Bitterness Is... Bad

In Ephesians 4:1, Paul says "I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Actually more literally, what he says is “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (ESV). In chapters 1-3, Paul reminds his readers (probably a wider audience than just Ephesus) of their identity in Christ. In the second half of the book, he calls them to live or “walk” in a manner that is worthy of their calling. They were not to “walk” like the pagans (4:17) but to rather “walk” in love (5:2) as children of the light (5:15). This will require making choices between good and evil, so they were to “walk” as wise, not unwise, people. Once we understand our calling by God, then we are to walk in a way that is worthy of our calling.

Paul gets pretty specific in that this walk entails—he talks about things like living in unity, speaking truthfully to each other, stealing from others and dealing constructively with our anger. Living (walking) like the people of God changes the way we respond to those things. And dealing with anger seems to be a particular issue for Paul. He tells not to sin in our anger but to rather process quickly, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" (v. 26). He then warns that a failure to process our anger will give the devil a "foothold" or "opportunity" (ESV). The word here is literally "place." It’s the same word used for Jesus praying "at a certain place" (Luke 11:1). We give the devil a place in our lives when we allow anger to go unresolved. This must be important for us because Paul returns to anger later in the chapter (Eph 4:31-32)

31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Bitterness, rage, brawling, slander and malice are all just different incarnations of anger. Brawling and rage happen when you act on anger immediately without thinking. Bitterness, slander and malice happen when we hold anger in and let it simmer in our hearts before it bubbles to the surface. We may think that rage is more honest as we blow up and then justify ourselves with, "Hey, I just say what I think."  Paul would respond, "That’s fine, now repent don't do it again." Bitterness is what happens when we fail to work through (and pray through) our anger so that we can release it (even if the other person does not properly repent). Bitterness is a very dangerous thing; it twists us spiritually and emotionally.

And bitterness can also twist us up physically. Researchers from Concordia University in Montreal report that constant bitterness can lead to physical illness, affecting everything from organ function to immune response and vulnerability to disease. In other words, bitterness will make you sick. Researchers Carsten Wrosch and Jesse Renaud have written a book based on their studies entitled Embitterment: Societal, Psychological and Clinical Perspectives. There study suggests that bitterness affects many different systems in the body that prevent them from working as they should. Bitterness causes people to blame others for their problems rather than looking side themselves, and this process over time litter makes them sick.

Paul’s advice may help us physically as well as spiritually, "Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry.” When an offense is serious enough to rise to the level of sin, then Jesus’ process in Matthew 18 ceases to be optional— we must go to the person directly (without talking to others) to resolve the issue in private. If that doesn't solve things, then we go back and take someone with you as a mediator. If that doesn’t work, then involve the church to mediate the issues. What we can’t do is allow things from personals slights to actual sins to fester and grow in our hearts and turn us into bitter people. When that happens, we are crippled spiritually and give the devil a place in our lives

The True Grace of God

Successful politicians become successful politicians because they are adroit at telling people what they want to hear. Unfortunately, sometimes that is also the case for preachers. Churches sometimes grow because they become skillful in finding what people want to hear... and they tell them. What passes as church growth is too often more stealing sheep from other folds rather than saving the lost lambs. Maybe you do that by having building better programs or bigger buildings. Or maybe you do that by convincing people that your church is “the one true church” while others are simply pretenders. Or maybe you convince them that God will make them healthy and wealthy if they listen (and give) to you. Why do so many of the T.V. preachers stress this health-n-wealth, name-it-and-claim-it heresy? Well, it’s not because the promise to make us rich is writ large on every page of the Bible. No, it’s because that message plays well in the mass market! Paul speaks of this market-driven church growth model in 2 Timothy 4:3 (NLT)

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to right teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever they want to hear.

People want to hear about the grace of God, but not necessarily about the true grace of God. Too many see  God’s grace as license. Oh, maybe not to the point of some of Paul’s critics who saw grace as excuse to keep on sinning so grace could increase (Rom 3:8, 6:1). But they (maybe we?) see grace as permission  not to sweat over the details of faith. All we have to do is get close and grace will male up the difference. All you have to do is make a somewhat honest effort and grace closes the gap.  And then when it comes down to making the hard choices of discipleship, we can defer and play the grace “get out of jail card.”  Grace means that we don't have to sweat the small stuff and that it's all small stuff.

Peter seems to have a different idea.  He calls us to “the true grace of God” in 1 Peter 5:12, and in the verses that precede, he describes this true grace with a hard edge--

8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:8-10)

The true grace of God is about standing firm in the face of the opposition to the devil and suffering hardship and persecution as you entrust yourself to His eventual vindication and salvation. That is the true grace of God. That grace comes to us through the cross and that grace calls us to the cross. And that kind of grace doesn't attract huge following on religion television. James Thompson in his marvelous book on 1 Peter entitled The Church in Exile, says this—

Whenever Christians have forgotten that walking in the steps of Jesus is costly, 1 Peter has been a forgotten book. The "true grace of God" hardly seems necessary for communities which are rich in their own resources. Where membership in the family of God is offered at bargain-basement prices, the message of 1 Peter is sure to be irrelevant, for only alien communities will find that this book still speaks a word of encouragement.

Several years ago after one particularly difficult time in getting people to volunteer for church ministry and even having several drop out of church almost-altogether, my wife sighed, "Maybe you've preached too much on grace." I don't think I over-preached  grace.  But I am afraid that I didn't preach well enough on the true grace of God. The true grace of God is the grace of the cross—not just the cross that Jesus died upon but the cross we are called to die upon along with Him.

Blast from the Past

We’re in the middle of "vacation season" at Denbigh. Roger and Keri are gone this week; Lynn and I will be gone will be gone next week. And we aren't alone. Most of our church is from other places, so when they get time off they go to those other places. It looked like half the church was out of town yesterday, but we also had a ton of guests as well.

One of our guests yesterday told me, “I was in on the vote on whether to hire you.” Steve and Linda Howell were members at Denbigh back in the early eighties.  Lynn and I came to Denbigh in May of 1980 to work as the youth minister and intern under Lloyd Unsell, but Lloyd left Denbigh several months after I got here to move to Oklahoma to be nearer his family. The elders asked me to preach on an interim basis while they found a new pulpit guy. They never found a new guy largely because they never really looked, and I kept filling in.  After a year or two or three (memories of the timeframe vary), they decided I was doing an OK job (given their low expectations,), and offered me the position. And Steve was evidently here for that vote.  So thanks, Howell's for the vote of confidence all those years ago. And thanks for all the nice things you said yesterday.

Steve and Linda represent a large part about what ministry at Denbigh have been through the years. Because of our close proximity to multiple military installations, we have had a steady stream of people coming in and going out through the years. Several years ago, Roger did a congregational study and discovered that almost half of our church had been here 2 years or less. So we have people for 3-4 years and then start all over with a new batch. Sometimes it seems that just when everyone is on the same page, the book changes, and we start all over again. So it’s good to run across people you haven’t seen for 30 (or more) years that say they appreciate what you did and what you are doing.