Are you bitter or better? Reading from Ephesians chapter 4 verse 31, let us hear the Word of God. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children. Live a life of love, just as Christ loved you and gave himself up for you. as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God. Interesting how anger, rage, bitterness, brawling, and slander are wrapped up with every other form of malice. Bitterness defiles us, and bitterness destroys lives. Bitterness destroys friendships. Bitterness destroys families, and bitterness destroys our future. Bitterness is like a cancer. It devours its host. Bitterness is self-induced misery. When we sin, we feel guilt. When other people sin against us, we feel bitterness. Now, bitterness is always based upon someone else's actions. We don't feel bitter about something we do. We feel bitter about what other people do to us. Now, these actions may be real, or they might be imagined, or they might be just grossly exaggerated. But bitterness is always based on someone else's actions. It may even be based upon a false report. But even if the reason is not real, the bitterness is very real. Bitter people cannot even begin to imagine the possibility that they may be wrong or that they're bitter about something that's imaginary or fabricated. As far as the bitter person is concerned, the other person's guilt must always be very real. Just think of the BLM riots or Antifa. or EFF or the arsonists and rioters who burn cities down. They are bitter and angry about what someone else has done or what they believe others are guilty of, even if they're completely and utterly wrong and they've got things back to front, upside down, and they've based all this upon nothing but propaganda. Hebrews 12 verse 15 says, see to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root springs up to cause trouble and to defile many. Now, the Bible warns us of the root of bitterness. Bitterness causes trouble, and it defiles many people. If there's a root of bitterness, it'll bear bitter fruit. Bitterness is destructive, and it's devastating. Now, the fact that you cannot normally see roots doesn't mean they're not there. We can see evidence of the root. So if you go down our driveway, you can see there's some humps and bumps, and there's a whole lot bricks that have been displaced and we've got problems being caused by the roots underneath. You can't see the roots but you can see the trouble the roots are causing. Now, if you go to Newlands Forest, you can see a lot of the soil has been washed away. So you can actually see some of the phenomenal root structure of some of these trees as the water coming down Table Mountain has washed away so much of the soil that's just covering the roots. So you can see more roots if you go to Newlands Forest than you'll probably see anywhere else. And that's because the phenomenal amount of water that's flowing down exposing the roots. That should normally just be underground. I'm told some big trees can have a mile of roots if you put all the roots together. But then, if that sounds amazing, I'm told by doctors that you can have miles of veins within your own body. One human body can have, well, shall we say kilometers? That's probably more accurate. There's kilometers of roots of vines and arteries within a human body. So that is amazing. Now, the roots are drinking in moisture nourishment and they are always spreading. The roots are spreading to find more moisture, and so a tree might be far away from moisture, but the roots will travel until it gets that moisture nourishment. The bitterness is not necessarily concerned with how big the sin is, whether it's real or imaginary. It more depends on how close the relationship is with the one responsible. So strangers can do terribly evil things all over the world without us feeling any bitterness at all. However, our close family members and our friends, our immediate superiors, they're close enough for us that when they do something or don't do something that's perceived as an offense, the bitterness can be very real. Now, the offense may even be trivial, but if the relationship is close, people can get very bitter. I was counseling someone in this mission some years ago over a whole number of things, and this man suddenly erupted, you remind me of my father. I hate my father. I mean, the venom, just where did that come from? And this person had so much hatred, and he projected onto me because I was an authority figure in his life, and I reminded him of his father. In the Bible, in the book of Ruth, you read of Naomi, who had moved from Israel to Moab during a time of famine, and there her husband and both sons died. And the Bible records in Ruth chapter 1, verse 13, that Naomi says, it grieves me very much for your sakes, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Do not call me Naomi, now call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me back again home empty. Why do you call me Naomi? Since the Lord has testified against me, the Almighty has afflicted me. So bitterness never leaves you closer to God. In fact, bitterness is like an acid that