Angry Like Jesus - Emotions Part 3

so do any of you know anyone right now that's a little bit angry raise your hand it's crazy out there right if you don't know anybody that's angry right now the good news is you're not on facebook and you're not on twitter because this is probably would you agree maybe the angriest time of our lifetime i'm curious are any of you battling with feelings of anger are you easily agitated i know i am what do we do with these feelings of anger we've been looking at the emotions of jesus and when you think of jesus you often think of him being loving and compassionate and full of grace jesus also got angry but when he did he got angry in a way that honored god and so the title for today's message is angry like jesus father we ask that by the power of your word you would empower your church to show your love and god when we do get angry may we be angry like jesus in a way that changes lives and honors you we pray this in jesus name and everybody said amen disclosure i know this message is risky it's risky because i could make some of you mad at me the reason is risky is because when i talk about this you're very likely to hear what i say through your own filters if i can be politically incorrect for a moment you're very likely to hear what i say through your political filters because have you noticed today that everything unlike any other time in history is politicized same with school if you go back to school or if you don't go back to school it's controversy and politicized same with opening up churches and businesses same with wearing masks and not wearing masks everything is political so what i want to do is just tell you in this message on anger and i hope you'll take my word it's like i honestly do not have an agenda you may think i do because you're very likely going to be tempted to hear what i say through your filter and i just want to ask you to take me at my word to tell you that i don't honestly have an agenda except to speak to you about a very relevant subject from a spiritual perspective as we talk about angry so if you do get really angry at me i just want you to know clearly this message is for you in particular it really is so so let's just do this for fun those of you online let's just smile smile have you forgotten how to smile here's what you do you just take your little you know and you just do this make my smile if you're online type it in type it down i'm smiling put a smiley face put put in put in the chat your favorite smiling emoji just smile can you like just like chuckle it could be it could be fake i don't care if it's fake just just kind of chuckle okay what i want you to do is remember it may be rough out there but there are a lot of reasons to still find joy there are a lot of reasons to still smile and be grateful and i want to be grateful that we have an example in the son of god how to be angry in a way that does honor god so as we talk about it today one of the questions that people will often ask about anger is this is it a sin to be angry like if i get angry is god angry at me because i broke his law is it a sin to be angry and the answer is very clearly it's not a sin to be angry anger can very quickly lead to unproductive and very destructive sin but the emotion of anger in itself isn't a sin unless it leads you to do something that is wrong i think you'd probably agree that there is a lot of sinful anger in the world today but we learn from scripture ephesians chapter 4 that it's not actually a sin to be angry the apostle paul said this he said in your anger do not sin don't let your anger lead you to do something that would be inappropriate and then he says something that might speak to some angry people today and he said this he said in your anger don't sin don't let the sun go down while you're still angry don't harbor bitterness in your soul you know anybody that's doing that don't point at him right now but but this is happening everywhere he goes on to say this hey don't let the sun go down while you're still angry and do not give the devil a foothold that word in the greek foothold it means a place or it means a room if you can imagine that you're trying to keep evil out of your house but you leave the door cracked that's what anger does and the devil can come inside that crack and just put his foot inside the door so that he could have access to what's in your house and that could be part of the reason why many marriages are struggling because they've left a foothold for the devil with some anger in their marriage it could be that's why so many friendships today are hurting because people are are letting their anger drive them to sin it could be that if you're not careful your unrighteous anger could actually compromise your witness and then your effort to make a difference for something that really does matter your anger might lead you to sinful behavior that ends up compromising your ability to make a difference in the very thing that you care about the most and your anger don't sin be very careful not to give the devil a foothold so what we're going to do is we're going to actually look at matthew's gospel matthew chapter 21 at a time when jesus did get angry let me give you the context jesus was entering into jerusalem right before passover now if you don't know about passover in the first century essentially every jew in the roman empire would travel to jerusalem for the massive celebration of passover where they would make sacrifices in fact the historian the jewish historian josephus said that normally in jerusalem there