I don’t know about you – but I spent years wandering in the wilderness because I felt that I wasn’t good enough for God.  And so I spent years on missing out on His love and His joy.  What a waste!

This week on the program we've been talking about receiving and living in the joy of God. A joy that people look for in all sorts of weird and wonderful places but a joy that only ever comes from God Himself and maybe, just maybe you've been listening in and hearing about the joy that God wants to bring into your life and thinking to yourself, "Well, I hear what you're saying and maybe God would want to put joy in your life but I don't think He'd ever do that for me." And if you thought that, you wouldn't be on your own.

I'll tell you why I think that is, because the joy of God seems to be so wondrous and so perfect that, (sigh) it's almost too good to be true, nothing could be that good and anyhow, I've spent so much of my life wanting to find this joy that you're talking about, trying this and trying that but I've never found it. Maybe God’s joy is just like, well another mirage along my journey in this joyless desert of mine.

There's one story in the Bible that I come back to again and again and again and I guess it's because I see myself in that story. So if you've heard me talk about the prodigal son before humour me because it's such a beautiful story that, well it just won't hurt you or me to journey down that path again just one more time. I don't normally do this on this program but I'm going to read you this story.

It's a parable that Jesus told to explain to us what God’s like when it comes to blessing someone, well like me perhaps and like you. When we know that we have absolutely no right to expect His blessing. It's a story that over and over again has spoken into my heart the reality that, well God does mean to bless me and you with His joy. Let's have a read, it comes from Luke’s gospel; Matthew, Mark, Luke, the third book in the New Testament, Luke’s gospel chapter 15 beginning at verse 11:

Jesus said, "There was a man and he had a couple of sons. The younger son said to his Dad, "Dad, give me my cut of the estate." So Dad divided his property between them. Not long after that his younger son got all that he had and set off for a distant country and there he squandered his wealth in wild living.

After he had spent everything there was a really big famine in that country and he was really in need so he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He was so hungry he longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating but no-one gave him anything. Then he came to his senses and he said to himself, 'how many of my Dads hired men have food enough to spare and here I am starving to death. This is what I'm going to do, I'm going to set out and go back to my father and say to him 'Dad, I have sinned against heaven and against you and I'm just not worthy to be called your son. Just make me one of your hired servants.'

So he got up and he went to his father but while he was still a long way off his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him and ran to his son and threw his arms around him and kissed him and the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I'm just not worthy to be called your son anymore," but the father said to his servants, "Quick bring the best robe and put it on him, put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and listen, go and get that fatted calf and kill it because we're going to have a feast and we're going to celebrate because this son of mine who was dead is alive again, he was lost and now he's found." So they began to celebrate.

Meanwhile the older son was out in the field and when he came near the house he heard the music and the dancing so he called one of the servants over and said, "What's going on?" And the servant said, "Your brothers come" he replied, "And your fathers killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound." And the older brother got really angry and refused to go in. So his Dad came out and pleaded with him but he said to his Dad, "Look, all these years I've been slaving away for you, I never disobeyed you and yet you never gave me even a goat to celebrate with my friends but when this son of yours, who squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home you kill a fattened calf for him." And the Dad said, "Son, you're always with me and everything I have is yours but we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and he's alive again, he was lost and now he's found.

Now when we're sitting on the outside looking in on the grace of God and His love and His joy that He wants to lavish on us it's a bit, it's a bit like this prodigal son sitting out there amongst the pig swill. We kind of know from a distance about the goodness of God but we have incredibly low expectations of Him and why shouldn't we? We don't deserve anything from Him and yet the best decision that the prodigal son ever made in his life was to come to his senses and set out on that road home, all be it with low expectations.

As he was travelling along that long road his stomach must have been tied in a knot, he must have rehearsed that speech over and over again and then, then he discovered something he didn't expect. Dad was already out there waiting out by the letter box craning his neck to see a little bit further down the road. Would his son be coming home today? Dad raced down and threw his arms around the lad, there was no lecture, there was no punishment, there was no condemnation and Dad commanded his servants, "Quick quick bring a robe, get a ring, get some sandals." And then the most outrageous thing of all, a party.

What was Dad doing? Dad was lavishing his joy on his son. It was so rational, it was so unfair, the son had done such wrong and the reaction of the faithful son, the older son, well it was pretty much on the money in that respect but Jesus told this story to explain to us what God is like and God, according to this story by Jesus, compulsively wants to share His joy with us. Listen to the explanation that Dad gave to the faithful son at the end of that story, he said:

"My son, you are always with me and everything I have is yours," But listen to this, "But we had to celebrate."

You see, it was a compulsion in the heart of the father, we had to celebrate, we had to be glad because your brother is back with us again.

God just wants to lavish his joy on us, just like the father did on his son in that story even though the son didn't deserve it. And we can sit here amongst the pig swill and we may well have a low expectation of God, that's okay, that doesn't faze Him. The best thing we could ever do is, like that prodigal son, come to our senses and set out on that long road back to Him with those low expectations.

But I'll tell you something; hold onto your hat because that Dad in that story is exactly what God is like, straight from the horses mouth. And when we turn back to Him, He lavishes His joy on us, He pours His spirit into us and loves us and rejoices in us and party's with us and fills us with a joy unspeakable. He can't help it, it's who He is, He loves you, He loves me so much, it's just who He is.

We tend to think of joy and sorrow as being two emotions at opposite ends of the spectrum.  But joy – real joy it turns out is like an antidote for the bitterness of sorrow.  It always has been.

When it comes to experiencing joy in our lives, for most of us, well we think that joy and sorrow are mutually exclusive. You can't know joy when you're under pressure or you've just lost someone you loved or when you've just lost your job. Now those two things are mutually exclusive; joy is when you're happy not when you're travelling through sadness or pain. It's a pretty common human understanding of joy, we rely on our human experience, that’s reasonable but well, what if that's not the case.

What if there's a joy that we can experience when we're under duress just as we can when things are travelling along okay? Well if that were the case then surely, surely we'd all want to know about it wouldn't we? That's what we're going to check out on the program today; is there a form of joy that persists through our pain and suffering? Because if there is, it can make the world of difference.

