Episode Transcript
All right, if you take your Bibles, please, and turn to Proverbs chapter 14, verse 29.
Proverbs chapter 14, verse 29.
The title of the message tonight is A Hasty Spirit.
A Hasty Spirit.
I was thanking God on the way out here for the nice roof that he allowed us to have put on this sanctuary a few years back.
And uh we have those storms like we had today and sometimes much worse.
And you know, we have one of those good solid roofs.
It just makes me happy.
Proverbs 1429, He that is slow to wrath.
He that is slow to wrath.
Now this word wrath here is going to be familiar to you if you've been in Brother Shepherd's Sunday school class.
Brother Shepherd recently gave an illustration of a bull snorting through his nostrils.
And by the way, Brother Shepard, that's what I have always envisioned myself.
When I've read that word and looked in the Hebrew and see what it means and always pictured a bull snorting and and that anger But the Hebrew word translated wrath here, it has the idea of breathing aggressively through the nostrils.
And that's important.
I believe we're going to learn a little a more have a more rich idea of this word wrath when we get through tonight.
We tend to breathe very hard when we're under physical stress, don't we?
When someone gets under great physical stress.
They go, and sometimes what they had to do, they had to breathe deep, take a breath, breathe deep, breathe deep.
It's not just with anger.
So there's a great truth that's being learned here, and that is anger is an internal emotion But breathing is a physical action.
Think about it now.
Wrath is being described Wrath, which is an internal emotion, which then spills over to a physical action Whether it's judgment, whether it's uh burning something down or rioting or whatever it is, or engaging in physical conflict, wrath. an internal emotion spilling over to a physical action.
And so this breathing is a physical action And by this we learn that inward emotions generate physical actions.
Can't get away from it.
Inward emotions generate physical action.
Anger causes our sympathetic nervous system to release hormones.
And I'll tell you, I've dealt not just in my own life and other people's lives, as just just living life and knowing people and knowing your own experience. but also people that I've I've dealt with on the website and at church who I've dealt with with counseling issues.
And you begin to learn that a lot of people struggle with hormonal issues, hormonal imbalances.
And it's a very real thing.
Very real.
Depression is very real.
And When we're under great stress, then we we have a sympathetic nervous system.
It reacts to that stress.
It's the way God designed and it It releases hormones in our bodies and such as adrenaline or noradrenaline.
And when that happens, our heart rate increases And our blood pressure increases.
And also we begin to breathe with shallow and more rapid breaths See, anger tells our bodies that something bad has happened, and that it prepares our bodies to respond to what has happened.
It puts us in a a a fight or flight mode because our bodies assume that we're going to need to quickly respond to whatever bad thing has happened so we can fix it.
Now let me translate that for you.
Anger or wrath in our heart affects the health of our body Anger in our heart affects the health of our body.
Now we're not just looking at anger Because the concept of wrath has the idea of that breathing.
So it's not just anger But any kind of stress that you respond to that causes you to breathe that way and to respond that way and that then incites that fight or flight in your system.
And that happens to people all the time.
When you get angry, it it puts your body under physical and emotional strain in it will affect your health.
When I get a new vehicle, I enjoy reading the owner's manual.
Is anyone else like that besides me?
Good.
You don't drive, Jonathan.
But I enjoy drive uh right uh you done got me all messed up, John.
I enjoy reading.
A new vehicle owner manual.
You can ask Tammy, I'll sit outside in my vehicle for hours.
Maybe not at a time.
And I'll just read and read and read because I want to familiarize myself and learn all I can about that vehicle.
And one of the things I enjoy looking at is the maintenance schedule.
What does the manufacturer recommend that I do to this vehicle?
And if you're used to reading an owner's manual on a vehicle, then you probably notice that there is a routine maintenance schedule And then there is a severe operating conditions maintenance schedule.
Y'all ever noticed that before?
So if you frequently use your vehicle to tow, for example, or you're you're in some type of uh severe condition where maybe there's a lot of dust or maybe you're you're uh uh driving up in the mountains uphill and you're you're putting some extra strain and severe conditions on your vehicle then it's going to require more frequent maintenance.
What I'm trying to say is your body is a marvelous machine.
David said, I will praise thee for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.
It's a marvelous machine.
We enjoy, uh Tammy and I enjoy reading from uh Dr.
Doug Corrigan.
He's on Facebook, Science with Dr.
Doug, if you ever want to look it up and follow him.
He's a molecular biologist, astrophysicist, the man's a brain.
And he's a believer.
And he was explaining the other day how Your body, when there's a cell in your body that's starting to die, it sings off signals.
Your liver then produces a little chemical that then goes off and it seeks that dying cell.
