Bitterness Hinders Grace-Energized Wives & Mothers

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Titus Two Women-08 Bitterness Hinders Grace-Energized Wives and Mothers .doc

Bitterness Hinders Grace-Energized Wives and Mothers

Titus 2:4

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God’s high calling for grace-energized women is to love their husbands and children. To most of us mature 21^st century believers that may sound wonderful. To them it must have sounded impossible.

The Cretans of Paul’s day lived in an ego-centered, selfish society that knew and cared little about forgiveness.  Roman society became so decadent that it saw forgiving people as weak and unforgiving ones as strong.  Cretans celebrated vengeful gods and exalted as heroes those who took vengeance on others.  The result was a society so much like America today–filled with bitterness, vengeance, anger, hate, and hostility.

More and more we see people seeking vengeance either outside or inside the bounds of the law. Just this week a crowd in Austin, Texas, dragged a man from his car and beat him to death for a crime they mistakenly thought he had committed. This pervasive unwillingness to forgive in our society is also the leading cause of the breakups in family relationships. [1]

Bitterness Pervaded the World of the Bible

God wanted the lost pagans living on Crete to see their changed lives and be confronted with living examples of Jesus Christ. Society was to be flooded at every level with the irrefutable proof of changed lives.

Paul sent the details for the invasion of this strategic island in his letter to Titus. We have been studying these admonitions in Titus 2. These life-truths have always deeply impacted any society. When the Gospel, that brings this impossible life into the heart of a newly saved individual, starts to work through Christ’s church, the world takes notice.

God has always worked out His plan in this world through individual believers who struggle[2] through life. One of the struggles believers have always faced while seeking to follow the Lord is bitterness.

The key passage in the New Testament that warns about bitterness is Ephesians 4:30, Let’s go there.

• Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. NKJV

The immeasurable power of God is stopped when His people disobey. God’s grace teaches us to deny ungodliness, but when we resist that grace, our sin grieves and quenches the Holy Spirit[3].

So Paul says grieve not the Spirit, don’t quench Him, because apart from God’s power nothing can be done that will last. Just as the congregations back then were told to deny ungodliness in any form, so must we also today.

Bitterness is a very deadly, fast-growing, and easily spread form of spiritual cancer.

Grace-Energized Lives Are Hindered by Bitterness

In the New Testament each time the word bitterness is used it always is a form of the Greek word pic. This word means just what the tool by the similar sounding word comes from, “to prick or cut.” This Greek word used for bitterness implies something that pricks or punctures and penetrates deeply.

This verse is fascinating for two reasons:

• First, bitterness is the very first sin that is listed after Paul warns about the horrible dangers of grieving the Holy Spirit of God as a believer. Bitterness is FIRST in that list; never forget that.
• Second, the verse on the other side of the warning (v. 29) is all about corrupt words (one of the danger signs of a bitter person is that they say rotten things about others).

At the heart of bitterness is a hurt that is internalized and not forgiven.

Perhaps the strongest warning Jesus ever gave to his disciples was in Matthew 18—he warned that the results of a bitter and unforgiving heart were grave. For a moment turn there to Matthew 18:21-35, and listen to the gravity of Christ’s warning.

• Matthew 18:21-35 Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.24 “And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 “But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made.26 “The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ 27 “Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. 28 “But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’29 “So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’30 “And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt.31 “So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done.32 “Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me.33 ‘Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’34 “And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.35 “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” NKJV

Did you catch that? Jesus just told believers that we would trap ourselves in the prison house and find ourselves in solitary confinement, tortured by the poisonous and sharp cutting edge of bitterness, if we hold onto an unforgiving spirit that always leads to bitterness.

Bitterness Leads to Intense Inner Torment

Jesus said that we hand ourselves over to the torturers (v. 34) when we embitter our hearts against someone. Those who live in the gall of bitterness imprison themselves in an emotional concentration camp and become the victims of immense internal torment.

Nurturing bitterness is as foolish as drinking poison or diving into a dark pit. Our refusals to forgive wall us into solitary confinement, and bitterness becomes our tormentor. Jesus warns that any believer is a candidate for this unspeakable emotional and mental torment when bitterness-producing un-forgiveness is practiced.

Do you see now why Paul lists bitterness first in the lineup of Spirit-grievers? Do you see why he says “put away ALL bitterness”? He says it is so deadly, so painful, so quick to spread that it must be dealt with right away.

