ROOT OUT RESENTMENT At The Earliest Opportunity! | Gary Sermon - video Dailymotion

God's Heart TV

What is the route to rooting out resentment? Discover the best way to deal with  resentment, bitterness and offence before its wicked fruit deal with you in this practical sermon with Gary - taking lessons from the case of Eliab and King Saul - shared during an Interactive Prayer Service at the God's Heart TV Studio.  "Sarcastic and cruel words say a lot more about the person speaking them than they do about the object of that sarcasm and cruelty." - Gary  ➡️ Receive Daily Encouragement on WhatsApp - https://godsheart.tv/whatsapp/ ➡️ Support God's Heart TV financially - https://godsheart.tv/financial/ ➡️ Information about Interactive Prayer - https://godsheart.tv/interactive-prayer/ ➡️ Volunteer as a God's Heart TV Translator - https://godsheart.tv/translate/ ➡️ Share your testimony - https://godsheart.tv/testimony ➡️ Join our Live Prayer Service on the first Saturday of every month - https://www.youtube.com/godshearttv/live

Transcript

00:00Resentment and bitterness often try to hide

00:05under a cloak of self-righteousness.

00:11Grace and peace to everyone in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

00:17And I'd like to say welcome to you all

00:20to this online service with God's Heart TV today.

00:25If you have your Bible, please take your Bible.

00:28We're going to be looking at some messages from the Word of God.

00:33This is a very unique book.

00:38It's the only book where as you read it,

00:43it is also reading you.

00:46It's a mirror.

00:49When we read the Bible with prayer, with devotion,

00:54then you are in it, I am in it.

00:58But most importantly, God himself is in it.

01:04And not only does God reveal the heart of man

01:09through the Bible, through his Word,

01:12he reveals the heart of God,

01:15his love for us and his solution to the problems of mankind.

01:20Thank you, Jesus.

01:22So, praise the Lord for God's Word.

01:27Let us pray as we ready ourselves to listen to the message.

01:33Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you

01:36that we're here again in your presence

01:40to listen to your Word.

01:43Lord, we pray that you will give us a heart and a mind

01:51that is fertile ground for your Word to grow in us

01:57and to change us for the better.

02:01In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen.

02:08So, if you take your Bibles again,

02:10we're going to look at some verses in the book of 1 Samuel.

02:17And this is the time when Saul was king

02:21and we're going to pick it up in chapter 16.

02:26And for context, I just want to read verse 1

02:30and a couple of other verses further down in 1 Samuel 16.

02:35The Lord said to Samuel,

02:38How long will you mourn for Saul,

02:42seeing I've rejected him from reigning over Israel?

02:46Fill your horn with oil and go.

02:51I'm sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite,

02:54for I've provided myself a king among his sons.

03:01So, the context here, Saul was king,

03:05but he just failed a very important test.

03:12He had chosen in a time of great pressure

03:17not to please God,

03:21but to live to please the people who were around him.

03:25And because of that, God had said,

03:28No, he's not going to continue to be king.

03:32Saul was the human strength king.

03:35He was man's choice.

03:37But he failed this important test of obedience to God,

03:41very particularly in this area of being under pressure

03:47and living for other people, making decisions for others

03:51rather than those which would please God.

03:54Now, I think many of us will be familiar with the story from here.

03:59God sent Samuel to go and find another king

04:04and I'm going to pick it up in verse 6

04:06because in this message today,

04:09we're not going to focus so much on King David.

04:12We're actually going to take a look at his older brother

04:17called Eliab.

04:20Let us read verse 6.

04:23So it was when they came that he, that is Samuel,

04:27looked at Eliab and said,

04:30Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

04:35But the Lord said to Samuel,

04:38Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature

04:44because I have refused him.

04:47For the Lord does not see as man sees.

04:50For man looks at the outward appearance

04:54but the Lord looks at the heart.

04:58There's some interesting background here.

05:02Samuel was a prophet.

05:04He was a wise man.

05:06Yet even he, when he saw the eldest son come forward,

05:11thought, this is the man.

05:13And from what we read here, he may have even said so out loud.

05:16Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

05:18He looked the part.

05:20Not only that, he was the eldest son,

05:23the one you would expect to be the one given most honour.

05:27But God said a very important thing to Samuel.

05:32It's not about his physical stature.

05:35Now, Samuel should have known this, of course, from the case of Saul,

05:39where Saul was very much chosen because of his physical stature.

05:44Indeed, it's said he was head and shoulders taller than anyone else.

05:48But even Samuel, the prophet, needed to learn this important lesson here.

05:53The Lord does not see as man sees.

