How Cheaply Will You Sell Your Birthright?

In New Braunfels, on the seventh day of the feast, there were two Swiss servants that were given, that took all the messages that had been given throughout the feasts and they capitalized them into two very powerful messages. One was given by Mr. Sam Sweatt, who is an elder up in Dallas. He talked about how we sometimes think this is what we're doing is the church.

Well, the truth is that it's our relationship with God. He brings people into the church. And how oftentimes we thought, if we could just keep our kids in the church, but in doing so, we keep them very busy. But in the end, they're no closer to God than anybody else.

It is God who builds his church, and of course the purpose of what we're supposed to do is turn the hearts of the children to God. And it's their personal relationship with God that He works with them. And how important that is in the family environment, that children are turned towards God. And that is the core. In fact, it's one of the reasons why the family structure was created by God, so that that could take place. And it was a very strong, and in many ways a corrective, split sermon about what God is doing and how we must be prepared now.

We must be in the process of being prepared. And it's involved in our families, it's involved in our jobs. Everything we do is training and preparation. And we can't keep failing these tests. We have to start succeeding. Then the second sermon, or split sermon, was where Gala Morrison, an elder from up in Illinois, gave an example of a little boy named Al. And how he had pictures of him, actually at that age, and now he wanted to learn to fly in the 1930s.

And he went through Al's entire history, and how he worked, he sacrificed, even as a child, even as a teenager, and he has taught easy sacrifice and sacrifice, because of this vision, this dream he had, that he could see, I want to fly. And of course, at the end, we find out that it's Neil Armstrong. Not only did he learn how to fly, he stepped on the moon. And he said, God has a vision for us, so great. And yet, even as children, and of course, we're all children of God, even our little ones, no matter how old we are, that has to be our vision.

That's what has to carry us. We have to believe that that inheritance is waiting for us. And no matter what the price we pay now, it is small compared to the inheritance. It is small to what Christ has that he's going to bring with it. So the price we pay now doesn't matter. The price we pay now, whether it's status, or money, or girlfriend. Now, these are hard things. It's a price. It costs something. Or a job, or certain friends, or whatever.

That price is worth it. But you only believe that if you believe you're going to receive an inheritance. And you have a relationship with God that is so close that even in the hard times, because if we're as close to the tribulation as we may be, even in the hard times, we will follow God. We will pay the price. I thought those two split sermons just took all the messages, all the themes that we had been going through, the entire feast, and it encapsulates it into two messages. One of the corrective and one very helpful.

And we're going to try to post those, not on the Internet, maybe even on our local site. In fact, I'd like to take all the messages that were given to do brothels and put them on our local site if we can, and post them, because I think the messages were so important. Because I truly believe God this year gave us very specific instructions. Thank God this year said, okay, folks, we have to move forward.

The people of God have to move forward. And in our organization called the United Church of God, we have to move forward. And I was thinking about this last night. I was working on a sermon yesterday. It's a different idea. And I picked up a sermon and I'd given 12 or 13 years ago. I started to read through it. I don't know why. I started to look through the notes and I started to think, wow, this is something we need to be remembered from time to time.

Because we now have a vision of the inheritance, which is what the Feast of Tabernacles is supposed to do. We now have a vision of the inheritance. What could cause you to give up on that inheritance?

Now, there's a lot of reasons, even during the Feast there were reasons brought out. We talked about, remember, fog, spiritual fog, where we just lose the light and we don't see where we're going. But I started to think about it. I started to look through these notes and I said, there's one emotion. And it's an emotion. Okay, what sin keeps us? Well, sin, of course, can help us or keep us from following God and take us against God. We don't have a right relationship with God. But, you know, sin can be forgiven of. So, if we repent, God forgives us of our sins. We're back in relationship. One of the men mentioned that forgiveness from God has a purpose. It is to reconcile. If He forgives and we don't repent, reconciliation can take place.

A relationship takes something of both parties. He always does His part first, because He is a loving God. He always shows mercy first. He always shows grace first. He always reaches out first. He always forgives, but we have to do our part, too.

So, sin keeps us from God. But is that the number one reason? I believe there's a number one emotion that puts you in the universe. Now, we can talk about selfishness, but that's not an emotion. That's a thought process that puts and there's emotions tied to it, that puts you as number one in the universe. Arrogance, pride.

These are all major reasons why we draw back from God and we begin to lose the importance of the inheritance. I'm talking about a different reason today, something we don't think about. It's something that every one of us has to fight.

Every one of us has to fight. You know, in the Old Testament, the Firstborn had a special privilege of birthright and inheritance. The Firstborn male got more than any other person in the family.

