Proverbs 25. I'll read beginning in verse six. Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence or stand in the place of the great. It's better to be told to come up here than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. What your eyes have seen, don't bring hastily into court.

What you do in the end, put your neighbor to shame. Argue with your neighbor in secret rather than bringing him before others because you don't know how your case will go. You'll bring shame upon you in verse 10, and your ill repute will have no end. Skip down to the end of the chapter. Verse 27.

It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one's own glory. A man without self control is like a city broken into and left without walls. This is the word of God. Self control, of course, is a major theme in the Bible, and it is a virtue of wisdom, and it is in decline, of course, today. Jonathan Haidt, in his book, Anxious Generation, describes the role of technology in eradicating self control from our society, not just from today's society, but the generation ahead.

He points how parents have increasingly become more and more reliant on screen time for discipline, that a child has a desire or is distracted or has low self control, and it is met with interventions. It is met with impulses, everything from a fidget spinner, which of course does not teach child self control or to get their impulses under together in in control at all. It just, you know, gives them another distraction. Everything from the fidget spinner to an actual screen, a cell phone, an iPad. Who among us has not seen little, baby carriages in the coffee shops and a little six month old there with the iPad hanging down off of the handle?

It's becoming an all too common sight now. And the spiritual effect of that, and by the way, Jonathan Haidt is not a, you know, not a believer, but he's noting a spiritual effect, although he doesn't use the language spiritual, but the effect he points out is that self control is eradicated. The child has every impulse fed, not restricted. And with the lack of restriction, the child comes of an age where they believe that any impulse or any desire they have should be met. He points out the role of instant gratification from screens in feeding a child an image of that.

They desire a food, they have it. They desire an activity, they do it. They desire a lust, they act on it. Because throughout their life, even their parents have taught them, if they want some interaction, they get it immediately. The idea of restraining yourself even in your emotions for a young child is foreign now.

The idea of restraining yourself is almost an external influence that would be negative. If you have a desire, put it in front of a screen. That creates almost a chemical addiction, Haidt writes in his book. A dopamine infusion in the brain at every changing reel or every changing screen makes children really addicts. You know, they go off to school, addicts in the need of the next fix of entertainment, the next fix of movement in front of their eyes that feeds their ever decreasing attention spans.

The Bible has a word for that. The word is temperance or self control. Under the heading of self control, the scripture, when it speaks of self control, it means basically the idea that you train your body, that your body works for you. You don't work for your body. That's my own definition of self control.

When you chase down all the ways that word is used in the scripture, that's how I would render it. Self control is the idea that you are in charge of your body. You boss your body around. I did landscaping for a while, and I had a, a boss, a foreman of the crew. We were on crews of four guys, and when my crew had a boss, that boss got to tell us what to do.

That boss was not always a believer, although the guy who owned the company was a believer. So generally I had Christian bosses, but sometimes I would have a foreman who was who was not a believer. He was a there was a crazy homeless guy, actually, who was quite good at landscaping and was often my foreman. And he would tell me what to do, and I had to recognize I worked for him. If I didn't work for him, that guy left people at sites before, like in random parts of Albuquerque.

You weren't paying attention, you weren't listening to him, you would pack up the truck, and those who were paying attention would in it, get in it, and leave, and if you weren't paying attention you were left there. This is in the days before Uber, by the way. Self control is the idea that you recognize you are the foreman of your body. Your body is not the foreman of you. Your body should not get to tell you what to do, what to eat, what to watch, when to sleep, what to think.

Those are impulses your body gives you, and you occasionally have to remind yourself, body, you work for me today. Pay attention or I'll leave you here. And I know with our bodies, we can't leave disobedient body parts here or there, but that's the essence of self control. Bringing, Paul says in first Corinthians nine, your body into submission. In fact, in first Corinthians nine, Paul says that every athlete demonstrates self control.

An athlete who doesn't demonstrate self control, Paul says, is not an athlete. Athletes demonstrate, Paul says, self control in all things. That's discipline. You bring your body into submission. Paul says he buffets himself in the same chapter.

So that, lest having preached to others, he himself wouldn't be disqualified by his own impulses, his own physical lusts and desires. Acts twenty four twenty five, our scripture reading for tonight at the beginning of the service, I hope you noticed this, that Paul was brought before Festus, and this first time he's talking about the resurrection. Remember they charged him with inciting riots and things that were lies. You know? And he acquits himself wonderfully, and yet as a favor to the Jews, the governor keeps him in custody and calls for him another time.

