Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Byron, Georgia, where our team is preparing for the war this weekend. Today and yesterday, we’ve been inviting young people from the community to come to our event to hear the gospel. In fact, God has been opening doors left and right. Just yesterday, all day long, we were in the public high schools in classrooms, inviting young people to come. Today as well, they were given opportunities in a different high school in ROTC classrooms to invite young people to come. And right now, at this moment, they are in the lunchroom at the County High School inviting young people to come. If you think of it, pray that the opportunities that God has given us to invite will translate into attendance. The reason why I ask you to pray for that is because when young people come, they’re going to hear the gospel. And if they’re going to hear the gospel, God’s going to do a work in their hearts. And many of them will trust Christ as their Savior.
In fact, last week we were in Pensacola, Florida, where God had done some great things before. But this year our prayer was that God would do even more. God gave us some great opportunities in the community to invite. And on the first night, we had almost 80 young people attend our event, the war. And there that first night, as I preached, God was working in hearts. Young people were under conviction. The conviction was thick. And at the invitation, hearts were willing. In the counseling room, many young people were saved. In fact, just that night, 14 young people trusted Jesus as their Savior, and by the time the three nights were done, 21 had trusted Jesus.
It’s just a thrill to my heart to see God use me and our team because you know what? We’ve got nothing. We are “nothings”. And the fact that as we depend upon God and yield to His leadership, He does great things in and through our lives. That’s what the Thee Generation is all about. You know what, young people? I want my life to be used by God. I would consider myself a part of the Thee Generation. I do my very best to live a life of total surrender to God, of total dependence on His power to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But one of the things that I found is that for those who are pursuing this cause, who are living for the cause like David did with Goliath, is that there are going to be roadblocks set in your way to derail you off of God’s plan for your life. And one of the roadblocks that I found to be most effective at knocking people out of God’s will is the matter of bitterness.
You know, the last couple weeks I’ve been studying Ephesians, last couple months actually, and right now I’m in chapter 4. And there are two verses that I’ve been thinking about the last couple days, verses 26 and 27. Here Paul is speaking to a group of people whose lives are different. They’re intended to live differently as a result, and he says, “Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil.”
And what I believe Paul is saying here is that he understands that anger is a natural reaction when we are wronged. I think there’s a sense in which God created us that way in his image to reflect the justice of God. When we see something happen that’s wrong, part of our natural initial response is to reflect how God feels about sin. It makes us upset. But here in the passage, it’s important to recognize the fact that here he says, “okay, be ye angry, but don’t sin”. There is a sense in which our natural reaction can cross the threshold into that which is sin. And he gives the threshold. He tells us what the threshold is right here in the verse. He says, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” In other words, our natural response to being wronged is to be upset about it. That reflects the justice of God. But when we allow our sense of justice being violated to produce anger that continues from day to day, then we have just crossed the threshold into sin.
Young people, I’m sure that as I’m talking about this here today, there are some videos rolling in your mind of times and places and people that have been hurtful to you. But I want to challenge you, if that is something that still hurts to the present day, if that’s something that’s still dominating your thinking, if that’s something you’re still angry about at this moment in time, days, weeks, months, years after the situation has taken place, you’ve crossed the threshold of sin.
You see, what happens is we see the situation and we recognize that justice has been violated. And we know that God demands justice. And when we see that justice is not being served, we take the situation into our own hands. Sometimes we get angry at the person and we lash out at them with our words. Sometimes we lash out at them physically, maybe even physically harming them. Sometimes we’ll talk to other people and we will sow discord about that person. We’ll talk about them in negative ways. But you know the surefire indication that your heart is still bound by bitterness is that it still hurts to this day.
And you know, the Bible has something to say about this. In Romans chapter 12, the Bible says, “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” A couple of verses later, he says, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” And in another place in 1 Corinthians chapter four, verse five, the Bible says, “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart.” In other words, what God is saying there is, listen friends, it’s not your job to bring justice. Your job is to believe that God’s got it under control.
One of the greatest comforts is to know that perfect justice will be dealt one day. Our job is not to ensure justice. Our job is to forgive.
Now I recognize that there is a role of human justice that God has instituted through government. God created the government to ensure that sin would be punished, that crimes would be paid for. But one of the things you’ve got to recognize is no system of human government is perfect. No human government will ever perfectly ensure that justice is served.
Listen, young person, you are not the judge, you are not the jury, and you most certainly are not the executioner. Your job is not to serve justice, your job is to forgive. In fact, in the passage in Ephesians chapter 4, at the end of the chapter, it says in verse 31, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you.“
You know, one of the reasons why many people are knocked off of the rails of living a life of total surrender and total dependence is because they’ve taken justice into their own hands. They’ve not given place for wrath in what they’ve done. Instead, as verse 27 says, they’ve given place to the devil.
You see, the devil would love for people to be bound by bitterness. The apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians said, “We are not ignorant of his devices.” And in the context, he was talking about people who were not forgiving an offender.
Listen, friends, it’s like this when you allow your anger to continue over a night. When you allow the hurt to extend beyond the day of the offense, what you are doing is you’re giving the devil a plot of ground. And you’re basically telling him, go ahead and build a stronghold on that plot of ground. We’re in basketball season right now. What happens is when you get bitter, when you get upset, when you let that anger extend beyond a day, you’re turning the ball back over into the devil’s possession. And young people, I want you to understand. If you really want your life to count for Jesus, you can’t live a life of anger. You can’t live a life of bitterness. You’ve got to forgive as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you. You want to be a part of the Thee Generation, then you may just need to start today by saying three simple words. I forgive them.
