Very happy, very pleased to be able to
bring on Jim Wilson to give this talk.
I was a college student here almost 25
years ago and that was one of the
first Bible studies I was in was on
how to deal with bitterness and how that
related to my parents and different things.
And thankfully I can give God the glory
that that was used to help transform my
life and my walk with Christ.
And so I'm very pleased, very happy to
be working with Jim now and to be
able to introduce him tonight to be able
to give this talk.
So Jim, can you come on up?
Just another comment.
How to Be Free from Bitterness has several
articles in it that will not be talked
on.
They will be, which I encourage you to
read, Forgiving Others, Man's Anger by Heather, Fitz
or Rage by me, Taking Offense by our
daughter Heather, Bradley and the Tongue by Chris
Flacos, Introspection, Relationship with Parents, which we'll cover
tomorrow, Saturation Love, How Does a Woman Become
Secure?
We had an edition of this with How
Does a Woman Become Secure?
And we began getting letters from people saying,
why are you picking on the women?
So we put it in this next one,
The Responsible Man.
And letters and questions from a woman becoming
a Christian.
And it was three months of her correspondence
and she was converted at the end of
those three months.
I'm going to pray again.
Father, help us.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
There are only two things a Christian can
do in any 24-hour day.
That's obey God or disobey God.
Now, to obey God, it takes grace.
And when we disobey God, it takes grace.
So everything I say has to do with
grace.
I may not use the word, but three
of these talks will be sort of taking
care of the sin part.
This one tonight, Repentance and Restitution and Continued
Joy, has to do with the negative aspect,
disobedience.
And two on positive, one on loving your
enemies, and on relationships with your parents.
All bitterness, we talk about one aspect of
it today, but there are other aspects of
bitterness besides bitterness.
In other words, if you've got accumulated sin
of some other nature in your life, whatever
it is, stealing candy bars, lying, they set
you up for the temptation of bitterness.
In other words, if you're walking in the
light, if you're walking in the joy of
the Lord, and somebody pings on you, you're
likely to get resentful or bitter.
So you can set yourself up for being
bitter by having a lot of other unconfessed
things in your life, and they don't have
to be big ones.
But we won't talk about that so much.
Tonight, we'll talk about the more common causes.
If you look with me at the book
of Ruth, chapter one, you know the story.
Ruth, there's a famine in the land, and
she left Israel to go to Moab with
her husband Elimelech and her two sons, Malan
and Kilian.
While they were in Moab, they married Moabite
women, and the next ten years, all three
men died.
Her husband died, and two sons.
She wanted to return home.
The two daughters-in-law were going to
go with her.
She encouraged them to stay home in Moab.
She said, if I got married again and
had sons, would you wait until they got
old, old enough to marry?
Well, one of them decided to turn around
and go home, but Ruth went with her.
You know that story.
But in her argument with these two daughters
-in-law, she said it is more bitter
for me than for you because the Lord's
hand has gone out against me.
I'm more bitter than you are.
You've just lost a husband.
I've lost a husband and two sons.
I'm more bitter, and I'm bitter because the
Lord's hand has gone out against me.
Then she got back to Israel.
So the two women went on until they
came to Bethlehem.
When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town
was stirred because of them, and the women
exclaimed, can this be Naomi?
The meaning of Naomi is the word pleasant.
Can this be pleasant?
Don't call me pleasant, she told them.
Call me merry because the Almighty has made
my life very bitter.
I went away full, but the Lord has
brought me back empty.
Why call me pleasant?
The Lord has afflicted me.
The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.
Notice what she says about being bitter.
Because the Lord's hand has gone out against
me, because the Almighty has made my life
very bitter, the Lord has brought me back
empty, the Lord has afflicted me, the Almighty
has brought misfortune upon me.
Five times, who's at fault?
God.
She's bitter toward God.
Now I assume she got over it.
The rest of the book is pretty good.
But the first chapter, she's living in it.
