Sermon Tone Analysis

Appropriate Anger

Several hundred years before Nehemiah, Solomon wrote this:

But, the Byrds made it famous in 1965.

Early ballad rock ‘n roll.

King Solomon wrote it, it’s in the bible.

But, is there really a time for all this?

I get a time to be born and a time to die.

Most of this nobody would have any issues w/.

Weep/laugh, tear down/build up.

A lot of this is real, sober, but mostly uplifting.

A time to live, die, plant, harvest

These all seem like progress.

Hard but good.

Are there really times to hate, times for war, and time to kill?

These seem harsh.

Yes, it’s poetic language, maybe not t/b taken literally.

Okay, ya, maybe.

But, it’s hard to think in these terms.

We have a problem just being angry.

Is anger ever okay?

A legit emotion.

Typically, we get angry at the wrong things or at nothing.

We stay angry or we’re too passive.

At the other end of the musical spectrum: Beethoven.

His life was filled w/ a lot of good things.

But, there were some real difficulties, too.

By 5 he was playing the violin.

At 13, he was a concert organist.

In his 20’s he was studying under Haydn and Mozart.

He was a prolific composer; 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, sonatas, and numerous pieces of chamber music.

However, also during his 20’s he began to lose his hearing.

He said his fingers also became “thick”.

As his hearing went, he relied on feeling the music.

But then, in time, this feeling began to fail him.

By the time he was in his 50s he was stone deaf.

Early on as he began to lose his hearing someone quoted him, shouting at the top of his voice, out of anger and frustration while slamming both fists down on the keyboard,

“

“I will take life by the throat!”

Here is this genius musician and composer who is losing probably the most important of his 5 senses to his gift.

You can appreciate that maybe he might be a little angry.

It was this anger, to take his life by the throat, that drove him to not allow his disability to overwhelm his gift.

He was determined not to give up and continued to compose for decades as he lost his ability hear what he was composing.

Sometimes we have to take life by the throat, get angry, and allow this emotion to drive our determination to not give up and to continue to make the necessary changes that will allow us to be successful in what God created us to be.

As Solomon wrote:

There are seasons, times when we need to get angry and use that anger as a motivation to bring about the necessary changes.

For instance, training our dog Jack.

My challenge is to not get angry at the wrong thing and never react too harshly out of anger.

We start gently, graciously, teaching him commands.

In a short time, he gets them.

He knows them and understands what we are commanding him to do.

He gets treated for obedience.

Then, after a short time, something trips inside of him and even though he knows what to do he decides to do something else.

Many of you know we are working on distractions.

Thursday mornings.

He should be able to sit, stay, and them come right to me no matter who else is in the room or whatever else might be going on.

He knows this.

He has no trouble when there are no distractions.

This is only sit, stay, shake, come.

Most of the time, not a big deal.

But, there will be situations when his life may depend on his obedience.

When we’re out at Sara’s garden and he’s w/ us and he chooses to run into the street.

He should stop when we command him b/c he could die if a car is coming.

When we’re in the forest and he catches the scent of another animal and bolts.

If doesn’t come when we call him and he chases that scent and loses us, he’s dead.

That makes me angry.

Similarly, teaching my children, when they were toddlers, to stay w/ me walking thru a parking lot.

They had to hold my hand.

They could run free in the yard, in a park, where it’s safe.

But, once we got near the street or parking lot they had to hold my hand and stay w/ me.

Or else!

Why? B/C their life depended on it.

I would get angry if they disobeyed me in those moments.

Other times, not such a big deal and I could respond less harshly.

But, if they were potentially in danger, or in danger of doing serious damage to something or someone else.

I’d get angry.

They needed to know that behavior was unacceptable.

Not b/c I’m a control-freak.

But, b/c their life or the life of someone else depended on it.

There is a time to get angry and use that emotion as motivation to bring about necessary changes, maybe in our own lives, maybe in the lives of others, before somebody gets hurt.

If we are going to successfully complete a do-over that God has given us we might need to get angry at ourselves, our situation, or somebody else.

Nehemiah is one of these passages written in the past and in ch.

13, he faced a situation where some people were going to get hurt by God if they didn’t make the necessary changes.

He got angry.

And his emotion provided some motivation for the ppl to make these changes.

The Background

(to ch.13)

We don’t know how long Nehemiah stayed in Jerusalem after the wall was completed and provided leadership for the ppl.

Eventually, he left and returned to his role in king Artaxerxes’ court as his cup-bearer.

The king had only given him permission t/b gone temporarily.

It came time when he needed to return.

And, again, we don’t know how long he stayed away or what motivated him to come back to Jerusalem.

Maybe someone reported to him, maybe he just missed the ppl.

Either way, it became clear that while the cat was away the mice got busy doing the wrong things.

When he got back to Jerusalem, he discovered 4 things going on that we making God very mad and if they continued the ppl were going to get hurt by God.

He got mad.

He took these situations by the throat, appropriately so.

The first situation:

A Fox

Nehemiah 13:

Nehemiah 13:

There was a fox in the henhouse.