Anger

James 1:19-20 NIV

 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

Do You Ever Get “Too” Angry?

A few years ago I was driving and someone without warning cut in front of me and nearly hit my car, and flew ahead of me, switched lanes again and then had to screech to a stop when the signal light turned red.  I was steamed.  I think I would have been sickly happy if the guy’s tires had blown out and he had flipped his car a thousand times because he would have “deserved it.”  At least that is how my anger perceived things at that moment.  Ironically, the two of us ended up side by side at the stop light and I had my opportunity to flash the guy my great wrath.  I turned my head as I pulled beside the guy and stared disdainfully at him, hoping he would look back and catch my ire.  Oh boy, he sure did.  The other driver turned to me and we locked eyes and he felt the fullness of my rage.  Then he did something that caught me off-guard.  He gave me the one fingered hand-signal of contempt and made motions that he was ready to fight me on the side of the road.  I was not ready for that.  I sized him up and felt pretty confident that I could handle myself ok with him but was I really going to let my anger take me that far?

Is anger helpful to us?  Does it make us better people, more capable of getting our work done, better able to parent our kids, give us what we need to be good husbands and wives?  Has anger saved marriages or enhanced friendships?  Should we be grateful for our anger and proud of the times we lost our tempers?  We all have known people who had “bad” tempers and most of these people we try to avoid but some we can’t because they are a part of our families or authorities at work or school.  Perhaps there is a “Tempers Anonymous” somewhere that has already been organized for those who get mad easily.   Maybe we know someone who should register with the group.  Should we be concerned about anger and those times when we lose our temper?  How should we evaluate our own anger?

Anger is one of the rawest of all emotions and is mentioned often in the Bible.  I remember how surprised I was to discover that God Himself gets angry.  Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses… (Exodus 4: 14 NIV)  The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:7 NIV)  Even Jesus, “meek and mild” flashed a temper.  He (Jesus) looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. (Mark 3:5 NIV)  Anger is a part of our divine nature, not something to be thought of as a curse but rather one of the ways we see God in us.  Yet anger, like every other part of the human personality has been warped by sin and we have lost its holiness. 

We see the very first flash of human anger described in the ancient book of Genesis.  The third person of recorded history, Cain became angry when his brother Abel was honored by God for the quality of his offering.  In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. (Genesis 4:3-5 NIV)  This anger of Cain’s is important to study because it provides a glimpse into the immediate effect of sin upon one part of our divine nature.  Most of us have learned to control our anger because we have grown accustomed to the sin damaged personalities we possess.  We are sophisticated in our approach to our lusts and rebellion.  Cain was not.  He was a novice to the damage his own sin was doing to his personality.  Like a baby just learning to walk, Cain had not adjusted to being a sinful person and when faced with for perhaps the first time God’s unwillingness to accept his bad behavior, something many of us would just slough off and perhaps ignore, Cain became unglued.   Anger, which God built in Cain for his protection against sin and temptation, became his undoing when it teamed up with sin.

God warned Cain about his warped anger.  Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:6-7 NIV)  This is a most interesting set of statements God makes to Cain and it gives us much to consider when it comes to anger.  First, the anger at its pioneer stage as a union with sin was linked to something specific.  Cain was angry that his offering to God was not accepted.  Abel and what Abel did was not the reason Cain was mad.  Cain was angry because his sacrifice was insufficient.  We almost never consider this when it comes to our own anger.  Nearly always we decide that we are angry because someone else did something or thinks something or won’t do something.  We are wrong here though.  Our anger starts with us and what we have done, what we have thought or with what we have not done. 

Now, those of us familiar with what happened next understand God’s warning about sin crouching at his door.  At this point Cain had sin merely at his door; it had not come inside his house.  His anger was not the sin but it was the warning bell of sin. We all, including Cain, can be angry and not sin.  The Apostle Paul, who was an expert on anger, knew that was so.  "In your anger do not sin":  (Ephesians 4:26 NIV) But Paul was quoting a slightly longer statement found in an older book than his, the Psalms.  In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. (Psalm 4:4 NIV)  Anger is the alarm that something is not right with us and if the alarm is to do us any good, we must get away and silently figure out what sin is crouching at our door.  For Cain, it was murder.  He was about to murder his brother Abel.  For me, it could be greed or selfishness or rebellion.  For you it could be lust or idolatry.  For someone else it might be stubborn pride or a lack of gratitude.  We all have our sins that come crouching at our door.  We should never be surprised by them.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our anger but for the wrong reasons.  Cain clearly wasn’t but we have been humbled by anger.  When it is public and we yell at someone or snarl or pound our fist in anger, we can be humiliated by our anger.  Our mistake is that we think it is the anger that is embarrassing when it isn’t.  It is the sin that we have let get too close to us that should make us red in the face.  Although it may not be clear to the waiter or our husband or the kid who ran into our car, it is to God and it should be to us.  Anger has sounded the alarm.  We have sin at our door.  We have either done something that has corrupted us or we are about to do something that will soon corrupt us.  We must never think that the other person has angered us or the trying circumstance has angered us.  It is the sin within us that has stimulated our anger and we must be silent and consider what sin it is that we have.