The next time Paul comes out, he's had some time to think about this. Do you notice? He cooled down in the the slammer for a while. When he's brought it again, it says he comes out preaching self control and goes from self control to the resurrection. I don't know the content of that sermon.

We don't get it. We get a lot of his other sermons. We don't get that one. But Paul entered. He has an audience with the king, and he enters by preaching about self control, driving them to the resurrection.

Of course, Felix then says no more. Go away. I'll call for you again when I'm more ready to listen to this. The kitchen was hot and he wanted out. First Peter four, verse seven, Peter says the end of all things is at hand.

Therefore, live with self control. This is a very common New Testament command. Self control is a fruit of the spirit. If you believe that the end of all things is at hand, if you believe that God is gonna end this world, then you should live with self control. That seems disconnected to us.

In fact, if the end is all things if the end of all things is at hand, shouldn't we lead with urgency? Shouldn't we be more busy? But Peter says, no. The end of all things is at hand, so restrain yourself. And that is because it's a fruit of the spirit.

Remember the demoniac who was healed? He was raving about and naked in the caves and lashing out at people. And when Jesus cast the demons out, he goes back to the town. And the first thing people realize is that, oh, he is clothed and in his right minds. That phrase is similar to the phrase of self control.

The demoniac had the demons cast out. He put on clothes, and he brought his body under control. Titus one verse eight says that self control is an elder qualification. In fact, in Titus two verse 12, it connects self control to serious thinking. Somebody who is self controlled is capable of serious thought.

Somebody who lacks self control does not have the capacity for deep or profound thought because their mind wanders. Their mind goes away. They're not able to reason from point a to point b to point c remembering what point a and point b were because their mind is gone self control is reining the thoughts back in making them a person a serious thinker in fact in Titus two verse two he says it should be a characteristic of godly older men it is a learned behavior not something you're born with you have to discipline your mind to bring it under control to develop self control and the fact that it is a learned behavior and it is a fruit of the spirit means that is a hallmark of biblical wisdom and you see this in Proverbs. There are so many Proverbs about self control. Proverbs about self control.

As we go through this tonight, I want to explain to you the wisdom of self control. The wisdom of self control. That's our heading for all of tonight. The first Proverb about it is Proverb 16 verse 32. Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit is better than the one who takes a city.

The person who is slow to anger has more self control would win an arm wrestling match against a strong person. That's the idea. The person who is able to control his own emotions, and anger we're gonna see is the antithesis of self control. The person who can reign in his anger can reign in his emotions has more inner strength than the Incredible Hulk. That's the idea.

One person can overthrow a city. Samson hurling the gates kind of idea. Man, he would be defeated by somebody with self control. Samson's own life shows that, doesn't it? Samson could rip down the pillars of the Philistines.

He could huck the city gates. He could make a pile of jaw bones he could do all of that with his strength his lack of self control literally led to his blindness and his death Charles Bridges says at this verse verse Proverbs sixteen thirty two, it describes a great conflict and a glorious victory, a conflict not in notion but in action, hidden from the eyes of the mighty people on Earth and known only to those who have enlisted in the war under the baptismal banner, he says. In other words, this verse describes a great war bigger than any global conflict. And the only people who see this war have enrolled in the Lord's army under the baptismal banner. They're of age to fight.

The heart is the field of battle, and evil is out there. Evil is our deadly foe, and it resides in the heart. The war that this passage describes is in the human heart. And the one who can control his own emotions, who can reign in his body, he has the high ground in this war. He has the tactical advantage.

Proverbs 19 verse 11. Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is to one's glory to overlook an offense. We've looked at this verse a few times before. One who gives into anger gives into the world and forfeits his very mind. The express here the expression here, in English, it smooths it out.

It says good sense makes them slow to anger. The old King James was better than this. It leads to our modern expression of that person is beside themselves or out of their mind. That's from this verse. A person who's given to anger is out of his right mind.

The Puritans used to describe anger as, quote, temporary madness, not able to think rationally. The contrast with that is self control. Self control gives patience, discretion. It brings peace. Cold water on a hot day.

Cold water on a hot day. Notice it's to someone's glory to overlook an offense. It makes things go smoother. Now this isn't in every instance, and, of course, when there's sin in the church, you confront church, but there's so much conflict and sin in the world that it is just virtuous to reign your anger in. I have a practical example of this.

