toxic waste of bitterness Ephesians 4 starting in verse 31 we'll read on to chapter 5 verse 2 let's hear the word of the Lord beginning in Ephesians 4 verse 31 get rid of all bitterness rage and anger brawling and slander along with every form of malice be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." This is the Word of God. Bitterness defiles and destroys. Bitterness destroys lives, friendships, families, futures. Bitterness is self-inflicted misery. It doesn't hurt the person that's directed at nearly as much as it hurts the person who's carrying the bitterness within them. Bitterness is like cancer. It devours its host. In Hebrews 12 verse 15 we read, See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. driven over the bumps in the driveway where we know that there's some root of a tree that's lifting up the driveway and we can see its evidence. Normally you can't see roots, but just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. Roots are drinking in moisture, they're drinking in nourishment, and they spread. And these roots can spread far. I'm told some of these huge trees can have up to a mile of roots, a single big tree. Especially if you get to old trees in Newlands Forest, Kirstenbosch Gardens. Some can have a mile of roots, and some of the big trees can have a million leaves. You get these sort of things when you're reading some of these great homeschool books on science and on geography. The roots sometimes become visible, you become aware of their presence when they start lifting up driveways and pavements. And if you've ever tried to push prams on sidewalks around any suburb, you can see there's a lot of roots out there that are lifting up and making quite an obstacle. The riots in many streets are also evidence of the roots of bitterness bearing destructive fruit. The BLM and TIFO rioters, they're all angry. They're bitter. What they're bitter and angry about may be real, it may be false, it may be imagined, it may be completely and utterly exaggerated. It could be totally out of proportion. But while the cause of the bitterness may be false, or out of context, the bitterness is real. And a person who's bitter cannot imagine that what he's bitter about isn't real. The Bible warns us lest any root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble and defile many people. If there is a root of bitterness it will bear fruit, bitter fruit. It is destructive and it is devastating and we see it. When we sin we feel guilt, or we should. unless our conscience has been seared, which can happen if we repeatedly push down, resist, and say no to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. There is a time a person can have a seared conscience, just like if you've drunk something too hot and your tongue loses all sense for a while, or your fingers touch something really hot and you don't have any sense of feeling. It can happen that you lose your conscience for a time. It can happen. But generally when we sin, we feel guilty. When someone else sins against us, we feel bitter. That's normal. Bitterness is always based on somebody else's actions. These actions can be real, they may be imagined, they might be grossly exaggerated, but they are many times based on a false report. You think how many times a person is bitter about something that they heard someone else said, or didn't say, or did, or didn't do, and you're bitter about it, and then later on you find out that actually it wasn't even true. But the bitterness was real, even if it was based on a false report. Bitter people can never imagine the possibility that they're wrong, or that what they're outraged about or bitter about isn't real. As far as the bitter person is concerned, the other person's guilt must always be real. And so you can be sure that these rioters and arsonists in the street, these BLMs and Antifas who are pulling down monuments, destroying things, looting, burning, destroying many people's lives and the accumulated sacrifice of generations, they feel no guilt because they're absolutely convinced that what they're doing is right and justified because their bitterness is justified because the other person deserves it. probably been victims of propaganda and indoctrination but they can't imagine that they're convinced they're right. And it's not like you don't come across this in our own lives and our own ministries and congregations. We've all been guilty of bitterness and we've all come across people who are into bitterness. I remember one field worker of this mission many years ago screaming at me with such venom it just made your blood run cold. You remind me of my father. I hate my father. And what can you say to that? There's a lot of angry people on the streets, a lot of people involved in the riots and many people involved in drugs and gangsterism and crime who are fatherless. and they are angry and angry at the whole world because their father either abused them or wasn't there or abandoned them and they say a fatherless generation is one of the big common denominations for a lot of the worst of what's going on. I was speaking to the head of the commission of the police of the whole of Western Cape at a meeting we had at Kelvin Grove and I asked him this question because you know at that time the Courageous film had come out and I said Is it true that the majority of gangsters on the Cape Flats are from fathers' homes? He said, no, it's not true. All of them are. Not most, all of them. Wow. He said, they all come from broken homes, dysfunctional families, fathers either absent or abusive, or they don't even know who the father is. He said, all of them. And at that point, that's many years ago, there were 100,000 gangsters. on the Cape Flats. And this police commissioner was convinced that the common denominator, the whole lot, was the failure of fatherhood, or absentee fathers. So, bitterness is not necessarily concerned about how big the sin is, whether it's real or imagined. It more depends on how close the