Yesterday we looked at what Jesus said to His disciples about joy in those dangerous, fearful days leading up to His crucifixion. We often focus on Jesus in that time but imagine, imagine how it must have felt for His disciples. They'd been following him for three and a half years; everybody knew that they were His disciples, what would happen to them if He was crucified? Would they follow the same fate? It was a scary, scary time for them and Jesus comes along and says to them, in John chapter 15, verse 11:

I have said all these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

See, He wanted His joy to fill them and make their joy complete and again in a beautiful prayer to His Father in heaven, just before He was handed over to the authorities, He prays this:

I am coming to You now Father but I pray these things while I'm still in the world so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

The 'they' being His disciples and He was also praying quite specifically for you and for me. Now either Jesus is a lunatic or He's onto something. Either He's a complete madman or He's experienced the joy of God which is something that's meant to strengthen these men during those fearful days and weeks and months ahead. Which was it? Years later the writer of the Book of Hebrews explains it to us, have a read. It's in the Bible, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2. He writes this:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfector of our faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross scorning at shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Now that's really interesting, what it tells us is that it was the joy that Jesus knew was coming, His glory in heaven, that sustained Him through that indescribable experience of being nailed to a cross. You see it was joy that caused Jesus to endure the cross. We saw He was filled with great joy before His crucifixion, He knew there was great joy to come after the crucifixion and so that's what caused Him to be able to do what He did, for you and me, to suffer and to die to pay for our failures and our rejection of God. Joy had a powerful role in His pain and His suffering.

In the Old Testament, the Book of Nehemiah, chapter 8 verse 10 if you want to check it out, you see how Israel was grieved and wanted to weep when Ezra, the priest and the scribe, showed them how they'd strayed away from God. They were convicted in their hearts of their sin but look at what Ezra said to them. They knew they'd strayed and they knew they'd got it wrong, have a listen to what happened:

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, "This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Don't mourn or weep." For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy the choice food and the sweet drinks and send some to those who have nothing prepared for them. This day is sacred to our Lord, don't grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

God's joy, the joy of the Lord is our strength, it's joy that sustained those people through their grief, it's joy that sustained Jesus on the cross, it's joy that makes us strong to endure because joy is the antidote to the venomous sadness and suffering and pain and loss:

Do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

And like any antidote it doesn't come from within, it's not something we produce, it comes from God, its the joy of the Lord.

Can I tell you, my experiences of suffering? I'm like anyone in this world, we all suffer don't we? It's not, we never want to suffer but we do, we go through times in life where we go through terrible suffering and I have one particular time in my life that I look back on and it was a really, really difficult time of suffering.

We have all these things going on around us that hurt us and crush us and destroy us and tear us down but when I was suffering, I'd just come to faith in Jesus Christ and there was this joy. I don't think I would have used that word then but there was this special thing happening and even though I was going through extraordinary pain and hurt and loss at the time there was an incredible joy in my heart.

Now this is not fun, these are not things we'd wish upon anybody but as I sit in the chair in my study where I pray early in the morning and share those things with God and read His word and just sit still in His presence, there's a joy that I can't put into words that fills my heart. And when I look back on those really painful times I look back at them with a sense I would never wish those times on my worst enemy but you know something; I wouldn't swap them either. I wouldn't change anything, because in those difficult painful times I experienced the sweetness of the joy of the Lord. Listen to how the apostle Paul puts it, he said:

We are pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed.

And again when he's on death row in a Roman prison he writes, in Philippians chapter 4:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. God is near, don't be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord always.

This guy knew, he was on death row, he was in a prison in chains and those chains couldn't hold him because he knew that the joy of the Lord was his strength. And he was, he was saying to others, "Rejoice, it is the joy of the Lord which is our strength."

God fills us with His joy and then when the trials come, when the suffering comes, when the temptations come, we have the strengths to endure them with joy. Not with a stinking attitude, not with a complaining attitude, with joy, with thanksgiving and praise and a great attitude. See, this is God’s plan that we should have His joy amidst our suffering.

Some people try to believe in Jesus from a distance. I tried – and believe you me, it just doesn’t work. So when you talk to them about the joy of the Lord – they say “Sure – but not for me.” Really?

Over the last couple of days on the program we've been talking about the fact that it's God’s plan to fill us completely and utterly with His joy, to make our joy complete but how easy is it to stand off at a distance and look around at all the trouble in this world and all the mistakes that so called Christians make in their lives and we think, "Yeah right, look at all that suffering, look at the mess the place is in. God? You have to be kidding. Joy? What a load of rubbish."

Well that’s one reaction and you know something it's not an all together uncommon reaction, I know it well. It used to be my reaction to stand at a distance and "poo hoo" this notion of God, that God is love and peace and joy and He wants us to experience those attributes of His nature; no. The problem is you just can't do that from a distance, let me explain.

I visited a barber shop recently to have my hair cut and as Bert the barber went to work, well he began to talk as you do in a barber shop. What do guys talk about? Well a whole bunch of things, sport, politics, interest rates. Eventually you end up on the subject of God and Bert said to me, "You know Berni; I don't believe that God exists." “Mm, that's interesting, why do you say that?” Here's what he said, "Well you just have to go out into the street to realise that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God existed would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed would there be so much pain and suffering in the world? I can't imagine a loving God would allow all of those things to happen."

Well I thought about that but I didn't want to get into an argument with him so when my hair cut was done I paid and headed out the door. But just outside I saw a man in the street with long stringy dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt so I turned around and headed straight back into the barber shop and I said to Bert the barber, "You know what Bert, barbers don't exist." He was a bit taken aback, "How can you say that?" He asked, "I'm here and I'm a barber and I just worked on you." "No,” I said, "Barbers don't exist because if they did there wouldn't be any people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards like that guy outside."

But Bert was sharp as a tack, he said "Ah," he said, “but barbers do exist. That's what happens when people don't come in to see me." "EXACTLY!" I said to him, "That's the point. God exists too but all that stuff you were talking about, that's what happens when people don't go to Him." End of discussion. You get my point? People want to criticise God from a distance but you just can't do that.

We're talking this week about joy, God’s joy and if we want to enjoy our lives we have to enter into that joy. After all that's what en-joy means, to enter into the joy. You can't stand at a distance and complain about God, you can't say "He's not real", you can't criticise Him for how He runs the joint, outside. You want the joy you have enter 'into' the joy.

I've always liked poetry, I always have. There's a beauty and a wonder in taking something profound and expressing it in poetry and the Book of Psalms is a book of songs and poetry and Psalm 100 says this:

Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us and we're His, all His people the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, into His courts with praise, give thanks to Him and praise His name for the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues to all generations.

