Bitterness: The Sin We Learned to Live With

Oh man, it is. It's July.

What am I doing? Preaching in a in a hoodie?

Well, I'm glad you asked. We're going to have some fun

today. So this is pretty great.

Had the staff at a little getaway last year and I, I made

a joke that I made a few times where I said, you know, if you

ever seen the Sour Patch Kids commercials, I said, I'm a sour

patch pastor. First I'm sour, but then I'm

sweet. You know, I like sarcasm.

But hey, if you need me, I'll be there.

And Pastor Autumn gave this to me for Christmas and it has

lemons here on the back, which is important for today.

Whoa. It's a really big 1.

So it's going to take us a minute to get there, but if

you'd like to read along, we're going to be in Exodus chapter 15

Exodus 15 · chapter mention

to begin with this morning. Before we get there, I'll ask

Pastor Autumn, since you thought that this hoodie was a good

idea, would you come on up here and help me with something?

And where is my daughter, Emma Lynn?

She'll be right back. OK.

All right, so here's what's going to happen.

Come on up. Yeah, right up here.

I'm going to ask you to slice these lemons up.

Well, I'm going to step away from you once you pick up the

knife, just just for my own safety.

Yeah. And let's see.

Cassandra, would you bring me my my water up here, please?

Hello. Now, here's why I've asked them

to to come on up here occasionally.

We've gone out to eat as a big group.

And these two weirdos, well, they have this thing that they

do sometimes where they will grab a slice of lemon and

they'll pour like some sweetener on it.

And then they just stick the lemon in their mouth.

And I'm like, you know, there's a dessert menu.

You don't have to do that, but they do this.

So if you would just slice up these lemons, Pastor Autumn, how

do you want them sliced? How do you want them sliced?

It's not for me. Y'all are the weirdos with the

tradition. What's the She said slice them

the normal way. It's the normal way.

OK. It's not a very sharp knife.

Well, it's it's it's enormous. So, yeah, you see fog coming up

from the lemons. You see fog coming up from the

lemons. I hope it's not fog.

There you go. All right.

You guys are going to just engage in your tradition, but

with no sweetener this time. She said you can have the

biggest one. She said no.

I just want you guys to take a really good big bite.

Oh, look, there's Kit Kat. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can cut it in half if you want.

I don't know. I think the whole thing should

just go on. All right?

There's a lot of medicinal aspects to lemon rind, right?

Yeah. Just the whole take a big old

bite. Look, there's Kit Kat.

Just look at her and take a big bite together.

Ready. Go for it.

Big bite, big bite. No, nobody didn't bite it.

But you guys do this all the time.

But I didn't do it the right way.

Oh, don't know what I was thinking.

Pastor Ron, would you cut these other ones in half for me?

My hands have spit on. That's all right.

You're not in the kitchen. Can you just, can you just cut

them in half and then just squeeze the lemon juice into

this for me? All right, Why did I do this

other than, man, what are they going to do?

Tell me no up here? It's so funny.

We just all laughed together, didn't we?

Here's the thing, The the lemon didn't really change.

It's always been what it is. I will say, Autumn, I think you

handled it a little bit better than Emma did, but not by a lot.

Here's the thing, one of them handled a little bit better than

the other one, but they both were obviously reacting to it

and here's why. How many of you have reacted to

something that was too tart or too sour before you know and you

have this whole body reaction to it.

But how many of you like something that is sour but you

used to not enjoy it? I remember I used to tell my

friends how much I loved warheads.

Do you ever have those candy warheads?

I was like oh I love them. Hated them.

I got older and liked them but as a kid I was like oh I love

them so much. They don't hurt my mouth at all.

Meanwhile I'm losing like 13 layers of skin on the roof of my

mouth because I'm trying to be cool.

Nobody plans on becoming bitter. Nobody wakes up 1 morning hoping

that they can spend years of resentment or replaying old

herds. Bitterness usually starts with

something real. Somebody says something that

cuts deeply or betrays your trust or someone who lets you

down. Basically, someone leaves a sour

taste in your soul, and at first we know something isn't right

and it bothers us. But if you never surrender that

hurt to God, then something else is going to happen and you're

going to adapt to it. As time goes on, you influence

other people and you pour into their lives whether you want to

or not. Pastor Autumn, would you pour me

a glass, please? Yeah.

Yeah. Would you just pour me a glass?

Thank you. You know how many of you guys

like a little lemon in your water?

Yeah. It's good for you.

That's what I hear. Yeah.

It's got some floaties. It's quite pungent.

Did you say there was spit on your hands?

I think so. No, no, no, just.

I'm just going to leave it here. I think you've you've helped me

enough. I think so as well.

Thank you. Thank you.

As you were. OK, I'll, I don't know if that's

lemon water or just watery lemon.

I think I'll pass. I'm just going to leave that

there for now, though. Today's message is called

bitterness, but it's called the sin we learn to live with.

