Your Personal Volcano

Thank you, Scarlet. That reminds me of what Paul said in Philippians chapter 3. When he said, brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of one thing I do forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Certainly, there are times in life when there is nothing left of our own resources, our own strength, our own wisdom. And we must, we are cast wholly upon the Lord to depend completely upon Him. And that is a good thing. And that is the only way that we can press on in times like that. It was 5.05 a.m. Angela was awakened by the cry of her infant son. It was the fifth time that night she did not know she could feel so tired. Colleck was not something she had planned on when she gave birth to Cory just five months or four months ago. She longed for a peaceful night's sleep, but it seemed only an elusive dream. Her husband Bill was working the third shift. She was all alone. Because Angela dragged herself out of bed and stumbled toward the sound of the crying, she not only felt tired but irritated with her child. Why is this happening to me? I didn't ask for all this. All I want is a good night's sleep. Is that asking too much? No matter how gentle she was, all her efforts to soothe her hurting son were futile. Cory's crying intensified. Because irritation escalated, you have no right to destroy my life by constantly stealing my sleep night after night. Shut up, she screamed as she shook her son. Her actions frightened her. And Cory too. At that moment, she realized just how easy it would be for her to lash out physically at her defenseless son. She felt her anger burning toward this child whom she dearly loved. The inner turmoil terrified her. She slumped to the floor and began to sob. Some of you have been through experiences like that. Or maybe you found yourself in a work situation like Jill. Jill works in a hospital as an X-ray technician. She likes her work and she's good at it, helping others has always been satisfying to her. However, she's finding it increasingly difficult to get along with one particular doctor. He is so arrogant and overbearing if she offers a suggestion about a series of tests he has ordered for a patient. He treats her as though she is grossly incompetent and demeans her. He rudely walks away from her right in the middle of her questions. He refuses to return her phone calls. The last time it happened, Jill hit the ceiling. Who does he think he is anyway? If it weren't for the fact that he's the senior orthopedic surgeon in the hospital and I came to Ford to lose my job, I would give him a piece of my mind. Even maybe I'd get a little of the respect I deserve. You ever been there at work? You see, in stressful situations, emotions often come flying out that other times we're able to keep under control. It is in a very real sense like we have our own personal volcano that resides deep within us. When we find ourselves in a stressful situation, things that normally we would not think or do just suddenly begin to boil up from within us. If we're not careful, if we don't know how to handle that in the moment, then all of a sudden it can come flying out. Sometimes the emotion that flies out is fear. You may be afraid of what others think of you because you failed at something. You may be afraid of losing control. You may be afraid that you won't measure up to others' expectations. Sometimes under stress, the emotion that comes flying out is fear. Sometimes under stress, the emotion that comes flying out is guilt. You feel guilty because you failed at something. You feel guilty because you let somebody else down. You feel guilty because you didn't measure up to the perfect standard that you had set for yourself. But the emotion that is most commonly associated with stress is anger. In seeking to understand stress in this series that we just started a couple of weeks ago, we've talked about how stress relates to personality. We've talked about how it relates to thinking, our thought life. We want to talk this morning about how stress relates to our emotional makeup, our emotions. What happens to us emotionally when we get under stressful situations? You may be angry in stress at yourself. For the way you're responding, you may be angry at others for getting in your way or for cramping your time limitations. You may even be angry at God for something he's allowed to come into your life. But anger is the most common emotion associated with stress, the most common thing that comes flying out like a lava when the volcano explodes. I think one of the best biblical examples of the relationship between stress and anger is Moses. In a few moments we're going to look at the passage in Numbers 20 where we have such a vivid example of Moses kind of exploding in a situation of stress. We're going to look at a couple other passages first. But I think Moses is such a good example because of what the Bible says about his character. The Bible says in Numbers 12-3, look at this verse on the screen. Now Moses was a very humble man more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. Now notice it's in parenthesis. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible but Moses didn't write that verse. That was inserted probably God himself caused an editor or someone else to put that in. That's God's evaluation of Moses. God is saying about Moses, no one more humble than this guy on the face of the earth. The reason why I think Moses is such a good example of what stress can do is it was out of character for him to act this way. You know Moses blowing up when he did blow up his anger spewing forth like lava from a volcano is such a good example to us of how it relates to stress because normally Moses was not that kind of person. He was not pompous or arrogant or self-centered. He was the most humble man that lived on planet earth at that time. Yet under stressful circumstances Moses lost control and not just at the one incident we're going to look at most carefully in Numbers chapter 20. In fact what I want us to begin with this morning is the disturbing trend that is seen in Moses' life. Numbers 20 is not the first time that Moses loses control. Actually it is the fourth time recorded in the Bible that he lost control of his anger. And I think that's significant when you're talking about a man who is known by God testimony of God about him is that he is the most humble man on earth at that time in earth's history for the Bible to record four instances where he lost control of his anger. It's pretty significant. I think God is trying to tell us something there. I think he's trying to tell us how serious this really is and how dangerous it can be for any of us in this room. Not just people who are volatile emotionally anyway. So I want us to look at the disturbing trend in Moses' life before we actually get to Numbers 20. The first time we see this happening is his anger erupting like a volcano against an Egyptian. Look at Exodus chapter 2. Exodus chapter 2. Moses has just become an adult and identified himself with his people Israel. He grew up in the court of Egypt being groomed and prepared probably to be the next Pharaoh. And he has become an adult and his Hebrews 11 tells us he has decided to cast his lot with his own people. He knows he's a Hebrew and so he decides to cast his lot with his own people. So he goes out one day to see how they're fairing. They are slaves in Egypt and verse 11 picks up the story. One day after Moses had grown up he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Dancing this way in that and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Now obviously although the Bible does not mention his anger obviously that kind of took control, didn't it? I mean whenever you see something that upsets you so quickly and it's so fast that you kill somebody, I mean that is obvious anger. And Moses lost control of his temper here. As I said cast his lot with his people. His heart is now with the Hebrew people. And as he sees an Egyptian taskmaster, flogging a slave, beating a slave, a Hebrew slave, it just flies all over him. And he quickly looks to see if anybody's noticing what he's doing. He doesn't see anybody. And his anger erupts against this Egyptian and he kills him and then tries to cover it over by hiding the guy. Well if you know the story you know that it was seen by someone because the next day Moses goes back out and sees two Hebrews fighting with each other and tries to break them up. And one of them says, what are you going to do? You're going to kill us like you did the Egyptian yesterday and Moses knows that what he has done is no secret so he has to flee the land of Egypt. And he goes out into the desert where God gives him a 40 year training program on character. But the next time we see Moses back in Egypt when he comes back this time as the deliverer of his people we find another instance where his anger flies out of control. And this time, secondly it erupts against Pharaoh himself. Look at Exodus chapter 10. In Exodus 10 you see God has been using Moses to announce to Egypt these plagues that God is sending on the nation as judgment for them not letting the people of Israel go. And so these judgments of God have come upon Moses has announced them and we find ourselves in chapter 10 at plague number nine. Plague number nine has just taken place. Moses has announced that it has taken place and now Pharaoh has decided I've had enough of this I'm going to let the people of Israel go. But in verses 25 and 26 Moses tells him we need to take our animals with us because we've got the sacrifice to the Lord out in the wilderness when we go and notice Pharaoh's response or what happens in verse 27 of Exodus 10. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he was not willing to let them go. Pharaoh said to Moses, get out of my sight, make sure you do not appear before me again. I think the exclamation points at the end in the text are very real. He says, the day you see my face, you will die. And notice Moses' response in verse 29, just as you say, Moses replied, I will never appear before you again. Now you really have to read on into chapter 11 to get the full flow of the thought here because chapter 11 continues the same incident. Moses has not yet left because chapter 11 tells us that God has already shown Moses what the tenth plague will be. And so before Moses leaves Pharaoh's presence, he announces the tenth plague which is going to be the most severe of all. And it's going to be this that God will now judge this nation by taking the first born son of every Egyptian family in death that night. So Moses announces that and notice what happens at the end of his announcement in verse 7. He says, but among the Israelites, not a dog will bark at any man or animal. In other words, God's going to protect his people. He's going to judge Egypt, middle of verse 7. Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All these officials of yours will come to me bowing down before me and saying, go and all the people who follow you. After that I will leave. Now notice the next statement. Then Moses hot with anger left Pharaoh. And I don't know it would be very easy for us to say, well, he's rightfully angry. But the word used here, the Hebrew word is literally the strongest word that can be used for anger. It's a good translation that he was quite hot with anger. I mean, he was ready to boil over. He had had enough of Pharaoh and even though Pharaoh was in the wrong and Moses is in the right in announcing God's judgment, the way that Moses goes about it, he is seething inside. He is hot with anger and as he turns to go out of Pharaoh's presence, I imagine there was a trail of smoke behind him. He was literally hot with anger. He was really fried over what had taken place. Now to announce God's judgment was the right thing to do. To do it in the way that he did it. Probably not. He leads the people of Israel out of Egypt. They spend almost 40 years in the wilderness. But before those 40 years are up, they come to Mount Sinai. And the third sign of a disturbing trend in Moses' life is in Exodus chapter 32. So look at that with me for a moment. Here his anger erupts against Israel. They have come out into the wilderness. They have made it to Mount Sinai. It is on Mount Sinai that God will call Moses up on top of the mountain. He will give to him the law, the covenant that he is going to make with his people. It's almost like a wedding ceremony there where he takes his people as if you will, his bride, his own people, his covenant people. Moses is up on the mountain for 40 days. And the people of Israel begin to think, this guy has disappeared. He's not coming back. And so at the bottom of the mountain they start pressuring Aaron to say, now we're out here. Moses, our leader is gone. Make us a golden calf. Now that harkens back to the days in Egypt where the Egyptians worshipped calves, bulls, and oxen as a symbol of the gods. And the Israelites remember that. And so they want something they can see. Moses is out of sight. God they haven't seen. They want something they can see that they can fall down before. And so Aaron under pressure makes a golden calf and the people of Israel start worshipping around this golden calf and the thing gets out of control. They get kind of wild. Look at what happens in Exodus 32, verse 15. Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides front and back. Now I want you to notice something in verse 16. It's a little clue here. There will be important later. The tablets were the work of God. But I think that means is that God himself took these tablets, made them, carved them out of the stone, whatever. And then the middle of verse says the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. So God made the tablets. God then wrote the Ten Commandments on them. Number 17. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, there is the sound of war in the camp. Moses replied, it is not the sound of victory. It is not the sound of defeat. It is the sound of singing, I hear. When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire. Then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it. Once again, Moses loses control. And it would be easy to say, well, this is the right to deserve it. I mean, there is an idolatry here and all kinds of other stuff. It seems a lot of immorality going on and all. Moses has a right to be angry. Even righteous anger, my friend, can be demonstrated in sinful ways. The Bible says be angry and sin not. Now let the sun go down on your wrath, it says, and don't give the devil a foothold or an opportunity to get a wedge in your life. And depending on how you respond to anger, even if it's righteous anger, you can respond in a way that is ungodly, unbiblical and gives the devil a foothold to get further into your life. And I think that's what Moses has done here. He took the tablets that God carved out of the rock and God wrote on and throws them down in his anger, burning with anger the text says. And then he destroys the calf, grinds it up, puts it in water, makes the people of Israel drink it. I'm not sure if the Lord told him to do that or not, but he did it. I think there's still some out of control stuff going on here. Moses burned with anger. You see, when you let anger take over, when a stressful, and I will admit, all three of these situations are stressful situations for Moses. But when anger takes over in times of stress, anybody can do things that would be unimaginable, that would be unthinkable at any other time. That's why it is so dangerous. On Mother's Day of 1987, Percy Washington went to church. He didn't actually go to the service. He drove up in the parking lot with the intent to kill his estranged wife. They'd been married 29 years, had been separated for a year, and he had gotten very angry at his wife and had accused her of all kinds of things. And so the day before Mother's Day, he went out and purchased a shotgun. He went to the church waiting for the service to get out with every intent of killing his wife. He waited until she came out of the church, got in her car, leveled the shotgun at the front window and fired. The problem was, as if that were not enough problem, the problem was in his anger and the intensity of his rage, he had forgotten to put on his glasses that day, and he mistook another woman for his wife, a woman who got in a car that looked very similar to his wife's car, and he ended up killing an innocent person who had no relationship to him at all. That would have been bad enough, it would have been terrible if he killed his wife. But you see that kind of out of control anger, that kind of rage will cause people to do things they would never think of doing otherwise. That is why it is so dangerous and why it is so important