Dennis Tuuri

Ecclesiastes 7:7-13. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad, and a gift destroyth the heart. Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for thy anger resteth in the bosom of fools. Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? For thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.

Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and by it there is profit to them that see the sun. For wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense. But the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life to them that have it. Consider the work of God. For who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked.

The children may be dismissed now to go to their Sabbath school if their parents desire that.

A little cubicle around me would be nice to have those here to spread out all my work. We’re talking about the seven deadly sins and we’re now speaking on the third of those in the historic order of the seven deadly sins, which is the sin of anger. I was talking to Doug H. earlier this week and we were talking about various little difficulties that come up, problems we have, and we have this big work we’re doing out here in terms of some of the political action stuff, in terms of restoring what the gospel is all about—restoring the law of God to its proper place in the life of the Christian.

Some big works out here dealing with groups outside of our families. And then we’ve got these little minor annoyances within our families—what seem to be minor annoyances, little sin problems both in the context of our individual families and the family of the church. And some of these things, what we’re talking about now—pride, envy, anger, and sloth—and we’ll get into the other sins in future weeks.

They’re not exactly directly related to a lot of these major things we think we should be working on. But you know what we were saying in the meeting Doug and I were having was that really this is the work—rooting out this sin in our lives. It may seem like these things in terms of dealing with anger in our household and whatnot are minor things compared to some of the great works we have to do out here. But that’s not the case.

If we handle the sin problems in our lives, and that’s what we’ve been talking about for the last couple of months, that’s what we’re going to be talking about for another couple of months. If we can do our best, in the grace of God, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to root out those sinful areas that produce so many more disastrous things in our lives, that will mean this work out here will be assured the successful completion of it.

So this stuff is real important. What we’re dealing with here—rooting out these sins like those big trunks of the blackberry that I talked about before that produce all these other things—may not seem important, but it is extremely important. It’s really the only work we have to do. For that reason, we’re going slow through these series of messages. And if I don’t get done with what I plan to have done today, that’s okay, too. We’ll just stop and finish up next week and then we’ll take another week and whatever. We’re going to go slow. This is long, hard work rooting out these sins in our lives.

I don’t want you to be discouraged as we preach through these things. It’s spiritual warfare that you’re going to have to engage in the rest of your lives. And God’s promised to give us victory. Remember we talked about the seven deadly sins and how the early church fathers saw those in relationship to the seven nations of Canaan. They were conquered eventually by the people of God. See, so it’s hard work. We got to get to it. And we’re going to go nice and slow dealing with this stuff so you understand what the scriptures have to say about these sins.

You know, they say that one of the good ways—if you’re going to be a good speaker, good communicator—is to tell people what you’re going to say and then to say it and then to tell them what you just said. So the idea is you say it three times and it gets through and I think that’s pretty good advice most of the time. So I want to start off this morning by reviewing what we said last week somewhat.

We said that it is easy to get into angry situations in our culture for lots of reasons. One thing we talked about was egalitarianism. The idea that people supposedly have these rights conferred upon them and that equality is in the Declaration of Independence is no longer seen as equality of justice or opportunity even. It’s seen as the equality of results. And so if you don’t have the same result as somebody else, well, that contradicts what the society is teaching you and that causes great frustration and anger.

I got in the mail this last week a mission statement from the Oregon State Board of Education. It’s about four pages full of a lot of interesting things. It has a lot to do with how they’re going to make the schools—one of their big goals, one of their three or four major goals for schools, elementary schools—is to make them community service centers to provide all kinds of social services to kids other than just education. Well, anyway, the very first thing this mission statement says is: we believe the mission of the state board of education is to secure excellent and equitable educational opportunities and results for all Oregonians.

And that’s what we talked about. You can assure perhaps fairly equal opportunities, but everybody’s not created equal. So, even there, you don’t have the same opportunity as me if you don’t have the same gifting from God. But for the state board of education as the beginning of their statement of mission to say they’re going to assure equal results for all Oregonians is ridiculous. You cannot get equal results.

And this is part of the reason—when you read these things and I read this sort of stuff every week of my life nowadays being hooked into all these governmental agencies—it can create a good deal of anger in you, particularly when you realize they’re going to use mission statements like this to make further inroads into your family.

