The High Cost of a Hot Temper
Numbers 20:1-12
By Dave Redick

"Anger is the wind that blows out the lamp of the mind."

Introduction

A man who usually took a bus to work overslept one morning and decided to drive. As he opened the garage door he saw that the rear wall - the one his wife smashed when she stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake - had not been repaired. He indignantly strode back into the house and telephoned the carpenter. "You said that you would have it fixed by noon yesterday," he stormed. "Let me ask you one question," said the carpenter quietly. "Did your wife drive the car in the afternoon?"

I hope that husband didn't have a hot temper.

In the "All in a Day's Work" section of READER'S DIGEST, Lesley Luth told this story:

My younger brother, I explained to a friend, had quite a temper as a boy. Our parents had tried extra love, attention, and patience on him, with little success. Then, in the middle of one of his tantrums, they simply handed him a shovel, pointed to the back yard, and instructed him to go out and dig and not to come back until he had controlled his anger. "Apparently," I said, "The therapy worked, because he's turned out nicely. "What does he do for a living?" my friend asked. "He builds in-ground swimming pools."

During a football game, the referee called a fifteen-yard penalty on the offensive team for unnecessary roughness. After he had paced off the yards and repositioned the ball, the player responsible for the penalty shouted at him, "You're a sorry referee. I think you stink." Without a word, the official picked up the football and marched down the field another fifteen yards and sat it down again. Standing to face the angry player, he said, "How do I smell from here?"

People do things as a result of anger that are sometimes funny. Then again, sometimes they are tragic.

On June 18, 1972, a B.E.A. Trident airliner crashed at Heathrow Airport in London. 118 people died in the wreckage. The intensive investigation that followed revealed that the pilot had been unhappy because of the way an airline strike had been settled. As he took the plane off the ground, he noticed that it pulled badly to one side. The men who loaded the cargo had failed to keep the weight in balance. That was the last straw! The pilot, already angry, exploded in rage and overcorrected, jamming the controls. The plane dived into the runway and all on board were killed.

An old Arab proverb says, "Anger is the wind that blows out the lamp of the mind."

Another says, "A chip on the shoulder usually indicates there is a lot more wood a little higher up."

These two proverbs are truer than you might think. We know today that there are measurable physical reasons why heightened anger affects our ability to be rational. When we are angry or fearful, our adrenaline flows faster and our strength increases by about 20 percent. The liver, pumping sugar into the bloodstream, demands more oxygen from the heart and lungs. The veins become enlarged and the blood supply to the problem-solving part of the brain is severely decreased because, under stress, a greater portion of blood is diverted to the body's extremities. George Odiarne, a management consultant, says, "This is an emotional condition that the person is in, and it means that, while he's beautifully equipped for a brawl, he's very poorly equipped to get a problem solved."

There is in Scripture the story of a man who worked forty long, hard years toward accomplishing his goal of delivering God's people to the Promised Land, only to be turned away himself because he didn't control his anger. I refer, of course, to Moses. Most people probably don't think of Moses, the man whom God used to deliver the Ten Commandments, as a hothead, but the record in Scripture is clear and God has preserved Moses' story so that we might learn a good lesson.

I've called this message, THE HIGH COST OF A HOT TEMPER.

Please turn with me to Numbers 20:1-12.

Since we're breaking into the middle of a story here, let me bring you up to speed as to what is happening. The Israelites had received the Law of God at Mount Sinai. When Moses came down from the Mountain, he found the people worshipping an idol (a golden calf) that they had created. God brought a harsh judgement upon them because already they were breaking the first of the Ten Commandments. After that incident the cloud that showed the presence of God picked up and moved once more into the desert. The people responded accordingly. They picked up their newly built Tabernacle and headed in the direction of Canaan. Their trip was far from uneventful. Desert traveling on foot was tough. They were prone to griping and grumbling about the conditions. They complained about the food and they didn't like the water. Look back at a passage earlier in numbers for a moment.

A look back into Exodus will show you that this kind of event for these people was not uncommon as they traveled through the desert. When they were uncomfortable, they complained. They whined that they wanted to go back to Egypt. God was angry with them and each time Moses would intercede so that they were not wiped out. Ultimately, God drew the line with them and their grumbling. The rest of numbers 14 tells what happened.

