SPEAKER_01: And this morning's question for city kids and city teens is the passage tells us some places we can find refuge, life, and rest.
SPEAKER_01: Can you spot some of these?
SPEAKER_01: This morning's reading is Proverbs chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: The wisest of women built her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever walks in uprightness fears the Lord, but he who is devious in his ways despises him.
SPEAKER_01: By the mouth of a fool comes a rod for his back, but the lips of the wise will preserve him.
SPEAKER_01: Where there are no oxen the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
SPEAKER_01: A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breeds out lies.
SPEAKER_01: A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding.
SPEAKER_01: Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the follies of fools is deceiving.
SPEAKER_01: Fools mock at the guilt offering, but the upright enjoy acceptance.
SPEAKER_01: The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.
SPEAKER_01: The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish.
SPEAKER_01: There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
SPEAKER_01: Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief.
SPEAKER_01: The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways.
SPEAKER_01: The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.
SPEAKER_01: One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.
SPEAKER_01: A man of quick temper acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices is hated.
SPEAKER_01: The simple inherit folly, but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: The evil bow down before the good, the wicked at the gates of righteous.
SPEAKER_01: The poor is disliked even by his neighbour, but the rich has many friends.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever despises his neighbour is a sinner, but the blessed is he who is generous to the poor.
SPEAKER_01: Do they not go astray who devise evil?
SPEAKER_01: Those who devise good meet steadfast love and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: In all toil there is profit, but the mere talk tends only but mere talk tends only to poverty.
SPEAKER_01: The crown of the wise is their wealth, but the folly of the fools brings folly.
SPEAKER_01: A truthful witness saves lives, but one who breeds out lies is deceitful.
SPEAKER_01: In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.
SPEAKER_01: The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death.
SPEAKER_01: In a multitude of people is the glory of a king, but without people a prince is ruined.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.
SPEAKER_01: A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.
SPEAKER_01: The wicked is overthrown through his evil doing, but the righteous finds refuge in his death.
SPEAKER_01: Wisdom rests in the heart of a man of understanding, but it makes itself known even in the midst of fools.
SPEAKER_01: Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
SPEAKER_01: A servant who deals wisely has the king's favor, but his wrath falls on one who acts shamefully.
SPEAKER_01: So reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: So we're we read Proverbs chapter 14, but we'll bring in other parts of Proverbs as well to try and get a rounded picture of today's theme.
SPEAKER_02: And today's theme is our emotions, our desires.
SPEAKER_02: Because one of the things that Proverbs is constantly dealing with is our heart, our emotional life, how we how we feel.
SPEAKER_02: Because how we feel can need some wisdom from time to time.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes do you ever find yourself getting um getting just set off by something really small?
SPEAKER_02: Somebody cuts you up, or they're too slow at uh at setting off from that green light.
SPEAKER_02: And before you know you're just mashing that that horn, telling people to hurry up, and you have a stronger response than you realize.
SPEAKER_02: And you maybe even surprise yourself.
SPEAKER_02: You're like, why did I why did that come out?
SPEAKER_02: Why did I respond like that?
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you actually feel certain emotions, negative emotions like bitterness or anger or resentment, and you know rationally that you shouldn't feel them, but you do, and you think, well, where do I go with those feelings, those those negative emotions?
SPEAKER_02: Or we have all from time to time just not been honest about what we're feeling.
SPEAKER_02: You can walk, maybe you walk in here, you walk into work or whatever it is, and say, How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_02: Fine.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know what FINE stands for?
SPEAKER_02: FINE is an acronym.
SPEAKER_02: It means feelings internal, not expressed.
SPEAKER_02: I'm fine.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to tell you how I feel.
SPEAKER_02: There might be lots of reasons for that.
SPEAKER_02: You say, I'm fine.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we do that because that's how we've been brought up.
SPEAKER_02: To keep a tight rein on our emotional life, you don't want to give away too much.
SPEAKER_02: You don't want to be that kind of attention-seeking person who's just like constantly all about the drama.
SPEAKER_02: By contrast, our world says, well, actually, you should amplify your emotions.
SPEAKER_02: That how you feel is what should primarily guide you.
SPEAKER_02: That you should follow your feelings.
SPEAKER_02: If it feels right, then you should go ahead and do it.