Mm, it's beautiful isn't it? "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise." See God, God has a heart full, a God sized heart full of joy that He wants to pour into us, into our lives, into our hearts.

That's what we looked at over the last couple of days on the program and Jesus said it over and over and over again. In John chapter 15, verse 11 we see a time when, well His disciples were really afraid. Jesus is about to be crucified, everything is falling into a screaming heap, they're afraid for their own lives, they're afraid for Jesus, they don't know what’s going to happen and look at what Jesus talks about:

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

That’s an amazing thing for Him to do. I mean either He's the Son of God or He's a lunatic, how can He be talking about joy at this time? We kind of sit back at a distance, either totally scornful of God or, as I used to be, or maybe kind of believing in Him from a distance. Believing that He's God but you never, never really believe that well, He'd want to fill me, me! With His joy:

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Wake up, God is talking here. God is talking about His joy, a joy we can't find in this world, a joy we can't find words to express, a joy unspeakable and He wants to pour that into our lives. As Paul said:

The Kingdom of God isn't about physical things and rules. It's about righteousness and peace and joy that come from the Holy Spirit.

God wants to open the windows of heaven and pour His joy into your life and into my life. Ah man, that's hard to accept, that's so difficult to accept and later on this week we're going to be talking about just accepting that joy but today, can I just say to you, we can't have that joy by just standing back at a distance, we can't have that joy by, I don't know, hanging around outside wondering what it will be like inside but never going.

We can't have that joy, we have to walk through the door, we have to enter into the joy to enjoy. You have to ask first, spend time with Him and pray and beat His door down and don't leave Him alone until He does what He said He'd do. Give us His joy and so make our joy complete, it's a joy that fills us in the good times and the bad times.

Ask, search, knock, whoever asks; receives, whoever searches; finds, whoever knocks, to that person the door will be opened. I mean look at us, we're not perfect, I'm a parent but I want to give good things to my kids, how much more do you think that our Father in heaven will give good gifts to those who ask?

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

God never wastes words; I believe God has brought us together today because He wants to say those words to you, because He wants to give you His joy, the joy of knowing Jesus Christ. He wants to make your joy complete. I have my ups and downs, I have some good days and some bad days but every day the joy of the Lord flows around in my heart because He promised it to each one of us.

Joy is one of those things we all want to have.  Not one person on this planet who doesn’t want it.  So – where does it come from.  I mean who’s idea is it and…well, is it for me?

There is something awesome about being around a person who has a deep sense of joy. Maybe you know one or two people like that and you know, often they're not sort of over the top and really out going people, sometimes they're just quiet and gentle but what you know is that there’s something inside them that you want. They seem to cope so well with the curve balls that life throws at them; they seem to have so much to give. They have like a quiet understated kind of gentle confidence.

Well maybe confidence isn't the right word; maybe contentment’s the word I'm looking for. And that persons joy kind of, well it invades your heart space and we want to be around them. It feels so good because they're safe and encouraging and they're just great to be with. Most of us, as I said, know one or two people like that and what we know is we just want to hang around them because it does us a whole bunch of good. My hunch is we all kind of relate to that.

Joy is a commodity that seems to be in such short supply. The advertising industry says 'if you buy this product you'll have joy' and so you buy the product and, and you and I know it never really brings us that deep abiding joy. It's a symptom of a greedy world; me, me, me, more, more, more but the more we chase after this precious commodity we call joy the more elusive it becomes.

For much of my life I truly subscribed to the philosophy that if all my needs and my desires were met then I'd experience joy. I had the big expensive house, I had the latest and greatest car, I had all the gadgets and they never brought me that joy, that contentment that I was looking for. I spent so much money trying, so where do you get it?

You know sometimes Christians get uncomfortable with the fact that we're talking about joy because it appears to be self centred; it appears that that we go and believe in God just to get His joy. Let me tell you something, when Jesus came to this planet He came proclaiming what? Well He came proclaiming the Kingdom of God, the reign of God in our lives and the people in 1st century Israel, well they got a bit confused because the Romans were occupying the country.

The Romans were occupying just about everywhere in the known world and Israel thought that God was going to send His messiah to set them free from that kingdom, that brutal reign of the Romans, and re-establish God’s kingdom in Israel and they'd have kings like David. Back to the good old days. But that's not what God was talking about. He was talking about something else; it's something that happens in our hearts. In Luke chapter 17, verse 20 it says:

Once the Pharisees came to Him and asked Him, "When is the Kingdom of God going to come back?" And Jesus said, 'you know, the Kingdom of God isn't going to come back in a way that you can see it or you say 'there it is' or 'here it is' because the Kingdom of God is within you.'

The people thought it was a physical kingdom, God had another plan. The apostle Paul puts it like this, he writes in Romans chapter 14, verse 17:

The Kingdom of God isn't about food and drink but it's about righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

What he was saying was that the Kingdom of God isn't about rules or reg's because they were having a discussion about what they could eat or drink. He said, "no, it's not about something physical and rules around that." It's about three things.

Firstly, righteousness which happens when we believe in Jesus, we experience the forgiveness of God and we have a right standing with God for the first time in our lives because we believe in Jesus and then we get our lives on track and in order and then we experience peace and joy. These are the things that the Kingdom of God is all about and they come to us through the Holy Spirit.

Not a peace and a joy that the world offers, it's not the same thing. You can't buy if off a rack in a store, you can't get it by spending money or going on a holiday or drinking good coffee. Not that at all, it's a gift from God and it's something Jesus talked about over and over and over again.

There was a time when Jesus was about to be crucified and everything was falling in a screaming heap and the apostles were afraid and He said to them:

I've said everything to you so that my joy maybe in you and that your joy maybe complete.

In this difficult time Jesus was about giving God’s joy to His people and He's still about that now, He's about giving us God’s joy and making our joy complete. See, not a joy you can buy off the rack, it's a joy that comes from out of this world.

Let me share something really interesting and profound with you. The Greek word – because of course the New Testament was written in Greek – the Greek word for joy is closely related to the word for 'free gift' and in fact the word for grace.

See God’s joy is this thing that He wants to lavish freely on us and over and over again that's what we see as Jesus talks about joy. Not something we conjure up for ourselves, not something we experience because something good happened today, God is a god of joy and He wants to fill us with His joy.

