Envy: The Sin Behind Comparison

All right, enough of that. Go to Genesis 30.

All right, Have you ever had the experience of buying a new car

and then, well, new to you, but then almost overnight it seemed

like everyone else had bought the same car?

Maybe you never paid enough attention to Jeep Wranglers or

Ford Broncos or Toyota Tacomas until then, but the moment you

decide that's the vehicle you want, you see them at stoplights

and in the parking lots and at the grocery store.

Or maybe you just start wondering if people got together

and secretly said we're all going to get the same car as as

this guy. Psychologists have a name for

this. It's called the Bader Meinhof

phenomenon. Easier to remember.

It's also called the frequency illusion.

And the idea is pretty simple. What it is, is this.

It's that your brain is processing an overwhelming

amount of information, especially these days.

Maybe you have talked about it or heard about it or read about

it. But the amount of news

information we get with the 24 hour news cycle, our brain was

never meant to understand what was happening in Paraguay to the

same level as what's happening in our community.

But we get all this information that's overwhelming and

sometimes it results in an increase in anxiety, right?

So a lot of times whatever you're focusing on is what gets

most of the attention is essentially what happens here.

Your brain has so much information and it needs to make

these split decisions on what to remember and what not to.

If you hear something but your brain marks it as not important,

you tend to forget about it. That's why sometimes you'll

rewatch ATV show, that's your favorite TV show, and something

will happen and you'll say, oh, I forgot that that happened

because that little part wasn't as important.

But you remember the bigger moments.

That's why sometimes somebody that you love can be like, don't

you remember when I told you blah, blah, blah, blah, And

you're like, no, because you're important to me.

But that story wasn't most of us.

Don't say that out loud. Your brain is constantly in the

process of rewiring itself every single day.

Now, that alone might give you more anxiety.

You're like, Oh no, I thought it was set, but it should give you

hope. You can see this in other ways

all the time. I remember this happened to

Cassie and I in specific when we were trying to have our first

baby. But a couple begins trying to

have a baby and suddenly it feels like every other Facebook

post is another pregnancy announcement.

And every trip to Target seems to include a sale on strollers.

Maybe you started thinking about buying your first house and now

every time you drive through town, you see all the for sale

signs and you didn't know how many were there, but they were

there the whole time. You just weren't looking for

them because it wasn't important to you.

Your attention has simply shifted towards something that

is newly important to you, right?

An interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it doesn't

just happen with cars or houses or babies.

It happens with your heart. Whatever captures your attention

starts changing your perspective and your heart as well.

If your minds become consumed with what you don't have, then

you start to slowly become an expert at noticing everybody

else who has something that you don't.

If you start to see promotions that you didn't get, or

vacations that you can't afford or relationships that you wish

you had, maybe you see opportunities you think you

missed and blessings that seem to belong to everybody except

for you. The dangerous thing there is for

Cassie and I, what it ended up feeling like was it was like God

had X amount of babies and He was like, who wants a baby?

Not you guys. This time He wasn't choosing

somebody over us. What God blessed somebody else

with had nothing to do with us. But it's hard not to feel that

when you're in the middle of it, right?

The irony is that nothing about our circumstances changes as

soon as we start to notice different things.

Maybe even notice. Like once you start going to

church, now all of a sudden you notice, oh, the bottom of my

cook from cup from cookout, It's got a scripture on it.

Or you start hearing a song. You're like, I think that's a

Christian song. Different things stand out

because now your mind and your heart has shifted.

But the only thing that changed there was your focus.

But because your attention is constantly drawn to what's

missing, sometimes some of us have a problem thinking about

anything other than the holes that we feel like we've got in

our life. And it makes them feel bigger

than they are. The Bader Meinhof phenomenon or

the the the illusion as we were talking about it.

It might be difficult to remember by name, but when you

look at it through this filter, when you're focused on what

you're missing, the Bible has a word for it.

And it's this. It's envy.

Envy is the sin behind comparison.

Most people, if you were to say, what's your struggle, where do

you struggle the most? Most people won't say, oh, I'm

super envious and I know it. Nobody says that.

As a matter of fact, we often define the difference between

jealousy and envy. Is this that jealousy is when

you wish you had something and envy is when you wish you had

something instead of somebody else.

And even that's not really a full definition, but we'll dive

into that in just a little bit. Before we read Genesis 30, I

want you to have a little bit of a background on where we are in

this. We just talked about last week,

we spoke about Joseph a little bit that, you know, the favorite

child of Jacob. But this is this is before

Joseph, before we read Genesis 30, I want you to know Jacob had

fallen madly in love with a woman named Rachel.

And Jacob, well, he worked seven years to marry her.

That's a long time, only to be deceived by her father Laban,

who secretly gave him Rachel, Rachel's older sister Leah

instead. Well, that's awkward.

But Jacob eventually married Rachel as well, and that's

awkward, but he had to wait another seven years to do it.

Laban was like, ah, can you blame me?

Leah was older, so I need to marry her off first.

But hey, if you work another seven years, then you can have

Rachel. I wonder what it was like for

those seven years where he's, he's married to Leah and he's

like, I'm, I'm going out to work.

She's like, I know what you're going to work for 14 years total

in order to marry Rachel. And then he finally marries her.

And that's where we are here. But the damage, I want you to

know, had already been done. And here's what I mean by this.

Leah. Leah knew that she wasn't the

one that Jacob had chosen. Leah knew that Rachel was the

one that Jacob loved the most. As a matter of fact, when we

read that story of Joseph last week, it said he loved Joseph

the most because it was Rachel's son.

