Understanding Resentment

There's no one more tragic in the Scripture than Israel's first king, Saul. Saul was a man chosen by God. Saul was a man that had all the attributes to be king. He had the mental attributes, he had the abilities, he had the physical attributes. And God gave him his spirit. And, for a while, he did very well. But Saul made a number of mistakes that eventually caused him to be abandoned by God. And we read the story of Saul, where you see a man who slowly slipped into mental illness, tried to contact the dead, ended up talking to a demon, and ended up dying in battle by committing suicide. And it's interesting, when we go back through his history, there was a specific point where it all fell apart. You can read the story of Saul. I just find Saul and David, just their interaction in comparing the two men, fascinating. Because David made lots of mistakes, too. David made lots of mistakes, committed sins, did all kinds of things. But because of his heart before God, God was able to use him, God was able to work with him, he always repented, and he changed. There were a couple of things that Saul never got. He never understood. And one of them is very interesting, because it's the very point in which God finally said it's enough. And I really didn't realize this too recently, that this is the point where God said it's enough. And it's in back in 1 Samuel 18. 1 Samuel chapter 18.

What was the issue that Saul was having that was so great that God said, I can't use you anymore? I mean, you think about how God interacts with people. For God to say, I can't use you anymore. It takes a lot. And God loves us. He works with us. He's so patient. He's so forgiving. As all of us know, everybody in this room knows how forgiving and how patient God is, because he's been forgiving in your life, and he's been patient in your life. So what was happening in Saul's mind, and what actions was he taking, that God said, I can't deal with you anymore? That's very interesting. Verse 6 sets this up. This is right after David had killed Goliath. David was still a very young man. Saul was king. He was powerful. Saul had everything going for him. Verse 6 says, Now it happened as they were coming home, when David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women had come out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul with tambourines and joy with musical instruments. So the women sang as they danced, and they said, Saul had slayed his thousands, and David his ten-thousandths. So they were singing to Saul, but they were also singing to David. In this little song that they were singing, David got more acclaim than Saul did. Now to understand, they didn't say King David. They said King Saul. Everybody acknowledged he was king. But David had just killed Goliath. And so there was a singing with them both mentioned the same song. Verse 8. Saul was very angry, and the saying displeased him. And he said they have ascribed to David ten-thousandths. And to me they have ascribed only thousands. Now what more can he have but the kingdom? He said, you know what? I really resent this. I'm the king. How could they do this? In a song about me, they think more about him. And he was angry, and he became bitter over it, and then he became very suspicious. And I just love the way this next sentence is written to the King James. So Saul I. David, from that day forward, he just kept an eye on him. Driven by this resentment, I mentioned all probably... It must have been towards the end of December, I said, through the first few months of this year I was planning some different sermons. And I said, what I want to give on is negative emotions, specifically about resentment. And it's interesting, I received a couple emails from people who aren't part of the congregation here, but listen on the hookup, and they've said, hey, what are you going to do that sermon on resentment? Well, here's the man that was powerful, had money, had a claim. God was with him. And he began to resent this other man, because this other man was getting a claim that he felt he deserved. Verse 10, And it happened on the next day that the distressed spirit of God came upon Saul, and he prophesied inside the house, so David played music with his hand, as at other times, where there was a spirit in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the spirit, for he said, I will pin David to the wall, but David escaped his presence twice. Here we see Saul beginning to slide into, literally, mental illness. What is the driving force in this? It is his resentment of David. He now has looked on David as an enemy. He now looks on David as a bad man, as a man who is a danger to the kingdom of God, to Israel. A man who should be killed, and twice he tries to kill him.

Verse 12, Notice what now begins to happen in terms of his emotions. Saul was afraid of David. Why was he afraid of David? David was a young man. Saul was an older man. Saul had power. He had wealth. David was a shepherd boy who was in the palace as a musician. He's afraid of the guitar player.

He's afraid of David because the Lord was with him, but had departed from Saul. It's at this point, and from this point on the story just gets worse and worse, it's at this point that God says, I cannot use you anymore. And it's because of this enormous resentment he has towards David.

Therefore, verse 13, Saul removed him from his presence, and made him the captain over a thousand. And he went out and came in before the people. And David behaved wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him. Therefore, when Saul saw that he behaved very wisely, he was afraid of him. He became suspicious of him. He hated him, and now he was afraid of him. And he was afraid of him because why? Because God was working with him.

