Now, let me ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me once again to Hebrews chapter 12. The author of the book of Hebrews is writing to Christians who are enduring what he says in chapter 10, a hard struggle with sufferings. And let's be honest, suffering hurts. What an obvious statement, right? But we may not be aware or may not be conscious of the fact that suffering can actually be spiritually precarious. Jewish believers who are addressed in this book of Hebrews, they were struggling. They were under pressure from unconverted friends and family members and from the culture itself. Just come back to the fold. And that pressure was intense, and in chapter 10 we read of the afflictions that they endured. You might look back in chapter 10 verse 32, he says, but recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. And then he tells about what some of that looked like. He says, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. In other words, you weren't the direct target, but you were there alongside, you were partners with those who were. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. So, the writer is saying earlier in your Christian experience, you endured such a hard struggle with sufferings with a confidence and a joy that you don't seem to have any longer. Over time, for some reason, this experience has worn you down and your endurance has begun to wear thin. And there were some who were tempted to fall away and just go back to the fold of Judaism. And let's be very honest here. If you don't know this principle, it's very true. Suffering can produce a longing just to make it stop hurting. And that longing for relief can be so overwhelming you will do almost anything. and you may find yourself tempted to serious compromise. As I said before, suffering and struggling can be spiritually precarious. Over and over as we read through the book of Hebrews, we see these warnings, do not fall away, continue to endure, to persevere, do not abandon the confidence you have in Christ. Those warnings were not just important for first century Jewish believers, they're important for 21st century American believers. So chapter 21 begins with this call, as we read, to run with endurance the race that's marked out before us, looking to that great cloud of witnesses, these Old Testament saints who could tell us, they could testify, yes, God is faithful. He was faithful to us. He'll be faithful to you as well. And then we're told, fix your eyes on the Lord Jesus, our great high priest, the founder and the perfecter of our faith. And then he provides a biblical perspective on the strugglings and the sufferings they had endured. He says, regard these as the discipline coming from a loving Heavenly Father. Verse 5 says, do not regard lightly. In other words, don't despise the discipline of the Lord. In verse 6, he says, the Lord disciplines those whom He loves. It's an expression of His love, not of His displeasure. Verse seven tells us that discipline requires endurance. In other words, it's difficult. You don't learn endurance when things are easy. You only learn endurance when there's something to endure. You only learn to persevere when your patience and your strength is tried. And the purpose of this fatherly discipline, verse 10 tells us, is for our good. It's that we might share in His holiness. But I want you to notice in verse 11, there's this very important phrase, and it's very easy to pass over. He says, for the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. And we can focus on painful and pleasant and miss that for the moment. And the reality is we are all wired for immediate gratification or to long for immediate comfort. My flesh cries out for immediate relief. The world is pressing in on us for the immediate while the writer here and the Word of God is pressing on us to embrace an eternal perspective. That longing that is in our hearts just to make the pain go away can lead us to compromises in our faith that can be disastrous. Because remember, it was their faith in Jesus. That's why they were suffering such reproach. That's why people hated them. So if I just leave that aside, quit seeking the Lord Jesus, maybe the pain will stop. Maybe people will quit being mean to me. For the moment, there may be relief. But as we saw in chapter 11, the saints are called to take an eternal perspective that he's preparing for us a city not made with hands. He's preparing for us eternal joy, the joy set before Him. Jesus endured the cross, that for the moment agony. And now He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God and He says, we too will know His glory. So if we consider what is God trying to accomplish in my life, that gives us incentive, gives us motivation to endure. So that's the context in which we find these verses 15 to 17 instructions. And I want you to see, I've got four points here. The first is a renewed warning against apostasy. a renewed warning against apostasy. And we find numerous warnings throughout Hebrews, warning against falling away, so I call it a renewed warning. But secondly, in verse…second part of the fifth, verse 15 is a warning against a root of bitterness, warning against a root of bitterness. And then thirdly, We're gonna look at a couple of conditions that lead to bitterness in verse 16, and then finally, verse 17, 16 and 17, the bitter example of Esau, all right? Now, I'm drawing heavily this morning in my perspective on bitterness from a book by Dr. Steve Vires, he's the pastor of Faith Church in Lafayette, Indiana, they have a very large biblical counseling ministry, very influential across the landscape of our country in biblical counseling. And his book is called Overcoming Bitterness, Moving from Life's Great Hurts, Greatest Hurts to a Life Filled with Joy. And he unpacks what the Scriptures teach about bitterness in ways I've not seen before, and I found it very, very helpful. So I'll be referring to him a couple of times. So first of all, there's this warning here, this renewed warning against apostasy. In verse 15, just the first part, he says, See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. There is a danger here he's warning us about that people who profess faith in Christ could actually fail to obtain God's grace. And you might say, well, what does that even mean? There are some, maybe even here this morning, sitting under the