Transcript

00:00 Shelby Abbott: Hey, Paul.

00:01 Paul Tripp: Hey, here we are again.

00:03 Shelby: Here we are again, getting ready to talk about anger for a second time and I am excited to talk about this because we're going to talk about something that might be surprising for some people, but it also might be comforting as well. The blessings and the danger of anger. We're going to start with Jesus.

00:21 Paul: Well, I want to rehearse a little bit of our last podcast because we introduced the topic of anger and one of the things that we saw was that the anger of God is an extension of His love, His holiness, and His justice. Because God loves us, He's angry. Because He's holy, He's angry. Because He's just, He's angry.

00:53 This means you ought to be hugely thankful that the One who sits on the throne of the universe is capable of anger because without that anger, there would not be justice and there would not be mercy; and that means for us, there would be no hope.

01:22 Now, when it comes to the anger of Jesus, I can remember hearing this so many times in counseling people, they would say, "Well, when I struggle, I can't run to that angry God in the Old Testament. I run to Jesus," and I always thought that misunderstands God's anger, but it misunderstands who Jesus is, too.

01:52 Shelby: Yes, both.

01:54 Paul: And so, I think it's important for us to say because Jesus is part of the Godhead, He reflects the same kind of holy anger that God the Father reflects. They are not different in character. If your theology makes you understand that Jesus is somehow different in character than God the Father, then you don't really know the Jesus of scripture.

02:25 Shelby: Yes, that's really important to understand that whenever you see the characteristic of anger in the Old Testament, if you believe in the Trinity, Jesus is right there the whole time. So to say that it's separate and that they're mutually exclusive is not good theology at all.

02:44 Paul: Well, it's biblical irrationality and Jesus even reinforced that by saying, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father."

02:51 Shelby: Exactly, yes.

02:52 Paul: "I and the Father are one." So let's look at Mark 3, if you would just read there, 1-6.

03:04 Shelby: 1-6, yes.

¹Again He [being Jesus] entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ²And they watched Jesus, to see whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. ³And He said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” ⁴And He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵And He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him, how to destroy Him.

03:51 Paul: There's a couple of interesting things in this passage. First, we see the occasion, the reason for the anger of Jesus, but we also get to see the reason for the unrighteous anger of the Pharisees. So in this particular passage, we have the perfectly holy anger of Jesus and the unrighteous, sinful anger of the Pharisees.

04:27 Jesus is going to heal a man on the Sabbath and right away, the Pharisees jump in and say, "⁴Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save [a] life or to kill [it]," and immediately, Jesus is angry.

04:56 Now, it's very clear from the passage that the anger of Jesus isn't that kind of personal anger that we experience, like somebody's driving too slow in front of us or somebody has the courage to disagree with us or our children are making noise when we want to watch something on television or all those selfish places of anger that puts us in the middle of our world, makes life all about us.

05:32 That's the nature of sinful anger. Sinful anger is always selfish in cause. Jesus is angry because of the shocking distortion of understanding of the Sabbath, the shocking legalism of the Pharisees, and the shocking lack of love for this poor, crippled man.

06:01 Shelby: Yes, so it's important to define the terms because a lot of times, we graft on our own personal definitions and we see Jesus experiencing that. We think He must be thinking and doing and feeling the same things that I'm doing, and it's not the same case.

06:15 Paul: Now, this One who's speaking is important to understand is Lord of the Sabbath. This interpretation of the Sabbath is deeply troubling to Him because He knows that Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath and so, if you have a Godward understanding of the Sabbath, rather than priding yourself in being a law-keeper, you would know that what Jesus is about to do is absolutely consistent with God's design for the Sabbath. And so, Jesus is angry that these guys are taking God's holy law, which was made for our good, and turning it into something that is harmful and abusive.

07:16 Shelby: Yes, which on the surface can look like activity-wise, the exact same thing; but their hearts are just in a really bad place.

07:25 Paul: And we know that these men, these Pharisees prided of themselves in their keeping of the law and Christ is going to go after that in another passage that we see. So Jesus is now indignant because of the abusive, unloving misuse of God's holy law.

08:04 This is so convicting for me. I wonder how much of my anger is because God's honor, God's law, God's glory, God's kingdom is being distorted or not honored? Would that all of my anger was about God's kingdom.

08:33 Shelby: Instead of yourself.

08:34 Paul: The bulk of my anger is about my little claustrophobic kingdom of one and so, would that God would grace me with the ability to be angry this way. When I'm grieved, what am I grieved about? I'm grieved because I go to the market and they don't have the thing that I'd set my heart on.

08:59 I mean, just stupid, inconsequential things that upset me. Recently, I'm looking at my drawer for a pair of socks and I say, "Luella, it drives me crazy that I can never find my socks." There it is. Who do I think I am?

09:21 Shelby: There it is. Claustrophobic kingdom of one, yes.

09:27 Paul: And so, this passage is meant to be, not only a revelation of the nature of the anger of Jesus, but a mirror into which we can look and I wish this is the stuff that made me mad.

09:44 Shelby: Yes, if we took the time to actually dive in here and look that what the Pharisees are doing are trying to catch Him to see whether or not He will heal on the Sabbath. They're focused on the Sabbath and keeping the rules, as opposed to whether or not He can heal.

10:05 They're even looking past the miracle. The fact that Jesus is God performing a miracle, they're like, "Is He going to do it on the Sabbath?" No wonder He was angry. If only I could be angry about those kind of things, too.

10:18 Paul: Well, there's another connection here and it's that the Pharisees' anger was a result of the hardness of their hearts and in the hardness of their hearts, they lacked love for this man, which would have meant they would say to Jesus, "Go for it. Do this. What a lovely thing to do on the Sabbath."

10:45 Shelby: Yes, the love would outweigh the rule-keeping.

10:50 Paul: So, mirror again. My everyday anger is connected to the hardness of my heart. For example, if I would say something, in a moment of irritation, nasty to Luella, that's hardness of heart because if I loved her the way I should love her, that would mollify that anger and I wouldn't express this angry thing I'm about to express.

11:26 Now, I don't want to think of myself as having a hardened heart. In fact, there are Christians who think that no Christian can ever have a hard heart, except Hebrews 3 talks about the possibility of us having a hardened heart — believers.

11:44 Shelby: Yes, except that.

11:45 Paul: The passage is written to brothers, Christians. So it's very easy in this passage to look at it and say, "Well, I'm on the Jesus side of this equation," when actually you actually live on the Pharisee side more, that often your anger is not about God's kingdom. It's about your kingdom.

12:16 Often your anger is not because you have a soft, sensitive heart like Jesus did, but you have a hard heart and if love ruled that heart, you wouldn't be angry in the ways that you are. I mean, come on, when you're a parent and you're stomping down the hallway, about ready to yell at your kids, you have personalized something that is not personal because your life is all about you. Your children didn't get together and say, "Tonight at 7:50, let's fight. It will drive dad crazy," or, "Let’s..."

13:01 Shelby: I think my kids might be doing that.

13:03 Paul: No, I don't think they are.

13:04 Shelby: No, no, I'm just kidding.