We are called. The saints are called the Firstborn. Now, Christ is the Firstborn of the Firstborn. He's unique. But at Christ's return, there is a resurrection of the Firstborn. Those prepared to rule with Christ on this earth during that millennial period. We just celebrated that. What would give those Firstborn? What would drive them to give up that inheritance?

They're called. The inheritance is a show to them. It's promised to them. It's promised to us.

Now, God's not going to take it back. We have to reject it. That's very important to understand. God said, here's the inheritance. You're called to be a Firstborn.

God doesn't really go that. But it is possible for us to not want it. It's possible for us to give it back. Let's go to Genesis 25. You know this story. In fact, one of the sermons early in the Feast of the Sherid of Raffles, this story was covered. Genesis 25. It was covered for a different reason. But I want to bring out something here. Verse 21. Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was buried, and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived.

But she had twins. But the children struggled together with dinner, and she said, if all is well, why am I like this? You feel that baby starts moving around in there. I can remember putting a coffee cup up just to watch him kick it. But you get two of them in there, and they're pushing and shoving each other. And she says, there must be something wrong with me. Look at me. I'm like a bad alien movie. I'm just moving and stuff coming. She would have said that. Okay, but you understand the picture. She said something must be wrong. So she went to inquire of the Lord. She said, I need to pray about this because there's something wrong in my pregnancy, because there shouldn't be this much movement. And the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. Now that's not the way inheritance works.

He said, the younger one has more of the character traits that I want. And that younger one is going to develop differently. And that older one isn't going to measure up. And so the older one will not receive the inheritance. I'm going to tell you why he would make this decision. Well, God, this is unfair. No, he tells us why he could predict this. Okay? There's a reason why he could predict this. And this is even mentioned in the New Testament as a message for Christians today.

Verse 27. So, of course, we know Esau and Jacob were born. Verse 27 says, So the boys grew, and Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field. But Jacob was a mild man, doing intents. And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, and Rebecca loved Jacob.

There's a real lesson here about showing favoritism to children. Now, each child is different. You have to deal with each child differently. But if you actually favor one, you love one more than the other. Boy, in New Braunfels, we had a sermon on sowing seed and how it takes three and four generations to get over bad seed that is planted in a family. And why we need to be working on planting good seed now. It was an outstanding sermon. And we reap what we sow, and it was just an outstanding sermon. And yet, God can help us by helping us plant new seed. And sometimes it takes three or four generations for the new seed to really come up, and we can plant new seed now. There could be change now, change is possible. Verse 29. We know what happens here.

We know what happens where there's this... He's going to give the birthright, the inheritance, to Esau. And Isaac tells him to make some food. Well, before I go to that story, let's read verse 29. I was going to skip over this, but this is really important, because this makes the point I was about to make. Now Jacob cooked a stew, and Esau came into the field, and he was weary. We know that Esau was a hunter. He liked to go out and he liked to hunt. Jacob, he raised sheep. He was a farmer. But Esau had been out hunting. He had not found any game. Who knows how many miles and miles he had traveled. He was exhausted, and he felt like he was starving.

And Esau said to Jacob, please feed me with that same red stew for I am weary. Therefore, his name is called Edomir Red. But Jacob said, sell me your birthright as of this day. You want some stew? Sell me your birthright. How cheaply will you sell your birthright?

How cheaply will you sell the inheritance that God has promised to you?

That he's already said he will give you. He won't take away. You have to get rid of it. You have to sell it. Esau looked at his inheritance that came through Abraham. Now, I want you to think about this.

I will bless all nations through your seed.

Do you realize that the Messiah could have come through Esau? But God said no, because he won't get it.

And Esau looked and said, I'm about to die. So what is this birthright to be? Now, I want you to think about it. If he understood what the birthright was, he would have said, God has made a promise to my family, Jacob. God has made a promise to our family, and it comes through me. I will not sell you this or anything. You know why? God won't let me die.

God won't let me die.

He can't. He made a promise. And my child will carry on, and that child will carry on, until all nations are blessed. And Esau looked at that birthright and said, I'm going to die here. I'm hungry. I'm exhausted. What good is my birthright if I die? Faced with the difficulties of life. His experience was real. He was starving. He was hungry. He was exhausted. He thought he was going to die. If he understood his inheritance, he would have said, God will not let me die now, because he has not fulfilled what he said he would do.

He did not have the faith. Then Jacob said, verse 33, swear to me, as of this day, so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.

God has given you an inheritance, a birthright.

When times get tough, how cheap will you sell it? What will you sell it for?

What will you sell it for? And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils, that he ate a drake and rose and went his way. And the next sentence explains it all. This is very important. Thus, Esau despised his birthright. It didn't mean anything to him.