And in this hatred, and in this resentment, and in this fear, God removed himself from him. This is a very, very important passage. God removed himself from Saul because of the emotional state he was in. And it was resentment. Resentment is a bitterness. It can be towards God, it can be towards other people, it can be towards life. But it is a bitterness because either you have had somebody mistreat you, or you perceive they mistreat you, or because people didn't treat you the way you wanted to be treated, or a whole lot of reasons.

People are bitter because they didn't get out of life what they wanted, or what they thought they deserved. People become bitter because it's enmity. People become bitter because of jealousy. What we're going to do today is we're going to look at this idea of resentment. I resent somebody, or I resent something, or I resent when I was born.

I mean, we can resent almost anything. We just have this bitterness that just eats away at us. The bitterness is an obsession, by the way. It becomes an obsession. And it can be over so many different things. And we're going to get to the heart of it. We're going to look at three causes of resentment. Three causes of resentment. In going through this, most of us, you know, some people don't matter of resentment. Most of us do, one time or another.

Most of us will find some peace in here, pardon the sermon, and get a little uncomfortable. I hope so. Because resentment is a very serious issue. Because it's an emotion, it's so much harder to deal with. It's easier to give a sermon like I did a couple weeks ago on the Three Heavens. It's information. It's facts. It's a whole lot harder to deal with emotions. They're sort of fuzzy things. It's like trying to hold water in your hands. You ever hold a giant balloon filled with water in your hands? It just sort of flows all over. That's what dealing with emotions is like. And yet, resentment is one of the most destructive emotions we can have.

And it leads to this anger, hatred, fear, at least a whole lot of other very negative emotions. So we're going to a core issue here, and that is resentment. I'm going to look at three root causes of resentment.

Three root causes of resentment. What they, what produces, you know, that resentment produces, and then scripturally how we deal with it. The first root cause of resentment is that you have experienced some kind of wrong that somebody's done to you, or a perceived wrong. Now, I want to say it could be a wrong or a perceived wrong, because a perceived wrong creates just as much resentment as a real wrong. In other words, someone could treat you really badly because they're just being mean to you, and it hurts, and you feel bad about it.

Something bad happens in your life, and you begin to build resentment. And then resentment builds and builds and builds, and resentment becomes an obsession. That's all you think about. Or someone could do something to you by accident with no intent at all. And this happens all the time. As human beings, we all live in our little bubble, and much of the time we're absolutely unaware of the damage we're doing around us.

Just unaware of it. And there's this perceived damage, injury, hurt we do to people, and sometimes we didn't even mean it. We didn't even know it took place. So there's real hurts, and there's perceived hurts, and it really doesn't matter. Resentment can come from both of them. I want to show you a person in the Bible that teetered on resentment. Now, what's interesting about this woman is she didn't become resentful, but you can tell in the passage she's almost there. And when we look through the passage, we see that most of us, in her situation, would have become resentful.

But why didn't she? Let's go to 1 Samuel. Well, though, the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. And, of course, chapter 1 and chapter 2 are just fascinating with how God worked for this woman and what she did, and you could see in her character. I want to look at this story a little differently.

I want to look at what she was going through and almost where she went. And it's sent in here. We know the story. Hannah is married to Alkana, and Alkana and her can't have a child. So he marries another woman, which was called into the name. If you can't have a child to carry out the family name, you can bring another woman into the house, and she had the children. And he loved Hannah, and that was his wife, but he had children to this other woman.

Now, that's very difficult because think about what it's like, and I think a lot of you women can understand, that you're not the fulfillment of having children. If you're the type of person that wants a child, to never have a child. Of course, men used to think of that in a lot of different ways. There's a fulfillment.

It comes from having a child, having someone to carry out your name. Or, just look at other things. The career that collapsed after 20 years. After putting your whole heart and life into it, or the fact that this didn't happen, or that didn't happen.

All of us have things that we carry around and say, oh, that would have only happened. And it's painful. Somebody ever looked at you and said, well, you shouldn't hurt over that. That's because they've never hurt like that before. They just don't understand. It's painful to have a loss, or it's painful to never receive something that you know would make your life more fulfilling. So this is the point Hannah is at. Now, she could have resented God and said, why can't I have children? You can heal me. Now, she didn't. This is very important. But she's got another problem here.

She has this other wife. Let's look at verse 4. Now, whenever the time came for Al-Qaeda to make an offering, he would give portions to Padina, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters. All her sons and daughters. This woman had lots of kids. But to Hannah, he would give a double portion. But he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb. In other words, she just couldn't have children. But he loved her. So he treated her a whole lot better than the woman that was having the kids.