preaching of the Word. Maybe you have publicly professed faith in Christ. Maybe you've been baptized. Maybe everybody in your circle of friends says, this is a devout believer. And yet, in your heart, there is a heart of unbelief. You have not yet embraced Jesus Christ truly as Lord and Savior. You have not obtained the grace of God. Even though by every appearance, it looks like you have. Now, we don't believe a real Christian can fall away. He will hold us. Nothing can snatch us out of His hand. There are people who have tasted the heavenly gift we read in Hebrews 6, and they give every appearance of true conversion, and yet they're not converted. Like Judas Iscariot, who by all appearances for three years appeared to be a true disciple of Jesus, and yet he was not converted. And so be very careful. See to it that no one fails to obtain that grace. Now, one of the means that the Lord uses to keep real Christians persevering is these very warnings. It's not that we're to live in insecurity or crave and fear, oh no, what if I fall away? What if I'm not really a Christian? He doesn't want us to live with in doubt, He wants us to live with confidence. But He wants us to recognize there are dangers about, and take those dangers very seriously, so that we'll keep watch over our souls. So we'd be on guard against the wiles of the enemy, that we don't give in to the pressures that are all around us and even some inside of us that would threaten our faith, that we recognize these pressures for what they truly are. But I want you to see also that in this verse 15, he says, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. It's a corporate responsibility. The word translated, see to it, it's one word, it literally means Oversee, it's the word that is used, the noun form is used for an overseer or a bishop, episkopos. And the writer's not addressing strictly pastors and elders here, he's addressing all the believers. See, as pastors, elders, we have the primary responsibility to keep watch over your souls. And we take that seriously, we at times do it better than others, but it's a serious responsibility, we get that. But what we find here is that every single one of us has that responsibility. Every single one of us are to be watching. There's a mutual watchfulness, a mutual encouragement, a mutual stimulating one, spurring one another on to love and to good deeds. We're all called to be looking out for one another. We shouldn't have that indifferent attitude that Cain reveals when he says, am I my brother's keeper? And the answer is yes, you are. We're one another's keepers, and we're members of one another. And the New Testament tells us that we're to love one another at least 10 times, maybe more. We find a very specific command, love one another. We find the commands to greet one another, to welcome one another, make sure no one is overlooked. We're to show honor to one another, to make sure no one feels insignificant. We're to forgive one another so offenses don't drive wedges. into the fellowship and people end up departing. We're to pray for one another. We're to teach and admonish one another with wisdom, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. It's not just you and Jesus meeting together and singing, but we are to admonish one another. There's something corporate going on, mutual as we sing. We're to consider how to stir one another up to love and good deeds. We're to comfort one another in the midst of whatever struggles. they may endure, that we may observe in each other's lives. We're to encourage one another, to build one another up, to exhort one another daily so that no one will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And those commands come to the body of Christ, not just your pastors, not just your elders, not just your Sunday school teachers, not just mom and dad. It's every one of our responsibility. So we have this renewed warning. to against apostasy, and the way you fulfill that mutual obligation will have a huge impact on your brother or sister's spiritual health. But secondly, we have a warning here against a root of bitterness. Verse 15, we're to see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, and that see to it governs the second clause, so essentially see to it. that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled." Now, the language of this root of bitterness that we find in here, defiling many, it's drawn, it's borrowed from Deuteronomy 29 verse 18. The children of Israel were preparing to go into the promised land. They'd been wandering the desert for 40 years, and now Moses is getting them ready. Final instructions, and he says to them, beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations, the ones they're going in to occupy. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit. Now, in Deuteronomy, the attraction, the danger was idolatry, these false gods of the land. And the roots of unbelief can lead to a wandering heart and produce a poisonous fruit that would spread to many, and it did. It did. People's idolatry and their rebellion, their abandoning of faith didn't remain localized, it didn't remain contained. It was like, it was like a pandemic of unbelief and idolatry that broke out among the children of Israel. It defiled many. But here in chapter 12, the root of bitterness he's referring to that can spring up and cause trouble, he's not talking about false gods and idolatry here. He's talking about something different. But the effect can be the same. Many can become defiled. It rarely stays contained. So what is this root of bitterness that we're warned against? Well, your life is like a tree, all right? We're all like trees. And trees bear fruit. And so the fruit that your life bears are your works and your words. And you might bear good fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and so forth. You might speak words of encouragement and graciousness. But we can also bear bad fruit of unbelief, of bitterness, envy, strife, malice, and any number of other grievous sins. The fruit that's being born gives us a very, very important indication of what's going on beneath the surface, the root. So the fruit is visible, the root is hidden. It's not visible. And your heart is that root. It is the wellspring from which everything in your life comes. It's the control center of your life. It's the place where your beliefs, what you believe