to get that under control. Now that brings me to Numbers 20 and the display of temper. The disturbing trend that we've seen leads us to this display of temper where God spends a little bit of time describing here this episode of Moses' anger. And this is a bad scene. This is an explosion of anger on the part of Moses. What I want us to see first of all is the circumstances that brought it about in verses one through five. Notice if you will please Numbers 20, verse one. In the first month, the whole Israelite community arrived at the desert of Zinn and they stayed at Kadesh. Their Miriam died and was buried. Now I want to just pause there long enough to say you have to understand the Israelites have been out in the wilderness almost 40 years and they are back where they started practically. They had traveled through the wilderness on a direct, pretty direct route to Sinai and then up to Kedish Barnea where they had the opportunity to enter the land. And the spies brought back the report you remember and some of the spies, ten of the spies, turned the people against going in and taking the land. And so God, as judgment, said you will wonder in the wilderness for 40 years. They have wondered for 40 years and they have basically gone in a circle and they are right back at Kedish. Now think about this. Moses has been with them all 40 of those years. And what he is going to hear next, he has been hearing for 40 years. Verse two. Now there was no water for the community and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, if only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord. Why did you bring the Lord's community into this desert that we in our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates and there is no water to drink. Now the circumstances that Moses is facing here are stressful for 40 years. It seems like nothing has changed. He has heard this complaining, this questioning of his leadership, this questioning of his authority and Moses has had it. He is seething with anger when he hears this again. The people may not know it but they are about to push him over the edge. Those of the circumstances, stressful yes, maybe understanding to some extent but the response of Moses is nevertheless out of line. Look at the response in verses 6 through 11. Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell face down and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, take the staff, now notice these explicit instructions, take the staff and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink. So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as he had commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, listen, you rebels must we bring out water from this rock? Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff, water gushed out in the community and their livestock drank. Now the response of Moses started well. God said to you and Aaron come meet me at the tabernacle and they did. Tabernacle was a place where God came down and met with them, communicated instructions to them and so forth and he did. He obedience to the Lord, he did. He met with God there. God told him he said, now you take the staff, you gather the people together and go speak to the rock that you see and it will yield forth water. In other words, God is going to display his glory, show his power by bringing water from a rock in the middle of the desert and all Moses has to do, obey God and speak to that rock. But when he gets to the rock in front of the people, the lava is already ready to spew. The volcano is about to erupt. He has had it as much as he can take and he just bursts out, listen, you rebels. Now where did that come from? That comes from anger. He is mad at the people. He says, listen, you rebels must we bring you water out of this rock? Now it wasn't Moses bringing water out of the rock to start with. The word we is the wrong word. He wasn't responsible for this miracle to begin with. But you see he is out of control. He is angry. And so he says, must we bring water out of this rock? And you know what is the most amazing part of this whole thing? That when he struck the rock twice, he was told to speak to it. When he struck the rock twice out of anger, out of control, water came forth. God provided the miracle anyway, which by the way, auto teaches a great lesson. And that is that results are not always the measure of what pleases God. You can get results a lot of different ways. Obviously results sometimes come, response comes from the pleasure of God and God working. But sometimes results can come other ways. Sometimes God in his pure grace because of his compassion on his people will provide for them even though the instrument that God wanted to use is doing it in the wrong way. And with impure motives. And out of anger, that's what happened here. Moses is totally out of order, out of line. And yet God still gave the people water. That's the response. But what I want you to really see is the consequences in verse 12. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy and the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land. I give them. The consequences that Moses faced were serious. God does not overlook what happened. It's not like God says to Moses, okay, Moses, I understand. I'm fed up with these people too. I understand your response. That's okay. No, he doesn't. And we might even think this is a little harsh. Moses has been faithful to lead these people through 40 years of wilderness wanderings. And the goal of it all, the thing on Moses' heart to get in the land, God's not going to let him do. Is that harsh? I think what we see here is that God is telling Moses, Moses. We've been dealing with this thing for 80 years. It goes all the way back to Exodus 2 before you went out the wilderness the first time. We've been working on this thing. We've been dealing with this thing. Moses, I've been working with you on this. Moses, you're going to face the consequences of your own actions. That's enough, Moses. You will suffer the consequences. Now the consequences of anger can be very drastic at times, and Moses is experiencing that. You will not be allowed to lead the people into the land of Israel. Sometimes the consequences for us are drastic. Did you know that in the United States of America, every year 14 men die from soft drink machines turning over on them? It's true. Be careful the next time you don't get the drink, the button you pushed, or you don't get the right change. You start shaking that thing. Come on, I'm going to get this. Be careful. Every year 14 men die from soft drink machines turning over on them. The consequences of anger can be drastic. Well, that's the display of temper that Moses showed, but God didn't tell us this story just for us to kind of shake our heads at Moses. I believe there's some divine teaching that he wants us to hear. I believe there's some lessons that he wants us to learn. And so I want us to focus for the remainder of our time upon three lessons from verse 12 in numbers 20 that God wants us to get down. Divine teaching, lesson number one is this. The root cause of anger is unbelief. You see it there in verse 12, but the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you'll not bring the community into the land. Because you did not trust in me enough, he did not trust in God to do what God said. That trust is always linked with obedience. Belief in what God says is always linked to doing what God says. The two are inseparable. And whenever we disobey God, it shows we're not trusting him the right way. We're not really believing that what he says is the right way to do it. And whenever we do not trust God's word, whenever we do not believe that the way God says to handle something, the way God says to respond to something is the best way, then it leaves the door open for anger to take us our own way. Moses knew what God's will was in this situation. He had heard clearly, God tell him, take the staff, gather the people, speak to the rock. But when you do not believe what God says to be the way to handle something, the best way to deal with it, and act on that, that leaves then your own emotions free-rained to take over. The root of anger is unbelief. And when we will not trust God to take care of a situation and determine that we will respond in a godly fashion, when we walk out to deal with a situation with our jaw set and our teeth clenched and our fist ball up, the anger is rising up within us when we go to do something in our own flesh in that way. It's because we have not trusted God enough to take care of the situation. We have not said, Lord, I believe you can do a better job of this than I can. And I'm going to leave it with you. I am going to trust you to take care of this. The root cause of anger is unbelief. Principle number two that I believe God wants to teach us from this passage is that losing control dishonors God. You see it there in verse 12? Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites. You see the problem was Moses misrepresented God when he acted the way he did. When he responded with anger like he did, he misrepresented God. Anytime we act rashly in the flesh, we do not show the proper respect for God and for how holy he is. Now much he hates sin. And we do not represent him well to others. That was the problem here. Moses stood between God and the people. He represented the people to God. He represented God to the people. He took messages back and forth if you will. He was supposed to represent God to these people and he did not represent God well. You see, we are in the same position in a sense. Everyone who knows Jesus as his or her Savior in this auditorium this morning, God has given you the responsibility to represent him in front of this world. Before this world you are to display who God is. That's what it means to glorify God. You know, we sing about glorifying God and what it means is to enable other people to see the God of glory that we love. We serve. The question is, are we doing a good job of representing him before other people? When we lose control, when we vent our own feelings of rage, we dishonor God. We also give to this world a distorted view of a God who loves them, who has compassion on them. Even preachers can do that. Preachers who preach angrily all the time. Everyone's well, it's okay to preach angrily. That was supposed to be a joke. Just forget that. But preachers who are all the time angry at their people all the time preaching down at their people, angry, I'm not sure when we do that we're representing the God of the Bible well. I know God is a God also of wrath and judgment. I understand that. And that message needs to be made very clear. But we also need to represent the fact that God is a God who loves us, who wants us to be in a personal relationship with him. And if anger is the motivation, we're out of line. We need to represent to this world the God who compassionately loves us and sent his son Jesus to die for us. James says it this way in James chapter 1, look at these two verses. James chapter 1 on the screen. My dear brothers take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. And here's the reason why. For