might be about 40 000 people or so during passover if you can imagine there'd be a quarter of a million people or so in jerusalem to understand jesus's mindset this was the last week of his life and he knew it this was like five days before he was going to give his life so if he's a little bit uptight i'm gonna understand because he knew what was coming and jesus the son of god who never ever sinned walked up to the temple and what he saw broke his heart and made him righteously angry he saw greed he saw hypocrisy he saw abuse and he saw a misuse of his father's house so jesus did something that's out of the ordinary for jesus in his righteous anger not his sinful anger but in his righteous anger jesus turned over a table and i want to read to you straight from matthew's gospel what jesus did verse 12 says this jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there he overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves and then he preached a little mini sermon to him and he said it's written he said to them my house will be called a house of prayer but you're making it into a den of robbers then matthew gives us this odd little sentence that seems completely out of context in the middle of jesus turning over tables and turning over benches and preaching a sermon about what they were doing wrong matthew tells us the blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them a weird little hanging sentence almost as if matthew's like combining two stories into one jesus is righteously angry he's showing him this is wrong in a very unusual expression for jesus and then he's healing people all at the same time what did jesus do he actually turned over a table it's kind of dangerous for me to tell you this but i kind of wish he didn't do that i got because i'd like to preach the sermon without that because some of you turn over too many tables and what i want you to recognize is jesus was not characterized by his anger he did get angry but it wasn't often it wasn't like matthew was saying yeah this was the fourth table he turned over this week and you should have seen what he did with his pharisee who mouthed off to it like jesus had this jesus jiu-jitsu stuff and he you know no no no jesus wasn't characterized by his anger in fact what we know about jesus is jesus is known for his love not for his anger when you think about jesus the first thing you think about isn't oh my gosh he's righteously angry the first thing you think about is that he loved the outcasts that he touched the lepers that he forgave the sinners and so my goal just so you'll know is not to inspire you to go home and turn over your kitchen table and look straight at your spouse and say that'll teach you to criticize my driving no no that's not my goal what we want to do is when we are angry we want to be angry but not in a way that discredits our witness not in a way that hurts our relationships not in a way that dishonors god when we're angry we want to be angry but we don't want to sin so what i want to do is i want to show you three very specific things that we can learn from jesus and how to be angry in a way that does honor god the first thing we're going to see about jesus's anger is this notice jesus wasn't angry about what others did to him but jesus was angry on behalf of those who were mistreated check this out jesus wasn't like offended at what somebody said about him or did to him but his heart was breaking on the mistreatment of others so let me ask you a question and those of you online you can just you can respond in the chat if you want to just play along with us just type yes if you agree this to be true do you think jesus was ever betrayed what are you saying say it aloud was he ever betrayed the answer is yes type that in do you think he was ever criticized the answer is yes do you think anybody was ever hating on jesus the answer is yes do you think he was ever unjustly persecuted the answer is yes but if you'll notice he never got angry when someone criticized him he didn't get angry when someone disagreed with his views if i can contextualize it moderately he didn't get angry and somebody posted something that he didn't like okay i'm meddling i'm coming for you don't worry i'm going to get to you just hang with me jesus got angry when others were hurting it might be wise and i've done this to do what we might call an anger audit it's really easy to think someone else needs this message but maybe look into your own heart and ask yourself what is it that makes you angry nowadays where is it that you're carrying a grudge where is it that you're easily agitated where do you find yourself on the inside being extra critical of maybe some group of people or maybe even a little bit hateful when you should be loving maybe do a little anger audit and let me just be really really clear when someone hurts you let's say they they lie about you they mistreat you they gossip to you they betray you it's obviously very natural to get upset it's a natural response to get angry the good news is we're not just bound to a natural world but we follow a supernatural god who invites us to do something that goes beyond that which is natural but instead what is supernatural and scripture is actually really clear to those of you who are followers of christ that when someone wrongs us we're called not for revenge not to hate those who curse us but to bless them and to forgive let's not forget that how do we forgive those who wrong us believe me i'm just like you i get people take shots at me hurt me and everything in me wants to stand