So it was year by year when she went up to the house of the Lord that she provoked her. Therefore, she wept and did not eat. Now, I want you to notice what's happening. The woman who's having all the kids in the family is making fun of the woman and putting down the woman who can't.

Of course she is. First of all, she's jealous because the one that can't have the children is the one that's loved. And she knows. All she is is a baby machine. That's all she is. Now, he has to take care of her. He has to do all the duties. He has to take care of her as his wife. But it's obvious he loved Hannah. But she gets by having all the kids, so she lets Hannah go.

And this hurt gets deeper and deeper, not only because she has missed out in life over something that's very important to her, but, two, she has an antagonist. She is someone who is abusing her all the time. She can't get away from this. This is in her home. Where's she going to go? It's inside her own home. So, she did not get bitter with God or resent God. She accepted that, but this was on top of that.

Notice she stopped eating. One thing about resentment is it begins to affect every aspect of our lives. It affects us emotionally. If you resent somebody, that resentment towards that person will affect your other relationships.

If you're filled with resentment, it will grow. If you resent one person, someday you will resent two people, and someday you will resent five people, and someday I know people who resent everybody.

Everybody. And every time anybody does anything, they take it personally. Oh, that was against me. That was against me. That was against me. And so, here she is being abused, hurting, and then something else happens. It starts to affect her health, by the way. She stops eating. Resentment will make you sick. Anger will make you sick, if it's unrighteous anger. Hatred will make you sick. The Bible says it. Resentment, she's physically becoming ill. Now things get a little worse, because Elkana, her husband, said to her, Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart grieved? Well, what do you mean, why? Right? And then he makes the statement, am I not better to you than 10 sons? Yeah. Look at me, I'm better than 10 sons. I'm your husband. In other words, her husband was not a bad guy. Her husband did not understand. So now, she's not only being abused in her own home by the woman who is having all the children, her husband, who loves her dearly, doesn't understand at all. He doesn't understand her emotions.

So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, how Eli the priest was sitting at the seat by the doorpost of the tabernacle of the Lord. Verse 10, and she was in bitterness of soul and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. Bitterness of soul. She is beginning to become overcome with resentment. I've been pushed down. I've been oppressed by this woman. My husband doesn't understand. God, why won't you save me from this? Well, you know the story. Now the high priest comes up. The one man in the whole nation of Israel that would understand. The man of God. The man that God worked through directly. He sees her. She's praying. And her mouth is moving, but she's not saying anything. She's not talking out loud. He sees this woman in anguish crying, rocking back and forth, and moving her mouth. And he says, well, when you're drunk, get out of the temple.

Not only is she abused, not only does her husband not even begin to understand her, not only is she missing a central core issue of life, fulfillment of life. The man of God misjudges the whole situation, and it chooses her as something that's not true. It's a bad situation, and she's teetering on total resentment. And this is where the test is now. What will she do now? Because as she walks out of here now resenting Eli because he misjudged the situation. She will go home and hate the other woman, and then she will hate the other woman's children, and then she will resent her husband. The whole thing starts, and this woman becomes a bitter, angry, unhappy woman who despises the man of God, despises her husband, despises the other wife, despises the children, and probably dies young, sick and unhappy and depressed. This is where she is right now. She's right on that edge. And what she does, verse 14, when he says, How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you. But Hannah answered and said, No, my Lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I am not drunk neither wine or intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for rather the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now.

When Eli realized in this humble spirit that she had brought all this to God, she was bringing to God all this resentment, all this hurt, all this pain, all this misunderstanding. She wasn't taking it out on the other woman. She was taking it out on her husband. She wasn't taking it out on the children. And she didn't take it out on Eli. This is what's amazing about Hannah. At this point of trial, she looked at him and said, My Lord, I'm not doing this. I'm not drunk. You know, she didn't say, You foolish man, you misjudged me. She said, No, no, no, no. I'm pouring this out to God. This is more than I can bear. This is a pain so deep, that's what you're seeing. And Eli answered and said, Go in peace. And the God of Israel grant you your petition, which you have asked of Him. And she said, Let your maidservant find favor in your sight. So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. She started to feel better. Eli said, God will take care of you. This will work out just fine. God's going to take care of you. She believed it. Physically, she started to get better. Emotionally, she started to get better. Guess what? She became pregnant. The point here in this story, you know, there's so many lessons in this story with Hannah in the first and second chapter of Samuel. But what is so important is where she was. Look at those verses. Describe what she was going through and her feelings, her emotions. This is all set up to put her. They didn't describe it. Show just where she was. Now, this is probably written by her son. Samuel probably wrote this.

