There’s a right way to be angry.

I have a friend who got new eye contacts not long ago. When he put them in, he was annoyed that they were blurry. He assumed that his eyes were just getting used to the new prescription, so he left them in. He went on like this for a few days with no improvement and suddenly it dawned on him. He had a different prescription for each eye, maybe he had put them in the wrong eyes – so he swapped them, and he could suddenly see clearer than he had ever seen before! These contacts had the power to give clear or blurry vision it all depended on using them correctly.

Today I want to look at anger – a potent emotion that is everywhere we look these days. Anger can be righteous and good and drive towards good change – but it can also be wrong headed, it can be mishandled and lead to devastation. Just like those contact lenses – the user must use it properly. 

In John 2 Jesus gets angry and has His own version of a riot at the temple in Jerusalem. John 2:13-16

13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And 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. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” 

There is no question here, Jesus is angry. He is so angry that He takes the time to go out and make a whip! Any of you ever done that when you’re angry? Then He comes back in and turns over the tables and drives the people out. 

A few observations. 

When Jesus is angry it is always just. It has been said that one should fear the anger of a gentle man. Jesus is not having a random burst of anger here – it is justified and right. If Jesus is angry about something than He should be – He is not being sensitive. 

Jesus’ action in His anger is always just. Jesus is not overreacting here, He is not mishandling His anger. He is doing a very right thing in driving these people out of the temple.

Man’s anger is rarely just. In James 1:19-20 James encourages us to be “slow to anger; ²⁰ for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

Even if we are angry for a proper reason we usually over-react and make the situation worse. In most cases, our anger is misinformed, we don’t have all the information and we make awful mistakes. 

Why was Jesus angry? There was a gentile court in the temple. It was a place where gentiles could go to pray. This was where these money changers were doing their business. And so, in Mark’s account of this story Jesus says in Mark 11:17, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

People were being kept from God. This is what makes Jesus angry. 

Matthew 23:13, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”

Mark 10:13-14, “And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴ But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them,”

Are you angry today? About racial injustice? About rioting and looting? About politics? About COVID 19 responses or the lack there of?

Three questions: 

1.     Why are you angry? Examine it carefully. Are you operating on the information? Are you being empathetic to the other side of the argument? Is your anger just?

2.     How are you handling your anger? Are you doing something, saying something you will later regret? Remember you and I rarely handle anger properly. 

3.     Would Jesus drive you out of the temple? In other words, in your anger are you standing between people and God? Are you misrepresenting Christ? Making peripheral things too important? Shutting out down conversations and opportunities with condemning and arrogant statements of so-called righteousness?

Listen, righteous anger can be a clarifying thing in your life – help you see things clearly – but only if it is God’s anger.