and your desires, what you want reside. And what you believe and what you desire have powerful influence on what you do. So, the root of the issue is what matters. Focusing on the fruit, the fruit just tells you whether there's a problem or not. The root is what you need to deal with in order to solve the problem. We need to uproot. And if the root is bad, it's going to produce all manner of bad fruit. So what goes on in your heart, hear me, what goes on in your heart determines the very course of your life. It's the control center. It's the seat of what you want and what you believe. That's where your desires, your longings, your convictions. Your opinions, all those things reside and come out from your heart. And what you want and what you believe determines the way you respond to everything in your life, whether they're trials and temptations, blessings, and benefits. What you want and you believe interact with your experience and determine how you respond. And so, here in this context of Hebrews 12, the believers, these Jewish believers are enduring struggle and suffering. And if their hearts are controlled by wrong desires, by unbelief, you can be sure there's trouble ahead. It's important that we have a good understanding. What does the Bible teach about bitterness? Bitterness of the heart, an embittered heart is toxic. In Ephesians chapter four, Paul is telling us to put off the characteristics of the old man and put on the garments of godliness of the new man. And he says in chapter four, verse 31 and 32, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. That's what you put off. And then be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Steve Vires, in his book, defines an embittered heart this way. He says, the seething and unresolved anger rooted in unbelief because of the pains and disappointments of life were not processed through the lens of God's eternal plan and purpose. So there's four elements here. First of all, there's a seething and unresolved anger. This is not right. Anger makes a moral judgment, by the way. What's going on is wrong. And it makes a personal judgment. And it matters to me. That's wrong, and it impacts me in a negative way, and I don't like it. And there's a volitional element to it, and I need to do something about it. Jesus walked into the temple, and he saw them buying and selling. He said, this is wrong. They're defiling my father's house. So he drove them out. Was it an act of anger? You bet it was. Was it sinful anger? Absolutely not. Jesus didn't sin. So there can be a righteous indignation that leads us to godly obedience, sometimes moving us to do what we really kind of put off doing, But if our assessment is incorrect, that's wrong when it's really not. Think about a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. What's he doing? He's saying, what your mom, dad telling you to do is wrong when it's not. Is this assessment correct or is it not correct? But there's this anger over that assessment of the circumstances of your life, and it's rooted in unbelief. I don't believe God is in control of this entire situation and has good plans and purposes for me, even in this painful trial that I'm enduring. But then I want you to see it's rooted, it's a response to the pain and disappointment of life. It's real. You might call it bitter circumstances. See, our hearts interact with these bitter circumstances. It's like a tree, the sun beats down on it, the heat beats down on it. And if it's not receiving the water in the roots, eventually whatever fruit is there is going to wither. How we interact with the heat and the hardship and the trials of our circumstances is going to say a whole lot about our hearts. So, this seething, unresolved anger that's rooted in unbelief, responding to the pain and disappointment of life that is not processed through the lens of God's eternal plan and purposes. We say, we're Reformed Baptists. We believe God is sovereign in all things. That is our professed theology. But what is your functional theology? What determines how you actually live? Do you process the pains and trials and struggles of this life through the grid of God's sovereignty and God's goodness and God's fatherly love for you that He's disciplining you? And it's not pleasant, it's painful, but it's going to yield a fruit of righteousness in the end. Therefore, I can endure it and even be grateful to God for His wisdom and His faithfulness. That's what it means to take the hardships and trials of life and filter it through, process it through the lens of His eternal plan and purposes. But if we don't do that, then we're gonna find ourselves spiritually adrift. Now, the seething anger can be focused on people who bring hardship into your life, people who hurt you. And you might start out with a red hot anger. I'm fit to be tied, right? But over time, that heat can dissipate, and you can find yourself left with cold resentment and bitterness. That's why it's so important, as Paul says, that we don't let the sun go down under our anger, we deal with it right away. That doesn't mean we vent it in rage, we want to get under control, but we don't let it seethe, we don't let it fester, we don't let it, the infection and the gangrene of bitterness and resentment spread in our hearts and possibly spread to others as well. Resolve matters quickly. Ted Dibb, years ago in a Sunday school class, I was talking about bitterness and Ted said, bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill the other person. Never forgotten that, hit the nail on the head. Ted later told me that wasn't original with him, he heard it on a radio preacher. That's fine, I'll still give him credit. But bitterness can be directed at people who hurt us, or maybe we think hurt us, but they didn't really. But bitterness can also be directed to the Lord, and that's even more dangerous. In verse five, we can regard lightly, or we can despise, resent the discipline of the Lord. Hear this, every one of us is an interpreter. Now what do I mean by that? Adam and Eve were told, You can eat of any tree in the garden and they're all wonderful. There's just one you can't eat of because if you eat of that tree on that day, you'll die. So Satan comes along and goes, you know, God doesn't want you to eat of that tree because he's stingy. It's not that God has been abundantly kind and generous to give you all of this