Anyway, egalitarianism produces anger. An acceptance of environmentalism. People believe that it’s the environment that creates sin now, not the sin of themselves. Dostoyevsky—we quoted from the Grand Inquisitor. He was saying that don’t you know a time will come when there won’t be sin anymore. There’ll just be hunger. It’s not that a man really has sinned or go out and commits a crime when he kills somebody. No, he just wasn’t well-fed when he was a child. You see, so we say that the environment produces the problems we have and the acceptance of environmentalism is another cause for anger because it really gives vent to people’s anger.

We said that in terms of our society another problem is that people are actually urged to express anger. We talked about that a little bit—you know, in terms of that—and if you thought maybe it is a good emotional device for a psychologist to tell you to vent anger by punching a pillow or something or screaming at the top of your lungs.

Proverbs 12:16 says that a fool’s wrath is presently known but a prudent man covereth shame. You see, so what Christians are doing when they go in for that kind of counseling is they’re becoming fools. They’re making known to everybody their wrath.

We said that there’s a true lack of justice in our society and that produces a great deal of anger, too. The potential for it if not handled correctly. Speaking on the radio next week, unless they change what I’m going to say, I’m going to talk a little bit about that gal who got 30 days for having a baby and then leaving it in a hamper where it died. 30 days. That can get you angry.

A couple other things came up this week when I was talking with some of you. The fact that we live in a society full of covenant breakers is also another great source of anger. We deal on a daily basis with people that have long ago rejected the idea of covenant and being faithful to their word. And that can really be irritating. And you know it’s supposed to be one of our marks—that we are covenant keepers. We say we’re supposed to do something. We’re supposed to swear to our own hurt. Psalm 15 says very important. But we walk in the midst of people that are covenant breakers and that can be very irritating and causing anger to us.

And then one final factor that I thought of that is important for what we’re going to be saying here is that we tend to live in an instant world. I saw some comedian, I don’t remember if it was Steven Wright maybe, with his name. He was telling—he’s a real kind of dry humor—and he said that he dreamed he made—no, he actually made instant coffee in his microwave and he almost went back in time.

We live in an instant society where everything is ding ding and one of the great sources of anger for Christians now is an impatience with oneself as God matures us slowly over time in the sanctification process. St. John of the Cross wrote that this great impatience comes from people’s ambitions to be saints in a single day.

Now we know in terms of saints as holy ones with the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, we do become saints in God’s calling immediately. But there’s a growing sanctification we must go through. Now, that’s real important because some of the things, if we get to them this morning, that we’ll be talking about can really be discouraging to you. I know that they’re discouraging to myself and to my family as we think through some of these proverbs and judge ourselves by them.

I don’t want you to be discouraged by this stuff. I want you to realize you’ve got to do the hard work to get rid of these sins in your life, but it’s going to be a long time working this stuff out in your life. God doesn’t do things instantly. So, we can get angry and frustrated even by sermons such as this morning on anger. When you think, I can’t be like that. And then you get angry with yourself cuz you’re frustrated.

Okay. Lots of anger around in the world. And we looked last week at some Hebrew expressions of that anger—being hot, overwhelming, burning, to have wrath, to let that anger burn you up, and to cause broken relationships. These are the meanings essentially of some of the Hebrew words involved—wrath overflowing to consumptive actions.

We spoke of some of those root Hebrew words that give us a good picture of anger. And we began actually then talking about positive statements about anger. We looked at Ephesians 4 where we read to be angry and don’t sin. Sin not. So there is a positive place. There’s a command to be angry under certain circumstances—the righteous anger.

And if you remember correctly, we looked at Leviticus 19:17 and 18. Then we looked at Zechariah 8:14-17. And then we also looked at Psalm 4. And if you go from the case law in Leviticus 19 to the Psalms to Psalm 4 to the minor prophets in Zechariah 8 and then into the New Testament epistles in Ephesians 4, you see the same thread where on one hand we’re supposed to judge and make judgments and do that correctly and wisely, but on the other hand, we’re not to fall into letting that anger, righteous anger boil over into sin.

So there’s a positive command for appropriate uses of anger. But very always it’s in scripture surrounded by language warning us that this may not be well handled. Remember we said that Arnot in his commentary on the proverb said it’s like matches with kids. Matches aren’t bad. You got to use matches sometimes with little kids. Tell them don’t use it at all until you get to the place where you can handle it.