05:59Man looks at the outside.

06:02God looks at the inside, at the heart.

06:05People see what we do.

06:10But Jesus looks at why we do it.

06:15Jesus looks at why.

06:18Man looks at what.

06:22I want to point out here that Eliab was jealous of David.

06:30Samuel went through the other six sons who were also present at the feast there.

06:36And God didn't say yes to any of them.

06:38So Samuel had to say, well, do you have another son?

06:40And he said, well, yes, the little boy, the little one.

06:43And he's out feeding the sheep.

06:45David was brought back and he was chosen.

06:48Now, Eliab was jealous and he allowed bitterness and resentment to enter his heart.

06:58Anybody in that situation would be tempted to be jealous, to be envious and to have some bitterness.

07:04But we see that that bitterness started to take root in the heart of Eliab.

07:10And we just need to turn to the next chapter to see that.

07:12In chapter 17 and verse 17 of 1 Samuel.

07:18Jesse said to his son David,

07:23Now take for your brothers an ephah of this dried grain and these ten loaves and run to your brothers at the camp

07:30and carry these ten cheeses to the captain of their thousand and see how your brothers fare

07:35and bring back news of them.

07:37Because the elder brothers had gone out to a battle and David, the younger one, was too young for that.

07:45He'd been left at home looking after the sheep and he was sent by his father on a mercy mission.

07:51Normally, when we read this story, we often focus on the fact that David encountered Goliath

07:58when he went to take this blessing to his brothers.

08:01But today we're going to look at a slightly different angle.

08:04We're going to look at Eliab again.

08:07And I'm going to pick it up in verse 28.

08:10Eliab, his older brother, this is talking about David of course, heard when he spoke to the men.

08:17David had seen Goliath and he was talking to the others about the situation.

08:23And Eliab saw this and he heard this and it said his anger was aroused against David.

08:30And he said, why did you come down here and with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness?

08:35I know your pride and the insolence of your heart.

08:39You've just come down here to see the battle.

08:42Now, this is the giveaway that Eliab had held a grudge.

08:50He'd held a fence.

08:52He'd held on to bitterness and resentment in his heart about David.

08:57What he said in that little outburst had nothing to do with what David had come to do.

09:04David was there innocently to bless them at the command of his father.

09:10What Eliab was saying was nothing to do with David's actions.

09:15It had everything to do with the state of his own heart.

09:20And it's important for us to reflect on that.

09:24Because as we look further at this message,

09:28this can be one of the telltale signs to let us see that perhaps we've let resentment or bitterness lodge in our own hearts.

09:40When we start to say things which don't really relate any longer to the situation,

09:47they're just an overflow because as Jesus said,

09:50out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

09:54And you can go along for months and have bitterness in your heart,

09:57not really see it because it hides.

10:00It hides under other things.

10:02And in this case, Eliab thought probably he was doing the right thing here.

10:09He was a grown up person.

10:11He was taking his responsibilities.

10:13He was there to fight the enemy.

10:15And here was this little troublesome brother of his coming to meddle in things.

10:20He didn't realise that resentment and bitterness often try to hide under a cloak of self-righteousness.

10:35To your own heart, if you've allowed this bitterness to take root there,

10:43to your own heart it feels like you're just trying to do the right thing

10:46and all these people around you haven't got it and they're doing the wrong thing.

10:50But actually, it's not a battle for righteousness,

10:54it's bitterness hiding under the cloak of self-righteousness.

11:01And it's very, very important that any bitterness or resentment of this kind

11:08is rooted out at the earliest opportunity

11:12because once it starts to bear its evil and ugly fruit, it's bad news.

11:20So, the title of today's message is simply this,

11:24Root Out Resentment at the Earliest Opportunity.

11:31And just to warn us what can happen if you don't do that,

11:37we're going to take a look at King Saul himself

11:41and what happened in the next few chapters of 1 Samuel.

11:44So, we're going to go to the next chapter, 1 Samuel 18, if we have our Bibles there again.

11:51It was still a long time before David actually became king,

11:55but by this time he'd grown, he was actually a commander for Saul of one of his band of troops.

12:05He was working for Saul as a loyal soldier under him.

12:11And God was giving David success.

12:15And we read in verse 7 of 1 Samuel 18, it says this,

12:20The women sang as they danced and said,

12:23Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.

12:28Saul could have chosen to be thankful and to thank God.

12:34Wow! The people are rejoicing in the victory that's been won.

12:39And me and David are being considered together.

12:42This man is a strong support to me.

12:46He didn't think like that.

12:49We read in verse 8, it says, Saul was very angry.