It'll attach to it, it'll then call some help Then the other cells will come, they'll remove that dying cell from the tissue, they'll break it down and then recycle its parts in your body.
That is amazing.
And that shows that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
We are the most marvelous machine on earth.
And like any machine that's placed under frequent stress, it's going to wear down prematurely.
It's what happens to people.
And here's a kingdom truth.
An angry heart can lead to a broken heart.
An angry heart can lead to a broken heart.
A stressed heart can lead to a broken heart.
Now Solomon is speaking about someone who is slow to wrath.
And the word translated slow here, it literally means long.
So when we look at the word slow here, since it literally means long, I want you to think about wrath being like a bomb.
In your mind, in your body.
And sometimes a bomb needs to go off.
Sometimes we need to respond in wrath in stress, in fight or flight.
We need to go into that sometimes.
Our body's made for that.
He couldn't do that, Brother Shepherd couldn't do his job.
Couldn't respond to emergencies But with that bomb, I want you to think about he that is slow to wrath.
I want you to think about that long, since it slow literally means long.
I want you to think about a long fuse on that bomb.
A long fuse.
So he that is slow to wrath, he that has a long fuse before he blows up So now he's not speaking about someone with no fuse.
He's speaking about someone with a long fuse.
He didn't say the person is never to wrath.
He said the person slow to wrath.
Wrath is good on the right occasion.
But the right occasion is a rare occasion, and we need to keep it that way.
Never brag about having a quick temper.
Because it's not something to brag about.
Being quick-tempered is a lack of immaturity and understanding.
It's foolishness.
So he that is slow to wrath, he that has a long fuse, look back in your text, is of great understanding. is of great understanding.
And if you don't have that great understanding and you have a short fuse, let's take the scripture and try to lengthen it for you a little bit tonight.
A person who is slow to wrath, who is slow to yielding to all the huffing and the puffing Wrath, drama, the huffing and the puffing, the intensity Who he that's slow to that is someone who understands some things about life.
He understands that because we live in a fallen world, there's always going to be something in life that's going to try to light that fuse.
Always.
I tell you what, man, you go work for the federal government I'm telling you, it sometimes I'll be at work and I'll just get in knots like this, not because the job's that difficult.
But because of the just the man, it just it's hard to explain.
Y'all ever heard the Aggie joke about how many Aggies it takes to screw in a light bulb?
Jonathan, have you ever heard that?
How many aggies does it take to screw in a light bulb?
What was it?
Five or six or something like that?
It takes one to hold the light bulb.
And then it takes all the rest of them to grab the table that the Aggie's standing on and then go around in circles like that with the table.
And we laugh at that because it's it would be stupid to do that.
I'm telling you, that's how the federal government works.
I'm not I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
It will be overly complex with extra moving parts in chaos, just chaos.
And that's no offense to the employees I work with, because they complain about the same thing.
I suggested the other day that we Put a peephole in a door for security so that people could look out before they exited and see what the environment's like before they walked out.
And they actually started trying to find out what agency would be over getting permission for a people.
I'm not kidding.
And and it's it's that bogged down with bureaucracy.
And so sometimes I find myself just getting knotted up with tension inside. dealing with with crazy.
So we he that is slow to wrath Has un great understanding.
And one of the things they understand is that we live in a fallen world.
We live in a broken world.
And because it's broken through Adam's fall You can have a nice long fuse, but you better know this.
Every day There's going to be something broken in life.
That's going to be over there with a little old match trying to light your fuse.
Isn't that right?
Always.
And so if it's a long fuse You can just reach out there and you can pinch it before it gets down and you blow up.
Right?
And so the person that's slow to wrath.
He understands we live in a broken world and there's always going to be something trying to light our views.
You can count on it.
Somebody's going to say something to you.
Somebody's going to do something.
Or there's just going to be something that happens in life that's really going to trouble you.
You can't avoid it.
And you can't afford to blow up every time life hands you a bad deal.
So you better learn to lengthen that fuse and save the explosion for you when you really need it.
You know, there's somebody, there's some folks, they walk around with this real short fuse, they hold it real close to their heart.
And when the little things happen, because they're going to happen, they're going to hit your fuse.
And when they happen, they're always, boom, blow up.
Boom, I'm upset.
Boom, I'm troubled.
Boom, this.
Boom that.
And if you're constantly blowing up, you're just going to break yourself down.
And you're going to break down the people that live with you.
Because when you blow up, you cause other people to do that too.
You do He that has a long fuse understands that most things that seem important today Aren't very important in the long run at all.
So there's really no need to worry today about something that's not going to matter tomorrow.
Would you agree with that?
There's really no reason to worry today about something that's not going to matter tomorrow.
There was a teacher that used to say, whenever the kids would get upset about something, and it'd be all drama, they'd say, in 50 years, no one's going to care.
