Be Unoffendable

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We're going to be reading Ephesians chapter 4 today to start with this. And this is a passage from Paul to the church in Ephesus where he says, Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry, and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hand, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God and Christ forgave you. I think it's a great passage to start off with, and we're going to learn three points in this. When we talk about unoffendable, what do we mean by unoffendable? That's not actually even a word, did you know that? But these days, who cares, right? But we're creating it. What do we mean by that? Why be unoffendable? Why is it important to do that? Or what good is it? And then how can I possibly be unoffendable in this world and in this day? With everything that's going on. So we'll take these one at a time. First of all, what does it mean to be unoffendable? I think that Dallas Willard probably nailed one of the chief problems I face, I think we all face in life. He says, anger is the most fundamental problem in human life. Just think about that for a moment. And when we're talking about being unoffendable, we're talking about being slow to anger. Because if you look up any dictionary definition of what it means to take offense, it usually means getting angry or miffed or I can't believe it at someone, which is usually a response of anger. And we live in a trigger happy age. Easily anger, outraged about everything under the sun. You could probably look at Twitter on any given day of the week and find on Twitter, the top two or three posts are some outrage at some event around the United States. Right, left and center. People are just ticked off, man. And they believe they are rightly ticked off and they have a right to be ticked off. That's part of the problem. You know, from protests that are happening during football games to those who voted differently than you did in the last election. From being a vegan or environmentally woke to those who are driving the biggest, baddest gas hog truck flying a Confederate flag. Everyone gets ticked off or hacked off or upset or shocked or outraged or flummoxed or punchy or pouty or pushy or demanding and downright selfish and I can't believe it. And so we're going to just share what I think the world should be like. And we as Christians, too, think we are entitled to our anger. That we should be angry. Brant Hansen wrote in this book, I used to think it was incumbent upon a Christian to take offense. I now think we should be the most refreshingly unoffendable people on a planet that seems to spin on an axis of offense. Forfeiting our right to anger makes us deny ourselves and makes us others centered. When we start living this way, it changes everything. Actually, it's not even forfeiting a right because the right does not exist. So that's what we're talking about in this series. What does it mean to be unoffendable is to be slow to anger and realize I don't have a right to my anger. I do not have a right to my anger. And we are really talking in this series about looking at this mind-blowing, paradigm-shifting, worldview-shattering teaching that the New Testament has called grace. And how that affects everything. So Paul says in this passage that we read just before, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Now, see, some people will say right away, well, see, it says you can be angry. In fact, it's okay. There is this thing as righteous. Have you heard of righteous anger before? Try to find, though, a Bible passage that actually has that phrase righteous anger anywhere in the scriptures. Anywhere. You won't. Now, Paul says, OK, we get angry, but do not sin. And notice how he says right after that he qualifies what that means. Be angry and do not sin with the next two phrases. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and do not give an opportunity to the devil, which basically says don't hold on to it. You get angry. Let it go. I'm not being Disney here. I'm being biblical. So it appears when you do get anger, angry, you better let it go quickly. Otherwise, most likely you're giving the devil an opportunity....