Episode Transcript
All right, we'll be in Proverbs chapter 14, verse 17 tonight.
Proverbs chapter 14, verse 17.
I think we have as many people online tonight as we did last Wednesday, and we have a lot of folks here on a Wednesday night.
So we've got a a really Healthy crowd tonight, both here and online as well.
I'm grateful for that.
The title of the message tonight is Two Kinds of Anger.
Two kinds of anger.
We're going to look here in verse 17.
The Bible says, he that is soon angry.
Anger is the most volatile human emotion that we have.
I believe it's probably the most dangerous human emotion that we have.
It often drives people to do harm.
Whether with their words or with their actions.
Last week, I'm not sure how many of y'all saw it.
Last week there were two men in Fort Worth. who were supposed to have been friends and one of the men became angry because his friend would not share any of his French fries with him.
Or the shepherds on anyone else see that besides us?
So he pulled out a gun and shot his friend in the head because he wouldn't share his French fries with him.
That doesn't just show us the state. of our world.
And you you you read things like that and and my mind goes back to Genesis six, when God saw that the there was violence and wickedness in the earth, and he was just done with it.
He was just done with it.
And I can so understand why.
Look at the loss of control and all the outrage and anger that fuels so much craziness in our world today.
But in short, a man lost his life over an order of french fries.
Anger is what drove that man to kill him.
About 6,000 years ago, anger also drove another man in a senseless killing of his brother.
And the reason for that killing was even less offensive than someone not sharing their French fries.
Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel obeyed God, and that's all Abel did.
And Cain was offended by it.
And that's no reason to be angry.
Genesis 4. 5 says, But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.
And Cain was very wroth, that is, he was angry, and his countenance fell.
Cain was angry at God, and he took that anger out on his brother who did nothing to him.
Cain destroyed a man's life essentially because God wouldn't let Cain make the rules.
People get angry because they're not allowed to make the rules.
And anger fueled by envy and pride is what drove him to kill his brother who did obey the rules.
And we have to learn to be driven by love rather than by anger.
I remember when I was young.
The the boys, the kids would brag about, boy, when I'm angry, I can get really angry and that's you don't want to mess with me And anger drives people.
It becomes a motivation for them, a passion for them.
But love is a greater motivation, it's a greater passion, and love will never drive you to harm the person that you love.
It'll never drive you to say something that you'll regret.
1 Corinthians 13 verse 4 says charity, and that's love, suffereth long.
That means it's long-suffering, it endures and is kind.
Charity envieth not.
Charity vauniteth not itself, is not puffed up.
I believe Cain was envious of his brother, Abel.
But that's because he was driven by anger, not by love.
Charity envies not.
First Corinthians chapter 16, verse 14 says, Let all things be done with charity.
And that means let all things.
Let love be that driving motivation in your life.
If there's something driving you to do something And it's not love.
If it's envy that's driving you, if it's anger that's driving you, if it's uh something else that's driving you, and it's not based on love. then you need to get rid of it.
Because your motivation's wrong.
So Brother Richard, uh I got a family to feed and I and I gotta get out and make money so I'm driven to get out and earn a living.
If you're doing that to feed your family, then it's motivated by love.
But it love should be at the root of everything that we do.
But he that is soon angry, the Bible says, look back in your text, dealeth foolishly.
Dealeth foolishly.
Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 9 says, Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.
It just rests there in the bosom of fools.
If you could just think of anger.
Just kind of hanging out right here at the center of a fool.
Just hanging out, waiting to have the cage rattled.
One day I was inspecting a salvage yard when I was in regulatory crimes.
I was up in Dallas inspecting a salvage yard.
And uh it was an unlicensed salvage yard and there was stolen vehicles there.
There there was it just a bad place And I was there by myself checking that yard out and and uh I was interviewing one of the men trying to make a criminal case.
And uh the owner of the salvage yard says, yeah, just have a seat on that ledge right over there, and I'll be with you here in just a moment, and I'll I'll come give you a statement.
I said, okay.
I went and sat down on the ledge and I heard the most awful sound like that.
I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was dangerous.
And I figured when I heard it, whatever it was, I figured, yeah, he set me on this ledge for a reason.
