Good morning. How we doing? It's great to be with you this morning. If you are visiting
and you're not aware, just like SeaWorld has splash zones, we have fan zones. If you are
finding the heat distracting, you can move to one of the areas on the side where you
will feel a little more fan if that will help you stay awake during our time in the Word
together. I want to encourage you that. And there's always water in the back as well in
the water fountain. So just wanted to point that out to you. Thank you for your prayers
for our families. We were away for the last four weeks. We had a good and restful time
together and are glad to be back with you. My kids come back tomorrow. They've spent the
week with Nan and Pappy going to Dutch Wonderland. So it's been a good week. So it's good to be
back with you this morning. I'm going to go ahead and pray for us as we look into God's
Word. Lord, we thank you this morning for your Word and how rich it is. Lord, how it is useful
for teaching and training, for instruction, for guidance, for correction. Lord, how it is
like a sharp sword that pierces to the depths of our being. Lord, I pray this morning that
your Word would speak to us. Lord, I pray for your Spirit's power that I might speak your
words. Lord, that what I speak would be useful to all of us, that we might know your ways more
and know your Son, Jesus, and His salvation more in the midst of that. Lord, be with us, we pray,
in Jesus' name. Amen. Jesus was the most complete and healthy emotional human being who has ever lived.
What do you think of that statement? You think it's true?
Fascinatingly, almost 100 years ago, theologian B.B. Warfield wrote an essay published in 1912
called The Emotional Life of Our Lord, where he felt the need to explain and defend what the
Scriptures actually said about Jesus' emotional life. And as he lays out this argument, he actually
began by saying, this is the problem that we've seen all the way back from the early church to today.
in understanding what an emotional life looks like in God's creative world, and specifically in the
person of Jesus. So he said, on one hand, there was a school in the early church that believed that
moral perfection was found in the Greek word that we might translate apathy, the lack of feeling,
suppressing or denying or rejecting our feelings as being less than divine.
And the other one, as Warfield says it, is that so that Jesus could identify with us and redeem us,
there was a school in the church that would want to attribute to Jesus every human pathos,
every deep feeling of our heart. He goes on and says both tendencies are still operative.
In our thoughts about Jesus, there's a tendency to, in the interest of magnifying the dignity of Jesus
to minimize his emotional life, and in the interest of fully embracing his humanity,
to magnify his emotional life. And he goes on to say this,
The one tendency may run some risk of giving us a somewhat cold and remote Jesus,
whom we can scarcely believe to be able to sympathize with us in all our infirmities.
The other may possibly be in danger of offering us a Jesus so crassly human
as scarcely to command our highest reverence.
It's a fascinating article. I recommend you read it. You can find it on the internet.
B.B. Warfield, The Emotional Life of Our Lord. But it provoked me this week,
as we're thinking this week, about human emotions and what the Proverbs have to do with human emotions.
And in reflecting on this, I thought, not only has the church wrestled with this,
but maybe you, like me, have wrestled with it as well.
I don't always know what to do with my emotions and the place that they're supposed to take in my life.
There are times when I want desperately to stuff my emotions.
I remember distinctly somewhere in junior high, well, not distinctly because it was vague,
but somewhere in junior high or high school, realizing that when I wanted things
and I didn't get them, I was disappointed and that made me sad.
And I decided the best way to deal with that is to no longer want anything
because then I won't ever be dismayed at that loss.
I have found that to be a pattern that I continue to struggle with even in my life today.
Some of us just really desperately want to dismiss our emotions
because we find them highly inconvenient.
It's very inefficient to have to feel things and to process them and to deal with them.
And we just wish we didn't have to do that.
There are others of us who think feelings are insignificant.
The world is based on reality and reality is based on fact and feelings just get in the way.
And the funny thing is there's actually a Christian version of this as well.
The Christian version of it is in the church, the truth is paramount.
Okay?
That sounds right and good.
And God calls us to respond to Him in belief and faith.
That is, taking hold of that truth and believing that it's right and letting that define our reality.
Okay, this sounds good.
But then there can be this entailment of that which says feelings don't matter.
Feelings are unimportant.
As a matter of fact, feelings are an impediment to godliness and to actually growing in Christian maturity.
