Sermons and Anger

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon everyone. It is Tuesday, July the sixteenth, twenty twenty four. It is currently five thirty eight pm Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, this question is primarily for myself, but I'm going to ask the question of you as well. How angry can one become as they listen to a sermon and not cross the line into sin?

0:55 How angry can you get when you're listening to a sermon? How angry, how upset? How frustrated can you get before you cross over into sin? Is there ever any excuse for becoming so angry, so frustrated that you want to throw something, that you want to hit, something that you want to just you just want to get up and walk out. Where is that line? Because the Bible says in Ephesians, chapter four, verse twenty six, it reads like this, be angry and do not sin. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath.

1:37 Okay, well, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. Okay, that's pretty you can tell hey, you know what, before I go to bed, I gotta deal with this anger. I gotta deal with this wrath. I've got to fix it. Okay, that we can kind of process. How do we do that? Can we accomplish that? But we can at least understand, Hey, don't go to bed angry? Okay? Got it? All right? Be angry? All right? Well that's okay. When can I be angry? How do we understand that phrase be angry in Ephesians for twenty six. We may need to do a little work on the Greek here and just see how this is structured and what we what this actually meant? But be angry? So this seems to indicate there is a time to be angry. But look at the next part and do not sin?

2:20 So how angry can you become before it becomes sin? It is it becomes sin when you, in your anger say something that is sinful, when you do something that is sinful. Is that when your anger crosses over into now, well, do not sin? But can you be so angry that, even if you're not saying something or you're not doing something, you feel and you think something Now The reason I'm struggling with this at five forty one pm on a Tuesday is if you listen to my last live broadcast about America a Christian nation, I lost I lost it. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna be honest with you. I got so angry, I got so upset, and maybe I got more upset, not so much at the sermon at what was being implied, because I kept saying, over and over, I don't know what. I don't think this is what that person met. I'm going to give them the benefit of the death, but the implication from this is utterly horrifying and frightening. I have been getting very frustrated over the last few days and listening to sermons dealing with the assassination attempt against President Trump or the former president, the presidential candidate. And the only reason I correct that is because you still have people running around saying the election was stolen and President Trump is actually the president. Okay, you get into some strange stuff there, so you have to kind of be more careful with your language. But

3:52 I've become very frustrated and listening to all of it, because either we are listening to things what claims are being made. They're are just abs absolutely fraudulent, like like misinformation, disinformation, lies, false accusation, bearing false witness, like some serious sinful things that I would think that would be like, that's sinful, But it appears that it appears that pastors can say pretty much anything in the pulpit and for the most part, it's not considered a sin or even a problem. It's just really weird our sense of when something is scandalous and when something is not lying, misinformation, misrepresentation, accusation, bearing false witness. It seems to be perfectly okay in the pulpit. That's what blows my mind, and that makes me angry. It bothers me when you're making statements that within five seconds of fact checking you're like, well, that's not necessarily accurate. Well where did you get that from? What is that based off? Well, what about that? Well, no, that's not necessarily true. No that's not necessarily true. No, that's not necessarily true.

5:00 Making just a claims about you know, all the forefathers of the American forefathers, the early American leaders, that are just it's that's not in many cases just completely not accurate or a complete misrepresentation. That drives me crazy. But how angry can I get? How angry can you get at preaching? Like when I see now, there was a time in my when I was younger, I approached this question differently. I was like, what is the problem with everyone else? They listened to these sermons and they just shrugged their shoulders and they don't care. They don't care if it's false, doctory They don't care if it's incorrect. And what is that's? Because no nobody is saved. If they were really saved, they would love God and they would hate sin and they would get it. So then then it was kind of like I was kind of going more with the lordship idea. They're demonstrating they don't really love God, but I probably are not safe. That's kind of the way I approach approached it and kind of basically looked at what's the problem with everyone else? But you know, after all of these years of living with myself as a Christian, knowing my own fraility, my own sin, of course, you know I have major issues with the whole lordship concept.

