Thank you.
Um, I am certain that most of you realize that we are living at a time where there is a growing fear of having any sort of uncomfortable conversation with anyone. We're living in a time when it's far easier to simply air things out online or even ghost someone rather than having to deal with a face-to-face problem or a difference of opinion.
I'll say that I certainly know this to be true in my role as a pastor. I'm continually saddened by the distance between what people will say to your face and what they'll say to you online. In fact, so many people have turned to hiding behind a screen to trash talk others in angry online outbursts that important conversations about just about anything have almost disappeared.
Now, we know that a great deal of this is specific to our time and to the realities of our technological age, but the truth is that the human tendencies towards rage, gossip, and slander are as old as time itself. This is why the Bible is so full of wisdom related to controlling our tongues, curbing our anger, and avoiding gossip.
We believe that things like controlling our tongues and curbing our anger are so important for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus that we felt the Speak Life series was necessary. This is why we're taking four weeks to explore the wisdom found in the New Testament book of James and its Old Testament counterpart, the Book of Proverbs.
Because it's just this simple: we want Grace to be a community where we can still have meaningful, crucial conversations with one another. We've already heard from Amy and from Marin on the importance of taming our tongues and understanding the impact of our words. These are two messages that everyone should listen to, by the way.
Today, we turn to what the Bible has to say about why it's important that we control our anger. My goodness, this is an important issue today, isn't it? Controlling our anger.
So let's get right to it. Today's passage is James 1. We'll be looking at certain things in the chapter itself, but we're going to focus on verses 19 and 20. It's on page 1019 in the house Bible.
I just want to tell you this: I had to tell the first hour, if I seem a little bit relaxed, I've been three weeks at our lake cottage in Michigan, and I just got back late on Friday night. This guy's relaxed, and if I'm talking a little slower and seem a little bit comfortable up here, I am. I just want you to know that.
I also think, uh, no, you don't need to clap about that. It's just I'm being honest with you. The other thing I want to do is welcome everybody online because I was one of you the last three Sundays, and so I know all about that.
I think I should start this whole thing by praying for me because I don't know what else I might just say. So let's just, let's all pray together and we'll get going.
Father, I thank you for this opportunity to look into your word. This is an important subject. I pray that what I say will bring glory to you and will be able to be used by your spirit to transform our lives. I pray this in the name of your son. Amen.
Okay, I want to give you some context for these verses that we'll be looking at. It's generally accepted that the Book of James was written by James, and he was the half-brother of Jesus. He wrote this letter only about 15 years after Jesus's death and resurrection.
So this makes the Book of James not only the very first book that was written that we now find in our New Testament, but it was also written at a time when almost all of the followers of Jesus were Jews. You see, the missionary journeys that were undertaken to bring Gentiles into the fold hadn't happened yet.
So it makes sense that James would begin this letter by saying in verse 1 that it is written to the Jewish followers of Jesus who are scattered abroad, or it says the Twelve Tribes, the believers who are scattered abroad.
While we can't be 100% certain about this, the assumption is that many, if not most, of those scattered abroad Jewish believers that James was writing to were people who had first heard the message of Jesus in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
On that amazing day, which you can read all about in Acts chapter 3, these people had heard a great wind blowing through the city, and they'd followed that wind. It had taken them to a location in the city—a quite miraculous moment, actually.
What they found when they got to this location was that a group of Jesus's disciples were proclaiming powerfully and convincingly that Jesus was the Messiah. Not only were they claiming this, but they were claiming it in multiple languages, and everybody there was hearing the message of Jesus in their own language.
That experience had changed people's lives, and they carried this good news about Jesus back to one of the many places that are listed in the book of Acts when it tells us all about this remarkable day.
The book of Acts tells us that there were people from at least 16 different far-flung locations from all over the Roman world who were present that day when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. Now these people had all gone back to their hometowns, and they were going to their synagogues and telling everyone about what had happened to them in Jerusalem.