Yesterday, our car was in a parking lot at at Lidl, and somebody hit it. And Maddie was in the car. In fact, she she is the one who had parked it and the person hit it hard, knocked the kids out of their seat and then the person bolted, ran away. And somebody, some good Samaritan, some good Annandale resident, got the license plate number and gave it to us. And so we called the police.

And the first phone call the police they were like, yeah we don't do that, sorry. The second phone call the police, still no luck, it's a traffic accident in a parking lot, you know, good luck out there. So we go to the police station. I bring Maddie to the police station, and they tell us there, we don't have any officers to help you. Good luck next time.

So we go home, call the police station, and this time, they send somebody, a lovely officer, and she comes and she asks us this question. She says, do you want to press charges? Do you want us to go arrest the person? And I was like, well, what's my choice? And she said, if you say no, we can go just politely ask for his insurance information and he's more likely to give it.

If you say yes to press charges he'll go away in handcuffs but you won't get his insurance information. Oh, this is a moral conundrum. I looked at Maddie, and I'm thinking, I want him to pay. Can you use the taser and we not press charges? Like, is that an option on the is that on the table?

At least let me know what I'm dealing with here. No. She could not use the taser. But, yeah, she called the guy and said, hey. They're not gonna press charges.

Just want your insurance information. He's like, oh, sorry about that. He blamed his son. Here's the information. Yes.

I thought of this proverb. Refusing to get angry makes your life go easier. Wanting revenge and wanting the handcuffs and the taser would have made things much harder for everybody. For everybody. That's just the problem with living in a fallen world is sometimes people get away with things.

Proverbs 21 verse 23. Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble. If you have self control over your mouth and self control over your tongue, you will have so much peace in this world. Notice it's not just the affections that self control is after. It's not just anger, but the mouth.

It starts with the heart, and the only hope for self control of the mouth is self control of the heart. We understand that. But that's going to produce self control of the tongue. And you can reverse engineer this. If you lack control of the tongue, it's probably because you lack control of the heart.

Your kids are aggravating you. Your boss is aggravating you. Things are grating you in life. Every small slight is exasperated and magnified, and so you lash out with anger. The truth is you're lashing out with anger because it's from the heart.

If you're able to restrain your mouth and restrain your tongue, you're a mature man, James says. Whoever can restrain his tongue is mature. Self control keeps you from getting to the point where you break in. We've all been there, where you're lacking self control. You feel slighted.

You feel wrong. And the irony with the person who gives into the sin of anger is a person is probably lashing out at the wrong person altogether. Your boss bothered you. The person cut you off in traffic. This happened.

That happened. The other thing happened. And then, you know, you yell at your dog. It had nothing to do with any of this. Small things build and build and build to the person who doesn't have self control.

Proverbs 23 verse one through five. This is a longer passage. You might want to look to it. If you can't see it in the screen, you can look at it in in your bible. You might even be open.

When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you. Put a knife to your throat if you're given to an appetite. Don't desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Don't toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist.

When your eyes light on it, it's gone. For suddenly, it sprouts wings and flies away like an eagle towards heaven. Here is the practical outworking of self control. This is control in the affections and in the desires. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, be so careful.

Now, it's interesting. When you're sitting down to eat with a ruler, the idea is that he's presenting to you better food than you have at your house. You're down, you're sitting down, we have the expression, it's a meal fit for a king. Well, if you're feeding with the king, every meal is fit for the king by definition. So you're down with the ruler.

You're getting offered more and better food than you ever seen before, and Solomon says that's the point where you need to be so careful. Put a knife to your throat if you're given to gluttony because the king will perceive it. Better for you to slit your own neck than to be exposed as a fool before the king. Don't desire what the king has because it is deceptive. The king will lure you in, promise you Turkish delight, and you will fall for it, and you become his spy, you become his servant, maybe not in a literal sense, but you become his pawn.

The king has always got an angle. That's why you're there. You're not there for his own personal, you know, gratification. You're there because he's getting something out of you. So put a knife to your throat.

I was reading Charles Bridges' commentary on Proverbs and this passage, it struck me, language that our American evangelical culture uses for the, you know, for purity, how far is too far, how close to the line can you get without going over it kind of questions, lines that we we use that kind of language in the purity culture today. He was using that kind of language to describe this, to describe self control with food. We don't talk like that as Americans, do we? When we talk about how close how close can you get to the line without going over it, that's usually single people asking how far is too far. Charles Bridges uses that exact terminology for delighting in good food.

