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Resentment and bitterness often try to hide

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under a cloak of self-righteousness.

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Grace and peace to everyone, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

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Welcome to you all, to this online service with God’s Heart TV today.

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If you have your Bible, please take your Bible.

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We’re going to be looking at some messages from the Word of God.

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This is a very unique Book.

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It's the only Book where as you read it, it is also reading you.

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It's a mirror.

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When we read the Bible with prayer, with devotion,

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then you are in it, I am in it, but most importantly, God Himself is in it.

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And not only does God reveal the heart of man through the Bible, through His Word,

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He reveals the heart of God, His love for us and His solution to the problems of mankind.

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Thank You, Jesus! So praise the Lord for God's Word!

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

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Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You that we are here again in Your presence

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to listen to Your Word.

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Lord, we pray that You will give us a heart and a mind that is fertile ground

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for Your Word to grow in us and to change us for the better.

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In Jesus’ mighty name we pray, amen.

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If you take your Bibles again, we're going to look at some verses in 1 Samuel.

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This is the time when Saul was king, and we're going to pick it up in chapter 16.

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For context, I want to read verse 1

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

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“Now the Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you mourn for Saul,

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seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?

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Fill your horn with oil, and then go; I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite.

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For I have provided Myself a king among his sons.’”

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So, the context here: Saul was king, but he’d just failed a very important test.

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He had chosen, in a time of great pressure, not to please God

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but to live to please the people who were around him.

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And because of that, God had said, ‘No, he's not going to continue to be king.’

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Saul was the ‘human strength’ king - he was man’s choice.

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But he failed this important test of obedience to God,

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very particularly in this area of being under pressure and living for other people -

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making decisions for others rather than those which would please God.

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Now I think many of us will be familiar with the story from here.

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God sent Samuel to go and find another king, and I'm going to pick it up in verse 6,

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because in this message today, we're not going to focus so much on King David.

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We're actually going to take a look at his older brother, called Eliab.

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Let us read verse 6: “So it was, when they came, that he looked at Eliab and said,

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‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him!’

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But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature,

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because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees;

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for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

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There's some interesting background here. Samuel was a prophet; he was a wise man.

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Yet even he, when he saw the eldest son come forward, thought: this is the man!

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

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“Surely the Lord's anointed is before Him!” He looked the part.

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Not only that, he was the eldest son, the one you would expect to be given most honour.

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But God said a very important thing to Samuel: It's not about his physical stature.

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

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

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Indeed, it said that he was head and shoulders taller than anyone else.

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

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“The Lord does not see as man sees.”

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Man looks at the outside. God looks at the inside, at the heart.

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People see what we do but Jesus looks at why we do it.

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Jesus looks at why; man looks at what.

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

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Samuel went through the other six sons who were also present at the feast there

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and God didn’t say yes to any of them.

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So Samuel had to say, “Well, do you have another son?”

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He said, “Well, yes, the little boy, the little one, and he's out feeding the sheep.”

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David was brought back and he was chosen.

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Eliab was jealous and he allowed bitterness and resentment to enter his heart.

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Anybody in that situation would be tempted to be jealous,

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to be envious and to have some bitterness.

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

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And we just need to turn to the next chapter to see that in 1 Samuel 17:17,

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“Jesse said to his son David, ‘Take now for your brothers an ephah

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of this dried grain and these ten loaves, and run to your brothers at the camp.

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And carry these ten cheeses to the captain of their thousand, and see how your

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brothers fare, and bring back news of them.’”

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Because the elder brothers had gone out to a battle,

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and David, the younger one, was too young for that.

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He'd been left at home looking after the sheep,

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and he was sent by his father on a mercy mission.

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Normally when we read this story, we often focus on the fact

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that David encountered Goliath when he went to take this blessing to his brothers.

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But today, we're going to look at a slightly different angle:

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we're going to look at Eliab again.

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

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“Eliab his older brother (referring to David) heard when he spoke to the men...”

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David had seen Goliath, and he was talking to the others about the situation.

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Eliab saw this, and he heard this, and it says, “Eliab’s anger was aroused against David,

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and he said, ‘Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those

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few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart,

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for you have come down to see the battle.”

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This is the giveaway that Eliab had held a grudge; he’d held offence.

