Hi, Nathan W. Bingham here. Before we get to today's episode, I'd like to ask you to please pray for this Saturday's Always Ready Youth event in Panama City, Florida. Teenagers will gather for a one-day training event, helping them to defend their faith, and encouraging them to stand firm on the truthfulness of God's word, even in a world filled with deep fakes and mel information. And if you're age 12 to 18, consider joining us. You can learn more and register at ligandier.org slash north Florida. Thank you. And when we're not angry about it, it reveals a profound indifference to sacred things. But the key is to have our responses mirror and reflect the responses of Christ. We should be angry at the things Christ is angry about, and not angry about the things He's not angry about. Our emotions can lead us down a path of sin, anger, grief, bitterness, even joy if we seek joy in the wrong places. So it's important for us as Christians to know what the Bible says about these topics, especially anger, for the Bible doesn't say that all anger is sinful. Welcome to the Monday edition of renewing your mind, and over the next four days, we'll consider both anger and joy. Our C-SROLES teaching on these topics is immensely practical, and their topic is not often addressed today from a biblical perspective. So when you give a donation and support of renewing your mind, that renewingyourmind.org, we'll send you two titles from Dr. Sproul. Is anger always a sin, and can I have joy in my life? Plus, we'll add both series to your digital library in the free Ligonier app. Well, to stop this week's study, here's Dr. Sproul on the Apostle Paul's command to be angry and do not sin. The Christian life in many ways is a life of responding to divine imperatives. An imperative expresses an obligation. It is a way of saying what it is that we must do. We have a special form for it in the English language, and we call it the imperative mood. And all languages have some way of expressing necessity, moral necessity, by way of the imperative. And that was also true, of course, in the Greek tongue in which the New Testament was written. There are many imperatives in the New Testament that there is one that sort of strikes us as being somewhat strange. And we find it in the fourth chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And we listen closely to what Paul says in chapter four, beginning at verse 25. He says, therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. And verse 26 begins with these words, be angry, that sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Now, obviously, the main thrust of this verse is a warning regarding a misuse of anger, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But did you notice the strange way in which Paul introduces the subject? He begins with an imperative, and he says, be angry. Now, yes, he's going to go on and qualify that. But here we actually get an exhortation to be something, to do something. And the word of God tells us with the imperative form to be angry. Isn't that strange? Or doesn't that just seem utterly inconsument with everything else that we learn in Scripture about norms and standards for human behavior? We don't want to be known as angry persons doing. We don't want to be known as being hotheads, or as angry young men or angry young women or angry anything. And yet the Bible says, be angry. Well, I think we have to understand this against the background of the general principles of Christian behavior, which always and everywhere is a behavior that is to be imitative. That we are called to be imitators of Christ who himself imitated God. And so Christian virtue is a matter of being a copycat, of being an imitator of someone else who reveals the standard of perfect righteousness to us. And the thinking goes like this, there are times when God is angry. There are times when Christ is angry. Therefore, there are times when we should be angry. Now, always the anger of God and the anger of Christ is a righteous anger. And this imperative that we have in the New Testament be angry is not a license for the expression of any kind of anger or any force of anger, but rather this anger that we are called to have must also be imitative, that it must be like the anger of God or like the anger of Christ in the sense that that anger be righteous in dignation, and not just selfish, explosive eruptions. But there are times when it is appropriate and required that we be angry. And we need to get it into our heads that every time that we're angry is not a sinful occasion. There was a movie several years ago, I don't know what the name of it was, where one of the most dramatic moments in the film was when the man on the TV newscast was expressing his displeasure and he called upon everyone in the city to go to their windows and scream out where Matt is expletive deleted. And we're not going to take it anymore. And so all of a sudden the film changes and you see these apartment buildings and people sticking their next out of windows all over the city screaming into the night, where Matt is and we're not going to take it any longer. In other words, the idea that that newscaster was trying to communicate was that the people had been as docile lambs accepting injustice and unrighteousness and never protesting in an appropriate means of anger about it. There are things beloved that go on in the world, in the school, in the government, in the church that ought to make