He gave it away cheaply. That's an important sense. This is what God saw even before he was born. He saw this child in the womb and said, that one will sell it cheap. This one won't.

God can see that. And so the older one, the one who should have received the birthright, sold it cheap. He sold it, you know, what do we sell it for? Nice clothes? A little bit of status, a little bit of fame. What are you willing to sell?

What God has offered you? What we just finished celebrating? Because I guarantee you, Satan is going to try. There's not too much I can guarantee in life. I can guarantee this. Satan is going to try to get every one of us to sell that inheritance.

Yeah, the cheaper the better. The cheaper the better.

This is why we're not personally connected with God. You will sell it eventually because he'll find your price. Oh, yours might be a little higher than some lentils. He might have to hit you with something really big, a car. Maybe the person that you think, hey, I can love this person for the rest of my life, but I'll have to leave the church to go with this person. I'll leave God to go with this person. Maybe your pricing will be higher than a bowl of beans, but it's still cheap. It's real cheap. We have to understand, and we despise her birthright. You know the story? Verse 26 and 27. Now, of course, Jacob manipulated to get the blessing because Jacob at this point did not have enough faith either.

Now, Jacob would go through years and years and years of hard training by God. Jacob didn't have the faith to get the birthright correctly. He'd already bought it. He manipulated, so he spent the next 14 years going through what? Being manipulated. He had to learn not to manipulate. So you read the story of Jacob from the moment he fled from his own home to the time he came back, and it's 14 years of having someone take advantage of him.

So he had to learn, well, that doesn't work. He paid a heavy price for what he did.

But the difference is he loved the birthright so much. He believed in God, in God's inheritance so much. He hung on to it no matter what, even when the man promised him one woman and gave him a different one. And he had to continue to work as an indentured servant to get the wife that he wanted.

Even when those troubles came, he would not sell his birthright. He stuck. He held on to God, even when it didn't make sense. He held on to God. Esau never did. He never did. But notice verse 30 of chapter 27. Verse 30 of chapter 27.

Now, as it happened, as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely gone out for the presence of Isaac, his father, the Esau, his brother, came in from hunting. He was going out to prepare food for his father so he could receive now the birthright. These aren't little boys. These are men that knew the inheritance with everything. So he makes savory food, brings it to his father, as it says in verse 31. And then he says, Let my father arise and eat of his son's game, that your soul may bless me. And his father Isaac said to him, Who are you? He said, I have your son, your firstborn, Esau. I am the firstborn. Notice he says that. I am the firstborn. You are going to be part of the firstborn. All those who respond to God's calling and follow God at this time and day will be part of those firstborn. You don't want to ever appear before God and say, Here I am. And he says, Who are you? You say, Well, that could never happen at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, When I come, there will be those among his followers who will come to him and he will say, I do not know you. And he said, Well, we're here. We're the firstborn. And he will say, I repeat, I do not know you. So Esau's message is important for those who have received the inheritance. It's a promise to us. We do not want to end up standing there at that time while others are changed. Others receive the inheritance. And we say, But God, I followed you.

God, I was a part of your church. And Christ says, I don't know you, but I'm one of the firstborn.

He says, But I am the firstborn. And I take trouble to see that he had said, Who, where is the one who had it gave and brought it to me? I ate all of it because before you came and I have blessed him, and indeed he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out, exceedingly great, and bitter cry, and said to his father, Bless me also, O my father.

Bless me. The man is crying. He is bitter. He has lost something he can never get back. Esau would go on to become the leader of a tribe. There would be many nations that would actually came from Esau that still live in the Middle East today. But he was bitter. And that bitterness of the people of Esau today, one of the descendants, a group of people who are descendants from Esau, are the Palestinians. Are they a bitter people? That bitterness still goes on today.

I had something, and I sold it cheaply. Bless me, O father, give it to me.

And Isaac said, I can't. I can't. It's something I've already given to somebody else. Bitterness. Bitterness is an interesting emotion. It hurts. It hurts at the depth of who you are.

Look at Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12.

Hebrews 12 is encouraging.

Encouraging chapter.

Esau is mentioned in chapter 11 in a sort of positive light, but here we get chapter 12, verse 12.

Here, the Apostle Paul tells Christians, Therefore, therefore, straight through the hands which hang down in the feveled ease, make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may be dislocated but rather be healed. In other words, he said, come on, stay on the path. Look at where God is taking you. Stay ahold of God's hand. Let him lead you. Stay on your knees. Keep focused. Pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

Without holiness and peace, this is the concept of reconciliation, without reconciliation between us and God, you will not see God.