So this is Ma's story, okay? This is what he was told by Mom. He understood and he wrote down her feelings.

And here she was, and she took it to God. This is one of the first things we must understand when we're faced with resentment. Don't go take it out on the other people, the people you resent. Take it to God. Now, notice she did not pray. Her prayer is very interesting. God help me. Her prayer wasn't, God, would you take that other woman and make all her hair fall out? And make her look like she's 87 years old? And make her smell really bad? And make my husband absolutely repulsed by her? He didn't say, she didn't say, God, would you take my husband and just punish him for not understanding me? You notice there's the resentment. She's not teetering them, but she's not resenting them, but she's hurt by them. Instead, she asks God to help her. That's so important. When you resent somebody, go ask God to help you. You have to get underneath and ask God to help you. You know, if someone's done you wrong, or you perceive that they've done you wrong, even if they didn't, it doesn't matter. You feel the same. That's what's so hard about emotions. It really doesn't matter whether they did you wrong or not. It's how you feel.

In order to deal with resentment, we have to do what Colossians 3 says. Or you will never get over resentment. You will just get worse. Resentment has been described as a cancer, and it is an emotional cancer. Colossians 3, verse 12.

Therefore is the elect of God, holy and beloved. We have God's Spirit. This is what we're supposed to be. Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, uniqueness, and long-suffering. We can't. You cannot be absorbed in resentment and have these things. You can't. It is not possible to be filled with resentment and have tender mercies. You only have tender mercies with people who see it the way you do. You only have tender mercies on people like you. You sure won't have tender mercies with the people that you dislike or that you resent. He says kindness. You're not going to be kind to the people who you resent. Meekness. You're going to be meek with the people you resent. You're going to be proud. Long-suffering. You're going to suffer long with the people you resent. Why would you suffer long with them? They're bad. Buried with one another. Now, why would this be of the church, instructions to the church, if it wasn't something we were going to have to do? Do you understand? We have to do this. This is an instruction to the world. This is an instruction to the church.

Buried with one another. And forgiving one another.

If you resent someone, you're supposed to go to God and forgive the person.

And you're supposed to go to the person and forgive the person. But what happens when we resent them? We won't do that. If we truly resent somebody, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Until they do this, until they get punished, until they do what I want, I don't have to forgive them. And that's not what the Scripture says. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you must do. Here is the place to start. Did Christ forgive you? Did God forgive you? If you have been forgiven by God, and the blood of Christ has been given to you, we're supposed to pass it on. We're supposed to pass it on. We're supposed to forgive.

Resentment won't let us forgive. And when we refuse to forgive, the resentment only gets worse and worse and worse. Until the resentment eats you up, and can actually cause mental illness. Resentment can cause mental illness. It will cause you spiritual illness, and it will cause you emotional illness, and it can destroy your mental state.

It's a strange thing about resentment, because it's an obsession. We become obsessed with whoever we resent, or whatever we resent. And because of that, we feel like we get power from the emotion. It's a very deceiving emotion. There's power in my resentment. There's power in the fact that I get up in the morning, and the first thing I think about is that person, or this person, or this thing, or that bad thing.

There's power in playing it over and over and over in my mind, or making up a scenario where I win. So you make up a scenario, when I meet that person someday, you play it over and over and over. And I'll get my dues someday with that person, and we resent them. And we think that's power. There's something. Know with those who wrote this, it's been around for many, many years. You'll find it quoted in all kinds of books. It's quoted on the Internet all over the place, because it's a note author and it's in public domain. But it's a very...it's one of those things that just captures the emotion of resentment.

It's called, resent somebody. The moment you start to resent a person, you become their slave. He controls your dreams, absorbs your digestion, robs you of the peace of mind and goodwill, and takes away the pleasure of your work. He ruins your religion and nullifies your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without taking him along. He destroys your freedom of mind and hounds you wherever you go. There's no way to escape the person you resent. He is with you when you are awake. He invades your privacy when you sleep. He is close beside you when you eat, when you drive your car, when you're on the job. You can never have efficiency or happiness.

He influences agent the tone of your voice. He requires you to take medication for indigestion, headaches and loss of energy. He even steals your last moment of consciousness before you go to sleep. So if you don't want to be a slave, let go of your resentments. There's something very, very true in this. Resentment makes us a slave to an emotion. The other person may not even know. The other person may not even understand.

