Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Wednesday. We have often taken up the topic of anger on the podcast. And that’s because we get a lot of questions on anger — hundreds of questions over the years on anger. Last time we looked at one dimension — namely, getting mad at God when life doesn’t turn out the way that we had hoped. Is it ever virtuous or righteous or godly or innocent or even morally neutral to feel heartfelt anger at God? That’s the question we took up last time, on Monday in APJ 1828. But most of our emails on anger are in the context of the home. In wondering what Pastor John has said here, I searched the sermon archive and found this clip that I want to play for you today. It’s for dads. And it’s a reminder of how a dad’s anger in the home kills the kindness and the tenderheartedness he is called to display to his family. So how do we confront the powerful and seemingly unstoppable force of anger inside the home? Here’s Pastor John with a wonderful gospel answer in a clip taken from one of his 2007 sermons. Here he is, talking about the fatherhood of God.

So here he is, as our Father, and he has never done us wrong or done anything to give us a legitimate cause for anger, and the relationship is broken with everybody in the world. Whose fault is it? It’s man’s fault. It’s always our fault. It’s always our fault when the relationship breaks down between us and God — always.

Pattern for Fatherhood

Now, here’s the point: Who takes the initiative to fix that? Our Father in heaven does, at the price of his Son’s life. This is not a small, “Well, I’m going to give it a little try here to see if I can save my children.” This is the Father and the Son, from all eternity, knowing our rebellious anger against him and saying, “Son, we’re not going to let them go. We will not let our elect go. We will do everything it takes to have them in this family and have them happy.”

“The gospel is the only hope for child-rearing.”

Now I mention it, dads, because that’s our pattern. And it was all our fault. It’ll never be all your children’s fault when they give you trouble. Some, but not all. And therefore, the call to be like God to our children will be more warranted than if we were perfect fathers. And even if we were perfect fathers, the knock on the door would still be, “I would like to talk to the man of the house, and we’ll work on this.” We will lay our lives down to have these children back, and to have them free from anger, and to have them whole emotionally and moving into their own little nests whole.

Gospel-Powered Parenting

Now, I said I would point you back to the way Paul worked with anger. Turn to Ephesians 4:31–5:2. This text is a model for fathers and how to attack the anger in the family — in himself, in his children, in his wife. Let’s start reading at 4:31. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another . . .” (Ephesians 4:31–32). Now stop right there. That’s all command — and as command, powerless.

You go to a dad who’s angry in this church tonight and say, “Stop feeling that way.” He’ll look at you like, “You mean you want me to fly? It doesn’t work.” That’s what he would say, probably, if you just said, “Stop the anger” — or like Paul, “Put it away.” That’s powerless. But the next phrase is all power: “. . . as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). There’s the only hope, dads. The gospel is the only hope for child-rearing.

“A soul that has shriveled up to one solitary emotion, anger, can begin to melt under the smile of God.”

The main issue in making kids mad is that we’re mad. And if we’re going to pull the plug on our anger, this is it. I don’t know any other Christ-exalting answer to how to overcome anger than to do it the way Paul says here. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you” (Ephesians 4:31). Reverse it. Let there be kindness and tenderheartedness — those other sweet emotions that are being slaughtered by the anger. Replace the anger with tenderheartedness, and forgive one another. And then here it comes: “as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Anger’s End

So according to the text, God doesn’t just come to us dads and say, “Stop being angry, and stop provoking your kids to anger — period. I mean it. I’m God. Do what I say.” That’s not the gospel. What God says is this: “From eternity, I planned to save you. My Son and I, in a covenant of redemption, agreed to do it. I’m going to let him go. He’s going to die. He’s going to rise again.” For every dad who will look away from himself to Christ to see the punishment he deserves and the righteousness God requires, and who will receive all that precious, glorious treasure — at that moment, God says, “I am totally for you, forever.”

And out of that forgiveness, out of that right standing, out of that sweet, tenderhearted experience of the living God folding me like a father into his family, you know what can happen, dads? A soul that has shriveled up to one solitary emotion, anger, can begin to melt under the smile of God. It can happen. It will happen.

