Anger and Patience

This morning, we're going to be in Proverbs chapter 15, and this is different for me. I've never preached a topical sermon, and that's what this is. So we're going to be talking about anger. This semester, we've been going through the Proverbs, and so for class, we had to work out an outline and build out a topical sermon. that it'd be a great idea, because I didn't think I'd actually preach it. I thought it'd be a great idea to just go ahead and deal with something that I struggle with, anger. And then I got a call after I presented it to class, and Pastor Dave said, you're preaching this. So here we are. But as I kept working on this and studying, I kind of realized this is hard because this is something that I struggle with, but it's really something that we all struggle with.

Whether it's your besetting sin and you just are angry, or if you just get angry, I hope that this is helpful. I think that God's Word helps us here. So, this morning, my hope is that we would see our anger for what it is, that we'd see the harm that it produces, that we'd see it in its context, that we'd see the harsh reality of why we get angry and who we get angry with. and that we would have a way to fight and repent of our sin, to fight our anger and to repent of it. So our main text this morning is Proverbs 15, verse 18. Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word? This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger calms the dispute. This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Where do we generally see anger exist and take place? When does your anger typically show up? When are you tempted the most to be angry? It's in conflict. It's in fighting. You have a conflict. There's a disagreement between you and a thing or you and someone else. And the temptation comes to just get angry. Because why don't they just see things my way? Okay? And so we see this in this verse. A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, okay? So strife isn't a word that we normally use or that we would normally think of, but it means conflict or a dispute or a fight. And our text this morning tells us that an angry man, he stirs it up. He creates it. He makes it happen. He actually looks for it.

When I was a kid, my mom had this saying. I don't know if you guys have ever heard this, but she called me and my sisters little pot stirrers. Have you guys ever heard of that? So a pot stirrer is someone who loves to upset the balance of life. And so my sisters and I, when we were younger, we would be, even now as adults actually, but we'd be gathered together and we'd be in the main room and we would just be poking. and prodding at each other, finding any and every way to cause some kind of problem, create some kind of conflict, make someone angry. And that's when my mom would just call us, you're just being a little pot stirrer. Stop that. Stop. You're just trying to create stuff. There's no reason. There's no reason to do that. And so that's kind of what the hot-tempered man is. The hot-tempered man, he's a pot stirrer. He likes to create messes.

He's a troublemaker. He does it, he causes trouble for himself, but he also causes trouble outside of himself. Tries to get everyone else mixed in. Proverbs 26, 21 says, like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife. The angry man or the hot-tempered man, I'm going to use those interchangeably, they're contentious. They look for conflict. He wants to find it or create it. He's either searching it out. He's either going to look for places where he can be engaged in some kind of conflict, or he is poking and prodding and messing everything up so that he can be involved in some kind of conflict. He invites it with his actions and his words. And you might be asking, well, how? How does that work? How do you look for conflict? So I'll tell you a personal story about myself. So several years ago, I used to follow this guy on Twitter, okay?

I've told some of you this story, so some of you will know immediately who I'm talking about, but I used to follow this guy on Twitter, and he would get on Twitter and say the dumbest things, and things that I disagreed with, and things that I just thought were really dumb. And he would say, he would, essentially he would say things that were, he grew to hate the church, he grew to appreciate false doctrine, and teach false doctrine, okay? And he would do it through social media. And I had friends that I went to school with because I went to Southern Seminary down in Louisville. I had friends that followed this guy. And at first, I was angry because I knew I had friends that liked him, and I knew I had friends that really heard what he said, and they took it to heart, and they began to believe this filth. And it really made me angry. Not only because my friends were believing it, but then when me and my friends would talk about it, we'd get in conflict.

Well, eventually I moved away. I moved here. Paige and I got married. I still followed this guy on Twitter. And I would intentionally go on Twitter to see what he posted. I would intentionally go there to see what kind of dumb thing I could find to be mad about today. So my anger morphed. It wasn't about my friends anymore. It was about I was just finding an excuse. And so this became a pattern in my life, and every time I did this, my poor wife had to listen to me rant and rave because I'd see it, and then I'd just close my phone, and we'd be in the living room. It'd be on a Saturday. Some people go to concerts and ball games on Saturday. Not me. I like to sit on Twitter and get angry at people, evidently. And so I'd get angry, and I'd be talking to Paige. I'd be like, how could he say this? This is so untrue.

