Sermon – Anger

Matthew 5 v 21 – 26

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone
who murders will be subject to judgment.' 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.

"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your
brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go
and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

"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. I tell you the
truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Pray

You all know the 10 commandments, no other Gods, Don’t

worship idols and so on, the third commandment is Do not

murder. So when I first got given the topic of Matthew 5v21-26,

I thought oh my goodness I have the topic of murder, how is this

going to relate to, well you guys. But as I read over the

scriptures several times I realised that even though it does talk

about Murder it also talks about something else, Anger. Anger is

something we all go through. I mean is there anyone in this

room who can seriously tell me that they have never been angry

before. There is a common myth going around that it’s not ok to

be angry. Well I don’t know where that is coming from. Its ok to

be angry, never in the bible does it say “do not be angry”.

Anger is a normal human emotion, just like happiness, sadness,

love and frustration, they are all human emotions that we are

wired with, we can’t help feeling angry at times.

Deuteronomy 4 v 25

After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time
—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the
LORD your God and provoking him to anger

Deuteronomy 6 v 15

for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn
against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.

See, even God got angry.

Ephesians 4 v 26 (Pt. 1)

"In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.

It’s how you act when you become angry. It’s ok to be angry,

just don’t in your anger sin. Also the second part of that

scripture says:

Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.

Don’t let the day finish without going and sorting out any sort of

Conflicts between you and someone else or you will be sinning.

As I read before in Matthew 5 v 23 – 24 it says,

"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your
brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go
and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

Now back in the days of the Old Testament people used to bring

Livestock (like lambs and Goats) to an alter and offer it as a

sacrifice to God for there sins, which we know longer do

because Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins, but we do

have to ask for forgiveness. So if you look at that part of the

scripture like that it becomes,

“If you go to God to ask for forgiveness then realise that there is

something between you and someone else. Then you should go

and sort that out before you ask God to forgive you.” I know

how hard it is to do that especially if you’re really mad at

someone for what they did, and at that point the last thing you

want to do is you to go talk to the person your angry with. I just

want to tell you guys of a story of a time, last year actually, that

I was really angry with someone, I mean like so angry I felt like

I was going to explode. And I am one of those people who if

I’m really angry with someone, will completely ignore them

even to a point that it’s like blatantly obvious that I’m ignoring
them. Anyway I was ignoring this person and pretending that

they weren’t in the room and just reading my bible, and then

after they left the room I stumbled across Ephesians 4 v 26:

“In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”

And at that time that was the last thing I wanted to hear, I didn’t

want to go talk with the person who made me feel like I was

going to explode, So I didn’t. But later on I found out that

because of what I had done I had really hurt the other person, in

my anger I had sinned because I never went and talked to that

person, I did eventually and it was all sorted out but it didn’t

stop the hurt that I had caused because I had let anger get the

better of me. James 1 v 19 & 20 says:

“My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak
and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that
God desires.”

Our anger often fails to please God, Its how we are acting when

we become angry that isn’t pleasing Him. I’m sure he would

have been very displeased with me after I didn’t listen to him

and go and talk to my Friend. 1 John 3 v 15

“Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has
eternal life in him.”
Just because you’re angry with your brother, or sister, doesn’t

mean that you hate them, I know that. But the part of the

scripture that really stood out to me was the second part of the

scripture:
“and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him”

And how that relates back to Mathew 5 v 21-26 where it says:

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone
who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry
with his brother will be subject to judgment.”

So basically anyone who is angry with someone in a way that

does not please God is subject to the same consequences as a

murderer. That’s pretty scary don’t you think that God sees us in

the same light as murderers when we are angry in a way that

doesn’t please him, doesn’t that make you think, I know it

makes me think. But how do we change our ways so we aren’t

displeasing God when we are angry? Well firstly we can look at

the anger at a deeper level. I want you to imagine an

iceberg floating in the sea. As you guys probably already know

only 10% of that iceberg is popping out of the water and 90% is

under the water. Anger is like that 10% of the iceberg sticking

out. And hidden under the water the anger is supported by a

whole lot of other emotions like guilt, disappointment,

embarrassment and even tiredness. These emotions may be

bringing up or intensifying the anger to a point where it

becomes un-Godly. I know if I look back at my story from

before I was probably feeling very disappointed and Sad among

other emotions and those emotions pushed my anger to a point

that I felt like I was about to explode and made me not want to

talk to the person. Perhaps when you get angry try thinking

about what it is that’s really making you angry. I know at the

time that may be really hard to do but if you try to remember to

do this you’ll find yourself doing it automatically as time goes

on. Secondly if you do have something between you and

someone else it needs to be sorted out, you need to do

something about it as soon as possible. Even if it’s not even

necessarily anger there might just be something between you

and you might not even realise it’s actually anger. So I’m just

going to play a power point but before I do that I just want to

leave you with one challenge. Tonight if there is something

between you and someone else, maybe they hurt you, or you

hurt them, maybe you’re angry with them for some reason, or

there’s something between you, you need to do something

NOW. Don’t wait. Don’t say oh I’ll just wait till they come to

me, they might not even know that they hurt you. It’s ok to be

angry with someone what’s not ok is to hold that anger inside

and let it fester or build. I challenge you if there is someone in

this room tonight that you need to go talk to, that you need to

sort things out with, do it now, don’t wait.