Pastor's Point - June 2023
Dear Church Family,
It is not hard to look around our world and quickly become disoriented and depressed by what we see coming out of the culture that we live in. As I have said to you before, our culture seems to be running away from God and His truth as fast as they can. If we are not careful, we can be tempted to…
- Throw our hands up and give up.
- Hide inside our homes and church.
- Become sinfully angry and lash out at those who are enslaved in sin and the course of this world.
But I think there is another response that calls us to display an appropriate righteous anger towards the wicked influence in our world.
Recently in our Psalm 119 sermon series we considered Psalm 119:53 which states… “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law.” ESV The CSB states… “Rage seizes me because of the wicked who reject Your instruction.”
This is not so much an anger against everyone who finds themselves transgressing against God’s law at some times in their lives. Righteous anger wells up inside of believers who recognize people who as one commentator points out, “willfully and obstinately despise God’s truth, and cast it behind their backs, and live in a continued course of disobedience to it; they willfully deny the truth. These are people who actively encourage others to reject God’s truth and order of things.
But how can we ensure that our anger is righteous anger and not sinful anger? In an article entitled; Three Criteria of Righteous Anger Paul Tautges interacts with Robert Jones’s book Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help for a Common Problem. Jones warns about the difficulty we have of discerning the sinfulness of our anger, he writes of the danger of self-deception. He states, “Let’s begin with a humbling observation: most human anger is sinful. The biblical record confirms this. But then in his article, Tautges points out Jones’ three distinguishing marks of righteous anger to help us discern right responses in our lives. Jones points out that for our anger to be righteous, all three of the following must be true:
- Righteous Anger Reacts against Actual Sin. Righteous anger arises from an accurate perception of true evil, from sin as defined biblically, i.e., as a violation of God’s Word (Rom 3:23; 1 Jn 3:4). Righteous anger does not result from merely being inconvenienced or from violations of personal preference or human tradition.
- Righteous Anger Focuses on God and His Kingdom, Rights, and Concerns, Not on Me and My Kingdom, Rights and Concerns. In Scripture, God-centered motives, not self-centered motives, drive righteous anger. Righteous anger focuses on how people offend God and His name, not me and my name. It terminates on God more than me. In other words, accurately viewing something as offensive is not enough. We must view it primarily as offending God.
- Righteous Anger Is Accompanied by Other Godly Qualities and Expresses Itself in Godly Ways. Righteous anger remains self-controlled. It keeps its head without cursing, screaming, raging, or flying off the handle. Nor does it spiral downward in self-pity or despair. It does not ignore people, snub people, or withdraw from people.
May God help us to know the difference between righteous and sinful anger in our lives. And then I pray that God helps us to have the courage of our convictions and be willing to display a righteous anger when necessary and appropriate as we live in this world for the glory of our God.
I love you and I love being your pastor!