Good morning! Today we continue our series
entitled Facing Your Enemy. This is
my third consecutive week in this series. In the past, my other co-pastors have
jokingly (and maybe not so jokingly) remarked that I seem to give the hardest
topics to them, saving the “choice lands” for myself. Well, last week I taught
on the difficult topic of lust, and the week before that, on coveting, so I
think I have had at least a share of the challenging topics. This week we shift
our focus to the cheery topic of – bitterness.
What exactly is bitterness? In the Bible
there are two main word roots for bitterness: mar or marah or maror in Hebrew, and pikraino or pikria or pikros in
Greek. In these languages, as in English, the words have multiple meanings and
connotations. In English, as an adjective, the four main meanings are:
1. Having a sharp, pungent
taste or smell.
2. Painful or unpleasant to
accept or contemplate.
3. Extremely harsh; for
example, intensely cold.
The Bible uses all four of these meanings.
For an example of the first meaning, Exodus 15:23, speaking of Moses and the
Israelites in the desert: “When they came
to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter.” For the second, speaking of Hannah who was
without child, I Samuel 1:10: “In her
deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly.” For the third,
in response to Habakkuk’s complaint to the Lord about why the wicked prosper,
Hab. 1:6: “I am raising up the
Babylonians, that ruthless [bitter] and impetuous people, who sweep across the
whole earth to seize dwellings not their own.” And for the fourth, Job
(incorrectly) speaks of God speaking bitterly against him like his friends who
have smeared him with lies (Job 13); also Absalom’s advisor Hushai warns
Absalom who has torn the kingdom away from David that David will be bitter and
will come at him like a fierce bear robbed of her cubs (2 Sam. 17:8). These are
all uses of the Hebrew word.
As for the Greek word, for the first an
example is the Wormwood bitter water in Revelations 8:11. For the second, we
have the example of Peter, who after the rooster crowed, went outside and wept
bitterly, Matt. 26:75. For the third, I did not find a clear example, but for
the fourth, two examples are Acts 8:23, as Peter described Simon the Sorcerer
who offered the disciples money for the power of casting out evil spirits and
James 3:14 which talks about the evils of bitter envying.
Regarding that first meaning, doing a few
minutes of research, I was surprised how misinformed I was about our sense of
taste. God has designed our tongues with the ability to taste what we call the
bitter taste, as well as sweet, salty, sour, and (I bet you never heard of this
one) umami, a Japanese word meaning
savory or meaty. Yes, you have special taste buds for steak! It is also a myth
that our tongues are divided into distinct regions with each kind of taste bud;
they are actually scattered all around the outside of our tongue. One web site
I looked at blamed this error in understanding on a mistranslation of a 1901
paper in German written by a psychiatrist. That’s wrong on so many levels
simultaneously that it’s actually kind of funny.
But our focus today is on the one kind of
bitterness that God says “No” to, the one implied by that fourth meaning. It’s
OK to weep bitterly, for a time; it is a natural and healthy part of grieving.
But what is not healthy, not OK, is to move into a state of mind in which we go
over and over again about how a person, or circumstances, or life, or God, has
wronged us. And to compare our situations to those of others and complain is
also not OK.
Bitterness, like envy and lust, is in our
heads; that is, it is about how we think. We can act on bitterness, just like
we can act on envy and we can act on lust, but any such action only comes after
“stewing,” after spending a fair amount of time thinking in a particular
unhealthy way.
Yesterday Isaac and I spent some time
talking about pathways to bitterness. I think “pathways” is a good word because
it implies a process; it communicates well the idea that bitterness doesn’t
happen instantaneously but develops over time.
One pathway towards bitterness is envy.
This is closely related to coveting, which we talked about two weeks ago. An
apparent example is the sorcerer in Acts who was envious of what the disciples could
do. But often I think envy is a lot more subtle, and it can entrap us if we are
not on the watch for it.
Let me set up a generic typical situation
that can lead to bitterness. You, and only you, are going through a particular
trial of some kind. It could be that you are suffering from a particular malady
or illness, something chronic. Or it could be that you are under continual
stress due to money woes that are a product of the economy and your particular
line of work rather than mistakes you have made. Or it could be that your child
or your spouse suffers from something that requires you to spend great amounts
of time and effort, experiences that you know others do not share. It could be
that your job places demands on you far beyond what you see others going
through. It could be that you have an extremely fussy and challenging baby,
much more so than what other Moms seem to experience. It could be that
something that comes easily and naturally to others, is extremely difficult for
you, and because of this, you struggle mightily where others do it easily.