numbs our conscience and takes us further away from God. Here you see Naomi was actually bitter against God. And then we read if someone else is bitter against God. In the book of Jonah, chapter 4, verse 9, we read that Jonah reacted with great bitterness when the people of Nineveh repented. Imagine a missionary or an evangelist being offended because the people responded to the preaching with repentance. And the Lord relented from sending judgment upon this wicked city of Nineveh. And Jonah was bitter, and God said to Jonah, do you have a right to be angry? And Jonah responded, I do. I'm angry enough to die. Jonah was so entitled to anger. He was entitled to be angry against God. He deserved it because he was right. God was wrong. And Jonah was very sure of that. Now those closest to us are the ones who can hurt us the most. a husband, a wife, a parent, friend, brother, sister. These are the ones that we are most sensitive towards. And when we are offended, we tend to respond in one of two destructive ways. One way is to nurse the bitterness, to keep remembering the details, to go over it and polish up our bitterness until we make ourselves sick. And the other way is to talk about this bitterness to as many other people as possible, spreading the sickness and making other people sicker. And it's very destructive to either internalize it or to spread it around with other people. And God's word commands us to dig up the root of bitterness and to get rid of it, to destroy the bitterness. We're to forgive. Jesus taught us. Forgive our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. That is how we should pray. And our Lord Jesus made it clear, Matthew 6, if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Father in heaven will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father in heaven will not forgive you. And that's very clear. So the apostle Peter came up to Jesus and said, Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? And he doubtless thought he was being super gracious and generous. I mean, seven times I'll forgive him. And Jesus said, no, I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven. That's 490. But I think the implication is per day, and that's almost at infinity. That's in Matthew 18. The Lord also told the parable of the unforgiving servant. There was a servant who owed a fortune to the king. Being unable to pay, he, his wife, and his children, all that he owned would be sold into slavery to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before the king and pleaded, be patient with me, and I'll pay back all that I owe. The king took pity on him and didn't just give him more time to pay the debt, but he canceled the debt. And he let him go free. And the Bible relates, when his servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owned him a pittance, a small amount, compared to what he had just been forgiven. He grabbed his fellow servant, began to choke him. And he demanded, pay back what you owe me, he demanded. And his fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me and I'll pay back all the debt. But the unforgiving servant refused. Instead, he had the man thrown into prison. When other servants saw what happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told the master everything that had happened. And then the king called the servant and said, you wicked servant, I canceled all your debt because you pleaded with me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And his master turned him over to the jailers until he could pay back all that he owed. In other words, the king canceled his forgiveness when he saw how unforgiving the one he had forgiven behaved. And so, Jesus says, this is how my heavenly Father shall treat every one of you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart. So, plainly, forgiveness is conditional on us being forgiven. If we refuse to forgive others, we break the bridge over which we must cross to get to heaven. There are no perfect people in heaven, except Jesus Christ himself. Every one of us has to get there through God's forgiveness. Therefore, if we refuse to forgive, it so offends God that he will withdraw his forgiveness from someone who is unforgiving. Not only does the Bible teach us to forgive those who ask for forgiveness, we are also commanded to forgive others, even those who don't ask for forgiveness. Colossians 3 verse 12, Therefore as God's chosen people, holy, dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other, forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Now where to forgive unconditionally? We are forgiven unconditionally by God, and we are commanded to live a life of unconditional forgiveness towards others. The fact that the offending person doesn't deserve to be forgiven isn't the point. We don't deserve to be forgiven either. The fact that they may not have apologized or repented or undertaken any due restitution doesn't relieve me of my forgiveness, my responsibility before God to forgive those who sin against me. One example is when the St. James Massacre took place, It hit us all very hard. We were all