12:54And the saying displeased him.

12:57And he said, they've ascribed to David ten thousands

13:02and to me they've only ascribed thousands.

13:05I think most of us would be happy to have everybody in the city singing that we'd defeated thousands.

13:13But no, no, no, this is not good enough for Saul.

13:16If you've got a jealous heart, there's always somebody you can be jealous of.

13:20You can be number two out of 20,000.

13:23But you're jealous of number one.

13:25That's the way bitterness and jealousy work.

13:29Let's read what it says then in verse 9.

13:33It says, so Saul eyed David from that day forward.

13:40And this is the New King James Version.

13:42Another version that I was reading said explicitly,

13:47Saul eyed David with suspicion from that day forward.

13:53And that's the meaning of that phrase.

13:56He eyed him with suspicion from that day forward.

14:04Because there's something about offence, there's something about bitterness.

14:11If you have offence in your heart, if you have a root of bitterness in your heart,

14:17which you are not rooting out but you're feeding,

14:21then you filter everything through it.

14:24So from that time on, it did not matter what David was going to do.

14:30It was going to be wrong.

14:32David could do anything and it would be wrong.

14:34Because that seed of suspicion, of evil suspicion,

14:39had been planted because he hadn't rooted out that resentment at an earlier stage.

14:46That is a feature of this kind of resentment.

14:50You filter everything through it.

14:52So your whole world view of the person you resent, of other people, is distorted.

14:58And the sad thing is, but for the grace of God, you don't even recognise it.

15:05Moving on, this was what I call stage one of the evil fruit of resentment.

15:12Saul was looking suspiciously at David all the time.

15:17And in his heart, he was angry.

15:21Now, we just need to move on a couple of chapters

15:23and we can see an example of what I would describe as phase two,

15:28which is cruel and sarcastic words.

15:32We have the thoughts, we have the things in the heart, but then it comes out.

15:36Anything in the heart ends up coming out in words.

15:39And I'm just going to pick up the story here in chapter 20 and verse 27.

15:45It happened the next day, it says, the second day of the month,

15:48that David's place was empty.

15:50Now, this is a big, big dinner table for King Saul

15:54with his various supporters, helpers and team

15:58and a particular place that for David was empty.

16:03And Saul said to Jonathan, his son,

16:07why has the son of Jesse not come to eat either yesterday or today?

16:13So Jonathan answered Saul,

16:16David earnestly asked permission of me to go to Bethlehem.

16:19He said, please let me go for a family has a sacrifice in the city.

16:22My brothers commanded me to be there.

16:24And now, if I've found favour in your eyes,

16:27please let me get away and see my brothers.

16:29Now, actually, Jonathan and David had worked out this story as a test.

16:33Jonathan couldn't believe that his father hated David

16:37because David was so loyal and so helpful.

16:39But David had a kind of an inkling, a realisation

16:42that his father had a real issue with him,

16:44that Saul had a real issue.

16:45So he said these words and he said, end of verse 29,

16:50therefore, he's not come to the king's table.

16:52Now, Saul's anger was aroused against Jonathan.

16:58And he said, you son of a perverse, rebellious woman.

17:03Do I not know that you've chosen that son of Jesse

17:06to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?

17:12Oh, it's very sad just to read this.

17:15It's almost embarrassing to read those words from the mouth of Saul.

17:21But this is a further development of the evil fruit of resentment and bitterness.

17:31Sarcastic and cruel words say a lot more about the person speaking them

17:38than they do about the object of that sarcasm and cruelty.

17:44There's no logical reason why Saul at this stage

17:49should start bringing Jonathan's mother into it.

17:52You know, the problem was that he was jealous of David,

17:55but he just, he filtered everything through it so much

17:58that he just blurted out cruel, sarcastic words.

18:05This is a great warning, but it's also, in a funny kind of way,

18:09an encouragement to you and me,

18:12because God will give us warnings before it gets too, too late.

18:19If you find yourself sometimes speaking to those you love,

18:25and afterwards you think, well, where did that come from?

18:28It wasn't really provoked.

18:31Then perhaps that's a reason to reflect

18:35and to let God shine the light of his word into your heart

18:40so that you also can root out any bitter seed,

18:44any root of resentment before it's too late.

18:49And phase three we're going to very quickly look at,

18:53because this is scary in the extreme,

18:57is another two chapters further on.

19:00Now, we're going to pick it up in chapter 22 and verse 13,

19:06because there's another person on the scene now.

19:09This is a priest.

19:11David had been to see this priest,

19:14and the priest had prayed for him, given him some food,

19:18and also let him take the sword of Goliath,

19:21which David had captured in the first place.

