Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 24, 2022 | More than a Feeling - Anger

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April 24, 2022 | More than a Feeling - Anger · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  unknown: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that bumper video signals that we are beginning a new series.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's about as far distant from Leviticus, I suppose, as you could get.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This series is entitled More Than a Feeling.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you as old as I am, you recognize that as the title of a Boston song.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But not here.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the first emotion that we're going to look at today is it's a five, gonna be a five-week series that Connor and I are gonna do uh back and forth.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um so I've picked as the first emotion, anger.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: When I recall, don't laugh at me, Hank.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hank knows me too well.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: He will agree with what I'm about to say.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I recall the most stupid and harmful things, hurtful things that I've done and said in life, most of them have been done under the influence of anger.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I came face to face with the philosophy, with my philosophy of life on the back window of a pickup truck this week.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The truck was stopped at the light at 21st and Fairlawn, and I pulled up behind it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't one of those pickup trucks that's plastered with dozens of stickers.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: It just had one sticker on the back window.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: One message that captured both sides of my personality and maybe yours as well.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: The sticker read in capital letters, live, laugh, love.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then in smaller letters underneath it, if that doesn't work, load, aim, fire.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You walk out your door this morning or any morning, fully intending to live, laugh, and love your way through that day.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then someone tramples all over your living, laughing and loving.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: The blood rushes into your head, and almost before you know it, you've loaded, you've aimed, and you've fired.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I've chosen anger as the first feeling, and it is, of course, much more than a feeling, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It affects a lot of what we do.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: It causes us to think crazy thoughts.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a story about a Chinese man and a Jewish man that had just met and decided to eat dinner together, and as they were eating dinner, uh the um the Jewish man uh started to get redder and redder and redder, and suddenly leaned across the table and just slugged the Chinese fellow right in the side of the head.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Chinese guy sprawls on the floor, looks up, and says, What did you do that for?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the Jewish man said, Well, that's for Pearl Harbor.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Chinese man said, That wasn't China.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't us, that was the Japanese.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, I'm sorry.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Got up and they continued their dinner, but after a while, the Jewish man uh face got redder and redder and redder, and suddenly he leaned over and he slugged, slugged the uh the the um no, no, the Chinese guy got redder and redder, and he slugged the Jewish man on the side of the head, and the Jewish man falls on the floor.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, What on earth did you do that for?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the Chinese man says, that's for the Titanic.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Jewish guy says, Titanic?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Jews had nothing to do with the Titanic, that was an iceberg.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Chinese guy said, iceberg, Goldberg, Steinberg, it's all the same.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that really happened.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But anger makes us uh do and say crazy things, and it's it's really no joke, is it?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anger ruins, has ruined some of our closest relationships.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's turned friends into enemies, it's turned some of our family members into strangers that we stay away from at holidays.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Anger gives Satan an invitation to work in our lives.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Anger is the reason why people, some people you know, don't go to church anymore.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, don't even try to live a Christian life.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: When I came to this church, there was a leading elder who was a leading elder at this church for 25 years or so, named Vert Holstein, head of the social work at the VA Hospital, he was a counselor, psychologist, and so forth.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he used to say that anger was the number one reason that people came to him for therapy, and that in his experience a root of bitterness was the number one cause that so many Christians are no longer disciples of Jesus Christ.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we all know that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We know the danger of anger, but we can't live in this crazy world for even 24 hours without being tempted to flare up and do something about it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Children get angry, it starts young.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Boys and girls, sisters and brothers angry at each other for taking something from their rooms.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Teenagers, a sister gets mad at her sister for borrowing a dress.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: In college, we get angry at our roommate for being so messy.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, as adults, we get angry, the boss has disrespected you, or a friend has thrown you under the bus, or even even a mother who loves an infant can get so crazy in the middle of the night when that infant is screaming that she's tempted to shake that helpless infant to get it to be quiet.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And a nurse who's regularly demeaned by an arrogant, overbearing doctor begins to start a whispering campaign against them.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Friend, if you haven't been on social media lately or even watched a talk show, rage is in today.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And not just on social media, on airplanes.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember a day when you could smoke, when people could smoke on an airplane.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even though we didn't like the smell of the smoke, we were, we honored the idea of individual freedom.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the last time I was on a plane, I left my mask down too long in between sips of my Coke Zero.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And a woman too far away for it to matter glared at me and let me know in no uncertain terms that she was upset.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: The hostility of today has provoked the male clinic to put out in a newsletter a hostility test to saying that if you answer yes to half of these ten questions, you've got a problem with anger and hostility.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first six questions.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like screaming at or punching someone at least once a week?