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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the often-overlooked sins of jealousy and envy, tracing their destructive power through Scripture and sharing candidly how they unexpectedly surfaced in his own life during a difficult season of transition.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee, Southern Baptist Convention, hearing on our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Well, I usually give a disclaimer on this podcast and say that it's about practical issues and it's about the day to day work, and I don't really spend much time preaching or doing bible study on this podcast. I save that for other venues. But today, I wanna break the pattern and share with you some insight that I've been learning about an important subject from the Bible, which has been very personal to me over the past year.
Jeff Iorg:I wanna talk with you today about jealousy and envy. Now, before you log out quickly and say, I'm not sure I want to hear that. I want to
Jeff Iorg:tell you that I never really had a problem with this until this last year. I never really struggled too much with jealousy or envy. Just wasn't one of those sins that held me down.
Jeff Iorg:And frankly, in all my years of preaching and teaching, I had never done a study on this theme in the Bible. But some things happened last year, and I may talk about a couple of them later in the podcast, but some things happened last
Jeff Iorg:year that evoked from me a response of jealousy and envy, which I found, first of all, startling, and second, embarrassing, and third, revealing.
Jeff Iorg:Last year, this was one of the really growing edges in my life was dealing
Jeff Iorg:with the problem of jealousy and envy as it reared its ugly head. So when I have a problem like this or a challenge like this, I go to the Bible and try to discover what it says about the subject. I have never, as I said, made a study of the words jealousy or envy. And when I started, I was quite frankly surprised at how often the Bible mentions these topics and how little attention I had given to them over the years.
Jeff Iorg:Now, I don't have time today on the podcast to go through the dozens of scripture passages that I've been studying, but I wanna highlight some of it for you. And then as I want to do, I want to get to the application part of this and really camp down there on what you can do to confront jealousy and envy in your life. The first thing I learned is that there are many negative examples of jealousy and envy in the Bible. I'll just highlight a couple. In Genesis chapter 37, jealousy produced a criminal conspiracy against a man named Joseph.
Jeff Iorg:Remember his brothers? They tried to
Jeff Iorg:kill him. They imprisoned him. They sold him into slavery. The whole story, though, starts by saying his brothers were jealous,
Jeff Iorg:and their jealousy produced a prolonged simmering motivation that had long term destructive consequences in everyone's life involved in the
Jeff Iorg:situation. And then skipping over to the gospels,
Jeff Iorg:it was jealousy that motivated the Jews to oppose Jesus. Pilate recognized their envy that they had of Jesus, and he offered them Barabbas as an alternative to Jesus, but, of course, they rejected him. You can read that in Matthew twenty seven eighteen or Mark fifteen ten.
Jeff Iorg:Jealousy or envy were a part
Jeff Iorg:of Jesus being turned over for crucifixion. And then, of course, there's a whole series of these references in the book of Acts. The apostles were performing signs and wonders and having great favor with the multitudes. You can find that in Acts five, and it says the high priest and his followers were filled with jealousy. And then down in chapter 17, Paul's missionary team was effectively ministering in Thessalonica, and it says the Jews became jealous.
Jeff Iorg:And then in Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas were once again ministering effectively when it says the Jews were filled with jealousy. So these are examples, an Old Testament example, a Gospel example, a New Testament Examples of times when jealousy was a very negative force that accomplished much destruction in the lives of many people. And then another set of scripture describes the destructive power of jealousy and envy. And I came up with at least seven categories of these, but again, only a couple for the podcast. First, jealousy destroys physical health.
Jeff Iorg:Proverbs fourteen thirty says, a tranquil heart is life to the body, but jealousy is rottenness to the bone. And then jealousy is more potent than anger. It says in Proverbs twenty seven four, fury
Jeff Iorg:is cruel and anger a flood, but who can withstand jealousy? Wow. And then even more, jealousy brings hellish destruction. In the Song of Solomon eight six, a female character voices this proverb. She says, for love is as strong as death.
Jeff Iorg:Jealousy is as unrelenting as Sheol. So these passages and several others I'm not taking time to mention today reveal the destructive power of jealousy. Then there's
Jeff Iorg:a whole section of Scripture that give warnings against jealousy and envy of people, like don't envy wrongdoers, don't envy arrogant people, don't envy violent people, don't envy sinners, Don't envy evil people. Don't envy the wicked. You get the idea. You can go through the the Psalms and the Proverbs and find these warnings about not envying certain kind of people or not wanting to be like them. And then perhaps some of the most revealing passages to me were throughout the New Testament,
Jeff Iorg:where there are lists of sins given, jealousy or envy are often included.
Jeff Iorg:I like to say it this way, jealousy and envy keep bad company. They hang out in the wrong crowd. Here's some examples. In Mark seven verses 21 and following, Jesus listed some sins which comes out of a come out of a person's heart and defile them. They include, quote, evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self indulgence, envy.