up and fight back and be angry and i feel justified in my anger how do i forgive someone who hurt me well scripture teaches we forgive just as christ forgave us and i don't know about you but i've been forgiven of so much so if i find myself angry for weeks at a time months at a time years at a time over something someone did to me or didn't do or said to me or didn't say if i'm a follower of christ at some point i may want to ask god for healing in my heart and let his holy spirit do a work to help me forgive as i've been forgiven when we look at jesus he wasn't angry about what people did to him said about him he wasn't angry at entire groups of people all those republicans are blah blah blah blah all those liberals he didn't do that he was angry at those who dishonored his father's house and mistreated some people if you don't know the details of the story i'll tell you he went in and he turned the tables over the money changers the money changers were the people that would exchange the currency so you'd have the proper currency at the temple um if like if you ever travel internationally and you exchange your currency for a foreign currency they'll often charge you more and they'll mark it up so i mean that's kind of generally fair what the money changers would do is they would mark it up a lot and jesus didn't like that what most scholars say he really disliked was not just that but what they did with the doves when you went to the temple to make a sacrifice you would bring a couple of dubs a pair of doves and it's a little bit like how many of you um remember concerts and sporting events anybody remembered that so if you if you if you buy a soft drink on the street it might cost you a dollar if you go to a concert or a sporting event it might cost you eight dollars at some place places they mark it up well this is exactly what they were doing with the doves but it was much much much worse one commentary described it this way that two doves on the street might cost about four pence when you got inside the temple they would raise the price up to 75 pence highway robbery so that those who were marginalized didn't have the resources to take a sacrifice into the temple and jesus didn't like that why was he upset why was he angry he wasn't angry over what someone did to him or said about him he was angry on behalf of the mistreatment of other people thought number one he was angry over how others were mistreated to quote my friend pastor albert tate number two notice this when jesus got angry he flipped tables but he didn't flip people somebody needs to hear this he flipped tables but he didn't flip people he didn't flip anybody off he didn't punch anybody he didn't cuss anybody out my friend pastor albert he said of the table that the table in many ways could have represented the system that supported the hypocrisy or the mistreatment it was on the table that the the misdealings were consistently hurting those that didn't have the resources to go into the temple and worship in other words when he and he turned when he turned the table why did he do this he flipped the table when jesus turned the table he disrupted the system that perpetuated the injustice he flipped a table but he didn't flip people now somebody here's going hey man preacher now you're preaching flip the darn tables over or whatever now again let's be careful again jesus followers led by the spirit of god and not led by our flesh let's be wise and let's be careful because the truth is whenever we feel strongly about something it's so easy to translate our perspective into a righteous posture because this makes me angry that i must be righteously angry but just because we feel strongly about something doesn't necessarily mean that we're right some of you are thinking oh someone someone needs to hear this maybe we need to hear this let me just give you an example just kind of for fun um what i'm going to tell you is some people are angry at me do you know that some people get angry at me and what i'm gonna tell you is not to be defensive i have no emotion toward this but i'm gonna give you two different extremes of people who feel like they are right righteously right to be angry at me there's one group who on one extreme would say pastor craig you should have never ever opened up the church during a global pandemic you're being reckless and dangerous you're evil you're putting innocent lives at risk and they're righteously angry you go to the other side and those are going to say pastor cred you should have never ever closed the church building you're caving into the liberal agenda i can't believe you're allowing people to wear masks the next thing you know they're going to put chips in your hands [Laughter] the funny thing is some of you are like on one side or the other yeah tell those other people they're wrong both sides feel righteously right but obviously both sides aren't it's impossible what happens all right please hear me so many people in their effort to be right have forgotten to be loving it was the apostle paul who said and now these three remain faith hope and being right and the greatest of these is being right no no no no he said and now these two remain faith hope and love and the greatest of these is let's make sure that when we're angry we don't let it convert to unrighteous anger that justifies unloving behavior our goal as christians is not just to be right our goal as christians is to always be loving jesus flipped tables but he didn't flip people how as followers of christ can we be righteously angry first of all