Sermon Tone Analysis
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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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The Monster Inside Me
Journalist Hunter Thompson, longtime contributor to Rolling Stone magazine and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, committed suicide in 2005 at age sixty-seven.
His addiction to drugs and alcohol and his abusive actions toward others were no secret.
After his death, his first wife, Sandy Conklin-Thompson, wrote:
He was, on the one hand, extremely loving and tender, brilliant and exciting, generous and kind.
On the other end of the spectrum—he was full spectrum—he was extremely cruel.…
I will never forget something Hunter once said to me.
In one of his tender moments, I asked him if he knew when he was about to become the Monster.
He said, “Sandy, it’s like this.
I sense it first, and before I have completely turned around he is there.
He is me.”
Who is there?
Who is he?
Its a monster inside of him.
The monster was anger.
Hunter Thompson sounds much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from Robert Louis Stevenson novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In Stevenson story of Jekyll and Hyde, Jekyll drank a serum that transformed him into a monster.
Hyde, was evil, self-indulgent, and uncaring to anyone but himself.
The reality is, we do not need to drink a serum t be evil, self-indulgent, and uncaring.
We come into this world with the sin serum already in us.
All of us are Hyde in our fallen condition.
All of us have the monster of anger lurking inside.
Take a moment to consider your heart when your anger is stirred.
It’s passionate intensity.
The feeling it boil up, rippling on the edges of of your heart, steaming as it rolls down the sides.
Sometimes it smolders like coals in a fire.
Other times the eruption is so spontaneous, its like a gas explosion in a house.
One minute you’re standing in the kitchen.
The next minute you are picking yourself off the ground with ringing in your ears watching the debris of what was once a home, a family, a church, scatter everywhere.
People are missing.
The neighborhood is shocked.
The church is split.
Death, destruction, and confusion are the fruit of your angers labor.
Anger is a monster, and Hunter Thompson was right.
He is me, like Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll.
The Bible warns you to address the beast of anger.
Solomon warns his son
A city without a wall was vulnerable to attack and peril.
Solomon says that is the fate on an angry person.
Paul identifies anger as a work of the flesh, along with hatred, strife, and jealousy.
He warns a few verses earlier for the Galatian church to not “bite and devour” each other, assumingely from the anger and hatred and strife building up among them.
The monster has one objective.
Bite and devour.
The most obvious example of what happens when sinful anger is aroused, specifically from jealousy and hatred is when Cain killed Able (Gen 4).
Cain revealed the monster inside of him when he picked up that stone to slay his brother in a jealous rage.
In the context of James, trials are afflicting his readers like waves on a beach.
The poor are being exploited by the rich.
(Nothing stirs the heart of man like exploitation and injustice.)
Poverty has a grip on many families in the church.
Some leadership might be showing partiality toward the rich, making the poor in the church feel powerless and worthless.
Additionally, the church is likely in an area of Palestine where Jews and Christians are already viewed poorly.
Persecution was likely adding more tension to a somewhat fractured group.
Needless to say, James readers were experiencing an inordinate amount of stress.
Stress acts like a vice that presses both sides of your heart.
As the stress heats up, the vice pushes on both sides causing whatever is inside your heart to squeeze out.
James told us as much when he described the reproduction process of sin.
Your heart is sinful.
You have unrighteous anger inside of you.
Temptation makes sinful anger look appealing to you.
For example, temptation will seduce your heart to respond to an injustice your suffer with the measure of your wrath and not God’s.
Vengeance is mine, says the sinful heart.
I will repay evil as I see fit, until I am satisfied.
What is so appealing about satisfying your anger?
Aquinas says
“Anger combines the pain of injury and the pleasures of vengeance and inflicting injury.”
Aquinas
Sinful anger seduces your heart into believing that the pleasure of vengeance and wielding your short arm of justice is the right thing to do, even in God’s eyes-despite the Bible saying to you,
For the Christian, the monster inside of you battles your new nature.
At times, your hearts battle with the monster of anger and it feels like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Who will win the day?
The New Me or the Monster inside of me?
In James 1:19-20, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, James offers you a faith wielding wise way handle your unrighteous anger in times of trial so that you can endure until the end.
This morning when the stress of trials press your heart like a vice and the monster of anger begins to rear his face,
Christian, Jesus empowers you to wisely win the battle of your unrighteous anger by loving God and neighbor.
The difference between righteous anger and unrighteous anger.
In verse 19, James says you must be slow to anger.
He does not say ignore it or see it as always bad.
There are times when your anger might be warranted.
Jesus was angered at the Pharisees hardness of heart (Mark 3:5).
Jesus was also angered when the people turned the temple into a den of thieves (Matthew 21:12-13).
Jesus had a righteous anger toward sin; the sin of unbelief and the sin that dishonored his Father’s house.
There is such a thing as righteous anger.
Moses demonstrated righteous anger when he came near the camp and saw that Israel had created an idol in the form of a golden calf (Exodus 32:19).
He was angered by the faithlessness and wickedness of Israel toward God.
When the people of Israel was threatened by the Ammonites, the Spirit of God rushed on Saul and he became hot with righteous anger (1 Samuel 11:6).
Anything that defames God or violates his holy will, you have a good reason to be angered.
The problem is, I would contend that 9 times out of 10, your anger is not for righteousness sake.
It is for self-sake.
Dr. Robert Jones offers three helpful criteria to use to see if your anger is righteous:
“ 1.
It reacts against actual sin.
2. It focuses on God and his concerns.
3. It coexists with other godly qualities and expresses itself in godly ways.”
Dr. Robert Jones (Uprooting Anger)
When Jesus expressed his anger it was toward actual sin.
In the temple, Jesus was more concerned about His father’s house and his name, than he was about anything else.
Jesus anger was grounded in truth and expressed with self-control.
There was no monster, no Mr. Hyde.
Jones goes on to contrast righteous anger from unrighteous anger.
Jones says,
“While sinful anger screams , curses, vents, and rages, righteous anger maintains a godly demeanor.
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