All right, well, let's go ahead and start with prayer. I know a lot of people are still in the hall, but time flies and so on. So let's go ahead and get ready to start. Almighty God, Lord, we are so thankful that you have given your people wisdom in your word. You have given them direction for their lives, not just the things that we need to know in order to believe are right. and be saved, but also the things that we need to know in order to live out our lives in this world. Our big problem, though, is far too often we don't put those things into application. We'll never be able to do it unless we have your Spirit living within us, Lord. And so we do pray, we beg you for the gift of your Spirit, your infilling grace to help us to live in this fallen world. But we pray also, especially, Lord, that you would help us to have ears that are open It is often the case we will hear something, we'll say it's a good idea, but then we'll never put it into application because it's difficult. Help us to be willing to do the hard things, to make the changes that will result in good fruit down the line. Help me to teach tonight. Help everybody to have open ears to hear. We pray all these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Well, today we're going to be continuing the last chapter, chapter 2, that we started, specifically dealing with when is anger wrong. We left off on point 3, and now we're coming to point 4, which teaches us our anger is sinful when we return evil for evil or attack the person with whom we are angry. If, after I have been attacked, I respond with a similar evil, if, for instance, somebody reviles me, curses me, I curse them back, then what I have done, unfortunately, is evil. Now, we see that kind of sinful anger borne out, obviously, in the life of Cain when he attacks his brother. And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel in his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. Now, it wasn't just that Cain was sinfully angry. It was that Cain took his sinful anger out on the person with whom he was angry. He allowed his anger, which was crouching at the door, to become sinful actions that were brought against his brother. What we see again and again is angry people acting in angry ways. A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back. A person who is controlled by their anger doesn't hold any of it in and they immediately, they just They vent everything that they feel and they unload on other people. An angry man stirs up strife and a furious man abounds in transgression. Somebody is angry by nature, constantly getting into rages at people, they are going to naturally cause strife around them. There are people in life who just move through whatever situation they're in, kind of causing turmoil wherever they go. They're kind of like Tasmanian devils, you know, from the old cartoon, destroying everything as they go past. And furious people are often committing sins against others. They'll sin in the way that they speak, or the way the things that they do online, the way that they talk to their co-workers, the way they treat their family, and so on. But they're constantly doing that kind of thing. And a fool's wrath is known at once, but a prudent man covers shame. Now, this is getting to the idea that it requires a great deal more self-control to let someone else's sin go by than it does simply to vent at them. To simply give way to your emotions, your feelings immediately, that's not really difficult. Any fool can do that. The harder thing is to be somebody who forgives and somebody who controls their temper as well. Now, when people who are acting foolishly get angry, they can express their anger in one of three ways. They can express their anger verbally. Kids, what does verbally mean? Yes? By saying mean things, okay? By shouting, by screaming, by seeking to hurt somebody with their words, right? Can words hurt you? Okay, so sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Is that entirely true? No, it's a silly saying. I don't know who made it up, but it's not true and it's not biblical. Of course words can hurt you. So verbally, we can seek to wound and hurt. We can use that as an expression of our anger. Then there is passively, all right? And we'll talk more about what it means to be angry at people passively. And then finally, physically. Okay, you wanna tell me about physically? when you punch them, yes. They have made me angry so I will punch them or kick them or bite them or do something to them. Those are the three different ways. So let's talk about the three different ways that we can be angry at people. We have an example here of anger. And this was unfounded anger. You remember Saul was angry at his son Jonathan because Jonathan favored David and Saul was trying to kill David because he did not want David to become the king. He wanted his own son, Jonathan, his own line to continue on. And so he treated his son as though his son was a fool and a traitor and he said this, then Saul's anger was aroused against Jonathan and he said to him, you son of a perverse rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness? Basically, you've brought shame on my household. He calls him a son of a, and something really bad, and then he basically is heaping his anger verbally upon his own son. Now in this case, who was right, Saul or Jonathan? Jonathan. Saul was unreasonably angry. David had done nothing wrong, and yet Jonathan was attacking him. All right, so verbally, children often learn to attack verbally in their childhood, all right? They will learn it not only because their own hearts are inclined towards evil, but they'll pick this up on the playground. I mean, where do children learn, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh? You don't come imprinted with that. But somehow, by the time you've reached the age of 12, every child knows that particular, you know, rhythm and all the other things like, I know you are, but what am I? And all of those other comebacks. Verbally, they're learning to hit each other, you know, with their words, to tear one another down and so on. Now, larger children, are prone to verbally bully because they can. In other words, if I'm the big kid on the block, I can tear you down because I'm not afraid that you're going to attack me. All right? What are you going to do, shrimp? You know, that kind of thing. So the kid may fume, but he can't come back at you. Smaller children will often adopt verbal abuse because it makes them