Insightful Musings on the Scriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
There’s still a bit of time left for saying GOOD MORNING.
My day began about 1:30am…when Max woke me by barking his head off. I went out on the front deck and there was his head laying there. Well, not really, but I was kind of tempted to make it lay there. What brand of anger is that? Instead I reluctantly let him in so I could get some sleep…then couldn’t sleep. Who said life was easy? Right now Max is sleeping like a baby next to me in the studio…in his special little dog bed…snoring. He’s all wore out from keeping me awake. We didn’t even do a jog. Maybe I’ll just kick him. I’m kidding. The fact is I regard my kidder as a very valuable organ. I could handle getting prostate cancer…but kidder cancer? Man! I’d be in real bad shape if that ailment befell me!
Anyway, I guess I’d better get to pushing on the rest of the day. Maybe I can catch a little nap after lunch. Ya think?
Blessings on your easy exciting day. Love, Dad/Ray.
There are many who misrepresent Jesus as being someone who was always kind and soft and loving. Here we see Him clearly angry. That’s right. Jesus gets angry. But this is no impulsive out-of-control irrational anger. It is a godly anger. It is righteous anger.
More important than seeing Jesus’ capability of anger is to understand what causes His anger. Make no mistake about it, nothing ticks Him off more than hypocrisy, pride, rebellion, and legalism. If we had time we could launch a study to substantiate that. We see Him here facing all those attitudes in this confrontation with primarily Pharisees. And we see them so absolutely consumed with their rejection and hatred of Jesus that they depart the scene of this miraculous demonstration of Jesus’ deity and go out to plot His murder. That really doesn’t make any good sense—but it’s still common today. Their anger was irrational and unjust. Jesus’ anger was deliberate and just—it was godly anger directed at evil.
May I suggest that you do everything you can to avoid the failures of the Pharisees (hypocrisy, pride, rebellion, and legalism) like you would avoid a black mamba. Solomon spoke of the foolishness of one to incite the anger of a king (Proverbs 16:14). How much more the King of kings?!