We're talking about the open secrets of sin.

What are things that happen in a church that we just treat as

normal? And bitterness is one of them.

And I get it because a lot of times when you hear somebody's

story, you don't want to discount what they've been

through. And so when they tell you

something that really wounded them, really hurt them, you

don't want to sound like you're you're dismissing it or saying

it's not a big deal. The wound is real.

But sometimes have you ever known somebody who's carried A

wound for, I don't know, 5-10, fifteen, 30 years sometimes?

And you think, wow, they'd be so much healthier if they could get

rid of this wound or if they could heal from this wound.

As strange as it sounds, this is exactly where we find God's

people in Exodus 15. Now, to understand what's

happening here, you have to remember where Israel is in this

story. God has just delivered His

people from over 400 years of slavery in Egypt.

They have witnessed the 10 plagues happening.

They've watched the Angel of death Passover their homes and

walked through the Red Sea on dry ground while Pharaoh's army

got swallowed up behind them. In fact, if you read the verses

immediately before our opening scriptures today, you'll find

Moses and the Israelites singing songs of worship because God had

done exactly what He promised He would do.

Have you been there? I know we're going to talk about

bitterness, but have you ever been in the season where you're

like, wow, God really came through?

This is not going to be possible without him.

And he did it. Life could not be better for the

Israelites. They are finally free.

And then just three days later, a lot can happen in three days.

Right now, they can't find water.

And when they finally do, it's undrinkable.

Any guesses why? Because it's it's bitter.

All right, it's amazing how quickly our circumstances can

change. And the second that something is

unfavorable, you start forgetting about the goodness of

God and how he's been there. Three days earlier they're

celebrating God's faithfulness, and three days later they're

questioning if God's even going to provide for them.

One of the reasons this story is more relatable than we think is

because bitterness doesn't begin when everything's going wrong.

It begins in the moments after God has been faithful.

See, we start to let our guard down and we say, well, now

things are going well. Now God is always going to bless

me, but this life is hard. Listen to the starting in verse

22. It says this.

Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea and

they moved out into the desert of shore.

They travelled in this desert for three days without finding

any water. And when they came to the Oasis

at Mara Oasis, the water was too bitter to drink.

So they called this place Mara, which means bitter.

And then the people complained and turned against Moses.

What are we going to drink? They demanded.

So Moses cried out to the Lord for help.

And the Lord showed him a piece of wood, and Moses threw it into

the water, and this made the water good to drink.

Anybody got a stick? If you do, don't, don't.

I don't want to ask you why I'm not.

I think I'm still not going to risk it.

All right. It was there at Mara that the

Lord set before them the following decree as a standard

to test their faithfulness to him.

Listen, it's a decree to test their faithfulness.

He said, If you will listen carefully to the voice of the

Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, in whose

sight? OK, obeying his commands,

keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of

the diseases I sent on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who

heals you. And after leaving Mera, the

Israelites travelled on to the Oasis of Elam where they found

12 springs and 70 palm trees. And they camped there beside the

water question room full of Bible scholars.

Now we just read it together. How many of them died of

dehydration? How many of them suffered

because of their circumstances? The very first thing that

happened they assumed was the ultimate thing that was going to

happen. God, you saved me just so I

could drink bitter water. He said, why don't you keep

walking? He never told them to stop

there. They just found water and said

this must be God's provision. I'm here to tell you that

sometimes what you embrace is God's provision is just

something in your life. Sometimes it's just something

you've encountered and it wasn't what the Lord meant to refresh

you. And then when you drink of it,

it's bitter and you say, well, this is what the Lord's done to

me. Now that being said, scripture

doesn't tell the Israelites to ignore reality or to think more

positively. Have you ever known a Christian

that would have shown up at Marin been like, this water's

great? Praise God who provided this

water, right? When you're sick, it's OK to say

that you're sick, but you are pleading the blood of Jesus over

you for healing. It doesn't do you any good to

say no, I'm a child of God, I'm never sick.

That actually just makes you a liar.

Guess what? Lying is bitterness.

What I want you to know is not something that happens

immediately. It almost always takes time.

It doesn't begin with something that happens in one second, but

it does begin with a genuine wound or a genuine

disappointment or an injustice. Your pain is not imaginary.

And so I'm not here to belittle the things that you've been

through any more than I'd want you to belittle the things that

I've been through. The real question in this story

wasn't whether or not the water was bitter.

Everybody agreed that it was. The real question is what the

people would do next. Would they bring their

disappointment to God and trust Him with it?

Or would they allow that moment to change the way they viewed

everything after it? Could you imagine if they then

came across these 12 Oasis and they said, I know what water's

like out here, so I'll never go along yet again?

Sometimes we do this. I'll never be in a relationship

again. I know what they're like.

Oh, I'll never trust a friend again.

I know what that's like. I'll never go to church again.

I know what Christians are like. Well, they're really just like

people. Jesus didn't trust people.