How much should you eat before you sin? And he says, this is the one battle where you actually gain territory by getting as far away from the line as possible. You want to move the line as into the other room. Get away. Don't fall into gluttony.

Have control over your own desires. And it's paired, by the way, in verses four and five. It's paired with the the two king verses and food are paired with don't labor to acquire wealth. Some people are so worried about money. They're so worried about possessions.

They need more things. They need the the better house and the better patio and the better grill and the better whatever they want. They have a list of things that they want, and they feel like they need those things to be happy in life. And Solomon says, don't labor for that stuff, man. It's a life that just it ekes away from you.

Have the self control to reign in your desires. Randy Alcorn, in his book, Treasure Principle, says before you purchase something, imagine it growing wings and flying away. And if you've read The Treasure Principle, it has a little drawing in that part of the book with the treasure chest and big wings. Love that drawing. Before you buy something, imagine it growing wings and flying away.

And he says he, early on in his life, he imagined all of his possessions in his car and the whole car growing wings and flying away. You see what you're gonna buy fly away? Now ask yourself, do I wanna buy it? Do I wanna buy it anyway? I just watched it fly away in my mind's eye.

Do I wanna buy it anyway? That self control is reining your desires in Proverbs twenty five sixteen. We looked at earlier, if you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it. Our affections are never in the right spot until they're fixed on God. When we desire things outside of God, we give in to folly and lack of self control.

That's what this passage is capturing. God, of course, provides honey. It's a metaphor for the word of God. God gives us good and sweet things, but the person who lacks self control deceives himself. He lacks self control, and so he falls for the lie that if a little honey is good, then more honey must be better.

If one scoop of ice cream is good, then half of the carton has got to be wonderful. Amen? No. Not amen. This is the lie of the lack of self control.

You see it in money. You see it in food. You see it in alcohol. You see it in so many things. If a little is good, much has to be better.

That's the lie. That's the lie. And that's a lie that a person who knows self control believes all the way until he's sick and throwing up. What God gave for good, he uses for his own harm. That's repeated in Proverbs 25 verse 27.

It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one's own glory. So it's bouncing here from self control over food to self control over your own reputation. The person who keeps eating food until they vomit is rightfully grossed out by that. Now take that and go to the person who keeps putting himself forward, who keeps wanting to be the center of attention, who keeps wanting people to know how good and right he is. That is the same kind of noxious persona as the glutton.

A man without self control is like a city broken into and left without walls. A city broken into and left without walls means it has no defense. The enemy got in, opened the door, and now everybody else can get in. That's the person without self control. What this means, if you think about it for a second, your first line of defense in your own human body, physically speaking, your first line of defense is your own instinct.

If somebody were to take a swing at you, God made you in such a way that you are expected to duck. If something's coming for your eye like a flick or a a raindrop or something, your eyes are fast enough to see it coming towards you and to blink to protect yourself. That's your first layer of defense. The person with no self control is like the person who forfeits that. They don't have enough sense to duck.

In fact, they're punching themselves. The person with no self control, their harm is generated from the inside. There are very few people that can withstand an attack from the inside, like the city door has been opened. It's their own heart, their own desires, their own lust ends up waging war on them. Well there's three particular enemies to self control.

I'm going to call this the AAA of self control. Not at all because of the car crash yesterday. Nothing to do with AAA. Just it works. The AAA of self control.

These are three enemies of self control. They attack you and they attack your self control. Lack of self control leads to them and it fuels itself. First is adultery. The first is adultery.

With all three of these, you're gonna see the pattern that they take things that God designed for good and they believe the lie that if God designed this for good, then more of it should be better. That's the lie that is behind a lack of self control. And you see it, of course, with adultery. Proverbs 23 verse 27, a prostitute is a deep pit. An adulteress is a narrow well.

She lies in wait like a narrow well, meaning you've fallen, you can't get out is the idea. She lies in wait like a robber and increases the traitors among mankind. Now Proverbs had a lot to say about adultery in the first nine chapters. Much of chapters five, six, parts of seven and nine referenced it. We haven't seen it again.

In all these general proverbs, there's hardly anything about it at all. It featured so heavily at the beginning of the book, but you do get this one here. So I want to bring it to your attention now. There's more could be said about it, of course, but that stuff comes at the beginning of the book. The point here is that the person buys the lie that sex because it is good, more of it should be better.