13:05 Paul: "Let's dump crumbs on the counter and just walk away. Mom will freak out, yes." I mean, come on. What kind of weird view of life is that? But that's what we do and so, the beauty of the way scripture works is not only do we see Jesus in all His beauty, but the beauty of Jesus exposes the ugliness in us. I think I'm more often the Pharisee than I am the Jesus figure.

13:40 Shelby: Yes, it's easy for us to look at scripture and go, "I relate to the hero here. I would relate to the Jesus side of this," but you're always the villain. If you could picture yourself in the worst part of whoever's represented here, that's usually my heart.

13:56 And one of the things that's been enormously helpful for me — and you have said this I don't know how many times, but you're so great at turns of phrases and pithy, little things to help, and it's really helped me — is the "fire your inner lawyer" because when I get angry, often it has to do with defending my own thoughts, words, actions, and that kind of thing.

14:20 And there have been moments in the middle of that anger welling up in my chest as I'm talking with my wife, where I go, "I hear Paul Tripp go fire your inner lawyer," and it actually legitimately helps and so, that's one of the things I've really appreciated about you.

14:40 You've encapsulated this idea of say, "Hey, let's not make it all about you." In a few short words, that's "fire your inner lawyer" and I've actually shared that with other people as well, say, "Hey, as you're thinking about going into your marriage counseling session later on today, fire your inner lawyer," and I think that's been enormously helpful for a lot of people.

15:03 Paul: Yes, a companion to that is just praying for a soft heart. You know, if I think about... let's say it's 10 o'clock, Luella has had a long busy day, she's tired, a soft heart would say, "I'm not going to complain to her about something inconsequential, something in the scheme of what's important doesn't make any difference at all," then she goes to bed rattled emotionally, not feeling loved and appreciated.

15:43 That's hard heart stuff and part of the dynamic of a hard heart is it doesn't look into the experience of another person and say what does it look like to love that person in this situation. If these Pharisees had for one moment put themselves in the position of that man with a withered hand, what would they have wanted Jesus to do?

16:16 Shelby: Yes, it's so obvious. Yes, it's just a lack of empathy.

16:20 Paul: And Jesus, because He has that kind of heart, He's the definition of love, saw through all of the legalisms and saw this man.

16:34 Shelby: Yes, and saw their motivations, their hearts, what was going on in their thoughts, was able to cut through that and extend love, extend empathy, and, in the process, be angry because I noticed when it says here in verse five, ^5aAnd He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. So there was anger and grief that were combined with one another because of their hard hearts.

17:04 Paul: Well, what we've just seen is exactly what the Old Testament presents to us — that the anger of Jesus is the result of His love. He's angry at this moment because He loves this man. He's not angry because the Pharisees are arguing with Him, all the stuff that would make us mad. He's angry because He loves this man.

17:28 Shelby: Yes, and I think about when anybody has ever threatened or even come close to injuring one of my daughters, I get angry at the fact that they might be hurt, injured, emotionally rattled, like you said with Luella.

17:50 And that anger, if you trace it back, it's a direct result of my love for my kids. If I didn't have love for them, I wouldn't be angry if someone threatened them or they were in danger or whatever; but because I love them, I am angry.

18:06 I think that's been a helpful way of me thinking about it, too, of what God's anger is like and we unpacked that a lot in the first episode of going through anger and the dangers and the blessings of that. So it's helpful to understand that anger, in many ways, can be tied to love, especially, when we're talking about God.

18:25 Paul: So let's move forward in Mark to Mark 10. Just read, Shelby, 13-16 there.

18:39 Shelby:¹³And they were bringing children to Him that He might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴But when Jesus saw it, He was indignant [there's that word "indignant"] and said to them, “Let the children come to Me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. ¹⁵Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” ¹⁶And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands on them.

It was a picture of love.

19:12 Paul: Well, it's, it's a picture of love, surely, but we're called to defend the fatherless and widows. That's called justice. The Bible calls us to defend those who are unable to defend themselves and this is what Jesus is doing here.

19:50 Again, this time, it's not the Pharisees. It's the disciples. They get it wrong that somehow, children aren't worthy to come to Jesus and because the children aren't able to defend themselves, Jesus defends them and He's angry that the disciples would have such a response. He says, "^14bLet the children come to Me; do not hinder them, for... such belongs [to] the kingdom of God." What a statement!

20:40 Shelby: Powerful!

20:42 Paul: Again, we're seeing the same connections that are made in the Old Testament. This is Jesus rising in holy justice and saying, "No, this is wrong. These ones aren't able to defend themselves. I will defend them," and it's an unjust understanding of who's worthy to be in God's kingdom.

21:09 Shelby: Yes, because they're not just ushering them away. It says they rebuked them. The disciples rebuked them.

21:16 Paul: So what are you hearing there? Once again, we've got sinful human anger, that's the disciples. "How dare you?" And the holy, righteous anger of Jesus defending these little ones who can't defend themselves.

21:34 Now again, we got to look into the mirror because we're called to Christlike living. How much of my anger is the product of justice? A heart for what is right. Justice has a heart to right wrongs. That's what justice is. Not often. I mean, I don't know how many of us even think that way about our anger?

22:10 Yes, not. When I'm angry, yes, I'm trying to process that right now. My anger is usually always about me. I can't think of any examples other than, like I said, protecting my kids. When I'm angry about that, but most of the time, it has to do with me.

22:29 It has to all about my little kingdom, my wants, my needs, my desires and if someone gets in the way of that, that's where my anger flares up, but not for justice purposes. I'm trying to think of examples in my own life and I can't. It's sad.

22:45 Paul: Now, there are occasions... I mean, I've had occasions when I'm really angry at something our children did when they were still at home and Luella would step in and say, "You're not ready to deal with this yet."

23:04 That's justice because if I went forward, what I would do would be harmful to my children and so, that's an example of she jumps in with a righteous concern and stops me from doing something that would be harmful for our children; but we can be so without that kind of anger in our lives.

23:45 Shelby: Yes, this specifically... I think it might be worth very briefly going over why children were viewed the way that they were viewed in that culture and why would the disciples rebuke children because today, I can't fathom that in our culture today.

24:04 If Jesus were here, telling kids to get away from Him because He's got more important things to do, it just doesn't seem culturally appropriate right now. What was going on in the time that would have made the disciples rebuke people bringing children to Him?

24:22 Paul: Yes, well, without a lengthy conversation about New Testament culture, one of the things I could say is the church has been Church of Jesus Christ we now live in is blessed by passages like this, so we believe in welcoming children into the community of faith.

24:51 We believe in catechizing, teaching our children young. So much of the attention of the church is to bringing up children in the nurture [inaudible] of Lord welcoming them. Our preacher at Tenth [Presbyterian Church] makes... he is brilliant at drawing children into a sermon.

25:17 Shelby: You mentioned that, that he does it during the sermon, not separately.

25:22 Paul: Yes, he... it's just so, so sweet. So that was not the place of children in New Testament culture. If they had any rights, it was through their parents and I think Jesus understood that; and so, what's happening with the disciples is they're dragging a cultural understanding of children into their work as disciples of Jesus and Jesus says, "No, no, no, no, no, no. This is not the culture of my kingdom."