Did you notice those words "ten times?" God was patient with these people, as He is with us, but there was a limit. An entire generation died there because they tried God's patience.

This was getting to be a very common occurrence! Do you suppose Moses was getting just a little fed up?

Still griping. Still complaining.

I want to stop for a moment to mention a trait that Moses had. Only when you understand this trait will you understand the judgement that came upon him.

Most people wouldn't consider Moses a man with a hot temper, but think for just a moment if you know his story. What state was Moses in when he took matters into his own hands and killed the Egyptian slave driver back in Egypt? Wasn't it a moment of rage that boiled over that day in the mud pits? What about when Moses came down from the mountain and broke the stone tablets that God had inscribed? Wasn't that also a moment of uncontrolled anger? In fact, as you pick your way through the story of Moses' life, what you find here and there are a lot of not-so-little fits of temper - times when Moses' anger boiled over.

In Numbers 16 three men named Korah, Dathan, and Abiram led an uprising against Moses. They challenged his authority and threatened to lead some of the Israelites back to Egypt. Moses was hot!

Now I can understand Moses' anger. But isn't it going a bit far to start shouting orders at God? In fact, when you review these incidents of anger in your mind you begin to see that Moses' anger was often directed at something of God's. When Moses killed the Egyptian slave driver he was charging out ahead of God's plan. When he came down from the mountain and found them worshipping the golden calf, he broke God's tablets. Here he is telling God what to do: "Do not regard their offering!"

Is it just coincidental that when a lot of people are mad today, they order God to damn the person? Isn't that similar to what Moses was doing here? Since when did the potter change places with the clay?

Look at what happened next back in chapter 20:

Take special note of how clear those instructions are. Take a rod. Go out to the rock. Speak to the rock. Stand back out of the way. Very clear. But look what happened.

So far, so good. Obedience. Just like God said.

From here on what you will be hearing are the words of a man who is a deep fit of unbridled anger.

Wait just a minute! Where were those words in God's instructions? God told him to speak to the rock, not the people. But Moses, brimming with anger that is out of control, takes the situation into his own hands. God was simply going to give them water. In Moses' anger-distorted mind he thought they needed more. He used the occasion to vent his spleen on these people.

Yes, I know someone could say, "They had it coming." With all their complaining, who wouldn't be in some danger of losing his cool? But look at Moses' words: "Shall we bring froth water out of this rock?"

Moses, you can't bring water out of a rock! Only God can do that. What a stupid thing to say. Perhaps it might even border on blasphemy. Its as though Moses wasn't satisfied with the way God was going to deal with these people and just decided to do it himself. (It reminds me of Jonah who got angry when God didn't wipe out the Nenevites the way he thought it should be done.) As the proverb I quoted earlier said, "Anger is the wind that blows out the lamp of the mind."

But anger isn't the whole problem. Actually, anger, in and of itself is not sin. It can quickly become sin, depending upon how we deal with it.

In Ephesians 4:26 we read, "Be angry, but do not sin." Moses is angry and he is sinning. He is usurping the role of God. It's as though he says, "I can do a better job with this than God can!" No on in his right mind would say such a thing, but then again, Moses isn't in his right mind. He's angry and out of control.

Proverbs 14:29 says, "He who is slow to anger is of great understanding."

On the other side of the scale though, Proverbs 25:28 says, "Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit."

That last Proverb is a perfect description of Moses right now. His walls are down and Satan has walked right in and taken control. If you are a person with a hot temper and you don't control it, then you need to face something: Satan very likely has the equivalent of freeway access into your life at that point!

Had God told Moses to strike the rock? No, He told him to speak to it. Instead of doing what God said, Moses reared back on that rod and smashed the rock - twice! Why? Because he's mad. Because, just like people today who are prone to fits of anger and rage, he's out of control and Satan is calling the shots.

OK. So what? We all get angry once in awhile, don't we? These people surely had it coming, so what's the big deal?

The big deal is in the next verse.

Oh! There are no words that could have been spoken that Moses would regret more! Eighty years of preparation and providence and now, in a moment of rage, the whole thing goes out the window!

And God meant it! From Deuteronomy we learn that Moses asked God several times to take away this stiff sentence of punishment, but God wouldn't do it. In fact, God finally told Moses to quit asking. The punishment was irrevocable.