If it's good with this person, it would be good with other people as well. The person who falls to that lie does so at their own harm. They fall in the pit, they can't get out. They fall in the well. Nobody can find them.

And the irony with this person who lacks self control and acts in their sexual lust and desires in that way, it's not just with the prostitute especially, it's not just the person has to seek it out. They don't accidentally run into this. They have to seek it out. But it's not just that they seek it out. Instead, they seek it out and then pay for it out of their own pocket.

They're paying for their own harm. That's the great irony here. They're paying somebody to punch them in the face. Proverbs five verse 15. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad or streams of water in the streets, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. That's the idea, that God made intimacy to be good in marriage. The person with no self control is not content with that. The spring overflows its banks. In the language of Proverbs five, their streams get scattered abroad because they're not satisfied with their own well.

It's the honey logic all over again. It's a lack of self control, and it leads to personal ruin. Again, much of this was earlier in Proverbs. The second enemy of self control is alcohol. Alcohol is the second enemy of self control.

This is another often warned against vice, and it fits here because, again, of the same logic. If a little whiskey is good, shouldn't half the bottle be better? If a little wine is good, shouldn't the whole bottle be better? If one beer is good, shouldn't six be delightful? And a person who drinks to drunkenness is absent self control.

This is the tyranny of immediate gratification. The person who again, the lie is, oh, this tastes wonderful, but they lack the self control to reason to what's going to happen to them in thirty minutes. They think, oh, this verse one. Wine is a mocker, Proverbs 20 verse one. Wine is a mocker.

Strong drink is a brawler. Whoever is led astray by it is not wise. Now, of course, God made wine for our joy. Psalm 104 verse 15 says that. God made wine to gladden the heart of man.

Ecclesiastes 10 verse 19 says something very similar. The wine is given us to gladden our hearts. Jeremiah 48 verse 33 says one of the punishments God gives on people is to remove their wine from them. But the hedonist, so to speak, seizes on that and says, hey, I don't know of the truth about God, so let us eat, drink, and be merry. God gave wine to gladden the heart of man, so let's have our heart gladden and not think of God.

It's self refuting logic, of course. My point in talking about that tonight in light of Proverbs 20 verse one is to understand that God did design wine to bring people joy for good. But like so many of these other vices, like the delicacies in front of the king, what was designed for your joy can be exploited and abused for your harm through lack of self control the drunkard turns what was given for joy and uses it for strife, for brawling, is led astray by it. In fact, strife is the word used in this passage. You might still be open to Proverbs 23.

But if you are, look down to verse 29. Proverbs 23 verse 29. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife?

Who has complaining? Who and so that's a fun list to think through. Think of people you know that have woes in life. Think of people you know of that have woes and are surrounded by strife, and they have sorrow, and they're always complaining. You might think of this couple of different categories of people.

You could probably think of six, ten people. How about this one? Which of those people have wounds without cause? Like, oh, my list is getting shorter. Also, their eyes are always red.

That's the next thing on the list. Ah, I get where this is going. The answer, those who tarry long over wine, those who go to try mixed wine. Don't look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly, because in the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things.

Your heart will utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies down on the top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, but I wasn't hurt. They beat me, but I didn't feel it. When will I wake up?

I want you to think of that logic right there. Man, that guy hit me so hard, but it's amazing. I didn't feel any pain. I wonder when I'm going to wake up. The dude got knocked out and is boasting that he barely felt it as if that were a good thing.

Why does he want to wake up? It's not because he needs to check his wounds and staunch his bleeding, it's because he says in verse 25, I must have another drink. What's astonishing by this person is that he is beaten, But who beat him up? I mean, maybe the bartender when he mouthed off. That's a likely possibility.

But the main culprit here is himself. This is a picture of somebody who punches himself. Why does he hit himself? Why does he have so much woe and so much sorrow? Because he has he wants a moment of joy.

That moment of joy, how he feels when he drinks, that moment of taste, that moment of delight, in exchange for that moment of joy, he gets a life of woe. It has been said that every sin brings its own mischief, but drunkenness multiplies it by a thousand because you use your money and you've certainly fallen to other sins as well. Lust and speech and laziness and a hundred other sins always accompany drunkenness. Drunkenness is the sin in the the multiplex. It's not in a movie on one screen.