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Second, do you get annoyed with others when you have to wait in line?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Third, when someone cuts you off in traffic, do you honk or yell or make a gesture?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, do you like to let people know when you're annoyed at them?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, when someone does you wrong, do you think of ways to get even?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Six, do you relive slights over and over?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I say, this is this morning I want to share with you the single passage of Scripture in which God brings together individual verses and ideas from the rest of the Bible to talk to us about how we should and should not react when we get angry.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that text, if you have a Bible, is in Romans chapter 12.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible if you want.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll read to you these five verses.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 12, verses 17 through 21.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 12, 17.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone's eyes.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, do not avenge yourselves.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, leave room for God's wrath, because it is written, Vengeance belongs to me, I will repay, says the Lord.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: But, quoting now from Proverbs 25, if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for in so doing you'll be heaping fiery coals on his head.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two hundred years ago, as America was gaining its independence, a man named Thomas Paine heard these words and reacted violently against them.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas Paine was a political activist and he was a leading agnostic and secular philosopher.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: He liked being controversial.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: He criticized George Washington without ceasing, and he criticized the Bible without ceasing, the most popular beloved person and the most beloved book in early America.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But when Thomas Paine heard these words in this passage of scripture that I just read to you, he sneered that Christianity taught its people to have, and I quote, the spirit of a spaniel.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever owned a spaniel?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was raised by three of them, not at the same time, but consecutively.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: For the cocker spaniel was the my dad's the dog of my dad's choice on our little farm in Oregon.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Thomas Paine was exactly right.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Spaniels are very gentle creatures.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're kind, and if you kick them, they don't snap back at you.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: They look up at you and say, I'm sorry, is there anything more I can do for you?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, perhaps as a revolutionary who was resisting British tyranny, Thomas Paine misunderstood the passage.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps he was worried that Christians wouldn't resist British tyranny, and he mistook this passage as a word for governments, a word for how to run a country.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, he missed the point because this passage has nothing to do with governments or war or capital punishment.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: After all, in the very next paragraph, the Bible tells governments to wield their God-given sword of wrath.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, our passage is about you and me and personal retaliation and private vengeance.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to your personal relationships, this passage does recommend the spirit of a Spaniel.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the passage begins with its theme statement: do not repay anyone evil for evil.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, don't retaliate, don't get revenge, don't obsess about payback.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what that's like.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes someone slights you or someone uh humiliates you or bullies you, and you can't let go of it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You obsess about it under the idea that justice must be done, and something in you cries out to even things up for righting that wrong, and you you adopt the theme of the motto of the country of Scotland: no one treads on me unpunished.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the interesting thing is that revenge is something we're greatly attracted to.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It ranks right up there with love as the single most common and enjoyed theme of movies and books down through the centuries.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Last of the Mohicans, even The Princess Bride, my favorite, The Count of Monte Cristo, uh Unforgiven, or The Outlaw of Josie Wales, Payback, The Revenant, Gladiator, on and on.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: True Grit.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a lot of movies, in order to attract people to the theater, include the word revenge in the title, Jaws, the Revenge, The Revenge of the Nerds, The Revenge of the Sith, and so forth.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a really, really common and popular theme, right?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: In books and in movies.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some people have said that Shakespeare would have no plays, certainly not Hamlet, without the idea of revenge, and that most of our TV series and movies, uh, and and and it's isn't this an amazingly common theme in sports?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where constantly you hear people say, well, you know, they put a they put something up on the bulletin board, somebody dissed me, I'm going to get back at them.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Athletes are motivated, right, by haters.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in music, if you've if you've paid any attention, Taylor Swift for the last 10 or 15 years can't accept a reward or an award of some kind without mentioning that she's motivated by all of the people who's who's put her down.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: In a funny way.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Abe Lemons, some years back, was fired as the basketball coach of the Longhorn, Texas Longhorn basketball team.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he was asked, are you bitter at DeLos Dodds, the athletic director, for firing you?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Abe said, not at all, but I do plan to buy a glass-bottomed car so I can watch the look on his face when I run over him.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, uh while revenge attracts us, it at times is not attractive and turns ugly.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a man in Philadelphia in a well-known story who was caught in traffic on an expressway because uh the four lanes were moving down to one, and he waited more than 15 minutes, and finally it was his turn.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, a car zooms by on the edge of the road and cuts in front of him, and he's got a jam on his brakes, and he's he's sweating and so forth.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: He almost got into an accident.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what makes it worse is the driver turns around and laughs and shoots him an obscene gesture.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: He gets in line behind that car and they keep crawling, and then the traffic stopped again, at which point, at which point the angry driver opened the glove compartment, pulled out a gun, walked up, and shot the man dead through the window, and said to the police later, he said, the injustice of it bugged me, yes, but it was the taunting afterwards that I couldn't forgive.