feel bigger and stronger, and because it makes up for what they can't do physically. They can't physically bully people. So they will learn to verbally bully people. And often, some of the most vicious verbal bullies you'll meet are actually physically small people, physically weak people. They're compensating for that kind of thing. So that's often the case with kids. Now, how is that bad behavior, that verbal bullying, sometimes reinforced by adults? Tell me. What do you think? Yes. They what? Curse. Okay. Parents can curse. Yes. Yes. Okay. If they're saying mean things to you, you should hit them. That's not good advice. Yes. All right, children learn to verbally bully, to verbally attack people. They get angry, and they learn to do it. How do parents reinforce that behavior in their children, that bad behavior? Yes, Will. Well, one example is how you speak to your spouse. Okay, so instead of setting a good example in the way that we speak, we teach our children how to verbally bully. And how do you mean? Ashley, you had your hand up. You teach your children to do it by example. Once again, remembering that kids become who we are and not who we want to be. Yeah, go ahead, Will. Yeah, it's often the case that our kids will end up saying the kind of things to one another that we say to them. They'll act in that way. Another way that we unconsciously reinforce... Okay, Graham's got his hand up. Yes? Okay, we'll get to that in just a second. Go ahead, Jimmy. If we talk bad about people we know that aren't around us, Oh yeah. Alright, I'm going to leave you on a little pastor insight here from a conversation with other pastors. We can tell actually which families are roasting the pastor on Sunday from the expression of the kids, sometimes during Sunday night or just generally speaking, how the children treat the pastor. If the children treat the pastor with this attitude of suspicion, disrespect, if they have a hermeneutic of suspicion where they just, you know, they don't believe anything that the pastor says, you can tell pretty quickly that the family is having conversations where the pastor is not being... shall we say, lifted up in that sense. Because while the parents can screen it, children are a lot more open in the way that they act. And speaking with other pastors, we found that that's the case. But you'll find also, this is something to warn you, your ability to perhaps cover your emotions or act differently with other people, your kids don't have it. They tend to be like Tinkerbell, all one emotion at one time. When they don't like somebody, they don't like somebody. And if you train them not to like people, they'll be a lot more open about it than... So, for instance, as an example, parents who are soft racists, in other words, racist privately, tend to produce children who are hard racists. In other words, they'll be that way on the playground and so on. Yes. Yeah, or they could watch bad behavior and then seek to emulate it. That's absolutely right. Another way that we do it, reinforcing it, is simply by not castigating it, not rebuking it, not admonishing our children. One of the worst things that we can do is when one of our kids really lays into another child and is witty or sarcastic, and we laugh. We're like, whoa, that was such a burn. What we're doing is we're encouraging that kind of unchrist-like behavior. It shouldn't be the case that we're allowing our children to get away with unchristian speech, speech that doesn't edify, speech that doesn't build up. But often, unfortunately, one of the other things that I noticed in Fayetteville is that we will establish patterns in our speech that we don't notice that our kids pick up on. Like for instance, sarcasm is like the only way the army communicates as a general rule. Unless it's a direct order, it's gonna be sarcastic, you know, the back and forth banter. And often couples won't even realize how sarcastic they are with each other. Now, sarcasm is biting. It has a sharp edge to it. And kids will pick up on that sarcastic mode of communication, and they'll use it themselves. And it'll be often that you wonder, why is my child so disrespectful? Why is my child so mean in their speech? Well, they're picking up on our speech patterns. Yes. What do you think? Sarcasm once in a while, it can be humorous and so on, but if it becomes the way that we speak with people all the time, then it's wrong because it's a belittling way of speech. Do you know what I mean? It makes the person you're being sarcastic with small and so on, and it's hard. So not rebuking and not setting the right standards are the two primary ways that adults will reinforce that behavior in children. Okay. Passive anger passive anger is especially common among females for whom yelling louder often isn't an option Okay, they are less prone to get physical and less prone to get very very loud Usually they had brothers and so on who could out shout them and so on so they had to take other routes So they express their anger in non-verbal, non-physical ways. Believe it or not, it is possible to be really angry at somebody and then not express it verbally, not express it in terms of physicality. Often, the passively angry individual will convince themselves they aren't actually angry. Hey, I'm not the one who's shouting. I'm not hitting them. I haven't done anything. That kind of thing. They'll do that often to reinforce their own righteousness in a situation. Passive anger is some of the strongest forms of anger. Common ways of expressing passive anger, sulking, pouting, and stewing. Okay, when we go to our room and slam the door, and you know, that kind of thing. Or we're constantly, you know, just, whenever we're around that person, we've got the evil stink eye, you know, and we're constantly expressing, I don't like you, that kind of thing. Or just pouting over the situation, the poo-poo lip with the child. And then stewing, constantly allowing the offense to come to mind and so on and thinking on it and letting it eat us up and then thinking evil thoughts about the other person to ourselves, thinking of all the things that we could do if they were suddenly in our power. I'd get my own back, that kind of thing. Then there's, this one is very popular in marriages, the silent treatment. I'm just going to ignore you. I'm not going to speak to you. I'm not going to have anything to do with you. I'm not shouting at you, but you've offended me greatly, and until you realize you've offended me greatly, and until you