To make matters more painful, God bless Leah with children.

And Rachel was unable to conceive children.

So each sister possesses the very thing that the other one

desperately wants. Leah is longing to be loved and

Rachel is longing to be a mother.

And each one has what the other one wants.

Now listen to this starting in verse one of Genesis 30 says

when Rachel saw that she wasn't having any children for Jacob,

she became jealous of her sister and she pleaded with Jacob.

She says to Jacob, give me children or I'll die.

Dramatic. OK.

Then Jacob became furious with Rachel.

Am I God? That might be a conversation

today, right? He's the one who has kept you

from having children. And then Rachel told him, take

my maid Bilhah, and sleep with her.

That always goes well in the Bible.

She'll bear children for me, and through her I can have a family,

too. So Rachel gave her servant

Bilhah to Jacob as a wife and he slept with her.

Bill Hobb became pregnant and presented him with a son.

Rachel named him Dan. Well, what does Dan mean in this

era? Well, she named him Dan, for she

said, God has vindicated me. He's heard my request and given

me a son. So it's kind of like in your

face verse 7. Then Bill Hobb became pregnant

again and gave Jacob a second son.

Rachel named him Naphtali, for she said I've struggled hard

with my sister and I'm winning. Do you all know what your name

means? OK, could you imagine?

Like, oh, that's such a beautiful name.

What does it mean? Oh, it means my mom was

struggling against her sister and she won.

Take that, auntie. Like, that's what it means.

Meanwhile, Leah realized she wasn't getting pregnant anymore

so she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

Soon Zilpah presented him with a son.

Leah named him Gad and said how fortunate am I?

And then Zilpah gave Jacob a second son and Leah named him

Asher, for she said what joy is mine now the other women will

celebrate with me. Jacob ends up having 12 kids

amongst 4 women married to two of them and can't see where envy

might enter into the picture here.

Envy is one of those sins that doesn't make us think we

struggle because we only picture it in extreme forms.

We imagine somebody who can't stand another person's success

or someone who wants to take what belongs to somebody else.

But Envy is much sneakier than that because it normally begins

with comparison. The overall title for this

series. The next 5 weeks take us all the

way to the end of July. It's called the Open Secret of

Sin. Do you all know what an open

secret is? An open secret is something that

everybody knows but nobody does anything or says anything about.

If y'all think back a few years to the producer and director

Harvey Weinstein and how he had been abusing women in the

Hollywood circuit for years and years and years.

And when it came out, there was just celebrity after celebrity.

It was like, Oh yeah, we knew that.

It's what spawned the whole Me Too movement.

And all I could think when I'm reading This is why didn't you

do something about it? Now, it's not that simple.

And I get it because sometimes powerful people are hard to to

to take down and they have the money to silence people or

whatever. But decades this went on and it

was considered an open secret. Let's bring it a little closer

to home. How about in the Christian music

scene? Something came out from Michael

Tate Just about a year ago, Michael Tate was one of the

founding members of DC Talk. He was a front man for Newsboys.

And then it came out that he had been abusing men behind the

scenes for decades. And in the Christian music

scene, nobody said anything. It's an open secret.

They know it, but nobody's going to talk about it.

Not my circus, not my monkey. Guess what?

God's Kingdom is your circus. And it's a really big circus.

We got a lot of monkeys we got to take care of.

We might as well do it together. So here's the problem.

Within the church itself, I believe that there are open

secrets of sin. There are sins that we tolerate

inside the walls of the church, inside the place that God calls

to make holy. And because everybody struggles

with it and they don't want to get called out, and nobody calls

it out and anybody else, well, we're just going to call it out

for all of us. One of them is envy.

We've got to kill it before it kills the things that are most

precious to us. I want you to think about how

many different areas of life that envy touches.

A woman scrolls through social media long enough and suddenly

every picture reminds her of the body that she wishes that she

had. Or a man watches the promotions

of his coworkers, and before long he can't even enjoy the job

that God has already provided for him because he's convinced

that somebody else is getting ahead faster.

Or how about a couple that's longing for children and they

notice those pregnancy announcements?

Or a single adult that notices every engagement and they're

longing to be married? How about a pastor that notices

another church that's growing faster, or a parent that notices

another family's highlight reel on social media and just assumes

that they're doing everything right while they're doing

everything wrong? None of these things that you

notice are sinful by themselves. It's OK to have desires and

goals, but comparison has a way of turning admiration into envy

if you're not careful. We follow people online that we

think have it all together and we're just like desperately

like, help us do it. But we also kind of resent them

because we wish we had it. The most frightening part about

this is that our minds don't just notice what we value, they

start to reinforce it. The more that you dwell on what

you lack, the more evidence your heart is going to find that

everyone else has it better than you.

Before long, you're not even living in reality anymore.

You're living in a story of comparison that somebody else

wrote for you and it wasn't the Lord.

We start to believe that if only we had their marriage or their

career or their body or their opportunities or their gifts or

their family, then we would finally be content.

And again, we would never say these things out loud, but it's

what our heart believes and most of us know it.

As I'm talking about it, that's exactly how envy works.

And it doesn't just convince you that someone else's life is

good. It convinces you that your own

life can't be good until it looks like their life.

But the problem is that finishing line is always moving,

isn't it? Once you think you've gotten

there, it shifts again. It's a never ending race and

it's awful. I think it's one of the most

dangerous open secrets in the church today.