Maybe some of you have experienced that.
Maybe some of you still think that today.
Okay.
So that's one end, one side of the road that we fall off.
The other side of the road that we fall off is that, and maybe this is more common in our culture today,
but we think that emotions are everything.
We glorify them.
We absolutize them.
We love authenticity.
He's so authentic.
He just says whatever he feels.
I connect with him so deeply.
It's so great that I can do that.
And you know what?
There's something really good about that.
There's something good in that authenticity.
There's something right about people being human and being able to express their emotions.
But often it falls into this logic of if I feel it, then it must be true and real,
and then it defines my life.
And interestingly, again, there's a Christian version of this.
I know Jesus died on the cross for my sins, but I don't feel it today.
And so I don't think it's real.
I don't think it's true.
And I want to acknowledge there's a crisis there.
Some of you may be wrestling with deep waters in terms of what happens when our feelings and the truth that we see in God's Word don't match up.
But this tendency is to make ultimately our emotional state primary and determinative and controlling in our Christian lives.
And there are whole parts of the church that say, well, you don't love Jesus if you're not feeling it today.
And I think it overemphasizes the role of emotions in our lives.
And I say that partly because I think, as we'll see in the book of Proverbs, emotions are a part of how God has created human beings.
It is, in fact, a part of what it means to be made in God's image.
And as we've talked about before, the book of Proverbs is a book about wisdom.
Wisdom being how ought we as human beings live along the grain or with the grain of God's created order.
How are we to live in line with how God has made us to be?
And interestingly, Proverbs has some very profound things to say about our emotional life.
And that's what we're going to look at this morning.
As we are continuing in this series, you may remember we're sort of in the topical part.
We're doing the second half of Proverbs.
And so there's no passage for you to turn to this morning.
You can turn to Proverbs 13.12 if you want to because that will be a good starting point for us.
But I want to affirm three things that Proverbs says about our emotional life.
And then at the end of those three things, I want to help us think about how do we move towards it in Christ.
The first thing that Proverbs tells us is that it affirms the emotional realities of human life.
It says these things are real.
So Proverbs 13.12, hope deferred makes a heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 12.25, anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.
Proverbs 15.13, a glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow the heart of a spirit is crushed.
Proverbs 17.22, a joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
And Proverbs 14.30, a tranquil, or if you look at the footnote, a healthy, a healthy heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
This is a collection of Proverbs from this second half that is affirming the dynamics that human beings feel emotions.
We feel hope and desire.
We are weighed down or we are glad.
We are cheerful or we are crushed.
We are, again, joyful or crushed.
It uses these words over and over again.
And do you see how it doesn't just affirm that they happen, but that they affect us in the depth of our being?
He uses interchangeably our heart and our bones and our soul and our spirit as not technically as sometimes it's described in other parts of Scripture to try to divvy up exactly how human beings are made and that sort of thing.
But I think in the Proverbs, it's all talking about the inner life of our human existence that we all acknowledge and say, yes, that is real.
And what it says is not only do these emotions exist, but they affect us.
They make a difference at the very core of our being.
And this is why hope deferred, hope that you long for but you're not yet getting, can make your heart sick.
Do you know that longing?
Longing for a loved one to return from a trip?
Longing to hear the good news after the surgery?
Longing to get that promotion, that job that you've applied for?
The hopes deferred make our hearts sick.
We worry.
We're anxious.
We're weighed down.
We're unsettled.
But when a desire is fulfilled, it's a tree of life to our soul.
When things that we hope for actually become real, it puts a bounce in our step and a sparkle in our eye and a gladness as we interact with others, doesn't it?
This is what Proverbs is affirming.
And it's affirming that when we feel positive emotions, it generally does good to us.
When we feel negative emotions, it weighs upon us.
They're hard for us.
These Proverbs are all descriptive.
They're all in the category of the Proverbs that say, this is kind of how people generally work.
They're not promises, nor are they prescriptions.
But they're descriptive, saying this is how we usually work.
And at the end of it, it's saying, emotions are important.
God sees that emotions are an important part of the human life.
And the way of wisdom is thinking through what is it to walk in a way of wisdom in our emotional life.
