Before the Lord Jesus
presented Himself to Israel as the promised King He had to pass through a
period of testing, which He did for 40 days. He met Satan, the strong man
armed, and bound him before He began His public ministry and went forth to
spoil Satan’s goods.

  Why was Jesus tempted? And,
being tempted, was there a possibility that He might have sinned, and so
jeopardized or annulled the whole plan of redemption? These are questions asked
often, and it behooves us to be able to give Scriptural answers concerning
them.

  If we would be clear in our
thinking as to this, we must remember that while our Lord was, and is, both
human and divine, He is not two persons, but one. Personally He is God the
Eternal Son who took humanity into union with His deity in order to redeem
sinful men. Perfectly human, yet absolutely divine, He remains just one Person.
Therefore as Man here on earth He could not act apart from His deity. Those who
maintain that He might have sinned may well ask themselves, “What then would
have been the result?” To say that as Man He might have failed in His mission
is to admit the amazing and blasphemous suggestion that His holy divine nature
could become separated from a defiled human nature and so the incarnation prove
a farce and a mockery. But if we realize that He who was both God and Man in
one Person was tempted, not to see if He would (or could) sin, but to prove
that He was the sinless One, all is clear. The temptation was real, but it was
all from without, as Adam’s was in the beginning. But Adam was only an innocent
man; whereas Jesus, the last Adam, was the Lord from heaven who had become Man
without ceasing to be God in order that He might be our Kinsman-Redeemer (Lev.
25:48). The temptation and His attitude toward it proved that He was not a
sinful Man, either in nature or in act, and He could therefore take our penalty
upon Himself and bear the curse of the broken law for others, because He was
not under that curse Himself. Scripture tells us definitely that He “knew no
sin” (2 Cor. 5:21); He “did no sin” (1 Pet. 2:22); “in Him is no sin” (1 John
3:5). He could say, “The prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me”
(John 14:30). There was no lurking traitor within to answer to the voice of the
enemy without. He was tempted as we are, sin apart (Heb. 4:15), that is, there
was no sin within to tempt Him. From the moment of His birth He was holy, not
merely innocent (Luke 1:35).

  “Then was Jesus led up of
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil” (Matt. 4:1). As the
perfect Man, Jesus was ever subject to the Spirit’s control. Mark tells us that
the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness (Mark 1:12). He was impelled to go for
it was imperative that His holiness be demonstrated from the very beginning of
His ministry. Temptation is really testing. He was tested by Satan, that evil
personality who is the foe of God and man. It was he who tested Adam and found
him wanting. Now he must be overcome by the last Adam, the Second Man (1 Cor.
15:45,47).

  “And when He had fasted 40
days and 40 nights, He was afterward an hungered” (Matt. 4:2). Jesus fasted for
the full period of testing—40 days. It was not until all this was over that He
is said to have become hungry. Then, in the hour of nature’s weakness, the
tempter came, endeavoring to overcome Him. The tests were threefold—the appeal
to the body, the soul, and the spirit—involving the desires of the flesh, the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The first appeal was to appetite, the
desire of the flesh, physical; the next to the esthetic nature, the desire of
the eyes, the soul; and the last to the spiritual nature, the pride of life, or
the vainglory of living. The Lord Jesus was impervious to every suggestion of
evil. These are the same temptations in character which the serpent brought to
bear upon Eve in Eden. She saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food
(the lust of the flesh), pleasant to the eyes (the lust of the eyes), and to be
desired to make one wise (the pride of life). She succumbed on every point, and
when Adam collaborated with her in disobedience to God the old creation fell.
They were tested in a garden of delight, a most beautiful environment. Jesus
was tempted in a dry, thirsty wilderness among the wild beasts, but stood firm
as a rock against all Satan’s wiles and blandishments; thus He manifested
Himself as King of righteousness, and so the suited One to be crowned King of
peace (Heb. 7:1,2). He who triumphed over the enemy after being tested in all
points like as we, apart from sin, is now our great High Priest, and is
appearing in heaven on our behalf, ready to assist us in every hour of weakness
and temptation.