The other person may not even care. But we have become a slave to our own emotion. And we become a slave to a mental image we make of that person. You know what's true sometimes? The mental image we make of that person is wrong.

It's funny to think about resentments. You'll rewrite history so that that person is the person you made up in your head. And sometimes we resent a person, and the image we've made up isn't even true. So now we're filled with anger and hatred and bitterness. We can't sleep. We don't feel happy. And it's because we hate somebody we made up.

We resent somebody we made up that isn't even the person that we resent. So this means that you must consciously, and it's a conscious thing you do against your own emotions. This goes against how you feel. You must consciously, with prayer, actively replace resentment thoughts with other thoughts. And that means you have to start thinking about the positive things in your life, specifically the positive things that God does. Now the second root cause of resentment is strangely enough, is the exact opposite of the first one. The first cause of resentment is because someone has either done you wrong or you think they've done you wrong.

The second one is even more complex. The second cause of resentment is the person didn't treat you the way you wanted to be treated. Now listen to that again. It's not that they did anything to you. It's that they didn't treat you the way you wanted to be treated. You resent your boss because your boss didn't say hi to you because your boss never gives you a compliment. Children resent parents because the parents didn't show them enough attention in their mind.

Husband and wife resent each other because, well, you don't show me the attention that I want or say the things I want or help supply the needs that I need. If someone's the person who did anything wrong or bad to them, it's that what they didn't do. This kind of resentment is so hard to deal with because you're looking at everybody around you and saying, what can you do for me? And since nobody can do everything you want for you, almost all relationships fail.

With this kind of approach, almost all relationships fail. And the reason they fail is because you're looking at every person in the light of, what can you do for me? There's the interesting parable Jesus gives about the landowner that goes out and hires people and gives them the day's wage to work for all day. Then halfway through the day, he realizes, hey, everybody, I'm not going to get the field done. So he goes and he hires a whole bunch of other people and says, I'll give you a day's wages to work half a day. Finally, in the last couple of hours, he goes out and hires some other guys and says, look, I'll give you a whole day's wages to come in and work because I've got to get this work done.

And at the end, everybody lines up to get paid. And the people who worked all day say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Wait a minute. How could that guy work for an hour and he's getting just as much money as I do? It's an interesting parable because every one of us, our normal human reaction to that is, that really is unfair.

That really is unfair. But I want you to notice the point in verse 15. Let's go to Matthew 20 and look at verse 15 of this parable. Because the parable, of course, is about God. God is the landowner. And some of us are called to different parts of the times of our life. When Christ comes back, eternal life is given to somebody who was just baptized and given to somebody who had to struggle for 50 years. Wait a minute. How come this person gets the same as I do? He says, well, let's go to verse 13. But he answered one of them and said, Friends, I am doing you no wrong. I remember the landowner here represents God in this parable. He says, the guy that has worked all day long, he says, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? No, this is real important. You and I made a covenant. I called you into the field. You came and worked. And I agreed to give you a day's wage. And people came in halfway through and I made a covenant with them. He said, wasn't that our agreement? And what's happening to these people is, well, I want more to my agreement. I want to renegotiate my agreement, not based on the fact that this guy gave them a job, but based on the fact that he's giving other people just as much as he's giving them. And since we worked longer, we deserve more. That seems sort of right, doesn't it? You can see why they would resent the landowner. But the landowner says that that was our agreement. You and I made God made a covenant with us. And we agreed to it. And some of us, you know, there'll be people at the return of Jesus Christ that just made that covenant, you know, right before he comes back. And there'll be others who have done it all their lives. The important thing is the landowner came and got you. That's the important thing. But once we start looking at each other and measuring ourselves by each other, we end up in a real problem.

He says, take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Verse 15, is it not lawful for me to do so? What I wish with my own things? This is this last sentence that is the hard thing, because this sums up the argument of the parable. Or is your I evil because I am good? In other words, the parable here is we can even resent God because we feel like God gives others a better break than He gives us. The truth is, it doesn't matter when you come into this field, it doesn't matter how much work each of us has to do in this field. We came into the field by the grace of God. That's the issue of the whole parable. We didn't come into the field because we walked up and said, hey, I'm a good worker, I'm going to come work for you. Everyone's called into the field. When God calls them into the field, and everyone has work to do and part to play, and everyone has so much to overcome, and everyone has to do part of this, and it doesn't matter when you come. It's by the grace of God we are here, and how can we compare with each other? Now, this is just comparing with each other in the Church. You see resentment. You really want to understand resentment. Watch teenage kids. Especially teenage girls. I don't mean to pick on girls, but I... The truth is, most 15-year-old boys are pretty much as oblivious to anything. They're hard to use, for example, as they're walking around in a stupor most of the time. But girls, on the other hand, girls in the other hand, they're thinking things through.