That means God's holiness has to come into us, and we have to reflect that holiness. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, wait a minute, how can we fall short of the grace of God? There is a teaching in some of the Calvinistic Protestant world that the grace of God is irresistible. Once he gives it, you've got it. So if God says, oh, I take you, you could go out and be a mass murderer, a whoremonger, you could go out and be the head of the mafia, and it's okay, because you're going to heaven, because God gave you His grace. That is not biblical. That is not biblical.

He says here, we have to be very careful, lest we fall short of that grace. Now, you notice it's not His grace that falls short, it's us. Is it possible to fall short of the grace of God? Yes. In other words, it is possible that I go of God's hand, wander off the path, and go back into darkness. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest, now this one's very interesting, any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this, many become defiled. They talk in the church here, so the many are people called from God that are part of the church. Many people are defiled. That's a very strong word. It means becoming filthy. Many people are spiritually filthy because they have a root of bitterness. Now, it doesn't say because they're out stealing. It doesn't say they're all just out committing adultery. It doesn't say they're robbing banks. But inside of them, they are driven by a singular emotion, and it is bitterness. And because of that, they are filthy. They need cleaned up. Now, we can all become clean by turning back to God. But this is a very important verse. People can literally give up on God and His mercy and His love and His guidance because of bitterness. Then notice verse 16, lest there be an affordicator or profane person like Esau. Now, this is very interesting. This root of bitterness is tied into, it's all the same sentence, to Esau, who had sexual sins, according to this, and was a profane person. So, bitterness can produce something else. But the main point he was bringing out is don't become bitter. Esau became bitter. Why? Who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. Satan found his price. Satan found his price. His price. How cheaply will you sell the kingdom of God? How cheaply will you sell it?

What is so important to you that you say this is more important than God?

Verse 17 is, For you know that afterward when Esau wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears. In other words, he's saying, you don't want to appear before Christ when you're about to receive your inheritance, your blessing, and you don't want to be rejected.

We come back to the feast. I hope all of you are spiritually on fire. I don't know how you cannot come back from a brothel and not be spiritually on fire. One person came up and said, wow, I listened to your sermon on that first day, and I said, wow, Mr. Petty is on fire. And he said, I realize, though he's not, I am. I said, good. That's what's supposed to happen. Because I could get that same message. And if you're not spiritually on fire, I might as well go do something else. That's a very stern warning, isn't it? Because he sold his birthright. And the warning is, do not sell your birthright. Do not sell it. But it's not easy. When Esau thought he was starting, and he was exhausted, and he was tired, and Jacob says, I'll buy it.

If he would have had that faith in God, he would have looked at Esau and said, it doesn't sell that cheaply, brother. I'll go on. I'll go on, because God will see me through.

But he despised it. Look at verse 28 of the scene.

Remember I said, when you see the word therefore, that's where Paul is summarizing, like 15 verses before. He always gets down to this point. Here's my point. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. We need to be so close to God that every day we are serving God. Our jobs is a way to serve God. Our families are ways to serve God. Our congregation is a way to serve God. Our leisure time is a way to serve God.

What we do for fun is a way to serve God. But that's what we do. We separate our lives into boxes. We have our kingdom boxes and our worldly boxes, and we don't mix them up. We don't mix them up. So we're one thing here, we're another thing here.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom, that's our inheritance, which cannot be shaken. This is promised. He says, you can't remove this. You can only walk away from it.

Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

Bitterness, though, is a very strange emotion. I've experienced bitterness in my life, and most of you have to. It is all consuming when you have it. It's interesting. You can take a tree and you can do all kinds of damage to trees. I have two crepe myrtles in my front yard. I don't know if that's a bush or a tree, but it looks like a tree. Whoever lived there before, when they trimmed it, they trimmed it with one of these electric trimmers, and they just tore up the trunk. So the trunk has these gnarly looking weird things on it, you know, where it was ripped up by the trimmer. But you know, it still grew, still fine. You can damage the leaves of a tree. It's amazing what you could do to a tree, and it survives. But you know, there's certain damage that you do to the roots, and it can't survive. It's a root of bitterness. Sometimes we get some bitterness that gets into our leaves, it gets into our limbs, sometimes it gets into our trunk. But once it gets into the roots, it takes, well, it always takes the power of God. It takes the enormous power of God to remove bitterness, because that emotion, we believe we deserve that emotion.

The bitterness, really, is just unresolved anger. You're just angry. Now, this can come from any area of life, by the way. This is what's so interesting about bitterness. Bitterness can come from any place, any experience in life. It's an unresolved anger. And as it gets into our roots, bitterness becomes the way we see life.