us angry. When the truth of God is maligned and distorted, we should be angry about that. When human beings are violated, we should be angry about that. And when we're not angry about it, it reveals a profound indifference to sacred things. But the key is to have our responses mirror and reflect the responses of Christ. We should be angry at the things Christ is angry about and not angry about the things he's not angry about. One of the things that impressed me about Jesus was the different way in which he related to different people. There are times when he relates to sinners who were involved in very serious sin, very gross sin, and he relates to them in a profoundly gentle, sensitive, caring, forgiving way. The woman caught an adultery as dragged to the feet of Jesus. The man isn't brought with him. And the Pharisees are using this as an occasion to trap Jesus and they're not concerned about this woman's morality. They're concerned about utterly destroying her. They didn't care about her forgiveness or her rehabilitation. And that's the occasion when Jesus was very calm. And he wrote in the ground and he said those who were without sin cast the first stone and one by one, the accusers went away. And Jesus was left alone with the woman and what do the Scriptures say? Then he poured out his wrath upon her and said, what's the matter with you, you wicked woman being involved in this adulterous relationship? I should have had them stone you today. He could have done that and had been justified in doing it, but that's nobody did. He said, where are those who condemn you? And she looked around and she said to him, no man, Lord. And Jesus said neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more. Now he rebuked her. He didn't say go and keep on sinning. And it doesn't matter if you continue this kind of practice now. But you notice the calm spirit that Jesus has and how tender he is to her. She was guilty. But he understood that she knew she was guilty and that her spirit was humble, contrite, broken. There was no need for Jesus to pour out his anger upon her. Instead, he was angry with those who were the leaders. And I notice this, that when Jesus deals with the pros, with the big boys, with the ordained clergy of his day, with the leaders of the community, with those in the seats of power and of authority, it's asked no quarter and givemen. He doesn't put up with any of this kind of stuff from then. And he tells it like it is and he climbs all over these guys and he expresses his wrath. But with the broken, with the downtrod, he is tender. I can remember Leo DeRosher once being interviewed. You know, after he wrote his book, Nice Guy's Finish Last. And he was interviewed on a television program and they asked about his secret to coaching and to managing baseball players. And he said, my secret is this is that I treat every person on my team exactly the same way. And when I heard Leo DeRosher say that, I thought, that's a lousy way to coach. If he meant by that, that everybody has to play by the same rules and everybody has the same requirements, OK. But some people need to be treated tenderly and other people need to be treated with greater strength. And if we're going to relate to all different kinds of people, it takes great wisdom to know when to be tender and when to be strong. And Jesus mastered that. But he always seemed to save his anger for those who really should know better and who were in positions of power and authority. And so there is a place and there is a time and there is a way for the Christian to mirror and to reflect the anger of Christ in a righteous way. But if there is any emotion that is laced with danger and can be the occasion for the destruction of other people and the destruction of our own souls, if not guarded and tempered by the truth of God, it is anger. Paul says, be angry. And he doesn't go on to say after that, I want you to be as angry as you can, all the time. No, he says, be angry. But sin not. Because he understood that the emotion of anger is a powerful impetus for sin. When we too become angry, we can overreact, we can become violent, we can become hateful, we can become bitter. And once we were interviewed on a TV program several years ago and the person was asking me questions about grief. And I said, you know, we get these emotions all mixed up in the Christian life. There are some Christians who believe it is a sin to grieve. And that if their husband dies or if their child dies, they are supposed to act like stoics and smile and grin all the way through the funeral and say, case or a sera, and exhibit no sense of the weakness of weeping or of grieving. I said, wait a minute. What do the scriptures say about Christ? A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. What was he doing, weeping at the death of Lazarus? Grief is a legitimate human emotion. Special blessings are promised to those who mourn. Those emotions are fine. Just as the emotion of anger is fine. But dangerous. Because what happens to grief if we do not find our comfort in God is that it can easily slip across the line in the self-pity or in the bitterness. The author of Hebrews warns about allowing a root of bitterness to spring up in our soul by which our lives are spoiled. And he see what a close and thin line there is from grief to self-pity, from grief to bitterness, from anger to bitterness. There are a lot of angry people in this world whose anger has eaten away their