August, 1942
290
„ T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S When a Preacher Is Angry By CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY* Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
with the people and their wayward ness, Moses struck the rock twice, as if the rock had been the head of the people, crying out as he did so, “Hear how, ye. rebels.” This burst of rage cost Moses the promised land. It was for this transgression that Moses, in spite of his grand service and his pathetic pleading at the end of all Israel’s wandering, was not permitted to go into the land of Canaan. That was not th e ' first nor the last time that a land of promise and of happi ness has been lost through anger. The Angry Elder Brother ; One of the unforgettable characters of our Lord is an angry man, the elder brother in the great tale of the two sons. When the prodigal had come home from the far country, and his rags had been bqrned in the stable yard, and the best robe put on him and a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and the fatted calf killed, and every one had sat down at the table and the musicians had struck up a lively tune, the elder brother, coming in from the field, caught the sound of music and dancing. He learned from one of the servants what the music meant; he was angry and would not go in. His place was empty. At tjie table his seat ought to have been the second seat of honor, but he shut him self out from the banquet of reconcil iation and forgiveness. On what ought to have been, and could have been, the happiest day of his life, he was wretched and miserable and lonely— all because he was angry. In a burst of anger one can destroy and undo what one has been labo riously building through many years. One of the old saints, greatly pro voked, explained why he had not dealt more severely with wrongdoers who had been brought before him. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “ I feared to lose in a quarter of an hour the little gentleness that I have been laboring for twenty-two years to gather, drop by drop, like a shower in the vase of my poor heart.” Friend ships that are of long standing,' whose branches have borne pleasant fruits, can be blasted and withered by one unrestrained e x p l o s i o n of anger. Wounds can be inflicted and insults delivered, which, in a moment, the angry man would give all he pos-
wind began to blow, and Jonah, about to faint, again asked God to take away his life. Instead of doing so, God said in effect to Jonah, “Come now, let us reason together. Doest thou well to be angry?” Jonah is an example of how the character of a good and a great man can be marred by anger, and his use fulness impaired. His story suggests the folly, the danger, and the injury of anger. Anger is one of the most common sins, yet one of the most dangerous and injurious to the peace and well-being of man. More than any other sin, it blasts the flower of friendship, turns men out of Edén, de stroys peace and concord in the home, incites to crime and violence, and turns love and affection into hatred. The Word of God has a great deal to say by way of personal illustration and explanation about the havoc wrought in human life by the sin of anger. The first angry man who ap pears in the pages of the Bible was the first murderer, Cain. What hap pened to Cain in this .instance, how he went out from the presence of the Lord a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth, is a piece of history which angry men have re enacted over and over again. Anger drives men out and separates them from their fellow men. The angry man is the loneliest man on earth. The folly of anger is illustrated in the prophet Balaam. When the angel of the Lord stood in the path with a drawn sword in his hand, Balaam did not see the angel. Enraged that the ass he was riding turned out of the path, he fell to beating her with his staff. What a picture that is of a man losing his temper when he is con fronted by adverse circumstances and venting his rage on even the brute creation! The real trouble was not with the ass, but with Balaam him self, for the angel of the Lord was there to rebuke him and to judge him. That is often the case; the man who is most violent in his anger at some one else is really the source of his own trouble and sorrow. Even Moses, in all his greatness and in spitg of his remarkable minis try, was injured by anger. When the people murmured and a s k e d for water, he was commanded to strike the rock at Horeb. Out of all patience
“Doest thou well to .be angry?" (Jonah 4:9). A MONG the prophets, apostles, , -/ \ and patriarchs who appear on 1 \ the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, there is none to whom Michelangelo gives a nobler countenance than to Jonah. Jonah was, i n d e e d , a great prophet, a l though, so far as his history goes, he made a poor beginning and a poor ending. First, he t r i e d to flee to Tarshish, and thus evade his com mission to preach repentance and judgment at the proud capital of the world’s empire, Nineveh; and at the end of his story, we see him pass from the stage of Old.Testament history in a fit of petulant anger. “ Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” was the text of Jonah’s sermon, as he walked through the streets of the great metropolis. Jonah did not expect, and, apparently did not hope, that the .Ninevites would re pent. But that is what they did. From the king of Nineveh on his throne to the peasant in his hut, the whole population covered themselves with sackcloth and sat in ashes and fasted. “ And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.” Great Men Marred This .unexpected turn of events dis pleased Jonah and made him so angry that he asked God to take away his life. He said that when he was first commanded to go to Nineveh, but fled to Tarshish, it was because he knew that God was gracious and merciful and slow to anger. Now he had proved it. The sparing of Nineveh made Jonah feel that his preaching had been discredited. Angry with him self, with Nineveh, and with God, Jonah went out to a hill in the sub urbs of the city and sat down to see what would happen to Nineveh. To shelter him from * the sun, God provided him with a miraculous gourd, and the angry Jonah was much pleased with this shelter from the fierce glare of the Mesopotamian sun. But the next day, smitten with a worm, the gourd perished as quickly as it had arisen. Then the hot east *P
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