Dr. Scott McKee: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. You look well rested. It's amazing what one extra hour of sleep doesn't do. If you're not a morning person, yours is not going be a morning person.
I want to welcome those of you joining us from our Pharmacy Hills campus just now via live video feed. Good morning to you. We are working our way through the famous love chapter of the Bible, one Corinthians 13, and you've noticed we're reading that same passage every week through this series, and maybe these words are becoming more familiar to you. Maybe at some point you committed these words to memory, and I wanna encourage you to do that. Here Paul is being a great poet and theologian as he describes what real love is.
Today, we get to verse four in First Corinthians 13, and this is our focus verse of the week that we're gonna see up on that screen over there apparently. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant. And today we're gonna talk about this line love does not envy, and then in our small groups, we're gonna talk about this love is not arrogant, or to put it in a positive way, love is humble.
So today, love does not envy. Later this week in our small groups, we'll do love is humble. So it's a tall order this week. Let's pray. Oh God, open now to us Your word.
Help us to understand and to learn to love the way that Jesus loved. We pray this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Today, we're talking about envy, and envy is as old as the human race. It's a natural part of the human experience, and everybody here knows what it is to envy.
At the outset, envy seems like a lesser sin. Stacked up against other sins like murder or robbery, envy seems less serious and a whole lot more common, and you might conclude that envy is, in fact, harmless, but you would be wrong to do so. The most common destroyer of relationships is not anger. It's not impatience. It's not apathy.
It's not unkindness. It is envy, and in our series on a forty day journey of learning to love like Jesus, today we're gonna focus on this love does not envy. It's impossible to love somebody and to envy them at the same time. So what is envy? Here's a description I've always thought was spot on.
Envy is resenting God's goodness to others and ignoring God's goodness to me. Envy is resenting God's goodness to others and ignoring God's goodness to me. Have you ever done that? Have you ever resented God's goodness to others and ignored God's goodness to yourself? Or let me ask you in reviews, in reverse, how many of you had an envy free week this last week?
You went seven days, and the thought of wanting someone else's job, status, marriage, or personality never entered your mind. You never at any point thought, I wish I had their hairline, waistline, byline, or bottom line. Your greatest rival got a whopping promotion, lost 25 pounds, got married to a neurosurgeon supermodel, and your only response was, I am so happy for you. Seems pretty innocent, but what's a flicker today can turn into a flame tomorrow. To borrow the metaphor that Terrence and Ashley Gray used last week, right, suppose you spotted a flame in your house, not a big flame, but like on the hem of a curtain in your home, what would you do?
Would you ignore it? No. You would put it out because you know the growth pattern of fire. What's born in innocence is deadly in adolescence. Left untended, fire tends to consume all that is consumable, and the same is true of the human heart.
If a fire is left unchecked, it can burn into a hungry flame that will consume all that is consumable. Solomon tagged it when he said, recorded in Song of Solomon chapter eight, Jealousy is cruel as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire. Look at Joseph's brothers in the Old Testament. You remember the story?
They started out taunting and teasing their younger brother Joseph, harmless sibling rivalry, but then the flicker became a flame. It says in Genesis 37, his brothers were jealous of him. As soon, it was it was easier to dump Joseph into a pit than to see him around the dinner table. Before long, Joseph was in Egypt, his brothers were in cahoots, and Jacob the father was in the dark. He thought his son was dead, all because of envy.
And what about the Pharisees? Were they evil men, criminals? No. They were pastors and teachers of their day, little league coaches and carpool partners, but what did they do with Jesus? It says in Matthew 27, they handed him over.
Why? Because of envy. And you can add me to that list as well. The Bible tells us really clearly that envy is what lies behind most other sins. James three sixteen says wherever there is envy, you'll find every kind of evil.
Nothing destroys relationships faster than envy. It can destroy families. It can destroy businesses. It can destroy neighborhoods. It can even cause nations to go at war with other nations simply out of envy.