So there is an appropriate place for anger. And as we said last week, Aristotle said that anybody can become angry. That’s the easy part. But to be angry at the right person at the right time for the right purpose and in the right way—that’s not within everybody’s power and that’s not easy to do and that’s why we have those admonitions not to sin.

Then we talked about the relationship of anger to the other seven deadly sins. We’re going to mention that as we conclude hopefully this morning as well. And essentially I want you to have in your minds that with this whole progression we have these first three sins—pride, envy and anger. And then we have the middle link which is sloth. And then we have the last three sins—greed, lust, and gluttony.

These first three are like some people talking about the sins of the devil. Whereas these last three are sins of the flesh. The middle is really kind of a sin of the flesh, too. The point is these are sins that the devil—are demonic really sins—and the devil will attack us in these areas. And they’re all related. We’ll look at some verses in a couple of minutes that show that it’s pride that leads to anger. And envy can lead to anger as well. Those are all linked up together. Those are sins of perverted love, love for ourselves instead of love for God and love of our neighbor.

Down here at this end, these last three sins we’re talking about are cases of too much love. You know, greed and gluttony and lust relate to proper things, but too much of a thing is sin. And so in the middle, Dante describes the middle of these seven deadly sins, sloth, as being a lack of love—love that knows what it’s supposed to do, but is just lazy in terms of carrying it out. And that’s the next one we’ll deal with when we finish up with this sin of anger in a couple of weeks.

Remember we said that last week we spoke about two things. Chaucer—or we began to at least—Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales and the Parson’s Tale said that there were two kinds of anger that were inappropriate or wrong. Sudden or hasty anger and then secondly full wicked anger—anger that burns like a crock pot, anger that shimmers over a long period of time.

And then we looked last week at the admonition to not let the sun go down upon our wrath. Not to have that long protracted anger that we let simmer away for a long period of time and then flares up. That sinful anger. We’re to be angry but not to be sinful in our anger and not let the sun go down upon our wrath.

Remember we talked about the fact that it isn’t just a suppression of our anger that’s supposed to happen in the evening, but supposed to happen in the evening according to Psalm 4 and Ephesians 4. Picking up that reference in Psalms 4 is that in the evening, those are times of devotions and meditation upon the person of God. And so, you’re supposed to let that not just be suppressed—that anger that could go on too long—but replace it on the positive side with something good, which is meditation on the person of God.

Remember, we said that it’s not correct to express anger or to suppress anger, but to confess anger. And we’re speaking here of sinful anger. Don’t express, don’t suppress, confess it as sin and move on and consider who God is. Very important. You know, you have that story in the Gospels about the demon being chased out. The house is left clean and all neatened up and the demon comes back with seven worse demons than himself and takes up residence. The idea you just can’t get rid of something negative. You got to fill in the positive. You got to fill in the meditation of God in the evenings as a positive cure to your anger and confession of your sin. Okay?

And we were going to talk last week about being slow to anger. The second of those two couplets that Chaucer talks about and we just barely got started on it. So, I’m going to return to it this morning and spend some time there. So, we don’t want to have too long anger and we don’t want to have too quick anger is the point we’re talking about now.

And your outlines kind of link up everything we said last week and brings us into this week’s topic as well.

Let every man be slow to anger. Now, I’m not sure if I read this or not, but I’ll read it again in case I did—it’s okay to reread this. It’s a quote by Arnot about these references to being slow to anger in the scriptures. Arnot in his commentary in the Proverbs says, “Tell me the specific rebukes that most thickly dot the pages of the Bible, and I’ll tell you the specific sins that most easily beset mankind. In that glass, we may behold our own defilements and dangers. If any vice is often reproved in the word of God, you may be assured it springs prolifically in the life of man. In this book of morals, anger is a frequently recurring theme. The repetition is not in vain.”

So all these verses—and I’ve listed some in your outlines last week, and I think I’ve categorized them some this week—all these verses about being slow to anger, tons of them, and I’ve only listed some for you. They’re there because we frequently sin in terms of being quick to anger. We’re hot-tempered. And anger in and of itself is easy to flare up like that. Very important we recognize that this is going to be something that’s going to be hard to get rid of in ourselves. And so God gives us many admonitions and exhortations and many things to help us understand this.

