Being Set Free from All Bitterness

It says in your presence is fullness of joy and life everlasting. Thank you for your blessing in Jesus' name, amen. You know there's a verse and it's one of the songs that we sing, better is one day in your house than a thousand elsewhere, to be in the presence of the Lord.

Now that can be wherever, when you're right with the Lord, wherever you are, it's not determined by location, the presence of the Lord is determined by the Holy Spirit. You know, if the Lord is with you, wherever you go, you can possess that place, take over that place for Jesus. I remember a time when we were going to the to the creek, to the camp, and in those days the camp was run by Vision Quest, it was a kind of a native group, and there were native influences, very strong, demonic, you could feel the presence of the darkness when we drove there.

Sometimes fear would come on us when we would drive on the land, it was tangible, and we would pray before we would enter on or after we would leave, and we would pray that wherever we would put our foot, that we would be able to take over that place for Jesus. You know, we didn't see it the first month or the first few months, but soon the place could no longer afford to stay, and it was taken over by another organization, which again took us on as a Christian group that could go and minister to the people in addiction, and we had the freedom to share our faith with people who were hurting. The totem poles came down, the boar's head that was there came down, all those rocks and points of contact, they all came down, and the gospel was preached, and the presence of God began to come and move in that place.

People began to experience the power of God, and it's not always like that, as much as it depends on you, as much as it depends on us being at unity, being in in right relationship with the Lord, then the Lord blesses us. He blesses us with his presence. What blessing is there if you have lots of money, but you don't have the presence of God, you don't have the favor of God, the goodness of God in your life.

I think of how God wanted to bless the children of Israel, how they were in bondage in Egypt, when we read in Exodus, and the people were groaning because the pharaoh had put a heavy weight on them, and they were slaves in a land. I don't know about you if you've ever felt like a slave when you've been working for someone, but this is literally the people, they owned these people. There was slavery where people owned people.

You didn't have choices, you didn't have rights, you did what was told of you, or it wouldn't go well for you. In the same way, it's a picture of people who are slaves to the enemy, slaves to sin, slaves to fear, slaves to bondage, in a natural sense, and they cried out to God to deliver them. In the same way, there's things in our life that we become we become slave to.

I remember our daughter Christa was slave to fear. She would be so fearful and anxious, and we had to pray with her many times, and the Lord's given her tremendous victory over fear. She had fear of dogs.

Whenever she'd see a dog, she'd have a panic attack. Whenever she would hear a noise, she would have a tremendous fear would grip her. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

You can't deal with, maybe you have cigarettes, you can throw them away, or you have some alcohol, you can throw it away, or you have some sexual stuff, you can get rid of it, but the internal stuff you're carrying with you, you can't just get it out of your heart. God has to take it away, and so we have to come to Him. In the same way, the children of Israel had to come to Him, and it wasn't just a one-night calling.

It was, for a long time, they were asking the Lord, maybe you haven't seen the victory yet. Don't lose hope. Maybe you don't have the victory yet.

God is able to make a way for you. Keep coming to Him, because the word of God says, and He cannot lie, the one who comes to Him, He's not going to kick them out. So keep coming to Him.

The children of Israel came to Him, said we're in bondage here. This Pharaoh, he's put a harsh task on our back, and Lord, just have mercy on us, and deliver us from this place. And the Lord raised up a deliverer in Moses, and Moses led them out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and into the wilderness, promising them a land that they would possess.

That land is the land of Israel today. These are the people of God, who God delivered from Egypt, and brought them into their own land. He promised it to them, and it didn't happen overnight.

It took time. In the same way, we were once darkness. We were once slaves of sin.

We were once in bondage to the elements, fear, and anxiety, worry, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness. Some of these things are internal things, greed. But you know what? We can ask Jesus to help us, save us from these things.

You know, many times we want to be saved from hell, and we want to go to heaven. That's just kind of the big picture. But every day, we need saving of something.

Things aren't going well in your life. You know, yesterday I went to go see my son, and he has so many exams, and papers, and things. He can't get them done, and it affected him on the baseball field.