It's false, and it's evil. This went on for a little while. And because Paige is very smart, she picked up on the pattern. And so one day I do this, and she just interrupts me. She didn't even let me start my rant. And she just says, why do you follow this guy? She's smart and very helpful. And, you know, I only laughed. I laughed at her. Because what she had done is she had poked me right where my sin was. I was following this guy because I wanted an excuse to be mad. I couldn't be mad at anyone else. I didn't have a reason to be. But I could follow this guy, and I could find a reason to be angry. And this is really a lot of what social media is, just generally speaking, is finding ways, us finding ways, or other people finding ways to get angry about things, to be mad about things. Now, this might just be a weird me thing. That may just be like something I do.

But I really don't think so. Because if you look at all of the anger on social media, I think you see it. You see a lot of people that are angry. Always looking for reasons to be angry or cause conflict. And so my point isn't that I was out creating conflict. I wasn't on Twitter posting things. But I had conflict because I went and looked for it. And I stirred it up. And then I brought it to my wife. And my wife has to be like, why? Why do you follow this guy? And I knew where I could find it. And I'd often return there. And so this is just an example of how the angry man, the hot-tempered man, wants to stir up strife. Because all he wants to do is look for conflict. He wants to create it. He wants to seek it out. And he does it just so he has an excuse. There is a point in which I felt justified for being angry. Because I felt like I was morally superior to this guy. I felt, well, he's just wrong.

It's right for me to be angry. But I knew what I was doing. He doesn't live life with me. I don't know him. He doesn't even go in our circles. He's not even a part of the church anymore, functionally. What business do I have following this guy on Twitter? But looking for conflict isn't limited to just Twitter. Sometimes the hot-tempered man invites people to treat him so poorly that he gets angry in other situations. Are you overly critical at work? Are you overly critical of your spouse? Do you always look for ways to correct your co-workers or your subordinates or ways to correct your spouse? Do you check to make sure your spouse knows exactly the right way to use the toothpaste tube? That sounds silly, but these are things we fight about. We fight about, well, you didn't squeeze the tube right. It's all mushed up and not rolled up. These are the things that we actually have conflict about. These are the things that we actually fight about.

For me, early in our marriage, it was the dishes. Maybe it's just this way in Brownsburg, but the water stains on dishes drives me bonkers. I hate water stains on dishes. And so I would go and I'd grab a cup out of the cabinet and look in it. Oh, I'm not using that. Didn't wash it. I'm not using that because that works. and my wife loved it because I'd be like, this has got a water stain in it again. Why are the dishes always got water stains on them? Why has the spoon got a water stain? Why? As if it was her fault. But I was nitpicking, and I was nitpicking on purpose, and this is what we do. I don't think I'm alone in finding things to nitpick about. I think we all have our things that we are willing to nitpick and that we're willing to create conflicts over. Do you ever wonder what someone's threshold is?

You know what I mean by that? How far can I push this person before they get angry? I think this is really common with siblings because I think about me and my sisters. But we do it with other people too. We can do it with our friends. We find where's the pressure point and then how much can I poke and prod? And then they get upset and then what do you do? You laugh about it because it's funny. Because you found the pressure point and you just wondered, I wonder how far it takes. How far I can go before they just lose it. When we do that, we're being contentious. I'll figure out how to talk one of these days. We're being contentious. We're being the angry man. We're being the hot-tempered man. We're looking for an excuse to get other people angry. And when they get angry, you might laugh or you might get angry back. Now, there are times when anger and conflict happens and it's not because...

You sought it out or we sought it out. We didn't go looking for it. It came upon us. We got angry because we had no escape route. Someone got mad and it was like you were backed into a corner and you weren't quite sure what to do. And how often in our marriages, how many times do our fights feel that way? Where it feels like, I don't know why they keep creating conflict. Why are they backing me into a corner? And then what we do is we get exasperated and we lash out and we just add to the conflict. We just make things worse. And this canon does happen where other people create the conflict, but it doesn't actually justify our anger. We did it for the call to confession. James 1.20 tells us that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. But just because you're backed into a corner doesn't justify you getting angry and adding to the conflict. Or even thinking, well, I'll just end the conflict. How many times have you thought that? And it doesn't actually end the conflict. It just makes more of a mess.