repent, I'm not going to talk to you. or I'm going to give you the cold shoulder constantly. Often men are completely vacuous and don't realize, you know, they completely missed what they did in the first place and suddenly they're in the middle of the silent treatment. And unfortunately, what does the silent treatment usually produce in men? Anger. It makes them aggressive as a general rule. So then they get more aggressive and then what happens on the other side? Yeah, it gets worse, so it becomes this awful compounding cycle where he's becoming more and more confused and angry, and she's becoming, you know, many a wife would be utterly dumbfounded. You don't realize what you did wrong? We really are kind of obtuse when it comes to feeling issues, I have to tell you, man. So you really do have to deal with the issue, saying, no, this is actually what you did wrong, and this is why it's wrong. Because often, the guys will just miss it. They shouldn't, but they do. So the silent treatment happens a lot. This happens between kids as well. It's not just, you know, husbands and wives and so on. Or you can even do this at the office. You can, you know, decide you're going to ignore somebody for the rest of your career with them. Isolating themselves. Going into the room and closing the door, having nothing to do with your family because you can't stand them, you hate them. Cutting yourself off from your peers at work or school and just, you know, stewing in that situation, but doing everything that you can to cut yourself off from that other person. Isolating yourself. That's another way of being passively angry at people. Yes, Graham? No. The silent treatment, you can be around the person, okay? But isolating yourself means you go away, you don't want to have anything to do with the... The silent treatment means, I'll give you an example, you know, if it's a husband-wife, let's say, I'll turn it around from the norm, the husband's giving his wife the silent treatment, okay? It's not like he got in the car and drove away or anything like that, but he's just not talking to her. Or his conversation is very flat and it's only about, you know, logistical things, where are the spoons, that kind of thing. So isolating yourself is going a little further and actually going away from the people. And of course, this one has become more common, hurting yourself. Okay, instead of turning the anger towards the person that you actually dislike, a lot of teens, especially, will hurt themselves. Cutters, for instance, they're angry at somebody else, so they cut themselves. That's one way of being passively angry at people. Now, an example of this passive anger in the Bible is given to us by the story of Ahab and Naboth. We read in 1 Kings 21, one through two, and it came to pass after these things that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard that was in Jezreel next to the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. So Ahab spoke to Naboth saying, give me your vineyard that I may have it for a vegetable garden. here next to my house, and for it I will give you a vineyard better than it, or if it seems good to you, I will give you its worth in money. But Naboth said to Ahab, the Lord forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers to you. So Ahab went into his house sullen and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him, for he had said, I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid down on his bed and he turned away his face and he would eat no food. All right, this is passive anger. He's acting like a pouty child as a response to being told no, okay? He's the spoiled king who wanted everything that he ever wanted, and when Naboth won't give up his family's land, he's all angry and pouty. Of course, Jezebel's worse. She goes ahead and kills Naba so he could have the land. Isn't that nice? So there are some things that are slightly worse than passive anger. But Jezebel's wife came to him and said to him, why is your spirit so sullen that you eat no food? He said to her, because I spoke to Nebuchadnezzar and said to him, give me your vineyard for money or else, if it pleases you, I will give you another vineyard for it. And he answered, I will not give you my vineyard. He wouldn't give me his vineyard. And she, of course, works things out so the elders end up killing him. That's the way anger works. It leads to sin. So that sulking, obviously, is not the way a king should act. It's not the way a Christian should act, certainly, either. The third way that we can express our anger is physically. When angry, they shove, poke, poke, punch, slap, kick, or even bite and scratch. And unfortunately, this kind of anger is very common among children, particularly siblings, brothers and sisters beating each other up, and so on, and unfortunately, spouses. And it's all too common among parents towards children, and of late, children towards parents. It used to be more uncommon that children would physically injure their parents, but that's becoming, unfortunately, more common these days. So, child abuse, spousal abuse, and fighting amongst kids is usually a result of anger. We're angry, and then we react inappropriately. We attack people physically. So those are all ways, obviously, when we act out on our anger. Yes? Yes. It happens. Especially when the parents are older and the children are younger. Yeah. I mean, to use an extreme example, there was recently a case in the news. I've forgotten his name. He was an ex-NFL player, became a pastor. Their 16-year-old son shot he and his wife, you know, so that was obviously out of anger. Oh, he's still their child. He's still their child against their parents. No, 16. My daughter's 16. She's still a child. No. All right. Now, also, our anger is sinful when we attack or hurt a substitute. This is also very common. It's not always the case that our anger boils over against the person that we're actually angry against, especially if that person is in a position where we know it would be tremendously detrimental for us to attack them. Your boss, for instance, okay? You pull a hissy fit with your boss and what's he going to do? Fire you or put an article 15. He's going to hurt your career. It's going to damage you directly and almost immediately. So therefore, what do you do? You move the anger to somebody else in order to get it out. Now, an example of this, admittedly, it's a little obscure. would be Moses's anger against the rock. The Lord commanded him to speak to it, but did he? Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, take the rod, you and your brother Aaron, gather the congregation together, speak to the rock before their eyes and it will yield its water. Thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock and give drink to the congregation and their animals. So Moses took the rod from before the Lord as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, Here now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock? Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. Now, who was Moses angry at? The people. Yes. the people of Israel who had been rebellious. This man had spent, you know, the better part of 40 years in the wilderness with these guys, and they're constantly raging and rebelling and doing the wrong thing and undermining his leadership and so on. And so he's angry with them, and he hits this rock. Now, he'd hit it before, but the Lord had said, this time you speak to it, okay? He did not speak to the rock, he hit it. Go ahead, Will. Right, but not this time. The Lord specifically said speak, and so he disobeyed the Lord and disrespected him there. Yes? Yes, there were actually multiple rebellions, both by the elders of Israel and then by his own sister and brother, Aaron and Miriam. Okay, so here's the question. What are some of the situations where we will take out our anger on a substitute instead of the original object of our anger? Now, I obviously gave you one. Yes, Grammy? When you're punching a punching bag. OK, when you're punching a punching bag and thinking about somebody else. Yes, JC? Sometimes when you're actually in control, you get mad and hit someone as hard as you can, which makes you upset. play this because you're mad, not because, you know, they're in your way, but in the way of scoring, you just, you know, you'll take off this or that note. Got it. Okay, so that's an example. Will? I mean, some people will take it out on other things, like don't eat lunch. Right. Joy? Well, I think, you know, whenever there's the, you've got the reduced threat. So, it can be, say for example, a kid's frustrated with themselves or frustrated with their parent, they take it out on their sibling because now the threat level is reduced and they don't feel as threatened to release that. The difficulty is this, is that there are enough natural provocations amongst siblings and in families that I think the The asymmetrical response is that situation where we often hide the misdirection of physical abuse or whatever. Somebody will provoke us, and it will be an honest, provoking situation, and we will asymmetrically respond with, like, Yes, because we're already, we've been boiling for quite some time. Right. Right. Okay, Jamie? There was this cartoon, I think it was sort of famous, where it shows, first the ball is shown at the guy, and the guy comes home and yells at his wife. The wife yells at the kid, and the kid yells at the ball. Oh yeah, no, you pass it on down the line, so to speak. All right, so the pastor is frustrated and angry with his congregation, his session, his denomination, but who's gonna take it out on? His wife, his kids, his family. It's endemic in the pastorate. It's very sad, but that's unfortunately the way it generally works. Parents, we need to watch this one ourselves because our kids are, you know, we get really angry and worked up about a situation at work and we come home and we bring the anger with us. And then the kids do something childish. They're too loud. They awaken us from a nap and suddenly they're dealing with the grizzly bear, you know, not the parent. So that's something that we shouldn't do. All right, so here's another question. Should we vent or practice transference, that is, take out our anger on inanimate objects or scream at someone, say a counselor? Can we, should we? Yes. What do you think, Will? Well, I mean, it's merely a displacement. The anger's still there. The sin is still there. I mean, unless you can move away from that, I mean, the sin is still in your heart. There was that example in the marriage seminar that we had about the water in the bottle. If you spill the water out, it's still water. That's what was in there. Right. Right. Although, I have to tell you, these are incredibly common workarounds with psychologists at this point in time. In anger management classes, they'll teach them transference, where they'll say things to them. Wayne Mack mentions it, you know, pretend I'm your mother and, you know, really let me have it for all the bad things that she did to you as a kid. And you vent all of this sinful anger. Oh, I feel better. No, no, no, no, no. Jesus said, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, Raka, shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hellfire. When your anger is bubbling in your heart and it comes bursting out, it doesn't matter what the object is. It's the anger, the hatred, the murderous rage that's sinful, whether you're expressing it by beating up a pillow, pretending it's somebody else, or you're actually screaming at the person themselves. It's a sinful anger, and we need to work on controlling the anger, not controlling the outlet, so to speak. All right, so the summary of all of these sections. All of these types of anger are sinful. They're expressions of bitterness. Oh, go ahead. Raqqa, it's a particularly strong way of saying somebody's an idiot. So all of these types of anger are sinful. They are expressions of bitterness and wrath. And Ephesians 4.31 says they must be put off. They need to be expunged, not merely handled. This is the issue. Most anger and stress management courses help you to manage your anger. It's always there, but we're going to keep it managed. The Bible says we need to extinguish our anger. We need to expunge our anger. It's rather like saying, well, we've got a forest fire. We're going to work on keeping it under control. No, actually the Bible says put the forest fire out. Okay, that's the way that we need to be looking at it. We need to expunge the wrath, not merely handle it. So what should we be doing to work towards this? Well, the first thing to do is to identify your own sinful propensities towards anger. Your use of substitutes. For instance, if you know for a fact you've taken it out on your spouse, or if you're taking it out on your kids, then admit that to yourself. Acknowledge that you have the problem. Okay? That's one of the first things that we have to do when it comes to anger. We have to actually admit we