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Bitter Men are Brittle Men | Sacred Men · Sacred Men

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Welcome back to the podcast, Brothers.
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I'm your host, Pastor Justin Dean, and this channel is all
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about making strong, virtuous Christian men in a weak and
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degenerate culture. Today we're going to look at
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something that makes us weak, bitterness.
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There's a proverb that says the heart knows its own bitterness
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and no stranger shares its joy. It's Proverbs 1410.
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What this proverb means is that bitterness is something that
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infects our hearts. The heart in the Scriptures
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isn't talking about just the organ that is pumping our blood
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through our body. It's talking about the Control
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Center of our whole self, of our soul, our feelings, our desires,
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our thoughts, our wills, place that we choose between good and
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evil, right and wrong, what we're going to do each day.
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And this part is interesting. If you've got a bitter heart,
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you've got a hard and brittle heart, and it's going to affect
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everything else in your life. Bitter men take themselves far
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too seriously. They can't laugh at themselves
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when they do something embarrassing.
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They can't absorb the emotional anxiety that comes from their
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wife and their kids, so they shut down or lash out.
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They struggled to deal with setbacks in life or business
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because they think that God has dealt with them unfairly.
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See, bitterness is a joy killer. And remember the scripture that
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says the joy of the Lord is our strength.
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See, bitterness has to be dealt with if we want to be strong and
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joyful men. And as men, we're often told to,
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you know, man up, suck it up, push through the pain, don't
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complain, and that's all good. But there is a pain that doesn't
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just need to be pushed through. It doesn't just need to be, you
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know, you don't just need to suck it up.
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It must be confessed and uprooted in our lives.
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And that's bitterness. We have to repent of it and put
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our faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Trying to push through the inner pain of bitterness and unchecked
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resentment doesn't make us tougher.
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It makes us brittle. Like dry wood that all the
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moisture sucked out of it. And you put any weight on that
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dry wood and it snaps instead of bending.
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A bitter heart cracks when life tests it.
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Bitter men are brittle men. Now the idea of this podcast
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came to me this week as my friend Pastor Josh Gallier
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preached for me on Sunday. We're studying Hebrews chapter
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12, and that's all about being men who run the race that God
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has set before us, that we run that race and we endure all of
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the difficulties of our lives by faith.
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And we're commanded to lift up our drooping hands and
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strengthen our weak knees because God is training us and
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disciplining us or discipling us as his beloved sons.
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God, as our Father, wants us to finish our race as well.
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He wants us to cross the finish line and reach the glories of
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heaven's shore. But he also wants us to become a
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certain type of person while we're here in this life.
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He wants to be us, to become strong and virtuous men who make
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this world as much like heaven as humanly possible.
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Well, one of the things that will take us out of our race and
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cause us to not run it well, or not finish it well, or finish it
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at all, is bitterness. God says to us in Hebrews 12/15
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See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no
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root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it
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many become defiled. The Scriptures here warn us.
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Clearly, bitterness isn't just an emotion.
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It's a destructive root that chokes out and poisons
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everything it touches. Today we'll unpack why bitter
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men are brittle men and what we'll see, what God's Word says
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about it, and most importantly, how the gospel frees us to be
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resilient, forgiving, and strong and faithful men in the Lord.
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So first thing let's look at let's look at the danger of
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bitterness. The danger of bitterness is it
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weakens us from the inside. See, bitterness often starts
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small. A slight somebody you know gives
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you a slight, somebody hurts you somebody.
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Maybe there's an injustice that happens in your life, a betrayal
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of a friend or maybe from your wife or your boss, or some
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circumstance that you could even possibly blame on God.
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Something doesn't go where your way.
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Maybe it's a genuine injustice. And as men, if we're just trying
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to suck it up, we might just put our head down, keep working, try
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to ignore it, bury it under work, bury it under a little bit
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of anger or, you know, just throw ourself into some
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distraction. Video games, watching movies,
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sports, athletics, whatever it is.
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And and we just think, oh, you know what?
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It's gone. I just ignored it.
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It's gone. But scripture calls it a root.
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And I think that's significant. A root.
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A root doesn't stay hidden for long if it's not rooted out and
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dealt with. A root stays there and there in
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the darkness of your heart. It begins to grow, and
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eventually that root will break the surface of our heart and
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cause us trouble. And the scripture says and
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defile others, so it's going to cause trouble to others as well.