I just want to highlight two things that envy does to us.

The first one is this. Envy makes us blind to our

blessings. Envy will always make you blind

to your blessings. One of the saddest parts of the

story of Rachel and Leah is that neither Rachel nor Leah were

able to enjoy the blessing that God had already given her

because each one was consumed by the blessing that she believed

she was missing. You don't hear Leah saying,

well, thank goodness I have these kids.

And you don't hear Rachel saying, well, thank goodness I

got a man that loves me. Now they're just focused on

their missing parts. And you know what's awful?

They're sisters. They don't act like it, do they?

But Leah desperately wanted Jacob's affection.

And if you read through Genesis 29 before that, every time she

gives birth to another son, you can almost hear hope in the

names that she chooses, that the children that she gives birth

to. Before what I read to you this

morning, they translate to things that basically say, maybe

now my husband will choose me. Maybe now he'll become attached

to me. And she had children, but she

couldn't enjoy her children because all she could see was

the love that she didn't have. Rachel heard the exact opposite

problem when she was having discussions with her husband.

She had Jacob's heart and she knew it.

She was the woman he worked 14 years to marry.

You think she never rubbed that in her sister's face?

But she couldn't even enjoy his love because all she could see

was the way that God was blessing Leah with children.

And this is what envy does. It doesn't convince you that

your life is terrible. It just convinces you that

you're missing one piece that's so important that this one

missing piece overshadows everything that God has already

placed in your hands. Envy has a way of magnifying

what is absent until you're blind to what is present.

Matthew chapter 20. Let's go and go to the Gospels.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

Jesus tells this story. And to be honest, I kind of

relate to the people in the story, but Jesus is right and

I'm not in Jesus chapter 20 or sorry, Matthew chapter 20.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

This is the book of Jesus. The whole thing is the book of

Jesus. All right, Matthew chapter 20,

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

starting right in verse one. It's the parable of the vineyard

workers. Listen to this.

Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out

early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

He agreed to pay the normal daily wage and sent them out to

work. Yay, God's contributing to the

economy, all right at 9:00 in the morning, as he was passing

through the marketplace and saw some people standing around

doing nothing. And so we hired them, telling

them he'll pay them whatever was right at the end of the day.

So they went to work in the vineyard at noon, and again at

3:00 he did the same thing. This guy's just hiring people

all day. And then at 5:00 that afternoon,

he was in town again and saw some more people standing around

and he asked them, why haven't you been working today?

And they said, well, nobody's hired us.

That's a good answer. The landowner told them, won't

go out and join the others in the vineyard that evening.

He told the foreman to call the workers in and pay them,

beginning with the last workers 1st.

And when those hired at 5:00 were paid, each received a full

day's wage. But then those who were hired

first came to get their pay, and they assumed that they would

receive more, but they too were paid a day's wage.

When they received their pay, they protested to the owner.

They said these people only worked an hour, but you paid

them just as much as you paid us.

You worked all day in the scorching heat.

And he answered one of them, Friend, I haven't been unfair.

Didn't you agree to work all day for the usual wage?

Take your money and go. I've wanted to pay this last

worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to

do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because

I'm kind to others? There's no good answer to that.

Yes. And that's where then the famous

saying comes, he says. So those who are last now will

be first then, and those who are first will be last.

I mean, to put this in modern terms, I want you to imagine I

used to work at Target, so I use Target.

You clock in at 9:00 and you're working from 9:00, let's say

9:00 to 8:00 that night, 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM.

You've got a long shift and you agree to do it.

I don't know, 100 bucks. I'm just throwing numbers out

there. And other people come in at 10

and people come in at 12, and people come in at 5, but you're

all salaried. You're not an hourly worker.

You've all agreed to get $100 to come into work that day.

Everybody's doing what they agreed to do, and they're

getting what they agreed to receive.

But you're upset because it's not fair.

I don't know if your parents ever told you this life's not

fair, But I'm going to tell you this.

You better be good that you're not the one who's in charge of

what is fair and just. You better be glad that your job

is not to be the judge of the universe because you would have

taken a whole lot of people, probably including yourself.

The whole beauty of grace is that it makes life unfair.

You and I are walking out and living a life that the angels

would have been cast out of. We just talked about that

earlier. Don't talk to me about what is

fair. The whole beauty of the gospel

is we don't get what we deserve. So we can't get so focused on

what this one guy's making for working an hour.

Just because we worked 8 hours or 10 hours or whatever.

We had an agreement, right? OK, Jesus is telling this story,

and he's telling it because people were not understanding

that the people who were coming to the Kingdom late in life or

last second were just as valuable to the God who created

them as those who had lived their whole lives serving him.

You don't do it so you can get more favor from God.

You do it because it's the right thing to do when you love God.

And the more that you love somebody, the more that you love

the things that matter to them. That's why Jesus ends that

parable by saying, should you be jealous because I'm kind to

others? The circumstances of the workers

didn't change. Their paycheck didn't change.

The only thing that changed is what they were looking at.

If they had no clue how long the other people worked or what the

other people were getting paid, they would have said this was a

good day's work and it was a good day's wage.

They would have been content. It's impossible to be content

when you're looking at other things.

Gratitude disappears the moment that comparison enters the

picture. But isn't that exactly what

happens to us too? We think we thank God for the

job that we got until somebody else gets promoted.