6:08 Now I won't get into you know, we've talked about that a million times, but now I look at it more like, Okay, I can't worry whether other people get angry or should get angry or shouldn't get angry. I guess the issue is how angry can I become before that anger. It's not righteous, it's not right, it's not spiritual. It's fleshly and ungodly. And I will admit that in the last broadcast it probably was fleshy and ungodly. I'm just going to be the first to acknowledge it. I mean, there's no reason to pretend. Remember I've been trying to explain to you that this podcast is just the podcast of a sinner trying to just living out the Christian life in real time behind a microphone. This is just my discipleship.

6:53 Well, my discipleship has to deal with my failures as well. I think there. I just I just got so upset. I just got so many Maybe it was the accumulation of everything. I get tired of listening to a sermon in like fact check, Oh that's not true. Fact check that's not true. Fact check that's not true. Fact Like I shouldn't have to be fact checking sermons. Okay, like the one place you should be able to go to say now they're not everything's always going to be accurate. Obviously, there's always going to be in perfection, there's always going to be sin. But for the most part that we strive our best, even though when perfectly we're always going to fall short. That for the most part, we try to be very careful with what we say behind the pulpit, and we do not throw out false accusations. We do not participate in slander and gossip and conspiratorial thinking and bearing false witness that we just had, and that we get our facts as accurate as we can be. We try to look for primary sources. We don't rely on secondary sources or third hand or we look at We try to just do these basic like things that would meet just basic academic standards in any any decent university. But sometimes what you hear from the pulpit, it's just there's just no it's just a free for all. It's like the wild wild West. You don't know where, you don't know what's going to happen, but you know what, it's on me to handle it in a better way. So I don't know how you felt about it. I felt I'm bothered by the whole thing. I'm still bothered by the things I've

8:24 heard. I'm just gonna be honest. So I'm bothered, and so there's a part of me I don't know how I'm going to proceed because we still need to watch and monitor how things are being I guess it would be different if we were what I was reviewing in the last message was more directly related to the assassination on President Trump, the assassination attempt against President Trump, that it would have been much more. It would have been understand I said president Trump again, because it's just kind of like an honorary title. Right, I'm not saying he lost the election. Everybody understands that, so the former the assassination attempt against the former president of the United States Donald Trump. There. If I'm trying to be as articulate as I can be, all right, which I'm not usually that articulate, but you get the idea. If it was more about that, then I felt like I would have been staying true to the overall goal. But it really was adjacent to it, right.

9:20 It still dealt with the politicizing and patriotism of the American Church and this Christian nationalism and just so many issues. It dealt with things that are related. And the reason I was reviewing it is it's part one and Part two was preached the day after the day after the assassination attempt. So I'm like, okay, I can't go to part I was trying to be fair. I don't want to go to part two and not be fair by ripping it out of context to part one. Part one may lay down some very important foundational truths, but Part one is basically an almost a reading, not just reading, basically a sharing of the the book, a book by Robert Jeffers.

10:01 We think we have found the book. I don't know if we can one hundred percent confirm it, but I think it's the book. Uh. And and if it is the book, well you know, I don't I don't even know. Yeah, yeah, well, I guess what we can do is take that name of that book and then start doing some Google searching to see if it's been reviewed, if there's been any academic critique of the book, and if anyone's demonstrated some shortcomings or failures or misquotes or anything in it, because then that would because if we can find where no this people have documented these things. This book has absolute error in it, and then we go to that sermon and he simply repeated that error. Then that error was now. But again, how angry can I get at that? I don't know. I don't know how angry I could get at that, because again, there's not the one thing about living out your Christian life is we have the scripture be angry, but say not, and let not the sun go down on your wrath. We have that, But guess what the Bible doesn't do. It doesn't start going bepppppppppep. You're getting close to any You're getting close to sin. You're getting close beepppppep. That's it. You've crossed the line. I do feel that there's a place for anger, but then you don't want it to be wrong. You want to handle yourself in a much more godly way. And I don't always handle myself in a godly way.

