This episode peels back the layers of how envy can seep into and destabilize our relationships, from family dynamics to social interactions. But we also tackle the cure to envy's poison. We uncover the flawed logic in comparing our lives to others and discuss how cultivating a deep, passionate 'fear of the Lord' can pivot our perspective—transforming envy into genuine celebration for others' triumphs. Join us on this journey of faith and introspection, and if you've found value in our talk, consider subscribing and sharing with friends. Together, let's embrace the strength found in Jesus and the joy of human connection.
This episode peels back the layers of how envy can seep into and destabilize our relationships, from family dynamics to social interactions. But we also tackle the cure to envy's poison. We uncover the flawed logic in comparing our lives to others and discuss how cultivating a deep, passionate 'fear of the Lord' can pivot our perspective—transforming envy into genuine celebration for others' triumphs. Join us on this journey of faith and introspection, and if you've found value in our talk, consider subscribing and sharing with friends. Together, let's embrace the strength found in Jesus and the joy of human connection.
Hey, what up? It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church. Welcome to our podcast. I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today. I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you. Enjoy the message.
Speaker 2:My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Fierce. Welcome, welcome. It's good to be with you all this morning. If you know, my wife and I, brooklyn, we've been together. That's, that's Kim, thank you. She is my better half. My wife, brooklyn, and I have been together for a while. Man, we started dating in junior high and, and when you start dating in junior high, you have some stories about your immaturity and I will share you one of those right now.
Speaker 2:Both Brooke and I are basketball players and she it was, she's was better than I was, and and so like I'd be practicing in my driveway and whatnot. And freshman year, high school, comes around and I get asked to be up on the sophomores and Brooke is asked to be put up on varsity and is already scoring points and contributing and stuff like that. And I'm thinking, you know, thinking to myself all right, if I were competitive, I'm competitive, if I want to be better at basketball than Brooke, I'm going to have to, you know, be a lot better than I am, and that's going to be a lot of work. It might be easier if I just try to like, undermine her in some way. So I, you know, before she goes on the bus, I she. Before she goes on the bus, I start a fight with her. I don't remember. You know, it's a long time ago for me, so I don't remember. I don't know what it wasn't really about. Whatever I was fighting about, right, the effort was that she wouldn't play well. But she goes to the, she travels and then she drops 30 on the team. And I learned a valuable lesson that she's better at basketball than I am. I learned a lesson that if I wanted to undermine her, I couldn't make her angry. And that wasn't the best lesson that I should have learned. I should have learned how to deal with my envy, and that's what we're going to talk about this morning.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, first things, definitions. Sometimes you hear folks say jealousy and envy interchangeably, and that's fine by me. Don't hear the sermon and then just go out and correct everybody Like well, that's not what Pastor Andy would say. But I'm going to draw a distinction. That's biblical. I'm going to draw a distinction between the two.
Speaker 2:Jealousy is a desire for something. This can be a good. You can have a good jealousy. God is jealous of us. He doesn't want us to worship any other gods, any other idols, so he's jealous for our hearts. If you have a spouse, you should be jealous of that, of that committed, loving relationship. When someone else tries to get in between you or mess with your relationship, it's more than anger, right. Jealousy rises up. Get out of here with that.
Speaker 2:Envy. Is jealousy the wanting of wanting something. But it's also it's often like I don't just want a better spot, I don't just want, like, a good spouse if you're single. Or I don't just want a happy family, I don't just want a powerful career or something like that, I want my neighbor's wife. I want my co-workers career promotion, I want my idols' skillset. And when you don't have that, you add resentment to it. That's envy In your imagination.
Speaker 2:When you think about them not doing well, you feel better, and when they are doing well, you feel awful. That's, that's envy. Think about the your, what you aspire to be. Think about the skills, the talents, the type of person, the accomplishments that you want to be. Now think of someone who already has that or is close to it. And now think if they, if I found out they were doing a little bit worse, would I feel better? Would that be a pick me up for this morning?