When you go to a place like Luke chapter 15 in the Bible, I really encourage you to do that, there's 3 stories. One of a shepherd who loses a sheep, one of a widow who loses a coin, one of a father who loses a son and in each case these people regain what they've lost and the point of each story is the joy that God experiences when He finds us. God is so over the top full of joy when He has a relationship with us. It's in His heart, it's in His nature.

The apostle Peter puts it this way, he says:

Even though you haven't seen Him with your own eyes, you love Him and even though you don't see Him now you believe in Him and you're filled with an unspeakable and glorious joy because you're receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I didn't realise it at first but as my relationship with Jesus began to grow that wondrous joy filled my heart. Not something we can conjure up, its God’s joy and He pours it into our hearts through His Holy Spirit as we experience His forgiveness and start to live in His goodness and ditch the rubbish we used to think, speak and do. That's why Paul wrote:

The Kingdom of God isn't about rules and regulations and physical things, it's about righteousness, peace and joy.

God’s righteousness, God’s peace, God’s joy that are given to us through the Holy Spirit. Totally out of this world. See until we experience it we don't understand it and even when we do it's impossible to find words that describe the wondrous reality of His joy and His peace because it's a glorious unspeakable joy. Not from this world, from Him.

And we can look in as many holes and under as many logs as we like but it's not until we make a decision to accept Jesus as our own, to put our trust in Him, that we start to experience a joy that's completely out of this world. As we dwell on His presence and pray we're filled with a wonder and an awe and a joy unspeakable. Out of this world.

Joy is one of those precious commodities that seems to be in such short supply. We go looking for it everywhere – so many things promise joy, but end up being just a mirage. Why is that?

It's great to be with you on a fresh new week on the program and today we're starting a series of ten programs, this week and next week, to take a look at joy. It's such a simple little word isn't it? Only three letters, one syllable, JOY and yet it seems to be in such short supply. It's more precious than gold or silver.

Think about it, how many of the people that you know would say, if asked, "I'm really enjoying my life" and if I asked you how much on a scale of 0 to 10 are you enjoying your life, how would you answer? Most people, well most people hover somewhere around the middle or the bottom half. Why is it that joy seems to be in such short supply in this world?

You know something; I've travelled to lots of parts of this planet over the years. Places where people are really wealthy, I mean really, really wealthy, places where people are moderately well off, places where people live in, well abject poverty.

I know people who are rich and poor, tall and short, black and white, thick and thin but you know something none of those distinctions seem to have much to do with how much they're enjoying their lives because they're all things on the outside and that’s not where it's at.

You can have everything that money can buy, the latest plasma screen, big new car, phone, clothes, jewellery, you can have all those things and more. A wonderful husband or wife, great kids, you can have all those things and still not be enjoying your life.

I heard a really well known businessman on the TV the other night, he can have anything he wants but you could tell his life was unsettled. He was searching for something, looking for something; he knew he hadn't arrived yet. You see so often when it comes to joy and the low levels of joy that we're experiencing, we blame that on the outside things, the external things.

"Well you know, I'd enjoy my life if I had a better job. I'd enjoy my life if, if I earned more money, then I'd enjoy my life and you know something, if all those other people weren't so difficult, if it weren't for the politics at work or the tension at home, if it wasn't for my loneliness, you name it we can blame it then, then I'd enjoy my life."

You know what I'm talking about, blame, blame, blame. But you know why I know that it’s not the things on the outside that bring us joy? Because I used to be one of those people who absolutely believed that it was. I went on holidays to five-star resorts, I had gold plated taps in the en suite. You name it I had it and I could buy it but the one thing I didn't have was joy. Actually I felt desperately miserable in all this wealth; you see there's this big swindle going on.

You may have heard me talk about it before perhaps and I take aim at the advertising industry but it’s not really their fault because what they do is just a symptom of a greedy society. You see they flash up seductive images of success. A businessman has made it or someone who buys a car and has a beautiful wife, they link these images of success to the product they're trying to sell us and effectively the message they have is "if you buy me you'll be happy" and so you do.

You spend your hard earned cash, you go out, you buy it and after a week you discover there's no joy in it at all. And then you watch the next ad, you buy the next thing and it still doesn't satisfy. "Ah no, when I'm happily married then, then I'll enjoy my life," but you know something another person can't make you happy. I have a wonderful wife, truly, Jacqui is my absolute favourite person on planet earth but I can easily still feel empty or hollow or unhappy even though I have her.

You see we live in a world that’s based on greed. Companies know that so they trade on our dissatisfaction, it’s their basis for earning more money to fill people’s pockets to make them happy, it just never does. Now I'm not against capitalism. I'm not against free enterprise, I'm not against people working hard, they're things I've been involved in all my life. It's just that they don't bring you any joy and yet over and over and over again we go looking for joy in all the wrong places.

"You know if I get entertained then I'll have joy." Well sure for a short time you feel good but that’s not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about a, a deep abiding contentment, a deep joy that never goes away even through the highs and the lows, the ups and the downs, the good times and the bad times, deep inside there’s this, there's this joy that we can't describe, there are no words for it.

That's what I'm talking about, joy, real joy. Now you might say to me, "Berni, is that what life’s all about? Aren't you being unrealistic? Are you being a Christian hedonist? I mean, do you think the whole point of knowing God is so that you will feel good?" They're good questions, well let me tell you something. One of Gods greatest promises is the promise of joy when we have a relationship with Him. It's not an optional extra for God, He talks about it hundreds of times throughout the Bible and we're going to look at some of those over this coming week or two.

Just for starters, Psalm 126, verse 5 says:

Those who sow in tears will reap in songs of joy.

And Jesus said to His disciples in John chapter 16, verse 24:

Until now you haven't asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.

Joy isn't some optional extra; it's an integral part of Gods plan for our lives. So often God says He's going to do this or do that so that our joy will be complete.

Over this week and next week we're going to see on the program that God's joy is the most awesome thing, it's the most wondrous thing, its part of the nature of God. God’s heart just floods with joy and it's His joy that He wants to share with us.

Jesus said to His disciples:

I have said these things so that my joy would be in you and your joy would be complete.

See, it's about God's joy being in us; it's not a joy we get from anywhere else. It's a joy that lasts forever and it’s a joy that comes only from Him. You know the problem we have? I've done this and I know a lot of other people have done this and maybe, maybe it's been in your life too, we go trying to chase down this joy, this elusive little thing called joy and we just always end up looking in the wrong places. And sometimes we miss the blindingly glimpsingly obvious. God is a god of joy, His heart is full to overflowing with His joy and He wants to pour His joy into my life and into yours.

