In this sermon, the speaker addresses the issue of Christians becoming bitter and cold instead of staying sweet in spite of being hurt. The speaker emphasizes that even though society is disintegrating and the last days are approaching, Christians should strive to maintain the victory of the cross and reflect the image of Jesus. The sermon references the story of Korah's rebellion in Numbers 16, where a group of people questioned and rebelled against Moses and Aaron's leadership. God's response to this murmuring and complaining was severe, as He threatened to consume the entire congregation. Moses, as a true pastor, intervened and urged the congregation to separate themselves from the wicked men to avoid being swept away in their sin. The sermon concludes by suggesting that there may be individuals in the congregation who have been guilty of similar attitudes and behaviors, urging them to repent and turn away from bitterness and strife.

This message is one of the Times Square Church Pulpit Series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, Post Office Box 260, Lindale, Texas, 75771, or by calling Area Code 903-963-8626. None of these messages are copyrighted, and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to friends. Staying sweet in spite of being hurt. Now, the Lord just gave this to me while I was sitting over here, and I don't know why I can't tell you of any particular person or party or group or anyone in the church because I don't hear things. I'm glad the Lord, I'm glad, you know, my wife tells me I'm losing my hearing completely. She's starting to yell at me just to, I mean, we'll be in the car, and I said, why are you raising your voice? Because you didn't hear me the first time. Well, when you get 60, it happens. Some dear lady wrote me a note recently, said, Brother, I wish you'd quit talking about being old. She doesn't have to look in the mirror like I do every morning and see what I see. But sitting here tonight, I really believe the Lord laid something out. Now, I want you to go to Matthew, the sixth chapter. Sixth chapter of Matthew. And after I speak a short word, we're going to go right into intercessory prayer, but I'm going to unburden my heart to you tonight. I hope when you leave tonight, you'll be able to say, I was so glad I was there tonight. I was so glad because God said something that just came from his throne, and I happened to be there. Praise God. Matthew, the sixth chapter, I want you to start reading verse 14 with me. For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father, what? Will not forgive your... If you forgive others their sins, he'll forgive yours. If you will not forgive others their sins, he will not forgive you. Then your heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions. Now, look at me, please. This is what frightens me. This is what puts such a concern in my heart tonight. I was just looking out over the audience, and God began to speak to my heart that in spite of what God's been doing in this church, there are some that are going to miss completely. The grounds literally... I mean, I'm going to show you how the grounds are going to open up and swallow so many because of a hurt somebody has caused them. And that hurt has turned to gangrene. That hurt has turned to poison, and it's getting worse and worse because there's a spirit upon them of unforgiveness. And I really feel like I'm prophesying. The Holy Spirit just laid this on my heart. I don't know who among you tonight this may be for. It could be one, two, five, ten, maybe a hundred. But there's a hurt in you of some kind. There's a deep hurt. I don't know who did it. I don't know if it was a husband, wife, friend, or you feel that a pastor or a worker or one of the brothers or sisters in the church hurt you. I don't know who. It may be somebody on the job, but you have carried a hurt, and God wants to deal with it tonight because you could be sitting in the midst of a Holy Ghost outpouring where there's a kind of glory of the Lord's appearing in His house, and you can be missing it completely. You can be sitting there with every one of your sins unforgiven. You can be right at the gates of heaven and not be able to get in. And if you die, if you should just happen to be carried away into death suddenly, you would not be saved. Now, that would be something to spend so much time in a church like this and hear so much gospel and not be saved at the last hour. There may be damnation upon you. And I say that with all my heart in love because I can't soften this, and that's exactly what it says. If you forgive men for their transgression, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. If you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. You can forget grace. You can forget all other scriptures until you deal with this one right here and now. I have overheard in my lifetime in the church of Jesus Christ, pastors and lay people say, Well, you don't know what so-and-so did to me. You don't know the hurt that I've carried all these years. I've not been able to forgive. I've heard daughters say of their mothers, I lived a lifetime