Healthy Anger

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Before I get into the message, I just wanted to share a little medical update with you. I had some. A little bit of a setback in my personal health. I've been diagnosed with prostate cancer. And so I've got a couple of more tests that we'll be doing in the next few days just to make certain that that cancer is contained. And then from there, they'll be scheduling surgery. So I'm going to be sidelined for a few weeks. But it is treatable. It is curable. I'm going to be fine. You're not getting rid of me that easy. And so. But I may be pulling to the right or the left for a little while. So y'all pray for me. I'll keep you posted on when all that schedule's gonna go down. So I've got that to look forward to, huh? So. All right. Thanks, guys. Thank y'all. But I wanna talk about a different kind of cancer this morning. I wanna talk about a cancer that can affect you spiritually. It can affect you emotionally, it can affect you spiritually. It is a cancer that every one of us have to deal with. And if we don't deal with it, I can tell you it's not going to go away. It's not going to get any better. And it is something that you and I, at some point in life will have to face. And it's the cancer of anger. Anger. It's one of those things we have to really watch and guard our hearts about, because this series is all about being healthy. We talked about starting out with a healthy heart. A healthy heart. And remember, when we say a healthy heart, that involves more than just the muscle that's pumping blood through our chest. That involves our will. When the Bible says, love God with all your heart, that means your will. The heart means your emotion. To love God with all your heart means to love him passionately. To love God with all your heart means your will, your emotion, and it means your mind. It means your mind. That's why when you say to someone, I love you with all my heart, what you're saying to them is, with everything that I am. I love all that you are. And God desires us to love him that way. But one of the things that can affect that, one of the things that can hinder that, one of the things that can hamper that is this cancer called anger. Now, the reality of anger is you cannot avoid it. And not all anger is bad. Sometimes if you don't get mad, that's a sign of not being healthy. But it's when you harbor the anger and you hold on to the anger. And when anger persists, it can become a cancer that can affect every other area of your life. That's why the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7. Nine, don't be fast, don't be quick to become angry. Slow your roll. Loosely translated, in other words, be careful about the things that make you angry. Have you ever thought about this? The first question, the first question God ever asked after man was excluded from the garden in Genesis 4, he asked Cain. And the question he asked Cain is, why are you so angry? Why are you so mad? What's gotten you so angry? And the backstory of it is God had established that, that he would be worshiped through an offering, through a sacrifice. You know the story of the fall of man in the garden in Genesis 3. And then man tries to cover his nakedness with fig leaves, which represents man's effort to be pleasing and to cover his own sin. And then God had to take the life of an animal. It took the sacrifice of another in order to cover the sins of man. And so God established that sacrificial system in the garden, that he would be worshiped through a sacrifice. He would be worshiped at an altar. So Adam and Eve knew that, and certainly Cain and Abel knew that. And so when they began this process of offering to God a sacrifice, the Bible says that Abel brought what God required, which was the sacrifice of an animal, a blood sacrifice. And Cain was a farmer, so he brings the fruit of. Of the ground and offers the fruit as a sacrifice. Well, you can't get blood out of a turnip. So it's not a blood sacrifice that he offers. So God rejects. He rejects the offering of Cain and accepts the offering of Abel. And you know the story, it enrages Cain. It makes him so mad. And God looks at him and says, why are you angry? All you have to do is be obedient and do what I've asked you to do, and all of this goes away. But he didn't deal with the anger. The anger began to seethe under the surface. And you remember the story on occasion, shortly thereafter, he rises up and he kills his brother Abel. Have you ever thought about it, man? The first murder in all of recorded human history was over religious differences. That's why I would tell you, man, don't argue with somebody when it comes to religion. Don't argue with somebody even when it comes to Christianity. You may win the argument, but you'll lose the person. We're not called upon to be attorneys that argue the case. We're called upon to be witnesses. And a witness just simply expresses their experience. Jesus said, the Bible says in Acts 1:8, you will be my witness. So all a witness does is share an experience. And so this anger that Cain felt toward his brother was rooted in this religious difference, that God had received the blood offering and rejected the offering of the fruit of the ground. But I'm just simply saying that this anger that was harboring in the heart of Cain was not addressed, it wasn't dealt with, and it caused him to do something absolutely terrible. Now, anger may not cause you to kill anybody. I hope not. But anger will affect you in many other ways. It'll affect your spirit. It'll affect your outlook. It'll eventually create bitterness within your soul. Anger is a powerful thing if it's left unchecked. In fact, Jesus, when he was talking to his disciples on one occasion in Luke 17, he said to them, it isn't possible. It's not possible to go through life and not be offended. He said, you're going to experience things in life that are going to make you angry. You probably got something that happened to you this