As a thought exercise, let me post to you, what happens if we want to follow this side of the path, falling off the path, and we say, let's deny our emotions.
Have you ever been in a conflict with someone, and you said, I think you're mad.
And they say, I'm not mad.
You say, no, I think you are.
No, I'm not.
Don't tell me I'm mad.
Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever done that to someone else?
And what happens?
Your inability to acknowledge it means that that anger gets expressed on the edges.
You can't actually sit on it and not have anger.
But rather than having it come out in a healthy way, in an intentional way, in a constructive way, that anger is expressed.
It leaks out the edges of our lives, doesn't it?
Passive aggressiveness.
Criticism.
Withdrawal.
All sorts of ways that we get angry.
When we deny it, it does great harm to us.
Sometimes denial of emotions can crush the spirits of others.
Well, you shouldn't be depressed.
Why are you depressed?
Don't be sad.
Cheer up.
Buck up.
It's not that bad.
Come on.
When you're in the middle of grief.
When you're walking through loss.
Those words aren't helpful.
In fact, they can often be crushing.
They deny the reality of your heart.
Bearing the weight of the loss and the grief that you're walking through.
Can be very destructive in that way too.
Thirdly, denial of our emotional life will distance us from God.
Because we serve a God who has a rich, sinless, emotional life.
He is angry with our sin.
He is jealous for our singular devotion.
He rejoices at the return of a prodigal child.
He sings over his beloved children.
He is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness.
And if we think that we, as beings created in the image of God,
can have a relationship with the creator God and deny emotions,
we will be very poor people indeed.
And our relationship with God will be very poor because of it.
So Proverbs, first of all, simply affirms the reality and importance of our emotional life.
But it does more than that.
Proverbs affirms our emotional complexity.
Let me give you some of the, these are some of the ones that you wade into
that are striking as you read through Proverbs.
Proverbs, first of all, just Proverbs 25, chapter 20, verse 5 says,
The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.
Proverbs 20, 27, the spirit or the breath of a man is the lamp of the Lord,
searching all his innermost parts.
Proverbs 27, 19, as water, as in water, face reflects face, so the heart of a man reflects the man.
These are pretty opaque Proverbs.
But I believe that what he's getting at in the core of them is to say,
human beings are deep.
We're deep people.
There's a lot going on in our emotional life is a critical part of it.
This life of our heart, the life of our soul is important and significant.
A part of us actually being created in the image of God.
Not only is our emotional life deep, but it's very personal.
Proverbs 14, 10 says,
The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.
Isn't that interesting?
Have you ever had someone come up to you and say,
I know how you feel?
This proverb says, no, no you don't.
And it's not just in sad things or hard things.
It's in good things too.
Both joy and bitterness.
Each human heart experiences emotions in a unique way,
according to this proverb.
And it points to the complexity of the emotional life that God has given us.
Now the good news is that we do have a Lord who knows all things.
And we have a Lord who has this infinite emotional capacity.
And so he is able to know what we feel,
even when no one else does.
And so I have often found it better to say,
I don't know all that you're feeling,
but I care about you.
That's usually enough.
Sometimes there's shared loss,
and there's a deep understanding.
But you know, that takes us back to the first ones,
about how deep our emotional life is.
You often don't have to say it,
because there's just an understanding.
It's fascinating to me that the scriptures tell us
to mourn with those who mourn,
and rejoice with those who rejoice.
What a wonderful thing it is.
Maybe you've had people who come.
Without words, they well up with tears
as they look at you in your pain,
in your loss and sorrow.
Or on the other side,
something good happens,
and your friend breaks out with the widest grin you've ever seen,
and gives whoops of joy.
Because of the good thing that's happened to you.
It is a wonderful thing
that we have this depth of ability to connect,
and yet we always need to be dangerous.
We have to be aware of the danger
that we don't always understand,
and we don't always know
the complexity of what someone else is feeling.
And so we have Proverbs 25, 20.
Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart
is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day,
and like vinegar on soda.
When you have a friend who has a heavy heart that day,
to sing them songs of joy
is like taking off their winter parka
when it's 25 degrees out.
It makes them colder.
Or, like vinegar and soda,
it creates a reaction that explodes.