I can't think of any time where, when I have thought, I'm just going to put an end to the conflict, that I've ever solved or resolved the conflict in my anger that way. It just doesn't happen. So we've spent a good bit of time talking about anger and conflict. And I want to point out that this is, you see this throughout the New Testament too. This isn't just in Proverbs. Typically, we actually see Paul talk about anger, and it's normally grouped in with other... with other synonyms for conflict, division, strife, quarreling, fighting. If you look at Galatians 5.19-20, what you see is a list of the deeds of the flesh. So listen to what Paul says here. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery. And then he says, enmities, hatred, strife, fighting, jealousy, outbursts of anger, Disputes, dissensions, factions. All of this is focused around anger and conflict. All of these things are about anger and conflict. And so we see that anger and fighting are bound up together. And it's not just in Galatians. You see this in Ephesians and in Colossians. Whenever Paul gives out these lists, when he's talking about the old man versus the new man, or right here he's talking about the deeds of the flesh, and then later he'll talk about the fruit of the Spirit. He's listing out.

He's listing out anger and conflict. It's in all of those lists. Pastor Dave's been going through the Sermon on the Mount, and when Jesus talks about murder and anger, what's the context? It's a dispute. They're going to court. It's brother against brother in court. It's a conflict. It's a fight. Our anger is bound up in conflict and fighting. This is why Jesus says, make friends quickly with your opponent in the conflict. So what is anger? Well, that's a silly question, isn't it? What is anger? We tend to think about people generally as angry or not angry. And so the reason why I want to talk a little bit about what is anger is because, as I said before, it may not be your besetting sin. You may not be angry, but you do get angry. And so anger isn't just outbursts of rage. It's not just flying off the handle and yelling. It's also irritation. It's annoyance.

It's stewing in silence. My personal favorite is frustration. Whenever this happened a couple times, when I'm working on something at home, I'm building something, I'm putting something together, I reach this point where I've probably ignored the instructions, and I've done something and messed something up, and I get mad. And I'll get angry. And my wife will ask me, why are you so angry? And I say, I'm not angry, I'm frustrated. There's a difference. It's a different thing. It's not a different thing. And the reason I want to point this out is because I think we use words like I was irritated or I was annoyed or I was frustrated as cover words. These are cover words to hide from the fact that what we've actually done is been angry. We don't want to fess up to anger because anger is like here and frustration and irritation and they're like somewhere down here. They're not the same thing. But they are.

Because how does my wife normally respond when I say, I'm not angry, I'm frustrated? She says, those are synonyms. They mean the same thing. And so we use these synonyms as a way to lessen our guilt. It's a way of us, we're actually being dishonest with ourselves. It's just a way that we try to cover our sin, anger. And as I mentioned before, it's the silent treatment as well. Anger doesn't have to be outbursts. It's the silent treatment. It's the cold shoulder. It's being short with people. You know, it's just quick responses. You're mad at someone, they're asking you a question, it's just quick. I'm not actually dealing with you. It's gossip and slander. Anger is something we all deal with to one degree or another. And it comes out in different ways. And what does Jesus say about anger? We just talked about the Sermon on the Mount. We talked about anger and conflict and going to court. And he says that if you're angry with your brother, you're liable for murder to the court.

Anger is murder in our hearts. Jesus equates our anger to committing murder. We get angry and that's what we do. We murder. We take our brother and we make him an enemy. And what do you do with your enemy? You fight until one of you gives up or dies. Now you've probably heard this before that anger is murdering in your hearts. That's probably not new to you. But do we live in light of that? Do we actually think about that when we get angry? What you're actually doing, if you were to stop, And stop thinking about yourself and why you're angry. And you actually thought about what anger is according to God's law, according to his word. I think it'd be a little harder to be angry. Maybe just a little. Because you don't want to murder your spouse. You don't want to murder your children. You don't want to murder your siblings. But we do. But we should take our anger that seriously. Because it's sin. And it's hatred.

The Westminster Larger Catechism has a list of ways that we violate the sixth commandment, which is thou shalt not murder. Here are a few. Sinful anger, hatred, envy, and desire of revenge. All of those cooked into the anger. And so one of the things that I also want to point out about this is that no one is actually safe from your anger. Because most commonly, you get angry at your loved ones. You get angry at the people closest to you. And they... They see the worst of it. You might get angry at your friends. You might get angry at your co-workers. But your wives and your husbands and your children and your siblings, they see the worst of your anger. They get the worst of it. Husbands and wives get angry at each other and they fight. They get angry about all kinds of things. If you've done premarital counseling with Pastor Dave, there are like seven or eight sessions. Six of those sessions are about fighting and anger.