garden and all these other trees. This one tree, he knows if you eat of that, you'll be like him. and he's stingy, he's holding out on you. Satan put a new interpretation, a false interpretation on the command of God, and Adam and Eve yielded and they sinned. We interpret life through the lens of our own desires and our own beliefs. So if you truly believe God is for me, God is good, God is wise, God is my father, God is disciplining me according to His good, that is the lens that's going to help you interpret whatever hardships come into your life. If you truly long to be more holy and more like Christ, when James tells us that the testing of our faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result that you might be mature and complete, lacking nothing, and your heart longs to be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. Like Paul says, I want to know Christ and even share in His sufferings if that's what it takes. then you're gonna respond to affliction and pain in a very particular way. But if you live for comfort, and if you only believe the goodness of God when you're enjoying His providences, and then you're crossed by things that don't seem to fit your perspective of what God ought to be doing, that's going to powerfully impact how you respond. You won't respond in faith, and you won't respond in humble obedience. You can wrongly conclude, God has abandoned me. God has not kept his promise. God is not for me after all. He's not faithful. Maybe he's not even there. Rather than emulating the saints who through faith and patience, some over decades, inherit the promises, our faith, we abandon our faith and we become impatient with God and even angry with God. There are those who say, it's okay to be angry with God. He's big enough, he can take it. Well, okay, what's the first assessment of anger? What is going on is wrong. Now, there may be sin against you that someone else is doing, but God is not the author of evil. So to be angry with God over anything coming into your life is out of place. It really is. In verse 16, we're warned not to be unholy like Esau. That word unholy means profane, means irreligious, sacrilegious. And the idea that I can be angry with God and accuse Him of doing something that is wrong is unholy, it's profane, it's irreligious. We can cry out, in fact we see over and over again, and I'll show you this in a moment, we can cry bitterly to the Lord about the agony and the grief and the sorrow and the hardship we endure, but we can't charge God with wrongdoing. In Job, he was given a word of his children's death, and all of his riches and wealth was gone. He tore his clothes, he fell on the ground, and he worshiped, and he said, the Lord's given, the Lord's taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised. And Satan said, okay, you won round one, but if you afflict him, you, give him physical suffering, he'll deny you your face. And God said, you can do whatever you want to, but you can't kill him. And so Job is stricken with the most grievous boils. I just think of, he's sitting on this ash heap, scraping the boils with broken shards of pottery. How agonizing and awful that sounds. And his wife says, Job, why are you holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die. And Job says, shall we accept good from God and not evil? And it says, in all of this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. See, we can't charge God with wrongdoing. We can't be angry with God. We can cry out in despair and bitterness of heart and say, Lord, I don't understand. Lord, if you don't help me, I'm not going to make it. But there's not a place that says it's okay to be angry with God. That's unholy. That's irreligious. Now the Bible speaks of a bitterness that's not sinful. Life experiences are described sometimes as bitter. In Genesis 49, Jacob is on his deathbed, and he calls all of his sons in, and he prophetically speaks a blessing over each one of what they might encounter, or he speaks to their past. And when he comes to Joseph, he says something very interesting. He says, the archers bitterly attacked him and shot at him and harassed him severely. And he goes on and commends Joseph for not succumbing to those attacks. Well, who are the archers that attacked him bitterly? It was his 10 of his brothers who sold him into slavery. And they're all standing there going, oh man. But they attacked him bitterly. And yet Joseph never became bitter. He told them, you intended it for evil. He wasn't denying the reality, but God intended it for good, for the saving of many lives. It was a bitter and painful experience, but he was not embittered by it. In Exodus chapter 1, it describes the slavery of the children of Israel in Egypt. And it says that in Exodus 1, 13, they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter. with hard service. And that's the reason the Passover meal included bitter herbs, because God wanted them to remember the bitterness from which they had been delivered. It wasn't, you know, that's all in the past, just forget about it. I want you to remember what you have been delivered from, not that you go back and replay the bitterness and revel in it and become embittered, but to grow in greater gratitude for the greatness of God's grace and deliverance. Every year, Passover, you start your Passover meal with bitter herbs. Numerous times, we see the people of God wept bitterly before the Lord, not with embittered hearts, angry at God, but just the bitterness and the sorrow just oozed out of them. In 1 Samuel, you remember chapter 1, Hannah is married to this really, really intuitive, wise, sensitive husband. And he has two wives actually, Hannah and Penina. And Penina has children, Hannah cannot have children. And she's grieved over that and her sensitive, wise, intuitive husband says, am I not more to you than 10 sons? No, you're not. And gentlemen, you and I cannot possibly understand the grief a woman wrestling with infertility experiences. It absolutely goes to the very core of her soul. The best analogy I've ever heard is chronic unemployment, where day after day, week after week, month after month, you go for interview after interview, and every week, every time, it's a rejection. And it eventually just wears at your soul. That is the best analogy I've been able to see to a woman wrestling with infertility, or as it's called in 1 