Becoming Pure from Lying and Sinful Anger (Ephesians Sermon 28)

Well, as we come to this section of Ephesians, we’re going to see more and more how intensely practical the Gospel really is, that the Gospel really addresses rubber meets the road issues, practical issues of everyday life, everyday morality, key moral issues. And we’re going to look today at two of them, the issues of lying and of anger.

To set this in context, we’ve already had in the Book of Ephesians the glorious vision of the Church of Jesus Christ. We have two different metaphors given us in the Book of Ephesians. One of a “spiritual temple, a holy house that’s rising to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit,” that’s the Church. And that’s such a glorious picture, isn’t it? To bring in that image from Peter of “living stones” being quarried or rescued from Satan’s dark kingdom by the power of the Gospel and transferred over and put in the walls of this rising glorious temple. And you, all of you who are brothers and sisters in Christ, you’ve already come to faith, you’re in those walls now. You’re already members of the Church. And you will be for all eternity, and you will give praise and glory to God from this day on and forever. So that’s that image, an architectural image.

We also have a biological image of the Body of Christ, Christ Himself, the head of the body, we members of it and all of us united together through faith in Christ, united in the Spirit. Growing and developing and becoming more and more mature, as the Church of Jesus Christ. So these two different images and in both cases, the idea of unity is huge, that we must be fit together in the walls, and we must be members together one of another, and as we’re going to look at these moral issues, lying and sinful anger or unrighteous anger, they are very divisive in the Body of Christ. They fracture our unity. We’re going to talk about that.

So the context of all of this, Ephesians 4:1 it says, “As a prisoner for the Lord then,” the apostle Paul says, “I plead with you. I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you’ve received. Walk in a manner worthy of that calling.” And we’re wanting to do that. Now right in the middle of Ephesians 4, we have a magnificent three-step process that’s going to carry us through the rest of this chapter and then on into the next chapter on these specific moral issues. And then it becomes just a general recipe or mechanism for holiness that God gives us, and we saw it in verses 22 through 24, “that we are to put off the old man, the old nature, which is being corrupted, constantly corrupted. We are to be “made new in the attitude” or “the spirit of our minds,” and we are to” put on the new self,” created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

II. A Kingdom of Truth vs. a Kingdom of Lies

So we come to the practical issue right away of lying, and isn’t it amazing that the Apostle Paul begins with this?  Like Paul, if you’re going to address a moral issue in the life of the Church, where do you want to start? He starts with lying. He starts with lying, with the issue of deceit. He begins, verse 25, with the word “therefore,” “Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, if we are all members of one body.” So the essence of the old life was that old corruption we had in lying and deceitful desires, we’re told in verse 22, “deceitful desires,” desires that lied to us, and then we lied about them. So the deceitfulness of that, and we are to be transformed, “made new in the spirit of our minds,” primarily by the ministry of the word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are to put on the new self, and I like the Holman Christian Standard Bible here in verse 24, “To put on the new man, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. Therefore, put off falsehood.” Do you see the connection then? So it’s in the purity of the truth, on the basis of that. So the Christian life is one of walking in the truth, walking in the truth and Jesus Christ is the king of truth, isn’t he?

We want to have, as Christians, the same commitment to truth that Jesus has. We want to speak the truth with the same kind of passion that Jesus uses. Jesus has a commitment to the truth that’s infinitely greater than any of us, even to the point of dying on the cross, rather than to lie about himself. Remember when he was on trial before the Jews, “I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” He said, “I am.” He gave that truthful declaration, knowing it would result in his death, because they wouldn’t believe him. I, as a Christian, I want to have that same kind of commitment to truth that Jesus had, that’s what sanctification is all about. Jesus, on trial before Pilate then mentioned his kingdom. Pilate seized on that, because He was there as somehow the leader of an insurrection, “You are a King then,” and Jesus said, “You are right in saying I’m a king. In fact, for this reason I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Jesus is the king, the king of the kingdom of truth. And in that way, He more than just teaches the truth, preaches the truth, exemplifies the truth. He is the truth. John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s Jesus and Jesus in this way, and we saw that in the scripture, in Hebrews 1, is the perfect display of the character of God. Jesus tells the truth, is the truth, loves the truth because God, His Father is the exact same way in reference to the truth. Actually, Titus 1:2 says, “God cannot lie.”

Think about that. It is impossible for Almighty God to lie. He always speaks the truth, and this Almighty God, who cannot lie, is omnipresent. He is omniscient. It is before Him that we will give an account for all of our words and actions on Judgment Day. It says in Hebrews 4, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight, everything’s uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.” For this reason, we Christians should be passionately committed to the truth because on that day, there will be no secrets. On that day everything will be uncovered and laid bare, everything. And so we want to live a life of truthfulness. So David, in confessing his terrible sin with Bathsheba, in Psalm 51:6 said, “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” We want to be characterized by truth straight through. We want to be light with no mixture of darkness at all, because that’s how God is.

Now, we have been rescued into this kingdom of truth, that I’ve been describing, out of a kingdom of lies. Ruled by a king of lies, Satan himself, fundamentally, at his basic nature, Satan is a liar. Fundamentally a liar. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it this way, “Just as it is true to say that nothing so represents God as truth and truthfulness, it is equally true to say that nothing so represents the devil as lies.” The devil and his kingdom are characterized by lies. Jesus said to his enemies in John 8:44, “You belong to your father the devil and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies.” So that means his whole kingdom, his whole dark kingdom is based on lies. First and foremost, Satan fell out of holiness into wickedness, because he lied to himself, he deceived himself. He believed that he could take God’s place on the throne of glory ruling over the universe, he believed this and he told this to himself. In Isaiah 14:13-14, “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to Heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit enthroned on the Mount of Assembly on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain, I will ascend above the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high God.'” I mean, he lied to himself.

God was never going to give up His position of absolute holiness and sovereign rule to a created being, but Satan became entranced by his own power, his own glory, his own beauty, and he looked to himself and he lied to himself, and he was cast down to earth, but when he was cast down to earth, he then commenced to lie to the human race, to Adam and Eve at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Remember how God had clearly warned Adam, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die,” but then Satan comes along and says, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, you’ll be like God, knowing good from evil.”