(School might be an example of this.)
Whatever it is, you find yourself comparing
yourself to others. You have to go through this; they don’t – how easy they
have it! You have tried to share your struggles with a few others, maybe a few
friends, but they just don’t get it. They are a little awkward about the
subject, maybe offer well-meaning advice, but they just don’t experience it so
they don’t really understand what it is like to be you in this situation. Over
time, you begin to think like this more and more frequently.
A second pathway towards bitterness is
unforgiveness. Someone wrongs you,
perhaps in a giant, epic way, but just as possibly in a small way. Whether this
turns into bitterness depends less on the size of the wrong than it does on
what you do afterwards. Maybe a friend says something mean to you, trying to be
funny. Or maybe they act selfishly. Or maybe they “dis” you in the presence of
others because they really want to be friends with someone else. Or it can be
something much more serious, from cheating on a spouse, to physical or other
forms of abuse, to stealing from you, to countless other ways we can really
hurt one another. Regardless, you are shocked and hurt. The person might
apologize or they might not; they might not even know that they have done
anything to hurt you, or they do know and are deliberately refusing to
apologize; they may even think it is funny. However the situation unfolds, you
just keep thinking about it. You find yourself going over conversations you
had, going over conversations you would like
to have, imagining what worse thing they will do next, what thing you will do next, etc. etc. You are
going straight down that pathway towards bitterness; you may already well have
arrived. A strong sign that you have arrived in this case is that you think
less about specific things the person or people have done, but instead tend to
think of them as “how they are.” It may not be any one big thing, but lots of
little things. If you are bitter towards your parents or your spouse or towards
someone else that you spend huge amounts of time with, this is often how it
evolves.
A third pathway (and I am sure there are
many others) is disillusionment. This has some similarities to unforgiveness,
but the difference is that nothing has been done specifically to you directly;
you may be experiencing collateral damage, but the act itself was not done to
you. An example of this is a pastor or other church leader who has an affair or
has been doing some other bad thing for some time and is suddenly caught. You
are disillusioned with him or her, and that is not inappropriate. But perhaps
as you watch the repercussions spread, you begin to become disillusioned with your
whole church, or even with church as a whole. I have met many people on our
outreaches, at school, and elsewhere, who have stories like this. They speak of
having been “hurt by church” and have responded by no longer being willing to
join with a local body of believers. Disillusionment can of course occur in
other contexts: you can become disillusioned with your company, or your
political party if you are politically active, or some other charity you help,
or a sporting organization, etc. Once again, if you are thinking about this
over and over and are starting to consider making general decisions based on
the actions of a few individuals, you are likely well on your way to
bitterness, if you are not already there.
Well, I want to make a few specific comments
about what to do if you have “arrived” into bitterness via any of these
pathways, and then I want to talk about what Scripture says about avoiding
these “paths” altogether.
First of all, bitterness is by its nature
self-centered. Sometimes people don’t think so, because it seems like their
focus is on the ones who don’t understand what they are going through, or on
the one that hurt them, but the reality is that they are feeling sorry for
themselves, and their focus is actually on how they feel. Staying in this state
for an extended length of time only leads to bad things. In self-centeredness
it is difficult to connect to anyone, including God. And I don’t think I can
emphasize this strongly enough: self-centeredness leads to more
self-centeredness. We become entrapped by our thinking patterns; to use an
analogy from an old Christian novel, “cobwebs” turn into “cables.”