traumatized and quite a few of our staff members were members of the church. My father had been converted there, my brother had been converted there. We all felt extremely traumatized and grieved by what had happened. And one of our workers who was just here this morning, Shaul, he shot back at the terrorists. And I remember Shaul coming to me and saying, God forgive me, Peter, but I just feel so angry at those terrorists. Shaul, you've got every right to be angry. We all should be angry. But killing mothers in the church, I mean, absolutely wicked. The deed was so callous, it was so brutal. And savage, no warning, a congregation in the middle of worship. But I did say to him, but you need to forgive them from your heart. And not because they deserve it. Obviously, they don't deserve it. But because you can't afford to walk around with this bitterness within you. It'll just poison you. And so Charles testified later in his book, Shooting Back, how that really impacted him, that he managed to come to peace with the fact that he's not going to walk around with bitterness with these people. He did his job. He protected his family and friends in the church. He pursued the terrorists, saw that they fled, and then he testified in court what he had said, which saw these people put behind bars. And then he went into the prison cell and with Kayama Kama, who he had wounded in the attack. He went and took him a Bible and shared the gospel with him. And this chap was very arrogant. He has in no way repented. He felt that he had done a great thing. He'd been involved in the struggle and even though he had killed innocent mothers in a multicultural, multiracial congregation, he felt he had fought apartheid and he is a hero. And he had contempt for the people in prison with him who were criminals. They weren't noble soldiers and freedom fighters like him. The other people in prison there, they were bank robbers and so on. They were bad people. Interesting, later when Desmond Tutu let Kaye out of prison, and he returned to normal society because of the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has nothing to do with truth, and it certainly didn't reconcile anyone. But Desmond Tutu, as the archbishop, set these terrorists free, all of them. Well, Kaye McCormack was back in prison, and he was, just a few months after being released, he was caught having murdered more people in a cash and transit robbery. The very people he despised because they were just killing for money. He went on to be later. And all of these chaps who Desmond Tutu let free of the St. James massacre, terrorist attackers, they all either died in car accidents or ended up back in prison for other offenses. So that's interesting. But the point is, Charles couldn't walk around with a bitterness and anger against these people. He committed them to the justice system in this country and to the ultimate justice of Almighty God. And that's all we can do. May God deal with these people. And we can pray and pray and do prayers, but we're not going to walk around with bitterness and hatred in our heart because of unresolved issues or because the justice system on this earth failed. It will fail. In many cases, people don't get justice on earth. But we do know that the day is coming when the Lord will see that justice is done. So we are commanded to have mercy upon those who don't deserve mercy, because we don't deserve mercy either. And so we too live a life of unconditional forgiveness towards others. James 3 verse 14 says, But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you have disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is full of mercy. So James 3 makes it clear, no matter what the offense, no matter who the offending party, we are commanded by the sovereign Lord to forgive. to live a life of forgiveness, to forgive your brother from your heart. Freely you have received, freely you should give. If you do not forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also withdraw your forgiveness. If you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. If you refuse to forgive others, then you have good reason to doubt your salvation. You're either bitter or you're born again. I can make a note that having been brought up in Rhodesia, there are two kinds of Rhodesians. They're the bitter Rhodesians and they're the born again. And many of us came to Christ after losing our country. And there was a lot to be bitter about. We had been betrayed, as Ian Smith's book, The Great Betrayal, clearly spells out. We were never beaten by our enemies. We were betrayed by our friends, by the very people we had fought for. My dad spent six years serving in the Royal Artillery, fighting in the Eighth Army, mostly under Montgomery, and in North Africa and Italy. We fought for them. Rhodesia provided more men per cent of our population than any other part of the British Empire. And when we were being attacked, the British sanctioned us, boycotted us, betrayed us, and even gave information from their spies, who were high up in the Rhodesian government, to the very terrorists we were fighting. Even gave