relationship is. You see, strangers can do incredibly evil things, and they do, all over the world, and it doesn't leave any of us the slightest bitter. It's not how big the sin is, it's how close the relationship of us is to the person who has offended us. That's what leads the bitterness. Our co-workers, our family members, our immediate superiors, congregation members, pastors, fathers, they tend to be the focus of a lot of the bitterness. And so, the fence doesn't even have to be a big offense. It just has to be from a relationship that's close, which is why husbands and wives can be bitter with one another. Children can be bitter with their parents. Parents can be bitter against their children. It's all very, very natural for sinful, human, depraved people, but it's super unhealthy. And the offense may even be trivial. I mean, sometimes in counseling, you can't believe what you hear from some people, which has justified all this destruction, divorce, and everything. And you hear what the offense of the other person was, which was normally not even something I did, but something I didn't do. And you can often sit there stunned, and you don't want to trivialize because this person's on a nuclear Chernobyl meltdown over it. But it all started with something often quite trivial but it just grew and festered and it got gangrenous and at the end the only solution in mind is amputation, divorce and so on. The relationship, if the relationship is close, the bitterness can go super deep. Now in the Bible, in the book of Ruth chapter 1 verse 13, we see that Naomi was bitter against God. Naomi moved from Israel to another land where both her husband and both her sons died. And the Bible records Naomi reacts with bitterness towards God. In Ruth 1 verse 13, it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Lord has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me home empty. Why do you call me Naomi? Since the Lord has testified against me, the Almighty has afflicted me." Five times, in just a couple of verses, Naomi blames God for her problems. Bitterness never leads a person closer to God. Bitterness only leads a person further and further away. It's like an acid and it numbs your conscience. And the trouble is a person who is bitter soon doesn't have a conscience. They cannot see what they're doing wrong. Because anything they're doing wrong is not wrong because it's the fault of the other person. That's why a person can burn down somebody's life, destroy their entire accumulated work of generations, and they feel nothing but a sense of accomplishment, because their rage justified the destruction. And the poor person whose business or home they've just destroyed, that means nothing to them. Their conscience is seared, because the bitterness like an acid has completely destroyed any sense of personal responsibility. I am not responsible. And the fact that they're doing vastly worse to people than the offense that they claim to be responsible to. It means nothing to them, because their conscience has said, I am a victim. I'm not responsible. They are responsible. He is responsible. It's always external responsibility. I have no personal responsibility, because I'm a good person. But those evil people, or the system, or parents, or whatever it is, they to blame. The Bible tells us about Jonah, who was angry with God. Jonah 4 verse 9, the prophet Jonah reacted with bitterness when the people of Nineveh repented. He would have thought he'd been super excited. He was one of the most successful evangelists ever. In 40 days Nineveh will be destroyed. Next thing the people are repenting from the king all the way down. And God relents from sending judgment upon him. And God says to Jonah, do you have a right to be angry? And Jonah responds, I do. I'm angry enough to die. You know, just spite you. You're just going to die to me. And you know, there's many a person who commits suicide and in their suicide notes, it's basically that I've done this so you can all feel bad. I want you to feel guilty that I committed suicide. Suicide is often the most selfish, hateful, acclimational self-mort. There's such a good description of this self-murder. And many a person there, you take Kevin Carter, this South African who was born the same year as me, went up to Sudan in 1993 and got this famous picture, won the Pulitzer Prize for 1994 of this Sudanese girl bent over and obviously too weak to stand up with the vultures poised in the background. They called it the photograph that made the world weep. It didn't make this character, Kevin Carter, who is a drug addict, an illegitimate parent. He had abandoned his child. I mean, you couldn't expect a man of 33 to take responsibility for his own child now, could you? I mean, really. And he was Time Magazine's great hero. And I read all this in the eulogy to him. In his suicide note, when he gassed himself later, he's angry at the whole world. When he got the Pulitzer Prize, which is like the Academy Awards of photojournalism, he goes to New York and he's got this summit of any photojournalist's career, you would think. And people asked him questions like, what happened to the little girl in the picture? Well, I don't know, he said. Well, how'd you get the picture? Well, I'd flown into Sudan, I was just there for an hour, I was waiting about 300 Yards from the plane, my pilot's waiting with the plane, I've got to get photo-ops just outside this UN feeding centre. I see this little girl stumbling, crawling. He said, I positioned myself in the shade of a tree, I took a light reading, I waited about an hour. And then as the vulture hopped in the background, I clicked the shutter and I knew I had an award-winning picture. But what do you do after you took the picture? I smoked a cigarette and I cursed God, he said. Now this little girl weighed less than his camera equipment. He could have carried her 300 yards to the aircraft. She could have got flown to Lockerchopie or to the Red Cross Hospital. She may