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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
I want to go in our Bible to Ephesians, if you would, chapter 4.
Ephesians chapter 4 and also go to Matthew chapter 5.
Ephesians chapter 4 and Matthew chapter 5.
We'll look at Matthew chapter 5 to begin.
Ephesians chapter 4 and Matthew chapter 5.
Matthew chapter 5.
Let's pray to begin and then we'll get right into our message.
Our Father, thank you for the chance to be here tonight.
Thank you for the good music, Lord, good hymns.
We're able to sing together as a congregation and hear good songs sung by people who have, you've given the grace
to have talent and the ability to minister in song today. Lord, thank you for them. Thank you
for the blessing we get from being reminded of the truths of scripture, the truths of your word
from good songs.
Lord, we have a rich heritage that's been passed down to us,
and we thank you so much for it.
And, Lord, we pray that you would bless us and help our heart to be inclined unto your Word and your ways to your person tonight.
As we look at this subject and we look at the Scriptures especially,
open the eyes, I pray, of our understanding.
Help our heart to be tender to receive the truth tonight, we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Matthew chapter 5 and verse number 21, the Bible says,
You have heard that it was said by them of old time,
Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment.
But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in
danger of the judgment.
And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raka shall be in danger of the council, but whosoever shall say thou fool
shall be in danger of hellfire. Now, just as a side note, before we continue, verse 22 says,
whosoever is angry with his brother, and it says following that, without a cause. In our Sunday school, we've been looking at the King
James question in our Sunday school, and this is one example where it is that the difference
between a modern version and our Bible is somewhat significant because in modern versions, the phrase without a cause is excluded from the text.
But of course, in the King James, it is included.
And for those of you that are in the Sunday school class, that is a textual issue.
And in this case, it obviously makes a difference. Because if this is excluded, then any anger at any time is not permitted.
But if it's included, then it means that there are cases in which anger is proper and allowed,
which is actually consistent with the rest of Scripture.
But that's just a side note, not the main point of what we
want to look at tonight. But I do want to call your attention again to verse 22, where our Lord says
that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, a cause. Now, there are two causes of anger as seen in Scripture.
The first reason for anger is anger that we experience with a just cause.
And then the other is anger that we experience without a just cause. I'm adding the word just because it's kind of implied, right?
Not just any cause that we make up, but obviously a cause that is scriptural.
So even if we have anger and that anger has a justifiable cause,
that is no excuse to then sin or violate God's commandments as a result of it.
So the issue is not anger.
The issue is anger, whether anger has a cause, a just cause,
or whether it doesn't have a just cause.
So let's look at the first of these two, which is this.
The anger that comes without a cause. Now think about it. Have you ever been
angry for a reason that was not justified? Have you ever been angry for no good reason?
How many of you have been angry just because you've had a bad day, right? Oh yeah, I know what that's like.
Some of us, I include us, some of us tend to be kind of moody and grouchy type of people.
Who would be honest and raise your hand and say, that's kind of, I'm kind of that way. Okay,
all right. I'm kind of that way too. I'm kind of that way too. Hopefully, we're growing, right?
We're getting better and we're seeing that we need to do that
less and less, but that is a natural tendency all of us have to some degree or another.
So, we all know what it's like to be angry without any good reason.
Sometimes, though, sometimes we have a reason, but the reason is not justified.
For instance, if we are angry over something that is not scripturally justified, for instance,
we're angry at a person for something that they did that was not wrong, that was not scripturally wrong, right?
That would be unjustified anger.
If we're angry at someone over something, maybe that we heard about
them, but we do not know personally that that's actually the case, hearsay, that would not be
justified anger. So there's reasons sometimes that we have anger. Now, I'm talking about anger here,
but really, I want to get to another point, okay? And we're going to get to that in just a minute.
But let me give you the connection between anger and what I want to talk about.
And what I want to talk about tonight is bitterness.
Bitterness.
Bitterness, let me give you a definition of what bitterness is in the sense that we're looking at it tonight in Scripture.
Bitterness might also be called resentment.
It might also be called a grudge.
But I think, honestly, what I think is the best example or the best term to describe exactly what bitterness is scripturally, and you'll see it as we go through these verses in just a minute,
is long-term anger. Bitterness could be defined scripturally as long-term anger. You see
the word bitter and the word anger and the word wrath occur often together.
