Sermon Illustration

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one. - Benjamin Franklin It is he who is in the wrong who first gets angry. - William Penn Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. - Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, Transformed by Thorns, p. 117 Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. - Benjamin Franklin

In the spring of 1894, the Baltimore Orioles came to Boston to play a routine baseball game. But what happened that day was anything but routine. The Orioles' John McGraw got into a fight with the Boston third baseman. Within minutes all the players from both teams had joined in the brawl. The warfare quickly spread to the grandstands. Among the fans the conflict went from bad to worse. Someone set fire to the stands and the entire ballpark burned to the ground. Not only that, but the fire spread to 107 other Boston buildings as well.

The Arizona Republic (4/25/95) reported that when Steve Tran of Westminster, California, closed the door on 25 activated bug bombs, he thought he had According to Edward Barnes in Time (3/14/94), a Sarajevo man named Pipo is a Bosnian Serb sniper who has shot down 325 individuals for the sake of revenge. Before becoming a sniper, Pipo was a partner in a Sarajevo restaurant with a Muslim man. The two were friends as well as partners--until Pipo's mother was jailed and beaten by Muslims. Pipo recalls, "When she got out, she wouldn't talk about it. That's when I picked up a gun and began shooting Muslims. I hate them all." Killing for revenge has changed Pipo. "All I know how to do is kill," he says. "I am not sure I am normal anymore. I can talk to people, but if someone pushes me, I will kill them.... In the beginning I was able to put my fear aside, and it was good. Then with the killings I was able to put my emotions aside, and it was good. B...

The Arizona Republic (4/25/95) reported that when Steve Tran of Westminster, California, closed the door on 25 activated bug bombs, he thought he had seen the last of the cockroaches that shared his apartment. When the spray reached the pilot light of the stove, it ignited, blasting his screen door across the street, breaking all his windows, and setting his furniture ablaze. "I really wanted to kill all of them," he said. "I thought if I used a lot more, it would last longer." According to the label, just two canisters of the fumigant would have solved Tran's roach problem. The blast caused over $10,000 damage to his apartment building. And the cockroaches? Tran reported, "By Sunday, I saw them walking around." As (Proverbs 29:11) says, only "a fool gives full vent to his anger."

Secrets can be destructive, no matter how long they've been buried, as residents of a Ukraine village found out. The Associated Press reported their story this way: For 43 years Zinaida Bragantsova had been telling people there was a World War II bomb buried under her bed. The story began in 1941 when the Germans advanced toward the Ukrainian city of Berdyansk. One night at the very start of the war, she was sitting by the window and sewing on her machine. Suddenly a noise was heard and a whistling close by. She got up and in the following moment was struck by a blast of wind. When she came to, the sewing machine was gone and there was a hole in the floor as well as in the ceiling. Zinaida couldn't get any officials to check out her story, so she just moved her bed over the hole and lived with it for the next 40 years. Finally, the woman's problem was uncovered. As phone cable was being laid in the area, demolition experts were called in to probe for buried explosives...

In November 1996 Sports Illustrated reported a bizarre story of competitiveness gone too far. According to the magazine, in a New Mexico high school football game between Albuquerque Academy and St. Pius X on October 12, 1996, several of the Academy players found themselves with strange cuts, slashes, and scratches on their arms and hands. One boy was bleeding freely from three cuts that later required ten stitches to close. Another boy told his coaches, "It feels like they've got razor blades out there." Well, almost. Referee Steve Fuller inspected the equipment of the opposing team. What he found on the helmet of the offensive center were two chin-strap buckles sharpened to a razor's edge. In the investigation that followed, the offending player's father, a pediatric dentist, admitted to milling the buckles. He had been angered in the previous game by what he thought was excessive head-slapping against his son by opposing linemen. This was his solution. Sports...

Jack Welch, former corporate chief at General Electric, grew up as a devoted Irish-Catholic. Early on he was an altar boy, and later, as an adult, his religion was so important to him that he was known to travel more than an hour to attend mass. However, his commitment to faith changed 34 years ago when his mother died of a heart attack. In his book Jack: Straight From the Gut, he writes, "I felt cheated, angry, and mad at God for taking my mother away." He claims still to believe in God, but says he lost his heart for religion and no longer attends church.

A person of property and eminence, who lived in habits of impiety and profaneness, was seized by an illness which compelled him to seek a physician; but, being disappointed for a time by his absence from home, he fell into a violent agitation, which was vented in horrid imprecations. As soon as the physician arrived, he was saluted with a volley of oaths. The violence of the man’s agitation broke a blood vessel; so that oaths and blood continued to flow from his mouth till he could speak no longer, and in this situation he died.

An artisan who used to attend the public debates held at the Academy, was once asked if he understood Latin. “No,” replied the man, “but I know who is wrong in the argument.” “How?” asked his friend. “Why, by seeing who is angry first.”

Speech ends anger, silence nourishes it. Much malice and grudge would be avoided, and the very poison of it drawn out, did we but give it a vent at first, by reasoning with the party that wronged us, and expostulating the injury, which most times is but a mere mistake. Now many, on the contrary, harbor this viper in their bosoms till it has eaten to their hearts; they not only let “the sun go down,” but go its whole round, “upon their wrath” (Eph. 4:26), and cannot find time from one end of the year to the other to utter their minds and compound their discords. Not only Abraham, but Aristippus shall rise up in judgment against such pseudo-Christians, and condemn them. For when Æschines and he had been at long debate, and there was “I stout,” and “Thou stout,” and neither could find in their hearts to go to the other, Aristippus went at length to Æschines and said unto him, “Shall we not agree to be friends before we make ourselves a common scorn to the whole country?” Whereunto, when Æ...