Maybe you've stepped on that landmine.
Maybe you've been the landmine.
Proverbs affirms,
it's complicated.
It's difficult.
And with great compassion and care,
and probably with imperfection,
we need to recognize
how complex our emotional life is.
And this leads us to the last proverb
in this section.
Proverbs 14, 13.
Even in laughter the heart may ache,
and the end of joy may be grief.
So even when you think you're seeing
what someone is feeling,
according to this proverb,
there may be something else alongside of it
that's actually the opposite.
Maybe you've experienced that.
Joy and sorrow mixed together.
It's far more common than we tend to want or think.
So our emotional life is complex and multilayered.
Joy can include sorrow.
Grief can include laughter.
So what do we do with this?
How do we understand?
How do we respond to this?
Well, I think one of the things to recognize
is that our emotional life is shaped
just like all of the rest of our created world
and order is shaped.
It's shaped by a framework
that I hope you guys have in your mind
of sort of the created redemption,
the redemptive history arc of the Bible, right?
So we have creation, fall, redemption, and glory.
And everything we experience in life
maps onto this huge arc
of what God is doing in the world.
And our emotions are like that too.
When God created the world,
He had an emotional life.
He created us with an emotional life.
Yet there was no sin.
And I will venture to say
that we really don't understand
what that looks like very well.
That that is far, far, far further
from our experience than we ever dare admit.
And then the fall came in.
And with the fall came two things.
One, the emotions that we have become corrupted.
And secondly, there are new kinds of emotions
like sorrow.
I haven't quite worked this out biblically.
Did God grieve before the fall?
If He's outside of time, He did.
But did Adam and Eve grieve before the fall?
Doesn't seem like it.
There are some right emotions
that came after the fall
that are part of a fallen world.
In redemption, then,
God comes and gives us a new life in Christ
whereby our emotions can be redeemed
out of the sinful patterns
that we tend to express them in.
And glory promises us a day
where our emotions will find
their greatest fulfillment and expression
without sin.
And interestingly,
there will be no more tears.
God will wipe away every tear.
And there will be no more sickness
or sorrow.
So run this through something like jealousy.
If I asked you if jealousy was a good emotion,
would you say it was good or bad?
Bad, right?
Commonly, it's bad.
You know why?
Because humanly, it's almost always bad.
It's almost always selfish.
I am jealous because you have something
that I want
or you are taking something
that I think is mine
and I didn't choose to share it.
And so I am jealous.
I am jealous.
I am jealous that you have something
that I want
or you have taken something
that I want.
And it's all about us.
Right?
So that's how we often experience
in our fallen reality.
But then Deuteronomy 4 comes in
and says to us
that God is a jealous God.
And we think,
because we've read Greek mythology,
what, is the God of the Bible
just like all like Zeus and Hera
who just, you know,
really were no better
than the rest of us
and weren't really worth our worship?
Is that what the God of the Bible is like?
And we realize,
no, that's not true at all.
That God has a right jealousy.
That He has a jealousy
that His creation
would respond to Him properly
as their creator.
That we, as His creation,
would respond to Him
with love and devotion and worship.
Because that is the,
that is the reality
of our relationship with Him.
And He is jealous
out of His love for us
to relate to us rightly.
He is jealous
that we might not run
and give that love and devotion
to anything else.
It is a right,
by analogy,
in the human life,
it is a right analogy
for a husband
to be jealous
for his wife's affection.
For a wife to be jealous
for her husband's affection.
That they don't run off
and go sleep with other people
and have,
and run off
and spend their emotional loyalties
and energies
in other directions.
It is right for a parent
to be jealous
for the protection of their kids
and to not simply entrust them
to others
who may harm them.
There are places
in human emotion
where there is a right jealousy.
Then we can taste it
and see
what a redeemed jealousy
might look like
in our human life.
So all that to say,
this framework
can be very helpful
as we run other things through it.
What about anger?
Is anger good or bad?
What about love?
Is love good or bad?
What about joy and pleasure?
Is that good or bad?
If you think about it,
it is complex
and in all of these things
there is potential
for both good and bad
in the way
that we humanly express it.
So let's make sure
that we embrace that
in our lives
and in our understanding of it.
