In Psalm 32 David confessed that he had stubbornly hidden his sin with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, her husband and how it had made him physically miserable. He described it this way in vv. 3-4, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah” (Psalm 32:3–4, ESV)
You see, time doesn’t heal all wounds, it just allows gangrene to set in and the poison to spread until it enters the blood stream and kills the heart.
Let me ask you, do you think you are somehow different? If you don’t deal with your anger it will turn to hatred and bitterness and it will corrode your heart.
Ephesians 4:26 says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” (Ephesians 4:26, ESV).
If you are a blood bought Christian, then you are a new creation in Christ Jesus. You have the Holy Spirit, and so you can call out to God and ask him to help you to forgive, and for him to put to death that sinful hatred and anger in your heart.
James 4:1-2 says, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.” (James 4:1–2, ESV).
Sometimes Christians read the “murder” part as hyperbole, as exaggeration about anger. Some read what James wrote and think that they will never let their anger go that far. But we are talking about an anger that is out of control, it begins small and then grows and becomes a monster that wages war.
John MacArthur said about this sort of growing hatred:
“Just think about something like hate; if you want to find out what hate does to people, go back to Genesis 4 and find out about Cain and see what hate did to Cain. If that isn’t a good enough lesson, go to Esau and watch hate drive a man through his whole lifetime. If that doesn’t satisfy you, go to the sons of Jacob and find out what hate did to those people, hate toward Joseph and the results of it. If that doesn’t do it, go find a man named Saul and see what it did to him. He hated David, and it drove him to the place where he killed himself. If that isn’t convincing enough, find Absalom and see what hate did to him in 2 Samuel 13. If that doesn’t convince you, read the book of Esther and find out how hatred drove a man named Haman to be hanged of his own gallows.”
Anger that is not dealt with quickly is a toxin in our heart and it poisons us until we repent and confess it. Shoving it down deeper isn’t an answer. David said in Ps 32:1-2, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” (Psalm 32:1–2, ESV)
If you struggle with bitterness and anger, take it to the Lord in prayer. As him to reveal to you how it has grown in your heart so you can see where all of its roots have led—in your speech, your attitude, your conduct, your worship, your relationships. Let the Lord show you so that you can be done with it completely and you can have that blessing David wrote about.
If you’d like the watch the full length sermon video on this subject, you can see it here: Facebook video link
[1]https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1794/paul-before-festus-part-1
“In our darkest seasons nothing has kept us from desperation but the promise of the Lord: yea, at times nothing has stood between us and self-destruction save faith in the eternal word of God. When worn with pain until the brain has become dazed and the reason well-nigh extinguished, a sweet text has whispered to us its heart-cheering assurance, and our poor struggling mind has reposed upon the bosom of God. That which was our delight in prosperity has been our light in adversity; that which in the day kept us from presuming has in the night kept us from perishing.”
Always Reforming 