That's according to Scripture. Said he knew all about them, but

man did he love them. Bitterness begins because we had

pain that happened and we never learned to release it to the

Lord and get healing. The tragedy is that not every

bitter moment has to lead to a bitter life.

So let's talk about that. What does bitterness do?

Well, the first thing it does is bitterness.

Keeps old wounds alive. Keeps old wounds alive.

Could you imagine if you had to carry every wound for the rest

of your life, the way that it felt when you first received it?

How many of you have had surgery before just to show hands?

Some sort of surgery? OK, aren't you glad you don't

feel right now the way that you did immediately following

surgery? Praise God for that.

Why do we do it in our soul? We carry it just like it

happened. How many of us have something

that's happened to us that we could go back and we could

relive it and we would feel it like it was happening in real

time? If you want to see what happens

when someone never lets a wound heal in the Bible, you don't

have to look much further than the very first king that Israel

ever had, King Saul. We'll be in First Samuel chapter

1 Samuel 18 · chapter mention

18, just a few verses. But Saul didn't start as a

bitter man. If you read his story, he

started as a very humble man. He, he doesn't even think that

he belongs on the throne and God chooses him.

And so he hides amongst the baggage because he's afraid to

embrace the responsibility that he's been given.

And then we have this little thing happen.

I don't know if you remember the story of David and Goliath.

David takes down a giant, by the way, he takes down a giant that

Saul wasn't willing to fight. The best Saul was willing to do

was to look at David and say, here's my armor.

Why don't you wear it? And David said, I'm not used to

that. I can't fight it your way.

It's a great lesson in that you can't fight battles the way

somebody else would. You have to fight it the way

that the Lord equips you. Different sermon for a different

day, but listen to this starting in verse five of First Samuel

18. Whatever Saul asked David to do,

David did it successfully. That should make Saul happy.

I would think. So Saul made him a commander

over all the men of war, an appointment that was welcomed by

the people and Saul's officers alike.

When the victorious Israelite army was returning home after

David had killed the Philistine, women from all the towns of

Israel came out to meet King Saul, and they sang and danced

for joy with tambourines and cymbals.

This was their song. Saul has killed his thousands

and David his ten thousands. It never says they were good

songwriters, right? But the music industry was in

its infancy. OK?

This made Saul very angry. What's this?

He said? They credit David with 10

thousands and me with only thousands.

Next they'll be making him their king.

It's a little foreshadowing. So from that time on, Saul kept

a jealous eye on David. Just last week, we talked about

jealousy and envy. We talked about how it's the sin

behind comparison. What was the first line in the

song? Saul has killed his thousands,

thousands. It's impressive.

And he was not willing to go against that giant.

Can you not give credit where credit is due?

Saul actually deserves some of the credit because he allowed

David to go. He could have told David no, but

he can't rejoice in the success of somebody else.

So this bitterness, this bitterness that's dwelling up in

him is going to lead down a a dark road. 1 sentence, one

comparison here, just one wound to Saul's pride and the women

that were singing it. They weren't trying to start a

civil war. I'd venture to say it was a

matter of national pride for them too.

They're excited about what God is providing.

So they're they're singing. God has provided for us.

Saul's done great things. And man, did you just check out

what David did? He just took down a giant.

I think it's worth celebrating. But you know, what's really sad

is that Saul could not hear God's victory because all he

could hear was his own insecurities.

Sometimes God is doing amazing things in our lives, in the

lives of people around us, and we can't see them, hear them.

We can't perceive them at all because all we can keep our eyes

and our ears and our hearts and our souls and our minds locked

on is what we view as something that's injustice.

Bitterness has a way of freezing us.

In time. Everybody else moves on, but we

don't, and we keep replaying the conversation and reliving the

betrayal and rehearsing the conversations.

What should have been said? Oh, if I could go back and have

that conversation, here's what I'd say.

Now I'd give them a piece of my mind.

The saddest part of Saul's story to me is that his life slowly

stopped being about God's calling and started being about

David. I really want you to hear this.

Saul's life became about David from that point on.

You see him plotting and trying to figure out how to take David

off the map, how to take him out, how to kill him.

When he talks to his own son, Jonathan, he can't talk about

anything. But David, for you and I, when

we get caught up in bitterness over something that has been

done to us by somebody else, at least a part of our life becomes

about them. And it's probably the last thing

you want. It's probably the last thing you

want to hear when it comes to something like this.

Because if they've already wounded you, you don't want to

give them a slice of your life. So why are you doing it?

Bitterness always steals so much more from us than we think it

will. It doesn't just keep old wounds

alive, it keeps us from living the life that God has placed in

front of us. And I wonder how many of us are

still sitting in a conversation that happened five years ago, or

something that a parent said to us growing up, or in a marriage

that ended. Or maybe we're sitting in a

friendship that fell apart. Or maybe we're still thinking

back on a church that hurt us. Maybe it was just somebody who

betrayed our our trust. But the moment is over.

