Sermon: Agape: Does Not Envy

Overcoming Satan's Spirit of Envy
#1726A
Bill Onisick
Given 09-Sep-23; 35 minutes 2023-09-09

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When we see someone driving a very expensive car, let us say a Lamborghini, what pops into our mind immediately? Do we assume probably a drug dealer, lottery winner, maybe a corrupt businessman. How about someone living in a multimillion dollar home, a home with that beautifully, meticulously landscaped multiple acres in front. What is the initial thought? Did they compromise in some way to obtain such wealth? Well, certainly some do achieve wealth dishonestly, but many have obtained it ethically through hard work or inheritance. And we know that biblically there is nothing wrong with wealth and nice things in and of themselves, as long as we keep them in the proper perspective.

So why then would our gut reaction be others' success is perhaps something that they did wrong in order to achieve it? Why would our gut reaction be a feeling of maybe displeasure or resentment? Why are we so quick to disparage them in our minds? Is it perhaps an underlying feeling that we should not have as children of God?

Today, we are going to examine the subtle but dangerous sin of envy. We are going to start with a definition here that is going to bring some clarity. It certainly did for me. And I have got to say, I have been guilty of envy quite a few times in my life, and I called it something different. We are going to look at a few examples. We are going to go all the way back to the source and the father of envy. You can probably guess who that is. And along the way, I hope we will pick up some instruction on how we can best avoid it together.

We have been spending a good bit of time on the battle within our mind and we are going to continue that today. The battle in our mind, which is the source, really, of all sin, right? It is the battleground where Satan's surprise attacks is trying to catch us off guard. The real danger here to the end time church, I contend, is we have a desire to compare ourselves to others and that gives us a feeling of good status with God. Compared to the average Joe, yeah, we are pretty good Christians. That is a really dangerous thought pattern, brethren.

Envy, coveting, murder, idolatry—these sins all start in the mind and they can actually stay in the mind. These sins can actually stay and reside in our mind and never actually come out in actions of word or deed, but there is still sin, right? There is still sin, and God hates sin. God knows our thoughts. How many of our thoughts today even, on the Sabbath, were sinful thoughts, thoughts not aligned to what God wants us thinking about?

It is not ok for us to have thoughts of sin. We have to get those thoughts out of our mind. And if we think it is okay, God will hold us accountable because that is a very presumptuous attitude. Just because we are not acting on it; we can have the thought of evil in our mind. The thought of murder for somebody because they have done something wrong to us. We can have a thought of envy or coveting in our mind and that is sin.

Now, what is more, sins that start in our mind often do not stay there and this is where it becomes even more dangerous. Usually those sins that start in our mind ignite other sins of action that become more and more visible.

So as we look into envy, we are going to study envy, jealousy, and covetousness because they are often interchanged and I think they are often misused, at least I misuse them. Mike Ford actually gave a really good message on this at the 2020 Feast. It was entitled, "Are You Envious or Content?" So I am going to point you to that and he made it clear that we often mistake jealousy for envy. And I am going to build on this today as we briefly look into jealousy and coveting before we double click on envying.

Now of these three related words—envy, coveting, and jealousy—only jealousy can be positive. So if you do not get anything else, remember that. Only jealousy can be positive. We can never have a positive coveting. We can never have a positive envying. And usually what we call jealousy is probably more envying, and that is what we are going to try to tease out here today.

Let us turn to Exodus 20, verse 5. The Bible makes it pretty clear that our God is a jealous God and we are going to go look at that right now.

Exodus 20:5 "You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God."

We can stop right there. We can go over now to Exodus 34, verse 14. We can see it repeated for emphasis.

Exodus 34:14 "For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."

As we read here, and as Mike pointed out in his Feast message, one of God's names is Jealous. So we know that this is absolutely a very positive characteristic, or at least it can be.

We could turn to several more, but I see Richard has got a pretty big stack of notes. (laughter) So I will just ask you to jot down Deuteronomy 4, "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." Deuteronomy 5, "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." And finally Deuteronomy 6, "For the Lord your God is a jealous God among you."

Our God is a jealous God. But, and here is the big but, we rightly belong to God. All worship and service belong to Him alone and it is indeed sin to put anything before Him. So He has a right to be jealous. All our thoughts, right? We need a Pooh thinking cap here, thinking chair: all our thoughts belong to Him and God tells us He does not want to share us with this world or anything in it.

Please turn me to turn with me to II Corinthians 11. But, now here is the big "but" again, to have godly jealousy requires that you first have and should have the object that you are jealous of. Remember godly positive jealousy is a desire to retain, to preserve, and not share that which is rightly yours. When we entered into the covenant with the Almighty Great God through baptism, we did what? We gave ourselves to Him entirely. We gave ourselves to Him. We belong to God completely. And so God has a right to be jealous over our time, over our actions, and our mind. It was through the ultimate cost and sacrifice of Jesus Christ that He paid for our sins. He is preparing His bride and we rightly and wholly belong to Him. He is indeed jealous, brethren, over our time, thoughts, and actions because they belong to Him.