26:05 Shelby: Yes, describing value to people who have been deemed lesser than or invaluable than more important things and Jesus wipes that slate clean and says, "No, no, no, no. Yes, the kids are just as important here."

26:22 Paul: And we know the reason for that is that from the womb, they are beings made in the image of God. That means they have dignity and value in the sight of God, and that value doesn't have to be earned. The value is not a result of adulthood or a societal station. It's... the theological word is it's ontological. It's from creation.

26:56 Shelby: Yes, that's good. That's basically what I wanted to hear you unpack for us, yes. Thank you.

27:02 Paul: And so, it's unjust for them to be treated that way. It's sort of like when I walk by a homeless person. I may be overwhelmed with any ability I have to change that person's condition and that may bother me. That's categorically different than despising that person and saying to the person next to me something terrible about them or pushing them out of the way or whatever and we should mirror the justice of our Lord.

27:59 I think that's why many churches, for example, have diaconal funds because we want to have mercy for those who are in conditions where they're not able to help themselves. Mercy and justice go together. So again, we see Jesus respond to the Pharisees out of love, He's angry because of love. Here, He's angry because of justice. Let's look at John 2:13-17.

28:48 Shelby: John 2:13-17:

¹³The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. ¹⁵And making a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And He poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶And He told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

29:32 Paul: So if you were looking at this passage, Shelby, and you wanted to explain to someone what the reason for the anger of Jesus here is, how would you characterize it?

29:53 Shelby: Yes, you put me on the spot here. I'm here to learn from you, not the other way around, but I would think that there's a misuse of the worship of God. There's an intentional selfishness that's happening here of people trying to benefit off the sacrifices that others need to make to God, so they're doing it in a way they're turning God's place of prayer and a place of worship of Him into something that's solely beneficial for them, and that makes Jesus mad.

30:35 "Indignant" is a better word to use, to the point that He's flipping tables, ushering people out, making a whip, which takes time, trying to drive people out in order to restore the purpose for what this area of the temple was for. How wrong am I?

30:57 Paul: Yes. No, I think you're right. I think there's two things that I would say about this. Perfectly holy Jesus could not walk away from the desecration of His father's temple. I mean, if there's any place on earth that would be treated with holy honor, it would be the temple.

31:43 Shelby: Yes, reverence and respect, yes.

31:45 Paul: Yes, and so, this is the holy heart of Jesus being revealed for us. This is the honor of God Almighty here and it's beautiful. It's because of His purity of heart, because any desecration of the things of God is heartbreaking to Him, that Jesus responds in such anger.

32:25 Again, oh, God, give me this kind of purity of heart, give me this kind of holiness of life that desecrations of You and what You say is right and true and good and beautiful are grieving to me and produce anger in me.

32:56 You know, I think it's easy in an unholy world to make peace with unholiness and to let it into our lives, and what once grieved us doesn't grieve us anymore. What once made us angry doesn't make us angry anymore. My dad had a letter from A.W. Tozer.

33:30 Shelby: Like a personal letter?

33:32 Paul: Yes.

33:33 Shelby: Oh, wow.

33:34 Paul: Because he had corresponded with him and he then was talking about the entrance of television into the world. It was the mid-50s and television was still a fairly new thing and his concern was that it exposed Christian families to things they'd never been exposed to, and it would begin to morally dull the children of God. I can remember reading that letter and thinking — I have it in my files — what a prophet!

34:14 Shelby: Yes, seriously.

34:15 Paul: He knew nothing of what was going to happen. He knew nothing of streaming services, of cellphones, of the fact that we have unholy things pushed at us constantly and you can keep changing, lowering the bar of what's acceptable.

34:47 Shelby: Yes, what once made you angry now makes you frustrated or then, eventually, makes you like apathetic toward the things of God and zeal is no longer a part of what you're experiencing when you see unholiness and sin. And Jesus sees this zeal for God's house has consumed Him. How does it consume me? Is that a good diagnostic question?

35:20 Paul: Zeal for God's things, angry zeal for God's things is a sure indication of a pure and holy heart. It's the only way it ever happens. So three passages we've connected the anger of Jesus to His love, His justice, His holiness. All those themes in the Old Testament are now being portrayed by Jesus. This means there's characterological continuity between God the Father and God the Son.

36:02 Shelby: Yes, yes, it's really important to understand. It's not angry God in the Old Testament, loving God in the New Testament. It's the same God.

36:12 Paul: Yes, and again, you got to get into this passage and understand when Jesus is so moved by the desecration of temple, what is that about? When someone has zeal for the desecration of something that God names as holy, that means that person has to have that pure and holy heart, so it is an indication of that heart in Jesus.

36:49 There's other thing that I think is important to mention. Most people who have studied the temple and studied where this market was set up believe it was in the outer court of the temple. The outer court of the temple was the only place Gentiles were allowed in. They couldn't go any further and so, we're seeing also depicted is Christ's heart of mercy.

37:26 We know way back in the Old Testament that the intention of the redeeming grace of God was spread beyond the Jews to Gentiles and yes, even to the uttermost parts of the earth. These money changers don't care about the plan and purpose of God. They don't care about who's in and who's out, and they gladly remove the Gentiles to set up their money-making business.

37:57 Shelby: Yes, this is the opposite of you are blessed to be a blessing. You are now doing the opposite of that. You are physically and spiritually in the way of allowing Gentiles to be able to have access to God. No wonder, Jesus was angry, especially, because the gospel is intended to go beyond the Jews to the Gentiles and so, the court of the Gentiles, if it's being clogged up, jammed up with people who are trying to make money, you're preventing people access to God and Jesus is the embodiment of access to God.

38:39 Paul: Well, and what you have here, this is the way to understand this — is you have violation of the two great commands in one passage. Love God above all else — you wouldn't desecrate His temple. Love your neighbor as yourself — you wouldn't get in the way of the closest the Gentiles could get to the worship in the temple. Two great commands violated.

39:08 If Jesus could watch the violation of God's two great commands, there's no holiness in Him and again, I just think it's... this is why I love stopping in these passages, because I think you can look at this and not understand the reason Jesus is angry is because the two great commands are being violated.

39:40 Those are the summary of all God requires of us. "Love Me above all else and love your neighbor as yourself." If you love God above all else, you'll keep the first four of the commands and if you love your neighbor as yourself, you'll keep the last six. There it is and you're seeing both those violated in one incident.

40:05 Shelby: Yes, that makes sense, but yes, it takes intentional time to pause and reflect on the connection between this — the significance of what's going on here — and it's just a story where Jesus gets mad because if you gloss over this, if you read it quickly, you're like, "Okay, I don't understand. Jesus is angry here for some reason," and you might jump to conclusions that aren't accurate at all.

40:32 Paul: So let's make a very modern current application of this. Again and again, Christians' anger against other Christians on social media is justified by this passage. "Well, Jesus turned over the tables." He did it because the two great commands were being violated.

41:03 If I would ask myself, "Is this person I'm angry at, are they in violation of the command to honor God, love God above all else, and love their neighbor as their self," most often, my answer would be no. They disagree with me on some issue of theology or biblical interpretation, but they're not standing against love of God or love of neighbor.