Have you ever met somebody that will, every time you talk to them, they'll bring up something that happened to them 30 years ago? And it just, it just, I mean, it just possesses them. They're obsessed. Yeah, yeah, having 30 years ago, this happened. 30 years ago, my child got sick and died, and God did not save them. I talk to people saying, I haven't been able to pray since, because God did that to me. They're bitter. It's an anger that just, it's in there, it's at the core, it's in the roots of who they are.

Once bitterness becomes into the roots of our personalities and our character, it actually begins to afflict everything we do. We are bitter towards everybody and everything. In fact, it's almost impossible to be happy. You're only happy when you're bitter, because you fear, if I give up the bitterness, justice won't take place. Or if I give up the bitterness, I won't get what I do. If I give up the bitterness, nobody else will understand my pain. And bitterness can come sometimes from horrible things that have happened.

I've seen people so bitter towards God. They would not give it up until God somehow apologizes. Until God tells me why He did this.

Betterness can come from any aspect of life, your job, the fact that, does that keep sliding down, or is it my imagination? Does that look like they were just drooping down? Now we have to change the levels. I've got it up.

It can come from something that happened to you as a child.

It can come from the fact that you've been unfairly treated. It can come from the fact that your talents were never developed the way you thought. You never got to do certain things in life you wanted to do. Maybe you wanted to travel. Maybe you wanted to sing, and you couldn't for various reasons. I've talked to people who sacrificed 10 years of their lives taking care.

My mother's here. I remember I watched her take care of her mother for years, years and years and years while her mother was sick. And it was hard.

But she never got bitter over it. I've seen other people get bitter over it.

Bitterness gets into the core of who we are, and it consumes us. You can get bitter over your husband, your wife. This is an area where bitterness can get into your life because of your husband or wife. Maybe your marriage is exactly what you wanted. Somehow it's not working out the way you wanted. Maybe your husband is this attendant, if you wanted him to be. And so you get obsessed with it until this bitterness is there. I'm pretty sure you're angry about everything. God gave me a bad husband. God doesn't give me a good life.

God's against me. It's interesting what Paul says in Colossians 3. There's an interesting co-event here.

Colossians 3 verse 18. I think of it as 18 because it's the...

it captures the subject here. It says, wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. And husbands, love your wives. And then he says, and do not be bitter toward them.

Let the anger go. Or you can say, well, you know, my wife, she's never been the wife I really wanted.

And you don't have to sit and eat the way it eats. You're a bitter man.

And pretty soon, you're bitter at work. You're bitter at everything after a while. Once bitterness gets in your roots, the whole tree gets nurtured with bitterness. You know, I've seen people... I can give you a hundred things I've dealt with where people will become so bitter it destroys their relationship with God.

You know, I could have had a lot of things, but tithing.

Tithing was something that just restricted me all the time.

And I look at this person over here, a boy. They have a lot of good things. Or I know this person, and they don't tithe, and they seem to give blessings. And the bitterness sits in. Bitterness grows and grows and grows. You know what the person eventually does? Their relationship with God. They don't trust God, so they don't tithe. And then they can't figure out why they're not being blessed. Not just physically, but spiritually. It's just like the marriage. They can't figure out why bitterness is through all their life. Well, because you hold this bitterness against your mate, it just settles into the core of who you are.

I see people that can't have a single good relationship with anybody, because they're bitter towards everybody. I deserve better than this. Life is the pits. I don't deserve to live in this toilet, and it's everybody else's fault, and why does everybody else have it better than me? It's just the bitterness that eats away at them. And pretty soon, they begin to despise their inheritance. You know, when we see what God is doing, and we're following God, bitterness goes away. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, by the way.

It doesn't mean there are times when things don't work out well. There's times when things don't work out well at all. There's times when you might feel angry over something. There's times when you do get sick, or you lose your job.

There's times when your mate doesn't treat you the way you want to be treated. There's times when somebody else misuses you and abuses you. That everyone, everyone goes through that. The bitter person thinks they're the only one going through that. Everybody goes through that.

But those who have ahold of the inheritance are like, I can get through this because God will get me through it. God will give me lentils. I don't have to sell it for a bowl of beans. God will give me what He says He will give me because God will give me the birthright, because you are the first born. That's one of the visions we get through the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles. It's waiting there for us.

So, whatever the reason, I've seen people get bitter over everything.

Once it settles into the core of your being, it becomes an obsession.

Let me talk about the symptoms of bitterness. Because it's an emotion. It's very hard. And it's funny, I was going through this sermon. I wrote these down. These are from 13 years ago.

13 years ago. Look at this sermon. I think, wow, I need to go back and learn something from this.

Because all of us struggle with bitterness from time to time. Since then, we become totally convinced that our emotional state is justified.

My bitterness is... Let me explain my bitterness. And then whatever we fill in, and many times it's true. I am bitter because... I am bitter because...