Or we love our career path until we realise we missed out on the

college experience. Or we love our home until we

walk through someone else's home and then we're like, man, why

don't I have a two-story? Or we enjoy our car until

somebody buys a newer one. We're content with our church

until we hear about another ministry that's got an exciting

group or event happening. And we're grateful for our

spouse, aren't we? Until we begin comparing our

marriage to a carefully edited moment we saw online, nothing

about God's blessings has actually changed in any of these

scenarios. The only thing that changes is

where we fixed our attention. And envy is so deceptive.

The second you say you don't struggle with envy, you have

already deceived yourself. It only has the power to

redirect your attention away from the blessings that God has

laid out in front of you. And before long, you're living

with the illusion that God has been better to everyone else

than He's been to you, when in reality, you just stop noticing

all of His goodness because you're consumed with His

goodness in somebody else's story.

One of the oldest stories in the world is the story of King

Midas. How many of y'all are familiar

with King Midas? Right.

So King Midas, he had the golden touch.

It's part of Greek mythology. I've been brushing up on some

Greek mythology. And according to the legend,

Midas was given one wish. And he asked that everything he

touched would be able to turn to gold.

And at first, it seemed like it was the greatest blessing

imaginable. He didn't have to worry about

how many coins he had anymore because trees, when he touched

them, became gold. Furniture became gold.

But it didn't take long before the blessing became a curse.

And the story of King Midas, he goes to eat his food and it

turns to gold. He goes to drink his water and

it turns to gold. And some versions of the story,

even his daughter was transformed into gold when he

hugged her. King Midas became so consumed

with what he didn't have that he lost the ability to enjoy the

things that were already right in front of him.

How many of y'all remember an auto auto place That was their

slogan was trust the Midas touch.

As a kid, I was like, I don't even have a car.

And I'm like, I know how that story ends.

I'm touching an I car when I get older.

I understand that it's just a myth.

I understand it's not a biblical story.

But there's a reason why that story has endured for thousands

of years. It tells the truth about the

human heart. We have this remarkable ability

to believe that one more thing or one more relationship or one

more achievement is going to finally satisfy us.

And we become convinced that contentment is just waiting

beyond that one thing. But like I said earlier, that

finish line, that one thing, it changes, doesn't it?

Now there's one more thing. I wonder what it might look like

in our community today. Could you imagine, oh,

hypothetical, I don't know. I'll pick a service branch, a

Marine, Let's just say that. Could you imagine a Marine who's

convinced that one more promotion will make him happy?

And so he tells himself, once I make staff Sergeant, life will

settle down. So he gets promoted for about

two weeks. He is thrilled, and then he

notices another Marine getting selected for Warrant Officer.

Suddenly the promotion that he celebrated becomes ordinary now

that he's chasing the next big thing.

So he earns another promotion only to compare himself to

somebody who made major faster. He buys the truck he's always

wanted, and he notices somebody buying a newer truck.

And then he buys a house. And then he wishes it had

another bedroom. And so he spends his entire

career reaching goals that he once prayed for but never

actually enjoyed once they arrived.

Contentment always lives one achievement away.

Have you ever noticed that just like King Midas, this guy would

discover that getting everything you think you want doesn't cure

a heart that's convinced there's always something better beyond

reach? Envy.

So dangerous. Envy doesn't have the power to

take away God's gifts from you. Praise God for that.

But it does convince you to stop seeing them.

Trains your eyes to look at other things.

I have a recommendation for you. You know what?

It is not a book. I set you up for that.

Thanks. It's a song.

It's a song by my favorite band, Switchfoot.

But 20 years ago, they wrote a song called Faust, Faust, Faust,

Midas and myself. And the singer John Foreman, he

describes this dream that he had where he woke up and he's next

to a beautiful woman. And it's not his wife.

And he's living this beautiful life.

And he looks at his skin and it's golden.

And I've just got an excerpt of lyrics I want you to hear, he

wrote. I looked outside the glass at

golden shores. Golden ships and masts with

golden chords. As my reflection passed, I hated

what I saw. My golden eyes were dead and a

thought passed through my head. A heart that's made of gold

can't really beat at all. Not everything that glitters is

gold, right? But also, not everything thrives

when it's made of gold. So what do you do if you realize

that you become blind to your blessings?

I don't think the answer is simply telling yourself stop

feeling that way. How many of y'all heard that

growing up? I'll give you something to whine

about. Thanks, Mom.

I'm full. How about you tell yourself

something like this? I shouldn't complain.

Other people have it worse than I do.

While that's true, there's always somebody who's got it

worse. Have you ever noticed that

telling yourself that never produces gratitude?

It never makes you feel more grateful.

It just produces guilt, which is awful, because now you're

envious and you feel bad for being envious.

Nothing's really changed for the better.

The answer is to retrain your attention, and you can do this.

We just talked about the Bader Meinhof thing.

You have to determine that some things are more important than

the empty holes that you've been looking at.

Can we go to the next slide? We need to retrain the way that

we think. Remember how we started this

message with that whole phenomenon that your brain

starts to notice things when it believes they're important?

If that is true physically, I want you to know it's also true

spiritually. The more that you dwell on what

you don't have, it's more evidence for your life to find

things that are missing. And the opposite is true.

When you intentionally begin to notice God's faithfulness and

His provision and his grace and his daily blessings, your

perspective will change. I promise you, because I walked

it out. And did I accomplish it in three

weeks? No.

So don't come to me in 3 weeks and be like Pastor Blake, it

didn't even work. Come to me in 10 years and tell

me it didn't work. And when you do it, use that

stupid voice. I just did.