with that mother, and she never loved me. She never understood me, and I put up with hell with my mother, and I can't forgive her as long as I live. They don't even talk to their mothers. There's that spirit from hell of unforgiveness. If you will not forgive, God says, I cannot forgive you. Your sins are piling up. You're storing up wrath against the day of judgment because of an unforgiving spirit, something you may not understand, something that you say, Well, the way I see it, I'm the victim. I was minding my own business, doing what I thought was right, and then suddenly somebody hurts you, and this thing builds up. It's a seed at first, but then you begin to think about it, and you keep twisting it and turning it and thinking of all the things you could have said and didn't say, thinking of all the reasons why somebody has hurt you. And so you sit in God's house, worshiping even, hands raised, crying out to God in praises, and all the while, your sins are piling up. Now, that's awesome. That's frightening. And I come against tonight in the name of Jesus every root and seed of bitterness. I come against, in the name of the Lord, as a pastor and a shepherd, against any kind of thing that you don't understand. If there's something you don't understand, you don't let it turn into a boil. You don't let it turn into cancer. You take it to the Lord and leave it at the cross. You just leave it. Say, I don't understand it, but I'm not going to talk about it. I don't understand it, but I'm not going to do anything about it. But the trouble is, when we are hurt, we usually spread that hurt, and everybody around us is affected by it. Usually it's the telephone. Getting on the telephone and saying, I just have to talk to somebody. And so you get on the telephone, and I'm reading prophetically, some of you may have done this this past week, and you say, look, I'm not gossiping, I don't want to hurt the pastors, I don't want to hurt so and so, but I've got to talk to somebody. And there you go, and you spill it out, and it becomes poison. It becomes wrath. And that is an unforgiving spirit, and the whole time you're doing it, you're adding sin to sin. First of all, He can't forgive you for your unforgiveness, and then you add upon that a gossiping, murmuring, complaining spirit. And my friend, when that happens, I want you to go with me, please, to Numbers, the 16th chapter, and I want to show you the tragedy of a child of God who gets a murmuring, complaining spirit. And what God's attitude toward it is. Numbers, the 16th chapter, verse 1. Now Korah, the son of Ishar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, along with Dathan of Biram, they rose up, verse 2, before Moses together with some of the sons of Israel, 250 leaders of the congregation, chosen in the assembly, men of renown. And they assembled together against Moses and Aaron and said to them, You've gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst, so why do you exalt yourself above the assembly of the Lord? It started out with three men. One man, he got another man, and then another. Three of them were the co-conspirators of this thing. And then it spread to 250. That's the danger of any Christian, of any believer in the body of Jesus Christ with a complaining spirit. Outside of a miracle, it's hard to contain. Outside of a miracle, it spreads like a ferocious cancer. You know, this amazes me that we all know that Jesus is coming, and that he's coming soon. We all know that society is disintegrating. We all know that there's a pull in the heart of the church of Jesus Christ that says, the days have come, the last days, they're winding down. And yet in spite of that, there are some Christians, rather than becoming sweet like Jesus and maintaining the victory of the cross, these dear people are turning the other way. They're becoming hard. They're becoming cold. They are questioning leadership. They are questioning other Christians. And rather than becoming sweet and gracious, and the image of Jesus coming forth out of their innermost being is coming bitterness, and wrath, and envy, and strife. It's spread to 250 princes of Israel, men of renown. Suddenly, there are 253. 253 it looks like here. They assembled together against Moses and Aaron. They came against the minister. They came against pastors. Folks, since we've been here in Times Square Church on at least three occasions, we've had people right backstage stand right up, right up nose-to-nose, face-to-face with some of the most bitter gossiping spirits I've ever seen stand right up to your face as if to say, who do you think you are? I'm just as holy as you are. You can't prophesy to me. You can't talk to me because I know God just like you do. Two young men especially said, what do you have to say to us? We know the Lord. We talk to God. We're His prayer warriors. We know just as much as you do is in essence what they were saying. And here's what they were saying to their pastors. You've gone far enough for all the congregation are holy. In other words, we're just as holy as you are, every one of us, and the Lord is in our midst. So why do you