Anger is an interesting thing – it comes from our sense of justice. Even God gets angry. Problem is, sometimes our sense of justice can be a little distorted. So when we experience angry – what can we do with it?

Anger is one of those basic facts of life and in many respects it's a natural reaction to a whole range of situations. Sometimes we think that anger in and of itself is wrong, well that's not so. See, God gets angry so either God is a sinner or anger itself is not a sin. Hmm, makes you think doesn't it? I passionately believe that Jesus Christ came and died for my sins and yours and that He was and is utterly perfect. A perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins.

And yet when He went to the temple in Jerusalem and saw that they had turned it into a bizarre He was angry, He made a whip and turned over the tables and drove the traders out of the temple with that whip. Of course God is a loving God but God is also a god of anger and ultimately, of punishment. So is anger right or wrong in our lives and what do we do with that anger?

Well, well let’s take a look at the anatomy of anger today. Basically it goes something like this: I've been wronged by someone, I therefore feel angry, they owe me some recompense so I'm going to respond in anger to obtain vengeance. That's kind of the cycle and in a sense, anger comes out of our sense of justice.

Of course, as we've seen on the program this week we can have quite a distorted sense of justice sometimes. We can be touchy or selfish and throw tantrums and so even though actually sometimes we haven't been wronged, people just fall short of our expectations or, or we're being selfish and we feel wronged and then anger, justice and vengeance take hold in our hearts.

Sometimes people do things that are clearly wrong and we're angry, okay how do we respond? The other day on the program we read this passage from the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 26. It says:

Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil.

In other words, sometimes we get angry, God knows that. The question is whether we dwell on it and let it fester over night and tomorrow and the next day and over and over and over and in doing so, whether we make room for the devil to distort our sense of justice and then this root of bitterness takes hold in our lives OR whether, like God, we're “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."

See, anger itself isn't a sin, God is angry with those who turn their backs on Him. You see that over and over and over again throughout the Bible. Let me read you just one example of God's anger, this is about Israel, Gods chosen people and it comes from the book of Judges chapter 2, verse 12:

Israel forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt. They followed and they worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him and they served Baal and the other gods. In His anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to the raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them just as He had sworn to them. They were in great distress.

See, this is God's response to His people forsaking Him but it's a right response. God never gets angry without just cause and this anger of God against Israel comes from God's sense of justice. He had a relationship with Israel, they were His people, He was their God and He said:

I'm a jealous God; you will have no other Gods before Me. You will worship me and me alone.

And of course Israel turns away from God and does these horrible things and they experience Gods anger and yet the wonder of God is that He's slow to anger and ready to forgive.

You know ultimately, when you and I harden our hearts against Him and our ways against Him, like Israel we will experience His anger. So how do we make sense of all of this? God gets angry but we shouldn't? Remember anger has its roots in our sense of justice. That much we get from God because we're made in His image. And of course, as I said, God never gets angry without just cause. The problem is, we can't say the same thing about us. Our justice gyroscope is so often out of balance and then, when we do experience anger we want to wallow in it and work it over and over in our heads and seek revenge and in doing that we make room for the devil.

Anger is a natural reaction and in some cases it's the right reaction the problem is, when you or I are the injured party our sense of justice is questionable at best and whacky at worst. So what do we do? How do we handle it when we feel that we've been wronged and we want revenge? We want recompense, we want justice to be done, how do we handle that? Well, God tells us in Romans chapter 12 beginning at verse 17 have a listen, he says:

Don't repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what’s right in the eyes of everybody. If its possible, as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Don't take revenge my friends but leave room for Gods wrath for it is written, "It is mine to avenge and I will repay,” says the Lord. To the contrary: If your enemy is hungry feed him, if he's thirsty give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

In other words leave the "justice" thing to God, leave the satisfaction, the recompense, the vengeance as God puts it, to God because His sense of justice is so much better than ours and in any case who knows what He's up to in that person's life? Only He does. When someone hurts us our initial reaction may well be anger, the same anger that God feels when He sees injustice.

The thing that's wrong is for us to repay that evil with another evil, 2 wrongs maketh not a right and God’s saying here, "Don't take revenge but leave room for Gods wrath." Leave room for God to act because Gods justice is so much better than ours, instead bless your enemy. If they're hungry feed them, if they're thirsty give them something to drink, show them grace.

Now we may never see the justice but then that's why Jesus died for you and me, that was so unjust but on that cross justice meets love and its called grace. Grace has been shown to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on that cross, a grace He now calls us to show to others.

Yes, you and I will experience anger from time to time but we're not to repay evil with evil, leave that bit to God. Forgive, forget, live life to the full and bless people, even the people that hurt us, with the grace that God has shown to us. You know something, I don't think that's too bad a plan, what do you think?

It is so easy to go from cool, calm and collected one minute into a temper tantrum in the very next. Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde. But God has some really practical advice as to how to handle that situation.

When you get a group of people together there seems to be, well, two sorts of people there. First there's the person who talks all the time, never shuts up and the other is the person who almost never says anything in the group. Somehow it seems that not many people seem to get the balance right, the balance between talking and listening and often the people who are really quiet in the group can be quite vocal even aggressive in a one on one situation.

Well take for instance when someone provokes us, you know when they do something and you can feel your blood boiling and you go all red in the face, right at that moment it's so easy to spit out something venomous, words we can't take back, words that damage a relationship. Sometimes when we're provoked we can be a bit quick on the draw when it comes to responding.

I want to share a story with you, I remember once as a consultant  (I used to run an IT consulting firm with some partners before I became a Christian. Quite a few years ago now) I was being mucked around by a large and important client of a particular ethnic heritage. I was dealing with him for months trying to kick off a project that meant a lot of money for our firm, it was a large global organisation and after months of investing time and effort with the people and with their management they pulled the plug on the project.

I remember I was sitting in my office and I received an email from one of our consultants working with me on this particular project, explaining that the client had decided not to go ahead. I just blew my stack, I couldn't believe that they had wasted so much of our time and resources and it wasn't fair and we were losing all this revenue and I tell you, I am not afraid to admit, I had a few choice sentiments that I almost expressed in a reply to that email to my fellow consultant. I even typed this angry venomous email.