This is one very destructive sin. So if it's so destructive, how do we stop it? Well, we can learn what to do by looking at what not to do, and the parable of the vineyard workers that Jesus tells in Matthew 20, we see an example of what not to do. Of all the parables Jesus told, you may know a lot of His parables, of all the parables, this tends to be one of the least popular parables Jesus ever told, especially for us Americans. Let me remind you of the story.
A vineyard owner goes out to the marketplace where workers are gathered at 06:00 in the morning, and he says, you'll come work in my vineyard for the whole day, I will give you 1 denarius, very fair wage for a day's labor, and those workers go out and begin their day at 6AM. At 9AM, the vineyard owner goes back, and there's more workers there. He needs more workers. He says, you'll come work in my vineyard for the remainder of the day, I will pay you a fair wage, and they come. He goes back to workers at twelve noon and at 3PM and gathers more workers.
I'll pay you a fair wage. Lastly, he goes out at 5PM. There's only like an hour left in the workday, but he says, you'll come to work in my vineyard for whatever remains of the day, I will pay you a fair wage. Do you remember this story? At the end of the day, the workers all line up, and he lines up the 05:00 workers first.
They've only put in one hour, and he pays them a full denarius. The workers who have been there all day long said if they get a denarius for one hour, imagine what we're going to get having been working all day long in the scorching sun, and yet each worker was given the same amount, 1 denarius, and when the workers who had been there all day got that, they said this is totally unfair, And the owner of the vineyard says, it's not unfair at all. I'm paying you exactly what we agreed to, a very fair wage. Are you angry that I'm generous with other people who aren't you? Aren't I free to spend my money the way I want to?
The least popular parable of Jesus. This could happen in churches. It could happen in the kingdom of God. And in this story, we learned five antidotes to envy. Five antidotes to envy.
If you want to get envy out of your life, you must first, antidote number one, stop comparing yourself to others. Stop comparing yourself to others. Comparing is the root of all envy, and comparing was the very first mistake made by these workers of the vineyard. Matthew twenty ten says specifically, those hired last came and were each given a denarius, a dollar. And when those who were hired first saw, they assumed they would get far more.
Other words, they started making comparisons. Look at what they're getting. What do think we're gonna get? We're gonna get more. We deserve more.
We ought to have more, and they started comparing. And the Bible says over and over again, we are never to compare ourselves to other people. It's not wise. You never compare the way you look. You don't compare your income.
You don't compare your intelligence. You're not to compare your kids. You're not to compare your husband or your wife or your job or anything else. Just don't do it. The Bible says you're never to compare yourself to other people for two reasons.
One, you are unique. God made you special. There's nobody like you, and so you cannot be compared to anybody else. And reason number two, if you do start comparing, it's always gonna lead to one of two sins. It's gonna lead to pride or envy.
When you start comparing yourself, like the way you look or the car that you drive or the way your front lawn looks or whatever, you're gonna start comparing. You're gonna think, I'm doing better than they are, and I'm gonna be filled with pride, or you're gonna say, they're doing better than me, and you're gonna be filled with envy. And either way, both are sins. Envy isn't a primary temptation of mine. I've never been prone to desire other people's bigger houses or incomes or second homes.
That materialistic temptation hasn't been strong for me. I've not been prone to be jealous of other people's fame. Fame has not been an ambition of mine, but this last weekend, I tasted a little bit of the comparison game. Some of you heard that I was in a hospital last weekend. I went to the hospital for what was supposed to be an outpatient procedure.
They were placing a drain. This is going to fall into the more than you wanted to know category, but they placed a drain into my colon, and it drains to an external bag that will be with me the rest of my days to relieve some of the pressure that I had been feeling causing some very intense abdominal pain. It's an outpatient procedure, but then I had some infection problems and turned the outpatient procedure into a four day hospital stay in the high rent district of the Beaumont Hospital system. And I started to feel something that felt like discouragement, hasn't really been a part of my journey. A lot of you have commented, really, my health journey, my cancer journey has been really remarkably filled with peace and almost an inexplicable joy that's been mine.
