7 Deadly Sins: Anger (16 Oct. 2005)
“Anger” October 16 2005
(The sermon can be heard on line at: http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm )
Recently, I was in the express lane at the grocery store. There was someone in front of us who was not “expressing” through the line. She was asking about the price of certain things she was buying… Then she asked the cashier if the change she received was correct. She counted the change and asked once more, “Are you sure this the right change?”
I knew I’d be preaching this Sunday on anger, but I could feel the anger rising up in me.
Ever been driving and had a car cut right in front of you so that you had to brake quickly to avoid an accident?
Have you ever been to the movies and Mr. Big and Tall sat right in front of you?
Ever had an experience where your favorite team lost because of a bad call the referee made?
We’ve all experience anger…
Not all anger is bad. Some anger is justified. Anger against injustice… anger over the fact that a loved one has been wrongly hurt are righteous forms of anger.
The Bible in Psalm 4 and Ephesians 4 point out that it’s possible to be angry and not sin.
Aristotle says that anger is virtuous if it’s the right kind of anger, in the right amount at the right time…
This morning we’re going to look at anger through the story of Cain and Abel. We’re going to look at how we can know whether anger is right or not, how anger can hurt others and us… and how we can deal with it…
If you have your Bibles please turn to Genesis 4.
3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.
4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favour on Abel and his offering,
5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the LORD said to Cain, Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?
7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.
8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, Let's go out to the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9 Then the LORD said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? I don't know, he replied. Am I my brother's keeper?
10 The LORD said, What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.
11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.
12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.
13 Cain said to the LORD, My punishment is more than I can bear.
14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. r
15 But the LORD said to him, Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over. Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no-one who found him would kill him.
16 So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain and his brother Abel brought offerings to the Lord.
The text tells us that Abel’s offering was received by God with favor, but that Cain’s offering was rejected.
This passage bothers some people because it seems to appear that God for no apparent reason accepts Abel’s offering and reject’s Cain’s.
But if we read the text in the original it seems that Abel offered the fat of the first born of the flock--the best part of his animals to God, but that Cain just brought ordinary produce.
Cain rather than being humbled by his failure becomes angry… angry first at God and then angry at his brother Abel…
Cain was the first born son, he was a person whose name meant “to acquire or possess” and apparently he was successful in accumulating things--and it seems that he was proud.
Pride, the first deadly sin, is a gateway sin to many sins including anger… Pride causes as person to over fixate on “I” and “I have a right to…” and if things don’t go “my way” pride will lead a person to anger.
Pride it seems opened the gate for Cain into anger--“why is my brother’s offering praised and not mine”--and anger led Cain to kill his brother Abel.
Anger is considered the most destructive of the deadly sins.
Anger causes us to hurt others.
Cain’s anger leads to murder.
Anger leads to thousands of murders and assaults in North America every year: in homes, the workplace, in traffic.
Anger lead to countless hostile words being said. Anger may lead us to passive-aggressive behavior”--a person says “yes” to do something but delays or botches something on purpose… passively expressing anger…
But Anger hurts others, but anger also hurts us.
Anger leads to all kind of physical ailments: Males who are quick to lose their temple double the chance of a heart attack and the death rate for men who lose their temper quickly is 5x that of the average male.
Anger prevents us from being able to think clearly.
Norm Evans, a all pro tackle player for the Miami Dolphins for several years, once confided, "It's harmful for a football player to get angry.
Evans explained, "Anger is so harmful in football that if I can get an opposing lineman or end angry at me, he will concentrate on beating me and forget to attack the quarterback—and that's my job, protecting the quarterback."
Another pro player that if he can get a defender angry at him, it’s much easier to fool them.
This is of course is not just true in area of sports, but anger will affect our judgment in every area of our lives… it can blind us… that’s why people talk about “blind rage.”
Anger kills out joy.
University of Michigan psychologist Christopher Peterson points out that forgiveness is the trait most strongly linked to happiness. Peterson said, "It's the queen of all virtues, and probably the hardest to come by.
Frederick Buechner says anger is the most fun deadly sin. “To lick your wounds, smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last morsel of the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways is a feast fit for a king.”
The chief drawback is what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
Anger hurts other’s but it also hurts us.
So how do we deal with anger?
How do we overcome?
1) Practice self care: The fact is the more stressed out we are the more we are prone to anger….