Christianity is not
a flat,
happy, happy,
Pollyanna,
we should all be happy
every day
because Jesus loves us
and died for our sins.
The truth is true
but the response
is insufficient
to reflect our human reality
and the dynamics of redemption.
So Proverbs affirms
the reality of our emotional life.
It affirms the complexity
of our emotional life
and then thirdly,
Proverbs highly values
self-control
in our emotional life.
I know when Pastor Nick
preached on anger
a couple of weeks ago,
he touched on this
but it's such a strong theme
in Proverbs
I thought it was worth
coming back to again.
There are great Proverbs
about this.
Proverbs 16, 32
Whoever is slow to anger
is better than the mighty
and he who rules his spirit
than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 17, 27
Whoever restrains his words
have knowledge
and he who has a cool spirit
is a man of understanding.
This one I think
is profound and scary to us.
A man without
Proverbs 25, 28
A man without self-control
is like a city broken into
and left without walls.
What means by that is
he is defenseless and vulnerable
because he lacks self-control.
Proverbs 29, 11
probably summarizes
the proverbial viewpoint
on control and spirits
and our emotions
by saying this
29, 11
A fool gives full vent
to his spirit
but a wise man
quietly holds it back.
The other week
I confess I was watching
You've Got Mail.
If you haven't seen
You've Got Mail
it's an oldie
but it's a decent goodie.
Tom Hanks
and Meg Ryan
and one of the interesting
things is
so Tom Hanks
is this powerful
book broker
and she's this little
shop owner
and they have this
complex relationship
but when she first
meets him
and finds out
who he is
she hates him
and she wants
and she watches him
be really arrogant
at a dinner party
and she so much
wants to zing him.
She so much
wants to just
give full vent
to what she's feeling
about what a terrible
human being he is
and then later on
she actually
is able to do that
and she's actually
able to do it
and she regrets it
immediately.
She finds out
that being able
to just let it go
is actually destructive
which brings me to
the other thing
I want to talk about
let it go
can't hold it back
anymore
let it go
turn away
and slam the door
I don't care
what they're going
to say
let the storm
range on
the cold
never bothered me
anyway.
The song
is often sung
on YouTube
at least
by preteen girls
as a song
of empowerment
and a song
of feeling
finally free
to be
who I really
am
but the interesting
thing about it
is that in the story
all she does
is destruction
when she lets it go
she destroys
her family
she destroys
her kingdom
and
interestingly
and surprisingly
for Disney
there's actually
a redemptive theme
where
she is saved
by the self-sacrifice
of her sister
that's another story
it's a cool thing
but the point
here is that
we live in a culture
today
where we think
that self-control
is repression
where we think
that self-control
is lacking
authenticity
and the Bible
is very clear
that that is not
true
because we are
human beings
made in the image
of God
and yet corrupted
by the fall
and even for Christians
as we have the Holy Spirit
in us
we are not able
to express
our emotions
perfectly
in every circumstance
that's not a newsflash
I'm sure you're surprised about
and so
the Apostle Paul
tells us
that one of the fruit
of the Spirit
is self-control
it is something
that we are able
to grow in
so that we can
feel the emotions
that are real
in our heart
and in our circumstances
and yet
at the end of the day
let the truth
of God's Word
and the power
of the Holy Spirit
shape and control
how we respond
so that our feelings
are driven by truth
so that
we need to seek
to know the Word of God
so that they can shape
how we understand
our emotions
should be governed
by love
so that
as we express
our emotions
we are not simply
thinking of
how do I express myself
but how do I care
about the other person
in the process
of my expression
my emotions
need to be
expressed
most fundamentally
with a view
towards pleasing God
and governed
by a desire
for godliness
God
may my emotional life
grow
in increasingly
in increasing way
to reflect
you
and your emotions
so joy
in a godly pattern
of this
a godly expression
is not selfish
pleasure seeking
but enjoying
but receiving
from God
good things
and responding right
sorrow
is not self-pity
but an honest
recognition
of loss
in the world
anger
is not an
uncontrolled
outburst
but a focused
rejection
of evil
and wrong
hope
is not wishful
optimism
but trust
in the future
work of a good
God
and so on
and so forth
temper long
man
whose
commentary
on
proverbs
is