Speaker 2:Donald Trump's most like tweet of all time was when he announced that he had coronavirus. What? Why are we so happy about that? Envy is tough because it's, as an ancient philosopher said, of all the ailments of the soul, this is the one that nobody wants to confess to. In Ecclesiastes 4, a wise man is reflecting on all the meaninglessness of life. In verse 4 he says all toil and all achievement spring from envy, and this, too, is meaningless chasing after the wind. Now, even if that's just like an exaggeration, hyperbole, most work and most human achievement comes from envy. Then why don't we see it? Why isn't it more obvious? That's because envy hides itself. It hides itself. Think about Joseph and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If you're familiar with the musical or the Prince of Egypt, move, whatever. No, that's Moses, joseph and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Speaker 2:Joseph has eleven brothers and he has a sweet jacket, and his brothers are jealous because the jacket represents that their dad loves him more. And Joseph he's seventeen at the time. He probably has a vibe that this is the case because he's wearing his jacket. He has a couple of dreams that show that his brothers and his folks are one day going to bow down to him, which is not, that's not like a cultural thing, especially when you're one of the youngest brothers. And what does he do? Well, he tells his brothers they're already not on speaking terms and he's like, yeah, yeah, I just had a dream. One day you're going to bow to me and they're like, yeah, we're going to kill you. Yeah, that's the end of that.
Speaker 2:So they plot and they buy their time. One day they're out in the fields and dad sends Joseph to go to them and they see Joseph coming before he knows that they're there and they capture him and they throw him in a cistern that doesn't have any water and they're like, yeah, okay, he's going to die there. Then they feel kind of bad about it and they see a caravan that's going by and they're like, okay, okay, he is our brother, we shouldn't kill him. Let's just sell him into slavery. And so they do that. And then they cover it up. They take that amazing technicolor dream coat, they dip it in goats blood and shred it and they say a wild animal pops. A wild animal killed Joseph. Now we know why he covered, why they covered it up to dad.
Speaker 2:How embarrassing that you sold your brother into slavery because you didn't feel as loved as you thought you should be. So weakness of character on their part, right. But what I want to point out is that if we were in that story and we had the thought, oh, he's our brother, we can't kill him, we would feel good about ourselves. We'd be like, yeah, he does deserve to die, but we'll be gracious this time and let somebody else do terrible things to him. And then I can keep going and feeling like I'm a good person, as a brother you know, I'm not rude like Joseph is, and he's taken care of perfect. It. Envy hides itself, and it even hides itself from yourself. So if you are lucky enough to have envy revealed in your life, you should be grateful, because it reveals something about your heart. It says something about who you are.
Speaker 2:Think about another famous biblical story. Think about Solomon and the two moms. I don't know if you're familiar with this. Solomon was a wise king, and an example of his wisdom is that two moms were in a dispute. They were fighting over the same child, each claiming that that child was their own. This is long before DNA testing. And so how do you resolve this issue?
Speaker 2:Well, solomon didn't know that one of the moms, he didn't know that one of the moms had lost their child and was trying to take this other gal's child. But he did know that if envy is at play it'll show itself. And so he said bring me a sword, let's cut this baby in half. And the real mom is like whoa, whoa, whoa, we just want you to settle the dispute. Didn't know that killing the child was on on the docket. I don't care about the, just let my child live. I don't Okay, I don't need, I don't need the child, just let the child live. And the fake mom is like if I can't have that baby, nobody can.
Speaker 2:And so I've heard interpretations that say like, solomon was wise in that he knew that only a mother wouldn't want to split his baby or baby into right. But I've met plenty of people who don't want to split babies into. In fact, it's a rare circumstance in which they do one of those being envy. It wasn't actually about the child at all. Whether the child's alive or not, I'm only content if she doesn't have him. And so envy hides itself, but it reveals our hearts. It's like this, the. It's a special case of what Jesus says up where your treasure is there, your heart will be also, except in envy, your treasure belongs to somebody else. But here's the thing. I mean, obviously, selling someone into slavery or trying to kill their child. These are not qualities that we aspire to right. But envy poisons yourself as well. It doesn't just hurt your relationships and other people, it poisons yourself. As Proverbs 14.30 says, a heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. It eats you from the inside out.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. If you're envious of your spouse or your kids or your coworkers, it messes with you. In the New York Times a couple years back, there was an article about let me get the subtitle correct. So the article is called Marriage Requires Amnesia Marriage Requires Forgetting right. Subtitle. Do I hate my husband? Oh for sure, yes, definitely.