A bitter person is cut and punctured by the words or actions of others. Those wounds untreated by the healing grace of a tender-hearted, forgiving attitude become a source of malignant poison. So this wound infects the wounded person with bitterness, a hurtful condition that touches every part of their life. As Hebrews 12 warns us, bitterness spreads throughout a person’s life until everything in them gets defiled by bitterness.

• Hebrews 12:15 looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; NKJV

One of the telltale signs of a wife or mother being hindered in living out her grace-energized role is when she feels “hurt” by her husband or children. Those hurts can quickly get infected and become resentful feelings which always grow into bitterness.

Say NO to Bitterness Daily

• Bitterness imprisons a believer’s emotions. Failing to forgive another will imprison a believer in their past.  Bitterness nurtures pain and keeps it alive, never allowing the wound to heal. The longer the hurt is dwelt upon, the more our anger is fed, resentment grows, and joy is extinguished.  Forgiveness energized by grace opens our prison doors and sets us free from our past.
• Bitterness poisons a believer’s life. Bitterness is not just a sin; it is an infection that poisons our speech making it biting, cutting, sarcastic, and slanderous. Bitterness poisons our emotions making them violent, unpredictable, intolerant, vengeful, and ungodly. Bitterness poisons all relationships making them void of affection, devoid of love, and emptied of kindness.  The writer of Hebrews warns, “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled” (Heb. 12:15). Forgiveness energized by grace replaces bitterness with love, joy, peace, and the other fruits of the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:22-23).
• Bitterness opens believer’s lives to Satan.  When Paul warned believers about improper anger he mentioned Satan’s horrible presence in Ephesians 4:26-27, “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.”  When Paul similarly charged the Corinthians he again joins Satan’s destructive influence upon believers who leave open this strategic door as he wrote, “Whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Cor. 2:10-11). The Bible clearly warns that unforgiving-based bitterness offers the most ground that Satan gains in our lives. Forgiveness energized by grace bars that avenue of demonic attack.
• Bitterness closes a believer’s life to God.  Remember how soberly Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount? “If you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions” (Matt. 6:14-15).  Jesus was not saying that believers lose the completed, past forgiveness of salvation. He was warning that bitterness robs them of their ongoing relational forgiveness with God the Father.  We cannot be right with God when unforgiving of others. Forgiveness energized by grace always restores us to the place of maximum blessing, returning us to purity and the joy of fellowship with God.

God wants believers to avoid bitterness so much that He constantly emphasizes the importance of forgiveness in Scripture.  There are no less than 75 different word pictures about forgiveness in the Bible. [4]

Spotting Signs of Bitterness

What are the warning signs of bitterness? As I list off some of the most common signs of bitterness, ask yourself as a wife or mother (and anyone else) if you are showing any of these signs of bitterness.

It is really not that complicated to recognize that bitterness has set in. Let’s think of some of the characteristics of a bitter person:

• They show a lack of concern for others. A bitter person cares very little about anybody else.
• They’re very sensitive and touchy. For instance, if a bitter person walks into a room where two other people are talking, and those people get quieter as he walks in, the bitter person thinks, “They’re talking about me.”
• They tend to avoid meeting new people, show little or no gratitude at all, and usually speak words of empty flattery or harsh criticism.
• They hold grudges against people, often for a long, long time. They find it extremely difficult to forgive.
• They often have a stubborn or sulking attitude.
• They end up experiencing mood extremes – very high and happy one minute, and the next thing you know, they’re so low they can reach up and touch bottom.
• Bitterness can be called the seed of Hell because one of the worst things about bitterness is that it doesn’t stop. It keeps getting worse. It may only start as a little seed of hurt, but then it grows and festers into a very dangerous thing. [5] 

Bitterness is one of the more deadly cancers of the spiritual life of the believer. If you are infected by bitterness, get out of your self-imposed prison now, don’t stay in a moment longer. Paul said that the Spirit of God, in the power of Christ’s cross can set you free. The escape route has been marked for us by the One who should have had all the reasons in the world to be bitter but was not. 

Getting Out of The Bitterness Trap 

Have you ever noticed that line in the Lord’s Prayer? Often we have said it so many times we skip right over it. “Forgive us God the way we have forgiven others.” God wants us to forgive others and not cultivate bitterness. Forgiving others isn’t denying that they hurt us, or ignoring it either. Getting out of the bitterness trap starts by honestly confronting hurts in our life—and energized-by-grace doing something about each one!

