What To Do With Our Anger
- David Fairchild
- Jul 26, 2009
- Series: Psalms
Psalms 137:1-9: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows there we hung up our lyres. 3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ 4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! 6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set
We are continuing our series of discussions that are intended to help us take a closer look at our emotional life. What do we do with our fear, anger, guilt, shame, suffering, and doubts? How do we handle them? How do we begin to see change when our emotions are ruining us and others? How do we fight against the underlying disbelief of our troubled feelings? How do we experience and encourage stronger affections for God, stronger desires for what He loves?
This is what we’re trying to accomplish over the next several weeks. We’re hoping that the cumulative effect of these messages will begin to transform us into a community that is neither afraid of nor enamored by our emotions.
Too often we are caught between these two extremes. We either feel too much or feel too little. We try to ignore our feelings by fighting them off like an enemy, or we don’t fight them at all and end up enslaved to how we feel in the moment.
Our emotions are windows into our soul that give us a glimpse of how we’re doing with God, and what we really want for our lives. They are the cry of our soul and if we’re going to understand our deepest passions and convictions, we have to be willing to be honest about them and not to try and hide them from God.
I know some of you are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into your thoughts. But change takes place in moments of our most graphic honesty and vulnerability before God. God loves to shine His light in dark places so He can show off the brilliance of His grace.
It’s in these moments, like the Psalmists, that we can bare our souls and bring our hearts before God and yearn to be transformed by Him.
Proverbs 23:26 says, “My son, give me your heart...”
And so, through this very difficult Psalm, a cry of distress and a cry for justice, God calls out to His children to give Him our hearts.
This Psalm is going to teach us what to do with our anger that arises when someone wrongs us. How do we deal with it? How does the writer of this Psalm lead us to deal with injustice and anger?
Let’ take a look at the first portion of this Psalm.
Verses 1-6: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows there we hung up our lyres. 3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ 4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! 6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!”
This Psalm begins with the writer poetically expressing his deep sadness over the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of God’s people to the city of their ruthless enemy, Babylon.
Here they sit down by a water-course, looking to gain a moment of peace as they add to the waters with their tears. At lease they could steal some breathing room from the crowd of their mockers.
The Temple of God, where His glory dwelled, the city where their God had placed them to become a light to the nations, was now a memory to them, and so they weep.
The drooping branches of the willows are like the backs of their misery, bent low and looking downward. Their instruments of praise and joy are hung up, as those who should be singing can only weep in bitterness.
And in an act of great cruelty, their captors required them to sing songs. It’s one thing to be carried away from their home and their place of worship, but what torture to be asked to sing songs that are filled with references to the faithfulness and love of their God. “Sing us a song about how you’re the light of the world. C’mon, do it!”
Their tormentors not only wanted them to sing, but they asked them to act as if they’re joyful while doing it. What great indignity and shame this is. Broken, wounded, and enslaved, they are cast into poverty and all their enemies laugh at their songs, mock their God, and have no pity on them.
They were asked to sing a song of Zion, perhaps a song that spoke of God’s great love for them, God’s great plans for them, God’s great care for them so they could ridicule their faith. Nothing could be more malicious or cruel. They wanted more than the Egyptians did. The Egyptians wanted their labor, their backs, which they could give, but the Babylonians wanted smiles and joy which they could not deliver.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? How long will we be mocked? How long will we endure these blasphemous taunts? How is it even possible that we could add to our misery by singing songs for their twisted enjoyment?
To sing
The Babylonians were universally renowned for their cruelty. They were great in war, but masters of torture. In fact, Babylon becomes the epitome of a city and people who hate God and are likened to a satanic prostitute that devours her enemies.
In Revelation, we see what happens to the spirit of Babylon that continuously opposes God and His children:
Revelation 18:2: “And he called out with a mighty voice, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.’”
One way the Babylonian military would strike fear into the hearts of its enemies, was by not only killing the young men and raping and enslaving young women, but also the soldiers would rip nursing infants from the arms of their mothers, grab them by the heels and swing them with all their might onto a rock until the baby’s head was crushed as the mother was forced to watch.
No doubt this is what
How does the Psalmist handle his anger when he is ridiculed and mocked? How are we to respond to taunts and suffering at the hands of those who gossip about us, slander our name, tell lies about us, or even try to dash our hearts against the rock?
Will our response be to take vengeance into our own hands? Will we pretend the pain isn’t there? Will we lash out and repay their insults? Let’s look at how this writer handles such great anger.
The Psalmist has just enough left in his voice to begin to turn this painful poetry into a passionate prayer.
1) We Should Have Righteous Anger
The first thing we’re already seeing with the Psalmist is that he refuses to simply stuff down his anger. He refuses to sit on it and let it seethe and boil under the surface. In other words, He expresses it.