How complex are the lies of Satan. First, a flat-out lie, a denial of something God asserted, “You will die if you sin.” The soul who sins will die. The death penalty, linked to sin, he lied about that. He said, “You’re not going to die.” He keeps on telling that same lie to sinners, “You’re not going to die. You’re not going to die. There’s no death penalty, there’s no accountability for our sins.” He’s telling that lie but then he brings in some elements of the truth for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you’ll be like God, knowing good from evil. That’s true, but it’s still a lie because the true statement in the service of an overall overarching lie, that’s the essence of cults and false religions, they say a lot of perceptually true statements, but in the overall overarching framework of a lie, of false religion, Satan’s whole kingdom is based on lies about God. All the atheistic scientific systems are based on satanic lies, all the godless philosophical systems are based on satanic lies. See, he has a complex system of lies that Satan has crafted, and those that are his subjects, those that are his slaves, they’re liars, too. As a matter of fact, Psalm 116:11, the Psalmist says, “And in my dismay, I cried out all men are liars.” Every human being, we’re all liars. Romans 3:13-14, “Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” Just the way we use our tongues, the way we speak, we are liars.

And Satan tempts Christians to act in the old pattern, he tempts us to lie too, though we have been delivered from his dark kingdom of lies, and we have been brought over into the kingdom of the truth, he still tempts us effectively to lie to one another.

Well, you remember the story in Acts 5 of Ananias and Sapphira, you remember that, how they had sold a piece of property, but they kept back some of the money for themselves, debatable whether that was a godly thing to do or not, but one thing that was definitely ungodly is that they lied about it. They lied to Peter. They lied in front of the whole church. “Tell us is this the price you got for the land.” “Yes, that’s the price.” Peter said, “Ananias how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you’ve lied to the Holy Spirit, you’ve not lied to men, but to God.” And Ananias and Sapphira in turn both dropped down dead for telling a lie. I mean, do you not see the grace of God in your own life that you don’t drop dead every time you tell a lie? I mean, think about that, thank God that whenever you’re convicted about lying that you’re still alive. I mean, we should tremble at the grace of God concerning this, and not be so glib about our lives. Ananias and Sapphira are a permanent warning to the Church. We have been rescued from a dominion of lies, amen. We’ve been set free from it. And the thing that’s beautiful about us is the truth about us is only good news. We are going to end up in Heaven, free from all sin, so we’re free from the need to lie. We don’t need to lie, we can speak the truth to one another. That’s the point of the Gospel here.

II. Put Away All Lies and Speak Truth

So we’re commanded here to put off all lying, to put off falsehood and speak the truth to one another, put off the lying like a filthy garment that defiles and corrupts you, put it off and resolve to commit yourself to the truth and the pattern of Jesus Christ. Say, “Lord, Holy Spirit, work in me the same love for the truth that Jesus had. I’d rather die than tell a lie, work that in me, Lord. I know I’m not there, but that’s what I want. I want to speak only the truth.”

Now, we know that the problem here is that lying and sinning go hand in hand. They’re like partners in the crime. A certain pattern of sin brings on lying to cover it up, so that the pattern can go on unchallenged. It’s been going on since Adam ate that fruit. You remember? And God came to him in the garden and he called to him, and Adam was hiding from God, and there’s this deception and hiding and a desire to present something other than what we really are. Now think about the scribes and Pharisees who Jesus called out as hypocrites, “Woe to you you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you’re like white-washed tombs. You look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you’re full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside, you appear to men as righteous, but inside, you’re full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Well, that’s what lying does. It puts a white-washed cover on a life of unrepentance in specific areas of sin, and so lying is a major issue. We must commit ourselves to telling the truth.

Now, as we live in this world we look around, we see lying flowing through just about every aspect of society and culture. It’s just we’re just used to it. I mean, take a party, for example, get a party of non-Christian people together, office parties, some Christmas party and all of the talking that’s going on. How much of it is true, how much of the things that the people are saying about themselves or stories they’re telling, or whatever are truth, or how much exaggeration is going, how much flattery is going on?  How much of these other things is going on? And there’s just so much deception going on in the room, people trying to make themselves look good or powerful or competent, etcetera, and they’re hiding their weaknesses by lying, this goes on all the time. People just become experts at shading the truth, stretching the truth, adapting the truth, arranging the truth, etcetera. Like it’s some silly putty that we can arrange however we like.

Or take politics, for example. Presidential campaigns. Have you noticed how the networks after these debates will give this truth-o-meter, or something like that? It’s just, we assume they’re lying, we just want to know how bad the lie is, how egregious, or how obviously false it is, but we know that the politicians must be lying. Why? Because the truth is so unpopular and you need to be popular in order to get elected and so you have to come back from a statement of your full convictions on controversial issues. You have to couch it a little bit, put some slogans, and nuances because if you just simply tell the unvarnished truth, you will not get elected. Would Jesus Christ get elected in the American political process?  He would never lie or shade the truth about any controversial issue, and that’s just simply unpopular in reference to unbelievers. And so, in politics, we are seeing it.

What about diplomacy? You ever wonder about diplomats sitting at the negotiating table? There’s a great verse, one of my favorite verses in the Book of Daniel, it’s not as well-known but Daniel 11:27, there in this incredible chapter of prophecy about the kings of the north, kings of the southeast, Greek kings and all these things are going to happen over Palestine, minor details of redemptive history, but God’s showing off how much detail he can predict about the future, there’s like 108 specific prophecies in the Book of Daniel, but minor Greek kingdoms that are going to follow Alexander the Great. It’s an incredible thing, but I love Daniel 11:27, talking about these two pagan kings, “The two kings with their hearts bent on evil, will sit at the same table and lie to each other but to no avail, because the end will still come at the appointed time.” I just love that verse. The two evil kings are just lying to each other in diplomacy. You see? And God says, “It doesn’t matter because I rule. I rule over the kingdom of lies, and I will achieve what I will achieve when I want to achieve it.” That’s God’s sovereign power.