What we must keep in mind is that none of these people who'd been at the day of Pentecost and who'd gone home to one of many places had said that they'd converted to a new religion. That's not what they said. No, what they had said was that they had come to believe that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah.
Even though Jesus had been crucified by the Romans and he died, God had raised him from the dead, and he was alive. Now, you can imagine how that story was received back in their hometown synagogues in places all over the Roman Empire.
We know that some Jewish people did believe these people's messages about Jesus, but we know that this message was mostly rejected out of hand and ridiculed by most Jews living in scattered places like Pontus, Cappadocia, and Elam.
It makes perfect sense to me why James starts his letter by saying this in verse 2: "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow."
When James says troubles come your way, the word he uses for troubles is a word that meant literally a testing of your consistency, your willingness to stay consistent in something. In other words, when troubles were coming their way, it was a test to see if they would consistently stand firm in their belief in Jesus as the risen Messiah, even when almost everybody in their lives was telling them that they were crazy.
When James says this is your opportunity for your endurance to grow, the word he uses to say endurance is a word that means to be unmoved from your purpose, no matter how much suffering you have to go through. Think about that—how much you're standing firm, and it doesn't matter how much suffering you go through when people say what you're saying can't be true.
All of this relates directly to these scattered abroad Jewish believers standing firmly when the Jews in their local towns and synagogues were in complete disagreement with them over whether Jesus mattered at all. You can imagine the conversations around that subject.
I can hear people in the various synagogues saying something like this: "You people went off to Jerusalem on your big trip, and you went to a Passover and a Pentecost celebration, and then you came back with this crazy story about some man named Jesus being the Messiah. Everyone knows that the Messiah will not be crucified by the Romans. He's going to conquer the Romans, and the Messiah is destined to make Jerusalem and the temple the center of the world. Did you idiots notice that that certainly didn't happen when this Jesus showed up? What you believe is ridiculous."
Then that small number of people who'd been in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost—people who'd seen the miracles and heard the message about Jesus from the disciples in their own language, no less—they would counter that they didn't like it when people condescended to them. They didn't like it when people questioned their experience, and they didn't like it when people were accusing them of being fools.
The conversations would get more animated and more heated and anger-filled. This is why James, who had clearly heard about these disagreements, says this in verse 19 in chapter 1 to the small number of Jewish followers of Jesus scattered throughout the Roman world:
"Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: you must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires."
James goes even further in verse 21 when he says, "So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls."
James included anger as a part of the filth and the evil in their lives. Guys, this is really strong stuff. It's also important to know that when James wrote this, he chose a very specific Greek word to say anger. If you had a good number of choices—why, in the book of Colossians, the Apostle Paul uses five different words to describe different forms of anger. James could have used any of them, but he used one.
The word is "orge," and you can get an idea of how that's moved over into English. But "orge" at the time meant a wrath that is purposed to bring public shame and judgment on other people. So mad that what you end up doing is shaming publicly others and wanting everybody else to bring a dark judgment on those people.
I'm sure James chose this word over his other choices because what must have been happening was that as these arguments over Jesus grew, they got more and more personal, and the anger was being expressed in ways to bring public shame on those they disagreed with.
It became more than a heated disagreement; it became a destroy-the-other-person's-character kind of anger. It became "orge."
It also makes perfect sense to me that James would say human anger like this does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Your Bible may actually have a note in it that says down at the bottom there's a question about whether the word that gives us righteousness, which is "sunē," should be translated as righteousness or justice. It can go either way.
I think this is one of the many places in the Bible where both translations, both possibilities, work. You see, speaking in this sort of anger with someone you disagree with, with your intention being to just destroy their character, that doesn't make you a righteous person at all. It makes you a slanderer and a character assassin.
Nor does working publicly to destroy someone's character just because you disagree with them about something result in bringing justice into the world. That's not what ends up happening. The disagreement gets lowered to a level of just public vitriolic gossip, and all that really happens is you throw fuel on an already raging fire.
No wonder James said the righteousness of God that he desires is not going to come out of being angry like this.
Fortunately, James has a remedy for his brothers and sisters, and for you and me, I might add. He says this: "You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry."