Spending time in prayer and the word are important ingredients to a healthy spiritual life, but so are enough sleep, good diet, and exercise!
You know how when we don’t get enough sleep or are not eating properly we are more irritable? It’s not just babies and young children who get more cranky, if adults are sleep deprived or hungry, we’re more cranky?
I remember a counselor suggesting to a particular couple who would quarrel and snap at search when they’d come home from work to have a glass of orange juice when they got home from work (he suspected that their blood sugar was low at time of the day). For this couple it worked; they stopped quarreling at that time of day.
According to Parker Palmer self-care is never a selfish act, it simply the stewardship of the only gift we have to offer the world.
Second choose not to stay with your anger.
After Cain is disappointed and angry that his offering is not accepted, in verse 7 God warns Cain by telling him that sin is crouching at the door of your life. God says sin “desires to have you, but you must master it.”
Obviously this is a metaphor, but there is a sense in which sin and anger in particular is like a crouching animal. It desires to pounce on us and control us.
Anger can dominate and control us… anger can “do us.”
But God says in the text, you must master it. Particularly early on in a battle with anger we can master it instead of allowing anger to master us.
Some people act as if they have no control over anger. They say you make me angry. Or my boss makes me mad. He’s pisses me off!
Anger may arise spontaneously, and we cannot fully control that, but we can control whether we stay angry.
We cannot avoid the first flush of anger, but we can choose to hold onto anger and nurse it or let go of it.
The word resentment literally means to “re-feel” and we can choose to rehearse in our mind some painful incident and that process will intensify our anger.
Being in touch with our anger can be helpful, expressing anger in prayer to God or to a trusted friend or counselor can very helpful, but there a sense in which “venting” our anger, like blowing on hot coals, can keep our anger alive…
Paul in the book of Ephesians tells us to not let the sun go down on our anger. Paul here is using a metaphor to say is deal with anger as quickly as we are able to…
There are times when we experience anger, but according to Paul we are to let it go as soon as we able to.
I was with someone this past week in as part of mentoring North Carolina who serving as a new missionary in Uganda. She was sharing with our group how people in Uganda are so friendly. People will greet you on the streets and say “Hello, how are you?” She was recently vacationing in England and needed to find a grocery store and she approached a British man and said, hello, how are you? He said, what you want!? She said I just want to know if you know if there’s a grocery store nearby? He said, “I don’t know!” Alison ended up finding a grocery story a block away… She was so disgusted by this person’s attitude that she said… it wrecked her vacation…and bothered her for 2 weeks. She said she wished she gone up to this guy and said, excuse, me in case anyone ever any asks you again… there’s a grocery store on the corner a block away! A friend in the group said, “Alison, time to let it go.”
And sometimes we are angry (and perhaps angry about something more serious than that) and sometimes we need to be feel our anger for a time, express it to God, to a trusted friend, in certain cases to the person who has provoked us, but then we need to let it go.
3rd When we are angry, we do we do well to ask ourselves what does this show about what I love and value?
Tim Keller points out that anger is an outflow of love. When we love something and it is threatened we become angry.
As we pointed out earlier, some anger is righteous.
If a loved one is being attacked and we get angry it shows that we love that person.
If a weaker group is attacked and we don’t get angry it shows that we care for the group.
If we trace our anger backwards, we can discover what is really important to us.
Sometimes our anger is directed toward injustice toward a vulnerable person we can affirm that that is a good anger.
But if our anger can also reveal we may love something disproportionately, it can reveal an idol.
Recently, I was about to practice sailing at our friend’s club (slowly working toward certification). It was a cloudy day on False Creek, but it was beginning to clear up and the sun was coming out and I’m like, “yes!”
But then we noticed that propeller was not properly working. Apparently some sea weed had block the engines ability to control the intake water and so we sat in the boat passing tools to the owner… while he trouble shot for about 2 hours.
The skipper and apologized and said I’m sorry for this…
And it was disappointing and irritating… I want to get out there (I thought to myself)! But I reminded myself about this message, kept saying to myself I’m just losing part of the day on the bay.
Do we get angry if our plans for our day off are frustrated?
Do we get angry when something that hurts our pride?
Do we get angry when we get a parking ticket and we saw the sign?
When we are angry? We must ask why am I angry?
What does this show about what I value?
Ask would God be angry at this?