we're not going to take things personally we're going to be angry on behalf of others we're not gonna flip tables we're gonna we're not we're not gonna flip people we're going to flip tables and the third thing we're gonna notice is this when jesus got angry he loved and healed those who were hurting let's remember and think back to our story who was it that could not get into the temple to worship the answer is it was the poor it was the marginalized it was the blind it was the sick and it was the lame they didn't have the resources jesus didn't just flip tables but what he did is he helped the hurting and he healed the sick right there in the middle of his righteous anger wasn't just a table flipping moment but it was a people loving moment look at that little part that i said was kind of hanging matthew made sure that we understood in the middle of his righteous anger the son of god still healed people the blind and the lame came to jesus at the temple and what did he do he healed them in fact if you look carefully at the four gospels every time you see jesus get righteously angry you won't see him yelling you won't see him like typing in the critical post he never says i believe in the church bless god nobody's going to treat me that way every time you see him get angry you see him help or heal someone every time look at it what do we do when we get angry we love and we heal those who are hurting how we doing that's okay do we need to smile again let's do something for fun i like to often pretend like we're in the bible or i like to pretend like the bible's happening now just kind of fun let's pretend like for a moment that this story is happening now imagine what happens in our culture today when jesus exposes the corrupt money changers using this wrongly for their profit here's what's going to happen you know it it's going to be a big news story exposing the corruption it's going to trend on twitter hashtag they kept the change or whatever it is i don't know okay and then in our culture today you know what we're gonna do as a society we're gonna do what those evil money changers had coming to them you know we're gonna do we're going to cancel them that's what we're going to do we're going to cancel them why because we love god and we're going to cancel those evil and corrupt people now for those of you that don't know what the cancel culture is some don't this is any time uh it's generally a well-known person like a celebrity or a politician or an athlete or a pastor it could be a business or a corporation or whatever but anytime someone says something that goes contrary to popular view it could have been what they said was an accident they might have misspoken they might have been uneducated they might have been just dead wrong in an area but the moment someone famous or something big or even someone that's not necessarily famous does this now what we do is we cancel them it could be that they were faithful and did good for 20 years two decades but one statement one misstep one wrong and sinful perspective and we cancel everything about them think for a minute about jesus think about those who hurt him and mistreated him i'll give you the short list there's the pharisees there was pontius pilate there was herod there was judas there was even peter who all wronged hurt betrayed lied about misjudged jesus or whatever sinful treatment they had of jesus and jesus didn't cancel any of them he didn't cancel any of them the pharisees were wrong pilate was wrong herod was wrong judas was wrong peter was wrong but just because you're wrong doesn't mean you're canceled i'm so thankful for a god who didn't cancel me i'm thankful for a god who didn't cancel me when i did something wrong when i sinned against him i'm thankful for a god who canceled my sin but he didn't cancel me he forgave me even when i sinned against him and he continues to forgive me i don't know about you but i am evidence of the faithfulness and the love and the grace and the mercy of a god who has every right to be angry at my sin but instead he poured out his anger on his son who was innocent on a cross and judged sin when jesus defeated paid the price defeated death hell sin in the grave i'm so thankful for a god who canceled my sin but didn't cancel me paul said it this way in colossians 2 he said for god forgave all our sins he canceled the record of the charges against us and he took it away by nailing it to the cross in this way he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities he shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross god canceled my sins but he didn't cancel me who is jesus he is the son of god who came to seek and save the lost he didn't come for the healthy he came for the sick he didn't come for the righteous he came for the sinners he came to show the love of god the grace of god and what made the son of god angry [Applause] [Music] what made him angry was anything that separated people from the love of his father when you get angry and you will don't sin hey let's grow beyond being easily offended and not get angry on behalf of ourselves but when we do let's use what we have to help those who are in need so if you do occasionally need to flip a table flip the table but don't flip the people because our goal is not to be right our goal is also to be loving we good can i go a little deeper are you okay can you hang with me are you gonna get angry at me you might i'm so thankful that as followers of jesus in this big global church full of very diverse people i'm really thankful that we get angry