Speaker 2:And she describes in one sense her husband is a leader amongst men, a pioneer in ideas about how to reinvigorate science education in America, but in another she sees him groggy in the mornings. She refers to him as a pile of laundry, a heap and smelly, waiting for the coffee of the day to usher him from the land of the undead. She is envious that other people think that her marriage is great because she thought she was marrying her ideal husband, this leader amongst men and really sometimes he's just a pile of laundry. Other people think she has a great life and she has to deal with the reality, but that's not always the case. A psychiatrist was talking about the obsession over safety for our children in America and he blames envy. He says that really, really, what we are afraid of is our children replacing us, and so it doesn't mean that you won't work really hard to get your kids opportunities or to get them into a good college, but you will parent them in a way that undermines them subtly so that they can't replace you. Namely, you won't expose them to any risks, so they'll never take them.
Speaker 2:If you like music, maybe you're familiar with Coldplay. This is a very famous band. Chris Martin is a lead singer and he, during the COVID times, played a duet with a famous jazz musician named Jacob Collier, who I'm a big fan. He's a musical genius. He created his own scale, the mega, ultra, hyper, no, super, mega, super, ultra, hyper, mega mixolydian. He just stacks thirds as many fingers as he has on a piano, so he's smarter than I am. He's more of a musical genius, and Chris Martin is going to play one of the Coldplay songs with him, and the way that this guy can just shape chords and move your soul is incredible.
Speaker 2:And Chris Martin stops singing in the middle of a song and is like I can't do this. And then he says had you seen the movie Amadeus? Do you know the part of the movie Amadeus about Mozart? Do you know the part where Salieri, this rival composer, plays a song that he's super proud of and Mozart, on hearing it once, goes to the piano and plays it 50 times better? And Salieri is just burning with envy? Chris Martin, in real time, during the live streaming of this, is just saying this and he said well, I've found Mozart and Jacob is immediately you know, like you wrote the song. We're enjoying this because you wrote the song. He's trying to be deferential, right, and Chris is like, oh, I don't have to be, I don't have to be best, but you can see that he's depressed the craft that he had given his life to and this guy has billions of like Coldplay is huge, but you know features Beyonce songs and played at I think they played at the Super Bowl, whatever they huge popularity and yet when you hear someone so masterfully play what you created and made it better, how can you have enough character to withstand that.
Speaker 2:We've diagnosed envy. It hides itself, right, but it reveals our hearts and we have to deal with it because it poisons our, it poisons our families, it poisons our communities, poisons ourselves. So then, what's the cure? Well, before we go to the cure, I want to give a false cure, and sometimes we, sometimes you can get this in the church, not that we would say it on purpose, but it's a misunderstanding, and so I want to clarify. All right. So the false cure goes something like this like when you think about social media and the comparing storm that that creates, right, the you know, oh my gosh, look how great their brunch is every single day, look how, how many different countries they've been to. Like it just bananas about, about the comparison that can happen if you just scroll. Well, you know, we say things. This is helpful.
Speaker 2:You shouldn't compare your behind the scenes to someone's highlight reel. That's a line from Pastor Steven Furtick. You shouldn't compare your behind the scenes to someone's highlight reel. This is true, you don't know everything about their lives, but I don't, especially if envy is the problem. I don't think it's helpful to say something like this. They're miserable anyway. Rich people, they can't have as deep of relationships. You know, hollywood folks just shallow as all get out. We do this with like bullies. You know, I've heard teachers say bullies, they, they just don't have any self-esteem. Literally the opposite is true. The reason why they're bullying is because they think they're better than the person that they're bullying. We're like no, no, no, they're miserable. Bullies are miserable. Wealthy people are miserable. Successful people are miserable. And now I feel better. If you feel better about someone not doing well, I have bad news for you. That's likely envy. That's likely envy In Proverbs 24, I'll give you the Christian version of this.