I had a friend who had a huge problem with anger and he used to get mad at me quite often.  I could always tell when his anger was starting to rise because his neck and cheeks would become red and although he might be smiling, I knew he was furious about something.  I had a warning sign that this man was angry.  Well, we have a warning sign about sin.  It is our anger.  When we become angry, we must, if we are to live closely with Christ and have His power guiding us rather than our sin, get off to ourselves and consider what sin has been exposed by our anger.  Then with the cruelty and compassion of a surgeon, cut it out.  Confess it and cut it out.  We should never take too seriously someone else’s anger but always with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice take seriously our own.  We never know how far the sin our anger uncovers will take us.  For Cain it was the destruction of his family line for they never recovered from his sin.  We though can chart a different course.  We can be holy.  And, if Jesus is being forthright with us (see Luke 19:17), we could be kings.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concluded

Continued From Yesterday's Blog

The internal response of Cain to God’s reaction to his minkah is most telling. Remember we are peering in on the infancy of mankind when sin has not worked its way through every fabric of life yet, when bloodthirsty men and adulterous women were not making sin seem such a small and commonplace thing. The psychology of man was still simple too. Horrible experiences had not yet marred his way of thinking and interacting so we see in this microcosm of being a very telling thing about how life really is. The way Cain responds to God’s feelings about his sacrifice honestly feels rather childish. Why did he become so furious just because YHWH thought much of Abel’s minkah but was not happy with Cain’s? The reaction of Cain isn’t the result of immaturity; it is the way things look when sin hasn’t saturated your life and you are careless in your devotion to God.

One of the most important strategies of science is to eliminate every single variable from an experiment so that all you have left is a clear result. You want to test for how beneficial drinking lots of water is on health, you compare two groups of people with similar physical characteristics and give them the same diet and same exercise regimen and have them live in the same sort of environment and you might be able to find out how helpful it is to drink lots of water…or not helpful. In our account is the same sort of study. What you have here is the elimination of every other source of discouragement, every other difficulty, every other problem with friends and family and you are left with just the pure outcome of giving a bit to God and no more. We are so accustomed to lackadaisical, lukewarm, tepid faith that we are desensitized to its real effect. We see in Genesis four that it makes us miserable human beings. It is easy to just slough off this example as merely reflective of Cain’s socio-pathic personality. He had bad genes. Did he though? So far all we have about mankind in the early parts of Genesis is the wormy, pathogenic work of sin on the human race. In Genesis four is sin played out in offerings to the Lord. God clearly wanted us to know by showing us Cain’s response how a degenerate view of sacrifice could erode the human personality.

Jesus warns against lukewarm faith in Revelation. He continually chided the disciples about their own commitment to Him. One of the more painful rebukes of Christ was His refusal to go out and meet with His mother and brothers when they demanded He see them. He completely disavowed Himself of them when He asked the rhetorical question, “"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 12:48-50 NIV What does it mean when Jesus says He spits out of His mouth lukewarm believers? Could it be that it looks more like we see in Cain than we care to consider?

Honestly, we are nothing more than what we find within. If lukewarm faith, lukewarm sacrifices, lukewarm morals tear up the world inside us, make our inner self polluted like we find in Cain, then wouldn’t it make sense to begin acting like Abel? What three things could we do today that would pull us out of this Cain world? Maybe we could make a commitment to read our Bible each day. That could be a firstfruits sacrifice. Maybe we could get up ten minutes earlier each day just so we could pray fervently. Maybe we could tithe…give ten percent of our income to this church each week. Maybe we could join a cell group and do it to please God and stop being only interest in your own preferences. Maybe you could donate some free time to clean up some of the projects needed to spruce up this property. Maybe you could go out of your way to invite at least two people to our church this week.

Abel was a normal person like you and me. But then so was Cain. We live like one or the other. Does it matter which one we look most like? It really is a matter of your minkah.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Continued

First let us consider why God didn’t approve of Cain and his minkah. Abel’s minkah is described as the first born of his flock. The first born in other parts of scripture is called the Lord’s. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal (Exodus 13:2 NIV) It is the sign of God’s provision and provided hope for His ongoing care. The firstborn was what the rancher depended on to reassure him that his ewe or cow would keep his flock going. Even if no others were born by the mother, at least the one was there. To give that lamb or calf away was a show of faith that God would eventually replace the firstborn. Firstfruits followed the same principle. The first of the harvest was the most precious. It was what you could count on to feed your family. It was there. Who could say what might happen with the later part of the harvest? Plagues might wipe it out or locusts might shred it. The weather could turn hot and whither the crops. To give away your firstfruits was giving away your security. Yet it was the firstfruits God wanted. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. Ex 34:26 It took faith to bring the firstfruits to God and only a believer could muscle up the gumption to do it. "We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the LORD each year the firstfruits of our crops and of every fruit tree. Nehemiah 10:35 NIV