And they're about the different things that you're going to fight about. It's assumed that at some point in your fighting, in your disagreement, in your conflict, that you will get angry because that's just what happens. And so there are rules, right? Don't say always. Don't say never. Don't throw things. That was telling when we went into one of the premarital counseling sessions and Pastor Dave was like, when you get angry, you may not throw things or hit things. You may not give any physical vent. to your anger. We have those rules because it's assumed that you will get angry. That it's assumed at some point you will be angry with your spouse. And so these are guardrails. We're going through love and respect for a small group. And one thing I noticed is that you can actually avoid conflict as long as you don't assume the worst about each other. As long as you assume and remember that your spouse isn't out to make your life miserable. And yet, how often do we assume the worst about the people around us?

We assume that they just keep doing this thing and they must just hate me. Or why do they always do that? Why don't they just stop? We assume that they just don't care or that they just don't want to listen or they haven't listened. We actually blame our spouses for fights. We don't think about our part in them. And we look at them as if they're the only ones who did wrong. And what were we doing? Again, we're trying to justify ourselves. We do this with others too. We do this with people we don't know. You drive. I drive, okay? We get mad at people for not knowing how to drive. And if you talk to some of us, some of you drive a different way than other people. So if you got on the road together, you'd actually be mad at one another because you don't drive the same way. You don't think the same way about driving. Truly, we get mad at everyone that we live life with. We get mad at each other here at church. We were just talking about fellowship this morning for Sunday school. And how often is that fellowship disrupted?

because of our anger and our conflict and our fights with one another. And ultimately, our anger, what we're doing is we're making enemies. We've decided that the person that we're angry with is our enemy. And we make enemies out of people who shouldn't be our enemies. Your siblings are not your enemies. Your spouses are not your enemies. And yet we treat them as such. So why do we get angry? Why do we get angry with one another? Why do we stir up strife? Well, we feel that we've been wronged. We feel we've been wronged in some way. We feel that some kind of injustice has been done to us. And so we get angry because we want to make it right. Because we're going to make it right. And so often our anger is also a response to victimhood. I've been wronged and now I'm going to get angry and I'm going to make everything right. Anger is self-interested. You get angry because you don't get your way. You get angry because you don't get what you deserve.

You get angry because your desires aren't met. And then we go and seek out our own justice. But it's never actually justice, is it? Do you ever think that you're the perfect judge of your own life and of your own anger? I hope not. We do. We do, actually. That's the problem. But what we actually end up doing is not getting justice, we end up getting revenge. Everything goes a step further for us. We give our spouses the cold shoulder or we lash out and we get angry because getting even just isn't enough. Justice isn't enough. We want to cause pain. We want to hurt others around us when we get angry. We want revenge. And what does God tell us about revenge? He says, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. And what does Paul say with that? Don't repay evil for evil.

Don't go looking for revenge. Don't go trying to get your own justice. And yet we do try to take this vengeance into our own hands and we end up hurting those we love in our anger and picking fights and making our loved ones our enemies and creating conflict where there doesn't need to be any. We get angry because of perceived wrongs or injustices. And this is even contrary to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love doesn't seek for revenge. It doesn't seek its own way. And so our anger is a direct rejection also of love. Revenge, conflict, fighting, these are all things of the flesh. These are the things that make up the hot-tempered man. He stirs up strife. He makes enemies. He seeks revenge. This is the angry man. This is the hot-tempered man. So what's our response? What can we do? Because the hot-tempered man is there.

It comes out of us. Some of us, a little more usual than others, but it's there. So what do we do? We see how destructive this is. Proverbs 29, 22 says, an angry man stirs up strife and a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression. Just, it's all around him. He abounds in it. It's destructive. There's this, I had this friend down in Louisville and he and I, he was helping me. He's older man than I am. and he was my mentor at the time, he was helping me with my anger. And he was helpful because it was similar, it was a besetting sin for him as well. And he was telling me that one of the things that was helpful was that they came up with some goofy name for it. I don't know if this was actually helpful, but I'm using this to illustrate my point, okay? My point, the point is that his wife, whenever he'd get angry, He would, she called it tornadoing around. Because he'd grab the coffee pot and he'd slam it back in. He'd be slamming shelves. And just creating destruction and wreaking havoc wherever he went. Because it's just there. He's just angry and he wants everyone to know that he's angry. And so because of our anger, the hot-tempered man, he goes and creates chaos. And he wreaks havoc. He does it in our lives.