about different injustices and we work to solve different problems because i don't know about you but i can't solve them all but i can work to solve a few i'm thankful for those who get angry and fight against porn and fight for marriage i'm thankful for those who are wise enough to fight against racism and stand for good men and women who serve and protect us every day it can be an and it doesn't have to be in order come on church throw up church let's go come on [Music] i may fight for something different than you i may use my power i might fight for the unborn and you might fight for those who are suffering from mental illness and someone else might fight for to free people from human trafficking and others might fight to help people get clean drinking water and some of you might fight for the polar bears i've never woken up thinking about the polar bears but man if they need some help when you wake up thinking about them go help those polar bears and don't get angry at me if i haven't been exposed to the polar bears yet because you're looking at things from a different perspective and god may be calling you a different calling and your anger hey don't sin don't sin we live in a very divided world and a very divided world needs a united church [Applause] and so what i'm hoping [Music] is that we can be united that our battle is not against flesh and blood not against people but against the powers and principalities of this dark world and when we get angry let's start with our spiritual enemy who comes to steal kill and destroy who wants to steal your joy kill your hope and destroy lives day in and day out and so may we be unified that we can be righteously angry about some different things in a way that can help bring solutions to different things but above all else we are united in a mission to lead people to become fully devoted followers of christ that's our highest calling that's our mission to go into all the world and make disciples jesus didn't say above all else be right with all your heart mind and soul and strength but to love the lord your god with all your heart mind soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself so we will get angry sometimes but we're going to get angry like jesus we're not going to be characterized by our anger we're going to be characterized by our love and any time we do get angry whatever power we have we will use it to bring hope and healing for those who are hurting and that is how we're angry like jesus so father we ask that you would use us this little portion of your body to make a real difference in this world as you're praying watching online praying in in a physical seat those of you who would say yeah i want to be characterized by my love but when i do get angry i want to use that anger to make a difference would you lift up your hands right now father i pray in a world where it's so tempting and so easy to let our anger that may even start angry at something that is a real injustice something that is a real corruption something that's not right i pray god that you would protect us from sinning help us to be angry like jesus was not even at our what happens to us but on behalf of others never flipping people and always using what we have to make a difference in this world god help us as your church not to be known by what we're against what we hate help us be known by sharing the love and the grace of jesus as you keep praying today there may be some of you who you wonder where do you stand with god you might feel guilty for some things that you've done wrong my gosh i can just remember feeling so horrible about all my sinfulness all the people that i hurt and let down and betrayed let me tell you about a god who can cancel your sin but he doesn't cancel you he loves you and he sent his son jesus to seek and save the lost he came to bind up the broken he befriended sinners and he forgave those who sinned against god who is jesus the sinless son of god who became sin on a cross he died in our place and god raised him from the dead so that anyone in this includes you who calls on his name you would be forgiven and you would be made new wherever you're watching today those who say i want his grace i need his forgiveness just turn away from your sin turn toward him call on him when you do god hears your prayers he forgives your sins and he makes you brand new those who say yes i want jesus i want his grace today by faith i give my life to him that's your prayer lift your hands now just lift them up online just type i'm giving my life to jesus just type that in i'm giving my life to jesus and as we have people all over the world meeting the grace and the love of god through jesus would you just pray with those around you pray heavenly father forgive all my sins jesus save me make me new fill me with your spirit so i could show your love and make a difference as you change my life thank you for new life i give you all of mine in jesus name i pray could somebody celebrate big welcome those born into god's family

Channel: Life.Church

Views: 49,335

Rating: 4.9461756 out of 5

Keywords: Craig Groeschel, Sermon, Life.Church, Lifechurch, life church, life church sermons, craig rochelle, groeschel craig, church sermons 2020, anger, angry, mad, dealing with anger, how to deal with anger, controlling anger, control anger, how to control anger, angry like jesus, sin, injustice, jacob blake, emotions, jesus, feelings, emotional, jesus got angry, injustices, feeling angry, flip tables

Id: 7DCaReCZMMY

Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 30 2020