Saying it seriously.
How many of y'all had stuff really, really bother you when you were at high school and now it's like, who cares?
Who cares A person with a long fuse understands that he lives in a fallen world and disappointments and trouble just come with the territory.
And thank God Jesus is going to come back and fix everything one day.
So in the end, everything's going to be okay.
There's really, most of the time, there's really no need to be upset.
They're just not.
He understands that people are sinners.
And that means sometimes we're just going to say things that we shouldn't say.
I do.
And being angry when something goes wrong, something we don't like, being angry has a greater chance of compounding the problem rather than fixing the problem, right?
I mean you think about it.
You think about it.
If a problem happens and you respond in anger, chances are you're going to make the problem worse Rarely will anger fix the problem.
But I tell you what, responding in love gives the chance of overcoming the problem and making a friend.
Respond in love if you can He that is slow to angers of great understanding, look back in your text now, but he that is hasty of spirit.
Now, this is really, really neat.
He that is hasty of spirit.
The word slow literally means in Hebrew long.
Do you know what the word hasty means in Hebrew?
Isn't that cool?
It means short.
It means short.
He that short in the spirit.
So there's your short fuse right there.
There's your short fuse.
So the person with a long fuse has great understanding.
But the person with a short fuse does not.
And we're going to learn a little bit here when it says he's hasty in spirit.
The word spirit here, and the word wrath means to breathe, right?
And so the word spirit here, it also means to breathe To breathe.
It doesn't only mean to breathe.
It can mean spirit as in like God's spirit.
But it has the idea of breath So it's saying he that is short, he that is quick to breathe, he that is quick to do the huffing and the puffing.
And this helps us understand the word spirit better.
For this is the same word used in the Bible to describe God's Spirit in the Bible So when we see, why is that important?
It means breath and it means spirit, or breathe and spirit.
So when we see God breathe into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, He's breathing in the spirit of life.
You could see it that way.
And I believe we can understand that God's Spirit entered Adam that day and gave him life.
The Gospel of John chapter 20.
Verse 22.
The Gospel of John chapter 20, verse 22.
And when he that is Jesus had said this, he breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
How about that?
So when he breathed on them, They receive the Holy Ghost.
So it helps to see how words are used at different places in the Bible.
And the Bible says, he that is hasty of spirit, he that is hasty to huff and puff and wrath and in in uh emotional drama, what does he do?
Look, it says, he what?
Exalteth folly.
That word exalteth.
Rebecca drew the picture tonight, if you looked in your notes, and I noticed she had folly raised up in the air.
I thought, ah, look at that.
That's an intelligent drawing there, because exalt means to raise up.
And another word, because we don't use exalt a whole lot, another word for lifting up is promote.
Right?
When you get promoted, you get lifted up.
You get up higher in the ranks.
And so When we're looking at exalting folly, it means he promotes folly.
Foolishness.
My mom and dad promoted gospel music for several years in Athens.
They built a music hall, they hosted gospel concerts.
But quick-tempered people promote foolishness.
And under the influence of their anger.
Their minds and their bodies become the venue for foolishness.
Just like my dad and mom's music hall became the venue promoting music.
They become the venue for promoting foolishness.
I know a young woman who has a short fuse.
And her whole life, as long as I've known her, has been filled with foolish drama.
And it's left her broken and full of sorrow.
It's very sad.
She lost her job the other day.
She lost her job the other day and put on Facebook that she was giving up.
She said there's no need to pray.
I'm giving up on prayer and church.
What's the point?
And when something's so simple can so quickly anger you toward God.
You have a short fuse and you're promoting folly.
And Lord help us to keep a long fuse.
Fuses that will burn out before we blow up.
And make fools out of ourselves like that.
Fuses that we can have time to consider and pray and Reach over and pinch and put the fire out on that fuse or clip it off before it finally comes and causes us to blow up.
He causes us to wring our hands, blow up in drama, blow up in stress, blow up in wrath, and wear ourselves out prematurely. and our families along with us.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Lord, for teaching us. the importance of keeping long fuses.
Not not not to take away the fuse To remember that it's time to blow up sometimes.
It's time to pull out the guns.
It's time to rush to the emergency.
It's time to uh to rise to the level to protect and care and heal and rescue and judge And we thank you for that ability to turn that on when it needs to be turned on.
But God, we pray that we'll be people of great understanding. to understand the broken world we live in, the broken people we live around, and the broken bodies, Father God, that wear out so much sooner when they're always blowing up.
Help us, Lord, to trust you, to put the government of our lives upon your shoulders, to respond in love and to trust in faith when these troubles come our way.
We thank you and we ask it in Jesus' wonderful name.
Amen.
