GODLY ANGER
Opening Prayer
Amazing God, your love created me and your love sustains me. Strengthen my love for you and my faith in you.
Read PSALM 4
Psalm 4[a]
For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A psalm of David.
1 Answer me when I call to you,
my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.
2 How long will you people turn my glory into shame?
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods[b]?[c]
3 Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself;
the Lord hears when I call to him.
4 Tremble and[d] do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.
5 Offer the sacrifices of the righteous
and trust in the Lord.
6 Many, Lord, are asking, “Who will bring us prosperity?”
Let the light of your face shine on us.
7 Fill my heart with joy
when their grain and new wine abound.
8 In peace I will lie down and sleep,
for you alone, Lord,
make me dwell in safety.
Footnotes
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
‘Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.’1 What does this verse mean to you?
Think Further
Many believe that this psalm was written by King David around the same time as Psalm 3, when his son Absalom was leading a rebellion against him. David addresses the rebels, warning them to ‘tremble and do not sin’ (v 4): not to allow their heightened emotions to lead them into actions displeasing to God.2 2 Samuel 15:3 suggests that these rebels were angry with David because of claims Absalom had made that the king was failing to deal with disputes and administer justice as a monarch was expected to do. How much truth there was in Absalom’s accusations we do not know, but people seem to have believed his claims and were provoked.
As elsewhere in the Bible, David does not condemn anger per se, but only when it led to sin. Unfortunately the rebels here allowed their anger to provoke them to revolt against God’s appointed king. How could they have dealt with their anger better? We may think that keeping our anger to ourselves is the answer but bottling it up is not always the best way. Jesus himself was not only angry at times but expressed his anger in both words and actions: he called the Pharisees and Sadducees ‘a brood of vipers,’3 for instance, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple.
Of course, Jesus’ anger was righteous, while our motives are not always pure. David’s advice to the rebels to search their hearts and be silent when they lie on their beds at night highlights the importance of taking time to reflect quietly on the reasons for our anger and to consider whether we are justified in expressing our feelings in action. How do we handle anger and how can we react in a godly way to wrongs done to us?
Apply
Pray about anything that has made you angry recently and ask for God’s wisdom to know how to deal with that anger well.
Closing prayer
Mighty God, you are my rock. May that assurance fill me with joy and peace, especially in the night hours.
1 Eph 4:26, NRSV 2 Many Bible versions do have ‘be angry’ rather than ‘tremble’. See also the NIV footnote for v 4 3 Eg Matt 3:7
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