weapons to terrorists, gave money to them, gave them platforms. And there's a lot of Rhodesians very bitter to this day. or they're born again and they are better. And that's a choice. You can be bitter or you can be better. But we don't have a choice to continue to live in bitterness. And Lord Jesus Christ gave us the greatest example of forgiveness. On the cross, having been wrongly tried in an illegal trial, falsely accused, unjustly condemned, whipped and beaten by the very people who existed for the purpose of serving Yahweh, I mean the high priests of the temple, by the Pharisees and the scribes who claimed to be servants of God, having been condemned by the religious leaders, with the crowds mocking him, probably the same crowds who had had friends and relatives fed at the multiplying of loaves and fishes or healed by the Lord. Maybe some of them had even been part of the Hosanna, blessed as he who comes in the name of the highest crowd on Palm Sunday, shouting, crucify him, crucify him. We have no king but Caesar. His blood be upon us and upon our children. Release Barabbas, that crowd mocking him, reviling him, cursing him. From the cross our Lord prayed, Father forgive them for they don't know what they do. And nothing is so Christ-like as to forgive your enemies. To forgive those who have done you great wrong. Our Lord Jesus taught in the sermon around, blessed are you when men curse you and insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil things against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven. For in the same way, they persecute the prophets who were before you. This is the Lord's command and this is his example. For to this you are called because Christ suffered for you and left you as an example that you should follow in his footsteps. There's no more powerful a witness when a Christian forgives his enemy. Be joyful in hope, be patient in affliction, be faithful in prayer. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends upon you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will replace his Lord. On the contrary, when your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That's in Romans 12. The question is not whether the person offending us deserves to be forgiven. We certainly haven't deserved God's forgiveness. The question is, are we going to live in obedience to God's command or in blatant rebellion by harboring bitterness, unforgiveness, and resentment? The fact is, if we refuse to forgive, the roots of bitterness will continue to grow within us, poisoning every aspect of our lives. We will become sick, physically sick, spiritually, emotionally, mentally sick, and physically sick. Bitterness is a poison and it eats up those who carry it within them. Bitterness does not harm the person I'm bitter against, it kills me. You may say, I'm not bitter, I'm just hurt. Well, the symptoms of feeling hurt are very close to symptoms of resentment. There's a close relationship between feeling hurt and being resentful and becoming bitter. But even more seriously, bitterness easily turns into hatred. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. That's 1 John chapter 3. So how do I know if I'm bitter? Bitterness remembers details. As any teacher will tell you, memory is helped by reviewing, reviewing, and reviewing. Repetition, repetition. That's how you learn. When we can remember every syllable, every intonation, every inflection of the offense, then we must know we haven't forgiven our brother for our heart, or our sister. We might be nursing a root of bitterness. And this is a great sin. Now, those who hope that time will heal will be sorely disappointed. Instead of fading over the years, bitterness tends to accumulate and deepen and fester, much like a wound that's untreated grows into gangrene. And I've seen what that does. I once had to sign a medical authorization from a mother's leg to be amputated. Now she was a chain smoker her whole life, as my dad was, and at one point the doctor told her she needed to amputate her toe, and then it was most of the foot, and then it was the whole foot, and then it was the whole leg beneath the knee, and by the time she was in a coma, it was her whole leg above the knee. And that's when I was called in. My mother was grey. And what a duty to have to do. My mother being a nurse had forbidden me and my brother to ever authorize any kind of amputation or any kind of mutilation. She had a horror of being mutilated, amputated. Absolutely not. She even wanted me to sign euthanasia papers and, you know, Mom, I can't do this. I'm a Christian. I love you. I'm not going to ever do that. And so it was, don't you ever authorize any amputations? And sure enough, that came about and it was my duty. So I phoned my brother in Johannesburg. Derek, what should we do? And he said, well, you're living in Cape Town. No good mom hating both of us. You just sign it. So, well, at that point my mother was very angry and I couldn't take my children, her grandchildren, to see her in the hospital. She looked like death warmed up. But within days of the amputation, Kala returned to skin. She