We have surrounded ourselves with screens. On the desk. In the family room. Even in bedrooms and kitchens. Increasingly in automobiles. One for every passenger on the airplane? And most importantly, hitchhiking on our person everywhere we go, the Precious in our own pocketses and handses.

Once upon a time, screens came attached to heavy, unwieldy boxes. Not anymore. Now they’re as thin as picture frames, and thinner. Some of us can count more screens in our homes than wall décor.

We are living in stunningly image-driven and visually-oriented times. We do well, then, to query ourselves regularly, and thoughtfully, about what images we’re allowing to pass before our eyes, and how they are shaping us. Moving pictures are powerful. They can arrest and extract attention we don’t mean to pay them (say, at a restaurant). And our habits related to screens don’t leave us unchanged.

Yet, in such days, it could be easy to be captivated by the screens and overlook the deeply formative and re-formative power of the great invisible medium that accompanies them: words. Words, especially spoken words, are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.

Words for Good, and Ill

Perhaps even more than our other four celebrated senses, our ability to hear makes us deeply human.

“Words are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.”

After touch (at three weeks), hearing is the next sense to develop in the womb, at about twenty weeks, and it is widely considered to be the last sense to go while dying. Which makes sense for us as creatures of the Creator who is (amazingly!) a speaking, self-revealing God. First and foremost, he made us to hear him, to receive and respond to his words. He created the world, through words, saying, “Let there be light.” He speaks new creation into our souls by effecting new birth through his word, the gospel (James 1:18; 2 Corinthians 4:6). And he grows and sustains our souls in the Christian life through his words (1 Corinthians 15:1–2; 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

When the serpent slid into the garden, he didn’t show Eve an Instagram video, or perform a TikTok dance. He spoke. He slid his poison into her heart through her ears. After all, God had spoken to create the world. He had given Adam instructions through words about how to live in the world. So too, when Satan attacked, he came with something more perilous than a sword or boulder. He came with words, leaning on the stunning power of the audible and invisible, seeking to unseat God’s words. “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1).

Who’s in Your Head?

In our day of striking media saturation and consumption, we will do well to remember the profound shaping, world-changing power of words.

Whether they are the words accompanying television and YouTube, or the written words of articles and tweets, or the purely audible media of podcasts and audiobooks, words form and fill our inner person, penetrate deeply, and quickly shape our desires, decisions, and outer lives — the whole of who we are. It’s not a matter of whether words are shaping us but whose.

Whose voice — whether through audio or written words or video, or old-fashioned face-to-face talk — whose voice is most regularly streaming into your ears, and going down into your soul? Whose voice captures your finite attention, and focuses you, or distracts you? Which voices do you long to hear most? Whose words are you welcoming most to enter into your soul, to sow seeds of life — or death? Whom do you welcome into that intimate space that is your ear?

Entertaining Demons

Do the words you hear and cherish most “follow the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2)? Are you becoming “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2) rather than “transformed by the renewal of your mind”? How “highly online” and “Internet-formed” are you? Some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2), but are we showing hospitality to demons?

Two lines from a recent Gospel Coalition email stopped me in my tracks:

Internet-formed Christians are increasingly being catechized by partisan politics and secular pop culture. The result? Divided and fragmenting churches, declining church membership, and weary leaders.

It stopped me in my tracks as a spot-on diagnosis. Christian parents, pastors, and disciple-makers were once the most formative catechizers. What happens when the words, and perspectives, of television and the Internet shape Christians more than their churches? We’re already seeing it.

Whose Words Are Changing You?

For many, the fight for faith in this generation — to not only survive but thrive as a Christian — is about not just what we see, but perhaps just as pressing (if not more so), what we hear and to whom we listen.

God made us for the gospel, which is first and foremost a message to hear. “Faith comes from hearing,” says the apostle Paul, “and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). And how did you receive the Spirit? “Hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:2). “He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you” does so not “by works of the law,” he writes, but “by hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:5). The voices we habitually allow and welcome into our heads have profound shaping power. “In the sensorium of faith,” writes Tony Reinke in his book on today’s countless visual Spectacles, “the ear is chief” (148).

“Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become like tomorrow.”

A new year is as good a time as any to take inventory of the audible voices and written words we encounter daily, especially those we habitually choose. Whose words do you welcome? Whose words do you not only hear, but listen to with rapt attention? Whose words fill your social feeds and podcast queues? What do you listen to on the way to work, or while you walk, exercise, or clean? To whom do you turn for advice? What podcasts, what shows and series, what musicians, what audiobooks? Are your choices governed by the pursuit of entertainment, or the pursuit of God? Instant gratification, or progressive sanctification? Shallow, mindless consumption, or careful, thoughtful growth?

Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become more like tomorrow. As Jesus himself says seven times in the Gospels, and then seven times more in Revelation, “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

New Year’s Defiance

As we continue to sort out the effects of new media and algorithms, and how the Internet shapes Christians and our churches in particular, we do have one clear, simple, ancient, decisive act of defiance.

To those of us willing to hear and heed the cautions, the solution, of course, is not to plug the ears that God has so wonderfully dug, but to open them and eagerly receive words and voices that are true, good, life-giving, balanced, and Christ-magnifying. Even more important than what we keep out of our heads, and hearts, is what we fill them with — and none are more worthy than the words of God himself.

God made us to meditate, not flit endlessly from one message to the next. It is a remarkable design feature of humans, that we can pause and ponder, ruminate and think, that we can stew over truth (and not just lies), and over the good God has done (and not just the evil of others). Perhaps, if you’re honest, you find your mind fragmented. Texts and notifications, tweets and memes, audio and video ads and clips seem to have eroded your capacity for serious, meaningful attention, and you’re not sure where to turn next, but just hit refresh. Make the word of God be where you turn.

Make his voice, in Scripture, the first you hear each day. And his voice, above all, the one that you welcome most, and try to take most deeply into your soul through his words. Let his words be your unhurried meditation, in the morning, and the place you return to regain balance in spare moments. Pray for, and aim to have, his word be “on your heart,” and central in your parenting, and present in conversation, with you “when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

Discover Good

Let meditation on God’s word be one great new-year’s act of defiance in our media-driven age. Half an hour of such unhurried, even leisurely, lingering over and enjoying God’s words just might fortify your soul for the unavoidable drivel of distant dramas, hot takes, and idle words we seem to encounter at every turn in this world. “Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord” (Proverbs 16:20).

You will find, over time, that God can indeed restore what the locusts have eaten. He can rebuild your mind, and your capacity for focus and sustained attention, and he can restore your heart, and give you wisdom and stability.

How different might the next year be because of what you resolved to do with your ears?

Audio Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the podcast on this Wednesday. So “the passions of the flesh . . . wage war against [our souls].” That’s 1 Peter 2:11. That’s what we looked at in-depth with Pastor John on Monday. The desires of the flesh draw away from the all-satisfying fullness of Christ.

That’s a huge point, and I want to return to that text and to that verse and to the verse after it, because in them we encounter the two greatest questions faced by the universe. No joke. The universe’s two greatest questions are answered here in 1 Peter 2:11–12. There Peter wrote,

Beloved [writing to Christians], I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

These two verses answer the two most gigantic issues faced by the universe. To make the claim and defend it, here’s Pastor John in a 1994 sermon.

In those two verses, two issues are seen to be massively important. In fact, I would say they are the two most important issues in the world, in the universe. They are the two issues that the whole Bible deals with throughout. And one of the ways that we know that we are aliens and exiles and strangers, like verse 11 says, is that the world, by and large, does not think that they are important issues. If the world did, the newspaper would look different, television would look different, radio would sound different, university classes would sound different, advertising would be different, business would be different. But by and large, these two issues, which the Bible treats as the most important issues in the world, are non-issues in our world. This makes aliens out of us who get our bearings from the Bible.