I was just about to send it and I thought better of it and instead I erased all of that and I sent a fairly benign email. Well, it's just as well because I hit the "reply to all" button on the email, and the email ended up not only with my fellow consultant but also with the client. Gulp! Can you imagine, if my thoughts of anger had been included in this vitriolic angry email, what would have happened?

Now you might say, "Berni, why are you sharing this stuff with us?" It's simple because we all go through situations day by day by day that make us angry. People, organisations, circumstances drive us insane and we want to explode. Just the other day I was staying at a place and the houses were fairly close together and it was a little holiday place and a neighbour, a few doors down, had their music on really loud, I mean really loud. Couldn't sit in our lounge room and just talk so I just went down and asked them if they wouldn't mind turning it down. Well, you should have heard what came out of that guy’s mouth.

Just a simple thing, their music was too loud and obviously they'd never been taught to take other people into account and the vitriol, the words, the venom that came out of his mouth and now he just ignores me and I just asked him to turn it down and I thought, "hang on, you're missing something. You were the guy who was doing the wrong thing!" And you know what I wanted to do? I just wanted to explode at him, I just wanted to tell him what I really thought, I wanted to teach him a lesson, I wanted to teach him some manners. You know the feeling don't you? And then he ignores me, he was the one that did wrong.

Now I'm really glad that I went through that experience and as hard as it was, can I tell you? Every fibre of my being wanted to tell this guy what I thought, as hard as that was I didn't say anything because exploding is never a good look, never but this feeling of anger is something we all experience. Some people more than others, some people are like on a hair trigger, anything will set them off, anger and tantrums are an ugly thing.

We're talking about anger management on the program this week and there's some really great practical input from Gods word that I want to share with you today. Comes from James in the New Testament chapter 1, verse 19. It says this:

My dear brothers take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry because a mans anger doesn't bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore get rid of all the moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you.

Isn't this really practical, it’s special? God’s solution to this whole anger thing, ‘Be slow to speak and slow to become angry.’

Slow down! Every time someone does something that annoys us we don't have to react this instant. We don't have to rip their heads off; we don't have to send an angry email. Maybe this is where the advice comes from "count to ten" you know. Interesting, throughout the Bible nine times you'll find these words or ones very similar:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger abounding in steadfast love.

I'll read it to you again; this comes from Psalm 103, verse 8:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

What a great concept, firstly He's compassionate and gracious, He's slow to anger. Just hold on for a minute, cut this person some slack, this man who wouldn't turn his music down. If I'm behaving like God I'm going to be slow to anger and the abounding and steadfast love bit, you know what I've decided to do? I've decided to pray for this guy regularly 'cause that's what Jesus says, "Pray for your enemies."

And be slow to speak. Just don't say anything, don't defend or assert or criticise or judge or belittle or shout or scream or anything. Don't! Be slow to speak. Now that's not easy, it begins with a change of heart; it begins by deciding that my anger is my problem. It begins by me resigning from the position of "tin pot little god at the centre of the universe". It begins by deciding the world doesn't owe me anything.

Being slow to anger and slow to respond and when we do respond, what should we say? I love this, this bit from Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1:

A gentle answer turns away wrath but a hard word stirs up anger.

You know when someone’s done us wrong the last thing we want to do is give them a gently answer, it just so cuts across the grain. We want to get recompense but Gods wisdom is that, 'a gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up even more anger'. This is Gods wisdom and it's really hard, it goes against the grain to bite our lip when someone else does something wrong.

It's so hard sometimes to respond in love, I find it hard. Each time becomes a little easier, each time heals a relationship, each time people notice and one day the relationship can be so strong that we have the ability to influence this person who hurt us with the love and the mercy and the grace of God.

It's hard to deal with anger but there's a right way and the wrong way.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger abounding in steadfast love.

Every now and then – we all through a temper tantrum. And so often it’s over the craziest little things. A hot temper isn’t a good look. So – how do we deal with it? How can we conquer it?

Now when we're bringing up children we expect them to have temper tantrums. They're never fun of course but a temper tantrum is part of growing up. It's a part of the process of moving from immaturity to maturity, of discovering how to exercise the responsibilities that come with new freedoms and that's why I believe Gods plan is to put children into loving families so that mum and dad who are more mature and who love the child are there to guide the child through that growing process and the love bit helps us to absorb the pain and the inconvenience of the tantrums along the way.

It's something that I think none of us really appreciate until we become parents ourselves. Now temper tantrums are par for the course for a child or a teenager but what about an adult, what about a person who is supposed to have matured and learned how to control their emotions? And when you or I have a temper tantrum do we just shrug our shoulders and say, "oh well' or is it something we need to deal with?"

We've all been there haven't we? Having our little temper tantrum and 99% of the time they're over silly little things. If we were truly honest with ourselves we'd stand back and say, "well, that was dumb wasn't it? Why did I bite my wife's head off over something small? Why did I snap at my husband because of this tiny little thing?"

For me it's the fact that I'm a perfectionist, it's just the way I am, it was the way I was brought up. Our school motto was "Age quod agis" which means “whatever you do, do well” or “if it's worth doing it's worth doing properly”. So I always fold and hang the bath towels perfectly, when I'm dusting I pick up things on the shelf and dust under them instead of dusting around them, I'm always on time and normally five minutes early, I always put the milk back exactly the same spot in the fridge not in a different place, the knives in the knife block, each one has to be in its place.

When you're a person like that God is going to make absolutely sure that He puts you in a family and into a work place into a Church where there's at least one person who's completely at the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone who’s not neat and tidy, someone who’s not always on time. It's an absolute dead certainty that God's going to do that.

And it doesn't matter what personality type we are He's always going to make sure that we rub up against someone who’s different and that is sometimes going to drive us nuts if we let it. That's where so many people have their temper tantrums, right in that place of difference.

Instead of standing back and realising those differences we just react like Pavlov's dogs, stimulus: response, stimulus: response, stimulus: response. It's a vicious cycle that leads to anger and temper tantrums. Someone does something that flicks our switch off we go with this temper tantrum. I wonder if you can relate to this.

My daughter Melissa works part time on a check-out in a large department store and every time she comes home at least one customer had to have a temper tantrum at the counter over something. Let's get a revelation today; we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people who are going to do imperfect things. At the department store, on the road, at work, at home, at Church, everywhere we go.

And we can either have temper tantrums or decide, you know something I actually want to have some peace in my life. I want to enjoy my life and you know something other people's failures are not going to rob me of that peace. Other people falling short of my expectations are not going to rob me of that peace. You know something we want everyone to be just like us, we want everyone to see the world just the way we see the world and it's never going to be like that.