I went to church and there's only 15 teenagers and the other 14 don't seem to like me. Therefore, I am bitter. I've seen teenagers become bitter.

Fill in the mic. Whatever it is that we put in that bitterness.

So now the bitterness becomes justifiable. And the problem is, this is what's interesting. At that point, that emotion must be defended. And so you could open the Bible over and over again. Well, here's the solution. The solution is turn to the Lord with all your heart. Well, that's easy for you to say. You're not the one who lost the job.

Well, the answer is if you are corrected for something you didn't do and you take it patiently, this is acceptable to the Lord. Yeah, well, I was corrected, but I've already been corrected and that was two weeks ago and I've only got to go two weeks.

Okay. Love your wife. Well, I've loved her all. I'm going to love her.

God better do something here. It's God's fault.

You could go to the Scripture. So when you are holding on to this this dulling, anger-repressed feeling all the time towards people, it's towards objects. It could even be towards God. Many times when you get down deep enough, it's towards God. We aim it towards human beings because we know we shouldn't feel that way about God. But when we get to the honesty of it, many times that's the way we feel about God. God, you allowed this. You caused this. You did this. Much as I'm God is saying, hey, you live in Satan's world. I have nothing to do with this. And as I said at the feast, and I want us to burn this into our minds, the church is an insane asylum. You say, wow, why would you say that? Because the whole world is crazy. This is a hospital for crazy people. Everybody's crazy. The whole world is crazy.

This is the hospital. So you say, well, the church feels like an insane asylum. Yeah.

Well, it feels like it's all crazy people. Yeah. Where did we come from? The crazy world. So this is the asylum. Once you get a hold of that, it gets a whole lot easier. Okay. Once you grab hold of that, it's all like, oh, I've been all, I've been in a room with a crowd full of crazy people. Yeah. You're in a world full of crazy people. This is a hospital where God's fixing people. But we're all still a little bit nuts here, folks.

We're all still suffering from our mental, emotional, spiritual illnesses that Satan put upon us. But the bitter person doesn't see that. All they see is, I am angry. I am hurt. Ultimately, it's God's problem and it's other people's problems. It's my boss's problem, my husband's problem, it's my children's problem. And I am, I will not let go of this.

And then sometimes you can't even get up and tell you, well, what will help? I sit down with people and say, what will help you get over your bitterness?

I remember one person telling me, I just want somebody to tell me they're sorry. I said, who? And they couldn't even tell me. I said, maybe there's somebody you need to go talk to. They couldn't even describe. Well, who do you need? I don't know. I just want somebody to tell me they're sorry. For what? Because I have all these disappointments in my life.

And the person named all their disappointments.

But nobody's going to tell you they're sorry. It's just life in this world.

Things are not going to tell you, sorry.

We've got to remember something. Jeremiah 17. Jeremiah 17, 7.

I tried to read this verse, this passage about once a year, and I haven't read this for a couple of years. So here we go back to Jeremiah 17, 7.

Blessed, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. And ultimately, that's what it comes down to. Ultimately, every one of us, there's times that are lies where all you have is you and God.

That's it. And at that moment, you must say, yes, Lord. And whose hope is in the Lord? What is your hope in?

If our hope is of God, the inheritance is there. It's waiting for us. And we're being trained for that inheritance. You know, that inheritance is so big, you can't go into that. You can't get that inheritance without training. We're being trained for it. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters which spreads out its roots by the river. No bitterness of these roots. God's Spirit is flowing into this verse. It will not fear then when the heat comes, because this leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit. Now, this is very interesting. He didn't say those who trusted the Lord will not ever have heat or drought. He didn't say that. He said when the heat and drought come, you will not fear and you will not be anxious, because why? Because God will get you through what's flowing into your roots is His Spirit and not bitterness. And we can talk about envy and greed and hate and all the other things that we get into ourselves who are roots. But bitterness is the one that everybody faces sometimes. Everybody faces sometimes. Then verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things.

Your heart cannot be trusted. My heart cannot be trusted. God has to show us our heart.

He says the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked who can build it. He didn't say that our heart, the natural heart of man without God's Spirit, He didn't say the natural heart of man is sort of nice, that the natural heart of man is basically good. He said it's desperately wicked. He didn't even say it's just wicked.

If we just trust our emotions, we are desperate, desperate to do the wrong thing. We're driven to do the wrong thing, and deceitful. I find that interesting.

The number one deceit we get in life, and I tell you who taught me this, was Roger Foster.