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What does that mean? It means if you're dealing with
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a bitter heart or bitterness in your heart, your wife is
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eventually going to feel it. Your kids are going to
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experience that hardness of heart, your brothers in Christ,
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your business partners, whoever it is, they're going to start
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feeling one way. I always describe this hard
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heart as it's like throwing ping pong balls off a statue, right?
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Your brother tries to encourage you.
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Your brother tries to say something to you.
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Maybe he's bringing correction to you.
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Whatever it is, your boss is trying to correct you.
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And that correction hits you like a ping pong ball off a
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statue. You don't want to hear it.
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You've got a hard heart now, a bitter man.
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He might look strong on the outside.
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Outside, right? He looks stoic.
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He looks unyielding. He looks unflinching.
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Nothing can faze him, but actually on the inside he's
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brittle. He's brittle, and that usually
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shows itself. And the fact that he'll snap at
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the smallest provocation because that root has sapped, it's dried
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out his spiritual vitality, right?
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Ephesians 431 commands us directly.
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Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be
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put away from you along with all malice notice.
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And I think there's a progression there.
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Let all bitterness, I think it starts with a bitter heart and
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then that can lead to wrath, that can lead to anger, that can
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lead to clamor and slander and then malice.
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And Paul doesn't say, well, just ignore it, Just suck it up.
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Just manage it or, you know, vent it.
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He says put it away. I would say in our context here,
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as we're comparing it to a root, pull it out, right?
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Uproot it. That's what you do with the
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garden, right? You, you, you plant a garden and
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you've got to go literally every single day and you've got to
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pull those weeds out every single day, right?
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Why? Because if you don't, those
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weeds will take over the garden and they'll suck all the
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nutrients out of the soil and those plants won't grow like
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they're supposed to grow. And Paul tells us specifically
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where to do this because bitterness, that bitter root,
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doesn't produce the righteousness of God.
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James 120 says the anger of man does not produce the
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righteousness of God, right? Bitterness tends to masquerade
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as justified anger, right? Oh yeah, I know who.
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I know how that guy is. Oh, that guy screwed me over
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before. So our heart becomes hard to
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him. We we walk in unforgiveness or
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my wife always says that, or she always does that, or she never
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says that and never does that. And our unmet expectations begin
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to harden our heart, right? It hardens us here, literally
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from the inside out. Theologian John Piper and his
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message Battling the Unbelief of bitterness puts it this way.
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The battle against bitterness is a battle against unbelief in the
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promises of God. See, when we hold on to
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resentment, we're essentially saying, God, you didn't handle
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this right. You haven't given me everything
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I need for life, for life and godliness.
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I can't trust you with this and I can't trust your ways.
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And I know you tell me to forgive, but I'm, I don't think
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you know what you're doing. And so I'm not going to forgive.
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I'm going to hold on to this bitterness.
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I need to carry this grudge. That's how I'm going to take my
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take care of myself. Well, actually, that's just a
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lack of faith. That's unbelief and it makes us
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fragile. My next point here is why men
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are especially vulnerable, right?
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And, and kind of why it makes us as men brittle.
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See, we're, we know this. We're called to lead, protect
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and provide, right? We need to lead ourself.
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We need to lead our families, our loved ones.
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We need to lead in the, in the church.
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And then hopefully, God willing, we can lead in wider society.
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We need to protect. We need to provide.
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Well, the problem is when we feel like either we failed or
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that somebody failed us, right? Why kids boss, go down the list.
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Well, what happens there is bitterness can creep in and kind
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of whisper this false promise that it will be our protector,
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right? Bitterness will keep us from
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being hurt in the future. We say to ourselves, I'm never
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going to let this happen again. I'll never let that person hurt
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me again. I'll never let my wife get to me
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like that again, Right? That's the kind of stuff we say,
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but the reality is that's a false promise and it always
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backfires. In Colossians 319, in the King
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James Version says this, it says husbands, husbands are
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specifically warned about this bitterness.
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It says, husbands love your wives and do not be bitter
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towards them. The ESV says do not be harsh
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towards them. But again, it's this bitterness
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that leads to harshness that leads to anger and outbursts of
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anger. And so the King James Version
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tells us specifically to love our wives and to not be bitter
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towards them. Now why would he single out
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husbands, tells wives he singles out wives and tells them wives
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respect your husbands and he singles out husbands and says
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love your wives and do not be bitter towards them.
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Why? Well, I think it's because
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bitterness towards our wives is more prone to us as men, right?
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And it being disrespectful is more prone to our wives as
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women, right? And the reality is bitterness
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towards our wives turns our love cold.
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It turns the temperature down on our love.
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It makes us brittle in the one relationship where we are called
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to reflect Christ's unbreakable love for the church.