And they're probably all watching how I respond right now.
And I was not about to make a fool out of myself.
So I just casually turned around and there's a bobcat right behind me.
And he's in a cage.
And they were probably hoping I'd jump and flail my arms.
And I just turned around and looked at Bobcat.
I just turned back around.
I just continued writing my paperwork out like there's always wild Bobcats behind me But that bobcat was in that cage making no noise whatsoever until I came and sat down within its space.
And when I encroached upon its comfort level, then that bobcat it started r and fool foolishness rests in the bosom I'm sorry, anger rests in the bosom of a fool, like that Bobcat was in that cage, just waiting for something to rile it up.
And you'll have fools like that.
And you have to be careful how you deal with a fool.
They're the ones that are involved in the road rage incidents.
They're fools.
And they're soon angry.
And just like putting a match to a can of gasoline, they'll just blow up real fast.
So he says, be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.
As we've already learned, anger is the most volatile emotion that we can have.
So if we're quick-tempered, that is, if we're soon angry, then that means we are soon foolish.
We're often foolish.
Anger drives people to act passionately rather than rationally.
We'll repeat that again.
Anger drives people to act passionately rather than rationally.
If you think something through, Do you know what you do if you think something through?
You think of, number one, is this the best thing to do?
What's going to be the outcome of this?
And you're going to think it all the way through to the end.
That's thinking rationally, and a rational person will typically typically not do irrational things.
A passionate person, a person driven off passion, Rather than rationale.
That person does not think things through.
They're driven off passion.
The person who shot their friends over the French fries.
They were not thinking things through.
They thought off passion.
Do you think that man who killed his friends, his friend over that order of fries, do you think that sitting in jail right now, do you think he still thinks that was a good idea?
Probably not.
He's probably thinking, I can't believe I'm here.
How did I get here?
Someone said something to me the other day that made me angry.
I don't get very angry very often, but I was at that time.
Brother, you don't want to see me when I'm angry.
Y'all, you wouldn't like it when I'm angry.
Usually my skin turns green.
I've you can ask Miss Tammy, I've busted many good pairs of clothes, getting angry.
But uh but I I don't get angry very often.
But I was this particular day.
It was a couple weeks ago And uh and in my anger, I remember thinking to myself, I think I will do this.
Maybe I will do this.
This will be my response to that.
And what I was considering doing was not wrong.
I mean, it wouldn't have been a sin.
But it wouldn't have been wise for me to have done it.
So in my contemplation and considering the doing what I was thinking about doing, I thought to myself, because I could feel the anger up in here.
You know that word anger in the Hebrews, it has the idea of blowing through the nostrils, like a bull, just blowing through the nostrils.
And that's because you got all this pressure up here, this emotional pressure in your mind, and it's just got to let off steam.
And that letting off that steam is that passion that you blow up an act.
And I could feel it up in there, and I remember thinking to myself, Richard.
You need to wait until this passion and this anger is gone.
And then, after all that subsided, then you make your decision.
So I did.
I waited until the passion subsided, and when I did, I had a whole different outlook.
By the way, uh I'll repeat my wife, who repeats a former pastor of hers, because it's a very good quote.
Never make a permanent decision in a temporary state of mind.
That's a very good quote.
Never make a permanent decision in a temporary state of mind.
That's what soon angry people do.
Like the man who shot his friend.
He made a permanent decision In a very temporary state of mind.
The pride of someone turning you down for not sharing a fry with you.
That's going to go away in a little bit, in a short time.
But he he acted and made a permanent decision in a temporary state of mind.
Had I been soon angry, had I been quick-tempered sort of fella, I would have acted in my anger.
Which would have caused me to have dealt foolishly and regrettably Now, there are two types of anger that I believe Solomon's talking about tonight, one being the soon angry, that quick kind of flashpoint kind of anger.
And maybe you could call them two opposite types of anger.
They're both anger.
But that first is soon anger or soon angry.
And then look back in your text and it says, and And I believe this is the second type of anger, a man of wicked devices.
A man of wicked devices, underscore wicked devices.
Wicked devices is speaking about wicked plans.