It's on all the screens. There's some form of drunkenness on every screen in the theater. It leads to so many other sins. The irony with drunkenness is that its victim is the perpetrator. The one who is a victim in the scene, the guy who's punched, knocked out, bleeding on the floor, he is the perpetrator of this.

He did it to himself. The source of his woe is his indulged will fixed on the wrong object, not fixed on God, but on his own immediate gratifications. And I will I will promise you this, somebody who is dealing with this kind of drunkenness in their own life, this is not an isolated sin. They will they will lack self control in several other areas of their life as well. It is very much a self control sin.

The third of our AAA here, adultery, alcohol. Third, anger. And this is the big one. This is the big one. Man, I have so many more notes.

I'm gonna use self control and go fast. The biggest enemy of self control far and away in Scripture is anger. Anger is the enemy of self control. Anger is not a problem that you fall into. It's not something for you to solve.

Anger is a human capacity. David Powlison says anger is best compared to sex and happiness, things that God gave you for good, but when you pursue them or serve them, they end and end up undercutting you in the very foundation of happiness. Proverbs 14 verse 17. A man of quick temper acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices is hated. Anger is not abstract.

Anger feels wronged while acquitting itself. That's the point of anger. The person who is angry feels like they have been wronged and wants to be vindicated. The angry person is always shifting blame away from themselves onto other people. Angry people are confident in their own rightness and this leads to them lashing out.

It leads to road rage. It leads to severed friendships. It's never abstract and it always acts, it says in verse 17, foolishly. Proverbs fourteen twenty nine, whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. It's a person who says, hey, this is foolish.

Let me put it in front. A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. Here, self control is tied to wisdom. If you're able to be tranquil in the flesh, remember earlier in our study in Proverbs, we talked about how how tranquilo is the the word to govern wisdom here. When you have when you're putting yourself under the control of God's providence, you are relaxed in the face of trials in life because you have a confidence in God.

Here it said that word, tranquil, that gives life to you. But the anxious, envious, angry person makes their bones rot. Their anger and their anxiety does not give strength to them. It erodes them away. Anger is most obvious when it wears costumes, like manipulation, sarcasm, being cold and quiet, being hot and yelling, grumbling, gossiping, indifference, envy, or just obstinacy.

Wisdom avoids all of that. And so when Solomon chooses the word envy here, standing in for all of those different ways people act out in anger, and you can choose any of those costumes. Proverbs fifteen eighteen, a hot tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. A person who is self control brings peace to situations. A person without self control brings conflict to situations.

I'm sure you know people, there's ramp up conflict. Any way they're wronged, they magnify it, they exploit it, and they want heads to roll. That's the hot tempered man. They are followed like Pigpen and Charlie Brown. There's just dust everywhere they go, wreaking havoc.

But the slow person to anger, they quiet, they spray the construction site with mist, with water to keep all the dust down. The angry person is not always angry in the lashing out way, it's often in the passive aggressive or manipulative way. And that's why it causes so much strife. Notice the language here, the hot tempered person stirs up strife. So the hot tempered person is working behind the scenes, gossiping, manipulating, being passive aggressive, being disunified, sowing disunity and discord, and stirs up strife.

Proverbs eighteen nineteen. A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle. So earlier, lack of self control is like leaving the front door unlocked. Here, you offend a brother, and notice the implication in Proverbs eighteen nineteen is not even the offense that any merit to whatsoever. It's just the person has been offended.

It's even in Hebrew like English, it's kind of a minimalistic concept here. Like, there's been something some slight to that person. They are more unyielding than a strong city. They resort to quarreling. They put bars up around them like a castle.

You can't approach them anymore. They've walled themselves off. Good luck out there. Behind a lot of anger is this idea of a person is telling themself, I am right. I am the victim.

Everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong. And they probably mean it as a personal attack against me. And this really is, David Powlison says, a godlike complex. When a person falls into that trap in their life, they think, oh, everybody who's not agreeing with me and putting me forward is hostile towards me personally. It's a godlike complex.

It produces anger because the person thinks I am wronged and I am right, and I must be vindicated. Ed Welsh, in his book, he has a wonderful tiny book called A Short Book About a Big Problem, and I love that they made a little tiny book, and the font is so small it makes you angry to read it. He has a little section there about the kind of person who takes personal slights personally and walls themselves off, and the only way to them is to argue the merits of their case. You have to argue with them to get them to explain why they are the ones wronged, and he says that kind of person, their relationships would do well in a courtroom, not so well in real life. Perhaps they're even right about what they about what irritated them, but they are certainly not humble in how they respond.