Speaker 2:In Proverbs 24, it says do not fret over, do not fret because of evildoers or be envious of the wicked. An evildoer has no future and the lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out. Don't worry about evildoers because their future is already determined and it's not good. But if you and I are like, yeah, I got an enemy and they're enemies of God, perfect hellfire, boom, I'll tell them the next time I see them you think you're so great, but you're hellbound. You're hellbound. Good luck with that. If we feel good about the destruction of another person's life, that's envy. And here's the thing. That's because you have a ledger. You're keeping track of rights and wrongs yourself and you're like God. He does an all right job, but my ledger is accurate and if God would just simply like look at what I'm seeing, I think he would agree this person straight the hell.
Speaker 2:When you think about the future of those who are in rebellion against God, if you get excited about the destruction of other people, you might be forgetting that we ourselves, as Christians, were once considered wicked and we are no longer considered wicked because of nothing that we did. It is but by the grace of God that we're saved. So then we end up something like Jonah and this is another famous story. You know the whale or a fish or whatever, and he gets eaten up. Jonah is a terrible prophet. He is terrible because God tells him to go somewhere and he goes the opposite direction. Then God brings him back using the fish, and so then he goes and finally preaches to the city and he's like these people are terrible, they don't even deserve to repent. So he goes to the city and guess what happens? They repent, and so then he goes up to a hilltop and he just pouts and pouts like God.
Speaker 2:I know and didn't want to do this. I knew you were a forgiving God. This is ridiculous. Those people deserve to die. Terrible prophet, ha Ha. False cure, ha.
Speaker 2:There's a great German word for this, by the way Schadenfreude. It means pleasure in other people's sufferings. Let's not do that. Let's not do that. Rather, in Romans, let's rejoice with those who rejoice and let's mourn with those who mourn. So what is the cure? What is the cure then?
Speaker 2:Proverbs 23, should sound very familiar to Proverbs 24, just has a different ending. Proverbs 23 reads do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. What's the cure then? Because if you and I are wicked, we need a way out. The cure is to be zealous for the fear of the Lord. We don't use zeal very often. We don't use fear in this way. So I'll explain.
Speaker 2:Fear of the Lord super important in the book of Proverbs simply means a deep, deep respect for who God is in his creation. If you think about all that God is and then you treat him that way, that's respect, that's fear of the Lord. So then we're supposed to be zealous for the respect that we're supposed to have, a passion for the proper respect of God. We should have a fierceness. See you guys next week. We should have a fierceness about respecting God and putting God in his proper spot.
Speaker 2:But this isn't just done by intellectual ascent. You can't just think okay, I have all these propositions about what is true about God. God is big. Yes, I believe that God is good. Yes, I believe that you don't just go through the list. Rather, it's about experiencing God. You know how there's a difference between someone who talks about love and someone who is in love. If you've felt in love before, it's a rose-tinted glasses. It affects everything that you see. It's a driving force and motivator for your life Zeal for the Lord, a passion that God might be known for how good and great he is, how beautiful and wonderful he actually is, because he took wicked people like you and I and he saved us.
