Amen. Please be seated and turn in your Bibles to Paul's letter to the Ephesians. I'm reading Ephesians 4, 26 and 27. 26 and 27. First, let us pray. Our God, we just sang that we would sing more and more on account of this awareness, appreciation, love for your mighty works that you can make the foulest sinner clean. And Lord, as we come now to your word, which is a hard word for all of us here, addressing the topic of anger. something that resonates with all of us. We pray that you would marvel us by your grace, that we would see the grace of your word, a convicting word, but also a comforting word for us who have new life in Christ. It is in his name we pray, amen. Hear now the word of God, Ephesians 4, 26 and 27. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Congregations, the word of the Lord. Years ago, a man shared with me his indignation over his experience where the grace of compassion or really basic human and marital rights were withheld at the expense of legal protocols. The man shared with me that he had to bring his wife to the local hospital for some emergent services. It was his and my prayer that he would be able to accompany her in this difficult time. Regrettably, try as he might, he was denied his right to be with his dear wife during an emotionally and physically distressing, even life-threatening ordeal that could have ended badly. And so it is at once tragic and maddening. It's not hard to imagine this man's helplessness, his frustrations, his pleas for compassion. Why can't I just be with my wife when she's in the room? All he wanted to do was be next to his bride and offer her some comfort to be present with her at a scary time. Thankfully, the Lord did spare her and they were soon in each other's loving arms again. Nevertheless, the whole event left this man with a bitter taste in his mouth. This episode was just one story of the COVID chronicles narrated on countless pages. But here are some questions like for us to consider, like to put before all of us, was this man's indignation just? That is, was he righteously angry at being denied this right to be with his wife? Even before answering that question, we need to consider the question, is righteous anger even a category given to the Christian? Or is all anger sinful anger? Maybe you don't know this man's heart. You certainly don't. So you cannot answer the question, the first question. And you're right to ponder, to not be so quick to give an answer. And you're right even to consider, is it possible that this man exhibited both unrighteous and righteous anger? Surely is possible. And bringing up this illustration by way of introduction is not to weigh in on this man's anger expression, so much as it is to lead into the sermon topic this morning, which is anger. Unrighteous or righteous anger. This is the matter under our heart review here. Two short verses that pack a punch, there's no doubt about it. And in these verses it's clear that as new creatures in Christ, with new life anger, we resist the devil. Verse 26 again says, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Again, foundationally, we need to ask if anger can ever be righteous. I remember years ago, an elder I used to work with told me of a conflict that he had with a member years before I got on the scene. He, the elder, was teaching, offering counsel to this member, and he made use of this category of righteous anger. But the man objected, and he was incensed that the elder would say that there is a righteous category. And I wonder if this member was righteously incensed at the elder's use. But this member is thinking, how dare this elder think that such was a category? Surely it was a category for God. Maybe not. Maybe all anger is sinful. But surely this is a category for Christ, but not for the Christian. Isn't the anger of everyone here sinful anger, unrighteous anger? Didn't this elder know that all anger was wrong? That's what was going through this man's mind. And it is an attitude in Christian circles. And I wonder if you've encountered it. I know I certainly have. Well, Paul's words counter this attitude, that's for sure. Verse 26 shows that this is a category. Paul knows that this is a biblical category of righteous anger grounded in divine anger. But what does it mean to be angry? Anger is a whole person moral judgment against an evil. Now I say it's a whole person moral judgment because you know that anger doesn't just stay in the spirit, that anger is expressed in the body as it should be since we are soul and body together. We are whole only when we have our soul or spirit and body together. We feel the anger that began in the soul. But it's a moral judgment against an evil. Now, this evil could be a perceived evil or it could be a real evil. It could be a true injustice or one that's merely perceived as an injustice. But the thing is, it's an injustice in the mind of the angry and then the anger is that expression of that judgment. David Powell's in his book, Good and Angry, an excellent book on anger, boils it down this way. To be angry is to say, I'm against that, it matters, and it's not right. I'm against that, it matters, and it's not right. What about God? Is he too pure of heart to be angry? In fact, shouldn't we say instead that his purity demands anger? Without the righteousness of divine anger, the whole Bible would make no sense at all. The Bible knows a divine anger. Psalm 711 says, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. Given the presence of sin, God is angry all the time. He's angry all the time at sin. Nahum 1, 2, and 6 says this, the Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. In