Samuel, barrenness. And so we see in chapter one that Hannah and her husband and Peninnah go to the temple in Jerusalem. And it says, Hannah was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. She wasn't shaking her fist at God. She was begging and pleading for mercy out of a heart that was weeping bitterly. There's a bitterness of soul that's not sinful. It's just deeply, deeply grieved. It's important we recognize that. In the book of Ruth, when Naomi, at the beginning of the book, Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, I believe, and their two sons go from a famine in Israel to Moab where there's food. And while they're there, the two sons get married to Moabitess women. And for some reason, we don't know, the husband and the two sons die. And Naomi's brokenhearted. But it's interesting, she doesn't abandon the Lord and say, forget that, I'm not going back there. She returns. She returns to Israel, the people of God. She returns to the Lord. But when she comes back, they call her Naomi, and she said, don't call me Naomi. I think that means blessed. She says, call me Mara, which means bitter, because she says, the Lord, the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. Now, you go into the book and he deals abundantly graciously with her and she's restored, her joy is restored, but she was experiencing a bitterness of soul that was not necessarily sinful, it's just the reality that bitterness of life really, really hurts. She was experiencing crushing grief, but again, she still came back to the people of God. Now, we said earlier, we're all interpreters, right? We're trying to make sense of life around us. And if we interpret these bitter, painful experiences of life with unbelief and through the grid of what we want and what we think we deserve, we're going to be embittered. And it's going to be like a poison that eats away at our souls. One writer named Lee Strobel says this, he says, acrid bitterness inevitably seeps into the lives of people who harbor grudges and suppress anger. And bitterness is always poison. It keeps your pain alive instead of letting you deal with it and get over it. Bitterness sentences you to relive the hurt over and over. Have you ever repeated in your mind, replayed that video of someone offending you, of some hard thing, and just over and over, you just brood over it, you just nurse that pain, and it just stays alive. rather than laying it before the Lord and getting his healing and his help. There was a lady in my church, older lady, a dear, sweet, godly woman, who used to tell us, and she experienced some sorrows in her life, she said, trials can make you bitter or better. That's easy to remember. Trials can make you bitter or better. And the difference is, are you gonna respond in faith Are you going to submit and humbly depend on the Lord and wait on Him? He's saying, I will wait for you on your word, I will rely. Or are you going to respond in unbelief and demand immediate relief or else? Will your trials make you bitter or will they make you better? Or will God make you better through them? There are two conditions. Let me say this before I get there. Your expectations determine your response. Expectations don't determine outcome. but they do determine your response. Your expectations are an expression. What do you believe? What do you believe that you deserve? What do you want? That's your expectations. And what you expect is going to determine the way you respond to the trials and hardships of life. And if you expect that in this life, you will experience afflictions and God will use those for your good, that's going to produce one kind of response. But if you expect heaven on earth, The prosperity gospel, health, wealth, if you expect an easy, trouble-free life, you're going to be sorely, and I would say bitterly, disappointed. Well, there are two conditions here in verse 16 that lead to bitterness. And again, it's a continuation of the command, see to it, verse 15, then to 16, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau. We'll consider the case study of Esau a bit more in a moment, but I want you to see there's first a warning against sexual immorality. And then you might say, now, wait a minute. He hasn't been talking about sexual immorality anywhere in the book of Hebrews yet. It just seems to pop up here. What's the deal? Well, sexual immorality is a pervasive temptation. It was then, it is now. And we've been talking about the heart, the control center. What we believe and what we long for, what we desire, those desires that demand immediate gratification can drive us into all manner of sexual immorality. And so, he says, see to it that none of you live in the clutches of pornos, that's the word, the Greek word. The word pornography, graphe means to write, to depict. So it's the depiction of sexual immorality, that's what pornography is. See to it that it's not part of your life. Last week I told the young singles, you need to be holy. And part of what being holy looks like is maintaining integrity and purity. And the culture around us says, if you're in love, you're gonna get married anyway, why not go ahead and move in together, why wait? That's what the culture says, and people see nothing wrong with it. And I see Christians who are doing that very thing because they bought into that lie. We're gonna get married anyway. James says, no, do not boast that you're gonna do anything tomorrow. You don't know if you're gonna be alive tomorrow. All such boasting is evil. Rather say, if the Lord wills, we will live and then do this or that. And if you have that perspective, you're not gonna compromise on obedience. When I do premarital counseling with young couples, it's one of the things I talk about frequently, guarding your heart against impurity, making sure that you reach the finish line with integrity because the temptations are so very powerful. But if the heart is in the grip of impure passion, it desires whatever they may be. It may be nearly impossible to respond to trials with genuine faith and obedience. So be careful of what has a grip on your heart. Secondly, there's a warning against unholiness. That sexual immorality points to your desires. Unholiness points to your beliefs or the attitudes of your heart. Remember, that word that is translated unholy can mean irreverent. or profane. It's the result of unbelief. It's a failure to believe