41:30 Shelby: Yes, again, the action looks similar on the outside, but what's the heart motivation going on in the inside? If the motivation is not about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself, it's about you.

41:48 It's putting you... is your anger a godly anger, a Godward anger or is it a personal anger? And a lot of times, it's a personal anger. I have literally seen clips of people giving sermons talking about politics and literally flipping tables in the middle of sermons, and saying, "It was okay for Jesus to do it and it's okay for us to be angry at this," and people applauding during the sermon. I'm like, the motivation is purely selfish here, has nothing to do with God or the love of other people. It makes me sad.

42:26 Paul: Yes, and we know that in Jesus, too, Peter says when He was threatened, He uttered no threats, but He committed Himself to His heavenly Father, judges all things justly. Same Jesus and in those situations, He didn't turn over any tables.

42:47 This is the holy heart of our Messiah, so beautiful. Angry because of the violation of God's command to love Him above all else and love your neighbor as yourself, and both of those things are being violated by these businessmen. Again, oh, give me grace that my anger is rooted in my love for God and love for neighbor, and not the opposite.

43:26 Shelby: Yes, and we have to be careful there, too, because it's like you said. On social media, I've seen so many... I mean, there are people who make their entire career out of going on YouTube and criticizing other people, criticizing other believers.

43:43 They would call into question their salvation and they would call them wolves in sheep's clothing, but they would look at something like this and justify how they act, and there's always that — even if I agree with them, I'm kind of like, "Yes, but the way that you're doing this seems like you're driven more by a personal anger than a love for God," and may we take that, flip it around, and examine ourselves because how often is my anger motivated by the love of God and love of people? It's just not. It's motivated by love for self.

44:18 Paul: Well, you get it here, too. Jesus wasn't desiring to do bodily harm to these people. He wasn't going to say a bunch of horrible things. He stayed on subject to His Father's house.

44:40 Shelby: How often are you able to stay on subject in the middle of an argument?

44:43 Paul: Wow.

44:45 Shelby: Yes, we flail. We scramble all the time and if you get accused of something, "Well, you did this," or, "Well, you did this or this situation made me do this," and yes, we don't stay on subject at all, so. And then, we justify it by looking at this and say, "Well, Jesus was able to get angry, too," and, yes, apples and oranges.

45:07 Paul: Okay, Luke 11. I'm going to ask you to read a rather lengthy passage of scripture. This is one of the most inflammatory, accusatory statements that Christ made.

45:35 Shelby: 11, what verses?

45:37 Paul: 37-54.

45:38 Shelby: Okay. This is entitled "Woes to the Pharisees and Lawyers".

³⁷While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to dine with him, so He went in and reclined at table. ³⁸The Pharisee was astonished to see that He did not first wash before dinner. ³⁹And the Lord said to him...

46:00 Paul: Okay, let's just get the scene here.

46:02 Shelby: Yes, yes. "Astonished" is a strong word.

46:06 Paul: He's been invited over to somebody's house for dinner. Just keep... this is a dinner conversation. Go ahead.

46:15 Shelby:³⁹And the Lord said to him “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

That's a good opening line for dinner table.

46:29 ⁴⁰You fools! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

⁴²“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. ⁴³Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. ⁴⁴Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”

47:07 ⁴⁵One of the lawyers answered Him, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.” ⁴⁶And He said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. ⁴⁷Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. ⁴⁸So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹Therefore also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ ⁵⁰so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, ⁵¹from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. ⁵²Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”

48:14 ⁵³As He went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press Him hard and to provoke Him to speak about many things, 54lying in wait for Him, to catch Him in something He might say.

48:33 Paul: In a way, this moment is shocking to us because by our standards, what Jesus is doing here is impolite, out of place and it doesn't go in the category of nice, yet this is Holy Jesus. Clearly, these are the words of an angry man and they're accusatory and judgmental, and the listeners know that because they say, "You're insulting us." Well, duh.

49:43 Shelby: "Teacher, you're insulting us."

49:44 Paul: Now, because of that, we have to ask again, what is the reason for this deep-seated anger of Jesus? And, wow, He has no trouble going after them. Well, what has happened is the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees who are the religious leaders of the day have bought into and are promoting a righteousness that's not true righteousness.

50:28 You know this when Jesus says, "You cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness." Think of this. Think if you have dirty dishes, you have a dirty bowl and you just clean the outside of the bowl and you put it in the cupboard.

50:52 Makes no sense at all. Then Jesus — Matthew 23[:25-26] records this — Jesus says, "First, clean the inside of the dish and the outside will become clean." You can't do this with your dishes at home. What He's charging these guys with — you got to understand the metaphor — is this was not a heart religion.

51:21 This was externalism. This was performative behaviorism that had nothing to do with the true character and true condition of these men. It's a complete distortion of everything God unleashed His grace to produce in us and they were promoting this false religion as true religion, and laying that burden on others.

52:04 We know that the promise of the New Covenant work of Jesus is "I will give them a new heart" because the heart is the control center of your personhood. Your body will only ever go where your heart has gone first and so, redeeming grace is about the reclamation of our hearts and the transformation of our hearts. I mean, you can feel my energy as I'm talking. This is reprehensible religiosity. This form of religion sends people to hell.

52:45 Shelby: Yes, yes. No wonder, He's angry.

52:49 Paul: It's horrible. It couldn't be worse because it's damning, false religion masquerading as true religion. It is absolutely wolves in sheep's clothing.

53:15 Shelby: Right, yes. There's a theologian who once said that he needed to be, not necessarily rescued from a lot of sinful behavior, but needed to be rescued from his damnable good works and that phrase has stuck with me quite a bit, my damnable good works.

53:36 What are my good things that I do that I think will give me access to God, give me access to a better life, give me access to whatever the blessings God is willing to give me, but actually my good deeds stand in the way of God's grace?

53:53 That's something that kind of is difficult to register for a lot of Christians, especially, if we've been raised in an environment where church is like "you do these things, you behave this way, you say these things, you act in a certain manner that's in line with what religion is supposed to do" and yet, their hearts can be totally dark on the inside.

54:15 Paul: Absolutely, and so, Jesus, who is going to be the final sacrificial lamb, the means by which redeeming, reconciling, justifying, sanctifying grace will flow to all those who believe couldn't possibly be in this situation and not be angry because this is an absolute distortion of what God is after in us and what true righteousness looks like.

54:59 Now, the thing that we have to talk about is this is inside of the true church. These were Old Testament experts. These were experts in all the scriptures that were available to them. These were people who gave and attended worship and knew God's law.

55:29 And so, here's the warning — it's so important to talk about this — that the greatest danger to the church is always found inside of the church, not out of it. It's what caused Martin Luther to nail those Ninety-five Theses. He wasn't attacking the surrounding culture.

55:55 He was concerned about the distortions of the gospel inside of the church and that migration away from a rest in the righteousness of Christ to a rest in my own righteousness, pride in what I could have never achieved or produced on my own, taking credit for what only God could do, Paul says, "If what we have we have received, then why then should we boast?"

56:42 Shelby: Yes, it was a gift.