Now, we see from this in Matthew 5, 22, that the Lord Jesus allows for anger because he adds without a cause.
At least I believe he adds without a cause.
Do you believe he adds without?
I think it's in there, all right?
I think it should be in there.
So he allows, not only in this place,
but in another passage of scripture,
he allows for anger.
But the problem is not so much the anger,
the problem is the cause.
And then secondly, the problem is whether that
anger becomes long-term anger. Because once it crosses into wherever that line is, crosses from
just anger to long-term anger, that's where you have a problem right there. That's where bitterness
and resentment begin. But what if you're angry over something
that's not a good cause, not a justifiable cause? That anger, as well as the bitterness that it might
produce in the future, is sinful from the start. Anger without a cause, by our Lord's words,
is absolutely wrong in every case.
There's no justifiable reason for it.
And that's the reason why those of us who are given to that kind of maybe grouchy tendency or whatever,
however you might want to define it, need to be very careful not to allow that temptation in our flesh,
in our Adamic nature, if you will, to lead us to be angry without any justifiable cause.
All such anger is sinful, okay? And that's where you find different passages of Scripture that,
where the Lord tells us that we need to avoid, we need to avoid anger, avoid anger, right?
But then let's look at the second one. The second one is anger with a cause, with a cause.
What do we do if the offense, the insult, the cause of our anger is real and is justified?
How many of you have experienced that kind of anger where you have had an actual scriptural reason? Someone
harmed you, someone offended you, someone insulted or someone did something that was obviously and
scripturally wrong to you and you were angry because of it. Has anybody experienced that?
How many of you would also say that has
happened in my family probably more times than I can count? Yeah. So often, you know, preachers,
you know, looking at myself, we talk about anger with other people, right, outside of our family,
but the real problem, the biggest issue is actually anger within our family
in that smallest ring I was talking about this morning.
So we often have anger for real causes, not just imagined causes, justified reasons.
So just because that anger persists and it becomes long-term anger,
because, you know, that anger persists and it becomes long-term anger. And of course, we know that bitterness is sinful, right? And we'll see that. You know that. I know that. We know the scriptures. We've seen them.
But just because it is sinful to be bitter and resentful and hold a grudge
does not mean that the original cause of that anger is illegitimate.
Sometimes, I would say even often, often,
a person who is bitter and resentful is bitter and resentful for a good reason.
In other words, originally, they were, someone harmed them. You know what? I want
to tell you something. You see that among, you know, that you have the recovering fundamentalist
movement. How many of you know what I'm talking about when I say that? You know, and I'm not,
I'm certainly not apologizing for those people because we know that's gone off the deep end.
However, we, those of you in this room, I know many of you know what it's
like, have been hurt by people, you know, in churches, preachers and such like that. You
have personally been hurt and people have wronged you. You know what that's like. So we're not saying,
look, if you're bitter, you just need to get right with God. And you know, well, you do need to get
right with God, but that doesn't negate the fact that your original complaint might be valid. And I'm not helping you by telling you
it's invalid. So I sympathize with people that have been hurt. You know, if you ever talk to
someone, some of you have probably have talked to people who are bitter at the Lord or bitter at
people, church people are bitter at,
you know, whatever. Some of you know what I'm talking about. You do them no good. I do them
no good if we try to explain it away and act like it wasn't a big deal. No, if they, listen,
if our church or any other church or church person or whatever did wrong to them, now, of course,
you're only hearing it from their side, but anyway, assuming that's the truth.
If that's wrong, then we ought to name,
yeah, that's wrong.
We ought to just say it.
Because really that's,
when you're dealing with somebody who is bitter,
we should, if they have justified reason,
we ought to say, no, that's wrong.
What happened, you should not have happened.
Right? God is not pleased with that.
Well, we're trying to protect our testimony.
Whose testimony are we trying to protect?
Our own.
Not the Lord's.
Because when something goes down that shouldn't go down and hurts people
and wrong is done and we try to hide it, we're doing it for our own testimony, for our own
reputation, not for the Lord's. The thing to do in that case for the Lord's testimony is to name
that thing and call it out and stand with the Lord
against that thing, right? Can I get an amen? That's what to do. And that's really the first
step to help somebody who is bitter to help them get past that. Because sometimes people are bitter,
but sometimes they just, they want to hear you say, yeah, yeah, you, they shouldn't have done that.
Yeah, they shouldn't have done that.
That's not right.
That's not right.