Or, take law enforcement and the judicial process. We’re told the policemen and detectives, they just assume that the people they’re talking to, the persons of interest are lying, that somewhere in there there’s lies, even lots of lies. And then think about the actual court trial, how much effort is made to get at what actually happened. Cross-examinations, examinations, and objection overruled, and all that. None of that’s going to happen on Judgment Day. It won’t be needed. God will just say the truth. Do you remember how God called up Sarah on laughing? Remember that? “Why did you laugh?” “Oh, I didn’t laugh,” she lied. And here’s the final word on the matter, “Oh yes, you did laugh.” See, that’s Judgment Day. There’s a clean efficiency to that, it’s called omniscience, omnipresence. “You laughed. We’re done. I don’t need any cross-examinations, I don’t need any witnesses. We don’t need any material evidence. You laughed.” And that’s Judgement Day. God tells the truth because He sees it all the time.

Furthermore, we understand that lying complicates life, as Walter Scott said, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” As you begin to cover up your sins, you weave a cobweb of lies around your lifestyle, and it becomes harder and harder to remember the truth, harder and harder to remember who you really are. Every relationship in life is polluted and made more complex by lying. Biggest problem in the Christian life is that genuine holiness can only come about when people genuinely address the sin problems in their life and they stop lying about it. To me, that’s the essence of a really trusted accountability partner, where you can tell each other the truth.

Self and pride is at the root of all lying and we lie to protect a projective false image of ourselves. Think about social media. How much of the image that people put on Facebook or Instagram or other social media is actually the truth. Or are they selectively putting photos, selectively putting things on to create an image. And that’s a dangerous thing because you don’t want to do that, you don’t want to create an image. You want to be the truth. You want to be a man, a woman, a young person of integrity. That’s what the Gospel calls us, to. And so we’re called in verse 25 to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to our neighbors, for we are all members of one body.”

It’s pointing to the unity that we have, lying destroys that unity. Furthermore, it is by “speaking the truth in love, right doctrine that we build each other up.” “When we heard the word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation, that’s when we were included in Christ, and we received the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

So it is the ministry of the truth of the word of God that builds the Body of Christ, we must speak the truth to one another, we must resolve to speak the truth. If you have a sin problem, be honest about it, and deal with it. Don’t make excuses. Conversely, don’t exaggerate your good works and achievements and make much about all the good things that you do, don’t do that, don’t seek to puff up your outward appearance. Now I need to say a couple of things here because we’re just messed up.

It’s like, “Pastor told me to tell the truth, I got to tell you what I really think about your outfit today. I’m just being honest.” Okay, well that’s not honesty, that’s your own unkind opinion. We must make a distinction between biblical truth and your own unkind opinion. Alright and even if it might be true, you kind of have to earn the right to say some of those hard things to each other. And we see people and we’re like, “They need this, they that.” We’re making these judgments. Is it you, are you the messenger to go say that? So let’s be careful and let’s be careful about TMI as well, you know what I mean? Too much information. “Yeah, my stomach is just really…” “I had the grossest thing this…” It’s like no, really. That’s not what I mean by speaking the truth. Okay? Each one needs to bear his own burdens. Alright, so don’t need to hear about your toenail fungus. Your doctor needs to hear about it. But I have a need, a physical need, if you’d be praying for me. Good, thank you. I will. I will pray for you.

Fundamentally though, the most important truth we need to say to each other is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to speak the cross to each other consistently. We’ll never be done with it. I think as I was thinking this morning about this point in the sermon, I just want to appeal to lost people to come to Christ because all of us are liars, Christians, non-Christians alike, but only Christians have the remedy and the covering and the forgiveness of Almighty God and how do we have that? Through the blood of Christ.

So the verse that came to my mind is 1 Timothy 1:15, which says, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.” So you could put in there Christ Jesus came into the world to save liars. And I don’t know anyone who lies as much as I do, because I know my own lies. Everyone else they might be lying to me, I don’t know, but I know when I lie and I need a savior and you do too. So if you’re already a Christian, let’s speak the cross, the grace of God to one another. It’s the only remedy there is to any of these moral problems we’re going to be studying. But if you’re not a Christian, if you’re not a Christian, then trust in Christ, look to Christ crucified. He is the Savior for liars.

III. Be Righteously Angry

The second issue that he deals with, the moral issue he deals with here is anger. Look at verses 26 and 27 says, “Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give an opportunity to the devil.” Human anger, like lying, sinful anger is a powerfully destructive force in human relationships. Now, the issue on anger is complicated. It’s complicated. There is something, I think, Paul’s making a distinction here between righteous and unrighteous anger. There are some things you should be angry about, and there are many things that you regularly get angry about that you should repent from and not be angry about.

And so we have to make a distinction. Now, the NIV says, I think it kind of smooths it over, but it’s not helpful how it smooths it over. It says, “In your anger do not sin.” All the other translations just give that imperative. “Be angry. But don’t sin.” So that’s what he’s saying here. So there is an aspect and I want to talk about it briefly, of righteous anger.

Some counselors, some people would say it’s never appropriate for us to get angry, but when you feel those feelings of, let’s say, righteous anger, what do you do? Do you stuff them down? Like a cap volcano. We’re living in a world characterized by such egregious unrighteousness. There is such a thing as righteous anger and Jesus gives us a great pattern of it.

In Mark 3, He’s about to heal a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and his enemies are ready to pounce. And He looks around at them and He says, “Which is lawful to do on the Sabbath, to heal or to destroy?” To save life or to kill, but they won’t answer because of their hardness of heart and Jesus, it says there, in Mark 3, became angry at them because of their hardness of heart. Or even better, in John 2, Jesus comes to the temple and sees all the temple concessions there, all the animals and the doves and all of that being sold for a huge profit with injustice and unrighteousness going on in a river of profit going to Annas and Caiaphas. And He is righteously angry, enraged. And so what does He do, He sits down and weaves together a whip. That’s just a picture of God being slow to anger, deferring judgment while He makes the whip. But when the whip was done, He used it. And he cleaned out that temple. He was filled with the righteous zeal for the glory of God and the purity of his temple. “How dare you turn my Father’s house into a marketplace?” There’s a sense of righteous anger at the wickedness on display there, so Jesus, displays that and in that again, He’s just a picture of Almighty God. God throughout the Scripture, displays holy righteous wrath against wickedness and sin. God in His anger refused to allow the Israelites to enter the Promised Land because of their unbelief, but He commanded that they turn around and for 40 years wander the desert, directly ascribed to the wrath of God.