There's a wonderful little Proverb, if you want to read it it's in the Old Testament Proverbs chapter 29, verse 22:

An angry man stirs up dissention and a hot-tempered one commits many sins.

If we have a bit of a temper maybe today’s the day we need to admit that and it's time to deal with it. It's time to get things into perspective. You see those little things that we get upset about 99.9% of them just don't matter, really they don't. I need this perhaps even more than you do.

Temper tantrums are a sure sign that we need to do some growing up. I tell you something God wants three things for our lives, a deep relationship with Him, the deep joy that comes from that relationship and for that relationship to bear good fruit in our lives, fruit that other people can be blessed through. It's how He works, that's how Gods economy runs and temper tantrums are a sure sign we haven't come to grips with the main currency of that economy, the currency of grace.

There's another Proverb, Proverbs chapter 16, verse 32:

Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is better than one who takes a city.

Isn't that an interesting way of putting it because a warrior, the man who takes the city, is someone who takes things by force through fighting? And Gods saying here a patient person is better than a warrior, patience is better than taking things by force, patience is better than a temper tantrum. When we control our aggression we can be such a great influence for God in the lives of other people because they see something that they want, a peace, a quiet contentment, a joy that replaces the outbursts and that's a beautiful thing; humility, a grace, a sweet fragrance of God Himself.

We do, we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people, fact of life, full stop, end of story, never going to change this side of eternity. People are always going to be different to us, people are always going to have weaknesses that rub us the wrong way and we have a choice, either behaving like an immature adolescent and throwing our little temper tantrum or deciding, you know something I'm just not going to go round that mountain anymore.

Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is better than one who takes a city.

An angry man stirs up dissention and a hot-tempered one commits many sins.

I'm not going there anymore. It is time to flip the switch and say, "God I just don't want to go there anymore." Can I tell you? Sometimes it is so hard just to shut up and not say anything. Sometimes we have to bite our lips so hard that they bleed. But when we draw close to God, we let Him change us on the inside as we come to grips with His grace and we do away with the little temper tantrums.

Self control and patience are hard things to learn and there's only one way of learning them, the hard way but they're fruits of the Spirit of God that grow in us as we draw close to Him and co-operate with Him and lay down our right to perfection and lay down our right to everything we expect of other people. God wants us to have peace.

Bitterness and anger can become a habit – an attitude that grips our live. It’s like a venom that pumps through our veins. Fortunately though, there is an antidote. God made certain of that.

Anger is a real problem in this world, it's running at plague proportions and yet it's something you don't hear people talk much about. Psychologists have come up with a term 'the last straw syndrome'; people seem to do outrageously destructive things. The young teenager who shoots up his high school, the road rage that happens around the place, people are flying off the handle all over the place, it's an epidemic.

You and I experience anger on a regular basis, both when it grips our hearts and when we're on the receiving end of someone else's anger. Anger, fury, rage, indignation, a desire to lash out, to hurt others, a deep sense that we've been wronged and we have to set it right through revenge. It's the stuff that wars are made of. So what's the antidote? How do we deal with it decisively and end the hurt that anger causes?

Well I have to tell you I am an expert in anger management, I'll tell you why. They say once an alcoholic always an alcoholic, people who seem to have overcome it talk about themselves as being recovering alcoholics. In other words it always stays with them but it's something that they keep overcoming every day.

Well for me it's the same when it comes to anger. My big Achilles heel, the deep flaw in my character is this anger thing. Berni's a type A achiever type of personality, I set goals, I chase them down, I hit targets, I move on to the next thing, and that's okay, it reflects in everything I do, the way I drive, the way I cook, I'm always planning my time, I'm always being efficient, achieving the best that I can.

It's great but it has its down sides. Now no matter what personality type we have each one of us, we expect everyone to be like us. I expect you to be like me and when you drive more slowly than I want you to and when you're not as efficient as I want you to I have a tendency to get angry. When you have my sort of personality you can be brutal about all those other people out there who just don't meet your expectations.

It drives me nuts when the car in front of me drives just slowly enough for me to miss the green traffic light up ahead. Unbelievable, how can they do that? I just want to lean on my horn and shake my fist and find some choice words. It's the stuff that road rage is made of.

My favourite saying used to be, "it's so hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys." So for the first thirty or forty years of my life I lived in an almost constant state of anger and rage. So when I talk about dealing with anger and finding an antidote to anger I'm not talking this stuff from a text book, I'm talking from a transformed life, a life that continues to be transformed because I'm kind of like that recovering alcoholic, this is going to be a lifelong process in me, a process of rehabilitation that God takes me through because that's how I'm wired.

Now I love a passage out of the New Testament of the Bible, the Book of Hebrews, it talks right into this problem and it's the place where I discovered the antidote to this venom. We had a quick look at this yesterday on the program. Have a listen. It comes from Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14:

Pursue peace with everyone and holiness because without them you won't get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble because through it so many will be contaminated.

That root of bitterness is what takes hold of our hearts and our lives when we fail to deal with anger. It's like biting into a lemon and sucking out the sour juice, have you ever done that? Just thinking about it makes your eyes water doesn't it? I remember working with a woman and she was a senior manager in government, very competent woman but she had this attitude in life and this look on her face as though just before she walked out of her office she had bitten into a lemon, she was that sort of a person.

When a root of bitterness springs up it causes trouble. When you plant a plum seed eventually it's going to take root and produce plums, not apricots or nectarines or apples but plums. When we let goodness take root in our hearts we're going to grow good fruit. When we let bitterness take root in our hearts we're going to grow bitter fruit. The root produces the fruit and that's what causes trouble.

It doesn't matter so much what's going on around us, see we can blame everyone and everything and every circumstance but really it matters on what's happening in our hearts, that's what determines the fruit in our lives. Proverbs chapter 15, verse 15 says this:

All the days of the poor are hard but a cheerful heart has a continual feast.

In other words how we respond to things, how we react to things depends on what’s going on in our hearts and if we've allowed a root of bitterness to take hold of our heart, you know when people have hurt us in the past or we've missed out on things and all of a sudden we get this bad attitude, this attitude that's like we've bitten into a lemon and we treat everything in the world as though we've just bitten into a lemon it's going to ruin our lives.