have been put in a drip and might have survived. All he brought into Sudan was his cameras. All he took out was this picture and all he left behind were cigarette stubs. And he raged with anger because some people judged him, thinking that he should do something for this little girl. And he's like, you know, swearing away in his suicide note. I mean, imagine, he's just... a few moments away from facing his creator, holy God of creation, and he's cursing everybody because they don't understand and they're judging him and he hopes everyone feels bad and he gets himself in his car. Kevin Carter is just a classic example of the selfishness of people full of rage. It's all someone else's fault. And the fact that his daughter could justly blame him for abandoning him, He never crossed his mind. He's responsible for nothing. He's just a victim, and everything is everyone else's fault. That is a classic example of someone who's got the roots of witness. They can see everyone else as sinners. Well, they think they can. Maybe that exaggerates it, or out of context, or imagination, but nevertheless, they can condemn everyone else to hell, while they say, I'm a good person. I've done nothing wrong. I was counting someone just yesterday who could actually say to me, I have done nothing wrong, There's nothing I need to apologize for." Well, he must be the only person who's walked this earth since Jesus Christ who could say that. But, you know, isn't it amazing how many people are so good and have done nothing wrong? And here's Jonah, angry at God for forgiving the sins of the Ninevites when they repented. Did Jonah not realize he needs forgiveness? If we refuse to forgive others, then we break the bridge of which we must cross. So those who are closest to us are the ones who can hurt us the most. Brother, sister, friend, parent, husband, wife, obviously. The ones closest to us, the ones we're most sensitive to, the people we work with the closest, they're the ones who can hurt us the most. But of course we should remember, they can hurt us, We can hurt them, as they say in the army, if the enemy is within range, so are you. It's something that most people miss out on that fact. Ah, he's in reach, I can reach him. But as you know in sword fighting, if you can reach him, he can reach you. That's the way it works. And when we can see how others have offended us, can we see how we've offended other people? When we are offended, we tend to react in one of two destructive ways. One way is to nurse the bitterness and to keep remembering the details until we make ourselves sick. Sick with bitterness and rage. The other way is to talk about it to as many people as possible, spreading the bitterness and sickness widely. An offence shared is an offence doubled. That sort of thing. Then you can travel and podrugal it. However, the Lord commands us to dig up the roots of bitterness and get rid of it, to forgive. Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. That is the one command over and over where it's so conditional. And God even says, if you will not forgive others their sins against you, neither will I forgive your sins. Matthew 6, 14-15, and if people want to double check it, for if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. An unforgiving spirit is a sign of an unregenerate heart. Peter came to Jesus and asked him, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times. And surely the Apostle Peter thought he was being super abundantly generous. I mean, seven times? This should get a major pat on the back and a gold star, a medal, trophy, something. And the Lord says, no, not seven times, 70 times seven, which is basically incalculable. Because you're not meant to be keeping count anyway. And then in Matthew 18 the Lord tells the parable of the unforgiving servant. Here's a servant who owed such a fortune to the king he was unable to pay. And he and his wife and his children and all that he owed was to be sold into slavery to repay the debt. He falls on his knees before the king and pleads, be patient with me and I will repay everything. The King takes mercy on him and doesn't give him time. He forgives him the whole debt. He doesn't even give him a discount. He forgives him the entire debt. And then the Bible says, but when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, which is not much, it's a few pennies. He grabbed him, began to choke him and said, pay back what you owe me, he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me, I'll pay you back. But he refused. Instead he had the man thrown into prison where the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly displeased. And they told the master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant and said, You wicked servant! I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on a fellow servant just as I had mercy on you? His master then turned him over to the jailers until he could pay back all that he owed. This is how your Heavenly Father shall treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. So what the Lord is saying in this parable in Matthew 18 is if the Lord forgives you and you refuse to forgive someone else he will take back that forgiveness. This is super serious and it doesn't fit into our antinomian easy believers and cheap grace but the Lord is so clear you can't mistake what he's saying. He says if you are unforgiving I will withdraw my forgiveness of you. The unforgivable sin in this sense is to refuse to be forgiving. Not only does the Bible teach us to forgive those who ask us to forgiveness, we also come under to forgive others even when they don't ask for our forgiveness. Colossians 3 verse 12-13, Therefore as God's chosen people, holy and dearly beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. So where to forgive unconditionally? Where to forgive unconditionally? As God forgives us, we are commanded to live a life of unconditional forgiveness towards others. I'm not to carry resentment, bitterness against anyone for anything I've done. Now I can tell you in the history of this mission, one of our most traumatic experiences was the St. James Massacre. 