And now every new relationship is filtered through the old

wound. Every new opportunity is

evaluated through yesterday's pain.

Bitterness is dangerous. The hurt might have happened in

the past, but bitterness refuses to leave it there.

Got a couple of illustrations just to drive this home. 1 is

for book fans and one is for movie fans.

So how many of you have read Great Expectations by Charles

Dickens? I I didn't figure I'd see a lot

of hands, right? Dickens was paid per word, so I

get it. I'd write the way that Dickens

wrote too, if I was getting paid per word.

But in it, there's a character named Miss Havisham.

On the morning of her wedding, she's abandoned by the man that

she loved. And I get it.

We've seen that in movies or TV shows many Times Now.

But for her, this was a devastating betrayal in the

book, what makes it so unforgettable is that she

freezes her life instead of moving forward, instead of

learning something. And here's what I mean.

She never takes off her wedding dress.

She leaves it on permanently. She leaves the wedding cake set

out to rot in place. And she purposely stops every

clock in her house at the exact moment that she learned of the

abandonment and the betrayal. Years passed, but if you were to

walk into her home, it would look like she was preparing for

a wedding, probably smell pretty bad.

But she's still locked into this moment.

Terrifying because emotionally, many of us are living in this

same house. And I get it.

I know I'm talked about Charles Dickens.

It's 2026, Let's talk about Star Wars.

All right, if you've ever seen Star Wars, there's a similar

story, believe it or not, in Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin didn't become Darth Vader overnight.

His transformation didn't begin with power.

He started as a little kid who was a bad actor, I'll say it,

the worst cast in The Phantom Menace.

And it didn't even start with a lust for power.

It began with pain. His story began with pain.

He was terrified of losing the people that he loved.

Can you relate to this? He's terrified of losing the

people that he loved. And so instead of surrendering

that fear to something greater, he held onto it.

And fear became anger, and anger became hatred, and hatred became

the very thing that transformed him into someone almost

unrecognizable. And that's exactly what

bitterness does. It'll make you a Sith Lord if

you let it. Maybe not, but it convinces you

that yesterday could still control today.

And before long, you're not even living in the present.

You're still living in what happened back then.

One of the reasons people love the story of Darth Vader is

that, and if you haven't seen it, I'm so sorry, Return of the

Jedi came out like, what, 84? Something like that. 83.

OK, nerd. All right.

In the final moments of Darth Vader's life, he asked for the

mask to come off and he's finally Anakin again.

He turns back to light, sacrifices himself to save his

son. Luke, destroys the Emperor.

So you think, thanks Disney, and he gets a moment of redemption.

And here's where Hollywood really does US dirty.

The problem is that your life is not a 2 hour movie.

And I think a lot of us assume that one day we're going to have

a cinematic moment. One day we're going to finally

let go of that bitterness. One day we're going to let that

be used for good. And I would just ask you this,

why not let that be today? What?

What are you waiting for? You waiting for the third act?

Are you waiting for the deathbed scene?

Because I'm just telling you, we don't all know when it's coming.

Just because you saw it happen in a Galaxy a far, far away a

long time ago doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to happen for

you. We don't know how much time we

have. We don't know how many

opportunities we'll get, and none of us are guaranteed one

final moment. Psalm 147 three says this, that

God heals the broken hearted and bandages their wounds.

How many of y'all would love to claim that for you today that He

heals the broken hearted, He bandages their wounds.

So how do we close these old wounds?

How do we heal them instead of carrying them for years?

The first thing you have to do is, and this is specific, it's

not just recognize where the wound is.

I probably don't need to tell you that.

I want you to recognize how often you bring it up.

Bitterness has a habit of replaying the old moments until

they become more real than the present.

What is it you have trouble letting go of?

Who betrayed you a long time ago?

And when you see them, it's instantly what pops up,

Instantly what comes up. Or maybe not even when you see

them. How often does it come up?

Think about the negative experiences you've gone through

that come up the most. Now if you just walk through

trauma or tragedy, I get it. It's recent, but I'm talking

about something that's in the past.

How often does it come up? And you may say, well, I'm

remembering it. You can't forget the past.

You ever hear that saying those who forget the past, they're

doomed to repeat it. I get it.

I would just ask you, are you remembering so you can heal from

it? Or are you remembering because

you've become attached to the pain?

A lot of people become their identity in in how they were

victimized. The second step is you have to

stop feeding the wound. And this means while every wound

does need attention in order to heal, bitterness keeps feeding

the wound itself instead. Could you imagine if instead of

putting a Band-Aid on a scrape, you got a handful of like, I

don't know, mud, toilet water, I don't know, just rub it in there

and see what happens. What do you think is going to

happen? It's going to get infected.

The wound is going to grow because you're feeding the wound

instead of the body. But a lot of us do this.