When you think of devices, when we think of devices, we think of contraptions.
Well, that's an interesting looking device you got there, like a contraption.
But think of devices in in the sense of planning, like you devise a particular plan.
Okay?
That would be a wicked device.
And so when people devise evil plots that they intend to carry out, the wicked plots that they devise are wicked devices.
So a man of wicked devices is a man who plots and schemes to Carry out the anger that he holds inside him.
Have you ever heard someone called a cold-blooded killer?
Yeah.
Now Both a cold-blooded killer and a hot-blooded killer, are they not both murderers?
And they probably both hate the person they're killing in some fashion.
They sure don't love them.
So they're both killers.
But you would have to agree there's a a whole different shade of anger there between the cold-blooded blood kill.
When we say, oh, that's cold-blooded.
We don't say that as a compliment, do we?
We say it as something really bad.
And the reason is that we understand that a cold-blooded killer Is probably a more heinous type of individual than someone who acted out of passion.
So the term cold-blooded is describing someone who, if you could think of it this way, is carrying out wicked devices in order to take another person's life.
Instead of killing someone in hot blood in the heat of the moment, instead of being driven to kill when the passions are high The cold-blooded killer takes his time after the passion has worn down. to plot, to scheme, and to carry out his anger.
And the man of wicked devices, he may carry that anger around inside of him for years, waiting on his Time to strike.
So both the soon angry man and the man of wicked devices carry out their sins of anger, but one sin is committed soon. in the heat of passion, and the others committed later with calculated premeditation I was uh reading the other day about someone who uh was angry about something that that happened to him when he was young.
And uh if I remember the story right They did something that made him very ashamed when he was young and embarrassed him a great deal.
And as he grew up, years later, he took his time, figured it all out, and when he got the opportunity, he went and killed that person.
And so that would be a man of wicked devices.
Scheming and plotting it out.
And it's better to have a quick, short sort of temper than to hold that in enduring bitterness and anger in your heart.
It's better to blow up and then quickly cool down. than to blow up uh and uh or not blow up rather but then begin to plot and devise and scheme to carry out your wicked devisement A man who is soon angry behaves foolishly, but a man who devises those wicked plans in his heart wickedly, intentionally, he shall be condemned.
Judas Iscariot plotted his betrayal and rejection of Jesus.
There's no passion of anger.
He just hated him.
He didn't love Jesus.
He hated him in comparison to his love of money, his love of mammon.
Jesus said, you'll either hold to one and despise the other.
He despised one and he held to the other.
Satan also plotted his betrayal and rejection of God.
Still to this day he's plotting and scheming.
Wicked devices are constructed from a wicked heart that's it's bent on doing evil.
And the Bible says in Proverbs 12, verse 2, which is something we've covered not too long ago, a good man obtaineth favor of the Lord, but a man of wicked devices will he condemn.
Same type of situation here.
A man of wicked devices, someone who's cold-blooded, plotted out, plan it out. and have no consciousness or feeling of wrongdoing in his heart to give him any sort of remorse at all.
Cold-blooded.
He'll be condemned, the Bible says.
Therefore a man of wicked devices, Solomon said, if you look back in your text now, is hated.
A person who plots and schemes like that to carry out those wicked devices, they're hated.
They're hated by a righteous person in a sense, but they're also hated by God.
They're hated by God.
So Brother Richard, God doesn't hate anybody.
Yes, he does.
He hates people.
Now, God loves people in the sense that he loves them as the people he created.
He loves their souls.
He loves them so much that he sent his son to give his life for them.
He wants them to be saved.
But he hates them as his enemies.
And God is righteously capable of doing both.
Both.
Romans chapter 9 verse 13 says, as it is written, speaking of God, Jacob have I loved.
But Esau have I hated.
Now that's God speaking there.
Esau have I hated.
Esau was one of those men of wicked devices.
Oh yes, he sold his his uh birthright for a bowl of soup.
That was a passionate sort of thing, by the way.
He later regretted it, the Bible says.
It was done in his hunger.
But he was a man of wicked devices.
Esau made cold, calculated decisions in the heart, rejecting the word of God.