Now, it isn't as though that was a new thought. The first-century Jewish world was seeped in the words of the Old Testament, and in particular, the wisdom of the Proverbs. My bet is that most Jews living at the time were very familiar with what the Book of Proverbs had to say about anger.
I'm going to read you five proverbs. They're short, but I'm going to read you five of them.
But I'm going to tell you that I could have spent the entire rest of this morning together just reading to you Proverbs on the subject of anger. So important was this for God to speak to us about anger.
By the way, the word that is translated out of the Hebrew into anger is the word "af." "Af" literally means your nose or your nostrils. The reason that it's used to say angry or anger is because they knew that when people got really mad, their noses turned red or they flared their nostrils. They knew that that was what people do.
Well, anyway, listen to these proverbs:
- People with understanding control their anger.
- A hot temper shows great foolishness.
- A hot-tempered person starts fights; a cooled-tempered person stops them.
- An offended friend is harder to win back than a fortified city; arguments separate friends like a gate locked with bars.
- A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.
- Watch your tongue and keep your mouth shut, and you will stay out of trouble.
Now again, none of this would have been new to James's original readers. But what seems to have happened is that in the heat of the moment, this sort of wise advice got lost. Trouble and division were breaking out everywhere, and James was left with having to call out this sort of anger in the lives of Christ followers by saying exactly what it is: filth and evil.
By the way, guess what the words that give us filth and evil mean? They mean filth and evil—same thing.
Now, I know that James was talking about anger that grew out of people who attended the same synagogue having different Jewish theological positions related to Jesus. I'm also aware that these sorts of theological disagreements are not generally what lead to this sort of anger in most people's lives today.
I will say, though, the more I thought about this as I prepared this sermon—and as I told you, I was three weeks at the lake and I had plenty of time to think about this sermon—let me tell you, as I was thinking about it, I was reminded of the many times over my years as a pastor that this sort of "orge" anger was used against me and other pastors here at Grace.
I'm going to keep quiet about the specifics, but I will admit that my blood pressure did tick up some when I was remembering things from the past. I'll just leave it at that.
With this said, what we usually have in today's world are differences that arise over things that are generally political or cultural or matters of personal taste or preference.
I just recently read an article in the Atlantic Monthly where two men who had been great friends for a long time—and they had actually become roommates—fell completely apart over which Lord album was the best: her first one or her second one. Lord is a pop singer from New Zealand, for those of you who don't know who Lord is.
They continued to live together in the same apartment for about a year, but they ghosted one another. They called one another toxic in online attacks, and they've never spoken to each other again over which Lord album is the best.
These are the kinds of places where our anger gets us into real trouble, especially since we can vent that anger without ever having to look someone in the eye.
James's words are so poignant: "Be quick to listen."
Now, I will say that we're just—Felicity is talking about hearing. It doesn't mean to hear other people, but it also involves this word of giving someone an audience. In other words, what James is saying is that we need to be quick to give others our full attention, try to figure out exactly what they are saying and why.
We shouldn't be on our guard looking for the dog whistles that get us worked up, and we should be listening with the intention of hearing the person out, even if we don't agree with anything they are saying.
Then he says we should be slow to speak. This is a real problem in our culture because people have already made up their minds, and we are continually thinking either about what our response is going to be, even as a person is just getting started on what they're saying, or we've just decided what to say to anybody who might take that position.
We're quick to speak without even thinking. When he says be slow to speak, that doesn't mean never responding, but it does mean responding after a time of considering what you're about to say.
Everything we say has consequences, and it's far better to be silent while weighing out the consequences than it is to speak quickly and have to live with those consequences.
This was evident 3,000 years ago when Solomon wrote out these proverbs, and it's still true today. We have to keep in mind that the best way we're ever going to get somebody to listen to us is to start by listening to them and then carefully saying what we have to say in ways that don't condescend, ridicule, shame, or inflame.
Here's the hard part: we are to be slow to speak even if everything they say to us is condescending and shaming and inflaming. We are not, through expressing our anger badly, ever going to bring about the justice of God or the righteousness of God.