He didn't have any success, because he was emailing papers at 4 a.m., and he had a doubleheader, and he played both games, and he did not have success in the second game. He was just exhausted. So should he quit? Should he quit school? Should he quit what he's doing? No.

We need the Lord. In whatever we're doing, we need the Lord. We need salvation.

Lord, save me from my troubles. Help me in my weakness. Deliver me out of my bondage.

It says we should call on the Lord, and He will answer us, and show us great and awesome things that we don't yet know. And sometimes the Lord wants us to learn to carry the weight of life. You know, we think we're blessing our kids, and we make everything so easy for them.

We give them everything. We spoil them with everything. What happens the first day you say no to them? You scream on the top of their lungs, and they flop around, and they have a tantrum, because you said no to them.

That's not reality that everything is yes and amen in the flesh. It's yes and amen in Christ. But God says no to us sometimes, because it's not good for us.

Something's not good for us. He says no. And it's as parents, we have to know that it's good to say no to our children when we know it's not good for them.

Well, my kids say they want to play video games. I said, what are our video games? And I said, and we have to be careful what we're watching, what we're doing. Well, if I'm not watching, they go two hours, three hours, five hours, ten hours, as much as what they want, all you can eat video games.

I said, this is not good for you. There's gonna have to be consequences. This is just not good.

All you can eat for the flesh. He gives us all things richly to enjoy. But food for the stomach, and the stomach for food, God will destroy both it and them.

We can't just indulge in things that are not good for us. If you just ate sweets, and cupcakes, and, and, you know, these nice crispy cream cookies, okay, doughnuts, you just eat a dozen of those. See how you're feeling.

You're gonna feel weighed down, you're gonna feel sick if you keep eating those things. A little bit in moderation, okay. But going headlong after it, because one is good, ten is better.

This is not from the Holy Spirit. We need self-control, and comes regard to the things of the flesh. And so the children of Israel, he delivers them, because they cried out to the Lord.

The answer is, call on the name of the Lord Jesus. And whatever it is you're going through, and whatever it is your struggle is, Jesus, please help me. Because the one who comes to him, he's not gonna kick them out.

And this is where faith comes in. Oh, I got this. I can do this on my own.

I'm gonna train harder. I'm gonna try harder. I'm gonna put my shoulder to it.

No, you're gonna exhaust yourself. And after you've exhausted yourself, then you're gonna look to the Lord. Why not look to the Lord before you exhaust yourself, and remain at rest in him, and wait patiently for the Lord until he answers you, and shows you those great and awesome things that you have not yet known.

There they are in the wilderness. God has sent them in to possess the land. They're getting to that place, and here they are at the land of Moab.

And there's this king, Balak. And he says, you know what, I'm exceedingly terrified of these people, because I've seen what's happening. Wherever these people go, God is with them, and he's rolling over the nation.

They're rolling over the nations, and they're gonna roll over us. And so he hires this prophet, this sorcerer, Balaam, son of Beor. And he knows that this guy has been very successful in cursing nations, and cursing people.

He hires the guy to curse the people of God, whom God has blessed. You know what, the tongue is a very powerful thing. You wake up in the morning, and you tell your kids, you're useless.

You know what, that will affect them all their life. You're like cursing your own children. When you tell somebody, you're a loser, or you say things, you know, you're no good, or you know, you're not gonna be my friend, or whatever we say.

You know, it says in James in chapter 3, it says the tongue is a small member, but it makes great boasts. And if a man can get victory, and tame that tongue somehow, he'll become perfect in all his ways. Because animals can be tamed and trained, but the tongue cannot be tamed by man.

It is full of an evil and deadly poison. With it, we can worship God like this, and afterwards, we can put somebody down, or tell them off, or swear at them, or do some evil things, say some evil things, spread some gossips, and some rumors, and tear people down. With it, we can bless God, and curse men.

Here's this, this Balak hires Balaam to curse the people of God. Tear them down, so they don't prosper in the way of God. But you know what, people can say what they want to you.