But in that ICU unit, I threw myself an old fashioned pity party when I started to think about other my peers, people my age, these recent empty nesters who are traveling to Europe and planning their next decade of life together, and my travel days are done, and I make plans no longer than two weeks out of that plan. The next chapter, I'm planning to leave this world. And I got a little envious of people who have more freedom than I do. Then I remembered and was reminded that I'm on the ICU floor of the hospital, and I am the healthiest person on the floor. Even some of the nurses were like, it's so nice to have a patient who walks and talks.
That's how low the bar is. I am the strongest person in ICU. They kept wanting to do everything for me. They scooched me to my gurney, and they moved me around. I'm like, I can scooch on my own.
My scoochability factor is really quite high. How I feel about myself depends who I compare myself to, to my healthy peers who are traveling the world or to fellow ICU patients who are really in a bad way. A lot of people envy people because also we don't know their whole story. We don't know their pain or their hardship or the untruth in their life, so most of the people we envy, we envy from a distance. That's when you get up close, and you see their warts and their faults and their failures, and they are just normal people with problems and hang ups and hurts.
Nobody is as cool as they appear. They may look like they've got it all together, but when you get close to someone, when you get to know them, you realize everyone has something they're dealing with, so one way to deal with envy is just to get to know people better, get to know them up close and personal and intimately. This is the power of small groups and relationships. When you get to know people closely, you don't envy them, but you can pray for them. This problem of envy has been around since the dawn of civilization.
If you want to get this out of your life, you have to stop comparing. That's antidote number one. Antidote number two, start enjoying God's grace to others. Start enjoying God's grace to other people. When you see God being kind and good and gracious to others, learn to enjoy it rather than resent it.
You need to be happy when God is blessing other people, somebody else. This is exactly the opposite of what the workers at the vineyard did. They went out, and the guys who worked all day were paid exactly what they were contracted for. They weren't cheated. They just resented other people being given the same amount, and instead of enjoying it, the workers resented it.
This is what it said in the parable of the vineyard, Matthew 20 verse 10. The workers who had been hired first thought that they would be given more than the others, but they were given the same, and they began complaining to the owner of the vineyard. And he said, are you envious because I am generous to them? They resented the generosity of the master. Romans twelve fifteen famously says, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.
Now, which part do you think is easier to do, the first part of this phrase or the second part? Is it easier to rejoice with those who rejoice, or is it easier to weep with those who weep? Most people find it easier to weep with those who weep. When someone goes through a hard time, it elicits our sympathies, our compassions. It's much more difficult often to rejoice when someone has a success.
We don't handle the success of other people well. We often feel threatened by it. We resent it because somehow in our minds, the world is divided as one big apple pie of slices, and if someone gets bigger slices, it means less for me. But that is not the way the world works. God has an infinite number of pies.
God doesn't run out of blessing. God doesn't run out of grace. He just blesses people differently. The main thing envy does, it keeps you from entering into the joy of other people, and you miss out on a whole lot of joy in your life that you could be enjoying. For instance, let's say you want get married, and you're not married now.
Every time you hear about a wedding, instead of being happy, you get resentful, or somebody in your company gets promoted, but you can't be happy for them because you think it should have been you. The classmate gets an A on an exam, but you can't be happy for them. This can happen in churches. Say a church on the other side of town has experienced great energy and vibrant growth. Can we be happy for them?
This can happen within departments of the church, who's getting more of the church budget, who got more promotion time from the stage. If you can only rejoice at what happens in your life, you're gonna miss out on a lot. If you learn to rejoice at God's goodness to others, you'll have a lot more to be happy about. Antidote number three, be grateful for what you have. Instead of focusing so much on what you don't have or what didn't happen, be grateful for what you do have.
This also has to be learned. It's not something natural to most of us. The Apostle Paul wrote, I have learned to be content. I have learned to be content. This is something that can be learned.
The same Apostle Paul wrote in First Corinthians chapter four, Isn't everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God? So what's the point of all this comparing and competing? You already have all you need. Envy is based on a myth, and the myth is that I have to have more to be happy. I have to have something that I do not have now in order to be happy.
And we get caught up in this, and we draw other people in it. Envy always asks, why them? Why do they deserve that? I deserve what they have. But gratitude asks, why me?