are angry people. If we don't, we're never going to be able to deal with it. If we don't have a problem, are we going to solve that problem? No, obviously not. So first we have to work on admitting that we actually do these things that we've identified. The second is we need to go to God. We need to confess our sins before Him in that particular area and then ask for His forgiveness. and ask also not only for his forgiveness. Our attitude when we go to God and we ask for forgiveness based on what his son Jesus Christ has done for us, for these sins, we don't go to him and then simply say, forgive me for these things, but we ask also for his help in changing take these things away from me so that I'm no longer angry. And then thirdly, we need to confess if we've got anger problems to our family members and close friends, the people that we have hurt again and again, and ask them for forgiveness. Now this requires a substantial climb down in our pride. especially if we're confessing to people who are beneath us, so to speak, in the social order. Like, for instance, our kids. That's hard. It's hard for a parent to confess a sin to their child. So we need to also ask for their help, particularly friends and spouses, and their accountability in overcoming that anger. Keep me accountable. If I go off, you need to keep me accountable and point out what's going on in my heart and tell me this is unbecoming to a Christian. Now, How can you help others to overcome their sinful anger problems? Okay. What? Praying for them is an excellent way of helping others to overcome their sinful anger problems. Yes. Is there any adult who's got any ideas here? Anybody? Yes, Ashley. Okay, confront them with their sins. We're gonna be actually talking about ways to do that in just a little while. Actually going to them and telling them. Is that hard? Yes. Most of the time, would we rather not do that? Yes, because it can often produce a conflict. And if we go to an angry person to tell them that they're angry, what is going to happen? They're going to get angry. So, and often we've developed, sometimes without even thinking about it, ways of managing them and their anger and, you know, trying to keep it at a low boil so we don't try to provoke them. All right, the next section is learning to be good and angry. To be good and angry. We won't finish the section, but we will start. Now, learning to be good and angry usually means you're really, really sinfully angry. But we need to learn to be really good, that is godly and angry. In other words, we need to learn how to become angry First, for the right reasons. We need to remember it's not a sin to be angry at sin, is it? We shouldn't be happy about sin, should we? No, it's not a sin to be angry about sin. So when I hear about some hideous injustice going on in the world, it's not something that I should go, oh, it doesn't matter. That would indicate no empathy, no sympathy, no heart. I should be angry at that kind of thing. Yes? Like the Corinthians? How do you mean? I mean, not the Corinthians, like the... Oh, first, no, he's right, 1 Corinthians 5. They had the sinner, but they weren't upset by his sin. And secondly, we need to learn how to become angry and express it in constructive and biblical ways. When we are angry, the outlet needs to be biblical and the outlet needs to be constructive. All right? So, we need to remember constantly, and this is going to be, you know, a theme verse that's coming up again and again, 4, 26, and 27. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Alright? One of the things that this means, working this out, don't let the sun go down on your wrath, means obviously not going to bed angry, right? Okay, and then waking up in the morning, angry. Okay, so what we need to do is we need to deal with the problem on a regular daily basis. We need to deal with our anger or the things that cause us anger on a regular basis. So we have to deal with our problems every day. All right, which is not easy at all, but we need to deal with them every single day. And let me ask you simply this, do you often become angry and do nothing to resolve the problem? Who says yes? You get angry and you do nothing to resolve the problem. Okay, who says no? I never get angry and do nothing to resolve the problem. Okay, that's not a good resolution. Yeah, I'm gonna solve it through a sinful response, that's not a good thing. When we allow unexpressed, unresolved anger to build up, we are creating a situation that will eventually explode. It's like an abscess. Kids, who knows what an abscess is? Who can tell me? Something in your mouth. Well, you can get it in your mouth. Often, you'll get it under teeth. It's true. I've had one. It was bad. Yes? It's a contained area of infection where white blood cells So what does it build up? What do we call that? Pus. Pus. Yes. Pus builds up in the area of infection. And more and more of it. And it's contained, unfortunately. So unfortunately, it tends to move towards eruption. It's like an underground volcano chamber. How many of you know about the Yosemite Supervolcano? Anybody ever heard of that by any chance? Okay, yes, Will knows about it. All right, and most of the people here. Under Yosemite National Park, the thing that powers Old Faithful is what they call a super volcano. There's a lava chamber far under the earth, which is, you know, always filled with a certain amount of magma. The great fear is that eventually the amount of magma there will grow so great that it might precipitate a collapse and then a resulting explosion. Something will set off the super volcano, which would destroy most of the state that it's in and create quite a problem for the world. It's a giant thing. But for a lot of people, they live their life becoming like this super volcano waiting to explode. Because they just stuff the stuff, and stuff the stuff, and stuff the stuff, and then finally they go off in an inappropriate way. Yes? What do you do when your sibling has been disciplined by mommy and daddy and then they get more mad at you? Actually, here's the thing. Whose problem is it really? their problem, okay? The thing you've got to do is to watch your own heart and not render evil for evil, and to confront them about that, to say, you're acting like Cain right now, okay? Evil is crouching at the door, and you are headed towards sin. It's hard to do that, though, to talk to somebody in that kind of way, to tell them that what they're doing is sinful and they're not acting like