56:43 Paul: Yes, so when we read these passages, what the Pharisees have done to biblical faith should make us angry, too.

57:02 Shelby: Yes, and when we take it lightly, we're missing the point. We're missing what's actually going on and again, this is often something that we have trouble flipping around and looking at ourselves, but we need to allow this to be a mirror to us.

57:19 Where am I the Pharisee and the lawyer in this? Where has my heart bent? Where is it inclined to go as a Pharisee or a lawyer and where do I need to hear the gracious words of Jesus say "woe to me"?

57:32 Paul: Well, let's use the metaphor, the word picture. Where am I cleaning the outside of the cup so I look good in front of people, so I'm ostensibly doing the right things, but inside is unclean? That's really convicting and the warning here — this is where the spiritual warfare aspect of this comes in — the enemy of our souls will gladly give us biblical literacy, theological knowledge, money in the offering, church attendance, episodic moments of ministry if he can claim and rule our hearts.

58:26 Shelby: Yes, he'll give you religion. He'll give you that, yes, as long as your heart's not engaged with it.

58:33 Paul: In fact, I would say that formal religion is one of his most effective tools.

58:38 Shelby: Wow! Now, that might rub a lot of people the wrong way.

58:44 Paul: Because if all you have is formal religion, you name yourself as "okay" when you may be far from okay. It's like a child raised in a Christian family who thinks he's okay because he's part of a Christian family. That's outside-of-the-cup stuff.

59:11 Shelby: Yes, it took me a while to understand that, too. You cannot piggyback off of the faith of other people, as a child, as a young person, too. And this is in particular scary to me because I am bent toward being a Pharisee and I relied on that most of my life.

59:32 I didn't become a Christian until I was nineteen and even when I became a Christian at 19, I thought I've already done so much, I've already learned so much, I've already studied so much. I can't go back to the beginning again and, by the grace of God, He gently tapped me on the shoulder and said, "That's pride and that's the very thing that I came to rescue you from, was from yourself."

59:53 So there are a lot of self-righteous, religious people who need to examine things, passages like this because Jesus is — just like with the Pharisees and the lawyers — He's trying to get after your heart. He wants your heart.

1:00:05 Paul: So we should be deeply and eternally grateful that God chose for our children to be raised in a family of faith, raised in the context of the community of the church; but we should be deeply concerned that our children were raised in family of faith and raised in context of the church because there's an enemy who would like to deceive them into thinking that's all that's necessary. And how many times you've heard people who were raised Christian homes, who later in life come to know the Lord because they were lulled to spiritual sleep because of outside-of-the-cup stuff?

1:01:07 Shelby: Yes, when I became a Christian, the night I became a Christian, I was at a Cru large group event and they were sharing the gospel from up front. Two students were sharing the gospel and I was so convicted that I'd never actually said yes to Jesus that I left the meeting early, went down the hall to the men's bathroom, pulled out a little track that was in my wallet, flipped to the back and said, "Lord, I need You. Will You come into my life and forgive me of my sins?"

1:01:36 And so, I prayed to receive Christ right there in a men's bathroom. I remember I came out and just before the meeting was done, my Bible study leader, so the guy who had been leading me in Bible study for almost a full year was standing in the hallway waiting to greet students as they came out and I went up to him and I said, "Dave, I just want you to know I just became a Christian," and he was like, "What?"

1:01:57 He was so confused because I'd been coming to Bible study for the year. I knew all the right answers. I knew how to behave well. I was not partying and drinking. I wasn't sleeping around and so, my cup on the outside was very clean, but I was convicted in that meeting that the inside of my cup was incredibly dirty to the point that I had fooled even my Bible study leader.

1:02:19 So that should be a warning sign for all parents. Your kids are not Christians because you're a Christian. You should make sure that they make their decisions on their own, lead them, guide them, instruct them, teach them, yes; but they will catch more than they're taught and so, live the Christian life in front of them.

1:02:40 Paul: So in this moment when Christ is going after these leaders so powerfully, we've already said He could not remain silent with this horrible distortion of God's redeeming plan, but there's nothing that motivated it, is He was angry at the crushing burden of this legalism on the average Jew.

1:03:20 And so again, you see His anger is a combination of His Holiness and His mercy. That kind of legalism will crush you because you never can measure up. The minute you think you've arrived, there's a higher standard.

1:03:45 My way of expressing that, what legalism does, it's like standing in the middle of a gymnasium and being told that I have to jump up and touch the ceiling. You cannot, you cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot become acceptable to God by the keeping of His law. It's impossible and the minute we shift from a grace-based faith to a law-based faith, we've lost the plot.

1:04:28 Now, that doesn't mean God's law isn't a wonderful guide for your life. It is and it's a beautiful job of exposing your sin, but it has no power whatsoever to radically transform your heart and to achieve reconciliation with God.

1:04:50 Shelby: Yes, and I like the intentional contrast here in the scripture, too, that when Jesus reclined at table, they were astonished to see that He first didn't wash. "Astonished" is not a word that I use very often in my everyday language, but...

1:05:12 Paul: That astonishes me.

1:05:14 Shelby: No, it doesn't, but it's a powerful word. They're so taken aback by the fact that Jesus didn't obey this one outward washing of the cup and He immediately goes after their heart.

1:05:28 Paul: What that tells you, Shelby, is they're constantly keeping score. That's what they are. That's what self-righteousness does. I'm constantly keeping score and you know that when you're constantly keeping score, the people you're scoring never measure up as much as you do.

1:05:52 Shelby: Yes, you're always in the lead.

1:05:53 Paul: You're always in the lead. You always win, but they're score keepers. They're sitting with the Messiah, for Pete's sake. Come on.

1:06:04 Shelby: Yes, and they're trying to tally whether or not He's actually doing what He's supposed to do.

1:06:09 Paul: How mortifying it is to be so spiritually blind that you're astonished by what the Messiah does.

1:06:20 Shelby: Yes, just ridiculous, just absolute foolishness and it's actually really good.

1:06:26 Paul: But again, remember who we're talking about. These are the big religious leaders of the day.

1:06:32 Shelby: Yes, it's good to see this, too, because there can be two people sitting in the front pew of a church and their lives, moralistically, could look exactly the same. Morally, they could be very on the same page, living a life that's honorable, showing up to church, reading their Bibles, praying and all that kind of stuff, but one person can be doing it out of their love for God and one person can be doing it because they're trying to appease God or they're trying to impress other people; and even though they might look morally the same, they're on two entirely different planets.

1:07:09 Paul: Well, we could do it this way. You have two people, two men, both married, sitting in Sunday morning service. They look exactly the alike. After the service, the wife does something irritating to the one man in the car and he rips her for twenty minutes 'til they get home. The other man gets in the car and he says to his wife, "Dear, that was a very convicting service for me and I realize how unloving I can be toward you, and I just want your forgiveness."

1:08:03 Externally, they look exactly alike, but they're actually different, different men. One man is blind to the massive contradiction that has just taken place in his life, from flipping the switch so quickly from worship to abuse of anger; and the other man carries that worship into the car in the form of confession.