Getting perspective helps me control my anger… asking myself is this something worth getting angry about? Poverty in Sudan? Yes. That my day off was interrupted… disappointed ok…angry--I don’t think so! It is embarrassing to think I can get so ticked about something directly affects me, but rather indifferent to bigger things I should angry about.
A fourth way to deal with anger, is to know we have received great love and mercy in Jesus Christ.
I know a couple of people who have temper issues, but both now are in love (no one here that I am thinking of). They have become much less angry people. When you are in a love relationship and you love and feel loved… you’ll become more loving less angry.
Some people think that falling in love is impractical. Father Pedro Arrupe says falling love is the most practical thing we can do. It will get us out of bed in the morning, determine how we can spend our weekends, what we learn. It will decide everything.
And there’s nothing as practical as being in love with God.
Earlier this month did you see the article in the Vancouver Sun about the young man Nicholas Chow Johnson who was severely by a gang modeling themselves after LA Street Gang, the crips, who wore blue beaten by a gang. Nicholas was walking to his girl friends because he happened to be wearing a red jacket, a color associated with a rival gang and Nicholas was beaten and left in vegetative state. The mother, very understandably, wants to sue the gang member who assaulted her son, even if it means that make the payments for the rest of their life. That’s a normal response. I don’t critique of that.
But I share as a point of comparison for this next story.
There was a 26 year old Korean graduate student who was studying political science at the University of Pennsylvania went out to mail a letter. He was accosted by a gang of teens looking for money. They took his money and killed him. The young man had been a model student and committed Christian.
At the trial the teenagers showed no remorse. The mother of the murder victim had every right to be angry (like Nicholas Chow Johnson’s mom), but she wasn’t. People from her church had voluntarily given for her son to be able to study in North America and when her son was killed, the mother asked for and received money from these same to be able help the teens who had killed her son.
When the young gangsters were convicted in court the Korean mother a devout Christ got down on her knees and pleaded that their lives would be spared…
I don’t know what was going on in her mind, but I know that kind of forgiveness possible, that kind of grace is possible only when we have a deep sense that we have been forgive and loved by God.
No one is naturally able to love like that, but it’s as experience God’s love for us in Christ, we become who people who are able to let go of anger and love….
Prayer:
Focus on receiving the love of God… let go of anger and forgiveness….
(The sermon can be heard on line at: http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm )
Recently, I was in the express lane at the grocery store. There was someone in front of us who was not “expressing” through the line. She was asking about the price of certain things she was buying… Then she asked the cashier if the change she received was correct. She counted the change and asked once more, “Are you sure this the right change?”
I knew I’d be preaching this Sunday on anger, but I could feel the anger rising up in me.
Ever been driving and had a car cut right in front of you so that you had to brake quickly to avoid an accident?
Have you ever been to the movies and Mr. Big and Tall sat right in front of you?
Ever had an experience where your favorite team lost because of a bad call the referee made?
We’ve all experience anger…
Not all anger is bad. Some anger is justified. Anger against injustice… anger over the fact that a loved one has been wrongly hurt are righteous forms of anger.
The Bible in Psalm 4 and Ephesians 4 point out that it’s possible to be angry and not sin.
Aristotle says that anger is virtuous if it’s the right kind of anger, in the right amount at the right time…
This morning we’re going to look at anger through the story of Cain and Abel. We’re going to look at how we can know whether anger is right or not, how anger can hurt others and us… and how we can deal with it…
If you have your Bibles please turn to Genesis 4.
3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.
4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favour on Abel and his offering,
5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the LORD said to Cain, Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?
7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.
8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, Let's go out to the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9 Then the LORD said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? I don't know, he replied. Am I my brother's keeper?
10 The LORD said, What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.
11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.
12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.
13 Cain said to the LORD, My punishment is more than I can bear.
14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. r
15 But the LORD said to him, Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over. Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no-one who found him would kill him.
16 So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain and his brother Abel brought offerings to the Lord.
The text tells us that Abel’s offering was received by God with favor, but that Cain’s offering was rejected.
This passage bothers some people because it seems to appear that God for no apparent reason accepts Abel’s offering and reject’s Cain’s.
But if we read the text in the original it seems that Abel offered the fat of the first born of the flock--the best part of his animals to God, but that Cain just brought ordinary produce.
Cain rather than being humbled by his failure becomes angry… angry first at God and then angry at his brother Abel…
Cain was the first born son, he was a person whose name meant “to acquire or possess” and apparently he was successful in accumulating things--and it seems that he was proud.