Right? This is what you're doing when you're creating conflict. You are just creating havoc. This is what we're doing. So what do we do instead? What's the remedy? How do we stop? How do we repent of this destructive, angry, conflict-creating mess that we are? How do we stop being angry? How do we stop getting angry? Well, let's look back at our proverb. There are two men described here. The first one is the hot-tempered man, and he creates strife. He makes messes. He creates conflict. And the second man, he's slow to anger and calms a dispute. Another way that you might read this, another way it's been translated is the patient one quiets quarrel. So the slow to anger is patient. So what do you do instead of be angry? You be patient.

We mentioned Galatians 5.19 and 20 and then a little bit the fruit of the Spirit. In the fruit of the Spirit, what's one of the fruit of the Spirit? Josiah, what's one of the fruit of the Spirit? That's one of them, yeah. What's the fourth one? Patience, that's right. We've been going through the fruit of the Spirit in Awana. That's the fruit of the Spirit. The deeds of the flesh are outbursts of anger and conflict and strife. And one of the fruit of the Spirit is patience. This is the fruit of those who have the Spirit, the fruit of those who are growing in their sanctification. And so we should be growing in our patience. So be patient with people. It's that easy, right? Be patient with people. Be slow to act on your anger. Be quick to repent when you get angry. And exercise patience. Patience is something that we actually have because God has given it to us. If you're a Christian and you have the Spirit, you have strength.

to be patient. You have the ability to be patient through the power of the Spirit. So we shouldn't dive headlong into anger and attack anything that moves contrary to our sensibilities. This is exactly what cancel culture does. This is what the mob does. They find anything that runs contrary to the way that they think or the way that they live and they attack it and they destroy it or they cancel it. And they get angry and they create conflict and they dig up past the fences. From years ago. And they assume the worst and they have no patience with anyone. There's no patience, there's no compassion, there's no mercy. That's the hot-tempered man and we ought not to be like that. So don't cancel your brothers. Don't assume the worst of each other. When there are disagreements and there are conflicts and they will happen, okay, you ought to assume the best of your brothers. You ought not assume the worst.

We ought not to assume the worst of our brothers or our spouses or our children. And children, you ought not to expect the worst or assume the worst of your parents or your siblings. And instead of assuming the worst, instead of allowing our sinful thoughts about each other, our assumptions, to drive and motivate us, we should let patience motivate us. So be patient with each other. And this is hard. This isn't easy. We're not going to walk out of here and all be patient with one another now. Right? Sanctification and the Christian life just isn't like that. And especially when you do find yourself in conflict and you do get angry, it can be hard to repent and change gears and be patient. It can be hard to repent and be slow to speak. But we need to remember that God has been patient with us.

Romans 2.4 says, Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience? Not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? So He's asking them a question. Do you think lightly of these things? Do you think lightly of God's kindness and His tolerance and His patience? When we're tempted to get angry, we should ask ourselves this question. Do we think of God's patience lightly? Because His patience and His kindness towards us is what leads us to repentance. And then Peter says, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you. The patience of the Lord, regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. We, because God has been patient with us, he has created a way for us to be saved. He's created a way for us to not be his enemies, to be his family.

to be His children. And we see God's patience throughout Scripture. We see it in our lives, but we also see it in Scripture. Just look at His patience with Israel after the Exodus. How often have you read through that and just thought, why are you doing this? Why, Israel? Why do you keep doing this? And you see that the Lord was actually patient with them. He's just. He's wrathful. But He is patient. And he was patient. And look at his patience with us. He's shown us mercy by sending his son to pay for our sins against him. Sins that don't deserve patience. Sins that we don't have patience with one another for. Sins that sometimes we don't have patience with ourselves for. Our sins, we know, deserve eternal condemnation. And justice would have been that we just be condemned. But God poured out his wrath toward our sins on his own son.

Because he was patient and merciful towards us. And look at Jesus, who died for us. And look at his patience as he was going to die. 1 Peter 2 says, And while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously. Now, the text is about suffering and how to suffer well. But that takes patience. It takes patience to not get exasperated. when you've truly been wronged, when you've truly been backed into the corner. Think about David and Saul. We've been going through 1 Samuel, so we've read a lot of the stories in the last several months. Saul is the hot-tempered man, if you want to think about it that way. He's creating conflict and going out to try to kill David because he thinks he's heard the songs, Saul killed his thousands and David his ten thousands, and he's jealous.