  “And when the tempter came
to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made
bread.” Every test was a direct assault upon the truth of His divine-human
personality. There might seem to be nothing inherently wrong for Jesus to
satisfy His hunger by making bread from stones, but He had taken the place, as
Man, of dependence on the living Father (John 6:57). As such, He acted only in
obedience to the Father’s will, and He could not entertain any suggestion
coming from another and an opposing source. He would not act, even to relieve
His hunger, upon the enemy’s advice.

  “But He answered and said,
It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Jesus met each temptation with a definite
word from God—a quotation from the Holy Scriptures. In this instance He quoted
Deut. 8:3 where Moses reminded Israel that of far more importance than material
food was the spiritual nourishment that is found in the Word of God. When God
provides food for His children He does not give them stones for bread, nor make
bread out of stones; but when we get out of the place of dependence upon the
Father we are very likely to break our teeth upon hard stone bread which we
thought would be better than that which comes from God.

  “Then the devil took Him up
into the holy city, and set Him on a pinnacle of the temple.” Whether the devil
actually did this or it was only in vision we are not told, nor is it important
that we should know. The point is that even the sanctuary may be a place of
temptation, for pride of grace is one of the greatest snares to which we are
exposed. From that elevated place Jesus saw the throngs gathered in the courts
below. Satan was about to use this as a reason why He should display His power.

  “And [he] said unto Him, If
Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down; for it is written, He shall give His
angels charge concerning Thee; and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest
at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.” Satan quoted only a part of Psalm
91:11,12. He omitted the most pertinent portion:“To keep Thee in all Thy
ways.” It was no part of the holy ways of the Son of God to leap spectacularly
from the temple heights in order to astonish the worshiping multitudes below as
they beheld Him suspended in the air above them, sustained by angel hands. This
would have been a presumptuous use of the promise. When Satan quotes Scripture,
look closely at the text and be sure nothing vital is omitted, for it is
possible to back up the gravest error with a text from the Bible used out of
its connection or only partly expressed.

  “Jesus said unto him, It is
written again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Where God commands,
faith can act upon His words, knowing—as Augustine said—“God’s commands are God’s
enablings.” But to expose oneself to danger needlessly is to tempt God, and
this is contrary to the principle of faith.

  “Again, the devil took Him
up into an exceeding high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the
world, and the glory of them.” These things belonged to Christ, the Heir of all
things; but Satan has usurped the inheritance. He attempted to present to Jesus
what might be called a “shortcut” to world dominion.

  “And [he] said unto Him,
All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
Actually, they were his to give only by God’s permissive will, for “the most
High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever He will” (Dan.
4:25). Satan had robbed Adam of the authority given him and reigned as usurper
in the hearts of wicked men; but he had no undisputed title to the kingdoms of
the world which he offered to give to Jesus if He would worship him, that thus
He might obtain the kingdom without the cross.

  “Then said Jesus unto him,
Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God,
and Him only shall you serve.” By another “saying” of God the foe was
vanquished. Jesus did not dispute Satan’s word as to his sovereignty of the
kingdoms of the world. It is not by debate the victory is won, but by the Word
itself.

  “Then the devil left Him,
and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him.” What a glorious consummation
to the temptation! The defeated, foul fiend fled away; and holy messengers from
the court of heaven came with gladness to minister to their Creator, who in
grace had taken the creature’s place. When we think of angels ministering to
Jesus, as they did in the wilderness and in Gethsemane, we realize how truly
human He had become in that He, who had created those glorious beings, should
now be served by them.

  God’s King must reign in
righteousness. The sinner’s Substitute must be as an unblemished lamb—with no
defect outwardly or inwardly. Therefore the Lord as a Man must be subjected to
the most searching tests to demonstrate His fitness for the great work He came
to do. Had the temptation brought to light any evidence of inbred sin or moral
corruption of any kind, it would have been the proof that Jesus was not the
Holy One of God, destined to bring in everlasting righteousness and to make
propitiation for iniquity. But nowhere was the perfection of Jesus demonstrated
more clearly than when Satan made every effort to find some defect in His
character, some form of self-seeking in His heart. The King was tested and proved
to be all that God the Father had declared at His baptism—the One in whom He
had found all His delight.

  (From Expository Notes
on the Gospel of Matthew.)