25th of July, 1993. A lot of the members of our mission went to St. James. My father went to St. James. My brother went to St. James. Both my brother and my father were converted. We had a lot of friends there. It was Chalfant Bakes Church and many of our folks were members there or attended there when in Cape Town. And our mission office at that time was on 3rd Avenue, just a couple of blocks down the same road where St. James is. I walked, ran to the church when I heard of the attack and I saw with blood on the carpets, blood-stained Bible on the floor, upturned pews, bodies shattered, people lying in a pool of blood like Gerard Harker, 21-year-old, who leapt on the hand grenade and absorbed the full blast to save the lives of people around him on the isle. And it was traumatic. We were traumatized, all of us, not just Charlotte, who was there at the time. We would regularly just break down in tears for Any time of day, it was just so shocking. You know, we were used to going and ministering at the persecuted church. We weren't used to coming to our streets, to our neighbourhood, to our church. It was just so shocking. And I remember Sean coming in and he says, God forgive me Peter, I just feel so angry when I think of what those men did. And I'd say, well God forgive you if you don't feel angry, because if you can't be angry about wicked men bursting into churches, killing mothers, Marika Ackerman, first person killed in the front row. If you can't be angry about that, there's something wrong with you. But of course we can't stay angry and we can't, you know, don't let the sun go down your arse, we've got to deal with this. We pray them Prakriti Psalms, we put it in God's hands, we... so took that message to heart that while he testified against him in court, he went into the prison and even a terrorist that he had shot, Kyle McCormack, he went in and took him Bible, visited his family, the man who gave all the orders for the attack, visited him and his family, ministered to them, developed a whole ministry for the Pan-African Congress who was responsible. And as he said, Obviously he's not in any way justifying what they did, but he's handed over to God for God to deal with him. God will deal with him. Now if he wants to be merciful and grant them salvation, great, and if not, it's in God's hands. He did his duty as a citizen, testified in court what they did, but he showed love to his enemies. Now, that's balanced, because if not, he would have been torn apart, and not just Charles, who was very personally involved, but we all felt violated, we all felt so angry that it could have turned into bitterness super easy. And the point is, for whatever reason, these people in the streets, many people are traumatized by something they've seen on TV to a stranger, and they rush out there and they commit terrible things, and they believe they're totally justified. But the Lord says, we have to forgive. We're not God. We're not judge, jury, and eternal executioner. We are fallible sinners who also need forgiveness, and therefore we are to live a life of forgiveness, not just to those who deserve it, because which of us can say we deserve God's forgiveness? Of course we deserve His forgiveness. I mean, that's what grace is, undeserved favor. The fact that the defending person may not have apologized, may not have repented, may not have undertaken any restitution whatsoever does not relieve me of my responsibility before God to forgive those that sin against me. This doesn't mean you endorse what they did and say what they did wasn't evil, wicked and deserving the judgment of God. It just means I am not going to carry this burden. I am not the authority to pronounce. Now, if you happen to be a magistrate and this case comes before you, well, your job is to evaluate in accordance with the law and apply it fairly in accordance with the law. But that's not personal, that's your duty as a magistrate. If you're a policeman, of course your job is to follow the evidence, find the people, track them down, and we get some of the story. the Skalki's Undefined Salafi Book on how they tracked down the people of the St. James Massacre. So that has to be done. But the Christians were ministering to the criminals and to their family members almost immediately, which is the way it should be. James 3 verse 14, But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but it's earthly, unspiritual. of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder in every evil practice, but the wisdom which comes from above is full of mercy. As Christians we are called to be merciful. No matter what defence, no matter who the offending party, we are commanded by our Sovereign Lord to forgive, to live a life of forgiveness. Now some of our enemies, will be converted and become our brothers and sisters in Christ. Others will steadfastly resist God and will be punished by Him duly in time and eternity. But that is not my concern. That's out of my jurisdiction. That's up to God. That's not in my hands. I must forgive my brother from my heart. Freely received, freely, freely given. Part of what we've received is mercy, grace, forgiveness. If you do not forgive men when they sin against you, your Father in Heaven will not forgive you. If you forgive them, your Heavenly Father promises to forgive you. And so, if I refuse to forgive other people, then I should doubt my salvation. In the light of these scriptures, a person who harbors unforgiveness or bitterness in his heart must question salvation seriously. Our Lord Jesus gave us the greatest example of forgiveness, when on the cross, having been wrongly tried, illegally tried, falsely accused, unjustly condemned, whipped and beaten, with all his disciples forsaking him, with the religious leaders condemning him, with the crowds mocking him, reviling him and cursing him, with