She's extremely bitter and she's bitter toward God.
The very nature of bitterness.
Well, let's look at another verse first.
Let's look at Ephesians 4, last verse.
Last two verses.
Verse 31.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger,
brawling and slander, along with every form of
malice.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving
each other, just as in Christ forgave you.
King James says, tender hearted.
I'm going to stop on that verse for
a minute.
Because one time I heard a tape of
Douglas' preaching.
And in this talk, he said he had
memorized five verses and he never attempted to
memorize them.
He just had them memorized.
And he mentioned the five verses.
And this was one of them.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving
each other, just as in Christ God forgave
you.
Another one was, be sure your sin will
find you out.
Now he memorized these verses because his mother
quoted them to him so many times that
I was glad to know that.
But she didn't quote the first part to
it.
It says, get rid of all bitterness, rage
and anger, brawling and slander, along with every
form of malice.
Then it says, be kind and compassionate to
one another, forgiving each other.
Compassion is an interior thing.
Bitterness is an interior thing.
Can I be bitter and compassionate at the
same time?
If I am both, I'm faking one of
them.
And it's not the bitterness I'm faking.
This is what you are.
Out of the overflow of the heart, the
mouth speaks.
And it's going to come out your mouth.
You're compassionate, it'll come out your mouth.
If you're bitter, it's going to come out
your mouth.
It'll show somewhere.
Okay, here it says, get rid of it.
And it includes, it helped define the word
bitterness by its associations.
It's associated with rage and anger, brawling and
slander, every form of malice.
Those aren't good words.
Bitterness is not an innocent word.
He says, get rid of it.
I like those expressions.
One of the awful words in this English
language is the word process.
You ever heard the word process?
A peace process means what?
It goes on forever.
One says, put to death these things in
you.
Does that mean a slow, torturous death?
It doesn't mean, no.
It means, shoot it in the head.
Put it to death.
Here it says, get rid of all bitterness.
It doesn't say, in a process.
Get rid of it.
Well, we say, I don't know how to
get rid of it.
Well, that may be true, but don't change
the meaning of the word because you don't
know how.
Let's look over at James, the third chapter.
Most of the third chapter is talking about
the mouth, I think, in verse 14 of
chapter 3 of James.
But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish
ambition in your hearts, do not boast about
it or deny the truth.
Such wisdom, quote, unquote, does not come down
from heaven.
Got that?
This bitter envy and selfish ambition didn't come
from heaven.
It's earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.
Now, can you get any more clear than
that?
Bitterness is unspiritual, earthly, of the devil.
It didn't come from heaven.
For where you have envy and selfish ambition,
there you find disorder in every evil practice.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is,
first of all, pure.
Oh, you want to know what comes from
heaven?
Purity.
That's the wisdom that comes from heaven.
Then, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy
and good fruit, impartial, sincere.
Okay?
The wisdom that comes from heaven is pure.
This bitter envy and selfish ambition does not
come down from heaven.
It's from the world, from the devil.
Okay, another verse of scripture in Hebrews chapter
12.
My first point is to help us to
realize how exceedingly sinful bitterness is.
It can't be qualified with anything close to
pure.
It didn't come from heaven.
It's associated with rage and anger and malice.
Hebrews 12, verse 15.
See to it that no one misses the
grace of God and that no bitter root
grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
First it's described as somehow missing the grace
of God.
Then it defines or describes bitterness as a
root.
A root is by definition underground.
You normally don't see it.
And it has a certain character to it
and it has a certain function.
It feeds, it drinks, and eventually it comes
to service.
When it comes to service, it's no longer
a root.
It's now a fruit bearer.
So if you have an apple root and
it comes to service, it bears apples.
If you have a wheat root, it comes
to service, it bears wheat.
If you have a bitter root and it
comes to service, it bears bitter fruit.
And he says here, it's a failure.
It misses the grace of God.
It also says, don't let it come to
the surface.