SPEAKER_02: So we can suppress our emotions, we can amplify them, we can even edit them.
SPEAKER_02: We'd say some things, but there's lots going on under the surface that we haven't spoken about.
SPEAKER_02: What would being wise with our emotions look like?
SPEAKER_02: See, Proverbs isn't just interested in encouraging us to act wisely, do wise things.
SPEAKER_02: Proverbs speaks to our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Proverbs wants us to feel wisely, to be wise with respect to our desires.
SPEAKER_02: That's the wisdom that is offered to us.
SPEAKER_02: And it's a wisdom that shapes us from the inside out, not just in terms of what we do.
SPEAKER_02: So, how should we act wisely?
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna make five reasonably brief observations from the book of Proverbs about how to act wisely with our emotions.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the first one, you ready?
SPEAKER_02: Emotions are a gift.
SPEAKER_02: Your emotional life is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_02: Human beings were made not just with the capacity to think, but with the capacity to feel.
SPEAKER_02: None of us here this morning are brains on sticks.
SPEAKER_02: We have a heart and desires.
SPEAKER_02: And so we feel things like love, joy, grief, anger, hatred, resentment, envy, bitterness, gladness.
SPEAKER_02: And Proverbs is full of language that addresses not just our brains, but our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you a couple.
SPEAKER_02: Proverbs 17, verse 22 says, A joyful heart is good medicine.
SPEAKER_02: But a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
SPEAKER_02: What's joy here?
SPEAKER_02: Well, do you see the joy is actually not just a nice feeling to have?
SPEAKER_02: What does it say joy is?
SPEAKER_02: A joyful heart is good medicine.
SPEAKER_02: Oh it's actually restorative, redemptive.
SPEAKER_02: It's healing to our souls.
SPEAKER_02: What a gift.
SPEAKER_02: To have the capacity to feel joy.
SPEAKER_02: It's good medicine.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you another one.
SPEAKER_02: Proverbs 12, 25.
SPEAKER_02: Anxiety in a man's heart or woman's heart weighs them down.
SPEAKER_02: But a good word makes them glad.
SPEAKER_02: See, in in that proverb, God knows that sometimes our hearts can feel heavy.
SPEAKER_02: You get that just that weight in the pit of your your stomach.
SPEAKER_02: God also knows that the right words from the right person, the right sort of time, spoken with wisdom and love and grace, can actually help to lift that burden, can't it?
SPEAKER_02: What a gift.
SPEAKER_02: Or Proverbs 4.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 23 says, Above all else, guard your heart.
SPEAKER_02: For everything you do flows from it.
SPEAKER_02: Our hearts, as our inner being, our core, our desires, our emotions, they're to be guarded or stewarded, kept, say, kept in trust.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Well, because they can lead us to foolishness.
SPEAKER_02: Has your heart ever led you towards some foolishness?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But they can also lead us to great wisdom when guided by the God who made our hearts after his own heart, who made us in his image.
SPEAKER_02: So here's the thing the presence of an emotional response in you is not a sign of weakness, right?
SPEAKER_02: It's a sign of design.
SPEAKER_02: It's a sign that you've been made to feel.
SPEAKER_02: We're made with the capacity to feel deeply and to express the depth of that feeling in surprising, beautiful, moving, terrifying ways.
SPEAKER_02: But even when we express difficult emotions like anger or grief, the expressing of them can bring a kind of healing and a closeness to God, closest to those around us when done wisely.
SPEAKER_02: So your emotions are a gift.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: That means don't chase your emotions away.
SPEAKER_02: Acknowledge them.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever you're feeling at any given moment.
SPEAKER_02: Say you're sitting and you're feeling that that weight, that just that that knot of anxiety.
SPEAKER_02: What do you do with that?
SPEAKER_02: You close your eyes and you say, I see you.
SPEAKER_02: It's safe here.
SPEAKER_02: You're welcome back here.
SPEAKER_02: We will get through this.
SPEAKER_02: Don't chase them away.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes our emotions cannot be immediately corrected or fixed straight away.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes emotions like grief simply do need to be seen and sat in for a time.
SPEAKER_02: We can do this when we remember that God only know God not only made our emotional life, but he sees what we're feeling.
SPEAKER_02: He draws near to us.