Such as the woman he chose to marry, if you'll remember that.
He said, well, I tell you what I'll do.
If that's who they want me to marry, I'll go marry a pagan.
I'll go marry a woman from the the people they did not want me to marry.
That's not passion That's cold-blooded, calculated rebellion.
Esau was hated by God, and all who devise evil against God's kingdom shall also be hated by God.
It's not that God doesn't love their soul again enough to save them, but he hates their wicked devices enough to condemn them.
And not only will a man of wicked devices be hated by God, but again he'll be despised by any righteous person in the same manner.
Galatians 5, verse 14 says, For all the law is fulfilled in one word or one saying, even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Love, love, love, charity, charity, charity.
God created us to love And we could fulfill all of God's law if we were just motivated and filled and driven by the love of God.
Now, if God's greatest commandment is to love, then we can understand why the greatest violations of his commandment is to hate. and to hate intentionally, as Lucifer, Cain, and Judas, Nimrod, and many other people He who hates shall be hated.
He who lives and acts out of anger shall experience God's anger.
Man of wicked devices shall be condemned.
As the Bible says in Psalms 18, verse 26.
Speaking to the Lord, with the pure, thou wilt show thyself pure.
To a pure person, God, you're going to show yourself to be pure to that person.
And with the froward or the evil or the evil planning person, thou wilt show thyself fraward.
Not all wicked devices are against God and his kingdom as the examples we've given tonight.
Not everybody has a wit that has a wicked device is like Judas or like the devil or like Esau.
And not everyone who has a wicked device is trying to overthrow the kingdom of God.
Some wicked devices are much more subtle, far less harmful, and yes, they're even carried out. by Bible-believing born-again children of God.
Christians have wicked devices all the time When you're planning on doing something, sometimes You'll catch yourself, and in the back of your heart, you'll we'll try to pretend like that's not the motive, but in the back of our heart there'll be some Ill motive that we have for what we plan on carrying out. ill sort of reason.
That's a wicked device.
And no, no matter how subtle it is, we we need to make sure that again, everything we do is motivated and driven by the love of God.
And when we find that we're plotting and planning and carrying something out, some plan that we're trying to do, if we find that it's not motivated by love, then we need to take that evil plan to the cross and let it die with Jesus there.
It's where it needs to go.
When Jesus went to the cross, there was absolutely no wicked device.
Everything was the purity of God's love schemed, plotted, and planned in eternity past to redeem his enemies.
And it needs to be that same love of God given to us by the Holy Spirit in our hearts that needs to be driving us toward our fellow man and toward our God.
So the next time you find yourself plotting some ill toward another person, remember the heart that God has towards you. which he expressed in Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11.
When he says, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you.
Man, that ought to get us to stop a little bit, shouldn't it?
I know the thoughts that I think toward you, God said.
What are our thoughts that we think toward others?
He says, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace when you're thinking about another person.
Are the thoughts that you have toward that person, are they thoughts of peace on the way out here tonight?
I was talking to my wife about this man that I'm friends with on Facebook.
I don't know who he is, but he's supposed to be a preacher.
That man is always mad at somebody, always he said he said something today on Facebook and Some other man got on there and said, you just need to close your mouth.
You sound foolish.
And he said, you want to come up here and try to make me?
Man, that's It makes Christians look just crazy when they do things like that.
Well, those kind of words, those aren't thoughts of peace.
I was commenting on that to my wife on the way up here, and I told her, I said, I'm at the stage in life, I just want peace.
I don't want to fight with people.
Now I'll fight for you.
Someone will try to come in here and hurt y'all, me and Brother Shepherd, the best to the best of our God-given ability, we'd do everything we could try to protect you.
But I don't want to fight with you.
I don't want to fight.
I don't like arguing with people.
I just want peace and And to think good thoughts toward people.
He says, thoughts of peace and not of evil.
In other words, I don't want to do you any harm.
That's what God's telling them.
He said, I want peace with you.
I don't want any harm to come to you.
And we don't we shouldn't want any harm to come to anybody else either.
We shouldn't be driven by that.
And he says, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end.
I love that.
An expected end.