morning on the way to church that made you angry. You may have had something in the room that has already happened to you that made you angry. Jesus just simply said, it is not possible to live your life and not have anger from time to time. You and I are simply going to be offended. It's what we choose to do with that offense. Somebody has described our generation, this generation you and I are living in, as the age of rage. And I don't doubt that. I mean, anytime you get in your vehicle and you drive down the roadway, you see road rage. You see people who are angry, and you just want to know, like God asked Cain, what. What are you so angry about? What has gotten you that upset? I read an interesting study from the national center of Biotechnology, and it said stress and anger have increased since COVID Listen to this. They said one in three people report an increase in anger. One in three. I saw a complimentary study where a psychologist said at least one in three people attending the average church are angry about something. One in three? Look at the person to your left, right? Now take a look at that guy sitting to your left, that gal to your left. Now look at the person to the right. Do they look angry? No. Well, it might be you. One in three. So it's something that we all have to deal with. And one of the best illustrations I wanted to share with you this morning of a person who didn't deal with the anger and the ca and the high price they paid for that was Moses. Moses was probably, no doubt one of the greatest leaders in all of human history. Moses, as you know, led the great Exodus out of Egypt. And yet, when you begin to look at the life of Moses, what you discover about Moses is he struggled with anger. He was an angry man. He had anger issues, and it followed him all of his life. In fact, it is his failure to deal with his anger that ultimately kept him from leading Israel across the Jordan and into Canaan. In fact, God said, you're not going to be able to finish what you started because you haven't handled anger. I'm going to raise up Joshua, and Joshua will finish what you started. And the takeaway from that is simply this. That anger that is not dealt with, anger that is not reconciled, anger that is not resolved, can cost you your leadership. What is leadership anyway? Leadership is influence. Influence. Everyone has influence. Influence is the idea of two small tributaries flowing together to create a current. And in that inflow, in that current, people get caught up in the current that is your life. They get caught up in your inflow, your influence. And everybody influences someone. And I'm just suggesting to you that Moses stands as a testimony of what unreconciled anger can do to a person's leadership. Let me show you a passage that really underscores this. In Numbers 20. Look at Verse 7, just a few verses here, and then I'll comment and we'll go home. In Numbers 20, Verse 7, the Lord said to Moses, take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink. So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock. And Moses said to them, listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock? Now he goes off on them. Now, that's not. You don't really get all that he was saying to them. He got real upset at them. He probably used some unsanctified language when he was addressing them. And the Bible just sanitizes it a little bit by saying, look, you rebels, I've told you before, there's nothing worse than when the upright get uptight. And here this guy is, man, he is going off on these people. He has had it. Now, before I finish that, let me give you some context so you can understand. One of the things Moses was dealing with from the time they left Egypt was the constant complaining of the people he was leading. Now, I don't know if you deal with that in your line of work where you have people that occasionally complain and they whine and they look to you. And he was dealing with the constant complaining. It's. It's. No matter how good God was to them and no matter what God did for them, it just never seemed to be enough. And he finally has had it. And God says, look, they're out of water. When Moses says, yeah, they're whining to me about being out of water. And Moses, God says, well, go to the rock and speak to the rock. And when you speak to the rock, the water will flow out of the rock and the people will be satisfied. Well, God didn't tell him to go off on the people. God didn't say chew them out. God didn't say talk down to the people. That was all Moses. And so he does that. And Moses, notice what he did in verse 11. He raises his arm. Now what did God say? God said, speak to the rock. What does he do instead? He raises his arm and he struck the rock not just once, but twice. He strikes the rock twice and water gushed out and the community and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land that I give them. In other words, Joshua is going to lead them across the Jordan. You won't do that, Moses. And so Moses leadership was cost in that moment because of his anger. Let me give you two or three things to think about with anger. First of all, anger is something we will all experience. You're not going to avoid it. I said a moment ago, you're going to get angry. It is as natural as the sparks of a fire flying upward. You're going to get angry. In fact, the Bible doesn't even say that we're not to get angry. In fact, In Ephesians, chapter 4:26, Paul was writing and he said, be angry. He said, just handle it the right way. Be angry, but don't sin about it. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. And in so doing, you make room for the devil. He said, when you don't handle anger in the right way, you're giving the enemy an opening into your. Into your heart. You're giving the enemy an opening into your life. You make room is the expression in this translation. You're making room. You're making space for the enemy to exploit you. So he's saying it's okay to be angry. He's saying, deal with it the right way. I read a quote from Aristotle. Wow. Aristotle said, anybody can become angry. That's easy. But to be angry, listen, with the right person to the right degree at the right time for the right purpose in the right way, that's not easy. And I think everybody in the room would say that's true. A study from Duke University said anger is the specific personality characteristic that can bring about physical illness. Isn't that interesting? They link physical illness to a person who does not deal with anger. Here's another interesting study. St. John's University in New York. This won't surprise anyone. It's just interesting that they've done a survey or they've done a study to document this. Men and women tend to become angry in different ways over different things. Nobody in the room would refute that. Right. In fact, the study said men get angry more at abstract things. Stock market politics, the car, not starting, abstract things. They said men tend to get angry over more abstract things. In fact, men tend to be more passive aggressive when they are angry. Now, women. Women, on the other hand, get angry more at more concrete things, more at people, at specific things. And this is a shocker. Women will stay angry longer. Another thing I'm telling you ladies, I'm just learning. I was married 42 years before Cindy went to heaven. I'm like, really? And women, when studied, most of them will vow, though angry and though dealing with their anger, they have vowed never to forget what made them angry. Shocking. I've told you this before. Have you ever had a. Like, got into it with another guy? And you and the guy are just. Man, you're going at it. You kind of know you're in his grill. He's mad at you, you're mad at him. You're kind of going like Moses. You're not saying things. Real sanctified. You're angry in the moment. And all of a sudden, one of you look at the other one and go, are you hungry? And the guy goes, yeah, I'm hungry. They go, let's go eat. And we go eat. And you know what? It's over. We don't even talk about it again. But like I said, been married to a woman for 42 years before she went to heaven. Let me tell you what I learned about Cindy Jean. If they get angry at you, they ain't no going to lunch. And there's nothing else that's gonna happen either for a long time. Long time. Long time. It's gonna be a long time. So nobody's shocked about that. It's funny because it's true. It's just the reality of it is we all get angry. We just handle it in a different way. So anger can be experienced. But this is my second point. Point. It's in how we express anger. Now, again, like I said, Moses anger cost him his leadership. And when you think about it, not to. Not to try to explain it, but to try to understand it, Moses world was a little disordered. I mean, he came from a divided home. You remember the story, how the edict went out that all of those little Jewish babies, Hebrew babies, were put to death? And how Moses mom jochebed, how she created that little bed out of the bulrushes and hid him there. And his sister Miriam watched over him. And Pharaoh's daughter came, you remember the story, to take a bath in the Nile and spots the baby floating and falls in love with that baby and brings him into the palace. And Pharaoh allows her to raise Moses as her own child. In fact, Moses, by definition, the name Moses means to be drawn out. To be drawn out. She drew him out of water, and God drew a leader out of Moses. And so Moses is a man that was drawn out, but he came from these two worlds. He had his Hebrew upbringing, he had his Hebrew understanding because his mother was going to be his nursemaid, and she was going to be able to impart into him the ways of God. Because Pharaoh's daughter allowed Moses mom to raise him as his nanny, not knowing she was his biological mother. Just the providence of God. And yet he had this Egyptian influence as well, who worshiped other gods. And so he kind of grew up not really knowing where he was spiritually, where he was with his family. So he had a lot of things in his life that were not reconciled. He came from a very difficult childhood. So I think that's part of helping maybe understand some of his anger and finally, his anger boils over when he makes the decision to identify with the Hebrew people of. Of his mother and his father instead of the Egyptian people of his adopted family, Pharaoh. And he sees that Egyptian beating the Hebrew slave. You remember the story. And in that moment, his anger for the first time is demonstrated. And the Bible says he looks this way and he looks that way. He kills the Egyptian and he buries him in the sand. I always, when I read that narrative, I always think, man, anytime you gotta look this way and that way, what you're about to do, you probably ought to tap the brake. He looks this way and that way before he does it and he kills him. But it's the first time in Moses life that we really see how explosive his anger can be. And instead of realizing that and recognizing that, he ignores it and he runs from it. It's like God says to Cain, why are you so. Don't you see the anger? Cain doesn't respond to it. He ignores it, and it ruins his life. Moses doesn't see it and he doesn't respond to it, and he runs from it. And ultimately it will wreck his life. So people will deal with anger and they'll deal with it in the wrong way if they don't deal with it in the right way. And I can tell you, dealing with anger in a good way can be a positive thing. Let me give it to you this way. There's good mad and bad mad. Good mad is righteous indignation. Good mad is Jesus with, with the whip driving the money changers out of the temple. It's righteous indignation. It means you get mad enough to do something about a situation that's not correct. Sometimes you have to get mad enough about your life to change it. Sometimes you have to say, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've got to get large and in charge of me. And I