one of his disciples betraying him, with another one denying him, and all of them forsaking him. Our Lord prays on the cross, Father forgive them for they do not know what they do. That's just unthinkable, that at a moment like that, with so much betrayal, not just betrayal by the Jewish religious leaders, and lack of justice from the Romans, but his own disciples have forsaken him. And one's even betrayed him, Judas. Nothing is so Christ-like as to forgive your enemies. to forgive those who have done you great harm. And the Lord taught the servant of Mount, Matthew 5, blessed are you when men insult you and revile you and persecute you and say all sorts of evil things against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who went before you. We should actually be glad when we're mistreated. This is the Lord's command and this is his example. To this you were called because Christ suffered for us and left us an example that we should follow in his steps. There's a whole book written in his steps. Excellent audio, excellent book, well worth going through. What would Jesus do? Well, he would forgive. There's no more powerful a witness as when a Christian forgives an enemy. This is incomprehensible to him. That's what brought the commander of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to the Lord, Mitsuyo Fushida, when he met an American pilot who had been imprisoned and tortured for years in Japan, who was coming as a missionary and evangelizing him and saw from his testimony how he forgave his captors and then hearing about this missionary who had been beheaded and his wife beheaded while they're praying for for the Japanese who were killing them, and then having the daughter of these missionaries, the Kovals, come and share the gospel in Japan. It was the forgiveness of these people that brought them from Shintoism to Christianity. He was converted. It's an extraordinarily effective way of winning over your enemies. And so, be joyful in hope. We read in Romans 12 verse 12. Be joyful in hope. Be patient in affliction. Be faithful in prayer. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Do not prepare anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. In so far as it is possible. Live at peace with everyone. indicates it's not always possible, but in so far as it's within your power. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you'll heap burning coals on his head. Get his conscience awakened. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That's all in Romans 12. So the question is not whether one offending us deserves to be forgiven. We didn't deserve God's forgiveness. The question is are we going to live in obedience to God's word on blatant rebellion by harbouring bitterness, unforgiveness and resentment. The fact is if we refuse to forgive the root of bitterness will continue to grow within us poisoning every aspect of our lives. Now it may not show itself in the same orgy of destruction and streets all over America and London and so on, but it will have destructive effects just as real, even if it's not quite as spectacular. Are we going to live in obedience to God's word or live in rebellion to God by harbouring resentment and bitterness and unforgiveness? If we refuse to forgive, the root of bitterness will continue to grow within us and will poison every aspect of our lives. We will become sick, not just spiritually, but emotionally, and mentally, and even physically ill. Body, mind, and spirit, it's all interconnected. Doctors will confirm to you that most of the patients they see, they might have physical symptoms, but a lot of it's got spiritual, emotional, or mental sources. A lot of it cannot be dealt with with medicines, although they might be able to suppress some symptoms, but they can't deal with the issue. The person's torn up inside with bitterness, resentment, rage, or whatever. What can the doctor do to resolve that? That's why a lot of things have to be dealt with with counselling, which is why they've actually got a 280-bed hospital without medicines at Kwasi Banti, because a lot of the people who come there are people who can't be dealt with by conventional medicine, and they get counselling. Many people walk out of there healed, not necessarily miraculously, but through the grace of God and coming to terms with whatever bitterness was in their lives, which is the cause of a lot of sickness. Not everything, but a lot. Now, you may say, I'm not bitter, I'm just hurt. Well, the symptoms of feeling hurt are very close to symptoms of resentment. There's a close relationship between feeling hurt, being resentful, and turning bitter. It's a matter of time. It can fester very easily. So even more seriously, bitterness easily turns into hatred. 1 John 3 verse 14. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer. You know, no murderer has eternal life. When you see people on the streets who hate, hate strangers, hate races, hate whatever they're targeting with their race, classes, genders, whatever their hate is poured out on, you've got to know that person is unregenerate. No regenerate person can live in hate. Our conscience would prompt us not to let the sun go down on our wrath, to repent, to make right with God. A person who lives in hate is a person who is unsafe. And so we must transform our toxic thoughts through thorough repentance and truth, biblical truth. How do I know if I'm bitter? Bitterness remembers details. As any teacher will tell you, memory is helped by reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. How do you remember it? Just keep reviewing it. Well, just like you might have mastered some exams, some people have mastered bitterness. They can tell you every single thing someone has done wrong with them. Remember in the Wharram film, when the woman who's the retail... The estate agent is asked to put a list of all the things her husband's done wrong, and she's just, you know, writing away, writing away, and pages of this, and, you