But you know what, if you have assurance, and you have right standing with the Lord, it's not going to affect you. You're going to be able to allow it to roll off of you. Sometimes people have said things about us, and I've talked to some people, and they said, you know, when I was 12, so and so said this thing to me, and they hold grudges.

Those words got into their heart. We have to be like ducks, we have to let the things people say run off our backs. But people can hold grudges, they can hold resentments, what so and so said about me.

You know what, the only one who is harmed when you hold things like that in your heart is you. This unforgiveness, and this bitterness can affect you, and it can even bring sickness into your body, because of how people treated you, things they said. Don't let the things that people have said dictate the course of your future, and the course of your life.

Release them, because the Word of God says, if you forgive men their sins against you, God will forgive you your sins. Having unforgiveness in your heart only harms you. That's why it's important, it doesn't matter what people say, whether true or untrue, release them.

And you might not be able to do it, but you know what, you go to the Lord, and you keep going to the Lord, and you keep coming to the Lord. There was a time in my life where I had bitterness in my heart for a number of years, it's like an onion. And I kept saying, Lord, I want to forgive, I forgive them, I let it go, please forgive me.

And that onion, it's still there, but it's getting smaller like a peel. And you just keep at it, and you keep at it, and you think, okay, I'm finally done with this bitterness, and this resentment, this unforgiveness. And then all of a sudden, one of somebody comes and makes a comment or says something, and boom, it's there again.

Lord, I thought I was done with this onion, this resentment, this bitterness. Lord, I don't want to become a bitter brother. I pray that you'd help me, help me to overcome, set me free from this thing, deliver me.

Keep coming to Him. Keep coming to Him. Maybe you don't see the victory yet, and whatever it is you're struggling with, whatever it is you're battling, whatever the issues are, keep coming to Jesus, and He's going to give you the victory.

It's victory in Jesus' name. That's where the battle is won. Well, this guy, he sent some men, a delegation, and he said, you know, I'll give you some honor and some gifts and stuff.

And he said, no, I can only, I'll pray about it. And the Lord said, don't, don't go with them. These people are blessed, you can't curse them.

And then the Balak said, well, you know, I'm going to send more honorable guys, and I'm going to give more gifts, and I'm going to bring some wheelbarrows of cash to try to entice the guy. Well, the guy's eyes got really big, and he said, well, I'm going to pray one more time. I'll ask the Lord again, as though God changes his mind.

You know, sometimes, you know, when the, when the offer gets bigger, you say, well, you know, can you change, I want to change jobs. And the guy comes and says, I'll give you a little bit, 50 cents an hour more. He said, well, it's not really worth it.

I'll pray about it, you know. But then the guy comes and give you 10 bucks an hour more. Maybe God changes his mind.

Maybe this is from the Lord. All of a sudden, you're ready to jump ship very fast, like Balaam. Well, you know, I, I kind of have peace about it now.

I think the Lord's, you know, opened a way for me. Well, next, you know, we're going. And on the way, he's going with his donkey, and the donkey is causing him trouble.

Because the Lord has an angel there, and the angel is going to kill this Balaam. Because the first time God said no, and the next time he said, all right, you're going to go anyway, your heart is set to go. So he said, go then.

If you keep asking the Lord for the same thing, he's going to give you the desire of your heart, but you are going to reap leanness in your souls. Now, the children of Israel, when they're in the wilderness, before they came to that place, they were tired of the manna. You know, it says, man shall not live by manna alone, but by every word of God.

They said, we want meat to eat. Give us some steak. Give us some moose.

Give us some leeks and some onions. When we were in Egypt, we had it so good. He said, okay, I'll give you meat to eat.

He granted them the request. He sent quails. They ate quails like every night.

They were eating quails, eating meat. But he sent leanness into their souls. They were not satisfied.

You know, you might have a bank account full of cash, but somehow in your soul, you're not satisfied. Something missing. You keep asking, keep asking, keep asking, keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing.

You'll get something that God doesn't want for you. And you'll reap the consequences of it. Well, the donkey crushed Balaam's foot.