If you’ve been a Christian for some time, you may have come to the conclusion that we are supposed to keep our anger under a lid. We’re not to express it to one another, and certainly we’re not to confess it to God.
So much of current Christianity teaches that our holiness comes by making sure we do nothing wrong. The problem with this view is that this creates a people who have not learned to do what’s right. Our focus is on the negative things we stay away from rather than the good things that God wants us to gravitate towards. In being conformed to the image of Christ we’re called to have the heart of Christ. And the heart of Christ is a heart that is radically for the things that God is passionate about.
One of those good things is a righteous anger against sin and injustice.
Spurgeon says: “They who have no heart cannot display real indignation—but where there beats a true heart of love, there must be righteous wrath against that which is unloving—holy anger against that which is unjust and true.”
The apostle Paul assumes we will be angry over good things. The problem is not anger; the problem is what we do with it. He says this:
Ephesians 4:26: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
As God’s people we should be marked by redemptive anger, which is really saying we should feel what’s wrong in this world and desire that God’s grace would restore what’s broken.
To be angry at injustice and sin is to simply acknowledge that this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
This is why the Psalms can be so troubling when anger is expressed towards evil. But the problem is not found in the heart of the Psalmist, the problem is found in a heart that has grown dull and numb through pleasure and security. We can’t imagine being worked up over anything like this Psalmist because we have lost perspective.
We’ve come to believe this world is about being comfortable rather than being restored. When it’s about comfort, we want to ignore injustice. When it’s about restoration, our hearts, birthed from a love for God and His creation, break over wrongs and rightly sense the heart of God.
In a world of comfort and pleasure, our only anger and irritations are aroused when we’re blocked from getting what we want.
Churchill said: “A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.”
And it some ways that’s true. If we are angry and irritated over small things like our inconveniences, our hearts will shrink to that size. However, if we are righteously angry over the things that Jesus was angry over, our hearts will swell in size.
If we are not willing to be angry over evil things that block righteousness, we will eventually become partakers in that evil.
In a religious home, we’re told to manage and control our emotions by not letting them out. In a liberal home, we’re taught that every emotion is equally valid and so we should express them.
But in the home of God’s word we’re taught that we’re to have deep anger, profound anger, expressed anger, but this anger isn’t selfish. It’s an anger that is concerned for God’s glory, for the justice of others, and for the redemption of what is wrong.
It’s just as wrong to be unable to feel righteous anger as it is to have an unrighteous anger.
Anger is supposed to show us what God is like. There is a glory in anger if it is righteous and redemptive. God’s anger is motivated by His glory and love for what is good. So should ours be. Anger is energy spent towards something bad that is threatening that which is good.
But this still doesn’t tell us what to do with it. It tells us we should have it, but what do we do when righteous anger begins to well up in our hearts?
Right when this Psalm moves from a poetic description and begins to boil into a righteous anger, the Psalmist begins to pray his anger.
2) We Should Pray Our Anger
Verses 7-9: “Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, ‘Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!’ 8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! 9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!”
But how do we express our anger? Where do we express it? How can we ensure that it is righteous and motivated by a love for what is good?
The Psalmist turns to God in prayer instead of simply venting it in a furious rage. He doesn’t become uncorked and start spewing venom at his oppressors. He brings it to God.
Some of us have bought into the myth that we can’t approach God with our true emotions. We have a view of prayer as a kind of somber script we recite that removes all emotions. Some of you may believe that to come to God in prayer means you have to have all of your emotions tidy and controlled.
So, our prayers lack passion. Our prayers lack honesty. And our prayers become boring and ineffective. But this is not the way of the Psalmist, is it?
Instead, the psalmist takes his white-hot, raw emotions before God and begins to process his emotions before his Father who hears the cry of his heart in the presence of God.
Let me ask you, do you want little robots for children who only bring data to you in an emotionless request? Or do you want the heart of your children to be honest with you when they come to you and pour themselves out as they ask for help?
So why would we think that God would desire anything less than what we would with our own children?
He opens up his emotions before God in all their reality and it leads him to see God in his reality. His emotions drive him to God, and in this, the presence of God helps him to stay close to His heart.
The Psalms call us to pray our emotional life before God so that we can be transformed by Him.
3) We Should Trust God with Our Anger
The beauty of this Psalm, as graphic as it is, is that it shows us that by pouring out our emotional life before God in prayer, by being honest with how we’re really feeling, by not stuffing our emotions down, our anger can be kept from turning into an unrighteous outburst.
As the Psalmist turns to God in prayer, He’s also reminding himself of who God is. He doesn’t pray that God gives him a strong hand to go and personally destroy his enemy. He doesn’t ask God to help him act against them.