exalt yourself above the assembly of the Lord? Now, let me tell you something. I had a gentleman from a very large church west of New York City. And I guess they have 10,000 members. I'll never get... In fact, this is just two days ago. He was talking to my wife and I. And he said... I said, what church you go to? And he named it. And he said, Brother Wilkinson, those people in that church, our church, we love our pastor. We love him. He's the most loved, revered man anywhere. And I said, that's very nice. And then after he left, I turned to my wife and I said, Honey, it's nice to be loved. It's nice to be respected. But I hope that in our church, in Times Square Church, when people ask about what's happening there, they wouldn't go away saying, Boy, do those people love their pastors? They'd go away saying, My, those people love Jesus. They love Jesus. They love the Word of the Lord. Folks, if you love Jesus and you love the Word, you don't have to worry about loving the pastor. That comes with it. But that's not the key issue. In fact, I'd rather some people got mad at me as long as they listened to me and got the truth inside their heart. My granddad had a philosophy. Make them mad or glad, but nothing in between. I've had people from all the United States in the past three or four weeks. I've been preaching a lot of love and grace, so has Bob and Don, but many of these people are on a mailing list and they come here and they say, Brother Wilkerson, what they're trying to say, if you quit prophesying, are you not preaching against sin anymore? I said, Don't worry. Just hang on. You'll hear it. And you see, here are 253 men. They rise up against leadership now and they're full of a complaining murmuring spirit. What's God's attitude toward his children who are so mindless in the spirit that they can literally speak against the ministry? I was born and raised and taught in a preacher's home that you don't touch God's anointed. And if you touch God's anointed, you die. Now, you just don't drop dead, but there's a spiritual death that comes that leads, finally, to physical death. And I told this congregation once about being down in the basement and overhearing a deacon board really pile up on my dad. My dad was a preacher and I was down in the basement in a coal bin and I heard it down through the tubes. What do you call those? Heat vents. And I heard that my dad said he was going to have a rough time at the board meeting, so I was just a little kid. I got a helmet and an old beat-up sword. I don't know where that sword came from. And I was down there. I was going to protect my dad. I was going to march in and deliver him. But I watched over the years. I watched members of the congregation. I remember one woman, especially when my dad was in the hospital, almost dead from bleeding ulcers. And they gave him, on a stick, a cotton ball with water. Somebody said that they called it a water sucker. And all she heard was that Pastor Wilkson claims to be sick and he's sitting in the hospital sucking candy. He had a sucker in his mouth. And spread viciously, my dad was dying, and spread this vicious rumor that he really wasn't sick. I don't know the whole details, but it was awful. But I watched over the years the judgment of God on that family. Children that were destroyed. Marriages that became nothing but in name only. And I saw the awesome judgments of God. Folks, one of the worst things that a Christian can do is to murmur and complain. I think that... Well, in fact, it shows it here very quickly. Moses heard this. He fell on his face. And the reason he fell on his face, he knew God's attitude toward his children who complain or murmur. And he spoke to Korah and all his company, saying, tomorrow morning the Lord will show you who is his and who is holy and will bring him near to himself, even the one whom he would choose. He will bring him near to himself. Do this now. Take your censers for yourself, Korah and all your company. Put fire in them and lay incense upon them in the presence of the Lord tomorrow. And the man whom the Lord chooses shall be the one who is holy. You've gone far enough, you sons of Levi. God says that's as far as you're going to go. You've complained enough. That's it. Then Moses said to Korah, Here now, you sons of Levi. Is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the congregation of Israel to bring you near to himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, to stand before the congregation of the minister? In other words, he said, isn't it enough that God is using you, touching you, that you're a part of what God is doing? And that, verse 10, he's brought you near, Korah and all your brothers, sons of Levi, with you. And are you seeking for the priesthood also? Therefore, you and all your company are gathered together against the Lord. Let me tell you something. Listen. Give me your attention. Just look this way, if you will. Any time that a Christian complains against true God-ordained holy leadership, any time they complain, it's not against that individual. If I'm a minister of the gospel and I'm walking righteously before the