know, well, this is just some of it, but you get that in, okay, now burn it. Doesn't even want to read it. Doesn't care. But that's very effective to communicate the fact that a bitter person can tell you everything the other person's done wrong. And they've got the details. But it's got nothing to do with our sins and what we've got to put right. And so it's a distraction. It's not helping at all. And so when we can remember every syllable, intonation and inflection of the offense, then we must know we probably haven't forgiven our brother from the heart. We've been nursing a root of bitterness. And bitterness is a great sin. It's a huge sin. Those who hope that time will heal will be sorely disappointed. Instead of fading over time, bitterness tends to accumulate, deepen and fester. I have been a Christian now 43 years. Converted 1977. As long as I have been a Christian. I have heard, every year, multiple times, Afrikaners, especially Dutch Foreign Ministers, apologizing for their sin, crime, and atrocity of apartheid. Do you think they get forgiven? Not in your life. Do you think the offended people get less offended? No, they get more offended, they get more angry, they get more resentful. Even the Julius Millennials who weren't even brought up under it and don't even know what it was. They are so bitter and angry about things that didn't even happen to them. But they didn't even experience. And today you'll find that amount. If you've gone through the biography of Herod Niels, Life is a Challenge in Africa, and he mentions at one point, he was at a meeting and somehow it was mentioned that he's a German and this one Jewish woman says, Somebody give me a knife! I want to kill this German! And, I was in Buchenwald! She screams. And Herod Neils is such a lovely man. He says, which zone and block were you in in Buchenwald? And she says, oh well I was in this one. He was locked up in Buchenwald after the war. And the moment she heard he had been locked up in Buchenwald her whole demeanour changed and she suddenly became like a little lamb. But her bitterness Now he's a stranger. He's a teenager during the war. What on earth could he possibly... But there's a lot of Jewish people who are full of bitterness about things that never even happened to them. And sometimes it may not have happened to anyone. But they're bitter, bitter, bitter. Maybe it's even because of a Hollywood film. But there's a lot of people bitter about things that may or may not have even happened. Maybe real or not. But do you think apologies help? Do you think restitution helps? No. Germany has pumped billions upon hundreds of billions of Deutsche Mark and Euros into Israel. Do you think anyone cares? No. They hate them even more today than they did before. Generations had nothing to do with it. And so it carries on. There is so much bitterness, but the one thing you know is bitter people are unsaved. If they refuse to forgive, if they persist in that unforgiveness, God says, I will not forgive them. And so, the only solution to bitterness is for the one who is bitter to confess before Almighty God the sin of bitterness and unforgiveness. And it's a terrible sin. The only way to remove bitterness from your life is to kill it at the root. Isaiah 29 verse 20 says, The ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut off. Those who with a word make a man out to be guilty, who ensnare the defendant in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice. Leviticus 19 verse 17 says, do not hate your brother in your heart. 1 John 2 verse 9 is even more shocking. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. In other words, straightforward the way John's saying, if anyone hates his brother, he is unregenerate. He is unsaved. Proverbs 10 verse 12 says, hatred stirs up dissension but love covers all wrongs. That really is true. Love covers over multitude of evil. 1 John 1 verse 5 to 9, for this is the message that we have heard and we declare to you. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to fellowship with God yet we walk in darkness, we lie. We do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we are fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. This is a message that needs to be proclaimed throughout the world because right now we've got an explosion of bitterness and resentment such as has not been seen for quite a while. Isaiah 26 verse 3. He will keep them in perfect peace whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Questions? Comments? Toxic waste of bitterness? Takes a lot of work sometimes. You know, probably Sean or others had the same problem. Yeah, no, it's not a straightforward path. I think the film War Room showed a nice example of how, you know, it's got to be several steps. In my life, I found I had to stop... people I was speaking bad of, I had to stop thinking of good things to say about them, which stretched my mind at first, because I couldn't think of one good thing to say about this person that's bitter. And then, to do something nice to the person that you've been bitter against, you've got to systematically wage war against that bitterness, step by step. For example, it's hard to be greedy when you're being generous and giving things away. It's hard to be... hateful and resentful when you are speaking well of the person and actually serving them. And that's how we fight it. Comments? Questions? I'd like to make a remark. At the start you mentioned that usually people close to us can hate us very easily. and while that is true, I think sometimes events can also hurt. And in the circles where I grew up, sometimes people hate the government, which is an impersonal thing. So it's not really, there's no personal connection between them and the government, but they hate the government with a passion. Okay, but maybe to fix it... Yes, it does. The government has prevented me from doing my work, or the government has taken away my business, or the government has unjustly convicted this person, or