1:08:50 So you know what's beautiful about these passages is in examining the anger of Jesus, we learn so much about our own spiritual struggles and the ways we can just get things wrong. We can think we're so right and, I mean, you're in a conservative, gospel-centered, biblical church, you're one of the good guys. But if you would have interviewed a Pharisee, they would have said the same thing.

1:09:32 Shelby: Yes, they would have said, "I'm one of the good guys," yes. They never thought they were the brood of vipers. They never thought they were the whitewashed tombs. They never thought they were the dirty cups on the inside and that's why they're so offended by Jesus because once you get called out for what's actually going on inside your heart, there's a tension there and that response shows you exactly who you are. If you respond in defensiveness and anger, it's proving the point. If you respond in tenderness and humility, that shows you where your heart actually is.

1:10:14 Paul: So what I want to do is summarize that what we're seeing is there is complete continuity between the anger of God that's revealed in the Old Testament and the anger of Jesus in His time here on earth.

1:10:34 It's a function of His love. It's a function of His holiness. It's a function of His justice. I's a function of His mercy and for that, we should be thankful. Shelby, we just have to get away from viewing the anger of God as the embarrassing uncle of His characteristics that we need to hide from the rest of the family and if God were not angry in the ways that we have seen revealed in scripture, there would be no cross. It's the anger of God with sin meeting the grace of God that sent Jesus to the cross, so the anger of God gets right to the heart of redeeming grace.

1:11:42 Shelby: Yes, and I said this in the last podcast, a lot of people think that the opposite of love is hate or anger, but it's not. It's actually... the opposite of love is apathy and so, if we're apathetic toward other people, like the man with the withered hand, for example, they just didn't care about him at all.

1:12:04 That showed what was going on in their hearts and so, if we want to be loving people, there is going to be anger attached to that, just like I was saying with my daughters. There's something that comes to threaten them, I will be angry at that and that is a good thing because that shows how much I love them and care about them; and we see that reflect. And that happens because I am made in the image of God. It's a reflection of God.

1:12:34 Paul: Yes, so I want to turn for the last of our conversation on anger to what the Bible says about our anger. Well, we know right away without looking at any more passage of scripture that the command of the New Testament of God to us is, 'Be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy."

1:13:00 That means in every dimension of our lives, so the application would be, in this topic, as God is holy in His anger, I should be holy in my anger. My anger should be the function of love. My anger should be the function of a pure and holy heart. My anger should be a function of justice. My anger should be a function of mercy.

1:13:27 And so, it's right for us to say, "Lord, I'm not there. Please rescue me from me. Please transform my heart. Please make me holy like You're holy because I cannot say with honesty that in every situation, the anger that I experience and the anger that I express in words and behavior is a result of those four things," and in that way, when it comes to anger, I am not holy as He is holy.

1:14:07 Now, for that, I cry out for transforming grace, but don't close your heart to the fact that our anger is [an] evidence that we have not arrived. Our anger is evidence that there is work that still needs to be done. I'm thankful that I'm a different man than I was ten years ago, but I pray that in another ten years, I'll be a much more godly man than I am today.

1:14:59 And anger is just one of those obvious signs, it's like taking your temperature. Why does the doctor always take your temperature? Because it's a clear sign of your health. Your anger is a clear sign of your spiritual health. It's like taking your temperature. How, when, why are you angry? Look at that. It's a very helpful indication of your spiritual health.

1:15:33 Shelby: Yes, how often would you say that the average person needs to do something like that? Is that like a daily thing? Is that like [an] every hour kind of a deal? Or what's your routine for keeping that kind of stuff in check? I know that's a super practical question, but...

1:15:56 Paul: No, I think, well, everyday. I think every time I open God's word, whether it's for personal devotions or for preparation or something, my prayer is that it would be a mirror to me and God would show me myself as I actually am.

1:16:15 Often when I am preparing to teach or preach, I call it my "head down in my Bible" moments when I'm just broken and grieved by my own sin and praying for God's grace for me; and so, you look for those spiritual thermometers and anger is clearly one of those.

1:16:50 Shelby: Yes, I found that whenever I wake up in the morning, everyday, the old man, so to speak, the old version of Shelby is resurrected again and I need to remind myself often through the mirror of God's word through prayer to help me recalibrate and make sure that I'm thinking properly, I'm speaking properly, I'm viewing God properly, and a great way to do that is in His word and through prayer; but it's difficult to do, especially, when you're struggling with something specific that's making you angry.

1:17:35 Paul: Yes, and I want to make sure that the people watching or listening understand when I'm talking about anger as a spiritual thermometer, I'm not talking about your standing before God. My standing before God has been secured by the perfectly righteous life, acceptable sacrifice, victorious resurrection, and royal priestly ascension of Jesus.

1:18:11 He looks at me through the righteousness of Jesus. That hymn that I love, "I need no other argument, I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died, and Jesus died for me." When Jesus said it's finished, He meant it.

1:18:28 We're talking about honestly estimating your spiritual health, your need for growth, your need for the further transforming work of grace. Classic theological term: sanctification. So that's what we're talking about.

1:18:53 You don't examine yourself to see if you're still worthy of God's love because that's settled, but you should care about living in a way that's pleasing, honoring, glorifying God and is consistent with the march of His work of grace in your life.

1:19:13 Shelby: Yes, regardless, too, of how long you've been a Christian. So I think it could be easy to say, "Well, I've been a Christian for 25 years, I don't need to work at this anymore." No, we're always a work in progress.

1:19:24 There's big things that God takes care of initially when we're sanctified in those early process, but we need to remember that sanctification is not... it's a means to an end. It's a preparatory thing to get us ready for spending eternity with God.

1:19:41 Sanctification is not just to ruin your fun or make you go through hard times or to purify you just for the sake of God being this kind of angry person who wants to punish His children. No, it's a means to an end.

1:19:59 Sanctification draws you closer to the heart of God and if our goal in life is to know God and to make Him known, this is one of the best ways to do that, is to take your temperature and look at what's going on in your life right now. Are you growing? Are you more sanctified than you were the day before?

1:20:20 Paul: And I want to say, as you're seeking to take your temperature — this is important to say — don't look out because you're always able to find somebody less righteous than you.

1:20:34 Shelby: Yes, I'm very good at that.

1:20:36 Paul: Don't look within because as long as sin is inside of us, there's going to be pockets of spiritual blindness. You look into the best diagnostic ever. What is that? The word of God. The word of God is written to be that mirror and that's what we've been doing and as we talked about anger, what's happened?

1:21:04 We can't talk about the anger of Jesus without it being a mirror onto our own anger. I love that that's been what our conversation has done because that's what's God's word is supposed to be. These things were retained for our example and our instruction.

1:21:23 Yes, okay, one verse in Ephesians 4, I'll read it. Verse 26:

²⁶Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.

I want to look at this passage, basically, to say that it holds out the possibility that between the "already" of our conversion and the "not yet" of our homegoing, we can actually have anger that's not sinful.

1:21:55 Shelby: It's possibility.

1:21:56 Paul: Yes. Be angry, but don't sin and then, the command goes on. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. Anger undealt with is anger that grows.

1:22:17 Shelby: For sure.