That's Proverbs eighteen nineteen. Proverbs nineteen nineteen, a man of great wrath will pay the penalty. For if you deliver him, you will have to do it over and over again. In other words, that kind of angry person, you don't wanna be friends with that kind of person. I mean, how many times do you wanna bail your friend out before he gets old?

I think of Jonah when I think of this. I mean, God rescued Jonah from his anger a few times, didn't he? Only to have to do it again. Jonah gets angry at God and ends up in the whale. And the whale ended up in the ocean, first of all.

God rescues him out of the ocean, then rescues him out of the whale. God could have just let the whale eat him. No, he rescues him at least twice by the start of chapter three. And you know that because in chapter two of Jonah, Jonah's praying for rescue from the belly of the great fish. Chapter three, he's on the shore preaching.

Then he goes up under the tree. He's mad at Nineveh. He's mad at the worm that ate the little tree above him. Do you remember what God tells him when God intercedes directly to him? Do you have a right do you remember the question?

Do you have a right to be angry? God identified the heart sin. Jonah was angry. He was delivered, and God simply had to do it over and over again. Proverbs 22 verse 24.

Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. Angry people often fail to understand this point. Anger doesn't just happen to them. I've heard people say, I'm, you know, I keep falling into anger or something like that. Anger doesn't happen to someone.

Anger is something they do. They manufacture it. Their heart creates it. The emotional system of a human being is complex. It's got lots of layers that overlap, but desires and expectations intersect.

And when you have a desire and an expectation that is unmet and you don't respond with humility and with tranquility under the providence of God, You instead respond with this idea of fairness and what you deserve and what your friends have and this is what my sisters and my brothers have and they get this and I don't get this and your desires and expectations conflict in your heart, and that produces anger, agitation. Tough to navigate life with such a person. If you're friends with that kind of person, you will never live up to their expectations. You're constantly entangled, as the word Solomon uses, in their anger. Proverbs 27 verse three.

A stone is heavy. Sand is weighty. But a fool's provocation is heavier than both. Wrath is cruel. Anger is overwhelming.

Man, how can you stand before jealousy? Notice here that jealousy or envy is listed as a form of anger. That's because you have that intersection of desires and expectations, the skewed grid of fairness. The person is not getting what they think is fair and they respond with anger. This is the friends that you haven't talked to in years and you run into them.

At church maybe, you haven't seen them in three years at church, goes to a different ABF, and you ask how how how are you doing? And they respond by comparing themselves to other people, and they're slighted in this way and that way. You know, I haven't seen you in a few years. How's how's your sister doing? Oh, you know, she's still mom's favorite, of course.

That kind of answer, that person is exuding jealousy. One author Gore Vidal writes, quote, every time a friend succeeds, something inside of me dies. That's not good. Not good. That is the heart of anger and jealousy.

Proverbs twenty nine eleven. A fool gives full vents to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back. Here you see the contrast between self control versus anger. The foolish person just vents. Hey.

You'll even use that language. Oh, I'm just venting. I just needed to vent. A person with self control understands how to quietly hold it back. The word quietly is key there because lots of people will say, I'm exercising self control right now.

Back off. I would call that venting. Alright. Those are the enemies of self control. Now let me talk about the fruit of self control, the blessing of self control.

Self control is ally. The ally of self control is courage, Why is courage? There is a sense in which God makes people to be courageous. Courage is the fruit of self control. And I I it is the antithesis of anger.

Anger is not courage. Even though there might be actions that look the same, somebody might be angry and lash out, that's a different source than courage. Courage is sourced in self control. The ability to silence fear, to act in a right way. That's courage.

Anger is giving into sin and fairness and venting it out and lashing it out. So somebody is, you know, being kidnapped in front of you. Like, let's ramp this up. One person might engage or rescue the person out of a sense of anger, and that's a sense of a form of common grace, I suppose. Another person might intervene out of courage knowing that, oh, something bad could happen to me.

That's a bad guy, and something bad could happen to me if I intervene, but I'm gonna rein in that fear, that self control. I'm pulling in that fear. I'm going to act in a way that is right, not because I'm afraid, not because I'm angry, but because I know what's right to do. That's courage. Here's a contrast of it.

Proverbs 16 verse 30. Whoever winks his eyes plans dishonest things. So the scene here is that somebody is doing something wicked, and the person with no courage, no self control just winks at it. I'll pretend I don't see. That's the person who purses his lips.