those two verses, there are nine expressions of divine anger. And that's just two verses in Nahum. There are many more verses. We cannot say, well, that's the Old Testament God and not the New Testament God. The Old Testament God was a God of hate, and the New Testament God is a God of love. We can't do that. The Bible doesn't allow that. There is both divine hatred and divine love in the Old Testament and in the New. There are not two gods. That's an ancient heresy, two different kinds of gods. Also, all you have to do is ask Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Remember, struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit who is God. But isn't Jesus just too meek and mild and gentle and humble, too pure of heart to even be angry? You know that false image of the Lord, don't you? And you know that the Bible gives us a full picture of the emotional life of Christ. In Mark 3, verse 5, it says that He, and He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Here, the Son of God looks around at these people, these unbelieving, hardened people, And he's angry. And he's angry at their hard hearts. This disbelief. John 11, 35 says, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. That phrase, deeply moved in his spirit, should better be translated, he was indignant. He was righteously angry, seeing the effects of death. Here is the resurrection and the life seen, the effects of death, and he is angry. The Son of God is not indifferent to death. He's not indifferent to hardness of heart. He's not indifferent, he's not neutral to sin, to evil. James 1.20 says, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. By contrast, the anger of God surely produces the righteousness of God. And we cannot say that righteous anger is only for the righteous God. What of the righteous men? The prophets were the righteous men who voiced God's divine anger against sin. The psalmist likewise, who were righteous men, they hoped in the righteous wrath of God. Consider Psalm 56, verse 7, David says, for their crime will they escape, in wrath cast down the peoples, O God. That introduces the category of a curse. Consider even the Apostle Paul, who was angry because some men were tempting others to sin. In 2 Corinthians 11, verse 29, he says, who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to fall and I am not indignant? What he was dealing with in Corinth were these super apostles. They weren't actually super apostles, they were, quote, super apostles. They thought they were awesome. They thought that they had the right teaching, that Paul didn't have the right teaching. And they sought to teach the Corinthians. And Paul, having spent so many years and time and effort pouring out his heart to these Corinthians, He is indignant that this apostolic word would be so easily cast away and replaced by a false word. And he says, am I not indignant if someone's made to fall, made to stumble? Of course. Or consider Acts 17 and Paul's conduct there. What's he doing? Is he surveying Athens? He's looking at all of the idolatry. Is he pleased with it? No, that's unfortunate. Is he indifferent to it, neutral towards it? Of course not. The text says that his spirit was provoked within him. A divine anger as a gift from God to him as he sees his idolatry, he is righteously angry. He does something about it, which we'll see later. Again, without the righteousness of divine anger, the whole Bible makes no sense at all to us. If there's no sin, then there's no need for the anger. But if there is sin, if there is evil, that demands anger, doesn't it? Unless you want to say that God does not care about sin. And we know better than that. Here we are, worshipers, sinners, saved by grace. Even as Paul would say that we were formerly at enmity with God. At enmity, not friendship. That's a hostile relationship that God overcomes. Now, as I said in the scripture reading this morning, Psalm 4 is the background to Ephesians 4, 26. And in Psalm 3, which is also part of the context of Psalm 4, David had fled from Absalom. Remember that his son of Longlox, Absalom, had declared himself king? This man had the hearts of many, had the support and force of many as well. The remaining supporters of the rightful king were rightfully angry at this injustice. King David, you're just gonna let your son think that he's king? He's got a great following. Let's do something about this. This is an injustice, we can't let this stand. And in David's admonition, he acknowledges to his allies that they are on his side. They've taken up David's cause. They are offended for him. They even flee with him. And they're asking, what are we to do, David? They're asking their king, what should we do? And this attitude is understandable. We don't struggle to put on these shoes. These shoes fit just fine, don't they? Whenever we zealously support our parents or friends, governing officials, children, pastors, we might begin to feel the heat under the collar when we hear someone speaking against them. How dare you talk about my wife that way? How dare you speak of my child that way? How dare you talk about the president that way? And we get a little hot, don't we? A little angry. And these men say, what do we do? Likewise, we say, what do we do? Do you want me to take him down? No one will know. David was right to respond, calm down, tiger. This is in the original Hebrew. Calm down. I appreciate the passion, but consider your heart and inquire into the motives of this anger. David encourages his allies to deal with their anger before the sun goes down. David is saying, let's not lash out in anger here and let's not worsen