He beat that donkey. Then the donkey went and he sat on the road and he beat that donkey. And then the Lord opened Balaam's eyes and showed him there was an angel there that was going to strike Balaam down because he was in rebellion to what God said.

And the donkey said, why are you beating me? The only time in scriptures it says that the animal spoke, the donkey was talking to Balaam. The guy was so beside himself. He's talking to the donkey.

And the donkey's talking back. Well, he said, if I'll go back then and say, no, God wants you to go now and you go and you speak what God tells you. So he made some sacrifice there and Balaam's there.

He's all excited to go and curse the people of God. And he stands there on the mountain to make some sacrifices and then he ends up blessing the people of God. Balaam is so angry.

He said, well, let's go try a different location. Maybe it's the location. He took him to three different locations and every time Balaam blessed the people of God because you cannot curse whom God has blessed.

But you know, there's a scripture and I want to read it. A lot of people don't talk about this verse because there's one way in which we can turn, God's anger can be turned towards us as the people of God. And we look in Revelation in chapter two and verse 14, Revelation in chapter two and verse 14.

It says, but I have a few things against you. He's speaking to the church, the church of Pergamos. You have these who hold the doctrine of Balaam.

So God is against the teaching of Balaam. Balaam hold to some strange teachings. And he taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things, sacrifice to idols and to commit sexual sins.

This is what Balaam did. He taught Balaam. He said, you know what? And we can read it from Numbers in 24, 25, somewhere there.

He taught Balak. He said, listen, you can't curse whom God has blessed, but if you can get them to stumble into sins, then God will deal with them himself. That's how you get to them.

So the devil comes to tempt us to dangle something where we're weak areas of weakness. Often it's through sexual sins. Often it's through idolatry.

It says the love of money is idolatry, chasing after money like Balaam himself did. Some other gods, you know, the baseball gods were not with us today. You know, you've heard it said.

There's a lot of gods out there, but they're dumb idols. They're not true gods, but people serve them. We don't want to serve them.

We worship the Lord and him only shall we serve. Let's look at Numbers and we can see what happened there and how he taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of God. Numbers in chapter 25, we'll read briefly here.

Verse one. Now, Israel remained in the Acacia grove and the people, the people of God, they began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. He said, listen, what you do is you make a party and you send all of your women down there and with their idols and everything and you start to have the dancing and you make a party with the people of God and they start intermingling, the people of God intermingling with the ungodliness.

And then they'll sin there and God will deal with his people. What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? So the scripture says in 2nd Corinthians chapter six, right? Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Come out from among them and be separate.

Don't touch unclean things. I'll receive you. God has purposed it in his word that we would keep ourselves pure for marriage.

That we would not fool around and do this stupid stuff because God cannot bless, especially sexual sin. It's a sin against the body. And when we ask Jesus to come into our life, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us.

Can we take the members of Christ and join them in this harlotry? This is what Balaam taught Balak to do so that God himself would begin to destroy his own people. And that's exactly what happened. They invited the people to sacrifice to their gods and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

God is a jealous God. We shall worship the Lord our God and him only shall we serve. Jesus is Lord.

But if we serve Jesus and money, God's not going to bless us. We serve Jesus and other religions. We say, well, all religions, we worship all gods.

God's not going to bless us. It's mixture. We have to be faithful to the creator of the universe and to his son who died for our sins on the cross, Jesus Christ.

And not only died, but rose again. Israel, verse 3, was joined to Baal of Peor and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, his people. You know, the Lord gets angry when his people are unfaithful and cheat on him.

In the same way, a wife will get angry if her husband, he's home most nights, but every once in a while, he doesn't come home. That's not acceptable in a marriage. And it's not acceptable to the Lord.

We need to be faithful to the Lord in all things. There's no one night off, one night a week off from serving the Lord to serve ourselves and do what's evil in the sight of the Lord. This is why we never get on our feet, because we're not faithful to him.

