The King James version translates Ephesians 4:26 -- "Be ye angry, but sin not." "Be ye angry..." There will most certainly be occasions for anger ... "But sin not." But don't let your anger lead you into sin. Anger does have a proper place in our lives. Anger in and of itself is not inherently wrong. In fact, anger can be a powerful impetus for good; as someone once put it, "The person who cannot be angry at evil usually lacks enthusiasm for the good." Webster's dictionary defines anger simply as "a strong feeling of displeasure." That strong feeling in and of itself is not inherently wrong or sinful. That strong feeling, however, can work its way out in all kinds of destructive ways. Aristotle is credited with saying: "Anyone can become angry. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way ... this is not easy."

Some other select quotes on anger: "Anger is just one letter short of danger." I like this next one: "The emptier the pot, the quicker the boil." From the field of counseling: "As a general rule, the angriest person in a controversy is the one who is wrong." -Thomas Jefferson is credited with the following: "When angry, count to ten before your speak, if very angry, a hundred!" As if in mild rebuttal, Mark Twain wrote: "When angry, count to four, when very angry, swear!" From author Frederich Beuchner in his book Wishful Thinking: "Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself, the skeleton at the feast is yours." Finally, from Ann Landers: "Anger is an acid which destroys its container from within."

I'd like to suggest two biblical principles to apply when angered. James 1:19 says, "Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger, for the anger of men does not work the righteousness of God." That first principle is this: listen to your anger. Anger can be an excellent teacher through which we can learn some of life's most important lessons. As implied by Psalm 4:4, don't spend your time lying in the bed of festering anger; rather, "lie down" and search your hearts and ask: What is God teaching me through this? Why was I angered? Am I sure I heard everything correctly? Did I take time to try to understand other's circumstances, other's points of view? How can God's righteousness be worked out through this thing that angers me? And then, the second principle: Determine to intentionally and purposefully channel your anger into constructive activity for the purposes of God.

Notice that it doesn't say, Paul was filled with compassion for this girl. He may well have been, but the text doesn't say it. The text does say he was annoyed, irritated, troubled, bothered, angered. Humanly speaking, I find it somewhat personally reassuring that, essentially, here was that pillar of the faith, the great St. Paul, and this girl bugged him. He was annoyed, he was angry. And he cast the demon out of her because he was irritated. Which, by the way, is more than a good enough reason to get rid of evil. After a while you just get tired of putting up with it. There comes a point when patience and tolerance of evil reaches its limits. If we care anything at all for what is good and right, then evil should anger us. Again, "The man who cannot be angry at evil usually lacks enthusiasm for the good." Note, though, that Paul was slow to anger ... it was only after several days of this constant haranguing that he reacted thus. But he was annoyed, he was legitimately angered ... and he constructively channeled that anger and used it as an opportunity for ministry. He channeled his anger by calling on the name of Jesus to heal this tormented soul.

As the text tells us, this slave-girl used to make her owners a lot of money telling fortunes. So when Paul cast out the demon, he also cast out their means of exploiting the girl. This angered ... no, this infuriated ... the owners, who dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates and whipped up the whole crowd into an anti-Semetic frenzy against Paul and Silas. So to keep the peace, the magistrates had them stripped, beaten, severely flogged and thrown in prison. Now, this is completely unjust. Paul and Silas had done nothing wrong. Simply by freeing a young girl from her torment, they were beaten and imprisoned. Besides, Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, which made this treatment illegal. So nothing about this is right or just or fair. Now, if you or I were Silas, sitting in a dark jail next to Paul with our feet in stocks, dabbing the blood running off our shoulders and back, throbbing with pain, you or I probably would have been angry. Perhaps we might have said something like, "This isn't fair! This isn't just. By the way, Paul, are you really sure about this vision you had for us to come to Macedonia? Maybe it was only a dream, you know ... and a bad dream at that. Maybe you misunderstood God: Maybe He didn't say go to Macedonia. Maybe He said go to Bermuda. I mean, if God wanted us here, why would He let this happen to us? If we're doing what God wants us to do, why do we suffer such unfairness, such injustice, such pain? This isn't right. This isn't fair."

But no, we have no record of Silas or Paul being angry, no record of their doubting their call from God. They did not choose to lie down in anger, they did not choose to sit there in the dark jail and lament their lot, marinating in the vinegar of anger, commiserating on their wounds, their hurt, their outrage and plotting their revenge. No. They didn't "go to bed" angry, they stayed up to "fight." They chose to channel their anger into constructive activity for the purposes of God, and they spent their evening in jail praying and singing hymns. They chose to let their prayers and hymns rise as protest against the evil, injustice and pain of their world. And as the other prisoners and the jailer saw the way these men channeled their anger, as they witnessed the grace with which they responded to adversity, a little revival broke out in the dark corners of that Philippian jail. And we also read that the earth began to heave, the very foundations of that prison where shaken, their shackles and chains unfastened, and the doors to their jail break open.

"Be ye angry ... but do not sin." When we gather in this sanctuary after a week of living in our worlds full of conflict, unfairness, strife and frustration, and we pull out our hymnals to sing hymns like we did today, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," we are not pretending the world isn't filled with evil and injustice and unfairness. In worship and in our lives, we are making a holy protest against it all, we are "staying up to fight", and we sing praise to Jesus Christ who really does reign. It is our praise of God, it is our protest against evil, it is our way of casting out the demonic temptation to lie down and make our beds in anger and hopeless despair, it is our way of "staying up to fight."

And friends, whenever the people of God refuse to lie down in anger and hopeless despair, whenever the people of faith determine to "stay up and fight" by insisting upon hope, the earth still shakes, the chains that bind us continue to unfasten, the prison doors of injustice still fly open, people are freed to live as God would have them live, and a little more room for heaven is made on earth. Be ye angry, but do not sin. Stay up ... and fight.