Now, the absence of being quick to anger is first of all necessary for the governing of one’s own self. I’ve listed there Proverbs 25:28 and 16:32. In Proverbs 25:28, we read that he that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that’s broken down and without walls. Okay? He that has no rule over spirit is like a city that’s broken down and without walls.

Now just the verse before that talks about how it’s not good to eat too much honey. Now why is that? You eat too much honey and you get sick. Honey is a good gift from God but you eat too much of it and you get sick and you lose your defenses as it were and you become sick from that honey.

Well in Proverbs 25:28 we read the same thing about a person that doesn’t rule his own spirit. We got to rule our own appetite and we’ll talk about too much honey when we talk about the sin of gluttony. But in terms of anger there is a rule over our entire spirit. That is to characterize the self-governing man. And that without that rule, you are like a city that’s walls are broken down. Okay? That’s broken down without walls.

In other words, you are open to attack. The person who is too quick to anger and does not control the spirit in that way finds himself rushing off in this direction or that direction in an angry fashion and is very easily set upon by Satan and by people that would seek to hurt him because he’s not calmly deliberated about things and thought things through. He’s rushed into a position with no control over his spirit.

Now, this is a great verse to teach our children because that’s what really—child rearing is all about. Teach them to be self-governing. And if they can’t be self-governing, they can’t rule a family or a civil government or church government either or a business. Really bringing up kids is teaching them to be self-governing under the spirit of God. And the control of one’s spirit is essential to this.

Now, really what this implies is the absence of pride. It says instead of letting our pride and our thoughts drive us here and there and our passions drive us here and there, we want God’s superintending spirit to act as a control upon ourselves. We want to be broken and submissive to that spirit. Okay?

So, we’re supposed to be self-governing in terms of controlling our own spirit. And then Proverbs 16:32 says that he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. Great reward to being slow to anger. And again, this idea that it’s even better than the one who is real strong or than he that takes the city. You see, to actively—to actively go on the offensive, as it were, for the kingdom of God requires that we be slow to anger and deliberative in what we do—to be self-governing of ourselves, and so not flare up into anger that’s going to hurt us.

I—my wife reminded me yesterday at a function we were at with another lady of an incident that happened when my first daughter Lana—the only child we had at the time—she was a little baby and we were living in some little place real little and we had a hamper, a clothes hamper we had rigged up for a changing table hamper, you know, from Jaffa or something and we had things around—bumpers around it—and she, we would change her there and my wife claims it was the only time I changed her. I don’t think that’s true. But I remember changing Lana a lot when I was younger.

But in any event, I was changing her diapers and looked away from her for a while or something and she fell between the hamper and the wall and kind of was like sliding down with these bumpers, these sheets and stuff we’d put around her down by this crack. And I got so mad that I after I picked her up, I kicked the hamper and broke it. Then I went out of the bathroom and I kicked a porta crib we had been loaned. You probably think this is our elder, right? A long time ago, but kicked this porta crib and broke it and had been loaned to us by my wife’s sister.

And what I’m talking about here is how when you do this sort of stuff, it’s damaging to yourself or to those whom you love. What I had done in my anger is I had left Lana back on that broken hamper and it was since the support was broken, was just teetering like this with little baby Lana laying on that thing, you know, and I was so angry over not being able to take care of her correctly. I left her in there by herself on this breaking hamper.

Well, that’s a picture—not a very probably there’s a lot more severe ones that me know of yourself, but with other people—but it’s a picture where you don’t govern yourself, it hurts you. You’re like a city with its walls broken down and you end up hurting those whom you love the most.

Arnot again says that when our clothes are on fire, the first thing we should do is put them out before we proceed to anything else. So when we flare into fits of anger, the first thing we should do instead of looking at what we can direct the anger to is to put that fire out right away. And that’s self-government.

Secondly, this self-government of being slow to anger results then in making oneself fit to rule. It is a qualification of the scriptures of the elders that they be slow to anger. I’ve listed two verses there. One is Titus 1:7 where we actually have the qualifications listed for bishop and he must be slow, not soon angry. Basic criteria of self-government. He can’t govern himself in terms of his anger and he shouldn’t be able to exercise government in the church either.