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I often say that Jesus Christ has a one way love for His
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bride. He loves us in One Direction and
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He loves us so much even though we're undeserving of it, that he
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he chooses to call us his beloved.
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And he loves us and he changes us with His love, right?
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He doesn't love us because we love him.
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He loves us first and then we love him because how he loves
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us. And that's supposed to be a
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picture of how we love our wives.
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We love our wives with a one way love.
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We we're going to love them no matter what.
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What that doesn't just mean feel loving towards them means we're
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going to act loving towards them.
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And then they're going to reciprocate that as their love.
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They're going to reciprocate that back to us, right?
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Well, bitterness burns the temperature down.
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Like if love is hot, bitterness is cold, right?
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Bitterness and love are actually opposites.
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A bitter husband isn't going to be tender towards his wife, he's
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going to be cold. He's going to be brittle, quick
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to anger, slow to forgive, and ultimately weak and leading his
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family spirit at home spiritually.
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Now think about it like this, you know, a resilient man, a man
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with the life giving spirit of God inside of him.
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He's going to bend with grace. He forgives as Christ forgave
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him. You know, I know down South
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there's been this cold snap and one of the things happens in
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these, these cold snaps is these trees.
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They, you know, they get loaded down with ice and they get
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really heavy. And then all of the,
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specifically the dead branches, they just snap and fall off and
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'cause, you know, knock down power lines and do all this kind
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of stuff. Why?
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Because they can't, they're, they, they can't support that
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weight and they're, they, they can't bend, right?
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They can't bend. While a resilient man can bend,
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he can move in the in the wind a little bit.
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But a brittle man breaks and this is what happens.
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I've seen this so many times in ministry over the last 20 years.
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A brittle man breaks relationships, he begins to
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isolate himself and ultimately he loses influence, right?
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He can't be in a difficult relationship with his boss.
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He can't be in a difficult relationship at work.
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He can't bend as he needs to bend.
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And I'm not talking about bending in our virtue or bending
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in our convictions, but just relationally.
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You need a, you need a give and take.
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You need a grace that kind of softens your relationship.
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And a bitter man can't do that, right?
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He's always right in his mind. He's quick to lash out, quick to
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get angry. I know guys that have been fired
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multiple jobs in a row and they still think it's their boss's
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fault. Like, bro, the one common
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denominator of you losing all these jobs is you.
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And often it often times it's because he's a bitter man,
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right? He thinks God owes him
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something. He thinks he's the smartest guy
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in the room. He thinks, you know, he's owed
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something from his boss or employees or his wife or his
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kids. And he's just so hard that he
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can't bend right. He hasn't been touched by grace.
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Now that this reminds me of a quote, one of my favorite quotes
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by CS Lewis from his book The Four Loves.
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And he says this, to love at all is to be vulnerable.
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Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly
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broken. If you want to make sure of
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keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an
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animal. Wrap it carefully round with
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hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements.
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Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
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But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will
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change. It will not be broken.
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It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
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To love is to be vulnerable. Now what a what a statement,
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right? If you love a dog, well,
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eventually that dog is going to do something you don't like and
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it's going to break your heart. And eventually that dog is going
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to die and it's going to break your heart.
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So the only way that you can prevent your heart from being
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broken is to just, you know, throw yourself into stupid
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things, into what the Proverbs called worthless pursuits,
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right? Surround your life with with
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hobbies and little luxuries, but avoid the great things of life,
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avoid real relationships. And I know many men, because
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they're dealing with bitterness, they suck at community, right?
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They don't know how to live in a missional community.
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They don't know how to ask for forgiveness and be forgiven and
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then forget about it with somebody.
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If you're living in real relationships, you're going to
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have conflict. There's going to be
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disagreements, there's going to be sin amongst brothers.
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And to be honest, it's not that big a deal if you know how to
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deal with your bitterness. But if you have a bitter heart,
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dude, as soon as somebody says something to you that you don't
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like, boom, you're going to bolt, right?
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You're going to get out of there.
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I know guys have been married multiple times, mainly because
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they have a bitter heart and they don't know how to deal with
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it. So what do we do with the what
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do we do with the bitterness that's in our heart?
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And I'm going to say this, and Josh said this in a sermon,
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bitterness is almost like the default operating system of our
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heart. When somebody offends us, we
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want to offend them. When somebody hurts us, we want
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to hurt them, right? That's normal.
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We would say this is from the doctrine of original sin.
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This is because we're fallen in our nature.
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We, we are not angels, right? We're more like devils.