How do we do this? Instead of looking for people

that will help us heal, we go to someone so we can replay it and

hear that we were indeed the victim, that we were indeed

wounded. You already know you were

wounded. You don't need somebody else to

confirm it unless you're just looking to feel good for a

moment. Any attention feels OK when

you're not sure of who you are. But at that point, eventually

you're no longer nurturing healing.

You're nurturing bitterness. Whatever you feed is going to

grow. And the last thing I would tell

you, and it's probably the hardest one, it's just trust God

with justice. It's one of the hardest truths

in Scripture is that forgiveness, It doesn't mean

pretending nothing ever happened.

It's just releasing the right to be the judge.

And you may say, well, I'm the one that was wronged.

I have the right to judge. OK.

But first of all, you can't do it in a righteous way.

And second of all, judgement from God is probably going to

sting a little bit more than judgement from you.

It just means that God sees what happened, God cares what

happened, and God is incapable of doing the wrong thing.

So because of that, why not let him?

Have you ever misjudged somebody and then you felt like you had

to try and fix the misjudgment that you made?

Well, there was a problem in the past, and now you just made a

new problem. And it's like this endless

cycle. Scars may remain in your life.

And I want you to know that closing wound doesn't mean

there's going to be no evidence of it.

Scars are, according to the Goo Goo Dolls, they're souvenirs

that you never lose, so you can remember that it's there.

And scars are there. And sometimes scar tissue hurts

too, but not like the open wound.

What would you rather have, a reminder of something that you

survived or an open wound? It doesn't just affect you

though, either. Bitterness is contagious.

It's actually highly contagious. She remembers.

Like isn't the craziest thing. Six years ago was COVID,

remember one day, I mean, Pastor Tom was the lead pastor here.

I was his associate. But the whole staff, we were

getting ready for service and we were like, oh, we've been

hearing about COVID. But here, here we posted a

picture of all of us with Lysol and masks.

We were like, we did a deep clean.

So it's going to be great. And then the numbers exploded in

two days after that. And we went, oh, there's no in

person church on Sunday, right? And then we were shut down.

I think we were only shut down maybe about 5 weeks, six weeks.

We were in the first ones to reopen.

But you know what else I remember?

Everybody lost their mind. Some people said wash your food

in bleach. Yeah, some people said wash it

with bleach. Some people, Some people were

wearing 2 layers of masks. Very good for the lungs.

I remember watching, I saw one time I saw somebody driving down

the the road in their car and all their windows were up and

their mask was on. And I just thought, who are you

protecting yourself from? And then we got up to a stop

light and I watched them pull their mask down and puff on

their cigarette and roll the window down and blow it out the

window and put the window back up and move their mask up.

Guys, we do not know what is good for us.

We don't know what we're doing. And I'm not saying coronavirus

wasn't a real thing. I know people that were

impacted. I know people that were

hospitalized. I know people that were, you

know, that that lost their life during it.

I mean, so it happens, happens with a lot of illnesses.

I'm just saying when something happened and we panicked, we

didn't know what we were going to do, right?

But this is the thing, we're here today, So what are we going

to do? COVID changed a lot of

industries. It changed church.

We weren't even live streaming before COVID.

And at that point we said, well, I guess we better start live

streaming. Some people never came back to

church. Some people are more comfortable

not being physically present in the midst of community.

And if you're watching, I'm not casting judgement.

I'm just telling you there's so much beauty and being able to

meet other people who love the Lord and you can serve alongside

them. And we're going to have a big

push. We're going to be telling you

about small groups and different ways that you connect with

people. Look, I'm not going to be there,

but I mean, there's a ladies informational meeting today.

It's like 15 or 20 minutes. Go to the meeting, not the guys.

Don't make it weird, OK? Right.

If your spouse wants to go and you're like, well, we had one

car or other way, just sit in the car for 15 minutes.

It's fine. It's like 3 songs, OK?

Do what it takes to connect with people who are going to help you

connect with the Lord, and we'll talk about why that matters in a

minute. I want you to know this.

As contagious as viruses are, your bitterness is contagious

too. You might think of bitterness as

something personal and assume it's a private struggle between

the person who caused the wound and us.

But Scripture paints a different picture.

Once you think about Saul, We just talked about him.

His bitterness started out with David, but it didn't end there,

because Jonathan lost his relationship with his father

because of Saul's bitterness, which couldn't be contained.

If all you can talk about is who you're bitter with with your

kid, your kids remember it, and they also remember how literally

you're interested in their life. The soldiers of Israel were

forced to spend their time chasing David through the

wilderness instead of fighting Israel's enemies.

Is that not one of the stupidest things when you look back on it?

Even saw himself became a shell of the man he was at the

beginning of his kingship. Why?

Because of 1 unresolved wound and it slowly affected everyone

connected to him. It's why the writer of Hebrews

says this in Hebrews 12/14 work at living in peace with

everyone. I'm so glad he uses the word

work. If you ever felt like man, this

is a, this is like a full time job.