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He’d held on to bitterness and resentment in his heart about David.

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

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

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What Eliab was saying was nothing to do with David's actions;

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it had everything to do with the state of his own heart.

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It's important for us to reflect on that because as we look further at this message,

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this can be one of the telltale signs to let us see that perhaps we've let resentment

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or bitterness lodge in our own hearts -

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when we start to say things which don't really relate any longer to the situation.

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They’re just an overflow, because as Jesus said,

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“Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

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You can go along for months and have bitterness in your heart,

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and not really see it, because it hides. It hides under other things.

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

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He was a grown up person, he was taking his responsibilities.

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He was there to fight the enemy and here was this little troublesome brother of his

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coming to meddle in things...

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He didn't realise that resentment and bitterness often try to hide

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under a cloak of self-righteousness.

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To your own heart - if you’ve allowed this bitterness to take root there -

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to your own heart, it feels like you’re just trying to do the right thing

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and all these people around you haven’t got it, and they're doing the wrong thing.

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But actually, it's not a battle for righteousness,

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

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It's very, very important that any bitterness or resentment of this kind

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is rooted out at the earliest opportunity,

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

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

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ROOT OUT RESENTMENT AT THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY.

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And just to warn us what can happen if you don't do that, we're going to take a look

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at King Saul himself and what happened in the next few chapters of 1 Samuel.

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We're going to go to the next chapter, 1 Samuel 18, if we have our Bibles there.

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It was still a long time before David actually became king but by this time he had grown;

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he was a commander for Saul of one of his bands of troops;

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he was working for Saul as a loyal soldier under him and God was giving David success.

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We read in 1 Samuel 18:7, “The women sang as they danced and said,

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‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’”

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Saul could have chosen to be thankful and to thank God:

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‘Wow! The people are rejoicing in the victory that's been won

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and me and David are being considered together; this man is a strong support to me!’

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He didn't think like that. We read in verse 8: “Saul was very angry, and the saying

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displeased him; and he said, ‘They have ascribed to David ten thousands,

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and to me they have ascribed only thousands.’”

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I think most of us would be happy to have everybody in the city singing

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that we’d defeated thousands. But no, this was not good enough for Saul.

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

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You can be number two out of 20,000, but you're jealous of number one.

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That's the way bitterness and jealousy work.

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Let's read what it says then in verse nine, “So Saul eyed David from that day forward.”

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This is the New King James Version. Another version I was reading said explicitly,

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“Saul eyed David with suspicion from that day forward”.

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That's the meaning of that phrase: he eyed him with suspicion from that day forward.

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Because there's something about offence; there's something about bitterness.

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

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which you are not rooting out, but you're feeding, then you filter everything through it.

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So from that time on, it didn’t matter what David was going to do, it was going to be wrong.

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David could do anything, and it would be wrong because that seed of evil suspicion

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

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That is a feature of this kind of resentment - you filter everything through it

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so your whole worldview, of the person you resent and of other people, is distorted.

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

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

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Saul was looking suspiciously at David all the time, and in his heart he was angry.

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We just need to move on a couple of chapters and we can see an example

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of what I would describe as phase two, which is cruel and sarcastic words.

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We have the thoughts - the things in the heart - but then it comes out.

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Anything in the heart ends up coming out in words.

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I’m going to pick up the story here in 1 Samuel 20:27,

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“It happened the next day, the second day of the month, that David’s place was empty...”

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This is a big dinner table for King Saul, with his various supporters, helpers and team,

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and a particular place - that for David - was empty.

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“...And Saul said to Jonathan his son, ‘Why has the son of Jesse not come to eat,

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either yesterday or today?’ So Jonathan answered Saul, ‘David earnestly asked

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permission of me to go to Bethlehem. And he said, “Please let me go,

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for our family has a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has commanded me to be there.

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And now, if I have found favour in your eyes, please let me get away and see my brothers.”’”

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Actually, Jonathan and David had worked out this story as a test.

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Jonathan couldn't believe that his father hated David

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because David was so loyal and helpful.

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But David had an inkling, a realisation, that his father (Saul) had a real issue with him.

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So he said these words, and then from the end of verse 29,

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“...Therefore he has not come to the king’s table.’