Pride, the first deadly sin, is a gateway sin to many sins including anger… Pride causes as person to over fixate on “I” and “I have a right to…” and if things don’t go “my way” pride will lead a person to anger.
Pride it seems opened the gate for Cain into anger--“why is my brother’s offering praised and not mine”--and anger led Cain to kill his brother Abel.
Anger is considered the most destructive of the deadly sins.
Anger causes us to hurt others.
Cain’s anger leads to murder.
Anger leads to thousands of murders and assaults in North America every year: in homes, the workplace, in traffic.
Anger lead to countless hostile words being said. Anger may lead us to passive-aggressive behavior”--a person says “yes” to do something but delays or botches something on purpose… passively expressing anger…
But Anger hurts others, but anger also hurts us.
Anger leads to all kind of physical ailments: Males who are quick to lose their temple double the chance of a heart attack and the death rate for men who lose their temper quickly is 5x that of the average male.
Anger prevents us from being able to think clearly.
Norm Evans, a all pro tackle player for the Miami Dolphins for several years, once confided, "It's harmful for a football player to get angry.
Evans explained, "Anger is so harmful in football that if I can get an opposing lineman or end angry at me, he will concentrate on beating me and forget to attack the quarterback—and that's my job, protecting the quarterback."
Another pro player that if he can get a defender angry at him, it’s much easier to fool them.
This is of course is not just true in area of sports, but anger will affect our judgment in every area of our lives… it can blind us… that’s why people talk about “blind rage.”
Anger kills out joy.
University of Michigan psychologist Christopher Peterson points out that forgiveness is the trait most strongly linked to happiness. Peterson said, "It's the queen of all virtues, and probably the hardest to come by.
Frederick Buechner says anger is the most fun deadly sin. “To lick your wounds, smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last morsel of the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways is a feast fit for a king.”
The chief drawback is what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
Anger hurts other’s but it also hurts us.
So how do we deal with anger?
How do we overcome?
1) Practice self care: The fact is the more stressed out we are the more we are prone to anger….
Spending time in prayer and the word are important ingredients to a healthy spiritual life, but so are enough sleep, good diet, and exercise!
You know how when we don’t get enough sleep or are not eating properly we are more irritable? It’s not just babies and young children who get more cranky, if adults are sleep deprived or hungry, we’re more cranky?
I remember a counselor suggesting to a particular couple who would quarrel and snap at search when they’d come home from work to have a glass of orange juice when they got home from work (he suspected that their blood sugar was low at time of the day). For this couple it worked; they stopped quarreling at that time of day.
According to Parker Palmer self-care is never a selfish act, it simply the stewardship of the only gift we have to offer the world.
Second choose not to stay with your anger.
After Cain is disappointed and angry that his offering is not accepted, in verse 7 God warns Cain by telling him that sin is crouching at the door of your life. God says sin “desires to have you, but you must master it.”
Obviously this is a metaphor, but there is a sense in which sin and anger in particular is like a crouching animal. It desires to pounce on us and control us.
Anger can dominate and control us… anger can “do us.”
But God says in the text, you must master it. Particularly early on in a battle with anger we can master it instead of allowing anger to master us.
Some people act as if they have no control over anger. They say you make me angry. Or my boss makes me mad. He’s pisses me off!
Anger may arise spontaneously, and we cannot fully control that, but we can control whether we stay angry.
We cannot avoid the first flush of anger, but we can choose to hold onto anger and nurse it or let go of it.
The word resentment literally means to “re-feel” and we can choose to rehearse in our mind some painful incident and that process will intensify our anger.
Being in touch with our anger can be helpful, expressing anger in prayer to God or to a trusted friend or counselor can very helpful, but there a sense in which “venting” our anger, like blowing on hot coals, can keep our anger alive…
Paul in the book of Ephesians tells us to not let the sun go down on our anger. Paul here is using a metaphor to say is deal with anger as quickly as we are able to…
There are times when we experience anger, but according to Paul we are to let it go as soon as we able to.