the situation by returning evil with evil. Don't hastily take matters into your own hands. Instead, ponder in your own hearts and on your bed and be silent. Be quick to hear and slow to speak. As James says, the same author who talks about the anger of man not producing the righteousness of God. Two wrongs don't make a righteous way of living. Restraint is needed. And as David says, we need to trust in the Lord. As the wicked lie in their beds scheming, let them scheme, but let us instead be satisfied with God's just plan. Let us entrust our lives into the hands of our God. The most powerful evidence of the righteousness of God's anger, of divine anger, the goodness of divine anger, is seen at the cross. Yes, we often think of the mercy that we have received by God in Christ, and so we should. But that's mercy to us because anger, divine anger, the fullness of the wrath of God was spent on the Son. If there is no righteous anger category, and the Father spent His wrath on His Son needlessly, Did Jesus die in vain? Of course not. He died to satisfy that just judgment fueled by divine hatred for all that is contrary to his law. And so it is always the case with God. And sometimes it is possible with God's children to be angry and not to sin. You hear I say, I phrase that, it's always the case with God. God is never unrighteously angry. God's anger is perfect and always right. And as new creatures in Christ, it is possible as children of God to be angry and not to sin. However, It's too easy for us to fall back into our old ways of expressing anger. And that is why Paul urges us not to sin when angry, not to put on pagan ways. We just wanna hold on to that be angry part. Jesus says I can be angry. Paul says here I can be angry. So that's it, I'm gonna be angry. But Paul says be angry and do not sin. So he's recalling old ways of living. And remember, in just the last couple weeks, we've been urged to be clothed with Christ, to take off the garments of the Gentiles, those who don't believe in Jesus. And have you thought about how you used to act when you were angry before you got saved? Or maybe you still act that way. You say, I've just been saved. I've just turned my life to Christ and I'm a baby Christian. And so I'm still dealing with old ways and how to express my anger. And perhaps it's very easy for you to remember because your old corrupt ways keep creeping up again and again in your conversations in how you resolve conflict or don't. And one way that we sin with the old way is by avoiding the anger. Paul is telling us not to avoid. We express anger sinfully when we pretend like there is no problem. That is, when we let the sun go down on our anger, we are not handling it rightly. Is this how you used to handle anger? Is it still how you handle anger? By avoiding it altogether. Now, it is one thing, and it is, in fact, a glory, as the Proverbs say, to overlook an offense. And that is to be our posture. That is to be our default, is to not be offended, is to overlook an offense. And in that way, we are following after our Lord. Not everything has to be talked through. Not every conflict has to be reasoned out. If that were the case, you'd be in your house with your loved one, whoever it is, for the rest of the day. We got to talk through everything that has angered me about you. Okay, you just give up work, I guess, and just spend the time talking about that. But you know that's not how you live. You overlook things, don't you? So it's one thing to overlook an offense, but it is quite another to pretend that it is not there at all. To pretend that it's gone. And you are fooling yourself if you just avoid the conflict, this injustice, this sin, and say to yourself, well, this is just what Jesus wants me to do. He just wants me to swallow it and forget it. Well, what you've just done is you've swallowed an elephant. And the elephant of offense in the room is going to walk over to you and sit on you. gonna come back. As you let the sun go down in your anger, surely it will rise when the sun rises, or maybe not even allow you to have an hour of rest, because you're stewing on the conflict. There is a better way, which we'll consider in just a few minutes, but avoiding the anger is not the answer. If the offense cannot be overlooked, and it cannot be overlooked if it threatens the peace of the relationship, Do you not avoid it? Part of our old ways of being angry are these aberrant attempts, these deviations of anger. These are sinful expressions of dealing with anger, and these should never be done. Sometimes we think of anger being expressed explosively. This is probably the majority of our thinking. This is how someone who's angry expresses angers. Explodes, just flies off the handle, an outburst of anger. I've had it. Someone treated you unjustly, or so you think, and you let them have it. You, who are the avenger of all. You who are the judge of all the earth. You whose only desire is that justice be satisfied and right then and right there. You, thank God that you're there for it, right? And you just unleash. After all, this person's a sinner. He deserves it, she deserves it. Cain, angry Cain, murdered his own brother. He who was his brother's keeper became his brother's killer. And why? What did Abel do to Cain? Not a thing. Instead, what Abel did is Abel brought in faith the right sacrifice to his God, and Cain hated Abel for it. And so Cain killed Abel unjustly. He explodes on his own brother. I read a story a few months ago about a couple unjustly treated. A Korean couple had gotten an Airbnb but needed to cancel this reservation. The Airbnb host, however, refused to issue the cancellation. What's this couple going to do? They were forced to keep this reservation. So what did they do? Did they overlook the offense? No, they took revenge. But how did they take revenge? Oh, how indeed. They traveled to the Airbnb and turned on all the taps, left on the lights and all the electronic devices, and even left the gas running. The couple returned to this location every three days to make sure that everything was still on. And what was the result? 