January 11, 2019
Rage Rash: Neutralizing the Acid of Anger (Part 2)
 
Below you will find an audio of the devotion being read for you, followed by the written devotion. Listen on the go, listen as you read along, or enjoy reading it without the audio. God bless!
 
 
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. – G.K. Chesterton
 
Fired Up
Mark 11:15-17 (NLT)
Jesus Clears the Temple
15 When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, 16 and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace. 17 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”
 
Jesus was not meek and mild on this day. He was consumed by a righteous indignation churning inside of Him. A holy anger propelled Him to overthrow the tables of the moneychangers and authoritatively evicted them from the premises. We may have a hard time picturing Jesus this way. We may not understand how Jesus could be angry and sin not. But as always, Jesus gave us a perfect example that anger is not only justified, but it is good, when it propels us to exercise righteousness in the presence of injustice.
 
Groeschel illustrates another example as follows:
 
“The other kind of anger, what I call sanctified anger, requires a different response. Scripture offers several examples of Jesus getting angry — but he never sinned. His was a righteous anger. One of my favorites is a story in Mark 3:1 – 6 about a man with a shriveled hand. This man happened to be in the synagogue on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were there, too, watching Jesus to see if he might dare to heal someone on the Sabbath.
 
Apparently, they considered performing a miracle on their holy day to be a monumental sin. Jesus seemed to know what they were thinking. In verse 4, he asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they refused to answer. Verse 5 says, “He looked around at them in anger … deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.” Jesus was mad. He was angry. All he wanted to do was demonstrate God’s love to people in need. But his detractors were watching his every move, hellbent on keeping God’s freedom out of their temple.
 
If I had Jesus’ power, I don’t know if I could have been so kind. I might raise my hands, and bam! they’d all have hemorrhoids. Okay, so maybe that’s just me. And that would be letting my anger lead me to sin. Instead, Jesus “said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored” (Mark 3:5). Rather than allowing his anger to cause him to sin, Jesus redirected his anger to do something righteous.” (1)
 
James gives us an important distinction. He says in Chapter 1 verse 20, “for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” The anger of man leads to sin, but the holy anger of God produces righteousness. If we are angry, we need to make sure that anger leads to righteousness.
 
If you are a passionate person, that is a good thing. Sure, it can get us into trouble if we do not have temperance, but God created you the way you are to be a warrior for Him. He needs intercessors and prayer warriors to advance His Kingdom.
 
Righteous Anger Helps Overcome Apathy
As we mentioned yesterday, there are many things in this world that can make us angry, including: dishonesty and lack of integrity in politics and media, high divorce rates, mind-boggling numbers of abortions, sex trafficking and drug smuggling, world hunger, the spread of false doctrine and pseudo-Christianity, child abuse, and the like. These things should make us angry! There is a problem if these things do not cause a righteous indignation to rise up. Please understand, I did not say self-righteous indignation. It is a holy fire that burns within us as we consider the need for justice and mercy.
 
In addition to the things in the world around us, our own sin should cause an anger in us at times. If we are failing in an area, or caught in a destructive pattern of behaviors or thoughts, a holy anger should propel us like coal in the engine of a locomotive. That fire is healthy. It motivates us to change.
 
A quick note here: We need balance in this. Our anger cannot become human anger or frustration over our failures. That will lead to depression and hopelessness. I heard a person define depression as anger turned inward. Obviously, I am not advocating this type of anger. On the other hand, a holy anger will propel us to turn from our sin and draw closer to God. It will shake us out of our spiritual laziness and drive us to repentance.
 
If our children, or another loved one, is steeped in the trap of sin, we should get fired up enough to do war on the floor. We should be motivated to hit our knees and pray for the salvation of their souls! God forbid we are content to let them be lost and not pray for their souls. It is okay to be angry when we see the enemies influence on their life. Not angry at them. But we must possess an anger at the enemy of their souls that leads to a zeal to see their spiritual condition change.
 
For many reasons, we can become laden with apathy and indifference. We have the propensity to be far more motivated by the things of this life than by eternal priorities. Holy anger overcomes that. It gets out of our comfort zone. Righteous indignation forces us out of our pew, to the front-lines of Christian service. An angry person cannot sit still and be satisfied with things as they are. The same raging inferno that filled the bosom of Christ the day he threw over the tables of the moneychangers, needs to grip us as we consider the condition of the church and the world today. We need a holy revival to sweep across our church and our city. Just as anger is compared to fire, so is the Holy Spirit. The fire of the Holy Spirit will not allow us to be apathetic and remain the same. When we are consumed by the Holy Spirit, we will possess a zeal that overcomes indifference. May the passion of the Lord arouse us out of our slumber, and plunge us into exuberant, Kingdom-advancing action.

Be Angry Like God
“Who’s in charge in your life? Sin is crouching at your door. Don’t let your hair-trigger anger tell you what to do anymore. Be wise. Don’t give your enemy even a spot of ground to stand on, not a nanometer. Don’t spew like a volcano. Chasing down cars in parking lots won’t accomplish the righteousness that God desires. Don’t stew on it. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
 
Instead, spend quiet, slow time with God, in prayer and in his Word, and learn what things make him angry. Then, when you feel your pulse starting to race, your temperature starting to rise, the veins in your neck starting to pop out, ask yourself, Where is this heading? If it’s toward sin, put it out. Drop it. But if it’s toward righteousness, fan the flame. Invite God to make you more like himself — and then let him.” (2)
 
Kingdom Violence
God created us with the emotion of anger. By the grace of God let’s learn to manage it properly.
While we are not to allow anger to cause us to sin, we are called to use force when necessary.
 
Matthew 11:12 (AMP)
12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violent assault, and violent men seize it by force [as a precious prize].
 
This is not speaking of a hostile violence towards other men, but a pursuing of righteousness and the Kingdom of God with a zeal and a passion like violent men overtaking a city. Being a Christian is not always about being soft-spoken, meek, and mild. Despite conventional thinking to the contrary; anger, zeal, and passion – even throwing over tables and kicking people out of the temple – have their place in the Kingdom of God.
 
(1) Groeschel, Craig. Soul Detox: Clean Living in a Contaminated World (pp. 138-139). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
(2) Groeschel, Craig. Soul Detox: Clean Living in a Contaminated World (p. 140). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.