God. Yeah, it's work.

Work at living in peace with everyone and work at living a

holy life for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.

And listen to verse 15. Look after each other so that

none of you fails to receive the grace of God.

This grace we're talking about. Is it possible that some people

in this room might fail to receive the grace of God?

Absolutely it is. Watch out that no poisonous root

of bitterness grows up to trouble you.

Corrupting many. Do you notice that phrase at the

end? Corrupting many?

The writer doesn't say. Watch out for that root of

bitterness that might defile one person says corrupt many.

That's the nature of a root. Roots don't stay in one place.

They keep growing. They go deeper, they spread

underground and they begin affecting everything around

them. So I would just ask you a couple

questions. Do you love your friends?

Do you love your family? Because bitterness works in the

same way. It starts in one heart and it

doesn't stay there. Paul gives us a warning in the

book of Ephesians chapter 4 verses 31 and 32.

Ephesians 4:31

He says get rid of all bitterness, that would be

enough, but I want you to hear the company he places bitterness

next to just in case. You're like, well, bitterness

isn't that big of a deal. OK, Get rid of all bitterness,

rage, anger, harsh words and slander as well as all types of

evil behavior. Instead, he gives you the

alternative. Be kind to each other, tender

hearted, forgiving one another just as God through Christ has

forgiven you. You don't have to forgive

somebody who's not wrong, do you?

Do you? You've been really kind to me.

You've been really nice. I just want to forgive you for

that. We don't do that.

He says instead of being bitter, be kind and forgive them.

What he's saying there is, yeah, I'm sure you have been wronged.

Forgive them. Don't let it stay.

Don't let it grow. One of the things that I was

able to learn about the things that I was bitter of is some of

my friends and some of the people closest to me in that

season I would talk to. And they were like, man, you're

still struggling with this. You, you bring this person up a

lot, don't you? And at first I'm like, no, I

don't while simultaneously thinking I do I do.

I love the way Paul word worded that because bitterness isn't

listed by itself. He puts it along with a lot of

things that are hard to defend. Bitterness you might be able to

defend, but the others you can't.

And bitterness as a way of producing all of those things,

rage, slander, all sorts of things.

Have you ever noticed that the longer you hold onto a wound

that your patients gets thinner? Somebody may make one joke and

you just snap at it. I remember Cassie and I work in

one time, one place and, and she, she was a little sexist

back in the day and she would, well, you'd make a lot of man

jokes to me, right? And because that, and I would, I

would make woman jokes to her. And it was just our way of like

flirting and just being sarcastic with each other.

And we weren't worried about it. And then as we left the, the

workplace, she was not ever sexist.

I just want to make that clear. As we were leaving the

workplace, there was a, a salesperson there who said, I

hope that you treat her a whole lot better.

And I went, what are you talking about?

She said, I heard the jokes that you make to her.

And I went, Oh, that's, that's our thing.

It was, it was the stupid one. Like why do women have such

small feet? So they can stand closer to the

stove and like stupid things like this, right.

And I want to be very clear, didn't mean it at all, didn't

mean it at all. But we would say these things to

each other just to be silly. And, and so when she's like, I

hope you treat her better. And I'm like, no, we're just

joking. And she said, yeah, well, I've

been in, I've been in like a couple of abusive marriages and,

and I wouldn't stand for that. So here's the thing.

It's not just us we're talking, but we're speaking around other

people. She's got a history that I'm

unaware of until this moment. Her filter is still there.

She's walked through some things.

There's bitterness there. And I'm not dogging her for it.

I understand that we've all got something there.

And in that moment, all I could just tell her is, well, I'm so

sorry, I didn't know that. And I didn't mean to negatively

affect you, you know, with that. And I just make the jokes to her

in private now. But at the beginning of this

message, I asked Pastor Autumn to squeeze all those lemons into

the pitcher. They're sour.

Their faces indicated that I wasn't making that up.

And if you think about it, if this pitcher is Pastor Autumn,

and look at look at all these things that have happened to

her, right? They've all gone in there.

This is not actually Pastor Autumn either.

But I want you to know this. This would be pretty nasty to

drink, don't you think? But maybe the lemon was.

Maybe the lemon was just there. Maybe this one will be better.

That looks clean. No, maybe this one.

Oh, that one's got all the seeds in it.

So here's the thing, I want you to understand this.

If this is your life and these lemons are the things that have

happened to you, these people, they represent all of those who

are closest to you. Maybe this is your spouse, it's

got the most of your energy. Maybe these are your kids, these

are your Co workers, your friends or whatever.

It's not a question of if you impact the people that you love

because you do. And you may say, no, I don't

make a difference in anybody's life.

To use a term from the 20s, that's bull roar.