started to recover dramatically. We moved into a home, started to build a cottage at the back of our garden for my mom to move into because she'd lost her leg. Now she'd lost her job. As a nurse, she'd lost her ability to drive because, obviously, in most cars, you need your feet for handling the pedals and so on. And even her home, which was on the first story and there was no lift, so she couldn't manage that either. She didn't have a prosthetic leg yet, that came later. I mean, I can't provide that immediately. And it takes time for your leg to heal to the point where you can put on a prosthetic limb. And yet, I saw my mom, well, get to the stage where she started to talk to me again. And I had to encourage her to join devotions. My mother was very secular. She didn't believe in God because she said no one could believe in God after the Second World War. And my dad had that attitude too. My mother endured the thousand bomber raids. She was quite traumatized by a whole lot of things that happened. I had to now explain to my mom, you need to come to church and attend devotions after our supper each night for the sake of your grandchildren. They won't understand if you don't come. She saw that, and she immediately took on her grandmotherly duties, and she attended church, attended Bible study without fail, and you could see her whole attitude changed. Not just color come back to skin, but life, eternal life. Abundant life. She got involved in the mission, handled our mailing lists, and back then our mailing list was like 8,000 addresses, which was a big job, inserts and everything else. And she became quite an important part of the mission. And at one point she said, it's more fun working here than watching a soap opera. All these young people with the love triangles and the breakups and this and that, and she got so wrapped up in the different relationships with these young people and counseling and so on, and it's more fun than a soap opera. Not that we would have liked to think of it like that, but to see her whole body healed and her soul healed, She had three and a half years to live after she came out of hospital. She was born again for the last two and a half years of her life on earth. And obviously, that amputation was necessary. It saved her life. At that time, it's the last thing she wanted. But that's what we've got to do, often with sin. Amputate that sin. As the Lord said, it's better to pluck out that eye that leads us to sin, enter heaven with one eye than to enter hell with both eyes or legs, as the case may be. And this is how it is with bitterness. We're going to lop off that root of bitterness, chop it off. Just like one of these days, we're going to have to come into the driveway and dig down and amputate those roots that are turning upside down all of our bricks and driveway, and maybe even undermining the very foundations of this house. And I think there's bitterness undermining all of us, and it's festering like gangrene. Time doesn't heal when it's gangrene. At a certain point, there's just going to be amputation. That's it. No more. And it's well depicted in the Fireproof movie when the Kirk Cameron character, the fireman, takes a baseball bat to his computer. Now, we're not anti-technology, but if that was the root and source of a sin, that's a decisive way to deal with it. And so, healing comes through repentance and comes through forgiveness. Isaiah 29, the ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, all those who have an eye for evil will be cut down, and those who with a word make someone out to be guilty, who ensnare the defendant in court, and with false testimony deprive the innocents of justice. That's Isaiah 29 verse 20. In Leviticus 19, 17, we are commanded, do not hate your brother in your heart. 1 John 2 verse 9 says, anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. If a person refuses to forgive someone and is harboring bitterness, they should question their salvation. Proverbs 10 verse 12, hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs. 1 John 1 verse 5 to 9 declares, this is the message we have heard from him. And we declare to you, God is light, and there is no darkness within him. If we claim to have fellowship with him, yet we walk in darkness, we lie, and we do not live by the truth. But if we walk in light, as he is in light, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness. You are either bitter or you are born again. Isaiah 26 verse 3 says, you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is steadfast because they trust in you. It's so important that we focus on God and his forgiveness. If we're not reconciled vertically with God, we can never be reconciled to the neighbor on the horizontal plane of the cross. So to be able to forgive someone else, we need to receive forgiveness from God. And that's how we become better instead of bitter. Any questions, comments, or additions anyone would add to that? Tosha? I am often unsure about what the scripture means that says, and that covers all wrong. I've originally sort of What does love for us have as our own sin? Does it