II Corinthians 11:2-3 For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Paul had brought the Corinthians into the truth and into the New Covenant relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ. He was zealous for them and he was worried that they were being unfaithful to God.

We too can have a positive godly jealousy for our spouse perhaps, that we do not want to share with anyone else. And if we see someone flirting with them, we can pop them in the eye! No, that is taking it too far. We cannot do that, but we can certainly gently grab our spouse's hand to point out that we are bonded, right? That we have a commitment to each other. And I will also point out here that many do take their jealousy way beyond the godly jealousy to try to control their spouse's every move, and this is not godly jealousy. So there are boundaries around godly jealousy.

Remember, godly jealousy is about a positive desire to retain, preserve, and not share that which rightly belongs to us. Anything else is not godly jealousy. There is another word for that and we are going to talk about it here in a minute.

So if we have a desire to get something that does not rightly belong to us right now, we could maybe try to use that word jealousy. If we are kind of young hip people, we might even say we are" jelly." But that feeling is definitely not God's Spirit and we should use the word envy instead because that object does not rightly belong to us so we cannot have godly jealousy for it.

Let us move on our study now. So we talked about jealousy. Now we are going to talk about coveting. In Martin Collins' 1997, "The Tenth Commandment" of his Bible Studies series, he defined covetousness. It is very simply stated. I really like this. "An insatiable desire for worldly gain." It can be really about anything. That summarizes it so nicely. When we covet something, we have a desire for the thing, the object, and we want it badly. The moment we covet and allow ourselves to focus on that thing, we are not only coveting, we are also committing idolatry because our focus, remember, is supposed to be on our Great God. He is a jealous God. Any time our thoughts get uber-focused on something else that is idolatry, in addition to coveting it.

Let us turn to Exodus 20.

Exodus 20:17 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."

Now, when I run on the treadmill in the morning at the Y, it is pretty early and on the TV there in front of me is usually ESPN or some home improvement show, and inevitably in front of the machines I want to use, it is always the home improvement show, never ESPN. I have a vision of somebody racing through the door at 4:59 a.m. and flipping on the channel so we get to watch some home improvement. I do not really watch TV anyway so it is not that big a deal.

But I am always amazed as I am running (and usually listening to a sermon or something), I will see these words come up and I feel sorry for this poor couple. It happens over and over again. They have a "measly" $2 to $3 million total budget to remodel the house. And I am like, man, how are they going to do that? But in seriousness, I am certain these shows have some sort of funding by the home improvement stores because they want us to become discontent with our homes, do they not? They want us to spend money in their stores. And they do a great job at it too.

If you notice, the first thing that we are commanded to not covet there in Exodus 20 it is our neighbor's house. It is pretty interesting and it is a little contemporary. Right? There is a big focus on home improvement these days and if we are not careful, we can all fall victim for this. Social media, home improvement shows galore, they are all trying to get us to keep up with the Joneses and the new trends to different types of flooring and colors and design patterns.

It is very easy, brethren, for us in the church to get way too focused on our homes. And I absolutely have been guilty of that. There is nothing new under the sun and I suspect that our Israelite ancestors in Jerusalem were anxious to upgrade those dirt floors to ceramic tile. But again, we must be very careful that we do not covet, that we do not allow these objects to become too much in the forefront of our minds. That is coveting.

There is a parallel scripture to not covet in Deuteronomy 5, which it adds "field" to the list. And then in Deuteronomy 7, God adds "silver and gold" to the list as well. So pretty much anything we could covet that we do not have is not rightly already ours.

Let us jump over to Hebrews now real quick, Hebrews 13, verse 5. You probably know this scripture.

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you."

This is an important point here when it comes to coveting. It really comes down to a lack of trust and faith in God. Right? God tells us He will never, never, never, never, never forsake us. He knows exactly what we need at any point in time. He is going to give us the gifts that we need. He is going to give us the spouse when it is the right time. He is going to give us the job when it is the right time. He is going to give us what we need when we need it if we are faithful and patient.

We can tie this back to Ephesians 5:3 and the inverse in Colossians 3:5 where Paul states, covetousness is not fitting for the saints. For we must put to death covetousness, he says, which is idolatry.

Over the Romans 13 now.

Romans 13:8-9 Owe no one anything except to love [agapeo] another, for he who loves [agapeo] another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness," "You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love [agapeo] your neighbor as yourself."