SPEAKER_02: With him we are safe.
SPEAKER_02: He loves us, he forgives our sin.
SPEAKER_02: And when we come to him by faith and trust, he has an emotional response to us.
SPEAKER_02: He delights in us.
SPEAKER_02: He rejoices.
SPEAKER_02: When we trust in him, when we place our faith in Jesus, that means that we have a place of permanent security and safety, a place of belonging where we can express those emotions that are a gift.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, our emotions reflect our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: I have um hopefully you can see this at the back.
SPEAKER_02: I have these uh I have these two little cups, right?
SPEAKER_02: They're actually from uh from like Toby's lunch, okay?
SPEAKER_02: So if you can't see these, hold them a little bit closer.
SPEAKER_02: You have these two little cups, and they're uh they're full of beads, right?
SPEAKER_02: Now imagine that uh this cup is me, and that this cup is you, right?
SPEAKER_02: And we're going through life together, and we're having a conversation, maybe, and maybe you say something that gets on my nerves, or I say something that offends you.
SPEAKER_02: And what ends up happening is that our two little cups they bump together.
SPEAKER_02: What happened?
SPEAKER_02: I made a mess, Mom, I'm sorry, I made a mess.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe this happens in marriage, right?
SPEAKER_02: I see two people are kind of journeying together and everything's kind of fine, and then every now and again there's a oh, oh, why did that why'd that happen?
SPEAKER_02: What happened there?
SPEAKER_02: The stuff came out.
SPEAKER_02: Why did the stuff come out?
SPEAKER_02: Well, you might look at your husband or your wife and say, Because you bumped me.
SPEAKER_02: You made me feel like this, and so I went.
SPEAKER_02: Why did it come out?
SPEAKER_02: Because it was in there.
SPEAKER_02: The beads only come out because they're in there, do you see?
SPEAKER_02: And what happens, I'll clear those up at the end.
SPEAKER_02: Uh what happens is that times of stress, anxiety, conflict, poof, they bump us, and we respond emotionally.
SPEAKER_02: And why do we respond emotionally?
SPEAKER_02: Because the other person put those emotions into us?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Because they're in there.
SPEAKER_02: What happens is that our emotions reflect our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: How we express ourselves, express something that's going on inside us.
SPEAKER_02: That's what I say at the start.
SPEAKER_02: When sometimes we we react in a way that even causes, catches us by surprise.
SPEAKER_02: You're like, oh, hold on.
SPEAKER_02: Why did I respond like that?
SPEAKER_02: What's going on that that actually got to me so much?
SPEAKER_02: Our emotions reflect our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: In Proverbs 14, one of the things that it deals with is this idea that outward actions reveal uh inner character.
SPEAKER_02: Let me pick it up at verse 5.
SPEAKER_02: A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies.
SPEAKER_02: So somebody who's corrupt in heart expresses that through lying.
SPEAKER_02: It breathes them out.
SPEAKER_02: As easy as it is to exhale, out come lies.
SPEAKER_02: A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding.
SPEAKER_02: Leave the presence of a fool.
SPEAKER_02: For there you do not need to meet words of knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: The people who are, their hearts are a certain way, a scoffer, somebody who uh who is cynical, who never takes anything at face value, that manifests itself in how they act, in the things that they say.
SPEAKER_02: And it's the same with our emotional character.
SPEAKER_02: Do you remember what we read from Proverbs 4?
SPEAKER_02: Above all else, guard your heart.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: For everything you do flows from it.
SPEAKER_02: The things that we do are not just, you know, arm behind the bowel, well, you made me be grumpy, uh, or you made me lie to you.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, they come out because they're in there.
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus' words in Luke chapter 6, out of the abundance of the heart, what?
SPEAKER_02: The mouth speaks.
SPEAKER_02: Our emotions are not imposed on us from the outside, they're responses to stimuli, responses to the circumstances that we find ourselves in that reveal stuff that's going on in that churning broil of our own hearts.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it surprises us.
SPEAKER_02: Growing in wisdom, therefore, is not just about God shaping our habits, but about Him shaping our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: To acknowledge that we feel sad or angry or guilty or fearful.
SPEAKER_02: And to ask, well, what has caused me to feel this way?
SPEAKER_02: But perhaps a more important question is to ask, where can I turn when I feel this way?