Instead, he says in verse 7, “Remember, O LORD…” And that word “remember” is not one of recollection as if God forgot them and their injustice. When we see God saying He’ll remember something, or someone praying for God to remember them, it means action. To say, “Remember, O LORD…” Is the same as asking Him to act according to His character and nature.
In his righteous anger, the Psalmist is trusting God to act according to what He knows about God. He’s asking God to be just, to be righteous.
He suggests a sentence that is fitting for the crimes the Babylonians have committed, no more, no less. If this were brought to the court of law, even with a human judge, a judgment would be made for punishment that would be in accordance with the crime. Anyone who doesn’t see this hasn’t experienced this kind of pain. He wants God to simply be what He is, a just Judge.
He lays his anger and injustice at the feet of God and trusts that God will be just in doing whatever He sees fit. He makes his request and gives it to God and then lets God be God.
Most ancient societies would be taking vows to their god to avenge these wrongs. But he simply comes and says, “Remember, O LORD…” you are the judge, you are just, you are holy, you are righteous, you are wise, you are powerful, and I trust you. And in this prayer, his anger is limited and sanctified.
If you go to God in anger and you remind yourself that only God has the power to judge, only God has the full knowledge to judge justly, and that only God has the right to judge, you will more and more see your anger transformed into faith and trust.
In this way, his anger doesn’t break him, it doesn’t control him, it doesn’t distort him, and it doesn’t drive him into action that would lead to sin.
This is only possible if you trust that God is just, that God is fully knowledgeable, and that only God has the right to make perfect judgments. Because God is a perfect judge, we are free from having to take vengeance and retribution into our own hands.
Miroslav Volf, a Croatian who endured great suffering and violence in the Balkans, says this about God’s justice:
If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence—that God would not be worthy of worship…The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God….My thesis is that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many…in the West….[But] it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence [results from the belief in] God’s refusal to judge. In a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die…[with] other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.
Volf is saying that the lack of belief in a God who is just and will judge and punish injustice actually nourishes violence, for the simple reason that we feel we have to take matters in our own hands.
Someone who says, “don’t get angry” or “violence doesn’t solve anything,” hasn’t seen their home burned down, their relatives killed and raped, and their babies dashed to the ground as soldiers laugh hysterically. It shows no concern for real justice.
Yet we’re called to go beyond retribution, we’re called to trust in the justice of God who has full knowledge of the injustice and will punish it fully and perfectly.
We bring our anger into the presence of a God who created all things and is fully able and has promised to put down all that is wrong and make all that is broken right and restored.
Now, the logical question you might be asking is whether or not this is an appropriate prayer to God from this Psalmist. The simple answer is, of course. This prayer is a cry for justice for God to be God in the way He promises.
However, is this a prayer that you and I should be praying against our own enemies? No. This Psalm is not for you and me to pray against another person. It has to be put into the context of the New Testament and seen through the eyes of Christ who calls us to:
Matthew 5:44-46: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”
Jesus can say this to us because we know something that the Psalmist didn’t.
It’s not that God’s character has changed. It’s not that God is now more loving and less just. In fact, in the first self-declaration of His character, God allows part of His glory to pass by Moses because Moses wants to see His God and know more of what He’s like. Then God says this to Him:
Exodus 34:6-7: "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
But how can God be merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in continual love and faithfulness, keeping this love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and yet at the same time not clear the guilty, and visit the sins of the fathers on the children and the children’s children?
How can He be both? How can He keep all these claims? They seem utter opposites.
In Luke 19:41-44, we’re shown how this is possible.
Luke 19:41-44: “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear (dash) you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.’”
Jesus deliberately uses this word that means “dash.” It’s the only time it’s used in the New Testament. He’s quoting Psalm 137. He’s predicting what will happen to those who will reject him and ultimately kill them.
Is He gloating over their destruction? No, He’s weeping. He’s reacting in a way that demonstrates the heart of God.
On the cross, when Jesus is stripped naked and shamed, He cries out to His Father to forgive them.
The Psalmist is crying out for justice for all the little ones of the world who have been dashed to the ground by God’s enemies.
The Father has made a way for such a great injustice to be punished. The Father has acted decisively and perfectly to ensure injustice is paid for. But it’s because the Father was willing to let His little One, Jesus, be dashed against this world, dashed against this cross, and broken into pieces.
The Son was taken out of the Father’s arms and was dashed and destroyed so that this sin can be paid for, but mercy and grace of our Father means that the punishment this injustice deserves is paid for by Himself, and is paid for by His Son.
Check Our Idols
James 4:1-3: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You 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. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
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