in God, to trust in God, to believe in God as He has revealed Himself in Holy Scripture. Rather, so many people believe in a God of their own making. I read this week, a man said, a good question to ask a person who says they don't believe in God is, tell me about the God you don't believe in, because it's likely that I don't believe in that God either. They don't understand who He is. But an unholy attitude is going to justify all manner of sinful responses. Did you hear that? An unholy attitude, what would you expect? It will justify all manner of sinful responses. The root's bad, and so the fruit is going to be inevitably bad as well. and that embittered heart. How do you think I'm supposed to respond? What do you expect when this person did that to me? Or what do you expect when God has let me down the way he has? Do you see how that unholy, that irreverent attitude poisons the well? Steve Byers says there are two principles essential to avoiding bitterness of heart. First of all, he says, God delights in placing us in unusual, unexpected, and uncomfortable situations and then asking us to trust His Word. The testing of your faith produces endurance. Trusting His Word, His character, and His plan. In other words, He's disciplining us. God delights to discipline His children. He disciplines those He loves. And we see this principle acted, carried out in much of Hebrews 11 where the saints are placed in these very difficult circumstances in which they must trust God, in which they must walk by faith and not by sight and not by feeling. Even when they could not see what He was up to, they trusted in His Word, His character, His promises, and His plan. And sometimes it took years or even decades to see the end result, but they combined faith and patience. And as a result, they inherit the promises. So that's the first principle. God delights in placing us in unusual, unexpected, and uncomfortable situations and asking us to trust His Word, His character, and His plan. Secondly, God's ways and plans often are completely different from what we might have wanted or thought on our own. In other words, God does not march by your agenda or your expectations. He blows that wide open. and guides us in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. He disciplines us for our good, even though it is not pleasant, but often painful. And the reason is that we might share in His holiness. That doesn't mean when a trial comes in your life, you go, oh, I know exactly what God is trying to accomplish right now. You may not know the reason in one sense. You know some of the biblical purposes. And that's where to focus on. There may be specific reasons, like Job had no idea there was this cosmic challenge where Satan says, you afflict Job, you take away the blessings, he'll curse you to your face. Job had no idea that was going on. And sometimes we're in the dark. His ways are mysterious. William Cooper, hymn writer that wrote many, many, many hymns that we're familiar with. He wrote the hymn, God Moves in a Mysterious Way. And Cooper wrestled with mental illness. He wrestled with depression. He tried to commit suicide numerous times. He was a troubled and tormented soul. But he came under the oversight, the care of John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, the faithful pastor. He received good teaching and instruction. It didn't take all the hardship away, but it helped him to filter it through truth. And he wrote this, he said, God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps on the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep and unfathomable minds of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will. God knows what He's doing, even though you can't see it. He says, judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan His work in vain." In other words, we're interpreters. And if our interpretation is based on blind unbelief, we are not going to figure out what God's doing. We'll scan His work in vain. God is His own interpreter. He will make it plain. It's true that God's ways and God's plans are often very different from what we might have wanted or thought of because His goals and purposes for us are infinitely higher and greater than anything we could ever conceive. So we need to learn, hear me, we need to learn to interpret those mysterious providences, those things that don't seem to make sense to us, those things we do not understand, interpret them in light of His revealed Word and not by how we feel. or what our culture tells us is fair. Now, a responsive faith is gonna prevent bitterness from sprouting up and infecting our hearts and lives. Peter says this in 1 Peter 2, he points us to the very example of Jesus Christ. For to this you've been called, 1 Peter 2, 21, for to this you've been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. I urge you, commit that to memory. He was reviled, didn't revile in return. He suffered, he didn't threaten. He said, Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. He continued to entrust himself to his father. My father will make it right. I don't have to deal with it. I don't have to worry about it. He could cast himself on the wise and faithful providence of God. We see the same reaction of faith in King David. And this is, if you've never studied this passage, it might take you by surprise. David, as king of Israel, endures a rebellion at the hands of his own son, Absalom. And Absalom seizes the throne and drives David out of Jerusalem. And so David and his servants and his mighty men are in this entourage of defeat and discouragement, leaving Jerusalem, probably dragging their feet along the way. And this man named Shimei comes out. Shimei was of the house of Saul who had been king before David. But you remember through his unbelief, his disobedience, Saul forfeited the throne and God says, I'm going to take it away from you and give it to another. So Shimei comes out while David and his mighty men are retreating, and he cursed them, and he threw stones at them. And 2 Samuel 16 tells us, Shimei said as he cursed, get out, get out, you men of blood, you worthless man. The Lord has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul. in whose place you have reigned. And the Lord has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, your evil is on you, for you are a man of blood." Talk about kicking a man when he's