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Anger we see much of in our so
-called enlightened times, smoldered in resentment, inward irritation,
hidden malice, uncontrolled and senseless violence and destruction,
all of which in spite of modern sophistication
is classified as sin, S-I-N, sin,
a word embedded in the indestructible word of
God, sin, or if you will, you prefer
another contemporary description, rebellion to the love and
constructive will of God.
But the wording of our text, Be Ye
Angry and Sin Not, would seem to indicate
that sometimes anger is not sin, and for
revelation on this we must turn to our
perfect example, the Lord Jesus Christ, the head
of the church.
And we must ask ourselves if he, the
sinless saviour, was ever angry in his life
on earth, and the answer is, oh yes,
indeed, several times and on several famous occasions.
But let me hasten to add that where
anger in man is mostly born of human
passion, anger in Christ is always born of
a spiritual principle.
Remember this, please.
For example, in Mark 3, Jesus faces a
man with a withered hand on the Sabbath
day.
He also faces the Pharisees who had withered
religious hearts, whose only gripe in order to
trap him was the piffling preservation of a
calendar day.
Read it sometime.
The Lord Jesus looked round about them with
anger, being grieved at the hardness of their
hearts, and said, Is it a day to
save lives or to destroy them?
Then he healed the poor wretch, but marked
the principle behind his anger, the constructiveness.
Again in Matthew 23 and John 2, respectively,
we find him blasting these same Pharisees as
hypocrites, tombs covered with whitewash.
What a description!
For their high religious profession and their low
irreligious practices, Jesus burst forth with anger.
And the usual money changes in the temple,
when in anger he took a scourge and
drove them out of the temple, crying in
John 2, My house shall be called a
house of prayer, but you have made it
a house of merchandise and a den of
thieves.
Surely as we witness what is going on
within the established church in our day, God's
challenge of righteous anger should become a major
issue in national life.
For the church political is loud in telling
the world where it is going and how
to go.
A bombshell for my Lord.
Does the organized church with all its millions
of hungry, few worshippers any longer know where
it is going?
Malcolm Muggeridge, that inimitable British satirist, recently wrote
the most extraordinary thing about human beings is
the fact that they pursue ends which they
know to be disastrous and turn their backs
on ways which they know to be joyous.
How true, how true!
Then why in God's name does the church
armed in the pulpit with the Holy Gospel
concentrate on humanity's salvation through Christ?
Why does it not?
And cease dabbling as amateur psychiatrists on humanity's
problems in a knowledge that when Christ came
to earth, he did not bother with externals,
but he went straight to the heart, the
evil sinful heart of man to make it
pure in the new birth.
Beloved, we must have good people before we
can have a good nation.
And let me drop another thought right here.
It is not buildings that make slums and
sorrow.
It is people who make slums and sorrow.
People in need of our Savior.
Does all this mean there is then no
hope or way out?
Oh, not in my Bible.
What I'm trying to imply is that we
as believing Christians should actively hate wrong deeply
because we love the right so deeply.
But we're not going to be worth our
salt if we merely warm a pew for
one hour on Sunday morning, very often listening
to religious drivel.
Be angry and sin not.
Let's be good and mad.
Let the world see a militant church singing
and acting the hymn onward, Christian soldiers marching
unto war, war for righteousness sake in these
desperate days.
Tell that man in the pulpit of yours
if he fails to glorify Christ that he
would be better sweep in gutters honestly.
Listen, beloved, if the Bible holds out no
hope for our nation, now dabbling in witchcraft
and astrology to the tune of 40 million
citizens a day, then America has no future
and our country will soon need a new
Gibbons to write the decline and fall of
the United States of America, God forbid.
Something quite a number in our land would
find acceptable to their distorted taste.
But thanks be unto God, there is hope.
And my time being up on this tape,
you will find that hope in Psalm 77.
Read it tonight before you go to bed
and let us as Christians rise up as
we feel the tang of it in our
very souls and lift the cross high when
we come to verses 10 to 14.
The Lord be with you and bless your
spirit and make you in these days gospel
fearless for the Lord.
Let me read the 77th Psalm referred to,
and I trust it will bring to your
heart the thrill it brought to mind.
Psalm 77, the chief musician.
I cried unto the Lord with my voice,
even unto God with my voice, and he
gave ear unto me.
In the day of my trouble, I sought
the Lord.
My sore ran in the night, and ceased
not.
My soul refreshed to be comforted.
I remembered God and was troubled.
I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed.
Thou holdest mine eyes waking.
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I have considered the days of old, the
years of ancient times.
I called to remembrance my song in the
night.
I commune with mine own heart, and my
spirit made diligent search.
Will the Lord cast off forever, and will
he be favorable no more?
Is his mercy clean gone forever?
Doth his promise fail forevermore?
Hath God forgotten to be gracious?
Hath he in anger shut up his tender
mercies?
And I said, This is my infirmity.
But I will remember the years of the
right hand of the Most High.
I will remember the works of the Lord.
Surely I will remember thy wonders of old.
I will meditate also of all thy work,
and talk of thy doings.
Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary.
Who is so great a God as our
God?
Thou art the God that doest wonders.
Thou hast declared thy strength among the people.
You will remember that Wesley and Whitfield and
his brother Wesley, who wrote the hymns, led
England into such a spiritual awakening to prove
this psalm, that it saved the mother country
from the ravages of the French Revolution.
God give to us in America that glorious
experience.