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not funny.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so God in Romans uh 12 says, there are three reasons I want to give you why I'm telling you not to try to get even.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the first reason God gives them verses 17 and 18 is because people are watching you.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's a watching world, and you have a reputation to lose.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Give careful thought, he says, to do what is honorable in everyone's eyes.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons that this topic is so relevant right now is something that happened just a few weeks ago.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: The slap heard round the world.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it was.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Oscars, uh, very few people can tell you who won best picture at the Oscars a few weeks ago, but everyone can tell you what this Oscars will forever be known for, and that is that Chris Rock, the comedian, made a joke about Will Smith's wife.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Miller Will Smith may have appeared to laugh when the joke was made, maybe then looked at his wife, but then walked up on stage.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Will Smith's a large man, Chris Rock is a small man, and he whacked him across the face.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um Des.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's his name?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Denzel.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Denzel.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Des.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just Desmond.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking of you, Desmond.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so Den so Denzel comes up to him.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Really interesting.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And famously that night said, at your highest moment, he said to Will, that's when the devil comes for you.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly right, isn't it?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, many of us, many of you may have a lot of sympathy for Will Smith, maybe for defending the honor of his wife or whatever, but today he's no longer a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he's ashamed.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a man who probably was as respected as any individual in the entire world, while he may have done something that some of you admire, no longer has the honor and respect of people around the world.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the point of those verses.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if I can go back to those for just a second.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because people are watching you.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, T C talks about everyone, he's talking about the whole world, which exactly is exactly what happened during the Oscars.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's watching.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and the question is, will people look at you as honorable or not honorable?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: You have a chance to lose that or keep it.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Will they look at you as a person who is peaceable or not peaceable?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: It all depends on your reaction.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Almost two months ago, about six weeks ago, it was the final home game of the Duke Blue Devils, and they were playing their arch rival in North Carolina.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And afterwards, there was going to be this huge celebration for Duke's famous coach and successful coach, Coach Kay, admired across America, except in Topeka Kangas, I suppose.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as a great coach, and the seats ran for$1,000 a person, and uh there were a thousand celebrities there, including uh graduates uh of their program and so forth.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And shockingly, the favorite, Duke Blue Devils, lost to North Carolina, their arch rival.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: But then the celebration started, and it was all happiness and light, and it was time for Duke's coach to go out and say something.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: But when he got out to the mic, it was clear he was still struggling, he was still upset by the fact that his team lost.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so the very first words out of his mouth, which I'm sure he now regrets, were I'm sorry that loss was unacceptable.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And his players on the sidelines all bowed their heads in shame.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible, of course, that that he was trying to apologize to the people for wasting their money to come to a losing game.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: But but you can imagine why so many celebrities in the media criticized him heavily because they caught in those words the whiff of retaliation, the whiff of anger at his players and perhaps at North Carolina for losing.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly, uh, something that should have been honorable and peaceable, suddenly that reflected on Coach Kay as maybe a little bit of a jerk that night, a little bit of someone who couldn't be crossed.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Back when Nikita Khrushchev was the premier of uh of Russia, he he said something very interesting about Jesus in the Bible.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We Christians, we we communists have many things in common with Jesus Christ, but my big difference with Christ is that when someone hits me on the right cheek, I hit him on the left so hard that his head falls off.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Russia's known for.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's your motto, people will fear you, but they will never call you honorable or peaceable.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: First reason God says that you should forswear retaliation is because people are watching you.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason that he gives is that you shouldn't try to get even is because God's got this.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: We read, friends, don't avenge yourselves, instead, leave room for God's wrath, because it is written, vengeance belongs to me, I will repay, says the Lord.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this, God says.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the moment we read God's wrath, we should expand our vision and remember that this is a much bigger subject, isn't it, than just you and me and the people who throw us under the bus.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: That God is a wrathful God, and the reason God's a wrathful God is that there is an invisible and parallel world to ours, even here.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the auditorium or at home where you're sitting watching this.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in that parallel invisible world, there's evil and there's good.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are demons and there are angels, and there is this invisible war that's always been going on.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And God is wrathful and very angry at evil and at sin and at death.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he loves his people.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a battle going on even right now in this auditorium for you.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Angels on one side, demons on the other, whispering thoughts, whispering words, perhaps into your ears.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And God hates sin and he hates evil and he's going to do something about it one day.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all in this little picture of God's wrath.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is not as though he's a mean, low-spirited God.