It says in Psalm 7:11, “God is a righteous judge, who expresses his wrath everyday,” everyday.” If you knew what to look for, you would just need to go around to the police precincts, or to the hospitals, or the nursing homes, or just the streets of everyday life. And if you knew what to look for, you could see the wrath of God on display everyday. But we don’t, and we just see really hard things happening to people, and God may be doing some things. I’m just saying this verse tells us every day God expresses His righteous wrath. And there is a day of God’s wrath coming in the future when e will settle all accounts when his righteous indignation and wrath will be poured out on all the ungodly who have not found refuge in Christ.

Now God has an amazingly long fuse, stunningly long. As a matter of fact, He said to Abraham, “In the future, your descendants will enter and take this Promised Land but not yet because the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” 400 years later, God’s cleaned them out. God cleaned them out by Joshua and the Israelite army. 400 years He waited. That’s the patience of God. So it’s actually right for Christians to feel anger about the wickedness we see. Every January, we have Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, it is right for us to feel a righteous anger about abortion. We should feel a righteous anger about that. We should feel a righteous anger about the mocking of God and of Christ that goes on in our culture. We should feel a righteous anger about the martyring of Christian brothers and sisters by terrorists in Syria.

Probably the thing that should make you angriest is the stubbornness of your own heart after all of the grace you have received that you still struggle with the same sins again and again. And cry out against yourself and say, “The very thing I hate, I do, and the very thing I want to do, I do not do, what a wretched man I am.” And at the end of that encounter with Almighty God Job said, “I despise myself and repent in sackcloth and ashes.” So there’s a sense in which I hate my own sin more than anything else, and it makes me, it angers me that I still sin, but that’s not all. It should bother you to know that hundreds of millions of people around the world have never heard the name of Christ. It should arouse anger inside you, when you hear of East African nations, the governments using food as a weapon in a political war so that their own people who they should be caring for are starving to death, literally. It should make us angry to hear about the graft and corruption of the Haitian government after the earthquake when tens of millions of dollars of aid goes in and government officials, some of them siphon off that money to feather their own nest, that should make us angry. And as a matter of fact, if you don’t feel anger about some of these things, something’s wrong with you. But we should remember that God is able to save amazingly sinners and separate out the ones who are doing these things from the actions that they’re doing. You should say, “I’m yearning for you to repent, I want to see you come to Christ, I want you to know the same forgiveness because I’m guilty of the same kinds of sins.” Alright, so that’s the issue of righteous anger.

IV. Be Not Sinfully Angry, But Quick to Forgive

What about unrighteous anger? “Well, Pastor, actually, that’s not something I ever deal with, honestly.” Well, go back to the earlier part of the sermon on lying, okay? There is a problem that we all have with unrighteous anger. “Be angry but do not sin.” Now, we could say, in your righteous anger, deal with it patiently, as Jesus did, but I’m going to just go over to the topic now of unrighteous or sinful anger. So much of our anger is based on the flesh. I mean, if you get angry 100 times in a stretch of period of time, whatever that is. How many of those, 90 or more are tied in some way to your flesh? I was talking to my kids about it this morning, I’ve got two in particular, two roots, two sources of sinful anger, pride and inconvenience. James says, “Also, you want something covetously and you don’t get it and that makes you angry.” So that’s another one. But I look at these two as huge. Pride. We get angry when our pride is ruffled, when we are publicly embarrassed in some way. When someone isn’t dealing with us as we ought to be dealt with. “Don’t you know who I am? You can’t talk to me like that.” You know that pride that leads to an angry reaction.

Cain got angry at his brother Abel, because God accepted his offering and not his own. Clear indication in the text is that he offered what God told him to offer and Cain didn’t. But he got angry, angry enough to murder his brother. Moses became angry at Israel and struck the rock twice, lost his place in the Promised Land. Nebuchadnezzar became angry at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that they wouldn’t bow down to his idol, became so enraged that he, I think just lost his mind. So anger is like a drug, and it makes you irrational. Saul, King Saul was enraged at David because of his pride was ruffled when these women of Israel went out and sang the song, you remember, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David, his tens of thousands,” that really bothered Saul. It’s like, Saul you’re number two, it’s okay, don’t get discouraged. But he was galled by this, and he wanted to kill David as a result. It was all out of pride.

Alright, so look at your own displays of anger. Let me speak to your parent, you parents, alright. Let’s say your kid does something disobedient and does it in the privacy of your home versus at Walmart, or at church, even worse. Okay and you are going to bring down the righteous judgement for that sin. Are you not telling me that there’s a little more passion when you have been publicly embarrassed than there is when you’re just dealing with it privately at home, and why is it? It’s your pride. And so, you might chastise or discipline with more anger than you should, because you’ve been publicly embarrassed. Or when your kids foolishly break something in the house and it’s going to cost time, energy, money to get it repaired and you become angry, because you’ve been inconvenienced in some way. Or all of us when we go out and you’re in line and someone cuts in front of you in line, doesn’t even look. They’re talking on the cellphone or something like that, and it’s like, “Oh, hmm, I’m feeling feelings right now. I’m feeling strong feelings right now. This ought not to be done, this is righteous indignation! I’m a human being, okay.” “I deserve to be treated better than this. Excuse me, I know you’re taking on the phone, but I have something I need to say to you.” What is going on there? Well, your pride and your inconvenience both kicking in and you have unrighteous anger.

Or whenever you might become angry at an inanimate object or an animal. Have you ever been angry? Now, you say animals are different than inanimate objects, they should know better. Well, it’s a debatable point but Jonathan Edwards resolved never to show the least motions of anger toward animals or inanimate objects. So that’s a resolution. Have you ever wanted that you stood up into something, banged your head, and wanted to hit the thing that just banged you and your hand is stopping and you’re saying, “What did I do?” Why compound it? You have a headache. Now you’re going to have a broken hand. But what is it that moves inside of us? This is unrighteous anger. So, be suspicious of your own anger, be suspicious of it. I don’t know, but one out of 100 times it might be righteous. One out of a 100.