19:25There was nothing in that encounter

19:27where David was minded to work against Saul.

19:31David was working against Saul's enemies.

19:35But Saul got to hear that this priest had helped David,

19:41and he hauls him up in verse 13.

19:44And Saul said to him, this is the priest,

19:46why have you conspired against me,

19:49you and that son of Jesse?

19:51You see, he can't even use his name David now,

19:54he's just calling him a son of Jesse.

19:56And that you've given him bread and a sword,

19:58and have inquired of God for him,

20:01that he should rise against me to lie in wait.

20:05This is not what David was doing at all,

20:06he wasn't rising against Saul.

20:08In fact, there were two clear-cut opportunities

20:10where he was easily able to kill Saul, and he didn't,

20:14because he saw Saul as God's anointed,

20:16he had respect for his position.

20:19But, verse 14, Ahimelech answered the king, saying,

20:25And who among all your servants is as faithful of David,

20:27who's the king's son-in-law, and he goes at your bidding,

20:30he's honourable in your house?

20:32And was it only then that I began to inquire of God for him?

20:35Far be it from me.

20:37Let not the king impute anything to his servant,

20:39or to any in the house of my father.

20:41His servant knew nothing of this, little or much.

20:44The king said, you'll surely die, Ahimelech,

20:48you and your father's house.

20:50The king said to the guards who stood about him,

20:52Turn and kill the priests of the Lord,

20:54because their hand's also with David.

20:56Because they knew when he fled, and they didn't tell me.

20:58But the servants of the king wouldn't lift their hands

21:01to strike the priests of the Lord.

21:03I won't read it out, but he tells a foreigner who's with him,

21:06who doesn't have that same respect, you go and kill them.

21:08He doesn't only kill the priests and their families,

21:11he destroys the whole town, women and children as well,

21:1485 priests plus a town,

21:17just because he had resentment against David.

21:21And it wasn't actually justified.

21:24And this action that he carried out,

21:28it was probably the lowest point of his whole reign,

21:31and there were many low points.

21:33It was dreadful.

21:34I want us to realise a very salutary truth.

21:38Saul was actually a religious man.

21:41Even at this time when he was so angry against David,

21:45he was doing things in the name of the Lord.

21:50He used God's name.

21:51He thought he was doing God's work.

21:53He was religious.

21:55And if you'd have taken him a couple of years earlier

21:58and said, Saul, you're going to kill 85 of the Lord's priests

22:03and you're going to destroy a whole city,

22:06he would have said, what, no way.

22:08I love the Lord.

22:09I serve the Lord.

22:10I'm not going to kill 85 of his priests.

22:14But that's what the final evil fruit

22:19of that resentment and bitterness can do.

22:22This is an extreme case.

22:25But it's how far it can go if it's not dealt with,

22:29if it's not rooted out.

22:32And Saul acted out of character.

22:37And the very same thing can happen to any of us.

22:44If that resentment, if that bitterness, that jealousy,

22:48whatever it might be, is not dealt with and rooted out

22:51at the earliest stage, then not only can we speak words

22:56instead of building up, we start to tear down with our words.

23:01Not only that, we actually do destructive actions

23:04which we would have never imagined

23:06because it's the bitter fruit coming out.

23:11This is not where we want to go.

23:15So we want to root out resentment at the earliest opportunity.

23:23And, you know, there's a great encouragement for us here

23:30because we just need to look at our Lord Jesus Christ.

23:37Let's just consider him for a moment.

23:42He suffered the consequences of this kind of bitterness,

23:47resentment, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the politicians,

23:51the common people, whoever it was.

23:55He suffered the fruit of that in the extreme.

23:59And in Jesus' case, he hadn't actually done anything ever wrong.

24:04For any other person, even David, you could find an excuse somewhere.

24:08Oh well, he did this wrong, you know.

24:10Not in the case of Jesus.

24:13He was pure. He did nothing wrong.

24:16And yet he suffered the consequences of that evil fruit

24:21to a cruel death through crucifixion.

24:27And as he was being crucified, he said,

24:32Father, forgive them.

24:36This is very powerful.

24:40When Jesus said, Father, forgive them,

24:46them includes you, it includes me.

24:51That is not just a historical story on that awful day in the first century.

24:58That is the word of God.

25:01Forgive them.

25:03Forgive you, forgive me.

25:06The power of forgiveness.

25:11Jesus not only said, forgive them, which includes you and me,

25:17he actually sacrificed his life

25:22so that we might be reconciled to God.

25:25He took the punishment through his death, then through his resurrection,

25:30the punishment that we deserve to reconcile us to God.