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Then Saul’s anger was aroused against Jonathan, and he said to him,

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‘You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen

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the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?’”

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

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

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This is a further development of the evil fruit of resentment and bitterness.

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

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

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There's no logical reason why Saul at this stage

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should start bringing Jonathan's mother into it.

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The problem was that he was jealous of David, but he filtered everything through it

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so much that he just blurted out cruel, sarcastic words.

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This is a great warning, but it's also in a funny kind of way an encouragement

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to you and me, because God will give us warnings before it gets too, too late.

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If you find yourself sometimes speaking to those you love and afterwards you think,

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‘Where did that come from? It wasn't really provoked.’

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Then perhaps that's a reason to reflect and to let God shine the light of His Word

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into your heart so that you also can root out any bitter seed,

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any root of resentment, before it's too late.

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Phase three - we're going to very quickly look at because this is scary in the extreme -

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is another two chapters further on.

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We're going to pick it up in 1 Samuel 22:13. There's another person on the scene now.

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This is a priest. David had been to see this priest, and the priest had prayed for him,

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given him some food and also let him take the sword of Goliath,

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which David had captured in the first place.

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There was nothing in that encounter where David was minded to work against Saul.

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David was working against Saul’s enemies.

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But Saul got to hear that this priest had helped David and he hauls him up in verse 13,

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“Saul said to him, ‘Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse...’”

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He can’t even use his name David now. He is just calling him a son of Jesse.

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“...in that you have given him bread and a sword, and have inquired of God for him,

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that he should rise against me, to lie in wait...”

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This is not what David was doing at all; he wasn’t rising against Saul.

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In fact, there were two clearcut opportunities where he was easily able to kill Saul

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and he didn't because he saw Saul as God’s anointed; he had respect for his position.

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Verse 14, “Ahimelech answered the king and said, ‘And who among all your servants

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is as faithful as David, who is the king’s son-in-law,

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who goes at your bidding, and is honourable in your house?

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Did I then begin to inquire of God for him? Far be it from me!

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Let not the king impute anything to his servant, or to any in the house of my father.

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For your servant knew nothing of all this, little or much.’

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And the king said, ‘You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house!’

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The king said to the guards who stood about him, ‘Turn and kill the priests of the Lord,

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because their hand also is with David, and because they knew when he fled

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and did not tell it to me.’ But the servants of the king would not lift their hands

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to strike the priests of the Lord.”

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I won't read it out but he tells a foreigner who is with him,

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who doesn't have that same respect, ‘You go and kill them.’

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He doesn't only kill the priests and their families; he destroys the whole town -

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women and children as well.

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85 priests plus a town - just because he had resentment against David.

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And it wasn't actually justified.

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This action that he carried out was probably the lowest point of his whole reign,

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and there were many low points. It was dreadful!

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I want us to realise a very salutary truth.

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Saul was actually a religious man. Even at this time when he was so angry

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against David, he was doing things in the name of the Lord. He used God's name.

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He thought he was doing God's work. He was religious.

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And if you’d have taken him a couple of years earlier and said,

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‘Saul, you're going to kill 85 of the Lord's priests, and destroy a whole city.’

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He would have said, ‘What? No way! I love the Lord. I serve the Lord.

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I'm not going to kill 85 of His priests!’

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But that's what the final evil fruit of that resentment and bitterness can do.

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This is an extreme case.

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But it's how far it can go if it's not dealt with, if it's not rooted out.

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Saul acted out of character and the very same thing can happen to any of us.

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If that resentment, bitterness, jealousy, whatever it might be is not dealt with

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and rooted out at the earliest stage, then not only can we speak

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words that tear down instead of building up - not only that -

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we actually take destructive actions, which we would have never imagined

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because it's the bitter fruit coming out.

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This is not where we want to go!

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We want to root out resentment at the earliest opportunity!

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There's a great encouragement for us here

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

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Let's just consider Him for a moment.

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He suffered the consequences of this kind of bitterness, resentment from

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the Pharisees and Sadducees, the politicians, the common people, whoever it was -

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He suffered the fruit of that in the extreme.

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And in Jesus’ case, He hadn't actually done anything ever wrong.

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

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‘Well, he did this wrong, you know.’ Not in the case of Jesus.

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He was pure. He did nothing wrong.

