FORGET NONE OF HIS
BENEFITS, volume 7, number 36, September 4, 2008
But it
greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry, Jonah 4:1.
Anger
General
George Patton was commanding the Seventh Army in the summer of 1943, and his objective
was to overrun the Italian forces on Sicily
in order to drive them from the war. He also hoped to make Hitler commit troops
from the eastern front, thus relieving Stalin’s Red Army of the stress they
were facing at the time. On July 22 Patton took Palermo
and cut off 50,000 Italian troops. A few days later seventy-three Italian POW’s
were shot by troops from the 45th division under Patton’s charge. In
their defense at their court martial, two officers said that Patton had told
them to take no prisoners. On August 10, while visiting wounded soldiers in the
army hospital Patton encountered a private without wounds. When asked by Patton
why he was there, he replied, “I guess I just can’t take it anymore, Sir. The
shelling is too much for me.” Patton went into a rage, swearing obscenities,
hitting the man twice with his fists on the head, and waving his pistol at him,
threatening to kill him. General Omar Bradley buried the first incident and
gave Patton a brief suspension for the second. Though a great and brilliant
General, clearly Patton’s rage got the best of him. Proverbs 25:26 says, “Like
a city that is broken into and without walls, is a man who has no control over
his spirit.” Anger, left unchecked, can be a deadly emotion, causing people to
say or do things they later regret, causing those in the destructive path to
live with intimidation, resentment, and fear. Are you an angry person? How does
your anger reveal itself?
Jonah
was angry. Why? We know from Jonah 1 that God had commanded him to go to Nineveh, near modern day Mosul in
northern Iraq, on the shore of
the Tigris River. Instead he sailed from Joppa on the
Mediterranean coast, due north to Tarshish, in modern day southeastern Turkey. In
other words, at God’s command Jonah fled in the opposite direction. Jonah lived
and preached during the reign of Jeroboam II in Samaria,
a time of unprecedented prosperity for some with unspeakable oppression for
many. Why did Jonah flee from the presence of the Lord? He did so because he
did not want the Ninevites to hear the gospel and be saved. In Jonah 3:10,
after God had used Jonah’s faithful preaching to convert the vast city of
Nineveh, thus averting His certain judgment, he became angry, in essence
saying, “I knew you to be a God of loving kindness and compassion. That’s
precisely why I fled to Tarshish. I wanted to prevent the conversion of the
Ninevites. This is too much for me. Please take my life.” It is obvious that
Jonah is filled with rage. Why is he angry and to whom is his anger directed? Is
it not clear that Jonah is a racial and religious bigot? He hates the
uncircumcised, pagan Ninevites. They are not worthy of God’s grace. He is angry
at God for bestowing His grace on them.
There
are two types of anger. One is righteous and the other is not. Paul commands
that we be angry and yet not sin. He goes on to say that we are not to allow
the sun to go down on our anger, Ephesians 4:26. So, not all anger is sin.
Righteous anger says, “God is right, and that is wrong.” When Jesus makes a
whip in John 2:13ff and drives the moneychangers out of the temple He
was displaying righteous anger. They were making His Father’s house a den of
robbers. You ought to be angry at injustice. Your blood ought to boil over the
slaughter of the innocents in our country through abortion. You ought to seethe
at usury charged to the poor by loan sharks. I once paid off a poor man’s loan
where he was paying 68% annual interest. But let’s face it- most of us rarely
use righteous anger. Most of us are guilty of unrighteous anger. That’s when we
say, “I am right. You are wrong, and God is wrong.” When your child breaks
loose from your grasp, runs into traffic, and narrowly escapes being hit by a
moving car, you are justified in your anger. God has set the world in such a
way that bad things happen to children who are hit by moving automobiles. But
when you are angry because your one year old has kept you up for several hours
in the middle of the night for five nights in a row, then that’s unrighteous
anger. You see, unrighteous anger comes because we say, “I have my agenda, my
goals, my plan, my vision, my space and you are resisting or thwarting me. I am
right in what I want, and you are wrong.” Actually, unrighteous anger reveals
our failure to trust God’s plan. After all, is He not completely sovereign in
all the affairs of this world? Are there really any accidents? Was God asleep
at the wheel when he put that incompetent store clerk in your path, causing you
to be late with your other tasks? Did it catch God off guard that your boss was
unkind to you, embarrassing you in front of other workers? Unrighteous anger
comes because we fail to see God in everything. We fail to see and trust His
sovereignty, goodness, love, and wisdom.
Where
does this take us? It brings loud or quiet displays of anger. You know too well
what I mean by loud displays- things like violent actions, throwing things. It
yields vindictive, vituperous, vitriolic speech with cursing swearing,
slandering, and gossiping. But perhaps an even more dangerous display is quiet
anger where one becomes withdrawn, sullen, given to self-pity, wishing secretly
for one’s demise or hardship, withholding love from the person, eventually
bringing a coldness of heart for many other people too. Are you given over to
loud or quiet anger?
What
are you to do? It is not enough to say, “I guess I ought to do better. Maybe I
can get rid of this one day.” Unrighteous anger is sin. It is a killer. You
need to deal with it biblically. You need to do three things. First, you ought
to do what God asked Jonah. When angry, ask yourself, “Self, why are you angry?
Are you justified in this anger?” If you are honest with yourself, then most
likely you will admit that you are not justified in it. It simply comes down
to, “I am right, and you and God are wrong.” So, learn to see God in
everything, submitting to His will. He is in the details. Second, you must
confess your anger as sin. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
If you confess your sins, then God is faithful and just to cleanse you from all
unrighteousness. And third, you need to hold onto the twin doctrines of God’s
compassion and propitiation. Here’s the glorious and mind boggling truth. In
your unregenerate state, God was perfectly justified in His anger toward you.
You had sinned against His manifold goodness. His wrath hung over you like a
cloud and when the measure of your sin was filled up, His wrath would have come
on you to the utter most. I Thessalonians 2: 16. “In an outburst of anger, I
hid My face from you for a moment. But with everlasting loving kindness I will
have compassion on you,” Isaiah 54:8. Christ took hell, God’s just judgment for
you. He suffered damnation lovingly, patiently, compassionately for you. Your
sinful anger is a serious matter. Run to Christ daily for refuge and grace,
marveling at His compassion and propitiation. Use both as a motivation for
holiness.
FORGET
NONE OF HIS BENEFITS is a weekly devotional by Reverend Al Baker, pastor of Christ Community
Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut.
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