James actually says this to us, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. For man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God, therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent,” the word therefore means that James is calling human anger moral filth. It’s like radioactive toxic waste, get rid of it. And by the way, that’s the verb that in the New Testament, always uses for anger. Get rid of it, get rid of it, take it out like the trash.

A settled angry life is inappropriate for Christians. I’m talking about bitter, unforgiving, unhappy people. We should be forgiving, we should be gracious, we should be living for the future world, we should realize that we deserve to be in Hell right now, and whatever has ruffled us or made our life difficult, we should still be overflowing with thankfulness, for the grace of God, and instead of being bitter, unfriendly, unhappy people. Concerning other people’s sins, we’re told in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient, love is kind, it doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it’s not rude or proud or self-seeking, it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.” So we should not be irritable, irascible, grumpy. That’s a choice we make.

I feel like our nation’s getting angrier and angrier. We’re angry people. I see a lot more public displays of anger. And I don’t just mean road rage, I just mean people that are filled with hatred toward humanity and go down to literally gun down totally innocent people. I just wonder how many people are in prison right now, how many people are in prison right now, because anger like King Nebuchadnezzar, made them irrational, made them insane, and they did something, and for the rest of their lives, they’re going to be paying the penalty for it. I wonder about that, it’s like a drug, just takes over. How many marriages have been destroyed because of sinful anger and because people did not know how to deal with their anger, or dealing with pet peeves?

I was convicted by this topic of pet peeves. I have too many of them. I want to cut it down by half in the year 2016. It’s hard, but things irritate me. I’m not going to tell you what they are, because you’ll probably do them to help with my sanctification. But there’s actually a website, I’m not going to read them to you, but it’s getannoyed.com. There’s like 150 pet peeves, you can write in with yours and they’ll add them to the list. But we should be characterized by contentment in any and every situation, right? “We’ve learned the secret of being content and joyful in any and every situation.”

And the verse says, in verse 26, “We should be quick to forgive.” If somebody has angered us, somebody has sinned against us, the Bible says, the Scripture says, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” This is strong advocacy for quick forgiveness. Now, I know a man, I’m not going to say his name, but he said to his wife, from time to time, “The sun has already gone down, so I’ve got another 23 hours that I can stew on this one.” I don’t think I’ve ever said those words. Oh, that was me. Now the idea is quick forgiveness. Be reconciled quickly. Don’t let it fester, don’t let bitterness come in, don’t give the devil a foothold, don’t give him a beachhead, like D-Day, to operate in your marriage, or in the Church. Go quickly with your adversary, Jesus said, who’s taking you to court, “Do it while you’re still with him on the way. Leave your gift there in front of the altar and go be reconciled to your brother” Immediately. There’s no delay. Deal with it quickly, address it. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. And if they have sinned against you, Matthew 18 says, “Go show them their fault privately, just between the two of you and win them over.” But deal with it immediately, deal with it.

V. Do Not Give the Devil a Place to Operate

And do not give the devil a place to operate. And when Christians settle in or are angry with each other, bitterness grows, and that destroys relationships. And we’re going to talk at the end of the chapter on forgiveness. So I’m not going to say much on forgiveness now, we’ll talk more about it later, but the Lord wants us to forgive as He has forgiven us, and so we must. So Paul is revealing to us the ramifications of the Gospel. Only faith in Christ can save, only faith in Christ can transform a life that’s been immoral and unvirtuous and displeasing to God and make it pleasing to him.

The Gospel is intensely practical… it addresses every area of life. In these few verses, Paul addresses some key moral issues that impact human society at every level—lying and anger. The gospel does not leave us as we were, but calls us to a higher, heavenly, Christlike life.

CONTEXT:

1)  The growing Church of Jesus Christ:

Paul had given us a powerful image of the rising church of Jesus Christ… a magnificent spiritual temple growing more and more glorious with every passing year; a spiritual structure in which we are placed as living stones in the wall for all eternity… combined with believers from all over the world in a supernaturally glorious unity. He has also given us the picture of the church as the Body of Christ, a living, growing reality, bound together by every supporting ligament, growing and building itself up in love as each part does its work.

But these images show the absolutely essential issue of church UNITY… the living stones must be fixed together with one another to make a powerful wall; the Body of Christ must be bound together in unity or the Body will cease to live.

Paul has given us this awesome picture of the supernatural unity of the Church:

But LYING and SINFUL ANGER that turns to BITTERNESS absolutely destroy church unity… so Paul wants them addressed by the power of the gospel…

2)  The transformed (holy life)

Ephesians 4:1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

It is NOT WORTHY of a Christian to live in lying and deceit… and it is NOT WORTHY of a Christian to live in SINFUL ANGER… the gospel is relevant to these sins and has power to transform us.

Ephesians 4:17-24 describes the continual three-step process of leading a transformed life:

First, he describes the OLD LIFE, the OLD MAN… the person you were apart from Christ…

Ephesians 4:17-24 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

Then, he speaks of the transformation that Christ brings:

20 You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.

Then Paul speaks of this continual three-step process:

Put off… made new in the mind… put on

22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Applied to these two issues, we are going to be taught here to PUT OFF LYING, which is part of the old life we lived in Satan’s Kingdom, and to PUT ON TRUTHFULNESS, speaking truth to our neighbors; and we are going to be taught to PUT OFF SINFUL ANGER, but to put on righteous anger, and quick dealing with issues that might make us sinfully angry

This is PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY… rubber-meets the road, daily life holiness We begin with the issue of LYING:

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

Paul BEGINS with this, in all of the practical issues of Christian morality he addresses!

