“We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us” (Isaiah 59:11).

In this chapter we will be teaching on the subject of anger. Is it demonic? Is it of the flesh? How can we tell the difference? What can we do about it? What does the Bible say about anger anyway?

Man’s wrath, according to the Bible, is an exhibition of an enraged sinful nature and is always wrong and without excuse.

Remember Cain’s anger at his brother? Cain was angry because God liked Able’s offering better! The reason God liked Able’s offering better was that Able did it God’s way and Cain did it his way! So, Cain got really angry - so filled with rage that he killed his brother. Can’t you hear the people screaming, “You just don’t understand? No one understands!” Let’s read Genesis 4:5,6.

“But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen?”

God said in verse seven that it was sin. Cain even murdered Able because of his self-centered wrath.

Now let us take a look at Jacob when he was dying. He called his twelve sons together and gave each his respective blessing. When he spoke of Simeon and Levi, however, rather than bless them he spoke of cruelty in conjunction with anger and selfishness, and he said: “Cursed be their anger.” (Genesis 49:5-7).

In Proverbs 19:19 God says, “A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment: for if thou deliver him, yet thou must do it again.”

Have you noticed that when an angry man gets into trouble with the law and you get him out of the trouble, that he almost always has repeat offenses? The only time that pattern changes is if that man gives his heart to the Lord and is delivered from his anger.

When Jesus was at Nazareth, He stood up in the synagogue on the Sabbath day and read from the book of Isaiah 61. Then He told them that He was the fulfillment of this promise and that He had come to set the captives free, to heal the broken of heart, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

They got really angry. They didn’t accept the fact that Jesus was God and that He was the promised Messiah! When He told them the plain truth, they became angry (Luke 4:28-30).

Anger is often the response when people are confronted with their sin. If your response is intense anger to a given situation, you might want to check things out with the Lord and see if there is something wrong before you start screaming at someone.

Here is a list of sins that take our breath. God says that the people who do these things will not go to heaven. He is saying that if you make a practice of these sins - not an occasional slip-up - if you make a habit of deliberately, sinning in these areas, you may not be saved and better get right with God.

“Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince and power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (KJV) Eph 2:2-3.

If you will notice in these verses in Ephesians chapter two that “wrath” is said to be the desires of the flesh. But also notice in this same passage we find connected to wrath, “the prince of the power of the air” (To be continued next week).