Now that passage from Timothy—1 Timothy 3:2—is the passage where it talks about how we’re supposed to pray in the churches holding up holy hands without anger or disputation. And there’s lots of different words in that second word. But the point is that remember when we talked about that passage I think that’s primarily directed to those who lead the church in prayer and this morning for instance when we came, this afternoon beginning of the service when we came with confession of sins, I prayed holding up my hands.

Now the reason I spread them apart—remember we talked about that—it’s a picture of the tearing of our robes. When we come to God in confession of sin we spread forth our hands and fan them because we’re acknowledging we’re ripped in terms of our own sinfulness before God’s presence and he heals us then. But in any event, the point is that those that lead in the church, elders who lead in prayer are to do so without having hands full of wrath.

That makes our prayers abomination to God to have that wrath in our hearts. So we have two different verses there supporting this idea that it is a requirement for office. Now in either of these situations, of course, uncontrolled anger can set up a whole chain reaction of events which are quite disastrous and work just against what we’re trying to accomplish. So, the absence of being quick to anger is a requirement of church office.

Now, before you think you’re off the hook, remember what we said about these requirements for church office in terms of eldership. All those qualifications are repeated in other places for all believers. And of course, that one about not being quick to anger is repeated in a number of the proverbs we listed here. So, it’s a requirement of your life as well.

It is a mark and you remember when we talked about this, the qualifications of elder are a mark of a spirit-filled man who is controlled by the spirit of God. And one of the manifestations of the spirit of God is an absence of being quick to anger. And that’s because it’s a reflection of the wisdom of God.

And that’s the third point. We’re supposed to be slow to anger—governing ourselves, making ourselves fit for rule—in wisdom. In wisdom, there’s a relationship between being slow to anger and wisdom. And I’ve listed a couple of verses there for you. Proverbs 14:29 says that he that is soon angry dealeth foolishly and a man of wicked devices is hated.

Now just before that verse by the way it says that the fool is arrogant and careless whereas the wise man is cautious. See it’s the verses just before that—verses 15 and 16 of Proverbs 14. The wise man is cautious. The fool is arrogant. And as a result of his arrogance he’s careless. Now what is the fool in the scriptures? The fool said in his heart there is no God. The fool is his own god. He is puffed up with pride. He is arrogant and that arrogance leads him into anger and in specifically into quick anger. He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly. It’s the opposite of wisdom in the scriptures. It’s foolishness to be quick to anger.

Proverbs 14:29, he that is slow to wrath is of great understanding. See, he’s wise. But he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly. So the idea of being slow to anger is a response to the wisdom that teaches us that God is in control. We’re not arrogant and puffed up. So we want to make room for understanding that God is in control of all these things and as a result be slow to wrath.

Ecclesiastes 7:9, the text we read at the beginning of the sermon. Why don’t you turn to that? Spend a couple of minutes talking about that. I know we looked at it some last week, but it’s such an important part of scripture, particularly for the days in which we live.

I mean, it says there not to do what so many people do all the time. Good people, too, I might add.

Ecclesiastes 7. Let’s see here—before I get myself lost rearranging these papers. Okay. Ecclesiastes 7. Look at—let’s pick it up in verse 7 where we started to read earlier for the sermon scripture. For oppression makes a wise man mad. There’s a lot of wise men who are mad today because there’s a lot of oppression of righteous men in our nation.

But in any event, and a bribe corrupts the heart. The end of a matter is better than its beginning. Patience of spirit is better than haughtiness of spirit. Don’t be eager in your heart to be angry for anger resides in the bosom of fools. And there you see that same thing that we read in these proverbs.

He says in verse 8, the end of a matter is better than its beginning. You don’t know what the end of a matter is going to be. And if you get soon angry at the beginning of a matter, that’s foolish because the end is different than the beginning.

I think Matthew Henry at this point in his commentary, he talks about Moses and dealing with Pharaoh and it was easy and in fact some of the children of Israel did sin in this way at the beginning of that whole affair. They got mad at Moses because things got worse for them. But things got worse because God was leading them to deliverance. And if they—the end of that matter was far better than the beginning. But see, if you get angry at the beginning, you’re not wise. You haven’t waited to see what God is doing with a particular set of events.

Wisdom is cautiousness and slowness to anger. Acknowledging that God has something in mind that you don’t know the end of it. End of a matter is better than its beginning. Patience of spirit is better than haughtiness of spirit. See the difference? Haughtiness, pride, leads into anger.