Lord, my heart is right and I can say, show me where you can accuse me. Because Moses became very angry, it says in verse 15, and said, do not regard their offering. I've not taken a single donkey from them nor have I done harm to any one of them. If I can stand here and say, I've never robbed you, I've done nothing but try, and for any pastor, I've done nothing but try to conform you to the image of Jesus, then any complaint or murmur, and this is my security, I'm not saying that anybody here, I don't have an ear that somebody's murmuring, complaining. I do know the Holy Spirit has put this on my heart. But if I am really walking in the spirit of God, any complaint against me is against God. It's not against me. That's what God said. It's against Him. You're really not murmuring against an individual. You're murmuring against God Himself. You're gathered together, not against me, but against the Lord. Verse 12, Moses sent a summons to Dath and Abiram, the sons of Elam, and they said, we will not come up. Is it not enough that you brought us up out of the land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness? Look what they think of Egypt. You brought us up out of the land flowing with milk and honey. There's nothing but leeks and garlic. And they call it now land of milk and honey. But you had also lorded over us. You lorded over us. Indeed, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey. You've not given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Would you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up. In other words, who are you to tell us what to do? Verse 18, so each man took his own sense and put fire in it, laid incense on it, and they stood at the doorway in the tent of meeting with Moses and Aaron. Thus Korah assembled all the congregation against them. Now you see it spread to the whole congregation. Verse 3, 250. Now the whole congregation at the doorway of the tent meeting and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, separate yourself from this congregation. I may consume them instantly. Isn't that amazing? Do you want to see God's attitude toward complaining or murmuring against true God-ordained leadership? Here it is. Separate from this congregation that I may consume them instantly. Now let me show you the heart of a true pastor. Moses was the pastor of Israel at the time. Let me show you the heart of a true pastor. Now if this man's heart was not right with God, if he didn't love the people, he'd say, I warned you. I told you. Now you're going to get it. God, give it to them. They deserve it. They've been murmuring, complaining, and gossiping. Lord, I've had enough of it. Deal with them. Send fire out of heaven and consume them. Now look at the next verse, verse 22. This is Moses and Aaron. They fell on their faces and said, O God, thou God of the spirits of all flesh, when one man sins, wilt thou be angry with the entire congregation? That's the pastor's heart. And that's what's in my heart tonight. Nothing but the love of Jesus Christ with a loving warning that you dare not associate with people or Christians, whether they go to this church or any other church. You do not associate with those who have a murmuring, complaining, gossiping spirit, an unforgiving spirit. Verse 24. Speak to the congregation, saying, Get back from around the dwellings of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Get away. Folks, that's God's word. Hear it. Will you please hear it in the spirit? If somebody comes to you, if they call you on the telephone, if they draw you aside, and usually it's like this. Now, I don't want to gossip, and I really love this person, but you know what they did? That's the way it usually goes. But it's always, I'm not gossiping. I don't mean anybody any hurt. But here's what happened. And then they spoke. And I'll tell you what. A big ear is the same as a big tongue. They're both evil. It's just as evil to listen to it as to speak it. I've asked God to never... God's been helping me in the past number of years to walk away from any pastor who is gossiping about anybody. I just don't want any part of it. I've been rebuked for writing some loving letters recently to Jimmy Swaggart. I got a letter from him yesterday saying, Brother Dave, you'll never know what your letters have been during this trial because the Lord gave me a prophecy for Jimmy Swaggart that God was going to bring him through that trial. And God had put a forgiving spirit in my heart. Yet I've had people write to me and said, we have heard, this comes on my mailing list, we have heard that you're speaking, you're back, what they're trying to say, we hear that you're walking in love and fellowship with Jimmy Swaggart. And they're mad. They're angry. Many people. An unforgiving spirit. I believe Jesus forgives. And when Jesus forgives, I want to forgive. Don't you? I wish you could have read this loving letter and feel the hurt. He said, Brother Dave, the thing that hurts me most is the damage this trial is doing to the name of Jesus. He didn't want it. He tried to stop it. But here's what the Scripture says. Speak to the