Why do I have all the things I have? I don't deserve what I have. It totally flips the perspective of our mind. It's not wrong to have dreams and goals. It is good to have those.
That's not envy. Envy is resenting someone who already has what you dream about. It's saying, I won't be happy until I get that. Envy is not being grateful for what you have. Antidote number four.
Trust God when life seems unfair. When it looks like God's blessing somebody else in a way He's not blessing you, you need to relax and trust God. One of the signs of envy, and one of the ways you can see when this is forming up in your life, is when you catch yourself using the phrase it's not fair. When you catch yourself using that phrase it's not fair, this could be a sign that envy is in your life. In verse 12 of this parable, it says, the last workers have put in only one easy hour, and yet you have made them equal to us.
You you can hear their envy in their words. We're better than them, we who slaved all day under a scorching sun. And notice the owner's reply in the next verse, and by the way, the owner represents God in the story. The owner of the story represents God, and the owner says, friends, I didn't cheat you. I paid you exactly what we agreed on.
What business is it of yours if I want to pay them the same I paid you? Don't I have the right to do whatever I want to do with my own money? The bottom line in envy is this. When you're envious, you're really in a battle with God. Your problem isn't really with the person that you're envious of.
Your problem at a deeper level is with God. You're doubting God's goodness in your life. You resent God's decision to bless somebody else. You accuse God of being unfair. When you're envious, your problem really is with God.
You don't think God has your best interest at heart. You think He loves somebody else more than He loves you, that God is playing favorites, and you accuse God of that. You start building an entire case against God, where the reality is God loves you as much as God loves anybody else. God doesn't love anybody else more than He loves you. You need to learn to trust God.
And the last anecdote we'll talk about, number five, keep focused on God's plan for you. Keep focused on God's plan for your life. Don't get distracted by what's going on in other people's lives. Center on God's will for your life. There's a simple phrase in the story that the owner says at the end of the story that kind of sums this up.
To those who didn't get what they thought they deserved, Matthew twenty fourteen, the owner says, take your money now and go. Take your money now and go. He's basically saying to those who are feeling slighted, get past it. You gotta move on. It's time to take the next step in your life.
Sometimes we get so stuck in the past. Some of you are still envying the person who became prom king or queen. We get stuck in the past, and God says to us, Move on. It's time to move on. Hebrews twelve:one says, Let us run with patience the particular race that God set before us.
The particular race that God set before us. That means the unique race that God gave to you. Your race is different from my race. God has a unique race lined up for you. Jesus concludes His parable with this kind of shocking statement.
He says in verse 26, And so it is that many who are first now will be last then, and those who are last now will be first then. If you want to be great, you must become the servant of all the others. This is the great reversal. None of the things we envy on Earth are gonna matter in heaven. Not one of them.
The things we envy most will not matter at all in heaven. Not success, not talent, not beauty, not fame, not accomplishments. None of the things we envy on this side of eternity are gonna matter in the billions of years we have in eternity with God. What God is gonna evaluate in your life and what God is going to reward in your life is not how much money or accomplishments or talents or beauty or whatever you have here on Earth. What God's gonna evaluate and reward in your life is your service to others.
He says, if you want to be great, you must become the servant of all the others. He'll ask how much you did to serve the people around you in love. He's not going ask about your bank account or your IRA or how big your retirement funds got. He's not going to ask how well known and famous did you become. He's going to say, how much did you serve?
Service is love in action. I would add that when you're busy serving others, you don't have time to envy other people. Serving other leads to a healthy mind, body, spirit, and releases genuine joy. Will you pray with me now? God of grace and goodness, we want our lives to be filled with love, so help us to round out the envy in our lives.
Help us to stop the comparison game and truly enjoy your goodness to others. Forgive us for the times we have not been grateful for your blessings in our life. Teach us to trust you more. Fill us with love overflowing that the power of your love would change not only us, but change those around us. Help us to recognize your goodness to us for you are you are our good, good father, and we thank you for the many blessings we've known.
We pray this together through Christ our Lord. Amen.