11:26 I mean I don't. I am a sinner. I'm so aware of it. Do you struggle with it? If you? This year, we've all been listening to more sermons than we've ever listened to. I mean, maybe maybe for some of you this is just a normal year, but I mean with the sermons two point oh app sermon challenge, trying to get everyone to listen, listen to at least one sermon per day for the entire year. Well, that's a lot of sermons by we're you know, we're in July. That is a lot of sermons we've listened to by now, right, and with a ways to go. I think I think I've had some frustrations and some irritations, but this last couple of days is starting to reach a level of and maybe because we're pursuing one particular kind, So maybe that's why. But in some ways I feel like I have no choice. I got a monitor. This is telling me where where the church is at.

12:18 And maybe it's gonna remember I've been saying forever the church is so politically hijacked. It's you know, the churches are filled with the idolatry of patriotism, nationalism, It's filled with politics. I've been saying this and saying this. Maybe this is the evidence. All this is evidence of what I've been saying. I did I need the evidence? Well, I know I didn't want to hear it. And then just big and I think maybe what's most discouraging is the discussion of God's providence without actually looking at it from both sides, from both sides. Now, someone did send me a link. I am going to try to review it. I don't know if I will review it later tonight. I don't know how I'm feeling right now. I kind of want to just keep pressing on too. I can get I can see that we're getting through the forest, and I can see the end there. I kind of want to just keep pressing on, trying to finish something. But someone did send me a link, and I didn't watch all of it.

13:11 I'll have to do some work on the audio because it's a mess, but it's a very like six minute seven minute. Someone posted on sermon audio their response to the assassination attempt, but he basically said, was it God's will, God's planned his decree that Trump be shot? Yes? Was it his will his decree that he spared Trump's life? Yes? And I don't he may even have went on to say, I don't know if he went on to say, well, obviously, from a logical perspective, then it was God's will and plan for Corey to be shot and killed. The man who was killed at the rally his first name is Corey, So that one was much more brutally honest. But so many others just want to talk about God intervening in God intervening. And someone just sent me someone from I can't remember what religion Sikhism, I can't. I can't remember what religion that they prayed at the Republican National Convention. Clearly not Christian, clearly not Christian. Praying to a false God, and basically I think giving credit to that God for sparing Donald Trump's life. So which God actually intervene and saved Trump? Well, Christians are going to say so, But well then that gets into our religious pluralism, which demonstrates that even in the Republican even at the Republican Convention, it's a pluralistic. It's a God, it's not the Christian God.

14:41 Therefore, even the Republican Party is not acting like a Christian nation if they're bringing up people from other religions to pray. So what I want to say, is this my last life, my last live broadcast. You heard my anger. In some ways, I feel my anger was justified to an extent. I felt that I got so angry that I was angry, But when it says sin not that I may have sinned. I know, I said I because I was so mad. I am not going to let the sun go down upon my wrath. I'm gonna make sure by the time I this night is over, it's done. I feel better and I can move on.

15:33 So be angry. I think I did that, and I hopefully it was righteous anger. Sin Not. I definitely send. I know. Look, by the time when the program was over, trust me, I send because my thoughts were all over the play. Yeah. My well, everything that happened after the broadcast that you wouldn't even know, I definitely send. Now, I'm not going to let the sun go down on my wrath. See, that's gonna not the way the Christian life works. Okay, well, I obeyed this, but I disobeyed this, But it would be I obeyed this externally, but I felt internally like it's that it's always a mess of of it's a it's a mixture of failure and victory. But I'm gonna stop because I think my food is here, so I'm going to go eat and then we'll see what's unstore the rest of the evening. Thank you for listening. You can email me news I Yahoo dot com. That's news I Yahoo dot com. Everyone have a great evening. God bless