whatever. It's got an influence in some way for them to, even if it isn't personal, yes. Yes, yes, and I'm wondering if that sometimes doesn't point, if you see something like that, if it doesn't point towards adultery. If you've made an idol or something, and you know this person is, and that's an idol, and you can't get to your idol. If you really thought your government was going to save you, Imagine it disappointing when they don't. They're going to actually make my life better. They're going to do whatever you thought they would. The sense of betrayal could be very real, yes. So it doesn't have to be against a specific person. And there are times in our lives when we can find that we actually resent God and we think God's being mean to us and not fair. I've joined a thought group. when you take your offer to the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you so we need to forget others even if they think we've wronged them it's not a matter of that you have wronged me but also when they think you have wronged them you should go and which is a very tall order from the struggle with that side it is hard it's very very hard because many of them will deny that they have a problem with you, even though you know the evidence is pretty convincing. That's a bit humbling, especially when they want to make a big thing out of nothing. Even while they're sticking a knife and twisting it. But we're responsible to be obedient. We've got to do what we can. We're not responsible for what we can't do, but when we do what we can, we can trust God to do what we cannot. What we shouldn't do is expect God to do what is within our power. If I can write that letter, make that phone call, knock on that door, speak to this person, do this restitution, I've got to do everything I can. Only then do I have a right to ask God to do what I cannot. But you're dealing with a society where people are full of rage, and I'm convinced this is a result of a whole lot of things that I've studied, from bad education, bad entertainment, bad news media, some manipulative people. It's a whole lot of people who are absolutely convinced that I am a good person. I've done my absolute best. And the amount of people I've hurt, you know, all their children are total disaster areas, their families are completely dysfunctional. I raised my children the best I could. But, you know, I try hard, but I can't say I've always done my best. Who can say I've always done my best? It just doesn't even seem rational. But as they say, the further away from God a person is, the more they think they're really a good person. The closer they are to God, the more they realize they're actually terrible. You know, the Apostle Paul saying, I'm the worst of sinners, and things like that. You think, sounds like an exaggeration. Paul probably wasn't the worst, but in his eyes he was. And that probably was a true assessment for himself. The problem is when we come to the point of thinking, you know, I'm good, nothing's my fault, everything's great, then we've really got to question what's wrong in our lives, because that doesn't tally with what one John 1 is telling us. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Everything becomes someone else's fault. And this is where many of these millennials on the street burning everything down, they're absolutely convinced this isn't their fault. Even while they're doing worse things than the people that they claim to be outraged about, somehow or another they are on the side of the angels. They are the saints of today and everyone else is to blame. Even a person who might not have ever done anything personally against them ever. So it's so trist, but that's what bitterness does. Bitterness can justify almost anything in the eyes of the person who's bitter. I used to get flak in the army for my pre-war scars because of concentration camps. But my family only got care in the 1920s. Probably before your time, yeah. Well, I remember one lovely Afrikaans girl, I had a date with her, she brought me home to her parents, and I know enough Afrikaans to know how she was being scowled out by her parents. How dare you bring some pedometer roinek and Engelsmansons to this house? And she said, but he's Rhodesian, and I'm like, it doesn't matter. But he's on our side, and it doesn't matter. So they were really furious. And this poor girl was just about disinherited by her family for having gone on a date with Aronia. But they were so bitter. And I felt for them because their family had suffered terribly. Her grandmother was one of only two of the entire extended family of 16 that survived the concentration camp. But the parents at Harvard now, their generation, I mean their children's generation, which is my age group, We had no problem with one another. We'd been aborted together. There's a common enemy. But for our parents' generation, my dad was so anti-Afrikaans, it just boggles the mind. He once said to me, I am ashamed that any son of mine can have an Afrikaans friend. My dad was just that generation of Royneck, Royalist. He was horrified, but then I went and found other families. So, you know, sometimes it's a generational thing. There's one generation that's just harboring this bitterness against another group. You're like, why? It's an even better one. I had a professor whose family moved to America between the wars. He must have been born in the late 40s. And when he was about five or something, he moved from New York to Kentucky. And he got it in the naked school because he's an excretive Yankee. We weren't even around in 1860. Bill Bathlin said that he was in the Navy and about 20 before he realized that damn Yankee wasn't a compound noun. He thought you could never say Yankee without damn in front of it. All Yankees were damn Yankees. He is from Tennessee. Well, I mean, the Yankees did some pretty bad things, but it's a bit ridiculous to blame another generation for it, you know. They weren't even involved. But that's the thing. What a