also apply to us as humans? What exactly does it mean when it says love has us in the wrong? I mean, if you look at being in a relationship where there's a lot of wrong happening within that relationship, does it mean that you may be as a partner covers all the wrongs that a partner is committing, whether it's against you or against the household? I think sometimes it can be like that. So, for example, I was brought up in a society where you didn't rat on fellow students, not even the bullies. And so, in a sense, it was our school motto and sense of honor that you would never be a tattletale, you'd never be a rat. So for example, even when I'm being tortured by some other student in stabbing injection to me during the school assembly, wouldn't give a sound or anything that never reported. I dealt with them directly, and I got some of these bullies back, and they got me back even more, and so on. But we'd never take it to the principal or the teacher. There was this kind of sense of recovering over the failings of fellow students. But then, being in admissions, the amount of times I've come across… If you're in admissions and you work, you sometimes see other coworkers not at their best. And so many times we're covering over because of love, we're covering over the failings of others. Sometimes we might even do someone else's job or tidy up from them so that they are not put in a bad light or so on. So I think in a marriage this happens frequently that in front of the children particularly, you're covering up for your partner and you're continually trying to only present the best of those that you love. And I know that this is true the amount of times I've had come across my desk or computer or correspond to somebody saying to me something that could put someone I greatly respect in a bad light and you just, you smother it, you get rid of it, you never repeat it. So there is a certain sense where love covers a multitude of sins. And we can see that those that we love, now there are people going around who are, to use James Kennedy's words, are fault finders. And he said we should be good finders. We should be looking for something good in the people we love, not looking for faults. Aha, you did this wrong, that kind of thing, as opposed to more trumpeting the successes and the positives. So love covers a multitude of sins, I think it's vital in a relationship. So if you take offense at every time your friend, your partner, your parents let you down, then you can get to a position where relationships are destroyed. Gossips separate close friends, but love covers a multitude of sins. And so I'm convinced that does apply to us. We should be those who can cover over the sins of others. Now, there does come an extreme where you can no longer do so for their good and for everyone else's. So there are times when you may have to, in counseling, maybe with church leadership, bring up problems of someone you deeply love because they've been self-destructive. But again, I think this is a matter of extreme. So if you're seeing somebody doing something dangerous that's self-destructive, it's going to cause great harm to them or the kingdom, you've got to at a certain point tackle him. But there's small offenses that we can sometimes overlook for the sake of relationships, for the sake of the good of the cause. So love covers a multitude of sins. The context of that verse is hatred stirs up dissension. And you can see there's malice, there's gossip, there's hatred. Well, that's the one extreme. The other extreme is love, which will overlook or even cover up a multitude of sins. I don't think it means that we want to become complicit accessories in somebody's crimes, but we're talking about a multitude of wrongs, a multitude of failures, sins even. Love covers a multitude of sins. I think you can't have a marriage where that doesn't happen. You can't have any good working relationship with anyone unless you're willing to sometimes overlook some things for the sake of the good of the cause or the sake of the good of the relationship. So if in a relationship, partner or say a friend is continually, there's continually something that's being granted to you and one covers it with love by, like you say, you try to smother the fire and you're continually doing that covering for them and helping and supporting and so on. So that is, love is covering us and at some point it is actually at the same time it can become very abusive and destructive to yourself. Well then that's crossed the line and especially if it's destroying the very person concerned who you love. You can't stand by while a person destroys themselves. So, is this a big enough issue to fight over, or is this an issue that we can just shovel a spade through to cover and leave it, and not bring it up again? Yeah, and they would also go hand in hand, I suppose, with when a person doesn't want to tolerate it. Because I know that people, including myself, have been accused by families that they can't believe one tolerates so much. Maybe you can quote this very verse. Proverbs 10 verse 12, love covers a multitude of sins. I