And he's stirring up strife and trying to kill David. And David, at one point, has a chance to kill Saul and end the conflict when they're in the cave. Right? You remember that story? And what does David do? He doesn't kill him, but he was patient. He tore a part of his cloak off. He waits for Saul to leave. He waits for it to be safe. And then David comes and reveals himself. And he shows him the piece of his cloak. And what happens to Saul? David didn't kill him. David doesn't come in anger. He comes saying that I spared you. I was patient with you. And what does Saul do? He breaks down and weeps. And he goes away. The conflict, at least for a time, is resolved. David quieted the quarrel. David solved the dispute because he was patient. David was slow to anger.

And he didn't just go trying to get justice for himself. We would read that story, and you read those stories, and you think, well, David would have been right to kill Saul. You would think. Because Saul was out to kill him. But David didn't do that. Because Saul was the Lord's anointed at that point. Saul was the king. David denied himself vigilante justice. And we should deny ourselves that same thing. Jesus was patient. David was patient. You read throughout the book of Acts, and the apostles are patient. We see them loving their enemies, loving the people who create conflict. Paul is always going to the synagogues to preach. And you wonder, why would he keep doing that? They keep stoning him. They keep getting the guards involved. They keep locking him up in prison. Everywhere he goes. And part of how the apostles loved their enemies throughout that was by being patient with them. They don't take justice into their own hands. God's people don't take justice into their own hands.

They wait on the Lord. They trust the Lord to deal with those who have sinned against them. You think about the end of Paul's letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy. He's talking about the harm that Alexander the coppersmith caused. And what does he say? He says, the Lord repay him according to his deeds. Let the Lord take care of that. Trust the Lord and pray that the Lord would bring those who have sinned against you, who have created conflict, who are angry, who tempt you to be angry, are in conflict, are tempted to be angry, trust the Lord and pray that the Lord would bring those who sinned against you to repentance. Be patient. Be patient and endure with them. Because most of them are here. Most of the people that you're going to come in conflict with are here, they're in your family. And remember that your judgment about your being wronged isn't perfect, and that the Lord's judgment and His justice is perfect. Now, all this talk about being patient,

You might be tempted to think that I'm arguing that we should just avoid conflict. That when conflict comes, you should just turn a blind eye to it. You should just not worry about it. Patience, you might be tempted to think patience looks like avoiding the conflict. And I don't think that's what patience is. One, it's not realistic because conflict will find you. You're going to have conflict in your life. We are sinners and we live in a world with other sinners. And you interact with sinners on a daily basis. And so conflict will come. And we're going to find ourselves in positions where we're not going to have perfect patience, where we're going to be like the hot-tempered man. And we're going to run into the hot-tempered man. And this is just the reality that conflict does come. So I'm not saying that we avoid conflict. Think back to what David does with Saul. He didn't avoid the conflict. David didn't just find himself out of the cave and run away. He didn't just avoid it.

He addressed it. But he did it with patience. He addressed it with humility and with patience and with kindness and with mercy. There's a way for us to address conflict without being the hot-tempered man, without you having to bring the hot-tempered man out of you. So you shouldn't go out of your way to create conflict. That's what the hot-tempered man does. But there are times where you do have to create conflict. Someone, I mean, a simple example would be you find someone in sin. You find your brother sinning and stumbling. It's going to create some kind of friction to go and confront them. But not confronting them is not the answer. And so we shouldn't just run away from conflict. You may need to say something that's true and helpful and may not be received well. You may think it may not be received well.

And there's a way to approach that with patience and with kindness and with mercy. And so we can engage in conflict without anger and malice, without slander, without frustration, without annoyance, without irritation. We can have conversations and we can have disagreements without anger. And we need to always be on guard of our anger. Again, whether it's a besetting sin or not, we need to be very careful not to commit murder in our hearts against our brothers and sisters, against our spouses. We need to engage in conflict with patience and with grace. We need to be merciful with each other. And if you struggle with anger like I do, then I would exhort you to trust the Lord and work on being patient. And trust the Lord that He will bless your work. As you fight your anger, as you fight your self-interest, as you fight your assumptions, that you would seek to be patient with those around you and seek to love them.

And then you trust the Lord that He will give you good fruit for that work. So repent. Be patient. Pray that the Lord will sanctify you and trust Him to change you. And I believe that He'll do it. That He will sanctify you. Let's pray.