 

  There are two kinds of
temptation spoken of in Jas. 1:2,14. The same word in the original is used for
both for the reason that it is a test in both cases:in the first, the
test is from without, and may be rejected; in the second, it is allurement from
within, and shows a nature that is evil. That our Lord’s temptation was only
from without is instantly seen if we quote Jas. 1:14:“Every man is tempted
when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” What horrible
blasphemy it would be to say this was true of Him!

  This confines all His
temptations to the trials from without, and which met with no response whatever
from Him. The response they meet with from men’s hearts is the “lust” of the
14th verse.

  And yet He “suffered being
tempted” (Heb. 2:18). What was the nature of the sufferings?

  (1) Was not the very presence
of evil cause of the most acute pain to the nature that had but one
characteristic—the love of God. So, for Him, His being in a world away from God
could only cause Him pain. Nothing here could give Him joy but faith,
repentance, and trust on the part of those who had been drawn by the grace of
God.

  (2) To be personally approached
with suggestions that were not the will of God would add to His suffering—just
as, in a certain measure, a pure-minded person would recoil from the invitation
of an evil person to indulge in some sin with him.

  (3) To refuse the
temptations offered meant, in a world like this, to go on in the path of
suffering. Faithfulness and obedience to God, where everything was
unfaithfulness and disobedience, could only mean suffering—deprivation,
dishonor, and sorrow. To refuse to turn the stone into bread meant, for the
time, hunger, and it was a sort of prophecy of His whole path of
poverty:“The Son of Man has not where to lay His head” (Matt. 8:20). To refuse
to cast Himself down from the pinnacle meant to lose the acclaim of popularity
which such a miracle would have brought. It is not that such popularity had the
slightest attraction for Him, but it meant, prophetically, the whole path of
rejection, shame, and scorn which, for a nature that was love, would be
suffering. He would not tempt God as if He needed to prove His care. To refuse
to worship the god of this world was to ensure the active enmity of the whole
world, with the cross at the close. All this only shows that suffering was a necessity
for Him in a world like this. The very refusal to be anything else than
perfectly righteous involved Him in constant suffering, and this was because
He was perfectly holy. The reason why there is so little suffering now is
because there is so little of that which is like Him. Yet where there
are true-hearted witnesses for Him, there will be the suffering that goes with
it.

  Every other temptation
appeals to the flesh, or is the flesh enticing one into an easy path.
Therefore the being “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Heb. 4:15)
refers not to our failures or sins, but to the trials of the way. Are we
poor? He was more so. Are we despised? He was a reproach of men. Are we exposed
to Satan’s malice? None was ever so much so as He was.

  Patient holiness must
suffer in the presence of sin. And whatever brought out that perfect holiness
would bring out the suffering. For one to yield and go on with the evil,
even in thought, is to prove himself unholy.

  (From Help and Food,
Vol. 26.)

* * *

Yield not to temptation,

  For yielding is sin;

Each victory will help you

  Some other to win;

Fight manfully onward,

  Dark passions subdue,

Look ever to Jesus,

  He’ll carry you through.

 

To him that o’ercometh

  God giveth a crown,

Through faith we shall
conquer,

  Though often cast down;

He, who is our Savior,

  Our strength will renew,

Look ever to Jesus,

  He’ll carry you through.

 

Ask the Saviour to help you,

Comfort, strengthen, and keep
you;

He is willing to aid you,

He will carry you through.

                                              
H.R. Palmer

 

  “God will not suffer you to
be tempted above that you are able to bear” (1 Cor. 10:13).

 

For a time the way seemed
easy,

   Oh, my soul!

Peace and joy were all
unhindered,

   Happy soul!

Little did I think that still

Lurked within my breast a
will

Which would soon with sorrow
fill

   All my soul.

 

With the confidence of
childhood,

   Thou, my soul,

Fearless in thy strength,
petitioned

   [Poor, weak soul!]

That the Lord would
straightway

     prove thee;

For I knew, Lord, Thou didst
love me,

And I thought that naught
could move

     thee,

   Oh, my soul!

 

Little knew I what I asked
for—

   How would roll

Conflict after conflict over

   Thee, my soul.

Peter-like, I loved my Lord;

But He took me at my word—

Sent a sharp and piercing
sword

   Through my soul.

 

All-enticing came the
tempter,

   Ah, my soul!