Here's what you do. The first thing, one of the

healthiest spiritual disciplines you can develop is the habit of

naming God's blessings before you name your burdens.

When we go to Him in a prayer, it's good to lay out your

burdens and ask Him to help you. I'm not telling you not to do

that, but how about this? Before you start laying out all

the things that you wish were different, how about you spend

time thanking Him for what is true?

Thank Him for his salvation. I don't know.

Thank Him for the fact you're not going to hell.

That's I'm pretty jazzed about that.

Just personally, I was in Florida.

It was already really hot, you know, so I'm sure I wouldn't

thrive down there. Thank Him for His presence in

your life. Worship Him for who He is.

Thank Him for the people that He placed in your life, especially

the ones you take for granted, the ones that you know aren't

going to leave. So you kind of treat Him like

crap sometimes. Thank Him for them.

Thank Him for the prayers He's already answered.

Even if you've already thanked Him before.

Gratitude doesn't deny that there's still things you have to

pray for, but don't let them become bigger than the goodness

of God that you've already witnessed in your life.

It will change the way that you think.

I promise you, you'll start noticing goodness a whole lot

more. This is why some people swear by

a gratitude journal. You could do that if you want

to. And some people, they're just

like, I'm not a journal. OK, well then say it out loud to

God. Well, I'm not really a prayer.

That one. I can't help you with that one

needs to change #2 it's another step we don't really like a

whole lot. Sometimes we just need to reduce

the voices that constantly feed our comparison.

We're all addicted to something that's bad for us, and it might

be different in each of our lives, but we all are addicted

to something that's bad for us. If every day begins, the first

thing you do, your alarm goes off and because it's now on your

phone, you turn it off and you immediately start scrolling and

you start looking at those highlight reels I was talking

about. Don't be surprised when your own

life starts looking disappointing.

That's how you started your day. It's the first thing you put in

your body. The first thing you took in was

somebody else's highlight reel. Think about it, how about if the

first thing you do is you end up engaging in conversations of

people that don't make you feel good about yourself?

You constantly seek out people that affirm that they're better

than you or that you need to be doing better.

You might need to edit some of your friendships, not just your

social media. Again, just just know this.

The issue is what's training your heart.

Your heart is going to notice certain things.

We need to be wise. The final thing that I would

just say on this before we move on is this.

And this becomes really hard if you're deep in envy, but it is

so essential and it will break envy faster than the other

things I shared with you. Celebrate what God does in

someone's life before you understand what He's doing in

yours. I've been there, I've been

there. I've been in the middle of a

really bad breakup and thought, well, it'd be easier for me to

celebrate with them if my heart wasn't broken.

I know it'd be easy if my heart wasn't broken, but it doesn't

mean it's wrong to celebrate it now.

Well, it'd be easy for me to celebrate that promotion if I

felt like my job, you know, worked out if my boss understood

me or whatever. Guess what?

Bosses never understand you. They don't, you know why?

They got their own issues. But it's OK.

I'm sure you fully understand your boss and have a lot of

grace for them. All right, that one went over

great. So if you can start celebrating

the goodness of God in somebody else's life, do you know what

you're celebrating? The goodness of God.

You're celebrating the goodness of God and you're like, yeah,

but it's not in my life, sweetheart, ain't about you.

Celebrate the goodness of God anywhere you see it in the life

of your friend, in the life of your family member, in your

life, in the life of people you don't like.

Let God shake it out. God is the one who handles

justice and vengeance and all of that.

Your job, your job is to love God and do what he says.

Why would you ever be mad at God being good to somebody?

Should you be jealous because of his kindness?

The other thing that envy does, And this makes us isolated,

which makes us compare all the more.

Envy turns your relationships into competitions.

One of the saddest things about Rachel and Leah is that they

should have been on the same page.

They were sisters. They had shared experiences,

shared struggles, a shared family in a little bit of a

weird way. But envy slowly changed the way

that they looked at each other. They should have been each

other's biggest fan, biggest support.

Sisters are meant to support one another, but instead of seeing

someone to love, they saw someone to measure themselves

against. Someone that they felt less than

but they hoped to feel greater than.

They dehumanized their sister into a tool to feel better about

themselves. It's gross.

Every child that Leah had became another reminder of what Rachel

lacked, and every ounce of affection that Jacob showed

Rachel became another reminder of what Leah longed for.

They weren't simply living alongside one another, they were

competing with one another. It's awful, but that's what envy

always does. It robs you of your contentment

and it changes the way that you see people.

Someone who should have become a friend becomes a competition

because now you're afraid they don't have your best interest at

heart, so why would you open up to them?

Maybe you'll open up to them when you've got more to offer

them. One time I heard somebody tell a

story where they said they said I could be a friend, but I'd be

more of a mentor friend to them. Oh, so you could just delete the

word friend out of that sentence?

I'd like to have a one way friendship please.

We've all been in one of those before though, haven't we?

What's heartbreaking about this is it doesn't stop outside the

walls of the church. If anything, it becomes so

subtle inside of the church. That's why it's in this series.

And let me tell you why. We have learned to hide it

better than the world. In the world, they call it

ambition. They talk about chasing your

goals and getting it done and working harder than anybody

else. Here in the church, we just

smile, and when somebody shares good news, we're smiling at

them. But inwardly we're wondering why

God hasn't done the same thing for us.