Here are some basic steps.

1)    Make a list of the people who’ve hurt you. This is always easiest for us because that is what we remember the best—the offenses others commit against us. Just jot names and things they have done to hurt you. Here are some typical hurts: “My parents didn’t keep their promises.” “They gave more love and affection to other members of the family.” “My dad took out his bad temper on me.” “My wife tries to make me into something I’m not.” “My friend wasn’t there when I needed him,” etc.

2)    Make another list of the things you have done to hurt them. Whoa, this is the hard part. Pride effectively edits our memories of the wrongs we do by shifting the blame, hiding our guilt, and so on. Our flesh likes our faults to stay hidden from others, so pray and ask God to shine the light of the Spirit upon your heart and expose ways you have harmed others.

One of the hardest things to do is to really clear the debts between parents and children. You could put down things like: laziness, ungratefulness (when was the last time you ever thanked your parents – just called them and thanked them?), deceitfulness (what have you done behind their backs to make them distrust you?), etc.

Making a list of those I have wronged is vital. Only when we agree with God about our sin and see it as He sees it—can we be forgiven (I John 1:9). One of the results of making such a list is that we find that in most of the ways that we have been hurt, we hurt others. My pride maximizes others’ faults and minimizes mine. This exercise will bring reality into focus.

3)    Take a good look at how you have hurt the Lord. Now we are at the most important place in our grace-energized journey out of bitterness. This is the most life-changing step. Get down on your face before God and ask Him to reveal all the ways you have hurt Him. God’s Word says He is grieved when we sin. Do we miss that terrible truth? Spurgeon said, “For it is an inexpressibly delightful thought, that He who rules heaven and earth, and is the creator of all things, and the infinite and ever blessed God, condescends to enter into such infinite relationships with his people that his divine mind may be affected by their actions.”

Each area the Spirit convicts you about, revealing where you have grieved God, confess and forsake, making no excuses to God. God said Christ’s blood cleanses away our sins not our excuses. We are transformed as we see that though God has been deeply hurt (grieved), He loves and forgives us and NEVER gets embittered towards us.

People closest to us can hurt us the most—right? Now as a believer, think about who knows every thought, hears every word, feels every emotion we have ever had. God does, right? We have the potential to hurt God so much, and we do. Yet He forgives. Because He forgives, He demands that we must do so also to all who hurt us.

The Bible says that “The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain.” (Genesis 6:6) The phrase “heart filled with pain” literally means “to have difficulty in breathing.” God made this beautiful creation and then He sees people not only hating and killing each other, but hating Him, too. And all that hurt goes deep, deep into His heart. We forget that God has a perfect memory. We only see a little bit – He sees it all, continuously. We only live a short time – He lives forever. When God looked at the world He made, He gasped with pain and horror. It hurt Him.

4)    Pray, and ask the forgiveness of God and man.  Now comes the simplest and hardest part of our task. Get alone with your list of how you hurt God and others and ask God to work in your heart. One by one confess them to God, then ask for and receive His forgiveness for every thing you have listed (and more as He reminds you). Then you need to tear up that list and get rid of it. Just doing that is a picture of how God wipes out, erases, washes clean, and removes our sins. Then you need to get in touch with those you have hurt and, either by letter, email, phone, or in person, ask for their forgiveness.

5)    Destroy your files.  Finally, there is one more vital step to take. There is still a copy of that list, it is in your mind. God says that He can also wipe that file clean. Hebrews 9:14 and 10:22 say that the blood of Christ, through the Eternal Spirit will purge your conscience from things that defile and will allow you to get close to the Lord with a pure heart, confident you are right with Him, and as much as is possible with others.   

Open the filing cabinets of your mind, take out all the files, and get rid of them. Tear up your list and burn it. You must release it all to God. Forgiveness is opening the filing cabinet before God and clearing the debts. “I’m not going to hold this against them. I’m not even going to keep a record of it.”

No record. That’s what God does with you. Do you want Him to remember and recall all the debts He has cleared you of? You do the same.