OK, listen, you do pour into somebody's life and you do leave

a mark. The question is not if you pour

into their life. The question is, what are you

pouring into their lives? And don't hear what I'm not

saying because I'm not telling you not to ever go to them and

talk to them about your bitterness, or to talk to them

about your struggles, or to talk to them about your wounds.

It's important. Choose your people.

Choose your circle carefully. But when you talk about it, do

it for a purpose. Don't do it just because you

want to feel seen by it. Once you feel seen, if you trust

them enough to see you, trust them enough to help you figure

out what to do with this. Personally, I think this should

just be dumped down the drain. It's the same thing though.

Whatever you allow inside of you eventually is going to pour into

the lives that you intersect with any of these glasses.

Escape the sour or the bitterness, not one of them.

So don't assume that somebody in your life is untouched by it,

because they're not. One of the most helpful

questions I think you could ask yourself is this.

It's not am I bitter? I know that that may seem like

an obvious one, but a much harder question is just who's

drinking from the pitcher, right?

Who, who, who am I pouring into? Once you know that, I would just

tell you the truth is a lot of us spend all of our energy

thinking about the person who wounded us and very little time

thinking about the people who are living with our response to

that wound. Who's having to help carry that?

Who's having to shoulder the weight when you start spouting

off at it. So that would be the first thing

I would tell you is just think more about the people that you

are pouring into, the innocent bystanders, if you will, the

people who weren't even there when it happened, but now it's

their problem. You ever had a moment where

somebody came to you and they just like, they just dumped some

of the hardest things and then they looked at you and they

said, man, I feel a whole lot better now.

And then you think, well, that's great because I feel like

garbage. It's OK, sometimes it happens

like that, but it's not really meant to be like that because

somebody like that is going to get sour and bitter again and

they're going to have to get it all out all over again to

someone else. Or maybe you again, sucker,

listen to this. Maybe your spouse didn't cause

the hurt, but they're living with your shorter temper.

Maybe they're living with your growing cynicism or the walls

that you've built to keep yourself from ever being hurt

again. Maybe your Co workers or your

closest friends have become the recipients of the pain that they

never caused. One of the first steps towards

healing is just asking who's paying the price for this wound

because somebody is. Second thing I think I would

tell you is just this. You have to recognize that every

single one of us is writing a story that somebody else is

going to inherit. When you complain about what

happened with somebody, you are painting a picture of them to

somebody else and they may not have a valid picture of them to

start with. And so maybe you grew up hearing

your parents talk about another family member and so you just

learned to stay away from that family member.

Or maybe maybe you just had that happen about an ex-spouse of

theirs or a former employer or maybe even a church that they

left. And before you know it, when you

meet those people yourself, you've already learned how to

feel about them and you haven't even had a chance to build a

relationship. That's how bitterness works.

It reproduces itself and and it keeps going unless somebody

interrupts the cycle. It's not that justice doesn't

matter, it's just that we're not the ones that can hand it out.

And the last thing I think I would just tell you is that we

all need people in our lives that are able to tell us the

truth. And one of the hardest parts

about bitterness is that the longer you carry it, the less

you notice it and the more defensive you get when somebody

brings it up. Find solid truth tellers and

place them in your life. I'm going to tell you that

sounds really good and it sounds brave until they do it.

Until they do it. For those of y'all that are in

the Conquer Ministry, I mean, I know that you have this.

I know that you give people permission for that.

I'm just telling you, for those of you that are Christians, you

need people that you have looked at and said if I'm ever off the

track, call me out. And then when they call you out,

don't get mad at them and bitter like it's not even his business.

Thanks a lot, Jay. I'm a go over here.

I'll let you could be a truth teller in my life.

I just I only want you to tell me the truth when it's

convenient for me. OK, Is that well, that that

ain't the one. But but I'm just telling you

like that is what we look for. We want people that love us

enough to tell the truth. We just also want to get away

with the with the things that we want to as well.

The reality is this, everyday you're pouring yourself into

somebody else. It's not whether or not you

influence somebody. The question is whether they're

receiving the life of Christ that has been transforming you

or the bitterness that you've allowed into your heart.

I got 2 scriptures to share with you before we leave today, and I

think it's worth asking why Bitterness is one of those open

secrets. Why does the church tolerate it?

Why do we let people walk around unhealed from wounds that

happened years ago? It's not because Christians

don't know that bitterness is wrong.

You never hear it ever in a positive way when it comes to

somebody's life. How you doing today, brother?

Bitter and highly favored. How about you?

Like nobody says it in a positive thing.

We know it's bad, we don't want it.

But bitterness is easy to justify, man, you'd you'd live a

lot freer if you could just get rid of that.

Yeah, that's true. Anyway, I'm.

I'm going to keep carrying it. We know what happened.

We know who said it, who left, who betrayed us.

We know who disappointed us. We don't want to be offensive to

people. So we validate their victimhood

as much as we validate the wound.

And this is the tightrope walk that we've got to do as

believers when we are one of those trusted people.