Now, we can tie this to the parallel scripture in Matthew 19. All of our responsibilities towards fellow man could be summarized in that second of the two great commandments: we are to agapeo our neighbor as ourselves. And that all the commandments Paul listed here are aligned to that duty, to love our neighbor. This gives us an indicator that when we covet an object that sin is first with God. It is the sin of idolatry through coveting. Our mind is taken off of Him and on to some objects or something that we want. But it is also against our neighbor. When we covet something, this sin is against the person that rightly owns that object. It is a sin against our neighbor.

And here is when the sin of coveting leads to the sin of envy. Now, what is the difference between coveting and envying? It is pretty simple. Coveting is about the desire to get the thing, the object, right? It could be a possession. It could be an ability. It could be an achievement. Envy is about the person, the person that has the object that we want, the person that stands in the way of us getting what we want. It leaves a feeling of discontent or resentment towards someone for something they have that we want and we feel we should have.

We can envy someone for their possessions, a house or a car (we talked about that earlier), for an ability or an achievement; and both envy and coveting are the result of comparisons and discontentment. We compare ourselves to someone else and see something we do not have and we want it. Coveting again is about the thing itself; envying is about the person that stands in our way to get it.

But what is interesting is that feeling of envy does not take into account the actual sacrifice it took to achieve that thing that we so want. We want the reward, we want the nice home or the car. But do we ever stop when we look at that and think, I wonder what it took for them to get that? If perhaps we envisioned 80-hour work weeks across an entire life, failed businesses, bankruptcies, broken relationships and marriages, all that to achieve that wealth. Probably not so attractive anymore.

You know, I once saw a retired famous football player hobbling in a airport and I gotta say, like I wanted to be that guy when I was a kid, and when I saw him hobbling across in all of that pain, barely could walk from all those years of wear on his body, I was like, "Oh, wow." No, I definitely did not want his life. That is terrible. He could barely move.

And that is the thing with envy. We want the thing, but we do not want the pain, and we do not put it in proper perspective.

Please turn with me to Genesis 30 where we are going to quickly examine a story of envy. Now we will set some context here. Jacob is the son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, and Isaac tells him he cannot marry the daughters of Canaan. So he sends him to his uncle on his mother's side, Laban. As soon as he arrives by the well, we read in Genesis 29 that Jacob had love at first sight for the beautiful Rachel. We read that he actually kissed her and lifted up his voice and he wept. He loved her that much, right from the get-go. He was lovestruck and weeping with joy. And he tells Laban, "I'll serve you seven years for her." And Laban says, "ok."

But of course, we know the story. He tricks him into marrying the older sister first. Laban tricks him into marrying Leah and Jacob agrees to serve another seven years for Rachel. But this sets up years of envying between the two sisters, right? The one sister is desperate for the love of Jacob. The other sister is desperate to produce sons and she is barren. And so we are going to see this envying going back and forth through this story, but we are going to have to go pretty quick here.

Let us pick it up here in Genesis 29, verses 32 through 35. You can you see how desperate Leah is for the love of Jacob. After the firstborn, Reuben, Leah says, "Now therefore, my husband will love me." After the second born, Simeon, "The Lord has heard that I am unloved, He has given me this son." After Levi, "Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I bore him three sons." But even after the fourth son, after she stops bearing, she does not have Jacob's love. She still envies Jacob's love.

Genesis 30:1 Now, when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said to Jacob, "Give me children, or else I die!"

Despite having Jacob's love, she envied her sister who was able to produce children and she desperately pleads with Jacob and Jacob responds. Now he was angry.

Genesis 30:2 And Jacob's anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, "Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?"

So Rachel was discontent. She borrows a trick from her grandmother-in-law, Sarah. It worked so well for her; and she gives Jacob her handmaid. And now we have a back-and-forth reproductive battle of the handmaids, each of them have two handmaids as the story goes. So, now we are adding up all of these sons (still no natural born sons from Rachel). And then in verse 14 (we will not read this), but Leah's son, Reuben, finds some mandrake. That is pretty interesting. And Rachel is now begging her for some of these mandrakes hopeful that maybe it would help her be able to have children. And Leah responds,

Genesis 30:15 "Is this a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes too?"

We can feel that animosity and envy there. So after Leah has two more sons and a daughter, the score is now six sons (Leah), one daughter, plus the four sons via handmaids. And finally,

Genesis 30:22-23 Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, "God has taken away my reproach." So she called his name Joseph.

So here we have got a very unhealthy family dynamic. Clearly, the two sisters are battling, they are envious. Just imagine what that did to all of their sons? There is a battle, a war, one side versus the other. And we can just see that the mothers taught their sons how to envy, right? They, the sons, picked up on their mothers' characteristics as they watched them battling back and forth. So over to Genesis 37, and this is what I was looking for.

Genesis 37:2 This is the history of Jacob. Joseph being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father.