Why? It is FUNDAMENTAL to the nature of the Kingdom from which we have been rescued and the KINGDOM in which we now live

I.   A Kingdom of Truth vs. a Kingdom of Lies

A.  The Kingdom of Truth

1.  The command begins with THEREFORE…

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

2.  The word “therefore” always causes us to look backward to what just preceded

Ephesians 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

a.  The essence of the OLD LIFE was the corruption by DECEITFUL DESIRES… desires which lied to us

b.  The essence of the NEW LIFE in Christ is one of TRUTH… “true righteousness and holiness”

Holman Christian Standard Bible: Ephesians 4:24 … put on the new man, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

3.  The Christian life is one of TRUTH, a WALKING IN THE LIGHT

a.  People who are converted speak of “seeing the light” or “embracing the truth”

1 Timothy 2:4 “God wants all people to be saved and to come to a KNOWLDEGE OF THE TRUTH”

b.  The light of Christ has comes and teaches us how things REALLY ARE

Ephesians 5:14 … it is light that makes everything visible.

4.  Christ is the KING of LIGHT, the KING of TRUTH

John 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

John 18:37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.

So, light has come into the world in the person of Jesus Christ… by Him we can see all things as they truly are. By Christ all things are visible, all things are truly seen

So, nothing is more incompatible with this than LYING… it is utterly opposed to everything Christ stands for, everything Christ is

5.  God is Truth

a.  Christ is truth because he is the perfect representation of the God of truth

b.  Essential to the character of God is the TRUTH…

Titus 1:2 God who cannot lie

Ponder that!! It is impossible for God to lie! God is the essential, the everlasting truth

1 John 1:5-7 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another

So, to be a Christian is to walk in the light as He is in the light… it is to live and move in a Kingdom of TRUTH, in which Jesus is the KING of TRUTH… so saturated with truth that he actually IS the truth

Furthermore, this God of truth has EYES of BLAZING FIRE and he SEES ALL THINGS:

Revelation 2:18 These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire…

Knowing the omnipresence and omniscience of God:

Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

For this reason, the deepest desire of Christians is to be characterized by TRUTH in the inmost recesses of our hearts

Psalm 51:6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

So… LYING should be as far removed from the life of Christian as possible… BUT the problem is lying is of the essence of Satan’s reign on earth

B.  The Kingdom of Lies

1.  Fundamentally: the devil is a liar

Lloyd-Jones: Just as it is true to say that nothing so represents God as truth and truthfulness, it is equally true to say that nothing so represents the nature of the devil and his kingdom as lies.

As Jesus was wrangling with his enemies, the Jewish authorities who were seeking to kill him, Jesus said this:

John 8:44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

2.  His whole kingdom is based on lies

Satan fell because he lied to himself that he had the right to take God’s place… to be worshiped as God:

Isaiah 14:13-14 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

Satan deceived Eve based on a LIE… essentially slandering God, implying that God was HOLDING OUT on the human race…

Genesis 3:4-5 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Satan lied about the DEATH PENALTY for sin, and he lied about God’s essential goodness and generosity

Satan’s entire evil empire is based on LIES about God

All false religious systems are Satanic lies… so also all false scientific and philosophical systems that are anti-God… they are all Satanic lies

Thus we do not repudiate lies and lying in a simple moralistic way, like we want to be VIRTUOUS or MORAL and therefore TRUTHFUL…

We as Christians see DEEPER into the essential nature of lying as a Satanic issue

3.  All human beings are liars

Psalm 116:10-11 I believed; therefore I said, “I am greatly afflicted.” 11 And in my dismay I said, “All men are liars.”

Romans 3:13-14 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”

4.  Satan motivates Christians to lie… ANANIAS and SAPPHIRA had their hearts FILLED BY THE DEVIL to lie to the church about the property they’d sold…

Acts 5:3 Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?

Acts 5:4 You have not lied to men but to God.”

Then, God struck them DEAD for lying!! This was a clear display at the beginning of the Christian church for ALL TIME how serious is this issue of lying, how devastating it is to the witness of the church, to the fellowship of the Church

Lloyd-Jones: “From our standpoint as Christians, to lie is to indicate that we have an affinity with the devil. And a habitual liar belongs to the kingdom of the devil, whose whole being is a lie. He is the father of lies, there is no truth in him. He is the embodiment of evil, and to lie is what he teaches others to do.”

C.  Rescued from the Kingdom of Lies, Brought into the Kingdom of the Truth

Colossians 1:13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves

II.   Put Away All Lies and Speak Truth

A.  The Basic Command: PUT OFF LYING, SPEAK TRUTH TO ONE ANOTHER

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

1.  Put off lying like a filthy garment

2.  Put it off like a corrupting robe that defiles you

3.  Resolve to speak the truth, and even more importantly, to LIVE the truth

B.  Lies and Sin Go Hand in Hand

1.  Lying is the most prominent characteristic in the life of sin

2.  You commit a sin and immediately want to COVER IT UP, to LIE about it

3.  Once you tell one lie, it becomes much easier to tell another lie to connect with the first lie

4.  The thing starts to snowball… it’s lie upon lie, one after the other

5.  Your whole life becomes a sham, a show, a hypocritical deception

Matthew 23:27-28 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

C.  Lying Flows through Every Area of Non-Christian Society

1.  Take a party for example

a.  The room is filled with people trying to impress one another, who are lying and flattering and exaggerating stories, concocting a bubbling brew with their words in what they include and what they leave out

b.  People become exerts at shading the truth, twisting the truth, bending the truth, airbrushing the truth till it is barely recognizable

2.  Take politics as another example… we just get used to politicians LYING because the truth is so unpopular

a.  Many networks put debates or speeches by politicians through a TRUTH- O-METER and there seems to be some level of lying in just about every paragraph

b.  Think about the way that Hitler used what become known as THE BIG LIE, TOLD OFTEN ENOUGH with enough conviction until everyone believed it… with a powerful concoction of lies he bewitched a self- pitying, economically depressed Germany into giving him dictator’s power

3.  Take diplomacy as another example

a.  National diplomats become skilled at lying to each other in the national interests of their country

b.  Great verse in Daniel 11 about two wicked kings:

Daniel 11:27 The two kings, with their hearts bent on evil, will sit at the same table and lie to each other, but to no avail, because an end will still come at the appointed time.