But the antidote, the antidote is also a thing of the heart; the antidote is the grace of God. God has every right to be angry with you and me; we both turned our backs on Him. In fact the Bible talks a lot about the anger of God and says, look when you get angry leave it to Him because He knows how to handle it but if we keep living in anger we're going to end up with a root of bitterness.

God handles His anger by a thing called grace, the unmerited favour of God. Grace by definition is something we don't deserve. Grace is what happened on the cross when Jesus was crucified. A place where Gods justice, the punishment that we deserve fuses with God’s love because He let His Son take the punishment and it turns into this thing called grace.

He forgives us by sacrificing His Son to satisfy His sense of justice and anger and that's the good news for us, that's grace, it's the antidote for bitterness and anger. Listen again to that passage out of Hebrews.

Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble.

When we live in that grace it takes the bitterness away, it tears it out and heals it because when we come to grips with grace, when we come to grips with how much He's forgiven us and the cost to Him of doing that in His Son it produces a new root, a root of grace and mercy in our hearts and that starts producing a new fruit.

God’s grace is the only antidote to this bitterness and this anger that I've come across. Instead of changing the fruit, you see sometimes we try and change the outside, because we can't, we need to change the root, we need to experience and drink in the grace of God and let Him produce a new fruit in our lives.

Bitterness is something that we sometimes carry around in our hearts. And so often, we don’t even realise that this root of bitterness has taken hold in our lives. What is it and what can we do about it?

I don't know if you've noticed but when a seed falls to the ground and dies ultimately it sprouts and takes root. And if it was the seed of a plum tree we can be fairly certain that the thing that's growing there is going to one day produce, well not apricots, not apples, not pears, we all know it's going to produce a plum because it's a plum tree that's taken root and in fact it's the root that ultimately produces the fruit. It just one of those basic facts of life that actually we don't have to think much about, the root produces the fruit.

And it's a bit like that in our hearts. If our heart takes root in goodness then we'll produce good fruit, in bad things and we'll produce bad fruit, in sweet things then we'll produce sweet fruit, in bitter things and we'll produce bitter fruit. It's just not rocket science is it?

This week on the program we're going to take a look at the phenomenon of anger in our society and in our lives. There's a great movie a few years ago called Anger Management. Anger is a real phenomenon in the hearts of so many people, you know how pressure builds up in life and ultimately people explode. We have at home a pressure cooker and we cook things in it and there's a vent and if the steam didn't come out of the vent that pressure cooker would explode and it's the same with us.

So many people are out there venting their anger; it’s in epidemic proportions. You have road rage and supermarket rage and a call centre rage, in fact this week’s program was prompted by a real life experience. At the moment I have a couple of brothers, Greek guys, doing some painting at my old 19th century terrace, just needed a bit of touching up. And they're doing a much bigger job in parallel to ours in one of the wealthiest streets in our country.

This place they're painting is a huge five storey mansion, they're using a special paint that costs, wait for it, a thousand dollars a tin – unbelievable and the houses in this street are worth between fifteen and twenty-five million, this is where the mega wealthy live. And lots of people in this fairly narrow street are having building work done and so it's pretty crowded and so even though they've got great views and lots of money and massive mansions there's quite a bit of strife in this place.

The painters have been working there now for a few weeks and they were telling me that you wouldn't believe the arguments raging between the neighbours. The house that they're working on belongs to a couple in their seventies and they haven't talked to their neighbours for twenty-five years because a quarter of a century ago they had an argument about some building works.

And all the neighbours in this street are fighting with one another. The woman who our painters are working for, they'd done some work a few years before and she was very nice, and now all of a sudden everyone is mean and nasty and horrible. Now you stand back from that and you think that's unbelievable.

I mean these people have everything in life, there's nothing they can't have or buy or own really, everything their hearts desire and yet there's a spirit, well a spirit of anger and bitterness and dissention in this place. Makes you wonder what's going on there.

These two painters, I've used them before, they are lovely people, they do a brilliant job, they're honest as the day is long. How can this woman be so nasty to them? I'll tell you what’s happened, anger and bitterness has taken root in her heart, that's why. You let things get to you and you get angry with people over and over and over again and it's like, it's like bitterness takes root in your heart and the root produces the fruit.

God actually talks a lot about anger, you know it's a word that pops up three hundred and seventy-six times in the Bible which makes it one of the leading subjects that God talks about. Anger is something we all have to deal with and it springs up so often out of a root of bitterness.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament puts it like this, he says:

Pursue peace with everyone and holiness because without them you won't get so much of a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on God’s grace so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble because through it so many will be contaminated.

See there it is, the root produces the fruit. Make sure no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. When a root of bitterness takes hold in our hearts it springs up and causes trouble and contaminates everyone around us.

We all have a problem with anger some days, we do, some people more than others but the longer we let it go on the more it takes hold of our hearts and our lives and produces bitterness and a bitter root produces bitter fruit. A root isn't something that happens overnight, it's something we cultivate and if we don't want it to keep growing we have to stop feeding it.

The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 26. He says:

Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil.

See he knows, God knows. We all get angry from time to time, it's not a sin. I mean sometimes people do things and it just causes us to get angry because they've wronged us but if we keep it inside, if we let the sun go down on our anger, if we keep it in our hearts and we brood over it and we work it over and over and over in our minds and we plan our revenge, that's when it grows from a root into fruit.

The right way of handling it is just to get over it, to forgive and to move on and then we won't be cultivating this root of bitterness which as sure as God made little green apples will produce fruit of bitterness because the root produces the fruit.

Now this isn't something we can do on our own, I believe we need an antidote to this venom. It's something that heals and cleanses and just gives us a fresh perspective. Let me just take you back to that earlier quote that we read before from Hebrews chapter 12, verses 14 and 15 where the writer says:

Pursue peace with everyone …

In fact that's an active thing isn't it? Pursue peace, go out of your way to pursue peace:

… and holiness because without them you won't get so much of a glimpse of God. Make sure no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble.

See the antidote to bitterness that the Apostle Paul is pointing to here is God’s grace. What's grace? Grace is Gods unmerited favour. We're going to talk about it a bit on the program tomorrow because it's a really important thing. God’s grace is His unmerited favour. He has every right under the sun to be angry with you and me a whole bunch more than He ever is and yet He sent His Son Jesus to die on that cross.

The cross is where justice meets love and turns it into grace, God’s forgiveness and when we experience that grace that's what acts as the antidote to this root of bitterness. Without it it's inevitable that a root of bitterness will spring up.