He said, you know what deceives us the most in life? Yeah, I know that answer, Roger. It's Satan. He said, no, it's your own heart. It's your own emotions. The thing that deceives us the most is our own feelings. He said, you can't deal with the spiritual aspects of things until you get people to deal with their feelings. You know what? That's true. I can't deal with my spiritual aspects with God until I deal with the feelings. And sometimes I go to God on my knees and say, you're going to have to change the way I feel.

Because until I get through this emotion, I cannot follow you. And you're going to have to change the way I feel. He says in verse 10, I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.

We're back to one of the messages. What we sow is what we reap. We need to be sowing the fruit of God in our lives. The second point about bitterness, this first point is the emotion is so great. You almost can't even get them to the Bible. They have to go ask God. They have to go ask, God, please show me where my emotions are wrong and help me deal with my emotions. Give me a clean heart. It's really hard to get through that first stage.

Now, bitterness produces some very interesting behaviors. And one is a bitter person, because they don't like other people to be bitter, too. And so a bitter person loves the dirt on everybody else. It's a funny thing. A bitter person loves the dirt on everybody else, and they tend to thrive on rumor and innuendo and slander. Have you ever met the people? I mean, I've actually gone to visit people. I remember one man I went to visit, and he had aluminum foil all over the top of his house to keep the aliens from being able to be down into his house. Have you ever seen people who are really into the whole alien thing, which is a very large part of population? There's millions and millions of people, believe it. And they know that something else is controlling their lives. Now, what it is, it's Satan, but they don't get it. So it's aliens, or it's President Obama, or it's Halliburton, or, you know, whatever is controlling them. And they think I'm being controlled by all these people and things. Have you ever met a person like that that was happy? I haven't. They're all scared, bitter people that know their lives are out of control, but haven't turned to God to understand why it's out of control and how to get it into control. But they thrive on rumor and innuendo.

They thrive on the dirt on other people. They thrive on slander, and they eventually create a world that has very little to do with reality.

So, if you are bitter, that anger will start to come out in. You will find yourself always putting others down. And you will like to hear, you know, this person sinned, this person did something wrong. You know what I heard? And the bitter person loves it. Because somehow it feeds the fact I am really better than everybody else. And I don't deserve all the things that have happened to me. I don't deserve it. The third thing is that the bitter person, if what's happened to them was caused by another person, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's, you know, someone is born with a speech impediment. They're born with a physical problem. Maybe they're born where they're in a wheelchair. They have to spend their whole lives in a wheelchair. That's a hard thing to do. I can't imagine going through that. But they become bitter. I never got to run like the other children. Can you imagine going through that? Some of you have health impediments you had from a child. You know what it's like. I can't be like the other children. And you either learn to deal with that or you become bitter. And sometimes you'll be people that are bitter. Yeah, I could never run. I could never play. I never got to do anything because, you know, I was born with a club foot or something. And they're bitter about it. But when it's another person that causes the bitterness, although no one can cause bitterness, we have to let it happen. If it's another person, then we have to have vengeance. And that's an interesting thing. There's a huge difference between justice and vengeance. Every once in a while, if I'm home during the day, at noon, Kim always says she knows when it's noon because I walk into the kitchen and I'm just standing there, you know, just sort of like the scene from Oliver, you know, with a little bowl.

She usually gives me lentils, by the way. There's a lentil. Don't eat. And I'll go in, and you know, if I'm at home at noon, you know what I like to do? This is just running. I like to watch Gunsmoke. Remember the old Gunsmoke? I started this about a year ago. I turned it on because at noon, there's two stations that show Gunsmoke at noon, you know, and I'll put it on. I don't remember all of them because I never watched them much as a kid. And they're pretty funny and sometimes they're a little silly. But actually some of them are good shows and good stories. And I saw one the other day that I remembered seeing as a child. It's the only one I can remember seeing as a child because it made such an impact on me.

A man was shot by another man, and because of that, his hand was deformed.

And the other man went to prison for 15 years.

And he spent that time training his son to be a gunfire. But his son didn't want to be a gunfire. He didn't want violence. And his son now is like 20 years old, early 20s. And there's a point in the show where people are now challenging him to fight. He doesn't want to fight. At one time, he does kill him because he is a gunfighter. And he's just devastated. He cries. I don't want to kill anybody. And the father says, no, this father is given my bitterness. I got to get my vengeance. I got to get my vengeance. He's got to pay for what he did to my hand. And he shows up and dodges because the stage is coming through. The guy gets released from prison, right? And he shows up, and he's got to get him at the stage post outside of dodge so Matt Dillon can't do anything about it. And so there's a scene where his son is standing there waiting for the guy to get off the stage. And the person gets off the stage, and they look at this really old man.

And the man calls him out. He says, my son's got to face you. And the man says, do I know you?

He says, yes, I'm so-and-so. He said, I'm sorry. Since I got sick, I lost my memory.