a Christian. Victor? being like passive aggressive, like you've told them something and now they're going to fight any way possible to get back at you. Is there one way that you can maybe make them stop annoying you? If they're verbally attacking you, don't Don't render evil for evil. Actually, believe it or not, what does Jesus say we should answer cursing with? Blessing. Yeah. We should bless the people who curse us. So it makes it very difficult for them to continue to curse us if we're blessing them, doesn't it? Yeah. Will, did you have your hand? Your hand seemed to be moving. Right, because God knows the score at any given moment. There are two ways to deal righteously with a conflict that we have with another person. The first way is to overlook the offense. If somebody has injured us or sinned against us and so on, The first way that we can deal with the offense they've committed against us is simply to overlook the offense. And we see lots of admonitions that as Christians who are animated by love and a spirit of forgiveness, we should be doing that. And above all things, have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. Within the body of Christ, we should be more than willing to forgive people immediately and not to bring up their sins. Proverbs 10-12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. If we are spirit, if we are honestly a church that is animated by that first Corinthians 13 spirit, if we're trying to indulge and build up love one for another, if we honestly love the other members of the body, it's easy to forgive. It's hard to forgive people you hate, isn't it? If you can't stand them, the least thing they do against you, you... Oh, that's just them all over, isn't it? And you just keep holding that. But if you honestly love somebody and they do something, you know, bad or sinful towards you, it's easy to forgive them. If we maintain a spirit of love towards the brethren, it'll be much easier to forgive the sins that they have committed against us. The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression. To not take it out of somebody when they sin against you, to not flip them off when they cut you off, to not scream at somebody who is treating you badly, that kind of thing, that is actually the greater glory. It shows that you are the bigger, more mature, more sanctified individual. I mean, how many times has it been in your life that you have acted in an angry way and then felt ashamed afterwards? You know, that you said that, or you did that, or you were just so petty because you know in that moment that that was not the Christ-like thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do. It reflected badly on you. To suffer and not respond with cursing and railing is by far the bigger thing, the bigger person thing. The Bible tells us we should sometimes confront sin in others. Who would like to look up 2 Thessalonians 3.14 and 15 for me? First person there can read it out loud. Okay, who's got it? I have. Who said it first though? I have no idea. John Faber, you said it, go ahead. If anyone does not obey what We say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. All right, so there are times when we need to admonish. There are times we need to rebuke and go and tell people what their sin is. And sometimes we are told to overlook an offense. But the difficulty comes in determining when do we overlook the offense and when do we have to confront the offense. Okay? Because with some people, I tend to find that you're all one or all the other. You're the person who's constantly confronting or the person who's constantly overlooking. You overlook when you should confront and you confront when you should overlook. That's the problem that we run into. So what are the biblical rules for when we should confront and when we should overlook? So times when it may be best to overlook a sin when it isn't a pattern. Oh, go ahead, John. Sorry. Yes. It's talking about other believers primarily, brothers and sisters in the faith. Times when it may be best to overlook a sin, first, when it isn't a pattern in their life. If this isn't something that the person does on a regular basis, something that they need to address, if it's a momentary slip, okay, then it may be something that you should overlook. For instance, if they drop a cinder block on their foot and they swear, Okay? And you know for a fact, this is not a person who swears on a regular basis. That would be one of those things where I would advise, let it go. But if somebody is swearing continuously over the littlest things, that's something where you need to confront in that case, in that sin. Two, when it doesn't hinder either their witness or someone else's witness for Jesus Christ, All right, this is not something that is going to bring a reproach on the Christian community, it's not something that reflects badly upon them in front of their neighbors and so on. If it's just, you know, one of the manifold sins that we all commit on a regular basis rather than something that's a public scandal and so on, then it may not be best to confront, it may be best to overlook. Thirdly, when it doesn't hurt them or someone else. They've committed an offense, but it doesn't really hurt anybody. So, those are three places where you may wish to say, I'm just going to go ahead and overlook this, and move on. Now, there are times, of course, when you do need to confront sin, however. When the sin will bring reproach on Christ. 1 Corinthians 5. Okay, we have the example of the man who is sleeping with his father's wife. This is something that was bringing open shame upon the Church of Jesus Christ. Even the Gentiles don't do these things, says Paul. They're going to speak badly of you. They're going to speak badly of your behavior. The way that you're acting is a reproach. It's a stench in their nostrils, the things that you've done. If your actions bring reproach on the church of Jesus Christ or on the name of Christ, because you are somebody who is publicized as a Christian. For instance, if the pastor has a big Jesus fish on the back of his car and a big follow me to Providence PCA church, magnetic bumper sticker, and yet he's constantly cutting off other cars and swearing at people in traffic and subsequently, you know, he's full of road rage. There is an example where he's bringing reproach upon the kingdom and he needs to be told, you ought not to do this. Or when sin is going to damage them or other people. Their actions, their behaviors are