1:22:18 Paul: It never gets less because you're rehearsing and as you do, anger increases. I can remember when Luella and I were first married, we covenanted with one another that we would never go to sleep angry.

1:22:37 Shelby: I've heard of couples doing that before.

1:22:38 Paul: In the early days, we would lay in bed holding our eyes open, waiting for the other person to confess first.

1:22:46 Shelby: Because you're so tired. Great marital practice there.

1:22:50 Paul: No, we were... it was a combination of being tired and being stubborn, but I want to say I've joked about this, Luella and I have never had any things in our closet. We just don't carry things. We have really, really sought to keep short accounts. What in the closet, I mean full of bitterness and anger, and that's why when you're talking about something happening today and you say, "Six weeks ago, you... and you remember when we were on vacation two years ago?"

1:23:32 That's all stuff that hasn't been dealt with. You've let the sun go down on your anger and it comes flowing out. It's been such a blessing just to take this command seriously and to be able to deal with the issue of the moment because we've kept short accounts and I think much of the health of our marriage has been attributable to that.

1:24:08 Shelby: Yes, because if you sweep stuff under the rug and you think, "I'll just let it go. I don't want to get involved in an argument or...," it will pop out again. It'll come out again. There's no such thing as making it disappear.

1:24:21 Paul: I'm kind of confused. Is the rug in the closet?

1:24:25 Shelby: You're the one that used the closet illustration, not me. But I have noticed that, that there have been plenty of times, if there's a swelling anger, it's usually cumulative, based on previous conversations, previous hurts, previous feelings of being dishonored or disrespected or offended or whatever; and that stuff, it just cannot be buried. It can't be pushed down. It will pop out again, so keeping short accounts is a great way to apply the scripture and help us to understand really what God wants us to do in the face of anger.

1:25:02 Paul: So I want to get to what may be our last passage here. This is James 4:1-10. I just don't think you can have a biblical understanding of anger and your anger and my anger apart from this passage. It's just so foundational and extremely practical and convicting.

1:25:35 Shelby:¹What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? ²You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ⁴You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that He has made to dwell in us”? ⁶But He gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

1:26:51 Paul: This passage is helpful and convicting in so many different levels. If you would approach a seven-year-old child, and you would say, "What causes all these quarrels and fights between you and your sibling," what would the expected answer be?

1:27:21 Shelby: It's their fault. It's someone else did something.

1:27:26 Paul: So our fundamental error in understanding our anger — his is so important to say — is to look outside of ourselves to explain it. The people in your life, the situations in your life do not explain the causality for your anger.

1:27:51 Now, in this situation, we're talking sinful anger. What causes fights and quarrels among you? That's the age-old question everybody who's a human being, religious, areligious, and non-religious would ask because we all have conflict in our lives.

1:28:12 And immediately, scripture, instead of calling us to look outside of ourselves to explain the anger, tells us to look inside of ourselves. ^1bIs it not this, that your passions are at war within you? ^2aYou desire and do not have.

1:28:36 There it is. My anger is a result of thwarted desire. I want to be agreed with. I want to be first in the line. I want the biggest cookie on the cookie sheet. You know, the examples are endless. ^2bYou covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

1:29:07 Now, that word "covet" is important because twice, I think it is, the Apostle Paul names covetousness as what? Idolatry, so he's talking about desires that now rule our hearts. Rather than our hearts being ruled by our Lord, our hearts are ruled by something else in a particular situation or a particular relationship.

1:29:40 This is enormously helpful. So the love of God and love of neighbor that should be ruling me in those moments is not ruling me. It's been moved aside by some other God-replacement. I want to be right. I want to be in control. I want peace and comfort, whatever the issue.

1:30:07 ^3aYou ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly. What's the wrongly? To satisfy these passions. A passion is probably a desire coupled with emotion. Now, here's the ticket. ^4aYou adulterous people! What is he talking about?

1:30:34 Shelby: Yes, what does adultery have to do with it?

1:30:36 Paul: It sounds like, all of a sudden, in this provocative, helpful conversation of anger, Paul is changing the subject. He's not and I was a very angry man. This passage blew my head off in a way that was just life-transforming.

1:31:01 ^4aYou adulterous people! What he means is that sinful human anger is rooted in spiritual adultery. The love that I'm supposed to have for God has been replaced by love for something else. If even in this moment and as long as sin still lives inside of us, we will oscillate between true worship of God and idolatry. So in this moment, what's driving my heart is not love for God. It's craving, it's worship of something else. Confession here — one of the big ones for me is time. I incessantly measure time.

1:32:08 Shelby: I've noticed this about you.

1:32:09 Paul: I have never used an alarm in my life.

1:32:15 Shelby: Really? I didn't know that.

1:32:16 Paul: I can say to myself if I'm having to get to a plane early in the morning, wake up at 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, I wake up.

1:32:24 Shelby: Really?

1:32:26 Paul: Yes, it's nothing to be esteemed. It's just insanity.

1:32:30 Shelby: Yes, I was going to say you're very rare that way.

1:32:32 Paul: But I'm very project-oriented. I know exactly how all my assigned duties in life, how long it should take me. I am always rushing in a competition with myself to get things done and I hate having to wait. One of my biggest struggles with Luella is she's not that way. She's very methodical. She's under the mistaken notion of doing something well is better than doing it quickly.

1:33:13 Shelby: Mistaken notion. You're still wrestling with it right now, actually.

1:33:20 Paul: And I've had to confess more than I would like to admit that that becomes a more ruling thing in my heart than love is. And all of us have areas of susceptibility like that, so in those moments, I'm angry, not as a product of love, pure heart, justice, or mercy, but because what I want has been thwarted.

1:34:13 It's just spiritual adultery or another term, idolatry and that to me was because I could always say, "Isn't it right to be on time?" You know, I had ways of justifying that anger and this just took them all away. I mean, I don't know when I felt like my heart was more naked before the Lord. I was just exposed by this passage, for which I am eternally grateful, but it was mortifying.

1:34:51 Shelby: Did it have to do with the word "adulterous" in particular? Was that something that was very intentional about going after your heart because adultery is such a strong word.

1:35:05 Paul: Well, it's just such an ugly thing. That indictment was very, very convicting. Notice how what God is doing in the midst of this. He says ^5bHe yearns jealously over the spirit that He has made to dwell in us. Notice it's not Holy Spirit. It's talking "soul" here. Look at the contrast. While I'm giving away my heart, God is fighting for my heart in redeeming grace.

1:35:53 Shelby: Yes, I think that it's important to understand that the hurt that can come with actual adultery that happens between a married couple is it's because there is such love there, like when love is betrayed, it's just the deepest kind of hurt and so, God intentionally uses this word to help us understand that His anger comes as a result of His love here. Again, we're coming back to that same thing.

1:36:30 Paul: And remember that Ezekiel uses graphic sexual language to describe the idolatry and spiritual adultery of Israel because that was meant to be graphic and distasteful and...

1:36:51 Shelby: Rattling.

1:36:52 Paul: That's picked up in this passage that...

1:36:54 Shelby: Yes, I love that.

