Transcript
Tim Keller (0:04)
Each year we make a special free resource available during the season of lent for the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday. Gospel and Life would like to send you a daily devotional Sign up to receive this daily email@gospelandlife.com lent now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching.
Unknown Speaker (0:27)
Please turn to Ephesians chapter four and I'm going to read read the verses that we've actually been looking at. And we're going to continue to look at only we're reading the entire section each week. But of course we're really focusing in on a different verse or a different subject each week because it's an amazingly wonderful, multifarious passage on what the Christian lifestyle really is. Ephesians 4 and let me read verses 25 to 32 therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work doing something useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only that which is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you. This is God's word. The purpose of this passage is to show how we can put off the old self and put on the new. Remember that verse 22, 23 and 24, which we looked at in depth several weeks ago, maybe several months ago now, says you were taught to put off your old self, which is being corrupt according to deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self. Now let's remind ourselves again that this is the overarching principle and all of the little things that we're looking at, the specific injunctions like be truthful and don't steal and speak constructively and get rid of bitterness and so on. These are specific examples of how we are and where we are to put on the new self. Let's remember this that that's the principle. You notice how often this put off Put on principle. You see in verse 22, 23 and 24 is mirrored in the specific injunctions. So you notice it says, put off falsehood, speak the truth. It says put off stealing and put on labor and generosity. It says put off speaking destructively. And it says, speak constructively. Put away anger and bitterness and put on forgiveness and so on. The thing we have to continually remember, and I'll drive it home every week, is if you look at the particulars of what the Christian teaching is, the particulars do not look that different than many other ethical systems. Look at the Chinese ethical system of Confucius. Look at the Greek pagan ethical system. Look at the humanist ethical system. Look at the Muslim, the Islamic ethical system. Aren't they all going to say, don't steal, be generous. Aren't they all going to say, don't lie, speak the truth. Aren't they all going to say, put away bitterness, forgive? Well, you have to be careful. In many of those other systems you're not going to get that same emphasis. But basically, basically you're going to find that most of the things that we're told here, you're told to do in other religions as well. But the difference, Paul and therefore Christianity, is never interested in moral behavior simply as moral behavior. It doesn't just say put on falsehood. Put off falsehood and put on the truth. Because that's right now it is right. But that's not what Paul says. What he's saying in every instance is stop lying because of who you are. Put on the new self means, remember your identity, remind yourself of who you are now that you're a Christian. That is the secret, that is the principle. And that makes the Christian religion very different than all other ethical systems. We said that before and you see it again. When I read through there, you notice it talked about, don't lie, don't cheat, speak constructively. And then suddenly in the middle it says, and don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. You're not going to get that in Confucius or you're going to get that in Muhammad, or you're going to get that in any of the other systems. In here it says, be kind and compassionate, forgiving as in Christ, God forgave. You see that what Paul is telling you is now this is the principle. We're going to get into particulars, but let me just say it in a general way. Paul says, when you're angry, when you're bitter, don't Say to yourself, okay, I've got to stop being bitter. Stop it. When you're lying, don't say, now wait a minute. It's wrong to lie. I can't lie. I just can't. I mustn't lie. Paul says, that doesn't work. And you know what? You already know that. I can speak very personally about this. When I was in. When I was in my seminary years, I was struggling with sins. I was struggling with things in my life I struggled with for a long time. And I would always do what I thought I was supposed to do. I was supposed to sit down and say, this is wrong. Stop it. Stop it. It didn't seem to work. I read a book, which I don't. I'm not sure I really recommend to people because it's kind of a hard book to read. But I read a book, wrote a. Pardon me, I didn't write it. I read a book. You heard Rodney Dangerfield says, I just finished my first book. Now I'm going to write another one. Now I'm going to read another one. He said, anyway, did you get that? Now I'm going to read another one. What happens is the. This book that I read, that I do not. Didn't write and that I don't recommend anybody is a book by John Owen called Mortification of Sin. It was written by a Puritan. He wrote it in the 16. Gosh, 1670s, something like that. And it's on how to put sin to death in your life. And it's really not one of the first books you should read. It's not even one of the 10th books you should read. It's probably, maybe not even the hundredth book you should read, but at some point it's a good one because what he did in that book really revolutionized my life. He didn't sit down and say, now here's how you kill sin. You just say to yourself, how terrible to do such a thing. Gentlemen, don't act like that. Human beings don't act like that. Christians don't act like that. Don't you feel bad that you've done that? He says, that doesn't work. Instead, you have to look at Jesus Christ on the cross and you have to say, now how do I repay someone who's done this for me? I have to look at Jesus on the cross and I have to say, look at how he's forgiven me. Surely I have to forgive other people. See, that's what Paul's saying in verse 32. Don't just say I shouldn't be bitter. Instead, think about what Jesus has done for