Scripture tells us to rejoice with those that rejoice and to

mourn with those that mourn. And the truth is, when we're at

our least healthy, when somebody's mourning, we're on

the inside thinking, well, thank God, that's not me.

And when somebody's rejoicing, we say, why can't that be me?

How about we applaud when someone is recognized, but we

also wish that our faithfulness would get noticed instead of

theirs. We hear somebody's testimony.

Instead of rejoicing in God's grace, we're asking why our

story doesn't look like theirs yet.

And envy doesn't make you angry with people.

It just makes it impossible to genuinely celebrate them.

I'm going to read you these three scriptures that are up

here on the screen from three of the gospels, just to show you

what knuckleheads the disciples were so that you don't feel bad

about what a knucklehead you've been.

All right? Because it brings me a lot of

hope to read these stories to mark Chapter 9, starting in

Mark 9 · chapter mention

verse 33. After they arrived in Capernaum

and settled in a house, Jesus asked his disciples, what were

you discussing out on the road? I can only picture this.

There are times that my kids, I hear just a piece of a

conversation. I'm like, what are you talking

about? Sometimes it's we worked it out.

Don't want to tell me. Right, OK, Jesus says, what are

you all talking about? Oh, could you imagine if he just

popped out of heaven? You seen those memes where he's

like, I saw that. Could you imagine?

He just popped out of heaven? Sometimes he was like, hey

Heather, what were you all talking about?

How your goodness endures forever.

Well, this is where we find them because listen to this verse 34.

They didn't answer because they had been arguing over which of

them was the greatest. He sat down, called the 12

disciples over to him. And this is the famous scene.

This is the this is the backdrop to when this happens.

While these grown men that he has handpicked to serve

alongside him are arguing over who's better than who.

Anything you can do, I can do better.

He sits them down and he calls over a little child and he put

this little child among them, takes the child in his arms and

he says to them in verse 37, anyone who welcomes the little

child like this on my behalf welcomes me.

Well done Jake. And anyone who welcomes me

welcomes not only me, but my father who sent me hoping that

they'd get that lesson. I'm sure they did there anyway.

This is the first real glimpse, if you think about it, that we

actually get to see into the disciples hearts.

They're walking with Jesus, they're listening to his

teaching, they're watching miracles unfold, their church

folk. And somewhere along the road,

they start arguing over which one of them is the greatest.

And Jesus asked them what they're discussing, and they

can't even answer him. They're embarrassed.

Their silence is probably louder than what they would have said

anyway. Jesus addresses the issue.

He teaches them that greatness in the Kingdom looks like

humility and service. And the lesson still doesn't

take root in their lives. Check this out, Matthew chapter

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

20. They're trying a different

tactic now. And bring in Mama.

Then the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came

to Jesus with her sons. She knelt respectfully to ask a

favor. What is your request?

He asked and she replied, in your Kingdom, please let my two

sons sit in the places of honor next to you, one on your right

hand and others on your left or the other one on your left.

And Jesus answered by saying to them, you don't know what you're

asking. He says, are you able to drink

from the bitter cup of suffering?

I'm about to drink. And they say, Oh yes, we are

able. I don't even know how I'd answer

God if he asked me that. Can you drink this cup of

suffering? OK, I'm not thirsty anymore.

Lord Jesus told them, You will indeed drink from my bitter cup,

but I have no right to say to you who will sit on my right or

my left? The Father's prepared those

places for the ones he's chosen. But check this out.

What did I just tell you about relationships?

When the other 10 disciples heard what James and John had

asked, they were indignant. That's a fancy word for real

Mad. And Jesus called them together

and he said, you know that the rulers of this world, Lord

lorded over their people and officials flaunt their authority

over those under them. But among you it will be

different. He didn't even say it should be

different. He said, check this out guys, it

will be different for you. Whoever wants to be a leader

among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be the

first among you must become your slave.

For even the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve

others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Well, I should put it to bed, right?

Sometime later after that first story, they send their mom.

How dirty is that? You want to know my personal

theory? I'm a step away from the Pulva

for this. OK, Jesus, first public miracle.

It's when his mom says, hey, they're running out of wine.

You need to turn this into wine. I bet you I really feel like

they were like he's got soft spot for moms.

James, go get mom. We're going to, we're going to

try this a different way. They're going to say, was she

going to say no to an old woman? He did.

So all right, let's go to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

We're now at the Last Supper. I mean, the story's almost over.

And then they began to argue among themselves about who would

be the greatest among them. Their time with him is almost

done. Jesus is trying to get across

something really important to them, and they can't see past

themselves. Jesus told them in this world

the kings and great men lorded over their people, yet they are

called friends of the people. But among you, here it is again.

It will be different. Those who are greatest among you

should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a

servant says who's more important, the one who sits at

the table or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table,

of course, but not here, for I am among you is one who serves.

In other words, you know what he said?

He said I'm here as a servant. Tell me if you think you're

greater than me. And I bet they got a real quiet

moment once again. Who's going to say I'd like that

spot? Jesus, could I sit at the head

of the table? Jesus is sharing his final meal

with the disciples. It's the Passover meal.

He's talking about the blood of the covenant.

He's talking about this new covenant that God is writing in

his blood. And within hours Jesus is going

to be arrested and beaten and crucified.

The shadow of the cross is looming over this room and they

can't notice it because what are the disciples discussing?

Who should be considered the greatest amongst the brothers

that they have? It's disgusting, and I tell you

this with all the love in my heart, because I struggle with

it just like anybody else. It's just as disgusting in our

lives. That should both comfort and

convict us because it comforts us.