Can you imagine the agony? Moses' hope of going into the Promised Land toward which he would march for forty years was gone. His life, his actions, his dreams - all ruined by a hot temper.

A lifetime of uncontrolled anger can carry a terrible price tag!

Moses wasn't punished because he slipped once or twice. Remember that we've seen that fits of rage were a reoccurring thing in his life. This was a pattern. When he was pushed too hard, he flew off the handle.

I heard of the story of how a farmer was told that he could rid his corn of crows by planting prunes between each row. As the crows filled up on prunes they had difficulty flying. There was a rusted plow out in the field. As the prune-laden crows took off, they would leap up on the handle of that plow to give themselves a running start. As they flew from the handle, the farmer shot them dead with his shotgun. The moral of the story is, when you're full of prunes, don't fly off the handle!

Moses wasn't full of prunes but he was surely full of anger. He surely flew off the handle and it surely cost him.

My friends, God's patience has a limit. A person may seem to get by without dealing a habit of rage, but how far can he or she go before they hit God's limit? We don't really know because that is God's decision, but I do believe there is a warning here. I Corinthians 10:11 says, "Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."

Yes, God gives grace when we sin, but that grace is intended to give us another chance to break with sin, not another chance to ignore it.

There is a high cost to pay for not controlling a hot temper.

Notice also that even leaders are not exempt from God's judgment. You won't find a greater leader in the Old Testament than Moses. Yet the merits of his leadership didn't get him into the Promised Land over the top of his sin. He was expected to honor and obey God just like everyone else.

Often we busy ourselves with our work for the Lord, thinking that it buys us special privileges but we need to realize that faithful service and accomplishment, as important as they are, are no substitute for obedience. One cannot say, "Yes, I have this problem, but it's OK because of all the things I do for God."

One more thing to notice… Look again at verse 12. Notice those words, "Because you did not believe me…"

God equated Moses' disobedience with unbelief!

Many would argue that their disobedience is unrelated to their belief. Said another way, many who live lives of disobedience insist that they are still believers in God. Such, however, according to the Bible, is not the case. There is a definitive link between disobedience and disbelief. We see it here. It can be seen elsewhere in Scripture, too.

Hebrews 3:12 says, "Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God." Then, talking about those who had fallen away, the Hebrew write six verses later said, "And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief."

How is it that the Bible calls disobedience unbelief? It's really quite simple. God has said He will punish continued, willful disobedience. A person who would know of such punishment and then sin brazenly in the face of it doesn't really believe God will do what He says. Thus, he is called an unbeliever.

Listen to Ecclesiastes 8:11: "Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil."

Why would a person sin in the face of the pronouncement of such judgment? Since judgment isn't executed on the spot, he begins to believe that there will be no judgment. He begins to live like there is no judgment.

Of course, judgment sometimes does come quickly. That was surely the case of Moses in our story.

We read in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."

The reason for the gap in the time between sin and the penalty is so that the sinner can come to his senses and repent, not so he can go on living in sin. One who goes on living in the sin really doesn't believe judgment will come. The root of all continued, willful sin that is done in the face of the knowledge of judgement is unbelief.

It hit the front pages of newspapers in the 1880's. I refer to the infamous Hatfield/McCoy feuds that took place across the border of Kentucky. Historians disagree on the cause of the feud, which captured the imagination of the nation during a 10-year run. Some cite Civil War tensions. The McCoys sympathized with the Union - the Hatfields with the Confederacy. Others say it began when the McCoys blamed the Hatfields for stealing hogs. Whatever the cause, the ten-year run of unbridled anger between these two families was tragic. As many as 100 men, women and children died.

In May 1976, Jim McCoy and Willis Hatfield, the last two survivors of the original families, shook hands at a public ceremony dedicating a monument to six of the victims. Thus ended the anger. Jim McCoy died Feb. 11, 1984, at age 99. He bore no grudges. The Hatfield Funeral Home in Toler, Kentucky, handled his burial .

If you are one prone to fits of anger, isn't it time you decided once and for all to call it to a halt? Isn't it time you laid it to rest?

I call on you to do just that.

You've seen what happened to Moses. Will something similar happen to you?

If you are a Christian, you simply must commit yourself to overcoming a hot temper! Do it today.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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