James says it directly, and my experience with dealing with people is that he is exactly right.
I know that this passage is talking about "orge" anger, and we all know that there are other kinds of anger out there. In fact, my struggles aren't with "orge" anger so much. I'll just be honest: my struggles—I first struggle with anger that grows out of bitterness.
This is anger that comes from being personally hurt, and I have been known to hold on to personal slights for decades. My wife brought up something this past week that she knew I was— you scratched the scab just slightly, and boom! Out comes Tim's anger, and it happened during the first Bill Clinton administration. I'm just being honest.
There's also an anger that I have that grows out of other people having a cavalier attitude about issues or circumstances that I am deeply moved by. You want to get my goat? Just say the things that I've given my life to aren't worthy of your attention.
I'll never forget it. That's another kind of anger.
And there's another anger, though, that I'm sure you all see in your lives somewhere, and it's explosive anger—anger that blows up when, say, someone doesn't get their way or when someone does something that somebody thinks is stupid or when somebody feels like somebody is wasting their time.
I just read yesterday a report that said that across the board in restaurants, owners are now averaging one time a week having to throw somebody out of their restaurant because they've been rude to their wait staff.
Now think about that: every restaurant, the average restaurant, is having people come in. We're so angry about somebody wasting their time or not getting what they want that they have to throw them out.
I'm just saying we have a problem. This is rage that blows up unexpectedly in unpredictable times, and it's a kind of anger that I'm sure everybody in the room knows somebody that is tormenting other people with this kind of rage.
All of these angers are simply—and I'm going to use a hard word right here—sin. I'm also confident that James, had he not felt that he had to address the specific kind of anger called "orge" right at the beginning of his letter, he would have listed out a bunch of other sorts of angers, all of which he would put under the category of filthy and evil and need to be gotten rid of.
I do want to say that James does not say we should never get angry. He says we should be slow to get angry. But from all that I can tell from my decades of reading the scripture, the times for us to exhibit what could be called righteous anger are very few and far between.
This kind of anger, the kind of anger that Jesus does show on very rare occasions, should grow out of a deep grief for the unjust conditions of our world, and it should always be absolutely in line with the things that we know are breaking God's heart.
But our anger should come slowly after much listening and contemplation and consideration, and I am certain that this is what James is telling us. It certainly is what Solomon, who is considered to be the wisest man who ever lived and the author of many of the Proverbs, believed this and said so over and over and over in his proverbs.
Now, I'm just going to say that I am not explosive. I think things through, I get my faction line, and then I tend to simmer and simmer and simmer, especially over those who have made assumptions about my motives or taken advantage of my better nature or used me in some way.
But here's my hope: that should I come face to face with any of these folks who have done these things to me—and I know who they are—if I should ever come face to face with any of those folks again, my prayer is that I will be quick to listen, slow to speak, and very slow to get angry.
Because, as James says so strongly, nothing righteous will ever come out of my anger, whether I express it through online trash talking or when bad-mouthing somebody behind their back or even if I do it face to face.
My greatest hope is that through self-control, endurance, or as James uses the word, that through my carefully thought-out words and actions, through my willingness to even allow others to think they have won the day, that in the end, righteousness and justice—the kind that God desires—then has a good chance of breaking into our world.
I'm going to quote James once again: "Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: you must be quick to listen, you must be slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and the evil in your lives and humbly accept the word that God has planted in your heart, for it has the power to save your souls."
I think that says it all for us. I think it says it all.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you. I just want to thank you straight up that you've given us your spirit to give us the strength and the power to overcome our tendencies to become angry, to feel that we have been misused or abused in some manner.
Father, I pray that—I mean, I pray thanking you that you have not left us alone in this difficult task. Father, I pray that you'll empower us to be a community that listens well and that when we speak, we will speak life into the lives of others and that we will do this in all places, at all times, and under any circumstances.
I pray this for us in the name of Jesus, our savior. Amen.
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on Nov 05, 2023