4.  Take law enforcement and the judicial system

a.  Police detectives are so used to lying that they just assume witnesses are doing it at every moment

b.  How much of a court trial is spent in trying to determine the TRUTH of the case because, despite the oaths that are administered to tell the TRUTH, the WHOLE TRUTH, and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, witnesses still lie under oath as a regular habit

D.  Lying Complicates Life

Walter Scott: “O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

As you begin to cover up your sins with a network of lies, it becomes harder and harder to remember the truth… to be who you really are

1.  Every relationship in life is polluted and made more complex by lying

2.  The biggest problem in the Christian life is that genuine holiness can only come about when people genuinely confess and repent from their sins and no longer try to hide them before God and act like they’re not true

3.  SELF and PRIDE is at the root of all lying: We lie to PROJECT A FALSE IMAGE of ourselves… we want people to think well of us, or we don’t want to take responsibility for something we’ve done, so we lie:

a.  Exaggeration: telling a true story with a little “enhancement”… the story just grows in the telling… everything you include and everything you leave out is done for the purpose of making people think well of you

b.  Facebook and Instagram: projecting a false image of yourself… perhaps as a fun-loving person with tons of friends having one good time after another

E.  Lying and the Christian Church

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

1.  Paul’s stated reason here: lying destroys the UNITY of the BODY

2.  Our Christian unity is based on shared belief in WORDS… the WORDS of the gospel, the WORD OF TRUTH

Ephesians 1:13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

3.  Our unity is based on believing words spoken by each other… and our maturity grows as we speak true doctrine to each other

Ephesians 4:15 speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

4.  We MUST SPEAK the truth to each other

a.  We must speak true doctrine, we must speak the words of Scripture to each other

b.  We must encourage one another in Christ, speaking words of hope and faith

c.  We must confront each other about sin, gently and lovingly

d.  We must build up the body by encouraging people about their spiritual gifts… if we are a body of LIARS, how can we believe that encouragement is nothing more than self-serving FLATTERY?

5.  Lying is destructive of fellowship… it makes unity impossible

F.  Resolve to Speak the Truth

1.  If you have a sin problem, be HONEST about it… repent from it… confess your sin honestly to God and to one another

2.  Don’t make excuses

3.  Don’t exaggerate your works and achievements

4.  Don’t seek to puff up your outward appearance in the Christian church, becoming a whitewashed tomb

5.  In speaking the truth to one another, make a differentiation between a hurtful OPINION and the TRUTH… you may think that someone’s clothes are ugly or their new hairstyle is ridiculous or their laugh is embarrassing… but that may just be your own UNKIND OPINION…

6.  The truth is something BIBLICAL… something that relates to the Word of God, or to actions that actually occurred…

III.   Be Righteously Angry

Ephesians 4:26-27 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil.

A.  The Next Issue: Human Anger

1.  Like lying, sinful anger is a powerfully destructive force is the Christian life

2.  How many marriages have ended because of sinful anger?

3.  How many church splits have come about because of sinful anger?

4.  In larger society, how many people are behind bars today because of a moment of unreasoning anger that consumed them and drove them to some terrible momentary action?

5.  Anger is a powerful force that must be addressed by the power of the gospel and the indwelling Spirit

B.  Paul Actually Seems to Command Anger: “Be Angry”

1.  NIV says “In your anger, do not sin.”

2.  But most translations: “Be angry, and do not sin”

3.  It seems to differentiate between righteous anger and sinful anger

4.  Paul is quoting Psalm 4:4 in which David is crying out against the wicked… God tells him and all the righteous to be patient, to offer right sacrifices, to know that God has set apart the godly for himself and will sustain, protect and bless them. Though he doesn’t say it in Psalm 4, the regular teaching in David’s Psalms is that God will judge the wicked in his own good time

C.  Righteous Anger is Right

1.  Some people counsel that it is NEVER APPROPRIATE for a Christian to be angry ever

2.  They actually would advocate a kind of suppression of all motions of anger… holding it down, pushing it inward, like a capped volcano

3.  But scripture indicates that there is such a thing as RIGHTEOUS ANGER

4.  The simple command here implies it: “Be angry”

5.  The clearest proof of this: Jesus himself got angry

Mark 3:1-6 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. 2 And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” 4 And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

John 2:14-17 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

This is actually an EXCELLENT DISPLAY of righteous anger… Christ’s zeal was measured and patient… he took the time to sit down and weave together a whip from cords… his motive was zeal for the glory of God’s house

6.  More than that, the God of the Bible gets righteously angry

Numbers 32:13 The LORD’s anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the desert forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.

Romans 1:18 ¶ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness

Psalm 7:11 God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.

7.  Yet God is SLOW TO ANGER… extremely patient:

Numbers 14:18 ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.

God has an extremely long fuse… waited for four hundred years for the “sin of the Amorites” in the land of Canaan to reach its full measure.

8.  So… it is actually RIGHT for Christians to feel righteous anger against the wickedness of sinners in this world… it’s actually WRONG to feel nothing when you read about terrible injustices…

a.  Abortion…. Millions of babies aborted every year

b.  The mocking of God by popular culture should make you angry

c.  The martyring of Christians by terrorists in Syria should make you feel angry

d.  Frankly, your own stubbornness in sin, the habitual way you continue to do the very thing you hate should arouse a zeal and passion inside you

Romans 7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

Romans 7:24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Job 42:6 I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

e.  It should BOTHER YOU that there are hundreds of millions around the world who have never heard the name of Christ

f.  It should arouse anger inside you when you hear of wicked governments in the Sudan or other east African nations who use starvation of the people as a political strategy

g.  It should make you angry to hear of the graft and corruption of Haitian government officials who use the earthquake in their country to arouse sympathy for their suffering countrymen, but who siphon off the millions of dollars of aid that flowed into Haiti

h.  Racism should make you angry… so should all displays of prideful arrogance on the part of leaders and athletes and movie stars who flaunt immorality

i.  IF WE FEEL NOTHING, then how does the Spirit of Christ live in us, who was so AROUSED by the sins of others???!!!

j.  YET, we should continue to remember that God is able to save sinners… and to find a way to separate the sin from the sinner in the hope that God will grant them repentance