Fierce the struggle, in my
longing

   To control

All my being for His Name.

Yielding, I was put to shame—

Found my treacherous heart
the same,

   Faithless soul!

 

Ah! I never thought to grieve
Him

   Who could save

My poor soul from lasting
ruin

   And the grave.

But I did not know my heart—

That it was the counterpart

Of all others; but the dart

   Pierced it well.

 

Sinned against the God who
loved me!

   How I groan

Over that which brought Thee,

     Saviour,

   From the throne,

In Thy love, to die, to
bleed,

Live for me, and intercede!

Such surpassing grace,
indeed,

   Lord, I own.

 

Weak and wavering, still thou

      trustest,

   Oh, my soul!

Christ thy strength—He will

     sustain thee,

   Fainting soul.

Let me all my weakness feel,

Then Thy strength Thou wilt
reveal—

By Thy might, in woe or weal,

   All control.

 

Then Lord, ever, in
temptation

   Let me plead

All Thy strength in all my
weakness,

   For my need;

And beneath Thy sheltering
wing

All my heart’s deep trial
bring,

And Thou’lt teach me there to
sing

   Praise indeed.

 

  Such deep exercise as is
expressed in the above lines is not, as is frequently supposed, the result only
of some gross, outbreaking sin. What by many would be esteemed a small sin, has
often caused a sensitive soul the deepest anguish and severest self-judgment.
Would to God we had always a tender conscience about all sin! Sin is hateful
and hideous to God, in whatever shape or degree. We are apt to measure it by
its immediate consequences, or the disgrace attaching to it, such as
drunkenness, etc. But this is not God’s way. He would teach us, first, that all
sin is against Himself, against His holiness.

  Every sin being the fruit
of our sinful nature, comes under the sentence of God’s wrath, even the cross
of Christ, and must needs come under the severest judgment of the believer, if
he would walk with God. He cannot go on with unholiness, however small it may
seem; and if we do not judge the first approach of sin, our consciences will
soon cease to be our faithful monitors, and who can tell to what lengths we may
go? Oh, to shudder at the very approach of sin! but alas, how easily we are
caught in the enemy’s trap, if the shield of faith is down!

  May the Lord help us, that
we abuse not the grace of God, nor do despite to the cross of Christ, that we
may not have to weep the bitter tears of Peter, nor cry with David, in his
sorrow and humiliation, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned!” (Psa. 51:4).
Yet, if we will have our own way, He lets us have the sorrow of it. But blessed
is he who, through the discipline thus incurred, reaps the peaceable fruits of
righteousness.

  (From Help and Food,
Vol. 13.)

 

Review

  In Part I of this article,
we considered examples of righteous anger expressed by God, by the Man Christ
Jesus, and by other persons in the Bible. We then gave a number of examples of
people in the Bible who expressed sinful anger and looked at the main reasons
for this anger. We noticed that often this sinful anger was in response to
people who were simply carrying out the will of God.

Sinful Anger in Response to Sin

  There are also a few
examples in the Bible in which anger was directed at a person who had sinned.
For example:

  Esau was angry with Jacob
for stealing the blessing from their father Isaac (Gen. 27:23,41).

  Jacob was angry with his
wife Rachel because she was sinfully complaining (Gen. 30:1,2).

  Simeon and Levi were angry
with Shechem for raping their sister. Their anger was justified at the outset,
but it degenerated into sinful retaliation (Gen. 34:2,7,25,26).

  Moses was angry with the
children of Israel because they were sinfully complaining against God; Moses’
anger led to his sinful misrepresentation of the character of Jehovah before
the Israelites (Num. 20:1-12).

  If a person sins against me
and I respond in anger, does the fact that it is a response to sin
automatically make my anger righteous? Not necessarily. In each of these
examples there is evidence of wounded pride; the anger is not used to make a
godly appeal to the person to repent of his/her sin, but to attack and/or get
even with the sinner. Perhaps you firmly believe that you have a right before
God to become angry every time you perceive that someone has sinned against
you. There are several things wrong with this idea:

  1. Your perception may be
wrong; you may have misunderstood or misinterpreted the person’s words or
actions; thus your anger would be totally wrong.