I know people who really work at their
bitterness not coming to the surface.
They don't succeed, but they really work at
it.
They try to keep it buried inside.
I said it doesn't work, but they're not
as expressive as they would be if they
didn't try.
But what happens to them physically if they
keep it buried?
What does this bitterness do to your body?
Makes you sick.
All kinds of things.
Ulcers, arthritis, colitis, name it.
Bitterness is kept in.
He said, boy, boy, I don't want to
get sick.
I want to keep it in.
I'll let it out and get everybody else
sick.
Now, he says that's what happens here.
See to it that no one misses the
grace of God and that no bitter root
grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
Defile means to make filthy.
To make dirty.
Many other people.
Just because you let this bitter root comes
up.
You can keep it in and get sick
or you can let it out and get
everybody else sick.
Well, if you tie this in with Ephesians
4, it says get rid of it.
You get rid of the root.
You don't just suppress it and you don't
just express it.
You get rid of the root.
Before we can get rid of the root,
it's hard to recognize.
You say, well, if I thought I was
bitter, oh, it's wonderful.
I don't know how many people have told
me that they got this book because they
knew some bitter person to give it to.
And then they thought, well, maybe I better
read it first and found out they were
bitter.
People don't recognize their own bitterness.
Let's suppose I, as a Christian, sin.
Let's suppose I tell a proper, a big
lie.
Now, having told this lie, do I feel
guilty?
Or do I feel bitter?
Now, it's not a trick question.
I feel guilty.
I sinned against a holy God.
And I know I may not want to
confess my lie, but I know that's the
only way out, is to confess it, to
be forgiven.
Now, let's suppose I don't lie.
Let's suppose you lie about me and spread
it all over Moscow.
Now, do I feel guilty or bitter?
Well, you're laughing, especially if you think you
know the answer.
But you feel bitter.
And so you could draw a conclusion.
And I'm going to tell you right now,
I'm telling a whopper in my next sentence.
And here's the lie.
Generally, I don't tell people the end of
the message, but I'll tell you in advance
I'm lying.
Guilt is when I sin, and bitterness is
when you sin.
That's not true.
Guilt is when I sin, and bitterness is
when I sin.
Guilt is when I sin, and bitterness is
when I sin.
Bitterness is never caused by the other person,
but we think so.
And we think so, and I will say,
there is a relationship.
This other person that, quote, made you bitter,
it was a temptation to you, but it
didn't make you bitter.
You say, well, when I married this guy,
I didn't think he was going to leave
his socks on the floor.
Was I going to get bitter?
About 30 years of socks on the floor.
People say, I'm not, one of the ways
I can tell people are bitter, they say
things like, I'm not bitter.
Or they'll say, of course I'm bitter.
Somehow, like it's a legit, even if they
know what it is, like it's a legitimate,
justified position.
Let's suppose you've got a friend, a roommate,
husband, wife, who, what's the word, knows what
buttons to push, or something like that.
Knows your number, and knows how to get
you bitter and keep you bitter.
I'll give you a couple examples.
First, my own life.
Been out of the Navy a couple years.
We're moving our evangelistic work from Washington, D
.C. to Annapolis, Maryland.
Moved into this house, and I put off,
and put off, and put off, putting it
on the storm windows.
Finally I realized, I couldn't put it out
a thing longer.
But I didn't have storm windows, I had
this plastic stuff.
You know what I'm talking about?
And so one day, and it was in
November, I went outside to start this little
project.
I had a stepladder, I had the hammer,
I had the tacks, and the plastic.
But I had several problems with those four
things.
The stepladder was on uneven ground.
It was wobbly.
Second, the plastic was big.
And third, my fingers were cold.
And fourth, the tacks were tiny.
And between big plastic, wobbling stepladder, tiny tacks,
and cold fingers, more tacks were falling on
the ground than were getting put in the
plastic.
Well, being a godly man, I thought I
was safe from any problems with this.
It had just taken me longer.