120,000 liters of water wasted in a bill of $1,600 for gas, water, and electricity brought to the apartment owner left with the bill. They sure showed him, didn't they? Exploded on him. Now, methodically, of course, but they let him have it. Another way that we respond sinfully in our old ways is by internalizing all of it. Maybe you don't fly off a handle. Not everyone does. Maybe It's inside, it stays inside. You internalize it and you explode within. You implode, as some say. Leviticus 17 and 18 says this, you shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people. The Lord in the Old Testament and the New was concerned about our heart, not just about the externals. And he says, don't let that anger stay in your heart, but instead reason frankly with your neighbor. Don't bear a grudge, talk with your brother about it. Perhaps most exemplary in the bad sense of this kind of anger is Jonah. Remember Jonah thinking that he did well to be angry. Remember God says, do you do well to be angry? Yes. Do you really do well to be angry? Yes, Lord, enough to die. Man, what was the problem, Jonah? Oh, just the conversion of Gentiles, just the effect of the gospel. Here is Jonah, a prophet of God, fleeing God because he knew, and he even gives the reason. Oh God, I knew that you are steadfast in your love and forgiveness. I knew that if I gave the gospel, if I called into repentance, that you would do a mighty work, and I didn't want that. And so what does he do? Does he praise the Lord for the mighty grace, the powerful work of God? No. He sits down and stews over it. engages in the most pitiful party of all. Woe is me. And he wishes his own death. Neither of these ways is the right way. Exploding, internalizing it. And they're both part of the old way of handling anger. Absurdities about anger abound in our lives. And by absurdities, I mean the lies that we tell about anger, about ourselves, to justify our anger. Are you still listening? Some of these are going to hit close to home. They certainly hit home for me. The first lie that we tell is this, my biggest problem is my anger at myself. You've heard that before? Have you said it yourself? Well, don't say it again. My biggest problem is my anger at myself. Really? That's your biggest problem, is that you're angry at yourself. Now, being charitable, okay, because we want to be charitable, right? That attitude is saying, I got some regrets. Okay, you can have regrets, you can be sorrowful over your sin, but don't you dare put yourself in a position that you are the judge of the earth. That's exactly what you're doing. By the way, your biggest problem is not your anger at yourself, but the sin to put Jesus on the cross. Lie number two, it's okay to be angry with God. He can take it. Have you heard that before? How many times have I heard that? False counsel, foolishness. It's okay to be angry with God. He can take it. Just because He can take it doesn't mean you give it to Him. Thank God, God's bigger than you. He's the bigger guy. Have you thought about this though? Again, this is Christians of all stripes. Reform, non-reform, doesn't matter. I hear this all the time. Go ahead. You see the Psalms. Go ahead. God's saying, be angry with me. You have permission. No, he doesn't. He doesn't say that, ever. What wrongdoing has God ever done against us? What evil, what injustice has God ever committed against us? Exactly. Yes, it is okay to lament. It is okay to cry out, oh God, why? How long, oh Lord? You have your examples in scripture. But let us never accuse God of any injustice. Absurdity number three, anger is something inside me. It's something I just have to get out. I have to vent. That's perhaps the most common and the most absurd reason that we give. It's true. Anger is inside you, just not in the way that this lie intends. Yes, anger is in you. It's in your heart. That's what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. You think that you're good because you didn't murder your brother? You didn't physically kill him? The problem is in your heart. So that's partly true, yes, anger is inside you, just not in the way that you think, or not the way that this is saying. This is saying, well, there's this anger inside me that it's physically, I just have to get it out. I just have to vent it out. I remember going from one pastoral appointment to another and turned on the radio and it was a Tuesday. And I know it was a Tuesday because a new segment or a segment on the radio came on. It was called Ticked Off Tuesday. What a wonderful opportunity for callers to call in and express all the righteous indignation they were experiencing and give it to the host. And what did the host do? Did he offer them words of comfort, words of wisdom? Of course not, but rather a sympathetic ear. Rather, yeah, you were right to be angry. People are the worst, aren't they? No sound counsel given, just an opportunity to fuel the person's anger. Anger is not something you have to get off your chest. It's not something that once you yell it into a pillow, you'll be fine. Or once you punch a bag, a punching bag, you'll be fine. That was the counsel that I was given as a kid. I had a