distraction from Satan when we can get worked up about other people's sins of other generations even. And it's not like we don't have mountains of our own sins to repent for. But here's an example. I was in Belgium in 2017. Reformation 500 event. And I had a whole bunch of university students come to me after one presentation and pour at me their loathing and hatred for the great-grandparents generation who is responsible for the colonization of Belgium-Congo. And I said, now isn't this interesting? because you are saying your grandparents and great-grandparents' generation who were praised in their lifetime, like King Leopold, who they particularly damned well, was praised as the greatest humanitarian on earth in his lifetime because he had brought peace to the savage Congo, ended the inter-tribal genocide, ended the slave trade, created the Congo Free State, and Henry Morton Stanley and King Leopold were praised for all the lives that uplifted and changed, trebled their life expectancy, brought literacy medicines on. Today they damn them to hell because they were colonists. But you... feel absolutely self-righteously superior to your great-grandparents while you legalize abortion, pornography, homosexuality, perversion, euthanasia, even compulsory euthanasia, and your government subsidizes dictators who are oppressing people in Africa today. You buy products from China which are supplied by slave labor, many of which would be Christians in these concentration camps who are working in slave conditions. You support China who does Organ harvesting, person needs a kidney or whatever, go to China, pay them the money, they'll whip it out of some, probably a Christian, a concentration camp. They don't sew him up again because he's disposable. He's just an organ donor. Well, he's been volunteered. And it's a one-way street. The donor doesn't get anything. He just dies. They don't even bother to sew him up afterwards. You support all this without probably having raised the word, but you'll condemn people of another generation who to the best of the light that they had, thought that they were fighting against the greatest evils of their time, slavery, ending the Islamic slave trade and so on, and doing everything to advance the benefits of the gospel and civilization for those people. But you convinced they are totally irredeemably evil, and you so much superior, I said, This is a bit like the two men who went up to the temple to pray. I thank you God I'm not like my great-grandparents. But can't you see your sins? What do you think God will say to you on the Day of Judgment? And of course these students were just aghast and I'm not suggesting they've done anything wrong because they're all good people. But isn't that the way Satan works? You can see everyone else and say I thank you God I'm not like that tax collector over there. I mean, we've got all our modern equivalents. Yeah, well, I think those Belgians weren't likely to get it from anyone else, because people in Europe don't think like that, but someone coming from Africa who's worked in the Congo does think like that. So, a false prophet points the finger out there. But a true minister of God has got to call his own hearers and himself to repentance. If we ever get into the, you know, them out there business, well, what good's that? If we're not calling our own hearers and ourselves to repentance, then we are failing, then we are false prophets. Any other comments? Well, let's have a time of prayer then, and we should be praying for Ourselves and our mission and people in society right now are seriously distracted. And probably very self-righteously so. I mean, that's just inviting the wrath of God when people are self-righteous. God resists the crowd, He gives grace to the humble. So, let's pray. Lord, thank you for this. own lives, Lord, examine our own hearts, Lord, for bitterness and unforgiveness. every one of our hearts and show us areas where we do need to repent of bitterness. God, I pray that you would help us to forgive as you've forgiven us. God, to see the incredible grace that you've showed us by dying in our place. God, for forgiving all of our sins. God, calling us out of darkness into light, making us members of your family. God, God, we are so self-righteous at times that we think the way that people sin against us is worse than the way we sin against you, God. So God, would you help us to see ourselves accurately? Would you help us to see our sins before you as what they really are, God? And would you call each and every one of us to repentance, Lord? God, would you help us to walk in the light, to love as you love us, shine forth the light of the gospel of the God who extended mercy and compassion and forgiveness to others. And Lord, would you help us to think of practical ways that we can show love to those who have sinned against us, that we can truly show them the love and mercy and forgiveness of Christ. Thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness. God, I thank you that even when we are faithless, you are faithful. Lord, we praise you for your mercy, your undeserved favor, for rescuing us out of the kingdom of Satan. Bring us into the kingdom of your own, dear son. We thank you, Lord God, for forgiving us, cleansing us, transforming us, adopting us. And thank you, Lord, for this message of reconciliation you've entrusted to us. Help us, Lord, to be faithful at this time, probably one of the most self-centered generations in history. We pray, Lord God, that you would help us to connect and reach and rescue some of these, many of these around us who are locked into the self-destructive downward path. We thank you, Lord, for the transforming power of your word. And we pray, Lord God, that you may give us the privilege of counselling and leading many that would come across us next week to the foot of the cross to find forgiveness and salvation and transformation and adoption to your kingdom. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.