SPEAKER_02: And that's where the gospel, the good news of Jesus, actually provides so much resources for our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: You're sitting in sadness or in grief.
SPEAKER_02: What does the psalmist say?
SPEAKER_02: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, he helps the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Or the prophet Isaiah.
SPEAKER_02: Speaking of that suffering servant, the bruised reed, he does not break.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you feel like a bruised reed.
SPEAKER_02: Just at any moment, any pressure at all, you'd snap in two.
SPEAKER_02: What does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't break you.
SPEAKER_02: He heals you.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're angry.
SPEAKER_02: Is it righteous indignation at an injustice?
SPEAKER_02: You cry out with the psalmist, vindicate me, O God.
SPEAKER_02: Or oftentimes, actually, our anger comes from a place of entitlement, not getting what we wanted.
SPEAKER_02: And at that point, we're actually a little bit like Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: Remember Jonah?
SPEAKER_02: Who didn't really want to go to Nineveh because he knew that God was going to be merciful and he really didn't want the Ninevites to have any of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_02: And there's the whole kind of last chapter of Jonah just complaining about this plant growing up and giving him shade, and then God takes it away the next day, and he's just, he's so entitled and he's angry.
SPEAKER_02: And God comes to him and says, Why are you angry about a plant?
SPEAKER_02: Why are you grieving about that?
SPEAKER_02: When you've got human beings over here, shouldn't you get your priorities all wrong?
SPEAKER_02: See how it kind of corrects us.
SPEAKER_02: And we need to see the mercy of God to us.
SPEAKER_02: Or in our guilt.
SPEAKER_02: Come to words like John's letter, start of John.
SPEAKER_02: In his first letter, he says that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
SPEAKER_02: But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_02: He takes our guilt away.
SPEAKER_02: He cleanses our shame or our fear.
SPEAKER_02: God says, Fear not, for I am with you.
SPEAKER_02: Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
SPEAKER_02: I will strengthen you, help you, and uphold you with my righteous right hand.
SPEAKER_02: What are you feeling?
SPEAKER_02: And rather than saying, you made me feel this way, ask, how can I run to Jesus with this emotion?
SPEAKER_02: Third.
SPEAKER_02: Emotions are complicated.
SPEAKER_02: Blaise Pascal, the uh the philosopher, said this.
SPEAKER_02: It's a lovely little turn of phrase.
SPEAKER_02: He says, uh, the heart has reasons that reason does not know.
SPEAKER_02: The heart has reasons that reason does not know.
SPEAKER_02: If you've been at City for any length of time, you'll have heard me kind of give this illustration.
SPEAKER_02: I think that your emotional life, my emotional life, our internal life, is like a box of Christmas tree lights.
SPEAKER_02: You what you know, it comes the 6th of January, and you put the Christmas tree light, you kind of wind them away in a very orderly sort of fashion, because you know that on the 1st of December, or if you're one of those horrors of human beings putting your tree up in November, uh when you got it out, you spent half the day untangling the mess.
SPEAKER_02: And so you put it away really, really carefully.
SPEAKER_02: And then whatever gremlins go up into your attic between January and December, by the time you go up and get them again, it's a complete and utter mess, and you spend half a day.
SPEAKER_02: Our inner life is like a box of Christmas tree lights.
SPEAKER_02: It takes it takes time to untangle it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not all that clear how I'm feeling sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes what I'm feeling is a mixture of things.
SPEAKER_02: I love that Proverbs deals with that.
SPEAKER_02: Let me remind you what Rory read from verse 13.
SPEAKER_02: Even in laughter.
SPEAKER_02: The heart may ache.
SPEAKER_02: And the end of joy may be grief.
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever laughed at a wick?
SPEAKER_02: Where you've sat after the funeral service and you've gone for lunch, or you've gone back to somebody's house, and as the day has ebbed on, what you've started to do is you've started to tell stories of the person that you're grieving.
SPEAKER_02: You tell those funny stories, those silly things that they used to do or say, and you find yourself laughing.
SPEAKER_02: Does that mean that in that moment you are, quote unquote, happy?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: You're full of grief.
SPEAKER_02: And a few hours later you will cry again.
SPEAKER_02: It's complicated.
SPEAKER_02: Even in joy, the heart may ache.