And there's this old man hobbling along, and he's yelling at him, draw! He says, I don't wear guns anymore. And the son's standing there. His whole life had been trained to gun down a man who was now a sick old man with no memories. Vengeance. Vengeance. Justice was paid. The man was in jail. But he didn't want justice. He wanted him gunned down. And by the end, the guy says, all I wanted was the he realized, all I wanted was vengeance. And he told his son, don't be a farmer. So the end is his son being a farmer, his dad helping him work on the farm. And they were happy. For the first time in 15 years, they were happy. But I saw that. I remember seeing that as a kid, because I remember the impact it had on my mind. That he could spend a whole lifetime being bitter. And he was this boy who was trying to be his dad was trying to make him bitter. He couldn't be bitter. He tried. He couldn't. He just became the fastest gun around. Vengeance is a very horrible thing. Romans chapter 12. Romans 12. Verse 16, Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on things, on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion. Repent, O, and evil for evil, have regard for good things in the sight of all men. And if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. There is a difference between justice and vengeance.

And if you understand justice, you will always try to give mercy when you can. When you can.

Bitterness, of course, destroys relationships.

And a bitter person can almost never cooperate. You can see a bitter person at... I didn't see this at the feast this year, but you can always pick out a bitter person, because they go from every place they go, they complain. The coffee dough isn't right. The sermonette was too long. I didn't even understand the sermon. The music's too loud. They just complain about every... The bitterness just comes out, and they just mad at everything. I just complained the whole feast. I've seen people. I didn't see that issue, but I've seen it in the past. I'll probably see it in the future. A bitter person just complains about everything. All they see is their own bitterness.

One last script for Ephesians 4. How do we deal with the bitterness? Because all of us will face it. And the reason all of us will face it is because bad things will happen to all of us.

And life will never work out exactly like we planned it. And the wife or the husband will never be exactly what we want, or our kids exactly what we have visioned in our minds, or our parents be exactly what we have visioned in our minds. Your health will never be exactly what you want. It might be for a while. Your car will break down. Your house will grow old. Your joints will get stiff.

People will mistreat you. And how do you deal with that without becoming bitter? Ephesians 4.25.

Therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. He specifically talked to the church here. And he said, look, you know, we can't be disunified by bitterness, by anger. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. That means one of the ways to be bitter is don't let the anger go. You know, you can actually train your body to be angry. If you feed yourself angry thoughts, you will train your brain to think angry thoughts. And your brain will train the chemicals in your body to produce anger, until that's exactly what your body thinks and feels. You could train yourself so you get up every morning, and the first thing you feel is anger. You can actually do that. You can actually do that. Boy, you do that, and bitterness starts to just eat at you. It's amazing what we can train our brains to do, and what we can train ourselves to feel certain things. He says, let go of anger. Do not hold on to that. Do not let it eat away at you. He says, nor give place to the devil, because Satan loves it. Satan loves it when you are bitter, because he's bitter. At the core of his being, God treated him unfairly. That's at the core of who he is.

And he's like, what was the quote from that movie my son was telling me about? Satan said, I love God too much. He said, that's why I rebelled against him. He says, do you realize he was going to take all these hairless apes and make them bigger than me? They were going to rule over me, but I'm perfect. And these human beings, all they do is destroy his environment, they rebelled against me. I love God too much to let you people rule. Interesting thought, isn't it? Core of bitterness. God is unfair to me. Life is unfair to me. It's the core of who he is. He loves it when we're like that, because it's like, hey brother, I have a soul made here. Someone as bitter as me. You know, he doesn't receive an inheritance. Whatever inheritance God was going to give him, and it wasn't what he's given us, by the way. Ours is greater than any inheritance he offered any angel. He lost his. He gave his inheritance up. He sold it. He sold it pretty cheap. Nor give place in the devil, but let him who stole still no more, or rather let him labor, working with his hands, which is good, that he may have something to give him who has need. Let O corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good or necessary, edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Bitterness causes grief to God, because it's the opposite. God's not bitter over anything.

He says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God and Christ forgave you. God has given you a birthright, the Kingdom of God. Christ is coming back, but He's preparing a people. And those people are to be shouting to the world. He's coming back, and people should be looking at us and saying, you know, there is something different about you. They won't see perfect people, because none of us are. But there should be something different about us. We should say, yes, let me tell you about God. Let me tell you about His way. Let me tell you about Jesus Christ. Let me tell you about what the Bible actually teaches.

That maybe God will work with that person. And if He doesn't work with them now, He'll work with them in the future. God has offered you an inheritance. Do not. Do not be like Esau.

Do not sell that inheritance for a bowl of soup.