man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. We do not accomplish what God wants in our lives or the lives of others through anger. We just simply are not going to accomplish God's work in that way. We do not advance his cause. We do not promote his glory when we act with anger. Moses, under times of stress, never fully got control. Of that anger and the volcano would burst forth. We need to recognize and remember we are representing God to this world. And we need to represent him well, losing control, dishonors God. The third lesson I believe God wants us to learn is that anger may leave painful consequences. It's obvious in the end of the verse the consequences to Moses. We've already mentioned them. You will not bring this community into the land I give them. I think Moses ended up being forgiven by God. I'm sure that Moses after this repented of his sin, confessed it to the Lord, sought God's forgiveness. I believe God forgave him, but there were some consequences that Moses would not be able to overcome. You see, when we bring reproach upon Christ, when we act in the flesh in our sinful nature and our anger bursts forth and the volcano espuses out all of its lava when that happens. There are going to be consequences. There are going to be consequences to you and others. And you can't always undo those consequences. In fact, most of the time you can't undo. You can't take back those words. You can't undo the damage in the hurt they did to others. You can't take back that action and the damage it caused. The consequences are in place. And so that's why this is one sin that we must gain control over before the volcano erupts. A few years ago, the American Heart Association published a study in their journal called Circulation. This was in May of 2000. Dr. Janice Williams of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led the study. And it was a study about heart problems, heart disease, and heart attacks. This was the research. The research included following 13,000 people for six years. That's a pretty significant study. And this is what they found. Those extensive profiles revealed that a person with a propensity for anger is nearly three times more likely to have a heart attack than their calmer counterparts. And so what about all the other factors? Well, they took that into account. The ratio was maintained even after the researchers took into account other major risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and obesity. Given those other factors, everything else being equal. People who have a propensity for exploding in anger are three times more likely to have a heart attack. Now, don't take that information and run with it in the wrong direction. Not everybody who has a heart attack is a time bomb or an anger type person. So when somebody has a heart attack, don't point the finger and say, yeah, Pastor John said, you're an angry person. Don't say that. Okay, that's not always the case. But everything else being equal, the odds are if you are an angry person, you stand three times greater chance of having a heart attack than a person who learns to control that emotion. And you know, sometimes that emotion of anger can have even very specific consequences. Not just general consequences, like I'm three times more likely to have a heart attack, but you can have very specific consequences as well. Probably every one of us in this room has experienced road rage. I know none of you have ever been guilty of it, but you've probably seen it by others. Yeah. Let me tell you about an example, a tragic example of that in California. Just recently, on the Golden State Freeway in Silmar, California, Delphina Morales, aged 42, and her daughter, aged 26, were irritated by an unnamed driver in a van. The woman who was driving the van had done something she'd cut in too close to them or something. And it just went all over this Morales lady and she began other passenger, other cars, vehicles, drivers, saw Miss Morales just kind of tailgating this other lady and making gestures toward her and they could tell she was really upset. Well, the van pulled off an exit ramp and Miss Morales and her daughter pulled off behind the van. When the van came to a stop, Miss Morales got in a position with her car where she could spin her wheels and throw mud all over the van. And she did that. She's totally out of control by this point. So she spins her wheels and throws mud all over the van and then takes off. But in her fit of rage, didn't realize she was going back up the exit ramp. She pulled into oncoming traffic, a FedEx truck hit her head on, killed both her and her daughter. And not every example of rage ends up that way obviously, but it is an example of what rage can do, the consequences of anger are sometimes extremely drastic. Now, before we get too hard on Moses, every one of us in this room has the same potential. We all have the same sin nature. We all face times of stress. And so there is lurking within the nature and heart of every one of us, of volcano. You have your own personal volcano. I have mine. And when we get under stress, there is always the potential for any of us with that sin nature to begin to well up with anger. And there is the potential for that anger to explode with an ugly plume of smoke and an ugly flow of lava, just like it did with Moses. Or maybe you're the kind of person who generally keeps those things inside. And outwardly, everything may seem wonderful, but inside it's boiling. I'm reminded of a couple who was in the military in Korea. And they had a little Korean houseboy who would do things for them. He would