mean, that is true. We know it in our experience. People have done it for us. I mean, think how many times we were a grief to our parents, but our parents' love covered over a multitude of our failings. We failed them so many times. We did so many naughty, stupid things, and yet our parents still loved us. Now, you've got to look at that and admire that. And they didn't make a big thing. And when we were grown, how unpleasant it would be if every time we gathered with our parents, they remind us of these irritating, terrible things we did when we were naughty teenagers or younger and keep bringing it up. So love does cover a multitude of sins. We all know it in our experience, but we've had to do it as parents. We still love our children, even though they've done some pretty bad and destructive and selfish things. But at a certain point we've got to deal with the issues with them for their own good. But we don't bring it up all the time, do we? I had heard this thought by some Christians that they feel like they're only obliged to forgive when the person approaches them. I can't see that in scripture because the very example that Jesus gave us was that he was together with his enemies on the cross. I mean that's just a classic. If we're to imitate Christ, well then I can't see any other way around it. Well even love your enemies. Yeah. Do good to those who mistreat you. I mean it's difficult when it is. Just to forgive your family members can be hard, but to forgive the enemies, yes. And the thing is too, the point that you brought up, is that it's for our benefit to be honest, because there's that relationship between us and forgiveness and God, and God has forgiven us, and the obligation that we have to forgive other people. And as you mentioned, you can't live away from that. But I just wanted to say something quickly as well. I have a friend who, she became a history, but prior to that she was in an abusive situation. She ended up coming away. She's persisted in continuing to pray for that man. Even though she distanced herself from situation. They actually have never been married officially, but she's remained single her whole life, instead of raising her son on her own. But she said to me one time that she was always very careful to talk about what happened, and she wouldn't go into detail because she just felt before God that she needed this concept of love covering sins, that she would just We're just going to pray and ask that the Lord is going to open this man's life. And she didn't want, I guess, all of this information out there about him that would paint him in a negative light and write on someone's life. In fact, she just had this impulse to keep that to herself and just continue to pray for him and see I'm sure that's got to be done in any marriage that we've got to cover for our partners if there's a problem. Because love means we want them to be seen in the best light possible. So we're not going to be bringing out or allowing to be brought out things that are going to put the ones we love in a bad light. I'd say that's also true in church history. And there's not a respected leader in church history who's not as good as detractors and those who hate them. And so the moment I put out something, whether it's on Martin Luther or Richard the Lionheart or Oliver Cromwell, but people, yes, but, and they start throwing negative things, and I feel that's not honoring our ancestors, our fathers in history, our ancient fathers, to quote Westminster Confession, and the importance of trying to protect our heritage. And while people are slandering those, using the People of the past are now the great cloud of witnesses like a football. Well, you can easily score a goal if the other team's not on the field. There's a lot of ways that we've got to respect our elders. And to me, that also includes people in history. But it's so basic that we don't want our loved ones put in a bad light. And as a new Krishna, I remember being shocked, traveling around the country, staying in many homes, and you'd see so many families where the husband or wife would use the opportunity around the dining room table and a guest in the home to use you as a wall to play squash, you know, to hit at their partner. And so you'd get something like the wife making disparaging remarks about the husband, and vice versa, and using the guest as the excuse to do so. Maybe it gave them an opportunity to be really mean and nasty. I couldn't understand that. Coming from a society where you didn't even tell on bullies, the idea that you'd say something disloyal against your own partner, absolutely shocking. And there are people who do that. It's staggering. One day, I've seen little kids come into the room and kick their father, who was talking to the guest, to get the father's attention. The father, sorry, sorry. And you've got to be kidding. You're apologizing to a kid who's just kicked you in the shins? There's some real brats out there. And they probably learned from their parents how to be mean to one another, because so many of these folks are talking like that. And yes, to me, that's the