down. This is decades after David had taken the throne. And that anger has been seething inside of Shimei all this time. He was bitter that David had become the king rather than the throne remaining in the family, the dynasty of Saul. Bitterness clouds our judgment. It often causes us to confuse important details. He didn't seem to realize that God had taken the throne away from Saul because of Saul's disobedience and ungodliness. He's blaming David as a usurper, which is totally false. And so one of David's mighty men, Abishai, says, David, should I go cut his head off? I want you to notice what David says. This is absolutely astounding. Discouraged, defeated, deposed. David says, what? And the king says, what have I to do with you, sons of Zeruiah? That's Abishai. He had a brother and Zeruiah was their father. If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, curse David, who then shall say, why have you done so? And David said to Abishai and all his servants, behold, my own son seeks my life. How much more now may this Benjamite leave him alone and let him curse for the Lord has told him to. It may be the Lord will look on the wrong done to me and the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing today. There's a little pamphlet. Some of you have seen a little pink pamphlet. We have stacks of them called Refuse to Look at Second Causes. We can be so fixated on those who bring evil into our lives and not recognize that God is sovereign over everything. including those who would attack us. They have to pass through His sovereign hand. So David looks at the Lord and says, perhaps this is what God is up to, but I'm going to leave it with Him. It's an amazing contrast. Here Shimei is, he's embittered against David because of a response of unbelief. He did not understand what God's purpose was and God's reason for taking the throne away from King Saul. He didn't know that Saul had forfeited the kingdom and that God had then given it to David. And his bitterness festered for decades. And then David has a response of faith, not unbelief. He is entrusting himself to him who judges justly. And brothers and sisters, when we understand God is sovereign over all of your circumstances, the ones that are unpleasant and even unfair, The ones that are false, those false accusations. Jesus said they'd come. Even our most bitter and painful circumstances, we can rest in the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God. Those things that make absolutely no sense to us and trouble our souls, we can find rest in God alone. He is wise and faithful, and that understanding, that resting in His sovereign goodness and will is a powerful antidote to bitterness. And even when people intentionally, maliciously, commit evil against you, we can say, my God, we'll make it right. And when that happens and you're like, how am I supposed to do that? Think of David with Shimei. Think of Jesus. He left an example that we're to follow in the steps. He enables us to do so by his grace. So here we come back to these Jewish believers. They were tempted not to combine faith and patience with those afflictions they were enduring. They longed for immediate relief from their trials, even to the point of being tempted to abandon their faith. Remember Psalm 73, it's a powerful, important psalm. Every Christian should know it. He says, I envied the wicked when I saw their prosperity. It's like, this isn't fair, and he goes on and says, surely in vain I've kept my heart pure. In other words, it doesn't pay to serve God. And the Jews addressed in Hebrews, and you and I at times, can fall for this as well. Is it really worth it to serve the Lord Jesus? And God adjusts his perspective and he comes to understand their end and realizes that that's not gonna last, that eternal perspective makes it all clear. But he says this, it was just up on the screen. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was like a brute beast. I was brutish and ignorant, like a beast before you. Bitterness of soul, a heart that's embittered, that's confused by unbelief and misinterpreting the providence of God, we're not thinking straight, and we're not acting straight. There's a craving for immediate gratification or immediate relief, and that can lead to an embittered soul. And brothers and sisters, that's a dangerous condition. So we've looked at this renewed call. warning against apostasy, and a warning now against this root of bitterness. And we talked about some conditions that might lead to bitterness, unrestrained desires, unregulated heart. But finally, just for a few moments, let's look at this bitter example of Esau. He was See that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. Steve Vires calls Esau the poster boy for bitterness. He says that Esau is perhaps the saddest and the most godless person in the Bible outside of Jesus Iscariot. Tragic figure. He was the firstborn of Isaac. The expectation is the firstborn is the primary inheritor, but God had said the older is going to serve the younger. Now, was he sexually immoral? It doesn't tell us that anywhere in the Bible that he was. It does tell us he married two Hittite wives and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca. but it focuses in on His unholiness. He treated that which was sacred as something common. He sold His birthright for a single meal. Kids, you may not be, what's a birthright? It's that primary blessing and that inheritance that goes to the firstborn. And that's a big deal, and it was a particularly big deal because Esau was the firstborn in the line of Abraham. Abraham, Isaac, and now he's next. And God had made a covenant with Abraham that was transferred to Isaac, and he would be next. And so Esau comes in from hunting one day, and Jacob has this delicious bowl of red stew, and Esau's exhausted, he's famished. He says, give me some of your red stew. And Jacob, ever the opportunist, They were twins, and he was born just a moment after Esau. In fact, he was born holding onto Esau's ankle. And Jacob said, I'll give you some soup if you give me your birthright. And Esau's like, you know what? If I die, the birthright doesn't help me anyway, so why not? He despises the significance of that birthright. His twisted desires for immediate gratification skewed his understanding of how bad the situation was. He wasn't about to die. He was hungry. But he was so ruled