But yet the Lord's still working with us, desiring for us to come to our senses, renounce our sins and turn back to the Lord, for he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, quick to relent from doing harm. Verse 4, then the Lord said to Moses, take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders from before the Lord and the son. Who were the offenders? Were the Moabites the offenders? No, it was the Medna who were the offenders.

They had a choice and they chose to do what was evil. When God had said, he'd given them the commandments already. They chose to do what was evil because it seemed good to them, because there was a party.

You know, my son, when he went to UBC, the first thing they did is they invited him to 17 drinking parties. 17 drinking parties. And every time he would say, no, I'm not going to the drinking party, they'd fine him 20 bucks.

And 20 bucks and 20 bucks and 20 bucks every time he's not going, another 20 bucks. Hundreds of dollars of fines because he's not going, he's suffering for doing what's right. Yet these guys had one drinking party and oh boy, there was thousands of them over there.

We need to stand up against things that are not right. And hold fast to the teachings of Jesus. Because when there's drinking parties, bad things happen.

So Moses said to the judges of Israel, every one of you kill his men who are joined to this idol Baal of Peor. And indeed, one of the children of Med came and presented his brethren. There was a Midianite lady there.

And they went and this man Phineas, he followed Aaron the priest there and he rose up. And he took a javelin in his hand. And he went after the man of Israel into the tent and he thrust both of them through the man of Israel and the woman through their body.

So there was a plague that had started because of the sin, as Dan was sharing about sickness and plagues coming on. And not every occasion, but many times sickness is a result of sin, many times. Well, God gets our attention to make us very weak so that we'll look up.

And the plague was stopped. And those who died in the plague among the people of God there, when they were mixed in there, 24,000 people because of their party and because of their decision. You see, Balaam could not curse the people of God, but sin can separate us from God.

And death was the result in this occasion because of the decisions that they took there, which were against the word of God. Now you say, why are you sharing these harsh things with us? Because you know what? The Bible says that we should teach our children when we go in and when we go out. So when we drive our kids to their activities, we have a prayer with them and we talk about these things to keep yourselves pure.

It's important to keep yourselves pure for marriage because you're going to one day have a wife or a husband. And we've made our own mistakes. We don't want you to repeat the mistakes of our forefathers.

Allow yourself to be set apart for God's best and it will go well with you. This is what we teach them. And when we lie down at night and when we wake up, we're talking about these things.

When we go in and when we go out is important. Not just to have a church meeting like we have here, but when we leave here to instruct them in the ways that are right. That's righteousness.

Instructing the children in the ways that are right. Because you know what? The teachers are instructing them in the ways that the government says is right. But we as parents need to instruct our children in the ways that God says are right.

And in most cases today, the two are in opposition. They're in opposition. Because homosexuality and all this lesbianism and all this nonsense and this this diversity and all this craziness that's going on and the teaching and the influence is not biblical and it's not godly.

And it's the way the devil is going to destroy our nation. If the people of God don't pray and seek his face and we turn ourselves from these wicked ways. Because that's when God hears.

When we become obedient and tuned to his wisdom. May the Lord help us to raise our families in a godly way in a perverse and adulterous generation. That he might preserve a remnant.

You know what a remnant is? You make a dress with something, beautiful dress, nice fabric, and then you have a little piece left over. You keep it. Maybe you can make a purse out of it or make some kind of small garment out of it in the future.

It's not the beautiful dress that's God's people. It's the remnant. It's the leftover that the world says it's worthless.

These are the people of God. The ones that the society says are worthless. These are the ones that God says are precious.

So if people have told you, you weren't going to amount to anything. You're worthless. Be certain God sees that you're precious.

He's able to do exceedingly and abundantly more for you than you can ask, hope, or imagine. Make Jesus your Lord. It's not complicated.

It's easy to be a Christian. In the sense that you say, Jesus forgive me I've sinned. Help me to follow you.

Open my understanding that when I read the Bible, I understand what I'm reading. Teach me your ways that I might walk in your path and become set apart from the rest of the crowd. Leaders walk alone and there's others who will follow.

Don't follow the crowd. Follow the Lord Jesus and he'll make a straight path for you. In Jesus name.

Amen.