souls. Their anger has been kept inside for so long it has been pent up and it has just slowly but surely eroded their very character. And so they come across as angry people, hostile people, bitter people. And so Paul gives his admonition here, be angry but sin not because the apostle understands that anger can be and often is the occasion for sin and what is his remedy? Be angry and do not sin and do not let the sun go down on your wrath. What does he mean by that? You can be as mad as you want in a daytime but as soon as the sun sets you can't be mad and anything that happens after the sun goes down you are not allowed to be angry. That is not the point. This is an expression, a proverbial expression among the Jews. Don't let the sun set on your wrath. What does he mean by that? Don't harbor it. Don't nurture it. Don't hold on to it. But let it dissipate. Let it go away. You know the person in my life who is most capable of provoking my wrath is my wife. And I don't think I am all that different from other people. Why would that be? Because it is her opinion that counts the most to me. And it is that relationship that means the most to me. It is that one human being in whom I have invested most of my affection and where we are so vulnerable to each other in those occasions. And I would love to be able to say to you that my wife and I, as Christian people, never ever have had arguments or fights in our marriage. And I would be lying. We have them. But the other problem with this is that my wife doesn't fight fair. Because she knows I can't stay mad. I can get mad and she knows that. But she knows me well enough to know. I can't. And I have actually, I have gone to my bed at night in my lifetime vowing to myself this time. I am going to stay mad. No matter what she says, no matter what she does. Well I wake up tomorrow. I mean I have purposely tried to violate the New Testament law here. That's all wicked I am. But I cannot stay mad. I don't know. I can't. And in the morning we laugh about it. But we don't always do that in our relationships. We get angry and then we sin. And we have grudges. And we begin to feed and to nurture animosity. And a lust for revenge. And an attempt to get even. To hurt the person who has hurt us. Paul says, be angry. Do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil. Boy, this has been said proverbially that idle hands are the devil's workshop. No. It's unresolved anger. That is the workshop of Satan. If he can take an otherwise healthy person and distort and twist their anger and make it bitterness. He can destroy that soul. And a lot of other people along the way. Later on in the same text beginning at verse 30 Paul says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. By whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor. And evil speaking to be put away from you with all malice. And be kind to one another tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Do you know what the key word is in this? Malice. It's the danger working in the shadows of anger. That anger can make us malicious people. And we know how we use the word malice in criminal justice system. Malice of forethought. That is with angry intention that we purpose to do harm to other people. That is a fruit of unresolved anger. How much better it is when somebody does something that you believe is wrong to stop right there and say, that makes me angry. And deal with it right at that moment. And then put it to bed. Put it away. Forget it. Or do we like to take it and massage it and make it our friend and turn us into hostile people with the spirit and root of bitterness. The root of bitterness of which the author of Hebrew speaks is a root that grows and bears fruit. And all of the fruit is rotten. You're allowed to be angry. And deed according to the word of God, friends, you're required to be angry about certain things. But that anger must always be brought corneday, before the face of God, and judged by the standard of his righteousness and of his anger. Be angry. But sin not. Be angry, but do not sin. A clear command from the Apostle Paul, but how do we deal with our anger? We'll be sure to listen to tomorrow's episode. What you heard today on renewing your mind was a message from RC Sproul's five-part study on anger from a biblical perspective. I was helped greatly as I considered this subject a fresh. So I recommend you respond today and request access to the entire series. And his companion book is anger always a sin. Simply show your support of this daily program with a donation renewing your mind.org. But when you call us at 800-435-4343 and request this series and book, we'll also give you access to his series on joy and its companion book. So that's two books and two teaching series when you donate that renewing your mind.org or when you use the link in the podcast show notes. Did you know that your support helped the recent build out of a new renewing your mind studio and it fueled last month's first ever renewing your mind live from the studio event with Derek Thomas. If you haven't seen the new studio or you missed that event, be sure to visit the official renewing your mind to YouTube channel and click on the live tab to rewatch it. And of course, subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss future live events. I asked earlier, how can we deal without anger? And it's a great question. And it's what RC Sproul will address Tuesday here on renewing your mind.