The two issues are these: the salvation of the human soul and the glory of the name of God. Or to put it another way, the two big issues in the Bible and in the world are these: How do you save the soul so that it’s not destroyed? And how do you glorify God so that he’s not belittled? Those are the two huge issues in these two verses. Let’s get that before we even talk about any details.

Salvation of the Soul

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). The issue here is whether the soul is going to be so fought against that it dies, that it is lost. There are anti-soul forces in the world. The world, by and large, doesn’t even think about its soul. But this text says that there’s a war going on, and there are desires in the world that are waging war, trying to bring my soul to ruin. And if it succeeds, if the anti-soul forces win, my soul is lost. And if my soul is lost, everything is lost, and there is no recovery.

Remember what Jesus said? “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37). Which means, if the soul has been lost, there’s no negotiating anymore. If the soul is lost, you don’t buy it back — it’s gone. If anti-soul forces win, they win. It’s over. Jesus said so in Luke 16, when he was talking about the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man went to Hades and Lazarus went to Abraham’s lap. And they were granted for a moment to see and commune in word. And the man in Hades said, “Just send him over with a drop of water. I am in torment in these flames.” And Abraham said, “There is a gulf here that is so big, so wide, so deep, that God has ordained nobody crosses either way, ever” (see Luke 16:19–31).

It’s over. That’s an awesome reality. This is a reality that has to do with everybody. It has to do with everybody forever, and it has to do with everybody forever in huge ways that have to do with hell and heaven. And yet, there’s no column in the newspaper, there’s no public-service announcement on the radio, there’s no sound bite on television, there’s no values-clarification course at the university or in our schools, there’s no government agency, there’s not even a welfare pamphlet that gives one hint as to how to fight for our souls.

“Our world is passionately committed to the inconsequential.”

The biggest issue that our souls face is a non-issue in the world, which is why you’re an alien and a stranger. They, the world order, teach us how to fight AIDS and how to fight mosquitoes and sunstroke and drunk driving and pollen and depression and rape and fire and theft and cholesterol and dandelions. But they don’t teach us how to fight for our soul. Our world — you must get this — is passionately committed to the inconsequential. One of these days that will not be the case. The eyes of the world will be opened, and our obliviousness to what will then be seen to be so obvious will so stun the world that we will have no explanation for the way we lived in America. How the eternal condition of the human soul could be a non-issue will be absolutely inexplicable. It will boggle the mind as we stand before our Judge. We are aliens.

That’s the first great issue. “How shall the soul of man be saved and not destroyed forever and ever?” That is a big issue.

Glory of God

Here’s the second one. “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). The first issue is how the soul shall not be lost. The second issue is how God shall not be belittled. Or to make it positive: how the soul shall be saved, and now, how God shall be glorified.

The salvation of the soul and the glory of God are the two biggest issues in the universe. And they’re non-issues for most people in America. This text says, “The goal of all human behavior is to be the glory of God.” Isn’t that an incredibly sweeping statement? The goal of all your behavior, from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night, is to draw attention to God. That’s the significance of human life. The positive significance of human life consists in our capacity to deflect attention from ourselves to God. That’s the meaning of human life as God intended it to be.

“If we don’t live for God’s glory, we become simply a little echo of a God-neglecting culture.”

You see that. I’m not making that up. That’s right here. “Keep your conduct honorable so that the Gentiles might glorify God” (see 1 Peter 2:12). Live, conduct yourselves, act, behave with a mind that asks, “How can I direct their attention to God by the way I live?” That’s what life is for. We live in order to get attention for God. If we don’t — if we don’t live for God’s glory — we become simply a little echo of a God-neglecting culture. We fit in so well to this world that we can’t direct anybody’s attention out of the world, which is where God is.

I just have the feeling that we’re so afraid of being Amish: dressing wrong, riding a horse-drawn carriage, being anti-modern, or getting the wrong tie, or not having a tan. We’re so afraid of not being in step that we blend in too well so that nobody’s saying, “Wow — look at God” anymore. And it’s because of the church.