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And yet He suffered the consequences of that evil fruit to a cruel death through crucifixion.

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And as He was being crucified, He said, “Father, forgive them.”

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This is very powerful.

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When Jesus said, “Father, forgive them,”

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‘them’ includes you and me.

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

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That is the Word of God.

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“Forgive them” - forgive you, forgive me.

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The power of forgiveness.

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Jesus not only said, “Forgive them”, which includes you and me,

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He actually sacrificed His life so that we might be reconciled to God.

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He took the punishment through His death and then through His resurrection,

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the punishment that we deserve, to reconcile us to God.

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And it's important to see this because

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if we're not careful, even the forgiveness of Jesus, we can use it as though

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it's a kind of free ticket to be able to sin a bit because

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‘it’s okay, we’re going to be forgiven later.

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Let’s let the resentment go to stage two and we can always be forgiven later...’

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I'm sorry. I speak flippantly. I don’t mean that.

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But there's a risk that we can see forgiveness like that - a free pass.

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But no, through His sacrifice, He restored a relationship -

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the relationship with the One who created us,

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with the One who has the power to defeat sin in our lives.

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So it's not a free pass to sin.

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The reconciliation and forgiveness of Jesus Christ

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

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But that power is not in ourselves.

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This is very important and I want to make it practical for each of us today.

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

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but I think every single one of us

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

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Because Jesus even said, ‘Offences will always come.’

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There will always be an opportunity. The temptation to this will be there.

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Ironically, it’s usually with those who are closest to you that

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you have this temptation to have bitterness and resentment.

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It will come.

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But the route to rooting it out,

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the way to get it out is not to do it in our own strength.

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It's to come to Jesus because the answer is in relationship.

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I really want to emphasise that because I'm no different to anyone else.

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I struggle with this. And I thought, ‘Where did that come from? How can I get rid of it?’

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And I can’t get rid of it in myself because Jesus wants me to build a relationship with Him.

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And it's not a magic prayer - ‘Ok, if I say this formula of words,

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that will purify my heart and I’ll be okay.

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I've got the prayer point. Now I know the words, I'm going to say them.’

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No! It’s through a relationship.

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And the barriers to that relationship have been broken down

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because Jesus removed them - that barrier of sin.

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We have been forgiven. We can have a relationship with the Living God.

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And it's only in that relationship, the Holy Spirit will root it out

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because the promise in Ezekiel 36:26 is ‘I will give them a new heart.’

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And that doesn't come through some kind of ‘magical thing’.

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That comes through relationship with Jesus Christ.

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So, God has great things in store for every one of us connected to this service.

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But you know something?

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We cannot come to God for blessing and at the same time hide from Him.

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I want to say that again.

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We can’t come to God for a blessing and at the same time hide from Him.

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We have to come with transparency, with honesty.

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And I use that example because, funnily enough, Saul did exactly that a few chapters later on.

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Saul had banished all the witches and wizards out of Israel; he was a religious person.

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He knew it was wrong, he got rid of them - but he got into a difficult position.

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He really wanted to hear from God and he was very misguided.

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And he thought if he went to one of these witches he had ‘knocked out’,

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that he could hear from God, and so he disguised himself.

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Now, it's not the whole story I want to mention here; it's simply this point -

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that in the same moment Saul disguised himself so he wouldn't be recognised,

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he was going to hear a message from God to tell him which way he should go.

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Now we can think - how ridiculous is that?

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There is somebody, God, who has the blessing for us and we're trying to disguise ourselves.

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But you know, if we're not careful, we can do the same thing.

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And let's just watch our hearts. Let's not hide anything from Him.

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We can’t come to God to receive a blessing and at the same time say,

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‘I've got this behind me and God's not going to see it.’ No.

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The God who will bless is the God who sees all.

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We need to come to Jesus and I invite us all simply now - let us pray together.

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Lord Jesus Christ, I need You.

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Lord, I have sinned in thought, word and deed.

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Come into my heart.

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Wash me, forgive me with Your precious Blood.

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Oh Holy Spirit, work in me that I may have a heart free from offence.

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Work in me to root out any resentment.

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And Lord, give me the grace to forgive others

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and always to give them another chance.

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In Jesus’ name. Amen.