Watch one 15-year-old girl, say this is a group of six or eight 15-year-olds, and watch one of them get attention from a 16-year-old boy, if you're older, so he's a man. Watch what happens with the other girls. The resentment. Right? I see women shaking their hands. All the guys are going, huh? Okay, but then women are getting it. They understand. Watch the resentment, and watch what they do to her. And it's not because, by the way, she did anything to them, but she got attention that they all deserve.

Emotionally, they believe they all deserve it. Here, all these workers emotionally say, we all deserve the same thing. And God says, no, you don't? You're only here by the grace of God. Look at what it says in Hebrews. Hebrews 12.

Hebrews 12. Verse 14.

Paul says, Pursue peace with all people in holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Now, that's very important. We must pursue peace, peace with God, and peace with each other. We must pursue holiness, or we're not going to see God. Now, remember, he's talking to people who have received God's Spirit here, and he says, you have to keep pursuing this. Looking carefully. This next statement is just remarkable. Looking carefully, let anyone fall short of the grace of God. How can you fall short of the favor of God? How can you fall short of the mercy of God? How could you fall short of the grace of God? There's no limit to His mercy. There's no limit to His grace. How in the world do we fall short of that?

Rest of the sentence. Let any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble. And by this, many, many become defiled. He's not talking to the world, he's talking to the church. Rejectment, we become bitter. Bitterness can be caused by a number of different things, but one huge cause of bitterness, that just, I'm just happy, wrestling, boiling, just upset that people can sometimes feel all the time.

He says that bitterness has defiled many people. See, resentment is a sin. Reseminent is a sin. Anything that causes bitterness is a sin. And it's so hard because, well, wait a minute, no, no, no, that person said it gets me. That may be true. Or that person, all they wanted was that person to say hi to me, invite me over their house. And that person never invited me over their house. I've been in the church 15 years. They never invited me over their house, so I just said, forget it. If I'm going to be, you know, not treated, you see what I mean? It's not treated. It's not treated that way. No, no, no. Once you become bitter, that sin's yours. It doesn't matter what caused it. That sin is yours. You and I own it, and it eats away at us. It eats away at us until emotionally we're sick, physically we're sick, and spiritually we're sick. So we have to understand, just because other people don't treat us the way we want to be treated, everybody wants to be loved. Don't we? Everybody wants people to treat us right. But what happens when... What happens when you have a room full of people all needing to be loved? Not a whole lot of love is given because everybody needs. The more everybody needs, the less love is given. That's why find a truly loving person, and you'll find people just gathered around them.

We all like to be around loving people because we get something from them. The more you resent, the less you're able to even receive love. That's what's scary about resentment. You can't receive love if you resent. Because resentment boils over into every relationship. Because once you reach a certain point, all you find fault, all you do is find fault with everybody. Even your best friends, all you do is find fault with them. You resent them. Because either they're treating you poorly, or they're not treating you the way you want to be treated. The last great way that we become resentful is by two other emotions. These emotions are similar, but they are different. One is envy, and one is jealousy. You're envious of somebody because they got something, or you're jealous of somebody because you want what they have. You can envy somebody because you can say, oh, I wish I could be famous like that person. Okay? That's envy. Jealousy is, I want that person's car. Not, I want a car like that person. I want that person's car. When you're jealous of somebody, you want what they have. When you're envious of somebody, I want something like they have. I envy them. Sometimes we try to be like the people we envy. Envy and jealousy. Genesis 4. Perfect example of resentment caused by envy and jealousy. Both of those emotions are involved here. Genesis 4.

Verse 1, Now Adam do eateth his wife, and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord. That she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came a path that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought in the first word of his flock, and of their fad, and the Lord respected Abel in his offering. Now, I gave a whole sermon one time, or part of the sermon was about the difference in Abel and Cain and their approach to God. But I just want to zero in on the relationship between Cain and Abel that we get out of these two verses. Verse 5, But God did not respect Cain in his offering, and Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. He was upset with God because God did not accept what he had brought to him. Now, what God says to him is very important here. So the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? Why is your countenance fall? In other words, he was so angry, you could see it in him physically. And he would, if he would have, you know, at that level of anger, he was hurting his mind, he was hurting his emotions. His physical health was being affected. You could see it. This man had lost control of his anger. If you do well, will you not be accepted? Now, here's God's mercy. Here's God's grace. Cain, I know you did wrong. You didn't bring the offering I wanted. But just do the right thing. I will accept you. Sometimes the whole driving issue of resentment is we want to be accepted. And we feel like nobody else accepts us. So we resent everybody for not accepting us. And when you resent people for not accepting you, you know what you do? You treat them badly and you drive them away from you. See, resentment just destroys everything.