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is that he cares so deeply about us that he hates the things that send us to evil and to hell.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so we read, God's going to handle this.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: God's got this.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Vengeance belongs to me.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that an interesting phrase?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Vengeance, quoting the Old Testament, the Torah.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Vengeance belongs to me.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: God says this is my prerogative, not yours.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to handle the vengeance thing.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I will repay, says the Lord.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: A promise.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'll make things even.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: We read this in Nahum 1-2.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: A jealous and avenging God is the Lord.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is avenging and wrathful.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and reserves wrath for his enemies.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a tame lion, is he?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing he says here, God's got this, is let God do your avenging.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Leave your avenging in the hands of God.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: After all, Jesus did.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: He left his case in the hands of God who judges justly.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 2 23.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let God handle your avenging.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then the second reason I'm in the second part of the second reason, God's got your back.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says, but if your enemy is hungry, feed him.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: If he's thirsty, give him something to drink, for so doing you'll be keeping fiery coals on his head.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: He says, because God's got your avenging, you do the unexpected.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: You do the unexpected.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: You do something that might cause your enemy to want to reconcile with you, that might cause him pain and remorse as he realizes your character is not the.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: He stealed himself for your reply.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: The bully is ready for you to come at him or to threaten him.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, what you do is the opposite of what he expects.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: This story comes almost directly out of Egyptian literature where you have stories of thieves who had remorse for having stolen something, and as they brought back the item they had stolen, they had a pan filled with hot coals on their head, showing that they felt mental remorse and pain for what they had done.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this seems to be when it's used in the book of Proverbs, chapter 25, the Lord says, if you do this, not only will you have a chance of reconciliation, of turning that enemy into a friend, but he says in Proverbs 25, but I will reward you for this.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So let God do your avenging and you do the unexpected.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then he comes in the last verse to reason number three.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because he says, you know what the third reason is that you shouldn't try to get payback, it's because you lose when anger wins.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you win when you reconcile.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be conquered by evil, and that's the point here.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: You lose when anger wins.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get ahead while you're getting even.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be a good person, you want to be a better Christian, you're trying to grow in the Lord.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you stop for a year, two years, or in some cases, five years, or that paraplegic who finally, after 13 years, shot and killed the man who had made him a paraplegic.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you put your whole life on hold until you get payback, then what's happening is you're allowing yourself to be conquered by evil, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't ever get ahead.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can't become the person that's honorable and peaceable that your children and grandchildren will admire.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Revenge.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: When you're plotting your revenge, dig two graves, one for your enemy and one for yourself.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the second point he's making in the last verse 21 here is don't be conquered by conquer evil with good.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you conquer evil with good?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the best way to conquer your enemy is to turn him into a friend.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Blow his mind.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Blow her mind by your response.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's just simply citing Jesus, isn't he?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who said, love your enemies.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if he steals one cloak, you know, give your shirt, give him your cloak as well.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the lesson from the last verse here.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first reason.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: The first reason is there's a watching world.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: You have a reputation that you need to consider.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason not to go for getting even or payback is it has to do with God.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: God's got this.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: That leaves you free to do something completely unexpected.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: But thirdly, because you lose when anger wins, but you win when you reconcile.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's stories in the Bible, right, about this.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when Moses and as they were in the wilderness, remember when his sister and his brother started making catty comments about him?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is he the leader?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's kind of a jerk.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we should be the leaders.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And isn't it interesting that Moses, it says, refused to reply or defend himself.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And because he refused to reply and defend himself, that left all that retaliation out there for whom?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: For God.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's not going to retaliate if you do, but that left it for God, and it said, God's wrath burned against Miriam and Aaron.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, since Miriam was the leader of that rebellion, he turned, he gave her leprosy.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then Moses stepped forward and said, Lord, please, please, get rid of her leprosy.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Take it away, heal her.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And God heard him.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, a type of Christ, right there.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or think of Joseph.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know the worst slights we have are like Moses when they come from our own family.