congregation. Get back. Get away from the dwellings of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Folks, get away from the gossip. Get away. Folks, do you know that if you go to Times Square Church, this is your church? This is your home? We're your pastors. The workers are your workers. The choir is your choir. We're all one body. And if one hurts, we all hurt. If one suffers, we all suffer. But you see, I don't want to be a part. I don't want to come under the judgment that falls upon those who gossip and murmur and complain and have an unforgiving spirit. I don't want to be anywhere near them when the judgment falls. I want to get far away. I don't want the ground to swallow up and get me in on it. I want to get away from it. Hang up the phone if you have to. Very lovingly say, Look, I got to go. I have to go. Sorry. Then hang it up. Do it nicely, but hang it up. Put a roast in the oven. Say, I got to go see my roast. Do something. Then Moses arose and went to Dathan and Abiram with the elders of Israel following him. He spoke to the congregation saying, Depart now from the tents of these wicked men and touch nothing that belongs to them, lest you be swept away in all their sin. Lest you be caught up and swept away with their sin. Do you want to know what I believe in the Spirit? I believe that there's some sitting here right now that have been guilty. And there's others guilty of listening to that kind of thing. And I'm telling you, in the name of the Lord, be careful, lest you get swept up and carried up in that same spirit. I'll tell you what. Someone who has an unforgiving spirit have opened themselves to demonic possession. And then that unforgiving spirit has with it just literally thousands or legions of other demonic spirits. And this spirit can leap upon you. That spirit can literally leap upon you as it did upon the seven sons of Sheva. It can literally leap upon you and destroy you. Stay away from it. Hallelujah. So they got back away from the dwellings of Korah. Verse 27. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door where their tents along with their wives and their sons and their little ones. Here they were saying, Moses, you don't scare me. I'm just as holy as you are. You don't scare me. I don't fear prophecies. I don't fear preaching. I don't fear any of that. I know God. Look at this. Verse 28. Moses said, By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds, for this is not my doing. If these men die the death of all men, or if they suffer the fate of all men, the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord brings about an entirely new thing and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that is theirs and they descend alive into hell, Sheol, then you will understand that these men have spurned the Lord. Then it came about as he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open and the earth opened up its mouth and swallowed them up, their households and all their men who belonged to Korah with all their possessions, so they all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol and the earth closed over them and they perished from the midst of the assembly. And all Israel who were around them fled at their outcry for they said the earth may swallow us up. Fire also came forth from the Lord, consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense. It's an amazing sight. Suddenly there's a mini-earthquake and the earth begins to split. These men, fire falls on them, consumes them, they fall into hell with the fire of hell consuming them. The whole earth opened, their tents, everything belongs to them, all their children, everything, it was all gone. I tell you what, God does not, if this is a Holy Ghost Church, He does not allow spirits of murmuring, complaining, unforgiveness to last very long. And the earth does swallow. What does that mean for us? It means they're swallowed up, they're swallowed up with the calamities of this world, they're swallowed up with the inner fire, they're swallowed up in problems, swallowed up in all kinds of messes, terrible messes. Folks, you know you can go to hell being in hell? Some people's lives are already a raging hell because God is no longer with them. They have literally murmured God out of their life. They've complained the Spirit out of their life. This unforgiving Spirit has taken such a route, the Spirit of God says, I cannot abide in a temple that is consumed with such an unforgiving, unloving Spirit. Now, of course, what they did, if you remember the 250 censers, God said, it's in the next verse, to Eliezer, the son of Aaron the priest, that he should take up the censers out of the midst of the blaze for they're holy. And they went and took these brass censers and pounded them into plates and put those 250 plates around the altar, around the brazen altar as a memorial, as a memorial to what God does to complainers and murmurers and those with unforgiving spirits and those who lack respect for God-ordained leadership. Look at chapter 17, and I'm going to close in a minute. Chapter 17, verse 5. And it will come about that the rod of the man whom I chose