SPEAKER_02: But in that moment of laughter, you feel genuine gladness and happiness to have recounted that memory and to share that laugh one with another.
SPEAKER_02: Or Proverbs 14, verse 10, listen to this.
SPEAKER_02: The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.
SPEAKER_02: What that means is no one really knows what's going on inside you.
SPEAKER_02: Not unless you express it.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we don't know what's going on inside us until it's expressed.
SPEAKER_02: Is one of the reasons why as a church we partner with an organization set up by Esther Lynch, who's the wife of the pastor of Emmanuel Church and a few others, called Equipped to Care, that helps us to kind of process our emotional well-being.
SPEAKER_02: They're doing a conference actually next Saturday in Grosvenor Road, church on the south side.
SPEAKER_02: And so you can go to equipped to care.ie if you want to go along to hear more about how to make sense of the Christmas tree lights inside of us.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what this means practically, right?
SPEAKER_02: Don't rush to simplify how someone is feeling or diagnose them too readily and go, okay, so this is what's going on inside you.
SPEAKER_02: Well, no, it's more complicated than that.
SPEAKER_02: There's a bunch of stuff going on at once.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes one aspect of it comes to the fore and then fades back, and another aspect comes to the fore.
SPEAKER_02: So don't absolutice one emotional expression, say, this is what this person is dealing with, right?
SPEAKER_02: Or, secondly, for yourself.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, it's okay to hold these things in tension.
SPEAKER_02: It's okay to laugh through tears, to seek peace, even when you're fearful, even when you're worried.
SPEAKER_02: God is big enough for our emotional complexity.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_02: That great Psalm of God's intimate knowledge of us, his making of us in our mother's womb says this.
SPEAKER_02: He says, You discern my thoughts from afar.
SPEAKER_02: You know each word before I speak it.
SPEAKER_02: He knows every knot and tangle of the Christmas tree lights inside your heart.
SPEAKER_02: And he loves you anyway.
SPEAKER_02: There is no better place to run to to find rest than when we are wearied by the tumult inside of us.
SPEAKER_02: Fourth, we're getting there, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Penultimate one.
SPEAKER_02: Fourth.
SPEAKER_02: Emotions are powerful.
SPEAKER_02: They can build up or they can destroy.
SPEAKER_02: Emotions are powerful.
SPEAKER_02: They can build up or they can destroy.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 1 of chapter 14, the wisest of women builds her house.
SPEAKER_02: But folly with her own hands tears it down.
SPEAKER_02: The house of the wise in the book of Proverbs is a symbol of just flourishing at every aspect of life.
SPEAKER_02: And causing flourishing and joy to those around us.
SPEAKER_02: Wisdom builds up that house in every respect, not just in terms of what it does, but in terms of how it feels.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 26 speaks to what this maturity, this wisdom looks like.
SPEAKER_02: It says, In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence.
SPEAKER_02: And his children will have a refuge.
SPEAKER_02: You notice in this verse, it actually uses an emotional word.
SPEAKER_02: It uses the word fear.
SPEAKER_02: The fear of the Lord is what?
SPEAKER_02: Is a fountain of life.
SPEAKER_02: Fear of the Lord, that emotional word, is not it doesn't have negative connotations in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Fear of the Lord is not terror.
SPEAKER_02: It's rather awe, wonder, just being captivated by him, looking at him rather than the changing circumstances around us.
SPEAKER_02: It's a bit like, it's a bit like, remember that uh that that moment in the Gospels where Jesus comes and he's meeting, uh he's meeting them on the sea.
SPEAKER_02: And the the sea is in a squall, there's waves crashing everywhere, and they think that a ghost is coming out of them.
SPEAKER_02: And Peter kind of peers out and says, Lord, if it's you, command me to come out to you on the water.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus says, Well, all right then, come on out.
SPEAKER_02: And so Peter steps out of the boat and starts walking towards Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's looking at him and he's walking on the water doing this miraculous thing.
SPEAKER_02: But then what happens?
SPEAKER_02: Peter takes his eyes off Jesus and starts looking at the circumstances around him and thinks, hold on a second, I'm standing on a liquid.
SPEAKER_02: And there's lots of that liquid around me.
SPEAKER_02: And as soon as he starts looking at the circumstances, the terror comes in.