The Bible says, “For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” (Matt. 6.14-15)

It’s a choice you must make in response to God’s offer of forgiveness to you. What will you do? [6]

Communion is our declaration that we have chosen to be forgiving of others, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. The best thing we could ever do is come to the cross, seek His mercy and grace. Cling to the cross where He died in our place.

Lives energized-by-grace deny this form of ungodliness and walk in the Spirit with a forgiving and tender heart.

[1]  Adapted from  MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Ephesians 4, (Chicago: Moody Press) 1983.

[2]  The reality of our new life in Christ is that it is a struggle. When Paul wrote to Titus, he had already described himself as a fellow-struggler through this world (Romans 15:30; I Timothy 6:12; II Timothy 4:7). Paul calls born-again believers under the guidance of the Spirit of God sunagonidzomai or in English “fellow-strugglers”.

[3]  Just as the armies of Israel were defeated because of Achan’s hidden sin, and the ministry of the churches of Asia Minor were halted because of the un-forsaken sins of each congregation—so the early church was forced to see that when God’s Spirit is grieved and quenched, the power of the saints to live the impossible life wanes.

[4]  These points adapted, paraphrased, and drawn from MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Ephesians 4, (Chicago: Moody Press) 1983.

[5]  This list was drawn from an article called HURT AND BITTERNESS by Winkie Pratney.

[6]  This list was quoted and paraphrased  from an article called HURT AND BITTERNESS by Winkie Pratney.

Transcript

Let’s open our Bibles to Titus 2. As you’re turning there, we’re looking at Christ’s Church. Christ’s Church is to be energized by His grace to live an impossible life for the glory of God.

And God’s high calling for women as Titus 2 in verse four says, is for grace energized wives to love their husbands, period, and grace energized mothers to love their children.

Now just saying those words to us, most of us mature 21st century believers sounds wonderful, but to those who got this letter 2000 years ago, that admonition from God through Paul to Titus to them sounded impossible. To have women love their husbands, to have mothers love their children, was a very difficult task back then.

The Cretins. Remember, Titus is a book written to a missionary church planner on the island of Crete named Titus. He was discipled and nurtured by Paul. But the Cretins, the people Titus served of Paul’s day, lived in an ego-centered, selfish society that knew and cared little about forgiveness. That’s how the people were raised. That’s how they had been trained and mentored and taught. Forgiveness was not important. Roman society became so decadent that it saw forgiving people as weak and unforgiving people as strong, and to be modeled and emulated and followed.

Cretins celebrated vengeful gods. They exalted, as heroes, those who took vengeance on others. The result was the society that Titus ministered to seems to have been so much like America today. The island of Crete was filled with bitterness, vengeance, anger, hate, and hostility. Kind of sounds like the news from Austin this past week, doesn’t it? Where a crowd of people thought this car had injured a child, and so they dragged one of the occupants out and beat the person to death. It’s amazing how much our culture, more and more we see people seeking vengeance either outside or inside the bounds of the law. And so, the pervasive unwillingness to forgive in the society of the Bible world and our society today leads to a very empty, very disillusioned, and a very fragmented society, right down to homes that are destroyed through divorce and separation because of a lack of forgiveness.

Well, bitterness pervaded the world of the Bible, and God wanted the lost pagans living on Crete to see changed lives. And He said, I want you to change in these small foundational ways. I want wives to have a whole new direction of their lives toward their husband instead of away from them. I don’t want you just to do agape sacrificial love. I want you to do phileo relational friendship love, which was totally devoid in the ancient world and becoming more so in our culture. And so those living examples of Jesus Christ were to flood every level with the irrefutable proof of change lives.

Now how is this to be done? It’s what you hold in your hands. Titus, a letter inspired by God through Paul sent to this young missionary church planter and to be instructed to the saints living on Crete. Paul sent the details for this invasion of Crete in the admonitions we’re studying in Titus 2. These life truths have always deeply impacted any society from the first century onward.

Christ Church has gone forward with the qualifications of leaders we see in chapter one and with the grace energized lives of the members of Christ’s Church that we see in Titus chapter 2. Just as important as it is to have biblically qualified Titus 1 leaders, it is important to have biblically energized and grace energized Titus 2 men and women, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, young men and young women.

That was God’s plan. And God has always worked out His plan in this world through individual believers who struggle through life. The Christian life is not easy. In fact, the Apostle Paul self-described his own Christian life as agonizomai. We get the English word agony. Paul said, the Christian life is an endless agonizing struggle. One of the things that makes it, that is what we see this morning, which I’m calling and we’re got to look at one of the chief hindrances to having a grace energized life.