If your pathway is envy while undergoing a
trial, the real issue is that you feel alone. It may be that your friends don’t
understand what you are going through, or it may be that they are trying to
help you by getting your focus to change from inward to outward. In any case,
the best comfort and support you will find is from God Himself. Real heartfelt
prayer, prayer not just telling God how you feel but also asking Him to come to
be near to you, to comfort you, is a powerful way to find God’s comfort. He
answers these prayers! Also, memorizing and meditating on Scripture is another
way to draw near to Him. There are so many great verses; here are just a few of
my favorites:
For I
am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not
fear; I will help you. – Isaiah 41:13
When my
spirit grows faint within me, it is You who watch over my way. In the path
where I walk people have hidden a snare for me. Look and see,
there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge;
no one cares for my life. I cry to You, Lord; I say, “You are my refuge, my
portion in the land of the living.” – Psalm 142:3-5
Hear
my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to You, I
call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the Rock that is higher than I. For
You have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe. – Psalm 61:1-3
Do
you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator
of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His
understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases
the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble
and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will
soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and
not be faint. – Isaiah 40:28-31
If your pathway is unforgiveness, well, there is no way but to
just say it, you need to either get over it or forgive. I know that sounds
harsh, so let me explain. Sometimes we hold grudges over imaginary offenses,
things that just aren’t real. We’re already grumpy, so we do the opposite of
following 1 Corinthians 13’s way of love, which says, among other things, that
love is not self-seeking (sometimes we are offended because we weren’t given
the attention we wanted), love is not easily angered (sometimes we are offended
over the tiniest thing – much like the basketball player who acts like he was
hit by a locomotive train when barely touched so that he gets the referee to call
a foul), love keeps no record of wrongs (sometimes we say, “that’s the last
straw!” even though it’s a minor thing),
and love always trusts, always hopes (sometimes we assume the worst
whether it is true or not). In these cases, we need to get over it, we need to
get over ourselves, we need to have a talk with God where we tell Him that we
are falling far short of I Corinthians 13 and ask for forgiveness and for His
help.
Other times there is something real; we
truly have been wronged by another. In such cases it is in our own
self-interest to forgive. What I mean by this is that stewing over your hurt
and angry feelings does not harm or affect the person who has hurt you; in
fact, all it does is hurt you. It makes you bitter; it makes you unhappy; it
keeps you from God and other people. Nelson Mandela once said that “Resentment
is like drinking poison and waiting for it to kill your enemy.”
By this I don’t necessarily mean going up
to the person and telling him or her, “I forgive you,” although sometimes this
is what we should do. Sometimes we may feel led to do this even when the other
person doesn’t say they are sorry or show any sign at all of being repentant.
But what I do mean is that we should in our
hearts, forgive the person. I like the word picture that comes up if we spell
forgive as “fore-give.” That is, we are giving before the appropriate time.
“Fore-giveness” isn’t so much about our emotions as it is about letting in some
sense the offender go free. And in freeing them we often find that it also
frees us.
This can be difficult; we don’t want to fore-give. To this I would give
two stories. The first is from the Bible, Matthew 18, to be specific.
Then Peter came to
Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who
sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times,
but seventy-seven times [or seven times seventy]. – Matt. 18:21-22
“Therefore, the
kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his
servants. As
he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was
brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master
ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to
repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient
with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The
servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. – Matt.
18:23-27
“But when that servant
went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver
coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he
demanded. “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient
with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had
the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw
what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything
that had happened. – Matt. 18:28-31
“Then the master
called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt
of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant
just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him
over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This
is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your
brother or sister from your heart.”- Matt. 18:32-35
I’ve read this multiple times, but this
week I was freshly grabbed by the amount of money; I like how the NIV
translates this as 10,000 bags of gold. That’s an absolutely preposterous
amount! The contrast to a hundred silver coins is extreme. The other thing that
grabbed me was the part about choking the man. That’s pretty violent! But
seriously, the point is that we as Christians have been forgiven a lot more
than owing 10,000 bags of gold. We are redeemed people, bought with the price of
Jesus Christ giving Himself up to crucifixion, to death on a cross, to
rejection by His Father, things we can only begin to really appreciate. We
simply have no right to “demand payment” which is what holding on to
unforgiveness is really all about.
The second story is from Corrie ten Boom’s
true account, The Hiding Place. This
tells of how Corrie was imprisoned in a concentration camp for hiding Jews in
WWII. Corrie was eventually freed, but not before her dear sister Betsie died
in the camp. Near the end of the book she writes about how, after the war, she
went all around telling about Betsie and helping people to begin to forgive and
heal. At one point she went back to Germany
“It was at a church service in Munich
“He came up to me as the church was
emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,’ he said. ‘To think that, as
you say, He has washed my sins away!’
“His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And
I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive,
kept my hand at my side.
“Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts
boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man;
was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to
forgive him.
“I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my
hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or
charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
Give me Your forgiveness.
“As I took his hand the most incredible
thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current
seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this
stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
“And so I discovered that it is not on our
forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but
on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command,
the love itself.”
