Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good afternoon, dear ones.

Whew! I’m ready for my old man nap. I just returned home from chasing around to deal with Thano’s car problems. He was called to work about 8am…and called me soon after he left. He didn’t get far before his car broke down. I ran to rescue him and deliver him to Safeway. Then his car problems were in my lap. I was able to connect with our mechanic after dropping Thano off. He was able to meet me at the car. We traced the problem to a bad alternator. I had Becki pick me up and we went to Molalla to get one. But they didn’t have it in stock and we had to run to Canby. We delivered the new alternator back to the mechanic who will get it changed out tomorrow morning. In about an hour we need to head out for other commitments. That’s not how I originally planned the day. So it’s fairly normal. And it’s not over with yet.

May your day be blessed—even if it is normal.

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?!