Pride says, “I know it’s going to happen from this set of events. I know that lousy Moses is down here and now we got to make bricks without straw and I’m upset and I know it’s going to get nothing but worse around here because that guy’s causing us trouble.” That’s haughtiness of spirit because you assume you know the end from the beginning and you don’t. God does.

So haughtiness of spirit, pride is what leads to impatience. Patience of spirit is better than the haughtiness of spirit. Don’t be eager in your heart to be angry for anger resides in the bosom of fools. Now, there is a righteous anger. He doesn’t say don’t ever get angry. He says don’t be quick to anger. Anger resides, comes to rest, stays too long, and flares up too fast. Where? In the bosom of the fool.

The fool who doesn’t acknowledge God in all his ways. And if we’re acknowledging God, that is a wisdom that says, “Cautious, slow down, think this through. Don’t respond in anger.” Then verse 10—this one, you know, I know people memorize this. It’s a good verse to memorize. Don’t say, “Why is it the former days are better than these?” You know, you hear that a lot, don’t you? Boy, things sure used to be good in this country. Why is it things were a lot better then? And now we have these lousy times today. That’s really lousy. And they start complaining about it.

And, what’s the answer here? Great big long dissertation of why these things have happened. No, the answer is you’ve not asked this from wisdom. Okay? Don’t ask such a stupid question. Don’t reveal your ignorance and your brutishness here by saying—by complaining about the way things are.

There is a God who rules in the affairs of man. And wisdom says that many times—and we’re in that situation. We’re in a situation as I prayed earlier of no peace in this country. Why is that? Because God is in control. He’s not going to let the worst of all worlds would be to have a society in America where people turn their backs on God and then we have peace and contentment in the land. Wouldn’t that be terrible? Because God would leave us out there. He doesn’t do that. He brings problems into the lives of people to bring them back to himself. He brings corrective judgments.

And so if times are bad today, it’s because God is correcting us to bring us into a position of further blessing. And secondly, when we say that things are good, and we mentioned this last week from Hengenberg’s commentary on this verse, he talks about the other verses where the people of Israel would say, you know, it’s better not even to believe God. Those atheists are a lot more wealthy and a lot happier than we are. And that is spoken from foolishness. The scriptures are clear that the wealth of the wicked is saved up for the righteous. Their judgment will come. It will happen. And to deny God’s judgment is to deny God in effect and to move into foolishness and into being soon angry.

Very important beautiful verses here. Wisdom long as an inheritance is good and an advantage to those who see the sun. This is important one for some of us to think through. For wisdom is protection just as money is protection. But the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the lives of its possessors. See, if you cannot and you’ve tried hard and you’ve been diligent, you can’t see an inheritance for your kids. He’s saying here there’s a better inheritance than money to leave your children. The inheritance of wisdom and that inheritance will save their lives when money can’t save their lives.

Understanding the times, understanding when to be cautious and slow and not rushing into foolish positions.

Verse 13, a statement of God’s sovereignty. Consider the work of God. Who is able to straighten what he has bent? You know, I mean, if God is bending our culture today, who can straighten it? Not us. It’s in his providence that all this stuff is coming to pass. And we’ve got to learn to submit to that and not be fools, but to be wise people understanding God and fearing his judgments in the land. And that’s the beginning of wisdom. And wisdom is the basis for being slow to anger. That is the absolute bedrock here is an acknowledgement of God.

Pythagoras said that anger begins in folly and it ends in repentance. At least it should for those people who are called of Jesus Christ. It ends in repentance, not in telling all the reasons why it’s okay to be angry. Plato said he best keeps himself from anger who remembers that God is always looking at him. See, that’s wisdom. I mean, there’s a God in the heavens who watches what’s going on, isn’t he in control of it all.

Now, wisdom then—I’ve put a couple of things here—is essentially acknowledging God’s goodness. First of all, wisdom says that no matter what situation has occurred, it’s been in the providence of God. And I may not want to rejoice in it, but I certainly want to acknowledge God’s hand in it and thank God for it. Thank God in everything the scriptures tell us to do. Because God’s purpose for us in Jesus Christ is good.