Turn back in your Bibles from Titus to Ephesians chapter four, and I just want to center on the 29th, 30th, and 31st verse with you just briefly because one of the struggles believers have always faced while seeking to follow the Lord with a grace energized life.

One of the chief impediments to that Spirit-empowered grace energized life is what Paul addresses in this text in chapter four of Ephesians verses 29, 30, and 31, and that of course is bitterness. The key passage in the New Testament that warns about bitterness is right before us in Ephesians 4, and what it says in the center is verse 30.

It says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And then what’s fascinating is that there is a succession of Spirit grievers things in our lives that grieve that cause God pain. And Spurgeon put it this way, he says that the infinite one could be touched by my actions is hard to understand and comprehend.

But God says He is grieved, that He is pained when Christians are acting in the way that He starts listening and look what is very number one first on this list. Okay? Look at verse 31 after it says in verse 30, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit, which is an ongoing action, a present active indicative. He says, I command you to stop in any way continuously be not grieving the Holy Spirit.

Verse 31, get rid of, as the NIV puts it, or in the New King James that I’m reading from, let all, and what’s the first word in your Bible after that? Yeah. Bitterness. Back to this thought. The order of the words in the Bible were not dart boarded. It wasn’t that Paul was saying, oh, there’s, I’ll get out the source here and I’ll start picking words and I’m got to throw and see what I should put first.

The Holy Spirit of God directly, superintended, and supernaturally engineered every word of the Bible you hold. The words that were chosen and even the order that they were written down, what is closest to the verse that commands all believers for all their lifetime to be careful to never grieve the Spirit of God? What is the very closest sin to that grief? Bitterness. And it’s not by accident. God says this, He says, I want you to be so careful.

In New Testament times, every time the word bitterness was used, it was always a form of the Greek word pic. Now you’ve heard of picks and pickaxes. It’s a very similar thing. A pic is something that chips and cuts away at something continuously until it can finally work through even the most resistant substance it can just pick away at it. That’s the word that. Pic is the Greek word from which bitterness is derived. And so, what the Lord says is the word means just what the tool by the similar sounding word comes from to prick and to cut. And this Greek word always used for bitterness implies something that punctures and penetrates deeply.

This verse is fascinating for two reasons. Verse 30, first of all, talking about grieving, the Spirit of God has bitterness as the first sin that’s listed after Paul warns about this horrible danger of grieving the Holy Spirit of God as a believer, bitterness is first in that list, and we would take heed to never forget that because bitterness is a huge struggle for believers. Second, the verse on the other side of this warning is verse 29. And if you look at verse 29, the apostle says this, let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. But what is good and necessary for edification that may impart grace to the hears and do not grieve the Spirit of God. It’s amazing. It’s almost like a sandwich in the middle is don’t grieve the Spirit of God on one side is bitterness does, and one of the byproducts of bitterness is that verse preceding unwholesome, rotten talk usually emanates from the heart of an embittered person. Their soul is poisoned, and so it comes out their mouth. And therefore, it’s a fascinating study to look at. This word at the heart of bitterness is hurt. That is internalized and not forgiven.

Well, that’s the message. What’s the application of it? Well, Jesus Christ himself, and if you want to turn back to Matthew 18 with me, we’re got to read this together. Jesus Christ himself presented probably. What are his most stern words of warning to believers in Matthew 18? And as we read together, Jesus warned his disciples not the lost, not the unconverted, not the spiritual phonies of the religious establishment, but his own disciples. Which we are also his learners and followers.

This morning, he warned them that the result of a bitter and unforgiving heart was most ominous. For a moment, in Matthew 18:21-35, listen to the gravity of Christ’s warning. He says, don’t allow your hurt to get a hold of you so that you become embittered so that you refuse to forgive the person that inflicted that wound on you, and don’t let that wound get infected and fester and begin producing the poison of bitterness in your life. Because if you do so, by the time you get to the end of what Jesus says, He says, you will have torture inside. You’ll be imprisoned in your own prison of torture because of being embittered.