And in the context of a family, you think about the number, you know, every day, day in, day out, you live with someone.
You live with husbands and wives.
You live with children.
You know, children.
You live with parents.
You live with your siblings.
And you interact with them on a daily basis. And with much interaction comes many opportunities, just virtue of the sheer number of
times that you interact with them. There are so many ample opportunities for all of these little
and small and multitudinous wrongs to be left unresolved between people in a family, right?
These little nips, these little,
this is why you gotta be so careful
with how you speak to someone
because you don't know what they're thinking
on the other side.
But those things in a family,
just because of the sheer number of them,
they build because they're left unresolved.
And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Unresolved anger,
little small instances of unresolved anger
build into bitterness.
And sometimes we start to see patterns.
We start to feel like we're being targeted
by our own family members, right?
Sometimes we are.
But that can turn into long-term anger, bitterness.
This is the reality of living in a family.
I'll tell you something, Dad.
You need to be very aware of your family
and be the bishop, be the overseer of your family.
Be the one who is discerning
when you start picking up on that resentment
and that bitterness and intervene.
Mom, you need to do the same thing
when you see that when you're kids.
Don't let that thing go.
You start to see the roots of anger.
You start to see it roiling kind of under the
surface. Deal with that thing because it will turn into long-term anger. It will. Listen to these two
verses. You know these verses, but I'm going to read them because I want you to see what I'm
saying in the context of these verses. Ephesians 6, 4, in the context of the family,
says this, and ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Remember bitterness, long-term
anger, long-term wrath. Provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord. The warning, fathers, be careful. Don't make your kids bitter.
Don't make your kids bitter.
Don't provoke them to wrath.
Colossians 3.19 says this,
Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them.
Why would a husband be bitter against his wife?
The reality is it doesn't matter why he would be bitter against his wife.
It's just the fact that it's very, very possible
just due to the fact that you live with the woman every day of
your life. And the same is true with the woman. And when you interact so many times, so many times,
these little, you know, these little foxes start to spoil the tender vines. They start to build.
So the Lord says, in family, there's a real danger that bitterness builds within family members.
If you would look at Ephesians 4 now, Ephesians chapter 4, verse number 25.
Ephesians 4, verse number 25. Ephesians 4, verse number 25.
It says this,
Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor,
for we are members one of another.
Now, what verse 25 does, pay attention to it if you will, it introduces the relationship aspect of this.
So what we're talking about in verse 25 is we're talking about the relationship with other people, right?
You see that?
So that introduces kind of the context when we get to verse 26.
Verse 26 is not an island.
It occurs in this set of
verses that deal with our relationship with others. Verse 26. Be ye angry and sin not.
All right, first of all, I want you to see this. There is no command in this verse to not be angry. Do you see it? There is no command to not be angry. Anger is
permitted. Now, we know from Matthew, with a good cause, but it is permitted in this verse, verse 26.
So anger is not equal to sin in every case. But as we all know, very often we sin due to anger. Even though anger itself might not be a sin,
the Lord Jesus was angry as a human being, right? When he went into the temple and he looked upon
the Pharisees with anger. You remember reading that, you know? So, and I know the Lord's, I mean,
he's God. He can't say, I know all that. But as an example to us,
he did show that it is possible to be angry and not sin.
In this verse, the Lord is clearly telling us
not to allow our anger to lead us into sin,
even if that anger is justified.
Now, here's the danger.
The danger is when we're angry
and we feel like we have a good justification at
our back, sometimes we go ahead and we feel justified in going over the edge and sinning
and breaking God's commandments in pursuit of that anger. So we can say this,
So we can say this, if you're the one who has been wronged,
that is no excuse for you to sin against God due to the anger of that wrong.
See, be ye angry and sin not.
Now, let's keep reading. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the
devil. All right, obviously, and we'll see it in a minute, but obviously, Paul is saying in this
verse, you got to somehow, someway, I'm going to just kind of introduce this to you, but somehow,
someway, you've got to get rid of this anger. You see that?
Let not be angry and sin not.
Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,
neither give place to the devil.
So obviously he's saying you've got to get rid of the anger somehow, okay?
Do you know who is not mentioned in 26 and 7?
Who is not mentioned?
Any guesses?
The offender. So Paul is telling us, you got to get rid of this anger,
and no mention of the offender is in view at all.