So he says you won't be accepted. If you do not well, sin lies at the door, and sin wants to rule over you, but you should rule over it. You can control this. You can get this right, Cain. That's what God's telling. You get this right. You don't have to sit here. Now, who does Cain really, really resent? It's not just Abel. He resents God.

Cain is upset because he wants to worship God the way he wants to worship God. He doesn't like these rules. He doesn't like the way that God says you have to do it this way. And all these rules God makes up, they're sort of silly. And, oh, Abel over here, he does those rules. What a self-righteous guy he is. Boy, if God only knew him like I know him, I mean, he's my brother. He's self-righteous hypocrite over here. And, by the way, one of the signs of resentment is that you will look at everybody and say they're hypocrites. You'll find everybody to be a hypocrite. First of all, you don't know the definition of hypocrisy. Secondly, of course you do, because you resent them. Why? Because you're not getting from them what you want. Or you're envious. Or you're jealous. Or because maybe they mistreated you. Or you perceive they mistreated you. Whatever the cause, if you find yourself always seeing other people, judging them as hypocrites, so you think, man, I'm the only person in the whole world that's not a hypocrite, that means you're probably a hypocrite. And also, these are probably so much resentment.

Verse 8, Now Cain talked with Abel his brother, that came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against his brother and killed him. His resentment towards his brother led him to murder. But in this case, he also resented God. Let's face it. You and I, we shouldn't resent God. We shouldn't be angry with God. We shouldn't be upset with God. Right? So what do we do? We take it out on a person.

Instead of going to God and saying, God, I don't understand and I feel upset. I feel resentment here. Why are you allowing this? See, go back to Hannah. Hannah's a remarkable attitude. She just went to God and said, you're the one that can help me. So I'm going to keep coming to you and asking you for help.

Now, what if Hannah would have said, okay, I can't blame God, but boy, okay, that could sure can suffer. I'll make him the most miserable man on the face of the earth. And she could have taken out all that resentment on him.

See, people do that all the time. You resent somebody else, but you feel like you can't resent that person, or that person's set off when you think more powerful than you or whatever. You know, if a child resents dad, sometimes they will take it out on dad. They'll take it out on a sibling.

They'll take it out on somebody else that they see as weaker. So that resentment becomes generational, actually. Resentment is passed on from generation to generation. James, Chapter 3. So here we have jealousy and envy. He is envious of his brother. He's jealous of his brother. And he resents him. And he resents God. And he ends up committing murder. James 3. James, Chapter 3.

Verse 13. Who is wise in understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are dead in a meekness of wisdom. Okay. Meekness of wisdom. The only way that you can ever really combat resentment is you have to have humility before God, and humility before others. Because we're going to get into here what is the real cause of resentment. Well, it's because I wanted to be voted the captain of the basketball team. Nobody would vote me as the captain of the basketball team, and that's why I resent them. Actually, that's not the reason. That just happened to be an event. Well, I resentful because this person got the job, and I didn't, and I'm really more qualified. Okay. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel bad about that, but resenting until you actually have this bitterness towards the employer or towards the other person.

Like I said, in families, people take resentment against one person, out on another person all the time. He goes on, he says, but if you have bitter envy, this bitterness, this eating up of your whole mind and your emotions, so you're just obsessed with this anger and this hurt, you're just obsessed with it. And you resent this person or that person or God or whatever. And at resentment, you become bitter with envy. But if you have, so if you have this, James says, if you have bitter envy and self-seeking, that's very interesting. The core reason for resentment, at its very core, is we are basically selfish. We want everybody to treat us by our rules. By our rules. And we're not willing to give other people the benefit, and we're not willing to give other people forgiveness. We're not willing to accept that nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. He says, so if this bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts do not boast a lie against the truth, with bitter envy and self-seeking, we will not live by the truth. We'll live by something else. We'll pretend to live by the truth, which then we are hypocrites. Now, hypocrisy does become the issue. Not because you see everybody else as a hypocrite, but because you're a hypocrite, in which you're envious, you're bitter, you're jealous, and you really don't live by the truth. You just pretend to, while condemning everybody else. At this point, you're lying against the truth in your life, the way that you live. See why I said this is such an important subject? And it's so hard because it's a feeling. It's a feeling. Yet this feeling is so destructive. He says, this wisdom does not ascend from above. What wisdom? Self-seeking and bitter envy. But it's earthy and sensual and demonic. The reason he says that is because he says, this is the way the demons feel. The demons have bitter envy, and the demons are self-seeking. That's the way Satan is. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. The more we are filled with resentments, the more we let ourselves become bitter, the more we will find our lives to be two things. One, confusing. We will find our lives to be confusing. We will find God's way is not clear to us, maybe the way it used to be. In fact, we won't even think about God's way a lot of times. Because we've erected a barrier between us and God through our bitterness. And what happens is, because of that, we don't even think about God's way much of the time. We just go through life thinking about, oh, I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do just what we do.