Do you know what that means?
When you're dealing with some people.
You may know how it's going at the time, but you you may not know how it's going to end.
You may be getting along with them now.
They may be keeping their word for now and holding up their end of the bargain for now.
But you don't know if they're going to turn the tables on you in the end.
We had a a hearing at court today This man come in dressed really nice, really nice, looked sharp, very kind sort of fella.
And uh he lives in a almost four million dollar home.
And uh I didn't know I didn't know what the case was about.
Because this was before court started.
We just screened him in and he's waiting on his attorney to show up, sitting out in the lobby.
And so he was a really friendly fellow.
And he's younger than me And so I just shoot in the breeze with him and I said, what do you do?
He goes, oh, not much.
And I looked, he said, well I I got four kids at the house.
I chased the kids around, do whatever the wife asked me to do.
He said, How much?
I said, so you're retired?
He goes, well sort of.
I think that's a good old you know a good way of saying I don't have a job.
And he I come to find out he lives in what they said is a four million dollar house, just under.
And he's up there trying to fight the bank who's trying to foreclose on his house.
Trying to make sure they don't get their house back.
Now, when all that started This man and his wife sign an agreement with that bank.
So you give us the however many million And we'll give you our word, that we'll pay all this back plus interest.
Well, that sounds good to me.
Shake on it, except they're signing, you know.
And everything's great.
The two parties are great.
But you don't know what that other party's thinking.
You see, there's some people out there, I've learned the hard way, and y'all have learned the hard way too, I'm sure.
And if you haven't, you're young, you haven't learned the hard way, learn from us.
There's some people out there that really think this way They think that if they can mess you over on a business deal, if they can cheat you out and them come out ahead financially, they think that's just good business.
It doesn't bother them a bit to know that they really did you wrong.
And they don't care if you need the money and don't get, they don't care.
And apparently this is the way these folks are.
So they're fighting the bank, trying to make sure they don't take that four million dollar house.
Now, if it was me I'd be embarrassed to say I didn't have a job, but I live in a $4 million house, and I don't want to pay what I owe.
I would either get me a job so I can pay it, or I would give the $4 million house back and I'd go get me a half million dollar house.
Would that be fair?
That seems fair to me I could uh my house isn't half million that I live in now.
But you would think that would be reasonable But with people you don't know the end game.
The bank would have never loaned that money in the beginning.
Had they known what would happen in the end.
Now the bank's paying a lawyer.
Now the bank's paying people to go up there and fight to try to secure their investment.
With God.
See, the debtor at court today, he's not motivated by love.
God's motivated by love.
And because he's motivated by love, every thought that he has toward you is a thought of peace.
Every desire he has toward you is not of evil.
He doesn't want any harm to come toward you.
He doesn't want to do you any harm.
And his thoughts are that way to give us an expected end.
So that we know the covenant that we entered into got with God concerning his son in the beginning.
When we signed up to become a Christian at our very conversion of our faith to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and all the benefits God said He would give to us and do for us.
In eternity future, it is only because God is motivated by the purest of love.
That you and I can have an expected end that never ends.
That you and I can know That God's love for us today is going to be the same tomorrow, the same a thousand years from now, and the same for all eternity.
It'll always be of peace and never of evil.
And if God is that way toward us, then whoever we deal with in life, they should have that same assurance.
That if I'm dealing with Andy Shepherd or I'm dealing with Richard Fulton or I'm dealing with Tammy Fulton, that I know that they have an intention of peace toward me and not of evil.
And they should be able to deal with us like that.
And anything we find outside of that, we need to check it at the cross.
Father, thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Father, for letting us have that warning about those who are soon angry.
Lord, that we can make sure that we don't uh make a permanent decision, commit a permanent, unchangeable act in a temporary state of mind.
And also, Lord, that we won't be someone of wicked devices.
Lord, we're supposed to devise.
We're supposed to scheme and plot and plan.
A man that uh builds a tower has to sit down and count up the cost.
We're supposed to do that, but it's not supposed to be evil devices, but good devices.
And we pray, dear Lord God, that you'll help our motivation.
To be centered in the love of God, and we ask it in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.