self-destructive or they're destroying their family. He's got an addiction. He's got bad habits and so on that are sinful habits that are wrecking his family or her family. Do you tell them? They have said, yes, you tell them. Is that fun? No. Or they've done something that's a pattern in their life towards you, okay? And you need to bring it up. You need to confront them and tell them. That's not easy though. So, can you give examples of sins that need to be confronted and sins that don't necessarily need to be confronted? Let's see if you can tell the difference between the two. Give me an example of a sin that doesn't necessarily need to be confronted. Not one I've already given. Grammy! When you what? Accidentally start hurting somebody. Yeah. If it was a genuine accident, that's usually not, but can a genuine accident make you very angry when someone, you know, when they accidentally hit you in the eye or something like that? Okay. Anything else? Things that don't require a rebuke? Will? At times, I mean, that can be required of you, where you need to be pertinent to another person, but also in the sense of, if they just want to participate in the conversation, you shouldn't. They're just asking questions. If there were a pattern of gossip and getting into things that aren't their business, that would be a problem. But if they're just asking a question, you should give them the benefit of the doubt. Let me give you some examples of non-patterns that don't require rebuke. If the guy doesn't do it on a regular basis, but he finishes the coffee pot and doesn't refill it at work, if that's a first-time thing. Or once in a blue moon, he does that, not a big deal. You don't need to rebuke him for that. love covers a multitude of sins or doesn't replace the toilet roll and stuff like that. But if he always does that, all right, if he's always finishing off the coffee and then never brewing a new pot for anybody else, if he always uses the microwave to microwave his tuna casserole and then never cleans it out, even though it's gone and splattered all over the inside of the microwave, now it smells abominable and he doesn't bother to clean it out, then maybe that's something that needs to be confronted and rebuked. If he's always taking your pens and never giving them back, but if, you know, it's a once in a while, if he took your pen and didn't give it back and that was a one-time offense or something like that, that's not something that needs to be confronted. That's where you really do need to look for patterns. Is this a sinful pattern? Is this selfish? Is this something that needs to be confronted in their life? They do this again and again and again and again. So, try to determine those things, all right? Because you cannot live a life where you are constantly confronting. You just cannot. For instance, with your kids, children are born with hearts that are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? That's a child's heart, okay? Foolishness, as Proverbs tells us, is bound up in the heart of a child. What does that mean? What does that tell us? Yes. You sin a lot. There you go. They're going to sin every single day. They're going to do stupid and childish things. They're going to do foolish things. They're going to do sinful things on occasion. Now, you can, if you want, hover over them, and as Wayne Mack puts it this way, I could have occupied a large part of my day just in rebuking and criticizing them and pointing out their sins. He points out he could have followed his children around all day, rebuking them, criticizing them, pointing out their sins, on a regular basis, never run out of material, because they're kids. What would have been wrong with this? Kids' hands are shooting up. Yeah, Victor, let's start with you. Because that in itself is, I believe, a sin. I mean, if you're constantly hounding someone, doesn't that fall under the You could be yeah open to a charge of hypocrisy in that case. Oh boy the kids JC will go from oldest to youngest There's no positive there it's just negative reinforcement constantly Isabel I Okay, go ahead, Ashley. Okay, when you're very aggressive. Yes, Tim and Owen. When you say, well, you should not have done that. But you're making them more angry, so you can just keep on saying that. And you're making them more and more angry. Okay, go ahead. And who was always trying to catch somebody else? The Pharisees were always trying to catch Jesus in a sin. Will? Right. Also, how would you react? What would happen to your mood if somebody was constantly, let's say you were at work and your boss constantly followed you around, criticizing everything that you did all day long? You would become depressed. You would become exasperated. You would become... angry continuously. If we really want to nurture a spirit of anger in our own kids and depression and so on, then, you know, criticize them 99% of the time. And don't set a positive example and don't give positive reinforcement or... Mac points this out, continuous nonstop fault finding and admonition would have encouraged them to be uptight around me and to want to avoid me as much as possible. All right, let's face it, folks, we don't want to spend all of our time in the process of around somebody who's constantly confronting, criticizing, who never has anything but a bad word for us. It's hard to live and deal with that kind of person, so we would want to be around other people who didn't do that, so we would avoid them. Now, could that have applications beyond just our children? We're talking about kids. What do you think, adults? Does it have applications beyond our kids? Who else does it apply to? What, everyone, okay, everyone generally, but in particular who? Spouses. If you are a fault finder general when it comes to your spouse on a regular basis, you will begin to embitter them towards you. It's just natural. But as Lydia points out, it works also with everyone. So there does need to be confrontation. Now, as I said, the tendency tends to be either abdicate or tyrannize. We're either always confronting or never confronting, and that's not it. There needs to be that biblical balance that's occurring in our life. It's hard to hit. It really is. But who do we see it perfectly displayed in? In whose life did we see it perfectly displayed? Jesus, who encouraged and confronted. Did he confront his disciples when they were showing patterns of sin? Yeah, for instance, which disciple was frequently showing patterns of sin? Peter! And he confronts