How Do I Let Go of Anger over Past Wrongs?
00:00:00.000 | Recently, I mentioned John Piper's massive sermon series on Romans titled The Greatest
00:00:09.080 | Letter Ever Written, 225 sermons in length, which took him eight years and eight months
00:00:14.260 | to complete. In that earlier episode, I played a clip from an early sermon from this Roman
00:00:18.900 | series and today I want to fast forward seven years and play for you another clip from later
00:00:23.660 | in the series. This one is from February 20th, 2005, a sermon titled Do Not Avenge Yourselves
00:00:30.360 | but Give Place to Wrath. It's a sermon on Romans 12 verses 16 to 20, specifically verse
00:00:36.460 | 19, where Paul writes this, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath
00:00:42.520 | of God. For it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' says the Lord." So how does
00:00:49.020 | faith in the future vindicating justice of God settle us and stabilize us and make it
00:00:54.040 | possible for us to live with sanity in a world that will cut us deeply? Pastor John explains.
00:01:02.860 | Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For, this is the ground,
00:01:15.100 | the basis, this is the way you're able to do it. For, it is written, 'Vengeance is mine;
00:01:21.060 | I will repay.' Now here's what that implies. That little word for implies that one of the
00:01:27.340 | motivations in our hearts for why we can't return good for evil, one of the motivations
00:01:39.680 | for why it's so hard not to strike back, not to plan vengeance, one of the reasons it's
00:01:47.020 | so hard is because deep down in our souls there's this warranted, justified desire that
00:01:55.980 | justice be done. And it doesn't look like it's going to be done. If I just say, "Okay,
00:02:02.540 | I won't count it anymore, I won't think about it anymore, I won't seethe with it anymore,
00:02:07.300 | I won't hold a grudge anymore," we feel like, "If I do that, nobody knows except me how
00:02:14.140 | bad that was." That's unbelief talking. God knows. How does it work? Is this saying, "Oh,
00:02:26.900 | I get it. If you want to get your enemy, let God get him." You kind of rub your hands like
00:02:34.180 | this, gleefully hoping that as you give the cup of water God will strike him with lightning?
00:02:40.540 | I don't think so. Because, listen to Proverbs 24, 17, "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.
00:02:51.020 | Let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Lest the Lord see it and be displeased and
00:02:59.460 | turn away his anger from him." No, the way it works is this. All of you in this room,
00:03:08.060 | all of you have been wronged in your life. Nobody has not been wronged. And many of you,
00:03:15.260 | let's reduce it down a little bit now, many of you have been seriously wronged by people
00:03:22.860 | who have never apologized nor done anything sufficient to make it right. And one of the
00:03:33.060 | deep hindrances to your letting hurt and bitterness go is the conviction that if you let it go,
00:03:41.740 | justice isn't going to be done and justice ought to be done. The fabric of the universe
00:03:46.660 | is going to unravel if I just treat this person like I treat everybody else or even better
00:03:51.580 | than I treat everybody else. He's got everybody deceived. He's got everybody deceived. Thinks
00:03:57.140 | he's a good guy. He's a jerk. And nobody knows about it. He's getting away with it. He's
00:04:03.700 | getting away with it. That's one of the hindrances to forgiveness. We just can't let it go. That's
00:04:11.340 | not the only problem we have in forgiving. It's just one. I'm dealing with one. We can't
00:04:17.220 | do that. We can't let this go, this wrong that we've been done. We hold on to the anger.
00:04:26.380 | We play the story in our mind over and over again. It never should have happened. It never
00:04:32.060 | should have happened. It was so wrong. It was so wrong. And he's just happy as can be
00:04:36.740 | and I'm in misery. I'm thinking like a divorce. He's got that young chick. The kids like going
00:04:44.460 | there for Christmas. I've got debts galore. This text is for you. All you who are carrying
00:04:54.420 | a seemingly legitimate grudge. You were wronged. Massively wronged. Justice ought to mean the
00:05:04.280 | death of the other person. It ought to mean that. You feel that to let it go, to lay it
00:05:10.500 | down would mean there's no justice or he's going to get away with it or no vengeance
00:05:17.460 | is in the world. You're wrong. This text is in the Bible for you so that tonight, today,
00:05:23.920 | when you walk out of here, you can lay it down and know God's going to pick it up. If
00:05:30.860 | you lay down your rage, your anger, you're playing it over and over again in your head.