  2. Your perception may be
correct, but if your anger is only for the purpose of punishing the person, it
is wrong, because you are to leave vengeance in the Lord’s hands (Rom. 12:19).

  3. God may sometimes want
you to “pass over a transgression” (Prov. 19:11). (We will discuss this in more
detail later.)

  4. You may be confusing sin
as defined in God’s Word with the fact that you personally have been
embarrassed or inconvenienced by another’s misfortune. For example, suppose
your young child graciously asks if he can help dry the dishes. After you come
out of your faint, you hand him a dish towel. He tries to be very careful, but
because of his small hands and lack of coordination, he drops one of your best
china plates. If you get angry at your child for something like this, it is you
who are sinning, and not the child!

Anger as a Means of

Controlling Others

  There is one more example
of anger in the Bible that we need to look at more closely. This is Peter’s
anger at the time of the crucifixion of Christ when people kept insisting that
they recognized him as a disciple of Jesus. The people were right and Peter was
lying to them. So why did he get angry? As a means of control, I suggest. The
situation was getting out of control, and he feared for his life. So he used
anger as a means of getting the people to back off. This is a very common use
of anger—for controlling other people and getting them to do what I want them
to do. I have seen it happen many times, and probably have done it myself.
There is absolutely no warrant for it, no Scriptural support for it:it is a
result of pride and selfishness through and through.

How Is Anger Expressed?

  How is anger manifested and
expressed? We most often think of people losing their temper, blowing up,
shouting, and so forth. But there are other ways. Here is an example from
Scripture:“Ahab spoke unto Naboth, saying, Give me your vineyard, that I may
have it for a garden of herbs…. And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it
me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto you. And Ahab came
into his house heavy and displeased … and he lay down upon his bed and turned
away his face and would eat no bread” (1 Ki. 21:1-4). Ahab was angry because he
was not getting his own way even though he was king. He did not blow up in
anger; rather he went off and pouted, and perhaps became depressed. I remember
a brother making the observation that depression often results from suppressed
anger—not always, but often. Much of what people today call “stress” is due to
going on day after day with suppressed anger and holding grudges.

  Another way anger is
manifested is the silent treatment. Some people sort of realize that losing
one’s temper is wrong, so they express their anger by being silent, not
communicating with the ones who make them angry. I remember reading about two
sisters who lived together in the same house. They had a falling out, and lived
the last 20 years each keeping to her side of the house, and never once
speaking to the other. How awful! How stressful!

  Then there are those whose
motto is:“I don’t get angry; I just get even.” Surely that is wrong because
the Bible says, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19,20).
But are not all these other forms of anger, including the silent treatment,
also a form of vengeance? A variation of this is using cutting or mocking
words. For example, I remember a high school teacher of mine who, when a
certain boy misbehaved in class, called him “Butterball.” If, in our anger, we
attack or make fun of the person (in this case, the physical appearance of the
person) rather than using the energy derived from our anger to attack and
resolve the problem (in this case, his misbehavior), then we are really taking
vengeance into our own hands.

  Finally, some people use
the gunny sack approach to expressing irritation and anger. Here’s how it
works. Consider a married couple:we will call them George and Sally. Sally
goes to brush her teeth and finds the tube of toothpaste squeezed in the
middle. She thinks to herself, “I just hate it when George squeezes the
tube in the middle,” and she drops it in the gunny sack—figuratively, not
literally. Then she goes to the bedroom and finds George’s pajamas strewn on
the floor. Again, she thinks bitter thoughts about George and … drops the
pajamas in her gunny sack. She goes down to the kitchen and the morning paper
lying on the table reminds her of how her husband never pays attention to her
at the breakfast table … and she drops the paper in her gunny sack. And so it
goes until Saturday when she catches George slicing bread on the kitchen counter
without using the bread board. She blows up, and out comes the gunny sack. She
berates him, not just about scarring the kitchen counter, but also about the
toothpaste and the pajamas and the newspaper. The verses “Let not the sun go
down upon your wrath” and “It is his glory to pass over a transgression” apply
here.