can't control a lot of things, but I can sure control the things that I'm doing in my life. And so sometimes in order to make a change in your life, you have to get mad enough to do something about it. Good mad, bad mad is when you don't deal with it in the right way. In fact, a form of depression is simply anger turned inward. Now, there's all kinds of depression, but there's a certain type of depression that will affect you because you haven't handled the thing that makes you angry in a healthy way. And you just turn that anger inward and you turn it on yourself. And that's Back to the Duke study, where it can actually affect your physical well being and it can affect your emotional well being. And I would go a step further to say it'll affect your spiritual well being. So you need to express anger. It needs to be expressed in a healthy way. And then the third thing we have to learn to do is we have to expel anger. Don't allow anger to reside. Don't allow anger to preside. Expel anger. I've shared this with you before, but when Jesus was giving that great sermon in Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, you remember what he said in I'm sorry. Yeah, Matthew 5, verse 8, I believe, where he said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And I shared this with you a while back. But the idea of being pure in heart, the word pure is the Greek word. Catharos Cathedral. We get the medical word catheter from that word. And catheter, as you know, is that device that takes impurity out of the body. I'll leave that there. And so he's saying, blessed are the Cathars in heart. Blessed are those who have the ability to remove the impurity from the heart. You have to have a mechanism to deal with anger and to expel anger from your heart, or if you embrace it and you hold it and you don't deal with it, it does become a cancer that will affect you ultimately. So you have to deal with it. And one of the first ways of dealing with it is you have to know what you're dealing with. I've known angry people who didn't really see how angry they were. And when you try to confront them on their anger, they get angry that you're calling them out because they're angry. And for those of us who struggle from time to time getting angry, we have to be open enough to hear someone who loves us and care about us say, this anger is affecting you and it's affecting me and. And it's going to affect everyone else in your life. You're gonna have to deal with anger. I had a good friend and he was. Man, he's just struggling in his relationships. He was struggling in his walk with God and every. And finally he just opened up to me and he just said, bill, I don't know why, but I'm just mad all the time. I'm angry all the time now. I said, man, you gotta figure that out. I'm not a psychologist. I play one on Sunday sometimes, but I'm really not one. And I said, you really need you probably need to go and talk with somebody that can help. There's probably something back there somewhere. Remember Moses on the family stuff and religious stuff and all the stuff Moses had in his back? It could have been any one of those or a combination of all of those. And sometimes you have to recognize the thing that has caused the anger. You have to go to that source. It's like. Like God asked Cain, why are you angry? Why are you angry? And honestly, this is supposition. But had. If he just had stopped for a skinny minute, he would have realized, I'm angry because I want something for me that God doesn't want for me. I want to bring an offering from the fruit of the ground. And God said, that's not what I want. I want to sacrifice. Because the shedding of blood will point to the coming of the Messiah one day, and you can't get blood out of the turnip. And so instead of Cain acknowledging why he was angry, he ignores it. And it is. It's demonstrated in his hatred. And he lashes out and kills his own brother. And so I'm saying this thing, if you can recognize that I do have a problem with this, it's really a big step in the way of ultimately dealing with this. Yes, I do have an anger issue, and I think I know what that's tied to. And sometimes you have to go and sit down with somebody who can help you process through that. And really all you're doing is getting tools in order to help you navigate through it. Sometimes the best way, honestly, to deal with some of the things that makes us angry is to learn how to let some things go. Last Sunday I talked about Paul when he said, remember in Philippians, the things that happened to me have fallen out for the furtherance of the Gospel. What Paul was saying is, I've had to let some things go. Now, can I tell you to deal with anger in your life and to expel it from your heart? There's some things you're going to have to Catharos. You're going to have to let them go. There may be some people in your life you're going to have to let go. I've come to the conclusion that there are some things in life that you and I go through, some offenses that we experience that will not get reconciled this side of heaven. They won't. And if you hold onto the anger of that experience, waiting for it to get reconciled, and you don't learn how to release it and get away from it, it will affect you far more than it will ever affect the person who offended you. Sometimes you just have to turn that over to the Lord God. It's not fair. I know, you know, God, this isn't right. I know, you know, it's beyond my scope and ability to fix it. So I'm going to leave you with it. I'm going to put it in your hands, and I'm going to try to walk away from it. And you know what you'll have to do? You'll probably have to walk away from that every day. And for some people, in some situations, you'll probably have to walk away from it several times every day. I remember talking to somebody and they said, man, Bill, at the end of a service, I prayed. And I felt like in that closing moments of the service, I finally got victory over this area of my life that I'd been