Yeah. I hate that that happened to

you. How can I help you move past it?

What do you need? Do you need to talk about it?

Do you need to get it off your chest?

Do you need to just feel what it's like to be a normal guy or

a normal girl and just get out and do stuff?

Do you need new friends? Do you need, do you need a

hobby? Do you need to like what is it?

You need to start getting your life back on track to let go of

it. Everybody's a little different.

The wound was real, but since it was real, sometimes we consider

it to be reasonable to hold on to it forever.

There's a story in the Old Testament I don't have time to

fully unpack, but I had to share it today.

And it's the story of Ruth. And Ruth is married to the son

of a woman named Naomi. And Naomi has two sons.

They both die. One of her daughters in law

leaves. And the other one says, I'm

going to stay with you. And anyway, in in the book of

Ruth, the very first chapter, starting in verse 19, just a

couple lines here, it says the two of them continued on their

journey and when they came to Bethlehem, the entire town was

excited by their arrival. Is it really Naomi?

So Naomi's been through trauma and tragedy and now she's come

home. And so the women ask, is it

really Naomi? And she says, don't call me

Naomi, instead call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very

bitter for me. She says I went away full, but

the Lord has brought me home empty.

Why call me Naomi when the Lord has called me to suffer and the

Almighty has sent such tragedy upon me?

I don't want to be unfair to Naomi because her grief was

real. She had just buried her husband

and had buried both of her sons. She wasn't pretending that life

had not been painful. But you notice that she doesn't

just say that life has been bitter.

She's asking everyone else to identify her by her bitterness.

She's asking everybody around her to identify her by her

wounds and by what she's gone through.

And we may not say it out loud. We may not go to somebody and

say, when you see me, I want you to remember that I went through

a nasty divorce and I've lost people and I've been betrayed.

And I want you to think of that when you see me.

We would never say that to people.

But when you continually bring it up and you ask them to

rehearse it and you ask them to let you relive it, that's

exactly what you're saying. You're saying, don't call me

Bob, call me Mara because I'm bitter.

I'm going to call you Bob. I looked at you right after I

said that. Bob, listen, how many of us have

done the same thing without ever changing our name?

We've become the person that was betrayed, the one that people

leave, the one who had a failed marriage, the one who got hurt

by a church. We choose that as our identity.

But I want you to hear what Jesus says about this in John

John 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8. He says this.

He's speaking to the people who believed in him and he says, you

are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings,

and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

And they say, but we're descendants of Abraham.

We've never been slaves to anyone.

What do you mean you'll be set free?

See, Christians, believers of any era, we don't get it.

And Jesus said, I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a

slave of sin and bitterness. Make no mistake, it's a sin.

He says a slave is not a permanent member of the family,

but a son. Sun is part of the family

forever. So if the sun sets you free, you

are truly free. Some translations say who the

sun sets free is free. Indeed, He says you can have a

different identity. You can be set free, but you

have to choose it. One of the greatest gifts that

Jesus gives us is not that he pretends our wounds never

happen. He gives us something that's

even better. He'll give you a brand new

identity that's greater than your deepest hurt.

The world might define you as the one who's gone through a lot

or by what has happened to you, but Jesus will define you by

what he's done for you. And your past might explain part

of your story, but it's not supposed to ever have the

authority to change your identity unless you give it your

authority. That's why I love Naomi's story.

She does go to people and say call me bitter.

But the book of Ruth doesn't end in chapter 1 either.

Naomi thought that Mara Bitterness would be the last

word over her life, but God wasn't done writing her story.

The woman who believed she had come home empty would one day

hold a grandson in her arms and she would become a part of the

family line of King David, ultimately the family line of

Jesus himself. God refused to allow bitterness

to write the final chapter of her life, even if she was OK

with it. I believe God wants to do the

same thing for y'all. We're going to sing in a minute

so, but you'll go ahead and stand up.

I just want to say, maybe today is not about letting go of

bitterness for you. Maybe it's just about refusing

to let your deepest wound become what you think about the most.

Maybe it's about believing that God is still writing your story

and that there are many more chapters to come after this.

The enemy would love for you to spend the rest of your life

introducing yourself by your pain, and Jesus wants you to

start introducing yourself by His grace instead.

Just telling you, as believers, we can't afford to let

bitterness be normal, and certainly not in the church.

It might be an open secret, but it can't be an accepted secret.

Next week we're going to talk about anger and how we justify

it because if we could handle anger, we would never get better

either. And that the truth, Father, we

just release our bitterness to to the best of our ability.

Some of us are releasing it with one hand and clenching onto it

with another one. We're scared to find out who we

are on the other side of it. But God, would you just simply

rebuild our identity and show us who we are meant to be.

Help us be identified by you, by your love, by your mercy, by

your grace. And may we stop walking around

with the wounds that the enemy wants us to carry.

In the name of Jesus, everybody said Amen.