Not only did Abel bring the firstborn, he also presented the fat of His firstborn. The Fat was the choicest part, the richest of it. When Pharaoh promised Joseph that his family would be able to enjoy the best part of the land of Egypt, he referred to it as the “fat of the land”, the exact same Hebrew word used to describe what Abel brought God. (See Genesis 45: 18) Again, the same word is used to describe the finest olive oil and finest wine of the harvest that God would give Aaron and his descendants. It was the “fat” or the olive oil and the “fat” of the wine his family would get. Now we don’t think so much of fat anymore because of our concern with calories and cholesterol and clogged arteries but the “fat” was the best, the finest you had. The offering of Abel was the most glorious he could offer; it was the fat.

Now turn back to Cain and his minkah. He gave some fruit he had. It was not the fat of the fruit. It was not the firstfruits. It was just something he had lying around his house. Ponder this. The ground had not been stained very deeply by sin yet and the world still was a relative paradise and it must not have been too difficult to find some sort of wheat or grape or apple to offer up to God. The implication is that Cain’s offering required nothing much of faith, nothing much of deliberation, (trying hard to choose the very best he had), nothing much of pleasure in the giving. His minkah was the plainness of obligatory religion. There are times when my children do their chores with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. There is no sense of rightness to it, no sense of pleasure in doing your best, no sense of giving a gift back to those who love you most in the world. It is pure drudgery and when the work is yanked out of them, it feels like a fingernail dragged across a chalk board rather than any sort of minkah. And yes, I am that same way. My minkahs can be just as thoughtlessly offered, just as carelessly given, just as free of affection as seemingly possible for one who is lifeless dust without Jesus.

We now must return to the original question. What separated Cain from Abel? Certainly is was the quality of their minkahs. One minkah was full of faith and extravagant pleasure in giving to a beloved God. The other minkah was an afterthought, a hand me down, a toss away gift. Several years ago a rather wealthy woman gave my family a used pot as a gift. It hadn’t even been washed. Now from someone who was impoverished, it would have been a most lovely thing to receive but from someone well off, it had the feel of flippancy.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concludes Tomorrow

A Tale of Two Minkahs Part One

Gen 4:9 NIV
Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?


What separates good people from bad? Is it what they do, how they think, or their passions that mark one from another? Are some people totally bad…others totally good? Were Cain and Abel opposites or do we have too little information to accurately judge them? Several years ago I was discussing with a good Mormon friend his theology of the three levels of heaven and asked him who it was, if even non-Mormons like me get to go to the 1st level of heaven, goes to Hell. “Well, I guess someone like Hitler!” Now that was reassuring because I as far as I know don’t have Hitler in my family tree or anyone as bad as Hitler lurking there. As poorly behaved as my kids sometimes are, none of them seem to have Hitler tendencies in them. I don’t have genocide in my background either so that seems to make it pretty safe for me. Now here is a good question! If Cain never killed Abel, would we think differently of him? Would he still stand out as one of the all-time bad guys of history along with the Boston Strangler and Joseph Stalin?

One of the most erroneous interpretations of Genesis 4 is the criticism of Cain for bringing a grain offering rather than a blood sacrifice to God. The rationale behind this is the idea that a blood sacrifice was desired by God and the grain offering of Cain was a sign on his part that he did not acknowledge his need for atonement and without the blood failed to trust in a coming Messiah. Of course none of that is indicated in the passage. God makes no complaint of lacking blood: in a sense the offerings are identical. Both brought what in Hebrew is called a minkah. But what is a “minkah”?

Minkahs are found all through the Old Testament. In some places such as in Isaiah 66: 20 and Jeremiah 41: 5 and Nehemiah 10: 33, the minkah is a grain offering, many times (Numbers 16: 15) it can be either and in other scriptures it refers to a meat offering (1 Samuel 2: 17 and here). Since both Cain and Abel brought minkahs and minkahs that are grain offerings are perfectly acceptable (Leviticus 7) and even commanded in the Law (consider Leviticus 6: 20), what separated one man’s minkah from another’s?

If there is one point that can be made which none can refute here, it is that God loved Abel’s minkah but didn’t think much of Cain’s. The text reads literally that the Lord gazed with interest upon Abel’s minkah but in verse 5 he had no such affection for Cain’s. Literally the Lord did not look at all at what Cain gave Him. I have been at social gatherings where I was completely ignored and felt the shame of it. Nothing I have experienced though drove me to murder and that is the most pressing issue in this passage and by far the most interesting. What happened here that led to such a fall?