So that means he's telling us to do something without any regard or respect to whether that
offender repents or doesn't, or whatever that offender, that person who has truly hurt you, whether they acknowledge it and confess it and ask forgiveness or not,
we still have to deal with anger. God's command, he says, let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
In other words, this idea, when the sun goes down upon something in scripture, what that's referring to is, okay, say you're cutting the grass, right? Good, good, good thing that, that is this time
of year we're doing often, right? You're cutting the grass and you got off work and you don't
really have a lot of time and you're cutting the grass. And while you're cutting in the process of
you cutting the grass, the sun goes down. That's what we're talking about here. So the idea is you're angry about something that perhaps is even legitimate.
And you're holding and harboring that anger until the day's end. Now here's the insidious little
tendency that we have. Here's what happens. We're angry about something
and sometimes it's justified and then we sleep on it. You know what happens when you sleep on anger?
The intensity of the emotion at its surface goes away
and it goes down underneath the surface. It does not go away.
Anger that is undealt with does not go away.
And for some reason, sleep has a way to bury things.
You wake up feeling like everything's good,
whatever about what happened yesterday,
but it's not dealt with.
It's still there.
It's just you can't see it and you don't feel it.
But it has not gone away.
It has not gone away.
So when the Lord says,
let not the sun go down upon your wrath,
there is no mention of,
there's no condition given for the response of the person who offended
you. The Lord expects us to put away anger. In fact, it says, if you will peek at verse number
31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor. That's an example of what I was telling
you, the connection in scripture between bitterness, anger, and wrath. Here's an example.
Bitterness and wrath
and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. You see that? All
bitterness put away from you. The Lord expects us to put away anger regardless of whether the
offending person apologizes or even acknowledges the wrong that he or she did. In other words, the Lord says
to me, Adam, put away the anger. But Lord, they didn't apologize. They didn't ask for forgiveness.
He says, put away the anger. But they haven't done anything to make it right. And that makes me mad.
make it right. And that makes me mad. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
There's no mention of the offender. You know, and you might be thinking, well, that's not fair.
That gives that wicked person a pass. No, it doesn't. But see, the Lord is concentrating on you and on me. His focus is on us because that's where the problem is going to start.
Notice verse number 27.
The Lord says, put away the anger, let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
And immediately following that command is a follow-up command that is connected to what's said in verse
26. Neither give place to the devil. This is a warning about opportunity given to the devil. In
other words, when we do not put away the anger, what we do is we provide an opportunity,
even if our anger is legitimate,
we provide an opportunity by harboring our anger
for the devil to get an advantage, to give place to him.
And once that anger,
you know, that day passes,
it sinks down a little bit deeper into your heart.
It's harder to get out at that point,
but it sinks down.
It's never dealt with.
It becomes long-term anger.
Long-term anger is the same as bitterness,
harbored anger, resentment.
Once that bitterness gets established in your heart, it does not only harm you,
but it now has the ability and the capacity to harm many others around you.
This is the way Satan gets an opportunity to harm others through you, your bitterness.
That's what the verse is saying.
We cannot give him the opportunity to harm us
and everyone around us
because we simply did not obey the Lord when He said,
let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
Put away your anger.
We'll come back to this passage in a minute.
Look at Hebrews chapter 12,
verse 14.
Hebrews 12, verse number 14.
Says this, follow peace with all men.
There's that relationship with others that's mentioned.
Follow peace with all men and holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord looking diligently.
This is how you follow peace. You follow peace by looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God and looking
diligently, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled.
A root. This is a root of bitterness that will spoil the peace mentioned in verse number 14.
Follow peace with all men.
Now, note, I want you to note that it is a root.
Now, those of you that are biologists and botanists among us, where are roots?
Under the ground, right?
They're under the ground. So when you look out, when you
look out at your lawn or when you look out at, you know, you look out at a garden, do you see the
roots? No, the roots are hidden. And this is called a root of bitterness. In other words, bitterness
is something, remember I told you, the sun goes down upon your wrath. That anger
is not fresh in your mind, but it's still there. It sinks down below the surface. So now you can't
see it, but it's there. You just can't see it. Just like the roots of the tree are there. You
just can't see them until you try to take it out. Now you got problems, right? So the root is there.
The problem with bitterness is once it's established,
it remains hidden and out of you,
growing in the heart of that person.
But notice what it says in verse 15.
Lest any root of bitterness springing up.
What is that?