exact opposite. They didn't let love cover all wrongs. We've got to be able to respect. You just think like your elders. You see them sometimes in a weak or vulnerable position. And maybe it's some grandfather who's gotten some Alzheimer's or whatever. One wants to protect them. And if we don't want to, there's something wrong with us. We must cover when the others are being weak. And that's the point. We carry one another's burdens. drive within you to want to spew out all these grievances, that that in itself is an invitation to the problem. Yes, for sure. I mean, I'm not saying it hasn't happened to me. I mean, I've had people come here and there is this dictation to want to tell people about it, but I know that that's not the right thing to do, isn't it? No, right. I mean, we all get tempted to this, and we've all got a lot of reasons to be bitter, but it's good to remind ourselves that scriptural principles to don't take this temptation. It's a trap. It's a snare. It's a death sentence in many ways. You don't want to go down this road, but it's like the devil's got these tempting, you have a right to be offended. You have a right to be bitter. You're a good person. You deserve better. And so the devil's tempting us at all times, but we've got to steadfastly resist. No, I'm not going to go down that path. I'm not going to get ensnared in this. I'm not going to give into it. We've all got temptations we've got to resist, but I think this bitterness is something that really destroys one. I've seen people absolutely bitter, especially in the latter part of their life, because, as C.S. Lewis says, it's not like when you've got these paintings of, you've got a path on the road and there's a junction, you know, left you go to hell, right you go to heaven. He said it's not one decision, it's thousands of decisions. Every decision you make puts you more on the broad road to hell than the narrow way to life. And it's true. It's like thousands of steps to get to the top of Table Mountain. And we've got to continually make those decisions. It's not just, yes, I remember back on the 3rd of April 1977, I decided for Christ. That's fine, but that's only one step in a huge disruptive adventure. Over the years, there's been thousands of different junctions we've had to make a turn at. And the narrow road is not easy, but the broad road will lead to destruction. Any other comments anyone would like to add? I found in the book, forgiveness has to be detergent. What does that mean? I heard at one point somebody putting it very well, he says, and somebody brings up, didn't you remember? And the man responded, now I distinctly remember forgetting that. And in the scripture, we read in several places in the Bible that God says that he will forgive all our iniquities. That's in Jeremiah, that's in Ezekiel, quite a few places. Forgive all your iniquities. And I mean, it's amazing to think that the God who is all-knowing can actually forget even your iniquities. I mean, he says, I will forgive all your iniquities. So it's an act of God's will. And so I distinctly remember forgetting that. And a person can bring something up and be like, I don't know what you're talking about. That's gone, that's finished, that's dealt with. I distinctly remember forgetting that. and you then decide to give it up for this very good reason. The amount of times I've had the temptations to be bitter that just something like traveling back to Zimbabwe, traveling around Zimbabwe and you can see The school I went to, the home we lived in, the place we worked in, wrecked and ruined. You know, you get two types of adhesions, the bitter and the born again. And that's about it. Even in this country, I travel around the South Sea. There's reasons, occasionally like rage grows within me over the forests that have been burned by the arson and the continual breaking down of so much that is beautiful, lovely in the Cape. And yes, one can go the route of choosing to be angry and bitter about it, but no, we're not going to get bitter. We're going to work at evangelism. We'll undermine this government with evangelism and with discipleship. And it's in God's hands, he will deal with them. It's not my task to deal with governments, that's God's hands, he's above them. All I can do is sow gospel seed and try to work at restoring society. And I think every homeschooler we help, every church we help, every Bible we get out, is undermining the hatred and the Marxism that inspires the government. And so we don't need to get angry every time we see the woke agenda and so on. We can just be like gorillas, planting landmines, in a sense, by putting barbels in places where it's going to make an impact. And, you know, like Gideon's putting the barbels in every hotel room. That's being gorillas. That's being real freedom fighters. And we know that what we did behind 9 Curtain helped undermine the Soviet Union. We'll continue to do it here. But we could be like so many others, just getting bitter, bitter. Look at that. Look at that litter. And there's so much around to just irritate one. But we can't let it steal our peace and joy.