will sprout, thus I shall lessen upon myself the grumblings of the sons of Israel who are grumbling against you. God made it very clear. He said, I'm going to get this out of my system. I'm going to lessen my burden by getting them out of the congregation, out. Folks, I thank God that in Times Square Church so many are growing, so many are being healed, marriages are being healed. But you know, there are some marriages, even in this church, that are in trouble, deep trouble. And if you really got to the bottom of it, you would find either one or both that will not yield and give up that unforgiving spirit. And decide one. You may now turn... You'll find that either one or both feel hurt, they feel victimized. And I want you to know it's not against your mate, that anger, that unforgiving spirit it's against the Lord. It's against the Lord at all times. And the Lord said, You cannot abide in my tabernacle. You cannot be a part of what I'm doing in these last days. I fear, with this I'm going to close. I fear more than anything in this world, I fear for those. I fear for those that carry hurt and bitterness and unforgiveness. I fear for those who gossip and spread rumors. I fear for them more than I do for the drug addicts and the alcoholics and even the murderers. Because there's never been any more severe judgment upon any other class of people never before has the ground or after the ground literally opened up, literally hell's mouth was opened and swallowed up those who had this kind of spirit upon them. If you have even a root of it, a tiny, tiny seed of it, pluck it out by its roots in the name of the Lord, and whatever you have to do, you get a hold of God and say, Jesus, forgive me. I want my sins forgiven. I stood in this pulpit Sunday night and I preached about being justified by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ and how he's blotted out our transgressions. But that does not apply. That does not apply at all. You are not justified. You're not right before God and your sins are not forgiven. If you sit here tonight in this room, I don't care if that individual is a sinner. If you have an unforgiving spirit, it's destroying you. It'll cause all kinds of judgment to fall upon you and your household, your children, your parents, everybody. You have opened yourself up to attack. You've opened everything in your life to judgment. And I can't soften that because everything in this book backs that up. I could take you all through the Old Testament, take you into the New Testament as well, even John. You go home and read 1st, 2nd, 3rd John and you'll see it there very clear. My prayer tonight is that there be a healing. Now, I have felt all day the Lord was trying to say something through me tonight and I felt that the Lord was going to bring some people here. There were going to be some individuals tonight that needed a special word and I didn't know what it was until I sat down here. And you that come to this church know I don't do this very often. I don't just get up and just unburden my heart very often. But having done it, I know now that God's speaking. I know it better than when I first stood up here. God's speaking clearly and I pray that fear of the Lord would grip your heart. It sure has gripped mine. I have seen men and women literally die of cancer, heart attacks. I've seen people just fall left and right and they were killed by their own spirit. It's consumed them, eaten them up. I know of a couple right now their faces come before me. It's probably 20 years ago that that spirit got into them. And you can't sit five minutes in their presence without that spirit just leaping. And I have to get away because they're distantly related to me. And I've tried to go into their home. I've tried to pray for them when they get sick. There's a choking spirit on one man. He is constant. There's nothing there. There's nothing there. All kinds of tests. And a man can't eat. He's always choking. He feels he's dying. You know what's choking him? That spirit. That unforgiving spirit is choking the life out of him. And one of these days he may choke to death and nothing in his throat. I tell my wife, I said, Honey, I don't want to go near. I said, I've never heard anything like that. Everything that comes out is ugly. Everything that comes out is complaining. Everything is murmuring. Everything is bitterness. Everything is unforgiveness. I hate to be around them. They look like they're dying. They're the saddest looking people I've ever seen. How can the joy of the Lord be in a heart that's full of unforgiveness? How can the joy of the Lord be made in my heart? It's impossible. Absolutely impossible. May the Lord heal us all tonight. Will you stand to your feet? Lord Jesus, I've obeyed you tonight. I just opened up my heart and you spoke through me tonight and you're speaking to people in this building that can be a part of no revival, that can be a part of no awakening if there's that seed or root of misunderstanding, of bitterness, complaining, gossip, murmuring, or unforgiveness. Oh, Jesus, smite it tonight with your grace and love. Smite it in love. Hallelujah.