dealing with. He said, man, I was angry. I was just mad at the world. I was taking it out on everyone. He said, finally, I felt like I had this epiphany in a service, and I just finally felt like God had finally freed me of that anger. And he said, I walked out of the church. He said, I walked to my car. I was so happy. I felt like this huge burden had been lifted off of me. And I just felt all this incredible joy. And he said, before I got on the freeway, some moron wouldn't. And he said, all of that stuff that I dealt with in there came right back on me. You know why sometimes we pray about the same thing over and over and over and over and over again? It's because the devil knows. That is something we struggle with. Let me give you a little insight on the devil. The devil is not omniscient. Omniscience belongs to God. That just means he knows everything. The devil only knows about me and you, the things we let him in on. That's why he knows my weakness. He knows you. The Bible says that your adversary, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour. You ever watch those National Geographic that have the lion stalking the prey? Man, that lion will lie in that deep grass and just slip up on that prey. And he waits until the prey is vulnerable. He waits until he perceives the prey at its weakest moment and he'll hit the prey in his blind spot and take it down. Devil knows I have a blind spot. He knows your blind spots. He knows we all have weaknesses. And that's why sometimes we pray about the same thing all the time. Because it's a weak area of our Life and the devil knows it. And we're gonna have to deal with it till the weak area becomes strong. So you just own it and you acknowledge it. And sometimes it's three steps forward and four steps back. But the incredible thing about that is one John 1:9 says, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and he'll cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So to get that out of my heart, I have to let it go, and I have to let them go. Have you ever thought about it, the idea of forgiveness? Forgiveness by definition means to release. Forgiveness by definition means to release. You're releasing something or you're releasing someone when you forgive them. Let me tell you something. It costs you to forgive. Somebody owes you 1,000 bucks, and you think, I'll never see it. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna forgive it. And you say to them, I've forgiven the debt. Don't even worry about it. I release the debt. Well, they're free from the debt. But it cost you 1000 bucks, right? Right. What's my point? My point is it cost you something to forgive. It cost you something. You have to be willing to let some things go, and you have to be willing to let some people go to hold them. And to hold it will affect your heart if you don't expel that anger. Catharos. Get that out of your heart. Eventually it will poison you, and it will affect your influence. Have you ever thought about why Moses striking the rock was so offensive to God? I mean, he had. God had told him, speak to the rock, and he struck the rock. And the reason it was so offensive is that Jesus was teaching an important lesson to the children of Israel. The first time he said, they need water, strike the rock. In striking the rock, it would speak of the cross. Jesus is the Rock of Ages. And the image was, when Jesus comes into the world, the first time he will be struck, he will go to the cross and he will die, but he will only die once. And so the second time, they need water from the rock. He says, don't strike the rock, because the rock was already struck. Because he's teaching a lesson to Israel. Speak to the rock. And instead, in anger, he struck it. And he shattered the image, he shattered the message that God was trying to teach to his people. And that anger and that rebellion offended his heavenly Father. And he said, you're going to heaven, but you're just not going to go to heaven fulfilling all of your destiny there on earth. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you your leadership. And the Bible says when you read the record that Joshua led them across the Jordan into the Canaan land and Moses died on this side of the Jordan. Unreconciled anger. It's something that is, like I said as I started, it's like a cancer. It can affect you. So don't ignore it. Face it and deal with it. And know God can give you the power and the ability through the presence of his Holy Spirit, to deal with anything that you're struggling with. When it comes to anger, learn to let it go. Learn to let them go. Allow God to heal your heart. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for this day you've given us to celebrate baptisms, life change, to come into this place to worship you, Father, to be able to lift our voices in song, to think about who you are and whose we are. Thank you Father, for your word that's always practical and powerful and has the ability to transform anyone. And I just ask this morning, Father, that you'll speak to our hearts. We all deal with anger. We all get mad from time to time. Help us to deal with it in the right way. Help us to process it in a positive way that will bring you honor and glory and that will strengthen our walk with you. Help us to channel that anger, good mad into something that brings about your purpose for our life. And finally, Lord, I pray for my friends who may never have trusted you as their personal savior that this might be the day right where they are, whether they're watching online or in this room at this moment where they just swallow their pride and they say, lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. I call on you as my savior in this moment. And Lord, we'll be careful to give you thanks and praise for we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:33:34] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. [00:33:43] Speaker B: Week. [00:33:44] Speaker A: We look forward to seeing you next week.