Well, my dear wife walked around the corner
of the house and wondered what in the
world was taking me so long.
Her mistake was, she wondered out loud.
And I said something unchristian to her.
And she turned around and went back in
the house.
I stood there in the stepladder saying, she
shouldn't have said it, she shouldn't have said
it, she stayed in the kitchen where she
belonged.
This wouldn't have happened.
But I already knew this truth, but I
was enjoying being bitter for a while.
But I realized that I couldn't be bitter
forever because for all I knew, I could
confess my sin, I knew I would eventually
do that.
But I also realized that she might be
in the house saying he shouldn't have said
it, he shouldn't have said it.
Even though I knew how to get rid
of my bitterness, I wasn't sure she could
get rid of hers.
I confessed my sin, my sin only.
Went into the house, she was not in
the kitchen, went in the living room, she's
sitting on the couch looking the other direction.
I said, boy, I'm in the cold house
now, unrelated to no storm windows.
I sat down beside her and I said,
Bessie, I've sinned against God, I've confessed it,
and he's forgiven me.
She turned around and smiled.
She said, I know you have a sensitive
conscience, so I've been in here praying for
you.
Now, it doesn't always happen that way.
Sometimes it can be a temptation to her.
What's the solution?
I suppose, don't get married.
Because the nature of bitterness is not the
magnitude of the other person's sin.
It's the proximity of the other person to
you.
There can be great evils taking place in
Afghanistan and Iraq and California and Bangladesh and
we can read about them, we may be
appalled and we may be...
but we don't feel bitter and we don't
feel guilty.
We just wonder this great evil.
But something that's not a great evil, that's
minor by somebody who's close to you, makes
you bitter.
Here are the people you can be bitter
toward.
Your father, your mother, your brother, your sister,
your husband, your wife, your best friend, your
roommate, your boss, your immediate subordinate, the people
you work with, you say, no, you didn't
mention everybody.
Uncles.
But I'll tell you, whoever it is, it's
somebody that's close to you.
And it's not the magnitude of the sin.
If it was some great gross evil, you'd
be feeling sorry for that person instead of
yourself.
What keeps me confessing my bitterness as my
sin, I don't think it's mine.
I think it's this person that did this,
said this.
And as long as I think it's the
other person, and I think if the other
person said he was sorry or she was
sorry, then I'd be over my bitterness.
Not true.
They'll say they're sorry, and you'll still be
bitter.
Because it wasn't their sin.
It was your sin.
You get forgiven your sin by confessing your
sins, not by them confessing theirs.
Many years ago, Jim Corcoran and I went
down to Walla Walla State Penitentiary before Christmas
to minister to the prisoners there.
And we went from maximum security, minimum security,
protective custody, and back in the evening, we
were back in maximum security.
And I thought I'd teach on this subject,
figuring there might be some bitter people there.
And during the talk, one fellow raised his
hand, and he'd been in the audience in
the morning when I was there before, where
we were talking about evangelism, and he was
wanting to know how to win people to
Jesus.
But now he asked the question, he said,
how do you get rid of bitterness toward
a man who beat up your three-year
-old little boy unmercifully?
So I told him how to get rid
of the bitterness.
And I said, when you do, you'll be
able to minister to him so you don't
want to do that to other people.
You can help him if you're free from
your bitterness.
He said, no, this guy can't be helped.
I said, why can't he?
He said, he's not with us anymore.
He'd murdered him.
That's why he's here.
But, having murdered him didn't get rid of
his bitterness.
If the man had resurrected, he'd have killed
him again.
Expressing bitterness doesn't get rid of it.
It hurts other people.
Another fellow, at the same time, he'd murdered
somebody because somebody had lied about him on
a felony.
And he'd say, he lied about me, I
killed him.
But he was still bitter.
Expressing bitterness doesn't get rid of it.
It reinforces it.
Many years ago, a couple that Bessie and
I had been responsible for me getting him
back to the Lord and Bessie for her
becoming a Christian.