IV.   Be Not Sinfully Angry, But Quick to Forgive
“Be angry, but do not sin…”

A.  BUT Most Human Anger is NOT RIGHTEOUS AT ALL!!

1.  So much of our anger is based on PRIDE… or INCONVENIENCE or some other carnal motive

a.  Cain become very angry out of jealousy at his brother Abel, because God accepted Abel’s offering but not his… PRIDE

b.  Moses became angry at Israel and struck the rock twice… losing his place in the Promised Land

c.  Nebuchadnezzar was enraged when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego wouldn’t bow down to his idol… he lost his mind and become irrational

d.  Saul was enraged at David because he was jealous of him, especially when the women sang this song, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands”… PRIDE

e.  King Ahab was angry when Naboth wouldn’t sell him his vineyard

f.  King Asa was angry at a prophet for telling him the truth

g.  King Herod was enraged at baby Jesus because he was threatened by his being called “King of the Jews”

2.  Look at your own displays of anger in an average week:

a.  What makes you get angry at your spouse or your kids

b.  Think about when your kids embarrass you in public and you are tempted to discipline them in anger… are you zealous for the glory of God at that moment, or are you more concerned about your own reputation…PRIDE

c.  When your kids foolishly break something that will take time and money to fix, aren’t you angry because of the INCONVENIENCE their immaturity will cause you

d.  When you become angry at inanimate objects that hinder you in some way, doesn’t this show how unrighteous our anger can become?

e.  We become angry at other drivers because they inconvenience us in some way, making our lives a little harder

3.  Be very SUSPICIOUS of your own anger… it is usually a display of carnal weakness and sin

B.  James Calls Human Anger “Moral Filth”

James 1:19-21 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

He tells us to GET RID OF our filthy anger… it does not bring about God’s righteousness

C.  A Settled Angry Lifestyle is Great Sin

1.  We must never be “bad-tempered people”… easily angered

1 Corinthians 13:4-5 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

2.  Christians should not be IRRITABLE, IRASCIBLE, GRUMPY

3.  This is a CHOICE we make

4.  America is becoming an angrier and angrier culture… more and more examples of rage in our public lives… not just road rage but life rage… maximum illustration: people who are filled with hatred toward humanity and gun down innocent people in public places… but far less is just the daily anger that seems to characterize so many people:

5.  Some have “pet peeves” in life… there’s a website dedicated to PET PEEVES called “get annoyed.com”

Drivers who don’t use a turn signal.

People who drink directly out of the milk/orange juice container. People that don’t use coasters.

People who blame anything but themselves for THEIR failure.

People who sit next to you on public transportation even when there are other seats available.

Noisy eaters.

When people take 20 napkins, use one, then throw them all away. People who talk too loudly on their cell phone in public

Socks getting lost in the laundry

When a person makes a sucking noise with a straw when the cup becomes almost empty.

People with bad table manners.

People who take too long to accelerate when the light changes because they’re using their smartphone

People that interrupt you

6.  But going through life constantly annoyed and irritated by these kinds of things seems a direct violation of the Christian life:

Philippians 4:12-13 I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do everything through him who

7.  Even worse: FITS OF RAGE (Galatians 5:20)

a.  Excessive, violent anger; loud outbursts

b.  Being out of control, shaking violently, throwing things

c.  Completely sinful!!!

8.  Worst of all: SETTLED ANGER… long-term anger… BITTERNESS, VENGEANCE

a.  Someone has been sinned against… and they can never forgive

b.  They live the rest of their lives in a quiet SEETHING state… corrupted by anger

c.  Unforgiveness is a corrosive acid that destroys their souls

D.  The High Cost of Anger

1.  Jesus linked anger to MURDER

Matthew 5:21-22 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca, ‘is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

2.  How many people are in PRISON right now because anger took over and they did something they will have cause to regret the rest of their lives

3.  How many marriages have ended because one or both of them had anger issues and said things they can never take back that destroyed the relationship?

4.  How many parents have abused children in corporal punishment because they were sinfully angry when disciplining?

5.  Anger is like a DRUG… it changes you physiologically, clouds your judgment, takes over and brings you where you do not want to go

E.  Quick to Forgive

Ephesians 4:26 Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry

1.  This is a strong advocacy for quick forgiveness

2.  Jesus urged us to seek reconciliation with someone immediately

Matthew 5:23-25 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. 25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.

3.  So, in marriage… if you are having a conflict, resolve it as quickly as you can… letting the sun go down on your anger means the greater possibility of settled BITTERNESS

4.  Also within the Body of Christ, we must get rid of anger and seek reconciliation QUICKLY… WITHOUT DELAY

5.  The longer it takes to come to forgiveness and reconciliation, the greater the danger of bitterness is

V.   Do Not Give the Devil a Place to Operate

A.  Anger is a DANGER ZONE in which the Devil Has Great Power

Ephesians 4:27 do not give the devil a foothold.

1.  When Christians are angry at each other and refuse to forgive and reconcile quickly, they give the devil a BASE OF OPERATIONS from which he can wage war on the church or family

2.  Think of the BEACHHEAD of Normandy after the D-Day landings… that is a “place”, a “foothold” from which the Allies waged war

3.  So also bitterness and unforgiveness is a “place” a “base of operations” from which Satan can work terrible mischief

a.  Factions and divisions can creep up

b.  A “root of bitterness” can spring up which bears bitter fruit for years

4.  Matthew 5: So if you have sinned against someone and you are aware that they are upset with you, leave your gift in front of the altar and GO IMMEDIATELY to reconcile that person to yourself

5.  Matthew 18: If someone else has sinned against you, it says to go and show that person the sin, lest you become bitter against them

B.  The Remedy is the Gospel

1.  Sinful anger, vengeance, bitterness is diametrically opposed to the grace of the gospel

2.  We were God’s enemies, reconciled to Him by the blood of Christ

3.  God has forgiven all our sins by sheer grace… how can we be settled into anger with another sinner

Matthew 18:23-35 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

4.  Bitter anger and settled unforgiveness is opposite to the gospel

5.  COME TO CHRIST… to free you from anger

Summary:

Paul is revealing to us the ramifications of the gospel of Jesus Christ

We are called on to “live a life worthy of the Lord” by the power of the Spirit

That involves freedom from LYING and SINFUL ANGER… may God purify us as a Church and cause us to live in the freedom of pure love!!