If your pathway is disillusionment with the
“hypocrites,” understand that, yes, there are wolves among the sheep – multiple
New Testament authors warned of this. But there are mostly sheep among the sheep; sheep are sinners, but they aren’t claiming
they aren’t. Growing in Christ-likeness, growing to maturity in Christ is a
lifelong process for all of us!
Actually it is more than a lifelong process; none of us will “arrive” before we
die (unless Christ comes first). He will need to finish changing us. As sheep
our primary job is to cling to the Good Shepherd; He is the one who will lead
us and help us to become what we are to become.
Yes, there are complete frauds out there,
and some Christian leaders are complete frauds, but most are just sinners like
you and me, growing but still in need of growing. And recall that Jesus saved
His harshest words for the religious people who put on airs, but showed the
greatest kindness to those such as little children who humbly came to Him with
nothing but a little faith.
And again, this is going to come out
sounding harsh, and I am by definition not speaking this to anyone here, but
when someone says they have rejected going to any kind of church fellowship
because of past hurts (or whatever reason) and yet they say they are Christians
sincerely following Christ, they too are hypocrites. To follow Christ means
that you do what He says, and Scripture is clear that Christians are to gather
together in local fellowships. It is assumed in everything said about spiritual
gifts, for example. I think of I Corinthians 12:
Now
if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,”
it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say,
“Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that
reason stop being part of the body. – I Cor. 12:15-16
In other words, saying you don’t fit in, or
they don’t need you, is not an excuse! And going on a few verses:
The
eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the
feet, “I don’t need you!” – I Cor. 12:21
If this is true for one part of the body
vs. another, how much more cannot the eye say to the entire rest of the body, I
don’t need any of you! Yet that is exactly what the person who refuses to be a
part of a local body is doing. He is saying he doesn’t need any of them, and that
they don’t need him, both of which are completely contrary to Scripture. We all
need a local body, and a local body needs every one of us.
Finally, let’s make some general statements
regarding the bitter soldier. To do this, let’s look at a passage from
Ephesians 4:
So I
tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as
the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their
understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that
is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. – Eph. 4:17-18
This passage isn’t specifically talking
about bitterness yet, but it does a number of verses later. Note here, though,
that the emphasis is completely on how we “stew,” how we spend our time
thinking. Thinking can be futile; it can be “dark” and “separated from the life
of God.” Paul is talking about unbelievers, but then he warns us not to be like
them. In other words, we can be just
like them when we “stew” with our stinkin’ thinkin’. Paul is very strong in this
passage; guided by the Holy Spirit, he says, don’t think this way any longer!
Don’t think like an unbeliever, someone who is separated from God, who doesn’t
understand God and His love and forgiveness. You are not one of these people,
so don’t act like you are!
The passage goes on to describe how we have
been taught to put off our old selves, which are being corrupted by deceitful
desires, and instead, we are made new in the attitude of our minds, and we are
to put on our new selves. It further goes on to talk about no longer being
false but being completely truthful, about how we can no longer remain in
anger, and about how we can no longer remain idle. It then says to be careful
about what we speak, and then we have the following:
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. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved
children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ
loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to
God. – Eph. 4:31-5:2
Get rid of all bitterness. All of it. And get rid of the things that often
accompany bitterness, the outward actions that result from stewing in
bitterness for a long time: rage, anger, brawling, slander, any kind of ill
intent at all. Instead we are to be kind and compassionate, forgiving one
another. Are we permitted to keep on complaining about how tough we have it
compared to everyone else? No. Are we allowed to begrudge the fact that nobody
really “gets” us and what we are going through? No. Can we remain angry at
those who hurt us? No. Are we permitted to keep on feeling disillusioned,
making generalizations, choosing to isolate ourselves from other believers? No.
We are to follow Christ’s example. Christ
died for those who hated Him. His enemies were the biggest hypocrites you ever
saw. And they hated Him; they spat on Him, ridiculed Him, tortured Him, and
killed Him. Nobody can sympathize with what He has gone through, because nobody
has ever gone through what He has gone through and nobody ever will again. And
yet He loves us. He forgives us. He wants to be with us and wants us to be with
Him. He is going to be with us forever.
There’s no “church hopping” for Him! He will make us into His bride and we will
worship Him forever. For Him, we can
choose not to be a bitter soldier.
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