25:35And it's important to see this.

25:38Because if we're not careful, even the forgiveness of Jesus,

25:43we can use it as though it's a kind of a free ticket to be able to sin a bit

25:48because it's okay, we're going to be forgiven later, you know.

25:51Let's let the resentment go to stage two and we can always be forgiven later.

25:55I'm sorry I speak flippantly. I don't mean that.

25:57But there's a risk that we can see forgiveness like that.

26:01It's a kind of a free pass.

26:04But no, through his sacrifice, he restored a relationship.

26:10The relationship with the one who created us.

26:14A relationship with the one who has the power to defeat sin in our lives.

26:21So it's not a free pass to sin.

26:25The reconciliation and forgiveness of Jesus Christ

26:29is a reconciliation to the God who gives us the power to overcome sin.

26:37But that power is not in ourselves.

26:41This is very important.

26:44And I want to make it practical for each of us today.

26:50We, I hope, have not seen an extreme case like the ones we've just read of.

26:55But I think every single one of us

26:58have known something of the effect of bitterness and resentment in our hearts.

27:04Because Jesus even said offences will always come.

27:08There will always be an opportunity.

27:10The temptation to this will be there.

27:12Ironically, it's usually with those who are closest to you

27:16that you have this temptation to have bitterness and resentment.

27:21It will come.

27:23But the route to rooting it out,

27:28the way to get it out,

27:31is not to do it in our own strength.

27:35It's to come to Jesus.

27:37Because the answer is in relationship.

27:41I really want to emphasise that because, you know,

27:44I'm no different to anyone else.

27:46I've struggled with this and I thought, where did that come from?

27:48How can I get rid of it?

27:49And I can't get rid of it in myself

27:52because Jesus wants me to build a relationship with him.

27:56It's not a magic prayer.

27:57It's not, OK, if I say these formula of words

28:01that will purify my heart and I'll be OK.

28:04I've got the prayer point now.

28:05I know the words, I'm going to say them.

28:07No.

28:08It's through a relationship.

28:10And the barriers to that relationship have been broken down

28:13because Jesus removed them, that barrier of sin.

28:17We have been forgiven.

28:19We can have a relationship with the living God.

28:21And it's only in that relationship

28:24the Holy Spirit will root it out

28:27because the promise in Ezekiel 36 and verse 26,

28:32the promise is I will give them a new heart.

28:38And that doesn't come through some kind of magical thing.

28:41That comes through relationship with Jesus Christ.

28:45So, God has great things in store for every one of us

28:49connected to this service.

28:51But you know something?

28:54We cannot come to God for blessing

29:00and at the same time hide from him.

29:06I want to say that again.

29:09We can't come to God for a blessing

29:13and at the same time hide from him.

29:19We have to come with transparency, with honesty.

29:24And I use that example because funnily enough Saul

29:28did exactly that a few chapters later on again.

29:32Saul had banished all the witches and wizards

29:35and everybody out of Israel.

29:37He was a religious person.

29:38He knew he was wrong.

29:39He got rid of them but he got into a difficult position

29:42and he really wanted to hear from God

29:43and he was very misguided

29:45and he thought if he went to one of these witches

29:47he'd knocked out that he could hear from God.

29:49And so he disguised himself.

29:51Now, it's not the whole story I want to mention here.

29:54It's simply this point that in the same moment

29:59Saul disguised himself so he wouldn't be recognised

30:02and was going to hear a message from God

30:05to tell him which way he should go.

30:08Now we can think, how ridiculous is that?

30:13There's somebody, God, who has the blessing for us

30:16and we're trying to disguise ourselves

30:18but you know, if we're not careful

30:21we can do the same thing.

30:24And let's just watch our hearts.

30:25Let's not hide anything from him.

30:28We can't come to God to receive a blessing

30:30at the same time and say,

30:31I've got this behind me and God's not going to see it.

30:34No, the God who will bless is the God who sees all.

30:39We need to come to Jesus and I invite us all

30:42simply now, let us pray together.

30:47Lord Jesus Christ, I need you.

30:54Lord, I have sinned in thought, word and deed.

31:04Come into my heart.

31:09Wash me.

31:12Forgive me with your precious blood.

31:20Oh Holy Spirit, work in me

31:24that I may have a heart free from offence.

31:31Work in me to root out any resentment.

31:40And Lord, give me the grace to forgive others

31:46and always to give them another chance.

31:52In Jesus' name, Amen.

32:01♪♪♪

ROOT OUT RESENTMENT At The Earliest Opportunity! | Gary Sermon

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