fix things and he would help cook meals and so forth. And this young military couple were always playing tricks on the guy. They were playing pranks on him all the time. They would nail his shoes to the floor and he would just pull out the nails, put them on and go on with a smile on his face. They would put grease on the stove handles and he would just clean it up and clean his hands off and go on smile. They would prop buckets of water over the top of half open doors. Some of you have done that. And when he would open the door, down comes the bucket of water on him and he would just towel off and whistle and go on about his work. And it got to them so much. They thought, well this guy, you know, just, well, we're really treating him terrible. And so they went to him and apologized and said, we're not going to play any more practical jokes like that on you. We're not going to do that kind of stuff. We feel really guilty about that. And he looked at him and he said, no more nails and shoes. No. No more grease on handles. No. No more buckets of water. No. He broke out into a big smile and said, okay, no more spit and soup. Yeah. Some people deal with anger a little differently. Keep it inside, get even in other ways. But regardless of whether you're the kind of person that explodes or you're the kind of person that just gets even in other ways, regardless, you've got the same propensity in you, the same tendency that Moses did. All of us do. So before we get too hard on Moses and say, wow, what a glaring character weakness in Moses never would have thought it before we do that. Let's ask ourselves, how are we controlling that mounting tension of anger that rises, especially when we're under stress? How are we dealing with it? I mean, it's not any better to stuff it down and to think, well, you know, those emotions will find lawn chairs down there somewhere and be good, they won't. They will eventually come flying out in other ways too. So, so what do we do? How do we get control of this? Real quickly in closing. Let me just say this. You cannot go back and change the past. You may not be able to change some of the consequences. You are experiencing in your life today because of bursts outbursts of anger. You may confess, you may ask for forgiveness of the people you've hurt. There may always be consequences. So what can you do? Well, first of all, make sure that you know Jesus as your Savior. We've got to start there. Make sure that you're saved. The rest of what I'm going to say about how to control anger in these few moments will not make any sense unless you first of all know Jesus as your Savior. You need to know that Jesus died for your sins on the cross. He died to take away all of God's wrath and punishment for your sins. And if you will place your faith in Him, then you can start a new life. And you will also have the Holy Spirit in your life to give you the strength and the power to live that new life. Secondly, if you are already a Christian but you're still struggling with this emotion of anger when you're in stress, let me ask you to do two things. Let me ask you to pray daily for the control of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is there to give us the strength that we need. He's there to for us to experience the filling, the control of the Holy Spirit. And part of the fruit of that, the Bible says, is peace and long suffering. That means the ability to suffer long with people who irritate you. Part of the peace or part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is self-control, to be able to keep those emotions under control, be able to learn how to deal with them and express them in constructive ways rather than letting them spew out. So pray every day for the control of the spirit. And when you find yourself under stressful conditions and the tension is rising and you can just feel the irritation leading to anger and it's starting to bubble up and you know there's going to be an eruption pretty soon before it comes to that point. Ask quietly and calmly, Lord, by your spirit, please give me control right now. And you will find yourself growing in that area. Second thing, I would like to ask you to do if you're a Christian, you know Christ. As I'd like to ask you to meditate, think about, maybe memorize a verse of Scripture so that you can use it whenever you find yourself in this kind of situation. It's Proverbs or Psalm 19 verse 14, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. When you find yourself in a position where stress is leading to that boiling anger and you're ready to boil over, then this verse, the Holy Spirit will call back to your mind. If you have it filed away there, the Holy Spirit will bring it back. Lord, right now in this moment, I want the words of my mouth, I want the meditation of my heart and the things I'm thinking about, things are going through my mind. Lord, I want them to be pleasing to you. Lord, you are my rock, you're my redeemer, you're my strength, you're the one who saved me, you're the only one that can give me the power to do this. Meditate on that verse, think that verse through and you will find your mind and your heart and your emotions being renewed by the word of God. So before it comes to a point where the volcano goes off and the damage is done, when you're under stress, please look to the Lord and ask for the control of His Holy Spirit, let His word rejuvenate and renew your mind so that you respond differently. And I believe with God's grace and His help, we can find ourselves learning to respond in stressful situations differently than has been our