If you’re a first time guest here at Hope, I’d like to give you a special welcome, and I want to let you know that you came on a great Sunday, because we’re starting a brand new worship series. Something we try to do here at Hope is we try to expose you to all kinds of different parts of scripture- sometimes the OT, sometimes the Gospels, sometimes the New Testament. Today we are starting a brand-new series in a brand new genre that we’re never really done before here at Hope. It’s a unique NT letter. A lot of people think- myself included- that it’s a NT version of Proverbs. It’s wisdom on how best you can live your life as a Christian. This makes James’ teaching very practical and concrete in your life. So we’re taking James under the theme “Religion that Works.” What does it look like when you push the gospel of Jesus into every aspect of your soul? This is the question we’re asking. We’re going to ask the question using the words of James 1. 

19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Are you an angry person? That’s what I asked myself. I asked myself that question for the past week or so. In every situation and with every person. Am I an angry person? I figured I should do that- carry around the heavy weight of this scripture before I try to give it to you. So I did that. I asked myself that question everywhere. Am I an angry person? I even did this- I took note- like James said- I took note of what it was like to talk to people for a week. Am I an angry person? I figured I should try and see how I’m doing with what James says here. James is practical and concrete like that, he wants to help us take our Christian faith and our salvation and make it real in our lives right here and right now. He’s so good like that. Notice this about what he does: he doesn’t give you a command here like the ten commandments, rather he gives you a clear and succinct vision of the Christian life. He doesn’t say: thou shalt not be quick to anger, he says Christians who live for Christ- this is how they are- they are slow to anger. 

Why shouldn’t we be angry? You might remember a few weeks ago I talked in a sermon about how anger is not sinful in and of itself. It’s not sinful. Jesus got angry with people. So why does James call us away from anger? Remember this is a book that gives us wisdom. He says here’s what’s true about humans- human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Anger causes us to do things that we regret, it causes us to say things that we wish we could take back; in short, anger almost never causes us to do something that serves someone else. It almost always causes us to serve only ourselves. This is what James teaches us. So I asked myself- in every situation and every person I was with for a week. Am I an angry person? Does anger color my words? Does it color my decisions, my tone of voice, my body language. To what extent does anger play a role in my life?

I gotta tell you, this emotional awareness was so much more valuable than I thought it was going to be. Because with every interaction, I was doing my best to have it on my mind- what emotions are driving my words and actions? Is there anger there? What I found was massive. Just to give you one pithy example- I found out about the underlying annoyance I often experience about picking up the same children’s shoes for the 27th time in the day that snowballs into annoyance that no one else is bothering to help me that snowballs into annoyance and anger about this, that, and the other thing. My whole life to this point I had never done that. I had never bothered to study that in myself. Let alone keep James’ encouragement to be slow to anger. Moreover, as I carried out this emotional audit, I realized that I had misunderstood this scripture. I have always misread this scripture and understood it to mean that everyone should be slow to display anger. I read the words correctly, but I was thinking in my head- here’s what anger is- anger is yelling and fuming and rolling your eyes and storming off. And that is anger, but it’s only 10% of anger. 90% of anger is the kind that’s burning low in your heart that nobody else knows about, and maybe even you don’t know about. And James says that we are to be slow to let anger burn at all. 

Again we return to this point. James says that there is a logical connection between the anger in your heart and the kind of life it’s going to produce for you. He’s adamant about this. And so he writes: “Therefore, everyone get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent.” See James is saying that there is a connection between the irritation in your heart and the kind of life that it’s most likely to produce. I wanna tell you something that I wonder about. Lust aside, I wonder how many infidelities come because of anger. She’s angry because he doesn’t notice her. He’s angry because she doesn’t care about him. I wonder. I wonder how many people split themselves away from their lives because they’re angry about how it has played out. I wonder how many people allow anger over something in their past to color the way they see everything in their present so that there is nothing good for them, it’s all anger. I wonder how many people are physically affected by the anger that’s always simmering. I wonder how many people are hurting because they’ve never dealt with their anger, and they don’t even know anger is the root problem. I wonder. 

But the truth is I don’t wonder at all. When someone is acting out, or acting dirty, or has checked out of their own lives, there’s anger there. It might not be the only thing there, but it’s there. You wanna know how true it is for you? Do what I did. Go and perform an emotional audit on your life- and find out whether anger is a part of who you are and what you do. Ask yourself: am I an angry person? Does anger color my words? Does it color my decisions, my tone of voice, my body language. To what extent does anger play a role in my life? Am I angry at the person I’m talking to- am I angry at myself, am I angry at someone else? You might be surprised how much irritation you feel when you’re trying to take a left across 99w on the way into church especially when there’s a street fair on main street. You might be surprised how much anger sneaks in when you’re hangry, when your alarm clock goes off, when your phone dings, when your spouse doesn’t read your mind, when time lags, when time flies, when you tell somebody blows you off, when your life isn’t what you thought it should be. That was me. You know what the problem is? You know where anger really comes from? James tells us. It comes from pride. That’s where it comes from. It comes from not being humble. That’s what he says listen to him: “Humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you.” There’s a reason you are more prone to talk than to listen. There’s a reason why your emotional default setting might be irritation. You’re proud. You’re not humble. Think about it. Why are you mad when things don’t go your way? You think you deserve better. Why do you explode on your spouse? Because you think they’re supposed to do it all for you. Why do you get so brooding when people don’t fawn all over you? You think people should look. 

Why does anger affect everything that we do? Why does it color our words, our actions, our thoughts, our attitudes, our posture and our body language? It’s because we’re focused on ourselves way too much. It is pride that is killing us. And so what James says- he says humbly accept the word planted in you. Because what the word does is it saves you from you. The Word saves you by teaching you to think about yourself less and God more. The Word saves you and teaches you that God loves you and that he’s powerful for you and in every circumstance in your life he’s going to come through for you. The Word saves you from you. In fact, the word of God has a saving word for us about anger. It says that Jesus took God’s anger on himself. It says that the wrath of God was satisfied. It says that we now have peace with God. See, the word shows us God. 

Let me close this way. Are you an angry person? That’s what I asked myself this week. I’ll tell you what I discovered. I discovered that it turns out that the lead pastor of the church in Jerusalem-this guy named James- turns out he knows a thing or two about living a peaceful life. The more I saw anger in my life this week, the more I understood God’s grace for me. And the better I understood God’s grace for me, the more I wanted to share that grace with others, the more I wanted to heal what I had hurt. I guess you could say that this sermon is a result of that. I hope you see that while this sermon has been about anger, it hasn’t been angry, but that it’s grown out of a heart that has peace. Planted in me. Peace that I do not deserve, but that will be mine forever. And the more that we all take that peace out into our lives, every day of the week in every circumstance, with every person, the more we’ll see that we actually have nothing at all to be angry about. Because everything we see will just be more grace. Am I an angry person? Are you? I guess I wouldn’t say so. All we are is saved. In Jesus’ name. Amen.