He brings evil to pass. Gray hair, meanwhile, is a crown of glory. It's gained in a righteous life. It is good to have a life of courage and a life of righteousness. That's a blessing.

Winking at evil won't get you there. Anger sees a perceived wrong and takes a stance of disapproval. Bad anger lashes out and complains, but good anger provides courage to help. Proverbs 24 verse 10. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

When there's bad things happening or dangers happening and you grow weak in the knees and you chicken out, you don't intervene, you don't help, then your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, behold, we didn't know what was happening, doesn't He who weighs the hearts perceive it? Doesn't He who keeps watch over your soul know it?

And He will not repay man according to his work. Sociologists and psychologists have often commented on the bystander effect. If somebody is being kidnapped or abused or a robbery of some kind, and the first people around there or the closest people around who don't intervene, nobody else will. That's kind of the psychological effect. And then people, when they're interviewed, will often say, oh, I didn't know what was happening.

They're living out this proverb. Well, I didn't know. I just heard that lady screaming for help, and I thought, you know, I'm just getting gas. What do I have to do with this? I didn't know what was happening.

It's a lack of courage and a folly, masked with, oh, I didn't know it was happening. But listen, God knows what you knew, and He knows when you knew it. This is a key passage used in the in the Holocaust, that so many people excuse their lack of action in the Holocaust saying, I didn't I didn't really know it was happening, but God sees and God knows, and God calls us to action. And that kind of courage could be the positive side of self control. Even you see anger as sin, but you root it in God and his character.

You see injustice and you want to help for God and for his glory, and it moves you to rescue. That's a virtue, a courageous virtue. Proverbs 28 verse one. The wicked flees when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion, and the wicked people, they have no courage. Those who are led by anger live for themselves.

They lack courage even though nobody's on their heel. There's no lion around. Meanwhile, the righteous person, he is as bold as a lion. He will intervene. He will help.

He will help people in need. He does have courage to do the right thing. And it's a contrast between righteousness and cowardice. That contrast is repeated in Proverbs twenty nine twenty five. The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in Yahweh is safe.

The fear of man, you live for the fear of people, you'll get caught. But if you trust in Yahweh, you'll be courageous. You have to fear listen. You have to fear God more than man in order to, a, be brave, and b, be wise. And this takes you back to the beginning of Proverbs.

The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. If you fear people, you won't be wise. If your first instinct is what will people think, you're not gonna be wise and you will never be brave. But if your first instinct is to bring your own fears under control, to harness your strength for the glory of God, then you will be both brave and wise. When you think about this, you recognize that courage collapses in on self control.

Courage and self control are the same thing. Self control collapses in on wisdom very easily. Courage falls to self control, self control falls to wisdom, and wisdom falls to faith in Yahweh. They all expand out and collapse in. Meanwhile, fear of man collapses in on anger, which collapses in on foolishness, which collapses in eventually on unbelief.

It doesn't mean every coward is an unbeliever, but but it does mean at the end of the Bible when Revelation says the cowards will have their place in the lake of fire. John sees the connection as well. And, finally, as we end tonight, understand how anger is sin. The only person with the true independent right to be angry at sin in this world is God. We lack that right.

And God, in His infinite wisdom, has poured His own anger out on His sinless Son so that we can be forgiven from our sin of anger. And when you take the theology of Proverbs into this, it gets even more profound. In Proverbs eight, the son of God is described as God's wisdom. So the son of God is the wisdom of God, and in the wisdom of God, he makes the plan of God to pour the anger of God out on the sinless son of God to atone for the sin of our anger. Wisdom designed a plan whereby wisdom would receive all the just anger as a substitute to free us to trust God for our vindication and not for ourselves.

Lord, we're grateful that you made a way made a way to escape your anger, which is poured out on sin all day long. You instead poured it out on Christ on the cross. Your son, I do pray that you would make us a virtuous people, people that possess self control and aware of the enemies of self control and the people that will have the courage to act. We wanna be marked by wisdom, wisdom that has restraint, internal restraint, but also internal courage. Through our self control, we know it's the holy spirit that seals our heart with these truths, that gives us the fruit of the spirit, namely self control.

It gives us boldness and the courage to act like men. Pray that you would seal that in our hearts and motivate us to go into the world as men of courage and action. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And now for a parting word for pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.