“We must not forget,” says Hickman, “to make our prayers to God, that He who giveth wisdom liberally and upbraideth not would teach us the wisdom of governing our passions, and by the aid of His Holy Spirit give us the victory over them; that he would create in us a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within us, and sanctify us throughout. When an unruly passion is subdued and a bad temper corrected, we have as it were obtained a new nature; and this is to be born anew, or of God. For these depend upon God by daily prayer. And all our vigilance and pains with ourselves, and our earnest entreaties at the throne of grace, we must particularly apply against ‘the sin which doth so easily beset us’” (Heb. 12:1).

A man should always be on his guard, otherwise his evil passions will run away with him. A small sickly boy on the back of a great cart-horse pulls with all his might to stop the powerful beast, but in vain, for the cart-horse takes him just where he pleases. It is just the same when evil passions get the better of a man, for they carry him away like the cart-horse, without his having the power to control them, and he seldom if ever will get out of a passion without finding that he has lost something he should have kept.

“What a chain of evils,” exclaims St. Ephraim, “does that man prepare for himself who is a slave to anger! He is the murderer of his own soul; yea to the letter he is so, for he lives in a continual torment. He is devoured by an inward fire, and his body partakes of his sufferings. Terror reigns around him; every one dreads lest the most innocent, the most trifling occurrence, may give him a pretext for quarrel, or rouse him into fury. A passionate man is odious alike to God and man, and is insupportable even to himself.”

Euclid, a disciple of Socrates, having offended his brother, the latter cried out in a rage, “Let me die, if I am not revenged on you one time or other!” To which Euclid replied, “And let me die, if I do not soften you by my kindnesses, and make you love me as well as ever!”

John, patriarch of Alexandria, had a controversy with Nicetas, a chief man of that city, which was to be decided in a court of justice. John defended the cause of the poor, and Nicetas refused to part with his money. A private meeting was held, to see if the affair could be adjusted, but in vain; angry words prevailed, and both parties were so obstinate that they separated more offended with each other than before. When Nicetas was gone, John began to reflect on his own pertinacity, and although his cause was good, “Yet,” said he, “can I think that God will be pleased with this anger and stubbornness? The night draweth on, and shall I suffer the sun to go down upon my wrath? This is impious, and opposed to the Apostle’s advice.” He therefore sent some respectable friends to Nicetas, and charged them to deliver this message to him, and no more: “O sir, the sun is going down!” Nicetas was much affected, his eyes were filled with tears; he hastened to the patriarch, and saluting him in th...

“It is an easy matter,” says Plutarch, “to stop the fire that is kindled only in hair, wool, candle-wick, or a little chaff; but, if it once has taken hold of matter that hath solidity and thickness, it soon inflames and consumes. Just so, he that observes anger while it is in the beginning, and sees it by degrees smoking and taking fire from some speech, or chaff-like scurrility, he need take no great pains to extinguish it, but oftentimes puts an end to it only by silence or neglect. For, as he that adds no fuel to fire has already as good as put it out, so he that doth not feed anger at the first, nor blow the fire in himself, hath prevented and destroyed it.”

“I have heard of a married couple,” says Matthew Henry, “who were both passionate naturally, but who lived very happily together, by simply observing this rule: never to be both angry at the same time.” It is said of Julius Caesar, that, when provoked, he used to repeat the whole Roman alphabet before he suffered himself to speak.

Anthony Blanc, one of Felix Neff’s earlier converts, was very earnest in winning souls to Christ. The enemies of the gospel were very angry at his success, and used threatening words against him. One night, as he was returning home from a religious meeting, he was followed by a man in a rage, who struck him with a violent blow on the head. “May God forgive and bless you!” was Anthony’s quiet and Christian response. “Ah!” replied his assailant furiously, “if God does not kill you, I’ll do it myself!” Some days afterwards, Anthony met the same person in a narrow road, where two persons could hardly pass. “Now I shall be struck by him again,” he said to himself. But he was surprised, on approaching, to see this man, once so bitter towards him, reach out his hand, and say to him, in a tremulous voice, “Mr. Blanc, will you forgive me, and let all be over?” Consequently, this disciple of Christ, by gentle and peaceful words, had made a friend out of an enemy.

It is said that in the earlier part of Robert Hall’s ministry, he was impetuous and sometimes overbearing in argument; but if he lost his temper he was deeply humbled, and would often acknowledge himself to blame. On one of these occasions, when a discussion had become tense, and he had displayed unusual agitation, he suddenly closed the debate, left his seat, and retiring to a remote part of the room, was overheard by a lady who was just entering, to ejaculate with deep feeling: “Lamb of God, Lamb of God, calm my perturbed spirit!”

“Do you think it would be wrong for me to learn the noble art of self-defense?” a religiously-inclined young man asked of his pastor. “Certainly not,” answered the minister; “I learned it in youth myself, and I have found it of great value during my life.” “Indeed, sir! Did you learn karate, kung fu, or some other system?” “I learned Solomon’s system.” “Solomon’s system?” “Yes, you will find it laid down in the first verse of the fifteenth chapter of Proverbs: ‘A soft answer turneth away wrath.’ It is the best system of self-defense of which I know.”