by his appetite, he despised that which should have been of inestimable significance. And he goes, sure, why not? That special inheritance. was no longer Esau's. That covenantal promise, he forfeited for a bowl of stew. Treated it like it was nothing. It was unholy. It was common. Later in chapter 27, Isaac tells Esau, I'm near death, I wanna give you my blessing, so I want you to go and kill some game and come back, fix me the kind of meal that is delicious that I really like. And so Esau takes off to go do that. And he says, and then I'll give you my blessing. Well, Rebekah, his wife, Esau and Jacob's mother, hears this, and she goes to Jacob, because remember, Rebekah was the one who received the prophecy, the older will serve the younger. And she's like, well, God needs a little help here. Right? And so she says to Jacob, go get a couple of goats out of the flock. Bring them to me. I will fix this delicious meal like Isaac likes. And you dress up like Esau. Jacob was virtually blind at that point. So Jacob was able to deceive him and make him think, I'm Esau. And he gives him this great meal. And Jacob, or Isaac rather, gives him the blessing. That covenantal blessing that by right and by custom would have gone to Esau. Esau comes back and he finds out what happened. He's devastated. He's begging and pleading with his father, don't you have any blessing reserved for me at all? And Isaac says, your brother has deceived me and I've given it all to him. He's taken away your blessing. You will serve him all your days. And Esau was enraged. He hated Isaac, excuse me, he hated Jacob. He purposed in his heart, after my father Isaac dies, I'm going to kill him. And he makes this statement, very interesting. He says, Jacob took my birthright, and now he's taking the blessing. No, you sold your birthright. He did not force you to give it up. You sold it because of your holiness. You despised it. That's on you, buddy. but his bitterness so skewed his interpretation of things. You see how we do that. When we allow bitterness to rule, we don't make wise choices. We do not perceive situations the way they truly are. And so his heart was filled with murderous hatred and he was embittered toward his brother, Jacob. R.C. Sproul in this says, Moses traded Egypt's treasures for the disgrace of Christ because he saw the reward. We read that in chapter 11. But Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of food because all he could see was lentil stew. Oh, let us not be like Esau. Let us not be so committed to immediate relief or immediate gratification. We forfeit that which is of eternal significance on the altar of the immediate. The writer of Hebrews says, don't be like Esau. Don't live for this immediate gratification or immediate relief. Set your heart on that which is eternally satisfying. Trust God that He will fulfill all His good promises in your life at the right time and in the right way. But in the meantime, hold on to these facts. He loves you. He disciplines those He loves so that we might share in His holiness. So don't let bitterness infect your heart. Because bitterness inevitably spreads. It will cause trouble, it will defile many. How? Well, if you lose sight of the sovereign wisdom and purposes of God, you lose sight of the commands of God, and you have this embittered heart, and you say, I have a right to be bitter, and you voice that bitterness to other people. Some might recognize and go, oh, wait a minute, you're missing some things. But others might go, you know what, you got a point there. and they could end up taking up your offense, and they can become infected by that bitterness as well. Maybe not as angry and not as seething, but now you have sowed dissension, confusion, and division among the people of God. You share that skewed perspective. Jacob took my birthright, how dare he? He didn't think it's birthright. He made a shrewd deal which wrong, but Esau made it worse than it was. Shimei says, David stole my father's throne. David did not steal the throne. God judged Saul, took the throne and gave it to David. It was right. They were ruled by their desires and by their skewed perspective and their disappointments. And if you listen to an embittered heart, it's very easy to take up that other person's offense. Poor Shimei. He should have been raised in royalty, part of the royal family. He's been deprived. He's got a point. No, he didn't. So that poison of bitterness spreads. You know, the culture in which we live today is permeated with resentment and bitterness. We play on how many expressions of oppression we can claim. If you have any kind of privilege, any kind of prosperity, then it's obvious that you have been an oppressor. You have oppressed others and your prosperity is at somebody else's expense. bitterness has been justified and weaponized. And it's totally opposite from the thinking of a gospel of Jesus Christ. It totally denies that we have a sovereign God in heaven who deals with us as He pleases. And it's true that saints and unbelievers experienced bitter and painful circumstances. The slavery in Egypt was bitter. The Hittite wives brought bitterness into the home of Isaac and Rebekah. And Jesus warned us, the world's gonna hate us, they're gonna persecute us, they're gonna slander us, that could be bitter as well. But if we view everything in life as under the sovereign control of a loving, faithful, heavenly Father, whatever these bitter trials are, whatever they may be, they can make us better, not bitter. So I'll close with this, trials can make you bitter, or they can make you better. And the difference is this, what you believe of what you want, the way you respond. If you respond with faith and patience, with humble submission to the wise providence of God, those trials will make you better. You will become more Christ-like. You'll share in the holiness of God. But if you are impulsive, if you respond with unbelief, if you are the determiner of what God ought to be doing, you're the arbiter of what's right and what's not, your heart will be polluted with the poison of bitterness in your response. will be wrong, the key here. Do you believe that God has a plan and a purpose for your life? That plan and purpose is good. Do you set your heart on being like your Savior, the Lord Jesus, who entrusted himself to him who judges justly? You can trust your Father, he will make it right.