The root's underground,
but now you have something popping out of the soil,
popping out of the sod. Now you have something you can see.
The root of bitterness has sprung up,
and it is troubling you, and thereby many be defiled.
So what inevitably happens is that bitterness,
which is in the heart, finds its way out,
and it hurts you, and it hurts me,
and it hurts everybody around you,
even though it was originally in your heart,
caused by perhaps a legitimate problem you had before
that was put down and never addressed.
It defiles, this verse says, many.
Notice it does not say it harms many or hurts many.
It says defiles.
So there's a spiritual element, a dirtiness, a sinfulness.
In other words, my bitterness,
once it springs up out of the ground where you can see it,
it will not only
hurt you and those around me, but it will also cause you to sin against God. It will harm your
relationship to God, even though you aren't the one who's bitter.
Listen to these verses.
You can note them.
We're not gonna turn to them for time.
Proverbs 15, 18.
A wrathful man stirreth up strife,
but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.
I want you to pay attention to two words,
strife and scorner. Proverbs 21, 24.
Proud and haughty scorner is his name who dealeth in proud wrath. This is kind of a quirky
verse. Who dealeth in proud wrath. God says, whoever deals in proud wrath is a proud and
haughty scorner. So there's pride and there's anger. In other words, that is describing a person who through pride will not deal
with the bitterness and the anger that's been there. I'm not doing it. I'm not. I'm just, no,
I ain't going to deal with it. No, it's their fault. That turns you into a scorner.
That turns you into a scorner.
Proverbs 29, 22.
An angry man stirreth up strife.
There it is again.
And a furious man aboundeth in transgression.
Proverbs 30, verse 33.
Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter,
and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood.
So the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.
Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth. The idea is it's there, hidden, latent. It's found a home.
It's staying put. Anger resteth in the bosom of fools. What these verses in Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes describe is the result of bitterness, which is scorning
and strife. You want to know why in your family you argue so much? It's because we saw this morning
there's a problem with love, but there's a second cause, which is bitterness. Bitterness produces
strife, and that strife harms everyone around you. Not just you, everyone around you.
You know who the person that's not harmed often is the person who actually hurt you.
As they say, one person says, bitterness is like poison that you drink and expect another person
to die. Another person says, bitterness does more harm to the container it's in
than it does to the thing you put it on. This is the way the devil gets an advantage. This is the way
the devil starts to hurt you and everybody around you,
hurt me and everybody around me when we're bitter.
And once the poison begins to spread,
the poison of bitterness to others,
there's no way to stop it.
The beginning of strife, remember that word,
is as one when one letteth out water.
Have you ever heard the old saying,
there's no use in crying over spilt milk?
Why do you say that?
Ain't nothing you can do to bring it back.
So it is, once that bitterness springs up
and it starts defiling, you can't fix it then.
There's no way to stop it.
And so God has given us a release valve, right?
God has given us a release valve.
He has provided a means to deal with anger
so it doesn't become bitterness.
I'm gonna read these verses to you.
Leviticus 19 verse 17 says this,
thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart.
Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor and not suffer sin upon him.
Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.
But thou shalt, here it is, love thy neighbor as thyself. That's familiar.
Matthew 18, verse 15. Moreover, if thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault
between thee and him alone. You see this? What do you see? Someone who has legitimately offended you and
sinned against you. That's what you see in this verse. This is not illegitimate. This is legitimate
cause for anger. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee,
then take with thee two or three more, one or two more rather, that in the mouth of two or three
witnesses, every word may be established.
Take a peek at Luke 17, if you would.
We're going back to Ephesians in just a minute.
Luke chapter 17,
verse three.
Take heed to yourselves.
If thy brother trespass against thee,
there's a legitimate cause for you to be upset,
for you to be angry.
Rebuke him.
And if he repent, forgive him.
Is this not something that we are just absolutely loath to do?
In our family, right? we'd rather bury it than to go to the person
and calmly and in a godly way say, you did this and it hurt me. You sinned against me.
You say, well, that makes me awkward.
That's okay.
You do it a few times and you won't be awkward anymore.
It's true.
When the Lord tells us to do this,
to go to the person who has offended us,
who has harmed us,
he's providing a safety mechanism.
When you're angry at someone, sometimes they have no idea
that they did anything to you. Well, they just did this,
they did that, and look at them, just acting like nothing happened.
It might be they don't even know what they did. You ever thought about that?