I highly
recommend
to you
says this
about
this topic
it is not
that the wise
are emotionless
or that they
don't express
anger
or disappointment
but they do
so in a way
that is appropriate
to the context
they don't blow up
in anger
though they may
get very angry
moderate expressions
of emotions
allow the wise
to think
and strategize
emotions
don't cloud
their thinking
another way
to put this
is that the wise
are patient
whereas fools
are impatient
I found that
a very insightful
quote
to think through
so proverbs
says these things
it doesn't
we haven't covered
everything about
our emotional life
this morning
about what it means
to be a Christian
in our emotional life
but proverbs
says these things
they are real
they are deep
and complex
and they ought
to be subject
to healthy
self-control
so that their
expressions
are
constructive
and positive
rather than
destructive
and negative
and so
the writer
of proverbs
says this
I found this
if you remember
proverbs is a series
of one of the
frameworks
and the literary
forms that they use
is a father
talking to his son
about how to walk
in the way of wisdom
and he says this
my son
if your heart
is wise
my heart
too
will be glad
my innermost
being will exult
when your lips
speak what is right
let not your heart
envy sinners
but continue
in the fear
of the Lord
all the day
and I just thought
it was interesting
because in this
little passage
you see
the complexity
of emotions
he's exhorting
his son
follow the way
of wisdom
because it will
be good
don't fall
into envy
but fear
the Lord
affirming
even in that
this is how
the emotions
are going to
affect your life
in pursuing
godliness
but then he also
says but your
godliness is going
to affect me
your response
is going to
do things
in my emotional
life
it's going to
bring me joy
my innermost
being will exult
when I see you
doing these
things
and so it
leaves us
with the final
question
which is how
do we
pursue this
what is it
that we can
do to pursue
growth and
understanding
a healthy
emotional
life
and friends
it is not
rocket science
it is the
answer we have
seen over and
over again
in Proverbs
and in fact
is the answer
over and over
again in the
scriptures
we need to
look to Jesus
Christ
because Jesus
Christ
embodied the
fullness of
perfect humanity
and so when we
look to Jesus
what do we find
we find one
who looked with
compassion
said woman
does no one
condemn you
we see him
who with holy
rage made a
whip and drove
the merchants
out of the
temple
we see him
wearily lamenting
about his best
friends have I
been with you
so long
we still don't
understand
he who wept
with his friends
at the tomb
of their brother
and shook
with anger
against the
ravages of
death
he who was a
man of sorrows
acquainted with
grief
who for the
joy set before
him
endured the
cross
despising the
shame
if we want
to know how
we walk in
wisdom we look
to Jesus
who is the
embodiment of
wisdom himself
we look to him
to see his
complexity and the
reality of his
emotions
we see that in his
humanity he
identified with us
we see in his
perfection an
example of how to
do it well
and most
amazingly we see
that in him
doing these
things for us
we see his
emotions expressed
uniquely at
times in his
redemptive work
for us
my God
my God my
God why have
you forsaken
me
father forgive
them they don't
know what they're
doing
the God of the
Bible shows us
what emotions look
like because he's
created us to know
him and that our
emotions would be a
part of our of our
life and our
glorifying of him
and when we behold
Jesus and when we
believe that what
Jesus has done can
redeem us out of all
of our petty and
broken and fallen and
foolish emotion
all of our denial of
it all of our
selfish expression of
it
when we behold him
and when we believe
and trust in him
this is where we find
then the life that God
has for us
the way of wisdom
the way of
godliness
let's pray together
lord we have touched
on many things this
morning and lord we
acknowledge that we
are fearfully and
wonderfully made and
that you have knit us
together
lord we pray that you
will help us to grow
mind and body and
soul and emotion and
will and affection
and knowledge and
understanding
lord in all of the
complexity of how you
have made us as human
beings lord may we
reflect and know you
more and specifically
lord may we know how
to lord live out our
emotional life in a way
that brings glory to you
lord help us to be more
like Jesus help us to
reflect Jesus in how we
live and lord help us to
depend on Jesus to exercise
self-control and see
transformation where we
cannot do it ourselves
we pray all these things
in Jesus name
amen