him on a number of times, sometimes, you know, cutting straight to the heart in a very sharp manner. Like, for instance, get thee behind me, Satan, for you're an offense to me. You're thinking the way a man thinks, not the way God thinks, in what you're asking for. And Peter had done that on a lot of occasions, and he would do it even again in the future. But Christ rebuked when necessary. He encouraged when necessary. He kept the two. He wasn't constantly going around, as the Pharisees did, on a fault-finding mission. But he did, nonetheless, criticize sins when they needed to be criticized. So he criticized the Pharisees, for instance. Woe unto you, Pharisees. Brood of vipers. Go ahead. or calm in this way, we can say, well, then look at Paul, because Paul's man just like we are. And Paul, in his letters, even in Galatians and in the Corinthian, he finds something that he can encourage them about. I can say it, but I'm challenged to do it, too, because I'm either... And in the original text of his messages, he used emojis as well, so they knew which tone he was using. It was a smiley face after most of them. Be careful what you rebuke for as well. We should confront someone only when he or she acts in a way forbidden in Scripture. This means being careful not to confront another based on mere preference outside of Scripture. A lot of the confronting and rebuking that goes on in churches often is based upon a person's preferences. I don't like this, but it's not a scriptural thing. For instance, you know, I don't like the movies you watch. I don't like the way you chew gum. I don't like the way you dance. I don't like the fact that you wear makeup. I don't like, you know, all of these things that aren't necessarily forbidden in scripture. I've seen disfellowshipping. occurring over issues like, well, he drinks wine with dinner, and I'm not going to have anything to do with that. And it can be just other preferences, secondary topics. These are the things that I would prefer. It doesn't have to be in a church situation. I would prefer that you act this way, but the person isn't actually sinning. I just want you to be more like me. And the fact that you're not like me, I hate that. So we need to be careful to be able, if you can't actually pin what the person is doing to a violation of one of the Ten Commandments, it's not a sin. You may not like it. It may not be what you would prefer, but it's not a sin. Okay? It's not blasphemy, it's not adultery, it's not theft, it's not coveting, it's not idol worship, it's not idolatry, it's not lying, then it's not actually one of the sins that God forbids in His Word. And in that case, We read in 1 Corinthians 4, 6. how you rebuke. Go to that person privately and for the purpose of reconciliation and unity, not for criticizing and condemning. If you go to a person who has sinned against you and your only purpose in talking to them is to get your own back, to criticize, to tear them down, to do that kind of thing, you're not doing anything constructive. It may be something that does need to be rebuked. But if you're just trying to tear them up, or criticize them, and so on, or make them feel bad the way that they made you feel bad, then that is not Christ-like. What needs to happen is there needs to be reconciliation and unity as the ultimate ends. Okay, this has come between us. This was an offense that was committed against me. We need to reconcile, okay? And remember to apply these principles to all your relationships. Remember this, your spouse is also a fellow brother or sister in Christ. We always cut corners when it comes to our family members. How careful we would be in going to a member of our church. I mean, for instance, and it would never happen, of course, if Nancy sinned against me, okay? I would, with fear and trembling, go to Nancy and then say, Sister, I hate to bring this up, and then open up the scriptures, and then she would show me that, no, she hadn't actually sinned against me. But anyway, that we would be aiming towards reconciliation the whole time, and I'm sure there would be no heated language and stuff like that. Whereas with our spouse, we just go, boom, and we'll do it in public or in front of our children. Or we'll tear down one child with a rebuke in front of the other kids, okay? And we'll shame them publicly. And that ought not to be the case either. So we need to remember that our relatives are also brothers and sisters in Christ and need to be treated with concern, with care, with honor. So how can we make sure your problems are addressed? One way is to establish a family conference. This is the last point. Family conference or talk time. Discuss the problematic issues that the family is dealing with. Set aside a specific time during each day. You're supposed to be dealing with your problems every day, right? Okay? So, remember to pray and consider, avoid shooting from the hip when it comes to problems. You set up a time to have these family discussions. You say, okay, what are the problems that we're dealing with? And then you work towards them with prayer and consideration, carefully. Okay? A time to do this might be before family worship, for instance, on a daily basis. Now, could we all do this? Yes, we could, but will we all do it? No, why? Why won't we do this? What are some of the reasons why we won't do this? Go ahead. Yeah, one of the things that is definitely gonna happen is for a lot of people, the idea of every single day bringing up points of contention and conflict at a regular point in time is horrific. I think I'll go with the plan of not talking about these things and just pressing them down. But yeah, so the idea of always dealing with the issues, making sure reconciliation is going on for a lot of people. It's just, you know, they feel that they would get an ulcer before anything would happen. Yes. To what? Right. Problems? What problems? We don't have any problems. We're a model Christian family. Come on. Right. Exactly. So there's no... But the flesh is weak. Anyway, I would challenge you and challenge me as well to actually think about doing this. Yes. All of us, generally speaking, at some level are cowards. So it may not be the physical bravery part, but sometimes the actually going out and speaking to somebody is hard. But do consider that. This is just one of many different ways that we can deal with this. We'll deal with more next week, but we're already over time. Did want to catch up from having taught the smaller course last week.