you. Think of who that makes you. Think of who that makes him to you. Or he says in verse 30, don't grieve the spirit of God. You're supposed to say, now look at who lives inside me. Being a Christian is ultimately being melted with spiritual understandings of who you are. Now that Jesus Christ has said, you are my beloved child, who you are. Now that the Holy Spirit has come in and said, I now live within your heart. You see, of course, you do actually have to put forth your effort and discipline yourself and just stop lying. You're tempted to lie. You know that if you lie, you're going to take it on the chin. You just stop. I'm not saying that there's never a place for a Christian to say, no, I'm not going to do it. But in the long run, what Paul is saying, that is not how you put off lying. That's not how you put off bitterness or not how you put off anger. What you have to do is you have to melt yourself. You melt yourself with an understanding of who he is and what he's done for you and the Great One who now lives within the courts of your life. That's what the Bible says. That's what Paul is saying. And in every one of these instances, this is the overarching message. All right, now we got to keep that in mind as we go into this one. That is Paul talks about. We saw last week, we finished last week. We spent a week and a half on it, on lying and dishonesty. Now we come to anger. Last week we began talking about anger. And this week, what I want to do is summarize and review what we said, but then move on. The anger subject is picked up in verse 26 and taken up again in verse 31 and 32. And I put them all for you right at the top of your handout, if you've got it, so you don't have to go back and forth in your Bible. Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry. Don't give the devil that kind of foothold. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another and forgive each other as Christ in Christ, God forgave you. I really, really muffed that Rodney Dangerfield joke, didn't I? I had a chance. I had a chance last week we said these things. And let me Quickly run through the first two. Two principles. Right away, we get about anger. First of all, let's remember that Paul actually says be angry and do not sin. He says, be angry. It's imperative. It's a command. And we learn this from that. First, we. And I don't have to spend any time on this. But last week we pointed out be angry must mean that suppression or denial of anger is wrong. There's a lot of people who think there's only two approaches to anger. One is you can just ventilate it, and the other is you can control it like a civilized person. Some people say you can ventilate it. But Christians, Christians control their anger. And that's. They say the only two things you do with anger, you can either give into it or you can control it. And that's not at all what the Bible says. The Bible is nowhere near as simplistic as that. And the Bible says, if that is your understanding of anger, you're in for a lot of trouble. It says in the book of Hebrews, beware lest a root of bitterness remain and springing up defile many. What that means is that you're not supposed to deny your anger. If you have that view that says Christians don't get angry, you're very likely to deny it when it's there. The book of Hebrews says you should always be extremely aware of whether and how much anger you've got. Because if it's hidden, see if it remains and it's hidden and you're not aware of it, you're not being aware of it. Beware means to be wary or aware of something. If you're not aware of how much anger and whether it's there, you're going to be in trouble. It will defile you. And so obviously suppression of anger is a wrong thing. A lot of Christians, because they're taught that they can't be angry, Christians don't get angry. You will call your anger anything else but anger. You'll say, I'm depressed. Because Christians can get depressed. That's not so bad. You'll say, I'm upset. Christians get upset. You can say, I'm worried. Of course Christians get worried. But you don't say I'm angry when actually you are. Secondly, the word be angry must also mean that not only is anger something not to be suppressed, but secondly, that anger is sometimes required. This is a command. Paul actually says, be angry. He doesn't say, now Christians don't get angry. And he doesn't even say, now Christians, you Know, if you do get angry, I guess that's inevitable, but, you know, it's really a bad thing. He says, be angry. And that means that anger sometimes is required. Go further than that. Or put another way, it means that sometimes if you're not angry, you are wrong. See, anger is something that God is doing constantly. Something that is true of God and therefore can't be a sin. In fact, you can go this far. This is a bit of a tangent. I'm not sure there's any emotion that we know of that's a sin in itself. No emotion is intrinsically wrong or intrinsically bad. They're all created by God. They go bad because they're tainted with sin. They're like fruit that get rancid. They're like food that goes bad, but in themselves they're fine. I'm not sure there's any emotion that's wrong. Well, you say, what about hate? Hate's anger. And besides that, God hates evil. He says so. In fact, when David is at his best, he says, I hate your enemies with a perfect hatred. Perfect hatred. You see, hatred is something that God's capable of. So it can't be necessarily wrong. It's only wrong if it gets sinful. What about anger? We already said that. What about worry? Somebody says, worry is a bad thing. Yeah, but worry is just concern gone bad. Concern, a deep concern for someone's welfare or the health of something. Concern. Worry is just concern gone bad. Well, somebody says, well, what about. You see, when you start to think about it, you begin to realize that there really aren't any bad emotions. They're just emotions gone bad. Now, what about anger? We have to keep this in mind about anger. Last week we defined it. This week we said, let's take a look at Jesus getting angry and God getting angry. Because those are great examples. Last week I gave you an example I won't go into now. That's the example in 2nd Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about anger being indignation and a zeal to see justice done. In Mark 5, we see Jesus getting angry. I did mention