Matthew 18, starting in verse 21. Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often should my brother sin against me? And I forgive him up to seven times. Peter’s feeling pretty good thought, I’m got to be. Finally, I’m got to say something the Lord’s not got to correct. He thought he had made it, and Jesus said to him, I don’t say to you up to seven times but up to 70 times seven. Verse 23, therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed 10,000 talents, but as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold in his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. And the servant therefore fell down before him saying, master, have patience with me and I will pay you all. Verse 27, then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred days pay, and he laid his hands on him and took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe.

Verse 29, so his fellow servant fell down on his feet and begged him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you all and he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So, when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked servant. I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you? And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers till he should pay all that was due to him.

Verse 35, Jesus applies this story about a person who wouldn’t forgive, who had been forgiven a story. That should strike home with us because all of us, if you’re standing before the Lord this morning, born again and regenerated. You have had the greatest miracle of all that God is still doing to this day, which is forgiveness. So, we all listen carefully when Jesus says, verse 35, so My Heavenly Father also will do to you. He’s looking in the eyes of His disciples. They’re the ones that brought this up through Peter. The topic was forgiveness and a lack of forgiveness from the heart of a believer. And Jesus says, My Heavenly Father will do to you believers if each of you believers from your heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses. Did you catch that? Jesus just told believers. That we would trap ourselves in the prison house. Look what it says. His master was angry, verse 34, delivered him to the torturers. He put him in jail. In torment, Jesus said, we will trap ourselves in the prison house. We’ll find ourselves in solitary confinement. We’ll find ourselves tortured by the poisonous and sharp cutting edges of our bitterness if we hold an unforgiving spirit always producing in the life of a believer bitterness.

Let’s bow before our Lord in prayer. Father, I thank You that we can examine our hearts, and I pray that we would examine our hearts for one thing, and that is there any of the poison of bitterness in our hearts because it will grieve you. Oh God, Your Spirit will be quench from working in our midst and we will begin poisoning ourselves and torturing and tormenting ourselves. I pray that You would let all bitterness and anger and wrath and clamor and malice and evil speaking be put away from us so that we can come with clean hands and pure hearts before You. In the precious name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Let me just present to you four truths to think about because Jesus said bitterness produces intense internal torment. That’s the whole concept of what He’s talking about here. Jesus said that we hand ourselves over to the torturers. Look back at verse 34, when we embitter our hearts against someone, those who live in the gall of bitterness will imprison themselves in an emotional concentration camp you. When holding on to an unforgiving spirit, you become a victim of immense internal torment. Nurturing bitterness is as foolish as drinking poison because that’s all it is. It poisons everything. Hebrews 12:15 says that bitterness defiles every part of us, not just our lives. It also extends out from us, and we begin defiling others. Our refusals to forgive walls us into solitary confinement. Bitterness becomes our tormentor. Jesus warns that any believer is a candidate for this unspeakable emotional and mental torment. When bitterness producing unforgiveness is practiced in their lives.

Do you see why Paul is bitterness first and that list of spirit quenchers? So, we see why Paul said, put away all bitterness. He says, it’s so deadly, it’s so painful. It’s so quick to spread. It must be dealt with right away. A bitter person gets cut and punctured by the words or actions of others, those wounds untreated by the healing grace of tender hearted, forgiving attitudes. Do you know what the 32nd verse is? All of us probably learn that and be kind one to another, tenderhearted forgiving one another. Why? Because one another deserves it. No, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

And so, without the application of the healing grace of a tender-hearted forgiving attitude, our wounds become a source of malignant poison. This wound infects the wounded person with bitterness, a hurtful condition that touches every part of their life. As Hebrews 12:15 warns us bitterness spreads through our life until everything in it becomes defiled by that poison. This is what the writer of Hebrews says. Look carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled in the context where we started of Titus 2, these women that were saved in the church, and Crete had every reason in the world to not be forgiving, they were raised that way. They were bred that way. They were taught that way. They were treated that way. They were perpetuating the unforgiving, venge filled society they were born into. But God says, when you’re born from above, my grace comes into you. And my grace teaches you to deny the way you were born. Deny the way your culture has formed you, and my grace energizes you to live the impossible life. To live a life that loves those that hurt you, that forgives and is tenderhearted. And so, we need to say no to bitterness daily for four reasons.