SPEAKER_02: And what happens?
SPEAKER_02: He begins to sink.
SPEAKER_02: The fear of the Lord, keeping your eyes fixed on him.
SPEAKER_02: That awe, that wonder.
SPEAKER_02: What does the proverb say?
SPEAKER_02: Gives us strong confidence.
SPEAKER_02: It becomes a refuge.
SPEAKER_02: It stabilizes us.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that we don't feel.
SPEAKER_02: But it does mean that when we do feel, we're not swept away.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 14 contains a number of proverbs that I'll deal with very, very quickly that speak to kind of some negative and positive emotions.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 29 deals with anger.
SPEAKER_02: Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly, foolishness.
SPEAKER_02: Some of us can be quick with a harsh word.
SPEAKER_02: We can be quick to flare up.
SPEAKER_02: Wisdom's encouragement is that lashing out in this way is a folly.
SPEAKER_02: And the encouragement actually is to become more of what God's like.
SPEAKER_02: Wisdom finds a home in a heart that is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_02: Or verse 30.
SPEAKER_02: A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that true?
SPEAKER_02: One of the, yeah, uh we we preached on envy in the summer, and uh I can't remember who said it, I haven't written it down.
SPEAKER_02: But it's that of all of the seven deadly sins, lust, pride, gluttony, all of those things, you know, avarice, those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_02: Of all of the seven deadly sins, envy's the only one that's no fun.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know that?
SPEAKER_02: Envy's no fun.
SPEAKER_02: It's no fun to look at what somebody else has, the benefit, the blessing that they have, and just feel resentful towards them.
SPEAKER_02: It's a rot in our bones.
SPEAKER_02: The encouragement there is to practice joy in others' blessings.
SPEAKER_02: But look more positive.
SPEAKER_02: But the positive bit is before this, a tranquil heart gives life to flesh.
SPEAKER_02: That a heart that has found peace, a peace in who we are and who God has made us to be and what He has given us and the place that He has placed us in, the heart that is content in those things.
SPEAKER_02: We looked at contentment last week, find us on Spotify.
SPEAKER_02: Finds life.
SPEAKER_02: Finally.
SPEAKER_02: Every human emotion is seen perfectly in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We can have this kind of false view of God.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what your view of God is.
SPEAKER_02: Uh but some people can think that God's kind of cold and detached and unmoved and unfeeling.
SPEAKER_02: But actually, when you read the Gospels and see God made man, what we see there is that God actually emotes quite intensely.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus feels deeply, vividly.
SPEAKER_02: You think of his anger, his righteous anger against the money changers in the temple.
SPEAKER_02: Or how he was dismayed at the self-righteous legalism of the religious leaders who didn't want to heal a man on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_02: Or how you rejoiced in God's work in Luke's gospel that God had revealed these truths to his disciples.
SPEAKER_02: Or perhaps the most profound moment in all of the Gospels.
SPEAKER_02: What did Jesus do at the tomb of Lazarus?
SPEAKER_02: Shortest verse in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus wept.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus felt sadness, grief.
SPEAKER_02: Even though he knew he was going to rise him from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: He was still sad.
SPEAKER_02: Or in the garden in Gethsemane.
SPEAKER_02: What does he say to his disciples?
SPEAKER_02: He says, My heart is overwhelmed with sorrow.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus felt deeply.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't suppress his emotions.
SPEAKER_02: He gave voice to them.
SPEAKER_02: He felt deeply, and in him we see an emotional wisdom, an emotional maturity that is not about not feeling, but about feeling rightly, feeling wisely.
SPEAKER_02: Our growth in emotional wisdom begins when we realize that by nature we don't feel things rightly.
SPEAKER_02: We don't feel rightly about God.
SPEAKER_02: We feel cold, feel ambivalent to him at best, maybe even hostile.
SPEAKER_02: To follow him is to allow him to reorder our affections and to arouse and stimulate new affections in us because of who he is and what he has done for us and to find him as altogether precious.
SPEAKER_02: By faith, his spirit awakens new desires in us for who he is and what he has done.
SPEAKER_02: It is then that by his spirit he transforms us that we may be wise, not just at the level of thinking, not just at the level of acting, but at the level of feeling.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, visit our website found in the links below.