And so the Lord says, well, go to them.
Tell them their fault.
And if you go to that person, you're informing them,
you're letting them know you've been hurt
and that you're angry over it,
and you're providing an opportunity for them
to seek forgiveness.
Because not everybody knows how you feel
unless you tell them.
And I want to say this real quick as well. What we might do because we're so low to go to people and try to have a calm
conversation about it in a godly way, we just avoid the problem and we let it become bitterness.
And then we start to mistreat them as a way to let them know that something's wrong.
them as a way to let them know that something's wrong. That's not right. We're going to mistreat them to try to send the hint or the signal that they hurt us. No, no, no. The Lord's way is to go
to that person and say what the thing is. If the person apologizes and the person seeks forgiveness,
God's command is clear.
We must forgive that person, even 70 times seven,
because God, for Christ's sake, forgave us
when we sought his forgiveness, right?
Right?
when we sought his forgiveness, right?
Right?
But really, in that case, that's kind of the easy case, is it not?
Let's just be real.
You go to someone who hurt you, maybe they know, maybe they didn't.
But you go to them and you tell them the issue and they say,
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't know I did,
I was in a bad mood, I was walking in the flesh,
it wasn't right with God, whatever the case might be,
I don't have an excuse.
Will you please forgive me?
We are commanded innumerable times to forgive people in that case, right?
But that's the easy case.
What if the person denies any wrongdoing?
What if the person refuses to apologize?
What if the person honestly doesn't think they did anything wrong?
That's a little bit more difficult, is it not?
If that's the case, am I, as the one who is offended,
am I allowed then, because they refuse to repent
or they refuse to acknowledge the wrong,
am I then allowed to harbor anger at them?
Or is it just, I'm allowed to harbor it forever?
Because remember, long-term anger is bitterness and resentment, and it will hurt me.
And when it springs up, it'll hurt everybody around me.
It'll defile everybody around me. And when it springs up, it'll hurt everybody around me. It'll defile everybody
around me. That is not going to end well for me. So what does the Lord say? Going back
to Ephesians, if you would, this is where we'll finish up tonight. Chapter four. We see it in verse 26. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. And then we
see it again in verse 31. Let, you see that word? All. All means all. And that's all. All means,
right? Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you.
So the Lord says, listen, there's no exception given for a person who does not repent
or does not ask or seek forgiveness.
The Lord says, you've got to put the bitterness and anger and the wrath away.
You have to.
1 Timothy, I'm sorry, Psalm 37 verse 8.
Cease from anger and forsake wrath.
Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
Colossians three, verse eight.
But now ye also put off all these.
Anger, wrath, malice.
You see, here's what I want you to understand.
This is key. Please understand. This is key.
Please listen.
This is so important.
Bitterness is really about my relationship with God.
I know when someone has hurt you, especially when it's legitimate, that's all you can see, right?
It's right in your vision, and you can't see anything else but that, what that person has done to you.
But I challenge you to see this. Really, in truth, bitterness is about my relationship to God, not what that person did to me.
not what that person did to me.
Although this matter is affected by another person,
ultimately it is a matter between my Lord and me.
And the moment that God gives me a command,
he gives, remember, me a command, not them,
me a command to put away anger,
it then at that moment becomes a God and me thing,
not a me and they thing.
At that moment.
And that's exactly what he does.
See, we want to hold on to it, right? We want to hold on to anger until that person satisfies
whatever steps of reconciliation that we have laid down.
But the Lord says, no, he says, I love the way
Brother Stewart used to do this. He would say this, right here, look right here, right here. Remember
when he did that? I always liked when he did that. Because it's true. The Lord says, look at me,
look at me, right here. The Lord's saying, look up here. It's about me and you.
Forget about that for a minute. It's about me and you.
Forget about that for a minute.
It's about me and you.
1 Timothy 2 verse 8.
It says this.
I will therefore that men pray everywhere,
lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.
Those of you that are preparing a sermon,
one of these Wednesday nights, here's your message.
You have three prerequisites for prayer, godly prayer.
Number one, holy hands.
Number two, no wrath.
Number three, no doubting.
Look at the second one, without wrath.
You're going to pray to God, you can't be angry. You can't be bitter at people. You can't do it.
Notice what it's saying. Without wrath. It's talking about me, my prayer to God.
You see, if the other person who offended me, if their repentance and their seeking forgiveness is necessary for me to put away my bitterness,
then I can't be right with God until they do.