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And so we need the gospel of Jesus Christ to come in and
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fundamentally change us in our nature so that we don't cling to
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this bitterness and we can actually root it out of our
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heart and we can grow to be resilient men.
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Well, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus doesn't
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leave us in this state of bitterness, right?
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We see it in what Christ did for us.
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Christ comes as the Son of God, and he lives as a perfect man,
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and he has every reason in the world to be bitter.
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He had reason to be bitter at God.
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God, why would you send me to do this?
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I'm going to be rejected by my people.
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I'm going to be betrayed by those closest to me.
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I'm going to be brutally and violently crucified and beaten
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on a rugged Roman cross. I'm going to look like an
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absolute failure, like I'm dying naked on a cross.
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It's one of the most shameful things that could possibly
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happen. But what do we see Christ do?
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He rejects the shame. He refuses to get bitter even on
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the cross. When he's looking at these
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foolish, wicked, sinful people crucifying him, He says, Father,
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forgive them for they know not what they do.
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Jesus there absorbed. See, he didn't have a hard
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heart. He absorbed the ultimate
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injustice without a root of bitterness springing up.
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He didn't say, you know, he didn't get mad at God for this
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happening. He didn't just blame all the
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people doing it, even though it was, he did have to, you know,
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endure all this suffering from the hand of sinners.
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No, he said he knew this was the Father's plan.
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He knew what it was ultimately going to accomplish and he gave
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grace. Even from the cross to the
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people that were crucifying him. Ephesians 432 right after it
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said to put away all bitterness. It says this Be kind to one
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another, tender hearted, forgiving one another.
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Listen as God in Christ forgave you now because we want to be
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strong and virtuous men and we want to have strong backbones
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and we don't want to have we want to have thick skin.
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We don't want to be easily offended.
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We do want to suck it up and lift up our drooping hands and
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strengthen our weak knees and pushes up push, you know, set
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our face towards whatever difficulty that we're called to
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do. And we want to be hard and we
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want to be tough. We we want to be all these those
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things. But it doesn't mean that we have
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to become hard hearted to do those things.
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The Scripture right here tells us be tender hearted and tender
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heartedness is not weakness. Jesus was tender hearted on the
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cross and that was the cross was a sign of his weakness.
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He, he knew that was God's plan for him.
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He consented to that plan. He set his face like Flint
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towards Jerusalem. He went, he stood in the face of
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Pilot, He stood in the face of the high priests and he he
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never, you know, he never balked on his profession, right?
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He never backpedaled anything. He that was the most manly thing
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he could do and yet he remained tender hearted at the same time.
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A heart that's functioning rightly is meant to be tender.
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It's living and active. We need to remember that, right?
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We don't have to get hard hearted in order to go through a
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hard and difficult season, or hard and difficult circumstance
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or a world that is at odds with us.
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The best thing that we can do for our families is provide for
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them our tender hearted love, right?
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This is why I'm providing. This is why I'm protecting.
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I'm not doing it begrudgingly. I'm not getting up and going to
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my 10/12/14 hour shift with a hard and bitter heart, right?
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You know, my wife gets to stay at home with my kids and I'm
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thinking about, oh man, she gets to stay at home and I got to go
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to this job. No, no, no.
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We do it with a tender hearted love.
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We come into our homes with a tender hearted love.
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That means when our kids meet us, we don't push them away in a
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hard hearted way. Dad's exhausted kids.
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Dad's exhausted. No, come in ready to welcome
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them. Come in ready to talk to them.
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Let I mean, you've been working hard all day, all day long for
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them, right? We need to remember what we're
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fighting for. GK Chesterson has his great
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quote. He says the true soldier fights
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not because he hates what's in front of him, but because he
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love, he loves what is behind him.
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Well, what's behind us specifically there.
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He's talking about our families, right?
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We could bring that out. Our churches, our brothers in
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Christ. No, think about that.
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We're fighting these battles for our wives, we're fighting these
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battles for our kids, for our future grandkids, right?
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We want to fight these battles in our generation so they don't
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have to fight them in their generation, right?
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We don't want to leave them a legacy of unfought battles,
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right? Congratulations kids, we didn't
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do our job, but now we are expecting you to to do yours.
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No, it's our tender hearted love for them that pushes us out into
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our battles with the world. We're doing it for our children.
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We're doing it for our grandchildren.
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So if we want to fight like true soldiers, we've got to get rid
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of our bitterness and we've got to forgive one another as God in
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Christ has forgiven you. Now what?
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This means the path out of our own bitterness of heart is
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forgiveness rooted in gratitude for our own forgiveness.