They seemed to go on with the Lord
for a long time.
He got out of the Navy, went to
seminary, came back, was ordained, and pastored a
church.
He began this new pastorate in the fall
and fell in love with the secretary of
the church in the winter.
And committed adultery.
And confessed it in February, I think.
And was defrocked in March.
And divorced after that.
I heard about it.
And since years before, we had been responsible
for them, that I gotta get to them.
They were in St. Louis.
And finally, I found a, I think, Eastern
Airlines.
You could go every place in the country
for $700.
So I picked out every place in the
country, including St. Louis, and went to all
these places to minister.
But I looked up the...
I saw him, and I saw her.
And I said to her, what have you
been doing the last six months?
Because it had been six months.
She said, I've been going to group therapy.
You know what group therapy is?
It's where all the fouled up people tell
their fouled up stories to each other.
That's a little prejudice statement.
But anyhow.
She said, I've been going to group therapy.
I said, what's happening in group therapy?
She said, I'm getting rid of all my
anger.
I'm getting rid of all my bitterness.
Oh, I said, is it gone?
Or are you always getting rid of it?
I said, I want it gone tonight, before
you get up in the morning.
It better be gone.
None of this getting rid of it gradually.
Well, she did.
She was free of it the next day.
I found out she was still going to
group therapy.
I said, what's happening?
She said, well, I don't have anything to
say anymore.
And I said, well, what's happening?
Well, everybody thinks I'm suppressing it.
No, it's gone.
Not suppressed.
Not expressed.
Gone.
Get rid of it.
Ten years later, after this little incident of
the storm windows, we were living in Annapolis,
Maryland, about ready to move to Michigan.
And having lived in a place for ten
years, you have any idea how much stuff
you can collect in ten years?
It breeds.
And I was driving around, thinking about the
different things we had to make a decision
on, whether you get rid of it or
what we do with it.
And so I thought of, I think, five
things that we'd talk to Bessie about and
we'd make a decision.
So I thought of this one.
We'd talk about it, make a decision.
Talk about this, and I said, boy, if
I even mention this one, she's going to
go through the overhead.
Got home.
This, made a decision.
This, and this.
Why can't a woman think like a man?
And I was bitter for 24 hours.
And I couldn't come up with any solution.
It was just like this, eating at me.
So I finally made the decision.
I was driving up to the house and
coming to the driveway.
I'm going to go in the house and
straighten her out.
And God, in his goodness, said, well, why
are you going to straighten her out?
I said, she reacts.
Oh, he said, who's reacting?
I knew I was reacting to her reaction.
And I confessed my 24 hours of bitterness.
And I went in and never brought up
the subject.
The first thing, the first time she ever
even knew about it was 10 years later.
I was speaking at Spring Canyon Lodge in
Colorado, and she was in the audience.
It was the first time she heard of
it.
Now, there's something else characteristic about that.
I have no idea what the subject was.
But if I hadn't gotten rid of the
bitterness, I'd know to this day what the
subject was.
I said this, she said this, the nature
of bitterness is bitterness remembers details.
And when you get rid of bitterness, you
forget them.
You don't even try to forget them, they
just disappear.
They're not important.
You say, well, can good things be remembered?
Yes.
But if you know the secret of memory,
it's what?
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Repetition makes memory.
And we don't repeat the good things.
We just go over and over the bad
things.
So bitterness remembers details, and if the details
are all at all accusatory to anybody else,
you're bitter.
I was speaking just to a small house
group in Texas.
People didn't know each other.
I just wrote to everybody I knew in
Texas to show up at this house.
These people didn't know each other.
I was speaking on this subject, and one
of the couples said, I heard this at
Washington State University.
I'd been bitter toward my mother for 10
years.
And I got rid of my bitterness.
And I came down here to Texas and
met somebody who was very bitter toward their
mother.
And I said, boy, I can help her.