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here is a boy who lost his childhood because his older siblings threw him into a pit and then sold him to Midianite traitors who took him to Egypt.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: He would never see his mother again.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: For 20 years he's down there suffering this and he's suffering that.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's he rises to fame, and then his brothers come down and he recognizes them.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, he says, you know what, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the principle that's captured here.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way to conquer your enemy is to turn him into a friend.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what happened.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let me uh tell you a couple stories and then close here.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: My mother told us a story, and she lived it out herself, of living of a Christian woman who lived in a neighborhood with a hostile neighbor who did not honor Jesus Christ.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my mother was an evangelist, and so initially she would walk up and she walked to the neighbors and so forth, and would sit down to drink tea or whatever with with the women and she would witness to them.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in at least one case, the response was very negative.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: But then I remember seeing my mother walk out of the house with a pie in her hand one day, and because I love pies and we didn't get them very often, I said, Where are you taking that?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she told me that she was taking it down to, and she named the neighbor.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Why?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because she and her husband, I hear, are really having trouble, and I just want to encourage her.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: In your neighborhood, you can surprise people rather than taking revenge by baking them a cake when there's a tragedy in their life and just walking it over and saying a few kind words, and you can turn an enemy into a friend.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a famous story of a Christian young man in the army in years past who liked to kneel by his cot at night and say a brief prayer.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was ridiculed for that.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one night after um after a long, weary hike in the wet mud, as he prayed there, his chief tormentor threw one muddy boot at him, hitting him in the head, and then another hitting him in the back.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Those boots fell, stayed there, he finished his prayer, and the lights were out, he went to bed.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: But in the morning, those two boots, cleaned and spitshine, sat before the tormentor's bunk.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was a change of life for that tormentor in his willingness to accept the gospel.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when you do the unexpected, when you surprise people.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: An illustration that means a lot to me comes out of a story of two preachers in London at the end of the 19th century.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: The two most famous preachers in that town at that time were Charles Spurgeon, a church of 20,000 at Metropolitan Tabernacle.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph Parker was the other famous pastor.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon had a flash, uh flashy temper.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And one day he heard that Joseph Parker had Spurgeon had this orphanage where he where he where he fed children and so forth.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Parker had made a comment to someone that that um that a number of those children when they came into the orphanage were very poor.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, as that got passed on from mouth to mouth, the way Spurgeon heard it was that Joseph Parker had criticized the way he was feeding the children in the orphanage.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And because he had such a hot temper Spurgeon, all of whose sermons were carried word for word in the London Times, took off, just blasted Joseph Parker in his sermon that next Sunday.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: The next Sunday, the Times and all the reporters went to Joseph Parker's church to see how he would react, how he would respond, how he would get even with Charles Spurgeon.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Dr.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Parker got up and he said, uh, I'm told that Charles Spurgeon is not at his pulpit this morning, and yet this is the Sunday each month that he collects for the children in the orphanage.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would propose that we should pass the plate and collect for the children in the orphanage.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the surprise was so strong that they had to pass the plates three times because of all they collected.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that week there was a knock on Joseph Parker's study door.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: He opened it and in chat stepped Charles Spurgeon.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: He put out his hand and he apologized and he said, uh, you didn't give me what I deserved.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: You gave me what I needed.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a chance for Parker to lose his honor and to lose his reputation, but instead he did the unexpected, and he turned an enemy into a friend.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: One more story, a famous one about an Armenian nurse whose brother was a soldier, and they were captured by the Turks at the turn of the last century.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: They were held captive.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one day to her horror, she had to watch as the Turkish as a as a Turkish soldier shot her brother in the face and killed him.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow she was able to escape and she went back, and she was working in a military hospital close to the end of the war when the very man who had shot her brother came into the hospital close to death.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And she said that in her mind, the word vengeance, just this was there in capital letters, but then instead she nursed that soldier back to health.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when his eyes came open for the first time, and when he saw who it was who was his nurse, she said, Why didn't you just let me die?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Because the Savior whom I love, Jesus, said that we should love our enemies and do good to those who hate you.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Tell me more about this, Jesus.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: We struggle because we go out into life wanting to live and laugh and love, and then something happens, and all of a sudden the rage rises within us, and we're tempted to load, aim, and fire.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Don't do that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me do your avenging, you do the unexpected.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Destroy your enemy by turning him into a friend.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we're normal people, so we get angry and the rage rises within us, and then we say and do things that we regret.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: When that happens this week, would you please, through your Holy Spirit, to flood us with the spirit of a Spaniel.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: For our own sake, the sake of our own reputation, for the sake of a watching world, we pray.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Especially for the sake of your son Jesus, in whose name we pray.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.