1:36:58 Paul: Sinful human anger is rooted in spiritual adultery. It's the result of love for God being replaced by love for something else and because God loves us, He yearns jealously over our souls. And then, he says ^6bGod opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. ⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

1:37:38 Here's what you need to understand. Sinful anger must be dealt with vertically before you'll ever get control over it horizontally. My problem is not, first, with you. My problem is with God. My problem with Luella is not, first, that I don't love Luella enough. My problem is I don't love God enough and because I don't, I don't love Luella enough. That's the order and that is just such an important insight.

1:38:13 Shelby: Yes, so helpful. Yes, yes.

1:38:15 Paul: And that's right where James goes. He doesn't say, "Okay, you got to manage your anger." I have to say this. Our hope is not in anger management. Our hope is in heart realignment. It's got to be said. You know that trying to manage your anger is like trying to keep a keg of dynamite from exploding when it's already been lit.

1:39:06 You won't successfully do that for long and so, often, anger management is just behavioral management. You know, get out of the situation but the thing is, this problem has been solved. It's like me saying to you, "You better be glad I'm a Christian because if I wasn't a Christian, I would deck you."

1:39:35 Now, is that where God wants me? Absolutely not because the battle for the heart is lost. I may not be hitting you, but I'm murdering you in my heart and so, this is not an anger management passage. Now, if that's where you are in your spiritual growth, that's a good thing. It's a good thing you're no longer hitting people, but don't think that's the battle solved.

1:40:09 Shelby: Right, yes, and that might be a very concerning thing for people to hear, too, because they think, "I can't control it. I can't manage my own anger in order to get to a certain place." This is not self-help. This should lead you to a spot of neediness. This should lead you to a spot of going, "I can't control this. I can't do this. God, I need You to do this for me." That's a really great position to be in.

1:40:34 Paul: You may successfully hold your arms at your side, but the rage, the hatred, the desire for bad things to happen to that person, that is only removed by transforming grace and that's why it says ^7asubmit yourselves therefore to God — surrender and ^7bresist the devil, and he will flee from you, which is wonderful.

1:41:16 Shelby: Yes, crazy.

1:41:17 Paul: He's not fleeing from my power, but the power of the One who lives within me. ^8aDraw near to God, and He will draw near to you. And notice again, this goes back to earlier. "Cleanse your hands and purify your hearts." "Hands" is behavior and heart. You got to fight the battle on both levels.

1:41:35 But I think this insight that human anger is rooted in spiritual adultery, that if I want to understand my anger, I don't look outside. I look inside and if I want to solve my anger, I do that first vertically before I ever try to solve it horizontally.

1:41:58 Shelby: Yes, and reminding yourself, too, the beginning of verse 6. ^6aBut He gives more grace. We need that grace. To think that we can control it ourselves is impossible to do.

1:42:11 Paul: Yes, and then, that's a beautiful thing to point out. I also think, at the end, James says, "Can I be honest with you? Your problem isn't that you don't laugh enough. Your problem is you don't weep enough. Let your laughter be turned to mourning."

1:42:35 If God would give us eyes to see ourselves as we actually are, we would weep. Not weep because we think we're going to hell, because we know our destiny's secure and our standing is secure; but weep at how far we are from where grace could enable us to be.

1:43:07 Shelby: Yes, and know that in this process, it's not about getting to this kind of phantom spot where we're not angry anymore. God wants to be with us in that process. It's about the "now" as much as it is about the destination.

1:43:22 A lot of times, we think we'll get to heaven one day. "I will be like this one day, this won't be a problem anymore." Well, that doesn't mean we should neglect the present. God wants to be working in our lives and be next to us in this process, extending grace as we become sanctified more and more.

1:43:42 Paul: You know, I think one of the things God does is He gives us exposure to things that He uses metaphors for us. I've known the Lord for a long time and I have a high level of biblical literacy and theological understanding, and it can be a temptation to think I arrived.

1:44:12 And I was listening to an interview with Michael Jordan, probably the best, greatest basketball player who ever lived. I think by the time of this interview, he had won several championships and the interviewer said, "What should the day of a game like for you?"

1:44:36 He said, "Well, I'm usually the first one in the gym shooting shots. And the person said, "Well, you're one of the best ever," and he said, "My shooting percentage hovered between 50%-51%." He said, "That means almost half the time, I failed. I will never stop practicing," and I thought, what an application to our lives with the Lord. I was listening to, years ago, an interview with Bette Midler, who in the 70s and 80s was renowned for her voice and she began talking about her career, and she said, "I still take voice lessons."

1:45:38 Shelby: Oh, really?

1:45:41 Paul: And she said, "I'm going to do voice lessons 'til I'm gone," and I thought both those examples, I really believe that my Lord brought those into my life to be a word picture of where He wants me. I'm never going to stop studying His word. I'm never going to stop looking into that mirror. I'm never going to stop confessing because whatever a topic I look at, I'm filled with awe at the beauty of my Lord and filled with grief at how far I am from it.

1:46:31 We have seen a gorgeous picture of what anger can be in its purest, holiest, just most loving and merciful form; and we also have seen how ugly anger can be. God's anger is a huge blessing to us. Our anger can be a huge spiritual danger to us and, by God's grace, we can do better. We can be better.

1:47:13 Rather than running to righteous arguments that justify our anger, how about running to God in humble confession and say, "Wow, there's a lot more spiritual adultery in my life than I would have thought there was. There are a lot more moments when I'm ruled by something else other than You, and I'm here to humble myself before You and say, "Please help."

1:47:49 Shelby: Yes, those are beautiful, beautiful prayers because it exposes your neediness and I think it's important to remember that God loves needy people. He loves needy people because it allows Him to shine.

1:48:04 Paul: The promise of the gospel is a broken and contrite heart He won't despise. Come to him in brokenness. He sees through your righteousness.

1:48:17 Shelby: Yes, He gives grace to the humble.

1:48:21 Paul: Yes, and you come, submit to Him. The exalting will be done by Him. You don't need to do it and anger is one of those things that I just think, "Who could stand before the scriptural description of righteous anger in all of its mercy and all of its justice and all of its love, and not say, "I fall short of that standard." We all do and for that, I'm very thankful for our four hours of conversation. They've been a huge reminder to me, hugely convicting to me and motivating.

1:49:10 Shelby: Yes, yes, and thanks for being honest. From the beginning, you talk about your anger and even talking about this example that you had earlier with just being honest about what you wrestle with, too, because sometimes, we could look at our heroes and go, "I'll never be like that because I'm just never going to achieve that."

1:49:28 So I appreciate you being authentic about your continuing struggles with these things because it exposes our need for the gospel and weakness as an advantage if dependence on Jesus is the actual goal, so.

1:49:44 Paul: Well, it's gotten hard for me to call others to confession and be unwilling to confess myself, yes. And I want to say, as you come, as you begin to face your heart and face who you really are, understand there's nothing that could be known, exposed, or revealed about you that hasn't been covered by the person and work of Jesus. You don't need to be afraid. Welcoming arms of love will greet you and what is broken, God has the power to make new.

1:50:24 Shelby: Yes, this is the gospel.

1:50:27 Paul: The blessing and danger of anger.

1:50:28 Shelby: Thank you, brother.

1:50:29 Paul: Yes.