My rightness with my Lord is dependent upon what they do, and that can never be.
You can be right with God even though the issue has never been resolved.
You know that?
You can be right with God even though that person has never repented. You can, but you have to put away the anger and bitterness. You cannot, on the other hand, be right with God while you harbor bitterness.
It's not possible because the Lord specifically tells us to put it away.
So I can say this.
The putting away of anger and bitterness is entirely my problem.
Right?
It's a me problem.
Not a them, but a me. It's always been that way.
But that doesn't mean it's easy, especially when you have been hurt legitimately,
and that person actually hurt you and did wrongdoing it, obviously.
That does not mean it's easy to put away anger,
because it is not. But since when are the Lord's commands all easy? You know, he often gives us commands that are impossible for us to do because we then must rely upon his aid and his grace to do
them, else we cannot. It is impossible. And this is one that probably
is near the top of that list, is it not?
Many disciplines of the Christian life are hard to do.
It might be difficult for you to put away anger,
like the Bible says,
but you still must do it
or else you'll be at odds with your Lord.
You know, it might mean that you have to take this matter to God
over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Every time an angry thought comes up in your mind,
every time you thought you had it whipped
and it comes back up,
it might mean that you have to take it to God
every single time.
And you do that and you take that thing to prayer
and you say, God, you know what's in my heart.
I don't want it there and I've already repented
and I'm repenting again.
Lord, you've got to help me with this.
I don't want to be angry at this person.
I can't control what they do.
I can't control their disposition
or their willingness to change.
I can't control them.
But Lord, it's about me and you.
I must have your help.
And you do that over and over and over
and over and over and over
until finally one day you'll turn around and you'll realize
that you haven't gone to God about it because it's not there anymore.
And that's how it works.
It might take a lot more time than we expect.
It might take many more tears than we expect.
But again, it is about my relationship with God.
Period.
That's it.
Forgiveness is something different.
What I'm describing here is not forgiveness.
In scripture, forgiveness requires the repentance of the offender
so that that relationship can be restored.
But just because there can't be forgiveness, true forgiveness,
biblical forgiveness because of lack of repentance,
that doesn't mean we have to hold on to bitterness
and go down with the ship of bitterness as it sinks under us.
We don't have to. We don't have to.
We don't have to.
So I just want to ask you,
is there anyone in your life that you're angry at?
Is there anyone in your life at all that you're angry at?
Is there anyone in your family that you're angry at?
That's where it comes up more than anything,
more than anywhere else.
Between siblings, between children and their parents,
that's a big one.
It's a big one.
You know, I'm trying to quit here.
You know one of the reason parents that children sometimes have a really hard time with dealing with things when they get upset at you?
Is because your ears aren't open.
You ain't listening.
They're trying to tell you they're mad at you over something you did and you will not entertain it.
You will not humble yourself enough to be open for your kids to tell you that you hurt them
because you're the parent. You're the one in authority. Don't do that. Don't do that. You know,
sometimes I'm the one who is the offender. You know the best thing I can do to help a person
and aid a person from being bitter and keep them from being bitter, you know the best thing I can do
is to keep myself humbled and meek before God.
So when that person comes to me
and says those difficult things for me to hear,
I can say, I'm sorry.
I don't want to upset you.
I don't want to offend you.
That's the best thing I can do to keep you,
that's the best thing you can do
to keep the other from getting bitter
is to have a disposition
where you're ready to seek forgiveness
whenever something comes up.
So do you have anger toward anyone?
Do you have that long-term, that resentment
toward anybody at all in your life,
toward any family member in your life?
If you do,
when we, Brother Andrew's gonna come
and he's going to lead us in a song,
I challenge you, you can come down to the altar,
you can sit where you're at.
What I challenge you to do is talk to the Lord about it
and name that thing.
Don't hide, don't just listen to the song,
but go to the Lord in prayer and say,
Lord, you know what's in my heart.
I'm calling it out right now.
And if you give me grace when this service is over,
I'm gonna deal with it.
If I have to go to that person,
I'm gonna go to that person.
I'm gonna deal with it. If I have to go to that person, I'm gonna go to that person. I'm gonna deal with this issue.
And whether that person receives it or not,
whether they ask for forgiveness or not,
I'm gonna go to the Lord and get victory
over this anger that's been in my heart.
Would you pray with me?