So I went to help her and realized
I couldn't remember anything I'd been bitter about
for those 10 years.
Gone.
So, first we want to know that bitterness
is your sin and your sin only.
Oh, I started to say, 10 years after
thinking about we moved to Annapolis and oh,
something else had happened.
Oh, after we got to Michigan, we had
a house with a very big bedroom where
you had a double bed and a chaise
lounge and a desk and all kinds of
space.
And Bessie and I could go up there
and the kids could be left out of
the box and we'd be Bessie could read
in bed and I'd be working at the
desk and just a nice, tranquil home.
Except whatever I was doing at the desk
wasn't doing any better than the storm windows
was working.
And I was getting steamed at this desk
when my dear, sweet wife said something to
me and I turned around and let her
have it.
She's in bed.
She looked at me in amazement, got up
and left the room.
And again I said, she shouldn't have said
it.
Well, I knew I knew it was my
sin and my sin only.
Amy Carmichael in a little book called If
has a little sub-thing at the bottom
says a cup brimming full of sweet water
will not spill one drop of bitter water
regardless how hard it's jolted.
That might not be a direct quotation.
If you're filled with honey, you don't spill
vinegar.
It doesn't turn sweet water into bitter water
when you get jolted.
All the jolt does is bring out what's
on the inside.
And when my Bessie said this to me
when I was in the storm windows, she
just kicked the cup.
And what was on the inside?
The cup came out.
In bed, she just jolted the cup.
And what was on my inside came out.
Well, I knew again I had to confess
my sin.
I got up from the desk, went over
to my side of the bed, got on
my knees and confessed God it was my
sin and my sin only.
Got up off my knees and said, but
look what she said.
I got back on my knees and said,
sorry God, that slipped out.
Got back on my knees and said, God,
I'm the only one in fault and I'm
confessing my sin.
Got up off my knees and said, but
you and I know who's really in fault.
Back on my knees.
Well, I probably stayed on my knees 40
minutes before I could get up and say
and not say something accusing about my wife.
Listen, you stay with it until the bitterness
is gone.
Tomorrow morning we're going to talk about having
continual joy, so I'm not telling you much.
I really want you to define it that
you've got it.
It's extremely evil.
It's of the devil.
And what makes it much worse is you
think you're innocent.
And you will not get back to the
joy of the Lord even if the other
person confesses.
You won't do it until you confess your
sin.
Well, we'll go into detail tomorrow morning on
confessing sin and I'm going to mention this
one, how to maintain joy in your life.
That will be what the talk will be
about.
There are three other booklets for sale that
helped me back before we were married.
One is called The Calvary Road and I
read that in I think March of 51
and Clean House.
Another one called Continuous Revival.
These are booklets, small booklets.
And I think I read that in 56.
Same truth about confession of sin but the
second one had a sense of immediacy.
No process.
God's grace is instantly available.
It forgives bitterness but you have to know
you're better.
the other person may be guilty.
The other person may be guilty but whether
she stays guilty or he stays guilty or
gets rid of it, it doesn't change you.
The only way you can be free from,
oh I mentioned earlier, compassion and bitterness don't
go together.
The scripture says rejoice in the Lord always.
Again I say rejoice.
It's impossible for a bitter person to rejoice
in the Lord always or at all.
So before we get into the positive aspects
of Christian life, you've got to get rid
of the negative ones and you've got to
recognize what they are.
Just a little postscript on I always thought
it was something else that somebody did.
But in recent recent years I found something
else that was a temptation for me to
be bitter.
Not a cause but a temptation.
And it's taken care of by the fruit
of the spirit.
The fruit of the spirit is patience.
Impatience precedes bitterness.
And all kinds of things can make you
impatient.
You may not be other people at all.
But when you're impatient not very long until
you're bitter.
So you have to take care of that
one too.
And there'd be many other things but I
wanted to throw in that impatience.
Largely because I get impatient.
And I recognize it.
I think we'll call it unless I want
to hear some repetition.