Even though we know the disciples wrestled with

comparison. We're disciples who wrestle with

it. But it should convict us because

if men who physically walked with Jesus could struggle with

envy, none of us is above it. I honestly believe this is one

of the open secrets of the modern church.

We don't say it out loud because we've learned to disguise it

with those polite smiles. But envy damages relationships.

Every single Sunday, someone else gets asked to lead a

ministry and instead of celebrating, start wondering why

we weren't picked. Or somebody shares a testimony

about what God has done in their family.

And then we're just like, well, I'll rejoice with you when my

prayers get answered. I've even watched churches fall

into this trap. It's been about five years now

since Pastor Tom retired. Not crazy for those of you that

were here, churches started comparing attendance and budgets

and buildings and stuff like that.

When I became the lead pastor here, I reached out to more than

two dozen churches in the local area because I genuinely wanted

relationships with other pastors.

I wanted to know areas that they were strong and they could help

support me and I wanted them to know what we're all about.

And out of those two dozen churches that I reached out to,

only 5 responded with a yes. And that broke my heart.

Because the Kingdom of God is not meant to function like

competing businesses. Liberty Church is not a

franchise. We're not trying to protect our

market share. The number one reason why most

churches don't work together is 'cause they're afraid of losing

people to another church. How can you lose something that

doesn't belong to you? If another church is faithfully

preaching Christ and reaching people, that's not our loss.

It's a Kingdom victory. And I'll just tell you this, if

you're ever here and you're just like, well, I feel guilty about

leaving, but you feel like you can be more effective in another

church, I'll help you there. That's not me.

Like, let me show you the door, you know, don't let the door hit

you on your backside. No, I want you to thrive.

I want you to thrive. And this, if there's an area you

think you can serve here, come and talk to me about it.

I can't guarantee you a green light, but talk to me about it.

Let's figure it out. I'll just tell you this, envy

will always ask you where do I rank?

And Jesus would ask you something different.

He would ask you who are you serving?

They're 2 completely different questions because one of them

builds competitors and the other builds disciples.

And I'm going to go with Jesus question.

I'll just tell you this real quick.

Another one of the stories of envy from history comes from 2

composers. How many of you are big fans of

Antonio Salieri? Why are you laughing at Antonio?

Does anybody know that name? You do.

I'll give you a sticker after service.

You want a sticker? 2 stickers.

Three stickers today. OK.

He was a competitor with somebody that you probably also

haven't heard of named Mozart. History kind of debates how much

of this is true, right? But they had this competition.

And Sally Erie wasn't a failed musician.

He wasn't untalented. He he actually was one of the

most respected composers and musicians of the day.

Students admired him. He had a career most musicians

could only dream about. Kings sought out his work to be

performed. And then Mozart came along.

And instead of allowing Mozart's brilliance to inspire him,

legend has it that envy consumed him and another man's gift

became the lens through which he looked at his own gifts.

So music stopped being something to create, and it became

something to compete over. The tragedy isn't that Mozart

was gifted, of course. The tragedy is that Salieri

became unable to enjoy his own gifts because he couldn't stop

looking at somebody else's gifts.

I wonder what would have happened if the two of them

could have put their heads together and created some music

together, right? Think about that for the church.

What could the church do if we started looking at other

people's gifts and realized we're better if we put our gifts

together? So.

Let me just say this, how do we retrain our relationships?

It's one thing to retrain what we focus on and our attention.

If your relationships have become split, how do you retrain

them? The answer isn't to do more.

I want you to know that. The answer is just to relate

differently to people. And I say this because a lot of

times when I talk about building up your relationships, people

are like, oh man, now I have to work in more coffee visits and

now I have to do more. No, not necessarily.

Maybe, but that's between you and the Lord.

Listen to this. I think it starts by

intentionally moving people out of that comparison category and

put them back into the category of relationship.

This is a human being I care about.

This is not somebody who's a thorn in my flesh.

And that starts. That sounds easy, but it's

pretty hard because our culture encourages us to evaluate almost

everyone. I see it all the time now.

Don't tell people your dreams because they're not all cheering

for you. Tell them your dreams.

If God put those dreams inside of you, then when it comes to

fruition He'll get the glory for it.

Don't wait until your dreams are achieved and be like, well God

told me 20 years ago that would happen.

I bet he did. But you just waited 2 decades to

tell me. Here's what you do.

For the first thing and I'm really big on this term but

become curious instead of comparative.

I really want to break this down for you all for relationships.

Instead of looking at another couple and thinking I wish my

marriage looked like theirs, why don't you ask him to dinner?

Why don't you ask him to dinner and then learn from them.

You're like, well, then I have to tell them that there's things

on my marriage that aren't good. Really.

I bet it'll be the first time that they assume that.

Instead of envying somebody's financial wisdom, invite them to

coffee and say, how did you get where you are?

I can't even spell the word budget.

Talk to them and be honest about it.

Instead of resenting somebody's leadership, ask them if they'll

mentor you or ask them to just at least give you tips.

What have you learned from leadership?

Envy keeps people at a distance and you know why?

Because people at a distance makes comparison easy.

People that are close that you relate to.

It's hard to envy somebody that you genuinely love and care

about. It's very difficult.

Keep them close. You know that saying where

they're like, you know, keep your friends close, but your

enemies closer. That's stupid.

Don't do that. Friends closer.

OK, genuine friends, because at that point, now you've got your

own support system. The problem is many of us have

our enemies closer because we're on guard.