Number one, bitterness imprisons, a believer’s emotions. Jesus says in the text before you that the tormentors would come. The tormentors of bitterness are our hearts become totally poisoned and darkened and fueling totally abandoned. When we are bitter and when people embitter us failing to forgive another will imprison. A believer in their past bitterness nurtures the pain of a past event and keeps it perpetually alive, never allowing the wound to heal. The longer the hurt is dwelt upon, the more our anger is fed, our resentment grows, and our joy is extinguished. However, forgiveness, energized by grace opens our prison doors and sets us free from our past, sets us free from that wound and heals it with the balm of his healing grace. Number one, bitterness should be said no to daily. It because it will imprison a believer’s emotions.

Secondly, bitterness not only imprisons us, it poisons our lives. It says in Hebrews 12:15, it says that thereby that root of bitterness freeing up defiles. It poisons every part of our life. Bitterness is not just a sin, it’s an infection. It poisons our speech making, our speech biting and cutting and sarcastic and slanderous, bitterness, poisons our emotions, making them violent and unpredictable, and intolerant, and vengeful. And all in all, ungodly bitterness, poisons all of our relationships, making them void of affection, devoid of love, emptied of kindness. That’s why the writer of Hebrews says, see to it that none of you deny the grace that will cause you to be energized and deny bitterness, because it defiles forgiveness. Energized by grace, replaces bitterness with love, replaces bitterness with joy, peace in every other fruit that the Holy Spirit wants to bring in our lives.

Say no to bitterness daily because it will imprison your emotions. Say no to bitterness daily because it will poison your life but say no to bitterness because as Ephesians four verse 27 says, bitterness also opens the door to Satan. In that list, it says in Ephesians 4:26. Be angry and sin not let the sun not go down upon your wrath. Verse 27, don’t give place to the devil. Do you know what a close relative of bitterness is? Right after foul things coming out of our mouths is anger. Usually bitterness produces anger, internalized smoldering. Feeds that bitterness, and that’s why bitterness opens a believer’s life to Satan. When Paul warned believers about improper anger, he mentioned Satan’s horrible presence In Ephesians 4:26-27, when Paul similarly charged the Corinthians, he again joins Satan’s destructive influence upon believers who leave open the strategic door of their life, leaving it open through angry. Bitterness and unforgiving, angry, and bitter spirit.

Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 2. He says, whom you forgive? Anything? I also forgive for indeed what I have forgiven. If I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan. Satan schemes to enter the back door of the life of a believer through an unforgiving angry heart, that becomes embittered. Say no to bitterness daily because it will imprison you as a believer, your emotions. It will open your life to Satan. It will poison your life as long as it stays in your heart.

Finally, the last reason we should say no to bitterness is because bitterness closes our life to God. Do you remember how soberly Christ spoke? The words of the Sermon the Mount. Sometimes we go through the Sermon the Mount, so fast that we don’t slow the tape down and hear what he said. In fact, often we quote part of the sermon the Mount, almost on autopilot, and we call that the Lord’s Prayer. It was actually supposed to be our prayer. It wasn’t his. It was his teaching us how to pray. And part of that prayer says this. He says, if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. That is a very sobering thought. Bitterness closes our lives to God’s work in our life, and so Jesus says, not saying that believers are losing their complete past forgiveness of salvation, that’s now what he’s talking about. He’s saying that bitterness robs us of the ongoing relational forgiveness with God as our Father. It stops His blessing. It stops His favor. It stops His joy in our lives. We cannot be right with God when unforgiving of others is what Jesus said.

As He said. Pray this all the time. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those what? Who trespass against us. Do you see the connection? Bitterness closes a believer’s life to God. We cannot be right with God when we are unforgiving of others, but we celebrate this morning forgiveness, energized by grace. That always restores us to the place of maximum blessings, returning us to purity and the joy. Of fellowship with God. In fact, God wants believers to avoid bitterness so much. He constantly emphasizes the importance of forgiveness in the scriptures. If you study, especially through the Old Testament, you’ll find that there are no less than 75 different word pictures about forgiveness in the Bible. And basically, what God says is He wants us to live in a state of perpetually forgiving others as he is perpetually forgiving us.

So, what happens if we’re struggling with bitterness? Declare that we have chosen to be forgiving of others even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. Come to the Cross of Christ, seeking His mercy and grace, clinging to the Cross of Christ where He died in our place, lives energized by grace. Deny this form of ungodliness and unforgiving spirit, and they shut the door to the poison of bitterness.

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