Joseph is now 17 when he witnesses his older brothers doing something they should not be doing and he brings this evil report back to his father. His brothers were doing something very contrary to God's way, because that word evil there is the same word we see were used in Genesis 2 to describe the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So they were doing something pretty bad. We do not know what it was. Now, it is not recorded, but it is pretty possible that (we are getting some context here), Joseph perhaps was different than his brothers. Maybe he actually had a good relationship with God the Father, he knew what was right from wrong.

It is very possible that Joseph was that annoying younger brother, a goody two shoes of sorts, a tattle tale, always telling on his brothers every time they did something wrong. But it appears he did have a good relationship with God at an early age. Maybe this is partially why Jacob loved him so much. But there is more here to this story.

Genesis 37:3-4 Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a tunic of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.

Now, it is no surprise here that Jacob preferred Rachel's two sons. I mean, after all, this was the love of his life and she was not able to have sons till very late in life. With their mom, who died at a very early age, by the way, that is a fact that sometimes gets left out here, we do not know the exact age, but Joseph was probably, maybe six years old, maybe eight years old when he lost his mom. And of course, he probably is getting consoled by his father. They had a tight bond because he was trying to help him through that loss.

As we read down now in verse 5, we will see Joseph has a dream and he tells it to his brothers and they hate him even more. And this was a prophetic dream. So this would tie back to perhaps Joseph actually was a little closer to God because this dream we know comes true later in life. It is pretty interesting how God works all this out in the future. Then again, in verse 9, he has another dream where his brothers are going to bow down to him and now everyone's going to bow down to him. Again, thinking of the future when he is going to be second in command to Pharaoh, it is a prophetic dream.

Genesis 37:11 And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

So pretty interesting subject for another day But certainly all of this comes to fulfillment in terms of those dreams.

We know how this all plays out. As Joseph approaches his brothers in the field, they have envy for for him and they conspire to kill him. The spirit of discontent creates a spirit of coveting, which then creates a spirit of envying, and ultimately leads to murder.

Now, when was the first instance of envy? We know when reading in Isaiah 14:12-15, how Satan has fallen, how he is cut to the ground. Because he said in his heart, "I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount." Right? Satan had an envy for God.

Turn to John 8 as we start to bring this to a close.

John 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it."

John tells us Satan was a murderer from the beginning. My question is: from what beginning? From the time he was created? I do not think so. I contend that the beginning John is referring to is the same beginning that we read about in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning [when] God created the heavens and the earth." The beginning referenced here I believe is when God announced and set into motion His plan to create humans on earth and give them the opportunity to become God beings. Satan hated being second to anyone. He hated that more than anything.

But, as we read in Hebrews 1, Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of the Father and is so much better than the angels. Let all the angels of God worship Him, we read. And when we combine this to Romans 8, verse 17, what do we get? "We are the children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with [Jesus] Christ." Think about that.

Satan is the creator of envy. First, he became discontent with his position. Then he started coveting that which he did not have: the honor, the glory, the exaltation of the Great God Himself. That led to an envy, an envy of God's exultation and supreme status and that envy, maybe, was kept inside for a little while, but it eventually duped him into actually thinking he could replace God, which we know did not go well at all. The envy was released in an outrage of sin, rebellion, and defeat. And he is absolutely outraged, brethren, over the prospect of billions of more getting added to be co-heirs with Christ.

Satan is out to murder us. Satan is envious of us and he is working hard to destroy us, brethren. How does he destroy us? Well, John 8:44 tells us he was a murderer from the beginning and he does not stand in the truth. There is the clue. He uses deception to murder us, right? The great deceiver is working his surprise attack to infiltrate our every thought, to bury explosive minds, if you will, minds of discontentment, covetousness, and envy. Proverbs 14, verse 30 should really hit home.

Proverbs 14:30 A sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.

Envy is like a spiritual bone cancer that starts on the inside and it erodes our contentment and our love as it aggressively displaces it with discontentment, hate, coveting, envy, and even murder within our mind. It creates a bitterness and ill will towards others because they have something we want or we think we deserve: a quality, an achievement, or in a possession. We feel slighted because God has not given us similar gifts. Inside we actually hope that somehow that person that has what we want is going to fail. They are going to trip, they are going to fall, they are going to stumble.

We will not go there, we have spent a lot of time in I Corinthians 13. But do you know what the very first negative attribute of agape is? Remember, Paul has eight positive, eight negative. The very first negative, God's Spirit of agape never does this. Do you know what it is? Agape does not envy. God's Spirit never creates a feeling of displeasure or resentment for someone else's accomplishment, quality, or possession. We celebrate their success. That feeling of discontentment and resentment is not godly jealousy. It is a sin of first coveting and then the sin of envying. There is a multitude of warnings throughout the New Testament on the danger of envy and we do not have time to go there today, brethren.

But let us finish up in James 3 because he does a very good job bringing it all together for us.

James 3:13-18 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

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