As I prepared a recent sermon from Acts 17, my outline included the following point:
Be broken, not angry.
There was one problem. In Acts 17:16, the Bible says Paul was provoked. Acts 17:16 does not say Paul was broken, it says he was angry. He was irritated or maybe exasperated, but the Bible does not say he was broken.
The spirit of anger that permeates our culture and many churches today concerns me. I am troubled to see Christians who baptize the anger of the culture in an attempt to make their attitudes acceptable before God. And, in my concern, I was eager to urge people to be broken over the sins of others around them.
But the text does not say Paul was broken, he was angry.
What then are we to do with this text? As a pastor, I have no choice. I am commanded in 2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” I do not want God’s people to fall prey to the angry spirit of the age, but I do not get to change God’s word.
Instead, I am to be changed by God’s word.
What do we learn from God’s word and Paul’s example? We learn that it is possible to be angry and not sin. We discover that some things actually deserve righteous anger and godly people are acting in godly ways when they chose to respond to ungodly idols with godly anger.
So, be angry, but do not sin. Be angry at the idols that hold people captive in your world today. Be angry at the pervasiveness of pornography and the sex trafficking that enables it. Be angry at the demonic hold of drugs and alcohol. Be angry at the deceptive power of money. Be angry.
But, rather than sin, follow Paul’s example. Allow your anger at sin to drive you to not fight with sinners, but to seek to rescue them from their sin. Engage with sinners as they are: captives to sin and sinful worldviews. Offer them hope and healing. Give them Christ and him crucified.
Paul looked around at the idols in Athens and he spirit was provoked–he was ticked off. What did he do? He went to the marketplace and began to tell people about Jesus.
How can you determine if your anger is righteous or sinful? Does your anger drive you to love others more and share Jesus or does it drive you to become bitter and argumentative? Righteous anger drives us closer to Christ and his heart for sinners. Sinful anger separates us from others and makes us self-righteous.
In other words, righteous anger leads us to brokenness. We do not choose between anger and brokenness. When we are concerned with the things God is concerned with, he will break us over the sin in our own lives and the desperate situation in the lives of others. How can you get there?
Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness…he will add all the rest later.