00:05:39.700 | If you lay that down, it doesn't get lost. God picks it up. Vengeance is mine. I will
00:05:46.900 | repay says the Lord. Let me take care of it. That's huge. Oh, how I want you Bethlehem
00:05:55.820 | to enjoy this liberty because you know what? In the liberty of a laid down grudge, love
00:06:06.580 | can happen. You've been wondering, "Why can't I love? Why can't I love? Why can't I love
00:06:12.380 | like I ought to love? There seems to be a blockage to my love." One of the answers is
00:06:17.660 | you just keep holding on to that wrong. You might even be making God the whipping boy
00:06:23.780 | or a husband or a son or a business partner or an old boyfriend just picked you up and
00:06:29.500 | dropped you like a stone, got you pregnant. There's a hundred pains in this room of injustice
00:06:37.460 | that was done to you and you can lay it down because God's going to take it up. As you
00:06:42.860 | lay it down, you can walk out of here with a huge burden lifted. In that freedom, love
00:06:53.700 | can happen. Close with a testimony, my testimony. In 1974, as many of you know, my mother was
00:07:03.220 | killed in Israel and as I've pieced the story together from those who were there, she and
00:07:11.100 | my dad were in a bus sitting in the first seat behind the driver and a VW minivan full
00:07:21.100 | of drunken Israeli soldiers with lumber on top loosely tied, swerved out of their lane
00:07:29.380 | and hit the bus in the front corner. And the lumber came through like missiles. And ten
00:07:38.100 | days later when she was flown back to Atlanta from Tel Aviv and I read the death certificate,
00:07:47.100 | it said, "Lacerated medulla oblongata." And I said, "Thank you at least that it was quick."
00:07:56.660 | I nursed my dad back to health for a month, taping with scotch tape the lacerations on
00:08:01.780 | his back, pouring in hydrogen peroxide, pushing the wounds together, taping them with scotch
00:08:06.260 | tape so they'd heal from the inside out. If you knew, as some of you do, the nature of
00:08:13.420 | my growing up years with my dad away and my mom, everything, you would know how big that
00:08:22.140 | loss was at age 28. But as a tribute to the mighty mercy of God, I can bear witness that
00:08:35.460 | I don't hate those soldiers. I feel no hatred for them. I don't wish them evil. It occurred
00:08:45.300 | to me as I was thinking recently, probably most of them are about my age now. One was
00:08:51.380 | killed I heard. Most of them are about my age, a little younger, maybe five years younger.
00:08:56.380 | I was trying to compute. I was 28. They're soldiers so they're probably in their mid-20s.
00:09:00.820 | So they're now in their 50s, somewhere in Israel today. And it occurred to me that the
00:09:06.780 | gospel might reach them and that they would be with me in heaven. And how do I feel about
00:09:12.540 | that? I feel really good about that, with my mom in heaven, with me in heaven. How do
00:09:19.860 | you feel about your adversaries? Are you thinking, you know, if Christ got to them and saved
00:09:28.900 | them, they'd be with you forever. Are you relating to them now in a way that would make
00:09:34.300 | it hard to relate to them then? That's not a good idea. It's going to be so embarrassing
00:09:40.340 | to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and they say, "You? I don't like you. I've
00:09:49.260 | been mad at you all my life." That's not a good idea. You should be praying that God
00:09:54.860 | would save them. So I commend to you, as one who has lived since 28, not carrying that
00:10:03.060 | grudge, I commend to you this life. It is a free and wonderful life. And in the life
00:10:11.100 | of freedom, God, if there is some vengeance to be done there, I just hand it over to you.
00:10:18.620 | And if there's salvation to be done there, I pray that you would do it. May the gospel
00:10:23.140 | reach these men who in their drunkenness caused my mother's death at age 28 so that she only
00:10:31.500 | knew one of my five children. Father, on this Lord's Day morning, I ask that burdens would
00:10:43.460 | be lifted. I pray that you would take this amazing promise, "Vengeance is mine. I will
00:10:51.940 | repay," and let every person in the hearing of my voice lay down every grudge, rage, anger,
00:11:02.820 | bitterness, resentment, story going through their head over and over, "It shouldn't have
00:11:08.060 | been that way. It shouldn't have been that way. It was wrong. It was wrong." May they
00:11:11.820 | lay it down, and would you give wonderful liberty. And in that field of liberty, would
00:11:21.820 | you cause great love to grow so that we from the heart can give a cup of cold water to
00:11:30.780 | our adversary in the hope that our light would cause them to glorify our Father who is in
00:11:37.900 | heaven. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.
00:11:42.580 | Powerful, powerful testimony of a crushing event from the life of John Piper, one we
00:11:47.780 | don't talk about a lot here on the podcast, but notice how this deep theological expectation
00:11:53.100 | of Romans 12.19, of God's coming judgment, notice how it roots and stabilizes us to keep
00:11:58.460 | our sanity in the midst of the tragedies and evils of this world. Our steadiness demands
00:12:04.460 | robust theology. It's so important.
00:12:07.940 | Thanks for joining us. If you have not subscribed to Ask Pastor John, consider doing so in your
00:12:11.500 | favorite podcast app or in YouTube or in Spotify. And for our episode archive or to submit a
00:12:16.220 | question of your own, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:12:22.180 | So why can we not love pleasure and love God at the same time? Paul says we can't. At least
00:12:28.900 | it appears that way in 2 Timothy 3 verse 4. So why is loving pleasure and loving God at
00:12:35.020 | odds in Paul's mind? That is up next. I'm your host Tony Reinhke. We'll see you back
00:12:39.860 | here on Friday.
00:12:40.900 | [Pastor John's Office]
00:12:42.900 | [Pastor John's Office]
00:12:44.900 | [Pastor John's Office]
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