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The price of Bitterness


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Trusting the Bible on:
?Bitterness?
Recently I preached the message ?When you can?t forgive? using the shameful event of David & Bathsheba?s terrible adultery as my text [iI Sam 11] which it would help you to read before continuing. By way of introduction let me say that one of the most painful things in life is betrayal! If you?ve lived very long you may already know the great pain & heartache of having been done wrong?maybe even by someone you loved and trusted! Often in the wake of betrayal & heartache comes great wrath, anger and bitterness. Let me tell you a story: Back before David slew Goliath there was a man of great wisdom named Ahithophel. So very wise and great was he that the Bible says his counsel was ?as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God? [iI Sam 16:23]. Ahithophel later became one of David?s counselors and most trusted friends. But David fell into a terrible sin ? adultery with a married woman whom you may know as Bathsheba! The young beautiful wife of the promising military hero Uriah. Uriah was a great warrior and though young himself he had already made it into David?s own elite force of valiant fighting men! Together Uriah & Bathsheba had dreams and a bright future! But while Uriah was off fighting for King and country, his King was committing adultery with his beautiful young wife! David and Bathsheba ruined forever that bright future with a night of adultery. If you?ve read the text, you know that Bathsheba ended up pregnant and that in order to hide it David tried to get Uriah in bed with her so that no one would ever suspect the baby she carried was David?s! When that failed, David had Uriah murdered in battle. What you may not know is that Bathsheba had a loving Dad and doting Grandfather. The Bible doesn?t tell us how many times Bathsheba?s granddad gave her piggy back rides and took her fishing as a child, but it does tell us who he was. Can you guess? The beautiful young Bathsheba?s grandfather was none other than the great Ahithophel {David?s friend and counselor}. When Ahithophel realized the dark secret of how his dear friend the great King David had lain with his precious granddaughter, defiled her and gotten her pregnant & ruined a family?s hopes and had even had her noble husband murdered to hide it, he was consumed with rage! It was a painful betrayal of his son, his granddaughter, his grandson-in-law, of the throne and of God! Anger & outrage spread like a wildfire in Ahithophel! It consumed him so deeply he said horrible things [iI Sam 16:15 to 17:6] and even asked David?s wicked son Absalom to let him have some men with which to go hunt David down and kill him personally [iI Sam 17:1-4]. But meanwhile David had been confronted with his sin, and he and Bathsheba had paid in tears with the death of their baby for that night of fun and that murder [iI Sam 12]. Sin always has a price and it?s always much higher than you think it?ll be! David sought and obtained mercy & forgiveness from God. We don?t know if he ever went to Ahithophel and asked his friend & counselor?s forgiveness, but if he did it fell on deaf ears. This betrayal had hurt Ahithophel too deeply for him to forgive. The bitterness of seeing Bathsheba in David?s arms, while her husband and baby lay cold in the grave turned his heart to stone and his great wisdom to darkness. I would caution you as your friend and as a pastor, anger and bitterness will eat you alive ? you must seek to forgive! By the end of II Sam 17 Ahithophel hung himself. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 4:26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Many verses come to mind in dealing with the results of anger and betrayal, of bitterness and wrath and all of them point to a simple truth: The heart that?s been born again and filled with the Spirit of God cannot long endure the heavy burden of bitterness and anger without suffering harm. See Colossians 3:13 ?Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye? and Ephesians 4:32 ?And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you?. I encourage you to search for God?s strength in mercy by asking God to help you find compassion and forgiveness!

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Trusting the Bible on:
?Bitterness?


The next time you preach it feel free to use the following from my personal life experience. My name is David.

November 9, 1980, 12:30 PM, Sunday morning I was convinced of sin, repented, and asked God to save me. For the next several years my greatest joy was fellowship with the Lord, reading and study of God?s Word, and witnessing for Christ. Not long after my salvation, God brought me an opportunity to grow spiritually. We need the old man purged to fulfill God?s purpose for us. An unforgiving spirit will prevent spiritual growth; I was such a person.

Acts 8:23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.
Ephesians 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
Ephesians 4:16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
Acts 8:22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

The opportunity was given to increase my spiritual growth and learn more of Christ like love. I never really forgave a loved one for an offense against me. I took my eyes off my Savior in late 1983 and allowed the circumstance to cloud spiritual sight and reason. Proverbs 14:14 ?The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways:?
James 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

I should have prayed for the grace to forgive but, I allowed this spirit to fester. I should have gone to that loved one and gone to prayer before God.
Colossians 3:13 Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

Matthew Henry commenting on James Ch. 1 said, ?Your own hearts? lusts and corruptions are your tempters; and when by degrees they have carried you off from God, and finished the power and dominion of sin in you, then they will prove your destroyers.? James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

God had a spiritual gift for me and I wasn?t going around it, I had to go through it; learn forgiveness. I lost nearly all that I had to lose, family, friends; my home. I lost my testimony and power to witness. The results of an unforgiving spirit are far reaching and had a negative impact on everyone and everything I loved or cared for. My relationship with God was disrupted; my relationship with loved ones was damaged. I lost my wife to divorce and I?m still repairing relationships with my children.

I withdrew from God but; He was never far from me.
James 4:8 ?Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you??. I was never at peace out of God?s will.

I have the unforgiving spirit behind me now and rejoice in God?s long suffering toward me. I?ve learned if someone offends or wrongs me, to go to God first in prayer, then to the person who offended; then, go to God with that person.
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I've known people consumed with bitterness. They allow it to fester and grow year after year and it does indeed eat them from within. I knew a family member who was like this and would time and again bring up incidents which happened 30 or 40 years previously with such bitterness that you could virtually see it eating them up.

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Bitterness runs through the scriptures in women as well as men. Thank you all for sharing your comments. Don't we all suffer with this? Has been hard for me to let some "off the hook" for no other reason than that it needed to be done not so that they could be free of my anger, but so that I could!

Pastor Harrison

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