God isn’t some Greek God of fate who is kind of having fun with us and whimping us around to make us feel bad. God’s purpose is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. He is taking us from coal and making us into diamonds, as it were. All things work together for our good because we’re called for the purpose of serving him.

And so, we acknowledge God’s goodness when we don’t flare up at the inconveniences that we face in life on a daily basis in anger. To do that is to flare up at God. A particular form of what—powder cake anger—this quick anger, is frustration anger. And frustration is a reaction to conditions we can’t control. Car breaks, something doesn’t happen right, your child doesn’t act the right way and you end up frustrated, you get angry, you get upset.

So, a failure to acknowledge God’s goodness is really moving from wisdom to folly and also moving away from being slow to anger and moving into being quick to anger.

And then secondly, a failure to acknowledge God’s justice. If we’re going to be wise, it acknowledges God’s justice in our own lives and corrective judgments in the lives of the world around us. It doesn’t say God’s justice never works out. It says indeed that God’s justice will work out.

Now, we’re going to talk about that a little bit more in a couple of minutes in the next point of the outline. This three kind of slides into point two or point four because point four talks about the relationship of being too quick angry, and vengeance and the reality of God’s judgment. But in any event, for now, recognize that if we’re going to be slow to wrath, then and self-governing, it comes from result of wisdom, acknowledging God’s goodness in the individual things that make us frustrated, and acknowledging God’s justice in the land, even when we can’t see the end of the story from the beginning.

Even when we’re in the middle of a situation that we may not be aware of, be recognizing, as we’re told to in Ecclesiastes, that the end is different than the beginning, and it’s better than it. God’s history is moving toward his conclusions, and God’s justice is being worked out in the society around us.

Now, each of these sections—these next three sections—I’ve got a picture that I want us to remember this particular reality by. And this particular thing about being slow to anger and particularly in terms of remembering God’s goodness in the midst of circumstances, the picture I’ve chosen is Numbers 22 and Balaam’s donkey.

I want you to turn there. Numbers 22. We’ll spend a little time here. And this may be as far as we get today. That’s okay, isn’t it? We’re all going to be real patient about that today.

Numbers 22, Balaam’s donkey. Wonderful story—really happened. You know, you read these Bible stories and you read them to your children. You know, we may well see Balaam. I don’t know for sure where he’s going to end up at, but the point is these are real people with real situations and they’re very instructive to us from the word of God.

And of course, you probably know this story somewhat at least. Balaam is being hired by Balak to go out and curse Israel and Balaam doesn’t want to do it at first and says he doesn’t want to go out and whatnot. And finally, Balaam ends up going anyway. And he’s riding his donkey along in verses 22. Verse 22 says, and I’m not going to deal with why God was angry, but we’re just going to pick it up at verse 22.

God was angry because Balaam was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as an adversary against him. Now, he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand. The donkey turned off from the way and went into the field. Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back into the way. He didn’t see the angel of the Lord.

So he got this donkey said, “Oh no, I’ll save my owner. I’ll go off to the field.” And Balaam hits him. Then the angel of the Lord stood on a narrow path of the vineyards with a wall on this side and a wall on that side. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she pressed herself to the wall and pressed Balaam’s foot against the wall. He struck her again.

The angel of the Lord went further and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn to the right hand or to the left. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she laid down upon Balaam. So Balaam was angry. Boy was he mad. And he strikes the donkey with his stick. And the Lord then opens the mouth of the donkey. And the donkey says to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you’ve struck me these three times?”

Balaam enters into a conversation with the donkey here. This is real interesting. Balaam says to the donkey, “Because you have made a mockery of me, If there had been a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now. See, he was really—powder cake anger was a reality in this man’s life. And he flared up against this donkey.

The donkey says to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I—have I ever been accustomed to do so to you?” He said, “No.” See, the donkey is saying—this is what Balaam should have done really at first. He should have said, “Now, why is this donkey turning out of the road here?”

Now, Balaam knows that there’s a lot of contention going out between him and God here in terms of his going to strike or curse the people of Israel. So Balaam should have realized there might be a good reason why this donkey is not cooperating when he’s cooperated all along. Apparently Balaam is now doing what he should have done before which is to stop and contemplate what’s going on in terms of the situation to acknowledge God’s providence in it. But he didn’t do that.

Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand. And he bowed all the way to the ground. The angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I’ve come out as an adversary because your way was contrary to me. But the donkey saw me, and he turned aside from me these three times. If the donkey had not turned aside from me, I would surely have killed you just now and let the donkey live.”

Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, “I have sinned, for I didn’t know that you were standing in the way against me now. Now then, if it’s displeasing to you, I will turn back.” And the angel says, “No, go with the men, but speak only the words which I shall tell you.”

See, Balaam got to the place of repentance when the angel of the Lord made it clear to him that the circumstances that God had brought into his life—his miserable donkey who wanders off to the field, who presses his foot against the rock on this side and then actually sits down on Balaam—all that was God’s providence protecting Balaam from the angel of the Lord who was going to kill him. And Balaam finally slows down enough to think it through. And God then shows him what happened. And Balaam repents then.

What’s he repenting for? Well, he’s repenting for striking the donkey, for being angry at the donkey. What I’m suggesting to you is that when we get angry at donkeys in our lives—and cars that won’t work and kids that won’t do what we tell them to do, and dinners that don’t turn out correctly and customers that have a problem and this, that, and the other thing, and bumping our toe in the middle of the night on the dresser drawer, whatever—we’re being like Balaam when we get quick to anger in those situations.

We’re being foolish. We’re not recognizing that God is in back of all these things superintending all that occurs and his providence working out his decree and trying to think things through calmly and rationally and saying, “Why is this coming to pass? Maybe we can understand it. Maybe we won’t be able to understand it.” Either way, God says the end of the matter is better than the beginning. Have patience. Don’t flare up. Settle down. Sit down. Think things through. If your clothes are on fire with your anger, put them out. Think about it a little bit.

Because when we flare up, we are in essence denying God’s goodness. And we have moved from being those wise people who acknowledge the sovereignty of God in all things to the foolish man who doesn’t consider God in all his ways. That’s what being quick angry is all about. And that’s what we’ve got to drive out of our lives.

Now, the reality of the situation is that we all are Balaams. In essence, we are fools before God. But God has brought us to repentance in Jesus Christ. And instead of pouring out his wrath against us, instead of killing us like the angel of the Lord was going to do to Balaam, he has brought us to conversion. He’s brought us to repentance. And he’s brought us to salvation in Jesus Christ.

And he’s given us his Holy Spirit, the spirit of wisdom and truth and understanding and knowledge. And that spirit will lead us into all truth and into patience if we listen, if we attend to the word of God and if we, like Balaam finally did, confess our sin.

Anger isn’t overcome by learning a lot of techniques. Anger is overcome by understanding that there is a God who is in the heaven who rules. And anger comes as a result of us submitting to that and taking time to think it through. And it comes through a long slow process step by step of correcting ourselves when we go over the line in sin and repenting.

You know there’s a phrase in the proverbs and the Psalms about the paths of righteousness. The word path there in the Hebrew really speaks more of a rut. Righteousness is a rut you get into. And you don’t get there, you don’t make a rut on a path overnight. You do it through a long, slow process of obedience. The same way we make bad habits and ruts of sin—little decisions every day that aren’t dealt with correctly.

Now, this next week, you’re going to have lots of opportunity to get soon angry. I know it. I know it. I know I do. I know you probably will, too. And you have an opportunity then to move into the path of righteousness, the rut of righteousness by if you sin, repenting of that sin immediately, telling God that you’re sorry for it, and acknowledging that you want to move into the peace and quiet of understanding that his providence rules in the affairs of men.

And he’s made that possible through the shed blood of our savior and his resurrection, which resurrection we celebrate this day. Let’s thank him for that.

Almighty God, we love you and we thank you, Father, for causing us to have hearts that spring into love through your scriptures. Father, we thank you that you’ve answered our prayers to reveal something of yourself. We know, Lord God, that you’ve told us over and over again in the scriptures that you’re a God who is slow to anger. And we thank you, Father, that you don’t strike us dead when we sin. That you didn’t strike Balaam dead, but corrected him.

Father, we pray that we would be aware of that this week. Help us to listen to the corrections that you bring into our lives through our spouses, through our children, through your word ministering to us, through friends, and help us, Father, to be quick not to make excuses for our anger, but to confess it and to move on into righteousness and peace, recognizing your providence in all things.

We ask it in the name of our blessed savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.