I was with someone this past week in as part of mentoring North Carolina who serving as a new missionary in Uganda. She was sharing with our group how people in Uganda are so friendly. People will greet you on the streets and say “Hello, how are you?” She was recently vacationing in England and needed to find a grocery store and she approached a British man and said, hello, how are you? He said, what you want!? She said I just want to know if you know if there’s a grocery store nearby? He said, “I don’t know!” Alison ended up finding a grocery story a block away… She was so disgusted by this person’s attitude that she said… it wrecked her vacation…and bothered her for 2 weeks. She said she wished she gone up to this guy and said, excuse, me in case anyone ever any asks you again… there’s a grocery store on the corner a block away! A friend in the group said, “Alison, time to let it go.”
And sometimes we are angry (and perhaps angry about something more serious than that) and sometimes we need to be feel our anger for a time, express it to God, to a trusted friend, in certain cases to the person who has provoked us, but then we need to let it go.
3rd When we are angry, we do we do well to ask ourselves what does this show about what I love and value?
Tim Keller points out that anger is an outflow of love. When we love something and it is threatened we become angry.
As we pointed out earlier, some anger is righteous.
If a loved one is being attacked and we get angry it shows that we love that person.
If a weaker group is attacked and we don’t get angry it shows that we care for the group.
If we trace our anger backwards, we can discover what is really important to us.
Sometimes our anger is directed toward injustice toward a vulnerable person we can affirm that that is a good anger.
But if our anger can also reveal we may love something disproportionately, it can reveal an idol.
Recently, I was about to practice sailing at our friend’s club (slowly working toward certification). It was a cloudy day on False Creek, but it was beginning to clear up and the sun was coming out and I’m like, “yes!”
But then we noticed that propeller was not properly working. Apparently some sea weed had block the engines ability to control the intake water and so we sat in the boat passing tools to the owner… while he trouble shot for about 2 hours.
The skipper and apologized and said I’m sorry for this…
And it was disappointing and irritating… I want to get out there (I thought to myself)! But I reminded myself about this message, kept saying to myself I’m just losing part of the day on the bay.
Do we get angry if our plans for our day off are frustrated?
Do we get angry when something that hurts our pride?
Do we get angry when we get a parking ticket and we saw the sign?
When we are angry? We must ask why am I angry?
What does this show about what I value?
Ask would God be angry at this?
Getting perspective helps me control my anger… asking myself is this something worth getting angry about? Poverty in Sudan? Yes. That my day off was interrupted… disappointed ok…angry--I don’t think so! It is embarrassing to think I can get so ticked about something directly affects me, but rather indifferent to bigger things I should angry about.
A fourth way to deal with anger, is to know we have received great love and mercy in Jesus Christ.
I know a couple of people who have temper issues, but both now are in love (no one here that I am thinking of). They have become much less angry people. When you are in a love relationship and you love and feel loved… you’ll become more loving less angry.
Some people think that falling in love is impractical. Father Pedro Arrupe says falling love is the most practical thing we can do. It will get us out of bed in the morning, determine how we can spend our weekends, what we learn. It will decide everything.
And there’s nothing as practical as being in love with God.
Earlier this month did you see the article in the Vancouver Sun about the young man Nicholas Chow Johnson who was severely by a gang modeling themselves after LA Street Gang, the crips, who wore blue beaten by a gang. Nicholas was walking to his girl friends because he happened to be wearing a red jacket, a color associated with a rival gang and Nicholas was beaten and left in vegetative state. The mother, very understandably, wants to sue the gang member who assaulted her son, even if it means that make the payments for the rest of their life. That’s a normal response. I don’t critique of that.
But I share as a point of comparison for this next story.
There was a 26 year old Korean graduate student who was studying political science at the University of Pennsylvania went out to mail a letter. He was accosted by a gang of teens looking for money. They took his money and killed him. The young man had been a model student and committed Christian.
At the trial the teenagers showed no remorse. The mother of the murder victim had every right to be angry (like Nicholas Chow Johnson’s mom), but she wasn’t. People from her church had voluntarily given for her son to be able to study in North America and when her son was killed, the mother asked for and received money from these same to be able help the teens who had killed her son.
When the young gangsters were convicted in court the Korean mother a devout Christ got down on her knees and pleaded that their lives would be spared…
I don’t know what was going on in her mind, but I know that kind of forgiveness possible, that kind of grace is possible only when we have a deep sense that we have been forgive and loved by God.
No one is naturally able to love like that, but it’s as experience God’s love for us in Christ, we become who people who are able to let go of anger and love….
Prayer:
Focus on receiving the love of God… let go of anger and forgiveness….
posted by Shigematsu at 12:07 PM
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