Confusion and evil, in other words, your conduct will become more and more against what you used to believe was wrong. And you will compromise more and more and more with sin. You just compromise with sin. And you think, because remember, resentments we think give us power, I am justified in this because that person did wrong, or that person didn't treat me right, or that person got the job, or that person got the girl I wanted, or that person got... And whatever it is, we fill in there, and it can be as varied as each one of us. At that point, we can justify sin because we resent it so much. That's a very dangerous place to be. So where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is pure, and is peaceable, and is gentle. It's willing to yield. It's willing to give in to others. Not compromising with the truth, or with morality, or right and wrong, but willing to yield to others, their opinions.

One thing about resentment, the more resentful you are, the more you'll find you're in constant conflict.

The more resentful you are in life, because pretty soon, everybody's got to treat me the way I want to be treated.

What happens when you have a world of people all interacting with each other with the premise, you have to treat me the way I want to be treated? Well, it's the world you know I live in.

Except for the rare individuals we find who actually are outward, they're loving, they're caring, and they're not self-centered. Gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Resentment is not a peaceful state to be in, and anyone who's experienced that knows that. Remember, part of the problem with resentment is our need for others to love us, or a desire for recognition, or a desire to receive what you deserve. I deserve this, and nobody's giving it to me.

So, the need for love is not evil, it's good. We all have a design that needs love. The need for recognition when you do something good, there's nothing wrong with that. The need to receive, you know, fair wage for fair work, whatever, but see how it all gets twisted up. Because God wants to work with us inside out, but we work through life outside in.

See, we work outside in, and He wants to work with us inside out. So, until this happens, I will feel resentment. God says, don't feel resentment, no matter what happens. But we work outside in, and God works inside out.

Until we have this right relationship with God, we'll have resentments. And everybody's going to have to, everybody here will fight resentment from time to time, because of things that happen or don't happen, or you get jealous over something, or envious of something, or somebody gets something you wanted, something gets something, and you deserve something, and you'll get it. You deserve recognition, and you don't get any recognition for something at work or in the church or at home.

How easy it is to resent your husband, because you worked so hard, and he never notices it. Then you talk to the husband, and he resents the wife, because I worked so hard, and she doesn't notice it. And they're both actually resenting the exact same thing, because they have the exact same need. That happens all the time. That happens all the time.

Remember, what happens is we go down this road of resentment. He destroys us physically, it makes us sick, it restores our relationships, and it puts a barrier between us and God. If you're struggling with resentment, here's something you can do. Take this passage in James 3, 13-18. Read that and turn it into a prayer. I mean, study it. Really study that passage. Study the words. You can spend hours studying those five verses. Study it, study it, study it, and turn it into a prayer. Father, help me to be yielding. Well, really, what I want you to do is make that person yielding. But, okay, make me yielding. See? Boy, as you go through that and turn it into a prayer, if you really do that, you're going to struggle. But, God, I resent that person, and you're telling me to do this? God says, yeah, I'm working from the inside out. You want to work from the outside in. Let's deal with the inside first, because that baby goes... then we'll go deal with the outside, okay? We'll go deal with the situation after we deal with the inside.

Take that passage and James, study it, and turn it into a prayer in your own way. And ask God to help you work through resentment. If you're suffering from resentment, remember I said, repent. It doesn't matter if the other person was wrong. Still repent yourself. Say, God, this emotion, I have to get rid of this emotion. There must be a place with His love. Just remember, your situation may not always change. Sometimes situations don't change in life. But you can experience healing from God that says God isn't always concerned with changing from the outside in. He's concerned with you, in your life, be changing you from the inside out.