significant anger problem. Several things were affecting me negatively, and I saw a therapist. I don't remember how old I was, but I was pretty young. I did some really nasty things. From my anger, I slammed a girl's head into the ground. Yeah, pretty awful. It's okay. You can look at me with shame because it was a shameful thing. I won't tell you the whole story, but I was not just in any of it. An angry person. And the Christian counselor said, yeah, here's what you want to do. You want to yell into a pillow. That didn't solve my problem. I'll tell you that much. It's true that anger is expressed with the whole person, and so there is a physical energy. But if we think that if I just go to the gym and run it off, that that's the biblical solution to the problem, we're fooling ourselves. Yeah, you might feel physically better, but that's not biblical solution to the problem. Or how about this lie, anger is all of them outside me. They're the problem. Have you heard that before? You made me do it. You forced me to it. You got on my last nerve. How many times have we heard that, or even uttered that? Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosopher, says, hell is other people. What a summary of hell, other people. They're all the problem. Because we, and this is what we think, we have all the right answers. And anything that goes contrary to our own will must be wrong. She's wrong, he's wrong, they're all wrong. No, they're not the problem. Yes, they may have sinned against you, but you have chosen to act. Hear me here. No one causes you to sin. And they might provoke you. They might give you opportunity after opportunity and make it very hard for you to have self-control. But you sin on your own. I sin on my own. You have the choice of being patient or provoking your children to wrath. Those are the options, as Paul tells fathers in Ephesians 6. Or how about this final line? It's just my cross to bear. Well, evidently not. It sure seems to be your cross for others to bear. I'll always be this way. Well, maybe you think you'll never change, and that is true if you're an unbeliever. It is true. You will not change. This problem will not be solved if you're an unbeliever. And this problem, by the way, if you're an unbeliever, is not your biggest problem. It is you being a sinner before a just God. Yes, you may struggle from time to time, But you can grow in Christlikeness. We do believe that the Spirit indwells us, don't we? We do believe that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus, don't we? Then we should expect, at the same time as we acknowledge that we are prone to sin, that we are fighting the old man, that we are actively putting off the old way, at the same time, We are in a position, by the grace of God, through the power of the Spirit, to put on new ways of life. And part of my own testimony relates to my sinful past in this area of anger. As I mentioned, I was a very angry boy, then a very angry teenager. And I unleashed my wrath, my anger, out on anyone. And my beloved wife, then girlfriend, received a lot of that wrath, unjustly. And I certainly not arrived perfectly, she and the kids would tell you that. But if I look back 20 years to now, I praise the Lord that there has been growth in this area, that there has been greater self-control and more patience and a slower answer to wrath. Beloved, Christ died for your angry heart, among other things. He knew the old ways and he knew how we simply express our anger and he abominated those ways. They are awful in his sight and he did something about it. He died. Christ died for your angry heart. So yes, be angry. but do not be sinning. And I say that literally because that's how Paul is getting at here. The sun must not set upon your anger. Yes, we can be angry, but do not be sinning in the process. We put off the old anger and we put on new anger. New life anger is a whole person hold the attack. To be righteously angry is to be angry at what angers God and solving it the way God tells us to solve it. Those two ingredients are very important. We are angry at what God is angered at and we solve it the way God solves it. We follow after Him. This word for anger speaks of that state of being intensely provoked. Consider the examples in the Old Testament. It's used of Jeroboam. Remember Jeroboam? That rascal? He provoked God through the sin of idolatry. Remember him? He had those two altars. One in Bethel in the south and one in Dan in the north. Because the kingdom had been separated between Jeroboam and Rehoboam. And he sets up a new priesthood, new altars, new idolatries and all that. And that language of provoking God is used of Jeroboam. Or King Manasseh. provoking God through a half-century of wickedness. It's used of Israel's blasphemies in the Golden Calf incident in Nehemiah 9. In other words, it is often, if not always used, of another person's sin provoking another to godly and righteous anger. And that is key. It is the sin that is the cause of the conflict. And here's one way you'll know if it's righteous anger. Is it your preference that was just not met? Are you simply annoyed or irritated? Or is there a sin involved? And usually we get angry because somebody's not doing what we prefer they do. Or because their ways irritate us. Well, you don't have biblical warrant to be angry at that person for a preference or for an annoyance. It's a sin. This is helpful to understand the context into which Paul is speaking. Real sin gets in the way of relationships. Real sin is used by the devil to divide you. So rather than being active in the sinning, we're told here to be active in solving the problem. With