Biblical Instruction

Concerning Anger

  Let us now briefly explore
some Biblical instruction concerning anger. The first one we have considered
already:

  We are to be angry, but
without sinning. “Be angry and sin not:let not the sun go down upon your
wrath:neither give place to the devil” (Eph. 4:26,27). In other words, there
is a kind of anger that is not sinful. There are occasions in which we should
express righteous anger, following the example of Christ. But at the same time,
we must be very careful not to allow righteous anger to degenerate into sinful
anger. We are to keep short accounts with God and with other people; therefore
we should make sure that our anger has been resolved before the sun goes down.

  We are to stop our
sinful anger. “Cease from anger, and forsake wrath:fret not yourself in
any wise to do evil” (Psa. 37:8).“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and
clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice” (Eph. 4:31;
also Col. 3:8; Gal. 5:19-21). We shall come back to the very important question
of how to deal with our problem of anger.

  We are to consider the
effects and consequences of our anger. “A wrathful man stirs up strife”
(Prov. 15:18). “Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous” (Prov. 27:4). “Whoever
is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment:
and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the
council:but whosoever shall say, You fool, shall be in danger of hell fire”
(Matt. 5:22). “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest
any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled”
(Heb. 12:15). “For the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God” (Jas.
1:20). “If you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and
lie not against the truth” (Jas. 3:14).

  We are to be slow to
anger. “He who is slow to wrath is of great understanding” (Prov. 14:29).
“He who is slow to anger appeases strife” (Prov. 15:18). “He who is slow to
anger is better than the mighty; and he who rules his spirit than he who takes
a city” (Prov. 16:32).“Love suffers long [or is long-tempered] … is not
easily provoked” (1 Cor. 13:4,5). “I will therefore that men pray everywhere,
lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting” (1 Tim. 2:8). (Engaging in
public prayer while nursing an angry, bitter spirit in private is gross
hypocrisy.) “A bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not
self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker” (Tit. 1:7).
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak,
slow to wrath” (Jas. 1:19).

  We have the privilege of
passing over some transgressions. “The discretion of a man defers his anger;
and it is his glory to pass over a transgression” (Prov. 19:11). The deferring
of one’s anger here does not mean putting it in your gunny sack to bring out
later. Rather, I believe it means that we stop and consider and pray about the
matter to find out how God wants us to respond. The second part of the verse
says that God may sometimes want us to pass over a transgression. Husbands!
wives! before you lash out at your spouse for some trivial misdeed (like
squeezing the tube of toothpaste in the wrong place), pray! Ask God and ask
yourself if it is worth bringing conflict and disharmony into your marriage
over such a matter as this. Also ask God to remind you of the many times your
spouse has passed over your transgressions.

  The apostle Paul might have
whammed the Philippians for engaging in petty conflicts, but instead he gave
them—and us—the wonderful ministry of Chapter 2, verses 5-11 concerning the
humility and subsequent exaltation of Christ Jesus. And in the Old Testament,
Moses was out of touch with God’s thoughts when he expressed anger at the
people’s sin while God wanted to win the people’s hearts by an expression of
grace. For this inappropriate expression of anger toward the people’s sin,
Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land (Num. 20:1-12).

  “It is his glory to pass
over a transgression.” I would include under this verse the annoying habit of
some to “nit pick”—constantly correcting their children or spouse or even
parents with respect to grammar or pronunciation or details of a story they are
telling.

  How we are to deal with
other people’s anger. “A soft answer turns away wrath” (Prov. 15:1). If
your two-year-old is having a temper tantrum, try whispering in his/her ear.
“Wise men turn away wrath” (Prov. 29:8). “A gift in secret pacifies anger:and
a reward in the bosom strong wrath” (Prov. 21:14; see Gen. 43:11,12; Matt.
5:44).

  We are to avoid stirring
up anger in others. “Grievous words stir up anger” (Prov. 15:1). “Fathers,
provoke not your children to wrath:but bring them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). “Fathers, provoke not your children to
anger, lest they be discouraged” (Col. 3:21). If a member of our family has an
anger problem, the other members should be much in prayer and in the Word to
discover any behaviors on their part that may be helping to kindle the anger of
the other. This does not at all excuse one’s anger. “The devil made me do it”
or “my parents drove me to anger” does not cut it with God. But at the same
time, the more reasons and excuses we can remove from the path of angry
persons, the greater the possibility of helping those persons with their
problem of anger.

  (To be concluded.)