it last week, but I didn't put it in the handout, so I thought I'd put it in this week. When Jesus is about to heal a man who has a shriveled hand, the people around him, the Pharisees, start to watch because they can't wait to find him, see if he violates any of their Sabbath rules because it's the Sabbath day. And if he violates the Sabbath, then they got Him. And Jesus gets angry, very angry. Why? That's the key. Anger is energy aroused in defense of something good and released against something evil. That's the reason why it would be wrong in many situations not to be angry. Anger is energy aroused in defense of something. You want to defend something. If you see something that's threatened, that's wonderful and good, and you don't get angry. You are not a good person. If you see somebody being oppressed, if you see somebody being used, if you see justice being trampled on and you don't get angry, you are not like God. God has to get angry because he's good. In fact, the more good you are, the more righteous, the more holy, the more pure, the more loving you are, the more angry you're going to get. When you see certain things that need to be defended. Anger is energy aroused and therefore it's released against something that's evil. Now, Martin Luther King, I don't know if you've ever seen this. Martin Luther King has a series of what he called his principles of non violence. And they're wonderful principles. But the one that is most germane to us, Martin Luther King says non violence is aggressive toward problems, not persons. And that is an extremely helpful and interesting understanding of righteous anger. Because what is Jesus mad at? He sees the Sabbath law, which is a wonderful law, a law that's made to make us. Why did God pass the Sabbath law? So that we would rest on Sunday, so we would be refreshed one day a week. And of course, Jesus is very angry about seeing a law made for us being twisted into an instrument for self righteousness and an instrument of torture for people. So he's angry. So what does he do? He turns and he actually speaks against the Pharisees and he says, tell me it's unlawful to heal on the Sabbath. So what he does is he releases his anger against the error and against also the disease. And he heals the man in anger. It says he gets angry and he heals the man. He heals in anger. Of course, he wouldn't be good if he wasn't angry. So you see, what is he defending? The law of God. What is he attacking? Sickness and an error and evil. All right. Third principle, be angry, but do not sin. And here's pretty much where we left off. And I'm going to read afterwards. I talked to a number of people about the example I used off the cuff. It's my own personal example. I realized I needed to draw it out and show it to you on a Piece of paper. So here it is. What is sinful anger? It's obvious that Paul says, be angry. Therefore anger isn't sinful in itself, but. But do not sin, which means it's very possible to sin in many ways. Now, I'm going to tell you right here. There's three kinds of sinful anger that I would like us to look at. You can actually see it in verse 31. It says, get rid of all bitterness. Let's wait for a minute and we'll get to that. One of the kinds of sinful anger is bitterness. You may be righteous in your anger, you may be right to be angry. But if that anger settles into bitterness, a settled hatred for someone, then it's wrong, and we'll look at that later. Okay? Secondly, then it goes and says rage and anger, brawling and slander. Now, rage and anger are interesting. Rage and anger are internal conditions. Brawling and slander are external actions. Rage and anger. By the way, the word rage is tumos, which means white heat. It means losing your temper. The second word, anger, is more of a settled condition in which you just go sour and you look at the whole world through anger. It's a settled, normal condition of your heart. It gets to the place where nothing you see out there you're seeing except through anger. So you're finding fault with everybody and you're finding irritation with everything, and you're seeing injustice everywhere. And so these are internal conditions, whereas brawling and slander are external behaviors. Listen, there's three forms of sinful anger, bitterness, which we'll mention in a minute. Blowing up and clamming up. Because you see, when you keep your anger inside, it's going to attack something, it's going to tear up something. Remember, anger is energy released to tear up things if you keep it inside. If you say, I'm not angry or I'm going to hold on to my anger and you keep it inside, what will it tear up? You, your insides, literally. And some of you know what that means literally. On the other hand, brawling and slander means it's another form of sinful anger where you blow up and you just release your anger toward people and destroy them. Clamming up and blowing up. You see why the biblical understanding of anger is so subtle? It says in verse 29, it says, do not let any unwholesome corrupt talk him out of your mouths, but only that which is helpful for building others up. What you're supposed to do, it's not simple, but you're not allowed just to stuff your anger. And you're not allowed just to ventilate your anger, but you're not allowed to say things except those which are beneficial. You got to attack the error. You've got to do what Martin Luther King said. Nonviolence is aggressive toward problems, not people. You've got to direct your anger. And therefore anger is to be used, not to be stuffed, not to be ventilated. It's to be used. This is not easy, but it's also, I think, as you think about it and realize it, a marvelously subtle and gloriously wise understanding of anger. As Jesus said, father, I praise thee that thou hast hidden these things from the high and the wise and you've shown them unto babes us look, let me give you an example. Here's a father blowing up at his children. We all know who this is. Now, we talked about this last week. Now let's do an analysis. He's blowing up at his children. Now, since you know that all anger is essentially defending something and attacking something, you can always analyze whether it's righteous and constructive or sinful and destructive by asking yourself two questions. What am I defending and what am I attacking? My anger is aroused in defense of something. What is that?