God the Ezeal, we attack. We attack the problem and not the person. Formerly, we used to attack the person. But with new life anger, we attack the problem. We don't attack the people, because as we already saw in verse 25, we are members one of another. It's like, to attack the other person is like one arm cutting off the other arm. That's not helping anyone. We attack the problem. the problem by not letting the sun go down on our anger. Remember Psalm 4.4, ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent. In all your anger, acknowledge him and he will direct your path. Deuteronomy 24.15, there's an analogy with the same term. It says, you shall give him his wages on the same day before the sun sets, for he is poor and counts on it, lest he cry against you to the Lord and you be guilty of it. Just as the employer will not neglect to give his worker his wages, neither should we deprive one another the godly resolution of our conflicts that stand between us. We handle speedily the issues that threaten our relationships. If you don't handle them speedily, If you're not quick to forgive and quick to handle the matter, then bitterness will set in if you're not careful. Anger, then, is a gift from God. It is an affection. It is a spiritual, uppercase S, spiritual energy used to solve real problems. And remember how angry Jesus acted. Remember how in Mark 3, 5, what the anger of the Lord moved him to do. He was angry. at their hardness of hearts, and then he healed. Usually in our anger, what do we do? We destroy, we harm. Jesus, with his anger, healed. Jesus, angry with the spirit within him, raised up Lazarus from the dead. Paul, with his spirit provoked within him, gave the good news to these Athenians. The good news, it included their idolatry and the way to have new life in Christ. Now, when Paul says, don't let the sun go down your anger, this is not to be understood in overly literal fashion. Now it's dark, okay, we're in an unfortunate spot here. Because some issues require time. They're time to understand, time to study, time to be reconciled. I've mentioned before that I've been various parties in reconciliation efforts. I've been the facilitator, I've been one in groups that offend or were offended. And these things take time. Sometimes there's five or six sessions before you have the meeting in the room. preparing the heart, clarifying the issue, gathering the data. But the goal here, what Paul's getting at, is we must be intentional about solving the problems. The cross is God's holy attack of our sin against Him. And you see that at the cross, God attacks the problem and changes the person. You have new life in Christ. You're not in hell. You're not suffering eternally. and he's changing you. And finally, verse 27 says we are to avoid it. Do not let the sun go down in your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Again, literally, do not be giving a place to the devil. We're told to avoid not the sin, but the slanderer, the devil. What will you do? Resist him and flee, and he will flee. James 4.7 says, submit yourself to God's ways, be humble, and so resist Satan's schemes. 1 Peter 5.9 says, resist him by being firm in the faith. Resist the devil's place, his foothold of rumors, by not giving yourself over to gossip. Resist the devil's place, his foothold of self-justification, by humbly examining yourself, charitably understanding the other person as you both attack the problem. Resist the devil's place, his foothold of a party spirit, by striving after unity and peace. And consider this warning from Calvin, before the poison of hatred has found its way into the heart, anger must be thoroughly dislodged. Christ's power of grace strengthens our resistance. That's the good news, dear ones. Dear saints, Christ, who has a spirit without measure, gives according to his grace. Yes, the flesh is strong at times. Our entitlement, our sense of justice reigns too often. But Christ's compassion is stronger, his mercy mightier, his love lovelier than hatred, his forgiveness freer than the feeling of eking out that members, your members, pound of flesh. Do you remember that vision that Zechariah had of Joshua the priest? In Zechariah chapter three, Satan was there as well. The high priest Joshua was standing before God with filthy garments. Do you remember that? And Satan was accusing him. The angel of the Lord, that is to say the Son of God, commanded, remove the filthy garments. His defiling attire was removed and he was clothed with Christ's righteousness. He was clothed with pure vestments and Satan's mouth was shut. Beloved, you and your brother, you and your sister are both clothed in Christ's righteousness. Don't let Satan win. Whatever the conflict, take it off by putting on the kindness, by putting on the garments of Jesus. He has paid for all your iniquities against him and against one another. Resist the flesh because the Spirit of God dwells mightily in you. Resist the devil because the Son of God who died for your angry heart rose for your clean heart. Let's pray. Our good God, thank you for your work in our lives. Thank you that you spent your righteous anger for us on the Son, that we would have mercy and righteousness, that we would become the righteousness of God. By your spirit, we pray that you would continue to work in us, that we would demonstrate new life anger as you resist the devil and love our brothers and sisters in Christ. In his name we pray, amen. Didn't feel like I went that long. Oh, there was a baptism, that's right. But it is warm, and it is past our normal time, so let me be brief here, especially since I just preached a sermon