Speaker 2:Envy's cure is reverence. Envy's cure is reverence. And this makes sense because if our treasure is in somebody else's house, that's envy, but if our treasure is in heaven, that's reverence. If we spend our lives trying to concoct plans to make sure that other people don't get what they want and we do, if we spend our lives pursuing the Instagram goal of making other people feel jealous of the life that we live my brunch will one day get all of the likes, my travel photos one but pursuing God, who is not envious of anyone because he has no equal God, is the solution. This experience of God can pull us out of envy so that we aren't stuck in the muck and mire of our own selfishness, the covert narcissism that plagues our lives, over emphasis on ourselves, in self-pity or in pride back and forth. God pulls us from that so that we think about someone who is much greater and worthy, actually, of our praise. Sometimes we call sports, sometimes we call them sports stars, the athletes that are very, very good. We call them stars, but really they're more like moons, in that they don't emit their own light, they simply reflect light that we give them. God is our light, he is our morning star and he deserves our praise. All right, so going forward when we think about the future now, how are we supposed to live in light of this message on envy? If Christians have a future hope that doesn't get cut off, if it's guaranteed, how is that the case too? Well, to tell you that, I will tell you another story. This is about Tolkien, jrr Tolkien, the writer of the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2:He, at least according to his biography, was plagued with envy early on in his life. He had a very good friend named CS Lewis, and in the late 30s they decided that they're going to write stories that they felt like should be in the world and they set off and CS Lewis starts writing and he gets through the space trilogy Books one, two, three, writes the Chronicles of Narnia Books one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. He writes the screwtape letters. Meanwhile Tolkien struggling, struggling, struggling to finish one book when his son, tolkien's son, went off to World War II. He writes an encouraging letter and says remember, you're part of a great story, as an encouragement to his son Remember, you're part of a great story. But he himself struggled with. Well, what is my part? I felt like I'm called to do something great and it's not coming. I have this aspiration. I aspire to be an author that creates something beautiful, and it's not. I'm not, I'm not.
Speaker 2:Eventually he stops writing, like in the late 40s. He just stops writing altogether. Until one night he had a dream. He woke up and he wrote a short story called Leaf by Niggle. The story goes like this there was a painter in a town who was hired to paint a mural on the side of City Hall and he has this picture of a tree in his mind and he starts going and after days, and after weeks, and after months and after years, he has one leaf and the town officials come and say what the heck? Where'd all that money go? You're wasting our time. This isn't good enough. And he's like I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. And then he dies and on the train to heaven he stops the train, he runs up the hill and it's his tree. He says this writes before him stood the tree. His tree finished its leaves, opening its branches, growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed and it so often failed to catch. He gazed at the tree and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. It's a gift, he said.
Speaker 2:Tolkien realized that when God says the good work that he begins in you, he will bring to completion means something that meant something for him that heaven isn't just a zen afterlife, it is the eradication of envy and it is the elevation of our hearts. Jesus Christ, god himself, died for our sins. And when he went to the cross he didn't complain, he didn't whine, he didn't begrudge us. When he went to the cross, he didn't, he just kept going because of the joy set before him. He didn't feel bad that we needed salvation. He didn't feel like why do I have to come and help these jokers out?
Speaker 2:God himself died for you and I so that we might not be bound up in this envy, that we could have healthy relationships, that we could raise our children in a way that honors God, that we could have a community that isn't hell-bent on getting what we want first. And because Christ died for us, because Christ died for us, we have a hope, the most wonderful hope that's guaranteed. All of your aspirations, all the best things that you desire, god can bring. God can bring promises to bring to fruition. Let's pray, heavenly Father.
Speaker 2:Lord, we confess our envy. Lord, it's so embarrassing that we think so little of you in comparison, god, that we get caught up in our own insecurities and inadequacies and comparisons and we actually want ill on other people because they have what we want. Lord, we confess, lord, we're so thankful that your son didn't begrudge dying, didn't begrudge us on the cross, but that he willingly came so that we might have a life free from envy. And, god, we pray this morning that you would help us to revere you, god, that you would pull us out of ourselves, that we might love you more and love other people In your name, amen.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you so much for joining us today. If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out Fears Thought Church. We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person. Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fears Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry. It's because of you that this is possible. You can click on the link in the description to give now, or visit Fears Thought Church for more information.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this podcast, why not subscribe? Share it with your friends. Click on the share button, take a screenshot and share it on social media or whatever. You would share such things. Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it. Don't give up. Hang on to Jesus. He won't let go of you. Jesus loves you so much and we love you. I hope someday we get to meet in person. Thanks again for listening.