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Complicated sentence. Let me say it again.
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The path out of our own bitterness of heart is
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forgiveness rooted in gratitude for our own forgiveness, right?
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So in other words, I remember how much Christ has done for me,
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right? I was born in sin.
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I I've sinned more times than I could count.
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I have offended a holy and a righteous God.
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There's no reason I should be accepted in His sight.
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There's definitely no reason I should be adopted into His
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family. And yet, in spite of all of my
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sin, Christ came and lived a perfect life in my place.
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He died a substitutionary death in my place because of my sins.
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And He earned for me a righteousness that's not my own.
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Martin Luther called it an alien righteousness.
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Christ was perfect, and now he gives that perfection to me.
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The Father accepts that and now looks at me as though I'm
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perfectly righteous, I'm holy, and I'm set apart.
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He's forgiven all of my sins, right?
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And he's adopted me into the family of God because of what
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Jesus has done for me. All of that is sheer grace.
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It's all sheer grace, right? So I don't want to get what I
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deserve. What I deserve is death and
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hell. I want to get what Christ has
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earned for me, life and life more abundantly.
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Now here's the idea. When I accept that from Christ,
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I get a new nature, right? I get a new heart, I get the
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spirit of the living God in me, I get forgiveness, I get
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adoption. I get all these things.
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When someone sins against me, I have to bring it into that
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equation, right? I've sinned this much against a
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holy and righteous God, and they've sinned this much against
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a Sinner like me, right? Christ forgave me this much, I
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definitely can forgive them this much, right?
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That's what we have to do. When we remember how much we
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have been forgiven, right? Our sin against the holy God,
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we're then freed to release others sins against us.
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This is the way out of bitterness, right?
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This is why I say in every wedding sermon that I do that a
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Christian marriage is is really unbreakable because the
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experience of Christ forgiving my sins is the very power that
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enables me to forgive my wife's sins, right and my children's
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sins. And this puts the grace of God
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at the center of a home and it drives out that spirit of
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bitterness. And we have all got to get good
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at preaching that, preaching the gospel to ourself if we want to
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grow up into godly, virtuous, joyful men.
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We don't want this path that you see so many dudes go on and by
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the time they're 50-60 years old, they're angry, bitter old
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men, right? We don't want that for us.
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And it's not going to be like that for us if we remember how
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to preach the gospel to ourself every day, every single day.
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So here's 4 practical steps for US men.
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If you're dealing with bitterness, and we're all going
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to be dealing with it in some measure, first confess it
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honestly to God, right? So just say, Father God, I
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confess, I'm dealing with bitterness.
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I'm bitter at this person. I'm bitter at these people.
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And I confess that to you. And I ask that you would help me
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repent, change directions from that sin.
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Then you're going to replace that bitterness by preaching the
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gospel to yourself, and you're going to replace it with
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gratitude. Say, Father God, I thank you
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that you didn't get bitter towards me.
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And you know, just send me to hell.
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Thankfully, that you gave me grace and you've washed me clean
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and you've given me forgiveness, and I've got an eternal home
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that one day I'll get to experience and I'll get to see
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you face to face. Father, would you give me that
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grace again? Would you remind me of that
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grace again? I want to be grateful for what
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you've done for me. A heart that is blooming with
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gratitude will not grow bitterness. 3rd, you choose
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forgiveness actively even when you you don't feel like doing
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it. Father, I choose to forgive my
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wife for this. I choose to forgive my kids.
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I choose to forgive my boss. I choose to forgive that brother
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so and so that did whatever he did, right.
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And then the last thing you do is you just go back to the cross
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and meditate on the cross, right?
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Look how resilient Christ was. Look how tender hearted Christ
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was. Look how forgiving Christ was.
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And then you're asking God to make you into the image of
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Christ from 1° of glory to the next, like the Scripture tells
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us. So that's the that's what I
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wanted to talk about today, guys.
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The idea is bitter men are brittle men.
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They crack under pressure, they hurt those they love, and they
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fail to obtain the grace of God. But resilient men in Christ are
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strong because they're humble, they're forgiving, and they're
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tender hearted. Now if bitterness has taken
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root, the day is the day to start to uproot it.
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Run to the cross, receive fresh grace and stand firm, not in
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your hardness of heart, but in Christ's strength.
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Thanks for listening guys. If this hits home in any way,
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please share it with the brother.
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Like it, subscribe and join me next time as we continue to
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build godly men in this week in effeminate culture.
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Until then, be strong in the Lord and put away all
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bitterness. God bless you men.