We're worried about what they're doing, and we're focused more on

our enemies than our friends because our enemies are closer

than our friends. I'm using words like this a lot

today, but I'm in a mood. It's stupid.

Stop doing it. For some people, it also means

to change your conversations. I just talked about sometimes

you have to prune those conversations that you've got

because these people are not contributing well.

Well, I'm not talking about them anymore.

I'm talking about you and me. If you know that when you're in

a mood, you go to someone so that you can have an envious

conversation, you know what you contribute, stop it.

Stop doing it. Stop contributing to the one

thing that is dragging your life down.

And I think especially important in the church.

I just touched on this is in the church, we all have different

gifts because God does not expect any one of us to do it

all. And a lot of times, let's say

you've got a gift of evangelism, you're really great at reaching

the loss, but you've got somebody who's got a pastoral

gift and they're great at helping somebody learn the

Bible, but they're too shy to really get out there and do the

hard work of an evangelist. We're all called to do it in

some way. But how about instead of like

they always want to do these outreach things?

You know, I, I like church programs.

Meanwhile, they're like, church programs are a waste of my time.

There's people that are going to hell that are over a Big Apple

right now and I need to go get them.

Crazy idea, right? Could you imagine if you were

like, what do you need to be equipped so you can go get them?

And here's what I need so I can help them know the Lord better

when they get here. Could you imagine what would

happen if we learned our gift, took it seriously so that we

could work in conjunction with other gifts?

Oh man, the church would look completely different.

How many of y'all know somebody who says they won't go to church

because it's full of hypocrites that don't get along?

Well, they're right, but we're trying and that's the difference

on the outside world versus the church.

We'll wrap it up. But as I come to the end of

this, I just, I want you to know that first of all, next week

we're going to talk about bitterness.

A lot of us, we hold on to bitterness because it's not good

to speak. I'll, but as we come to the end

of this, we're going to be in Philippians 4.

I have one last scripture to share with you and I just want

you to know it's interesting because Paul uses one particular

word in Philippians 4 and I want this to be the word that you

notice above all the other words when you read the scripture from

now on. And the word is this learned,

Learned. Here's this well known

scripture. Paul says this to the church in

Philippi. Not that I was ever in need for

I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.

I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything he

says I have. Here it is learned the secret of

living in every situation, whether it's with a full stomach

or empty, with plenty or little for I can do everything through

Christ who gives me strength. One of my favorite hoodies says

I could do all things through a scripture taken out of context.

I just I don't wear it to church events because I'm afraid that

somebody's going to take a picture and be like, look at

this hypocrite pastor. But I wear it at the house and I

pull my hood up when I need to be alone.

Listen to this. This, this word learned is the

key to everything that we've talked about today because envy

has a lesson that it's trying to teach you.

Envy whispers to you, You'll be content when and you can fill in

the blank from there. You'll be content when you

finally get married. You'll be content when you have

a House of your own and you're not renting.

You'll be content when you have kids.

You'll be content when you get a promotion.

You'll be content when this grows.

You'll be content when dot, dot dot.

The problem is the finish line doesn't stay there.

So I want you to think about in these terms.

Yesterday's prayer becomes today's expectation, and before

long, today's expectation becomes tomorrow's

disappointment. It's no wonder so many of us

don't even enjoy life as we go through it.

What did Paul say? He he learned.

Why is that the word I want you to remember?

Because if you struggle with this, you can learn, too.

Paul's a brilliant man. The secret wasn't pretending

that he had no desires. He had desires.

I promise you that. You know where he wrote the book

of Philippians from prison and he said, I've learned the secret

to contentment. I bet you he had some desires.

He had known seasons of abundance and he had known

seasons of need. But he learned that his joy and

his contentment didn't come from his circumstances.

It came from Christ Himself, and no matter where you are, nothing

can separate you from the love of Christ.

I don't even think the opposite of envy is gratitude, although

gratitude is certainly part of the answer.

I just want you to know this. Gratitude thanks God for what

He's given, but contentment? I want you to hear this.

Contentment goes one step further and trusts God with what

He has not given you. Gratitude is when you're

grateful for what He's given you.

Contentment is when you're grateful for what He has not

provided, or at least not provided yet.

Gratitude says thank you for these blessings and contentment

would say. And I trust you enough to

believe that what you have withheld from me is just as much

a part of your goodness as what you have provided to me.

It's a completely different way of living.

It's something that the world will never understand.

I just want you to know that envy spends its life looking

sideways at other people. When Paul says I can do

everything through Christ, who gives me strength, he's not

talking about winning a championship or a 401K or a

personal dream. That's the way we tend to apply

that scripture. He's talking about something

that's deeper. He said whether I have a little

or I have a lot, Christ is enough and I can do anything he

asks of me because he's the one that's going to equip me.

His contentment wasn't anchored to what he possessed.

His contentment was anchored to the one who possessed him.

As we've walked through the story today and you saw Rachel

and Leah spend years looking over the fence at each other,

we've seen disciples argue over who's the greatest when the

greatest was literally walking among them.

We can see how envy blinds us to our blessings and our

relationships. I just want to encourage you

today, don't let your eyes go side to side.

Don't let them stay horizontal. Anytime you're struggling with

this, you take it back to Him and you turn your eyes upward.

You turn your eyes to Christ. If Christ is lifted up, he'll

draw all men, all women to Him, and that includes you.

Let Him draw you back to Him again.

Amen.