Jeff Iorg:There it is. Slander, pride, and foolishness. Think of the company that envy keeps in that passage of scripture. Romans one twenty eight and following, same kind of thing. There are people listed that are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, malice.
Jeff Iorg:They're gossip, slanderers, God haters, arrogant, pride, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. But what was the first one? They are full of envy. And then when you get to Paul's writings on down through Romans, first Corinthians, Galatians, all along, multiple lists, which include lists of sins and envy or jealousy are included. But it wasn't just the gospels and Paul.
Jeff Iorg:James, he has the same thing. In James three fourteen to 16, he says that having bitter envy and selfish ambition contrasts with wisdom, and that envy and selfish ambition lead to disorder and every evil practice. And then not only does the gospels and Paul and James, but even Peter adds on. In first Peter two one, he says, believers are urged to rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. So once
Jeff Iorg:again, envy and jealousy keep bad company.
Jeff Iorg:Well, this is a brief overview. I I've been doing a pretty in-depth study of the word jealousy or envy, sometimes translated either way, throughout the Old and New Testament and trying to draw out of scripture what it says about this vile sin.
Jeff Iorg:Now, if you struggle with jealousy or envy, let's talk about how to resist it and how to overcome it. Number one, take the problem seriously.
Jeff Iorg:The stories of the destructive power of jealousy and envy are instructive. They are included in the Bible for a
Jeff Iorg:reason. Jealousy destroyed Joseph's family, set his life on a path which took him through all kinds of struggles and difficulties, including slavery and
Jeff Iorg:imprisonment. Now, of course, you get to the end and that beautiful, wonderful promise, Genesis fifty twenty, the Joseph principle, what man intended for evil, God intended for good. So while, yes, good came out of it, don't miss the original issue, the sin that started the whole
Jeff Iorg:thing, jealousy. These stories are instructive. They help us to see just how much damage unchecked, unrepentant jealousy can cause. And the delineations of its destructive potential are clear throughout some of these other passages that I've read, and the warnings against it are pointed. The Psalms and the Proverbs particularly don't mince words in telling us to take on and resist jealousy.
Jeff Iorg:And the inclusions in the sin lists are sobering. When I look at the sins that are associated with jealousy and envy, immorality, adultery, gossip, lying, hatred, bitterness, anger. I'm familiar with all those, but tucked in the list repeatedly in the gospels, Paul's writings, James writings, Peter's writings, tucked in the list throughout the New Testament is always jealousy or envy.
Jeff Iorg:And those inclusions are sobering. I think, for example, about how hard in my life that I've had to work to avoid adultery. I have worked hard to remain faithful to my wife in every way, eliminating pornography, eliminating questionable entertainment, and certainly eliminating any kind of a personal relationship that would infringe on the sanctity of our marriage. I've done that because I've recognized adultery is listed in these sin lists as a serious thing I need to confront. I've had to do the
Jeff Iorg:same thing with anger. I had to work on my anger for years to get to
Jeff Iorg:a point where I understood where it originated, and I saw the evil of it. And I recognized how God could change it and had to change it. And I did the hard work that it took to really come to have a a a whole different perspective on and a victory over some deep seated anger. But I never did the same thing with jealousy.
Jeff Iorg:Never recognized it for what it was. Never really had to take it on all that aggressively. As I said, until this past year. When really for the first time,
Jeff Iorg:I had rise up within me feelings of jealousy and envy that were so strong that I would have a physical reaction to them in my body, and I would have verbal outbursts that I would have to check, and that I would have just racing thoughts of just all the things that I felt were wrong about the situation. So once you take
Jeff Iorg:the problem seriously, second step, diagnose the reasons for jealousy or envy. Here
Jeff Iorg:are three that I think we should think through. Number one,
Jeff Iorg:you feel you deserve something you do not have. You feel you deserve something you do not have.
Jeff Iorg:Most of you know that I was moving toward retirement, and what I was especially looking forward to was being free from the responsibility of organizational leadership. As I've said on many other occasions, I wasn't retiring from life and even from ministry. I was just going to focus myself on other things and no longer have the daily burden of leading an organization. And after doing that for forty five years, I have to be honest and tell you, it was very freeing to imagine life without having to think about payroll and policy and procedure and strategy and organization and conflict and legal and all the stuff that goes on with an organizational leadership responsibility.
Jeff Iorg:It was freeing to think about that. And then God called me to the job I currently have and gave me the most challenging organizational leadership role of my lifetime. And then people would say to me their own retirement story. And over those first few months of being in this job, I heard several people tell me how wonderful it was to be retired, how much they were enjoying the new life they had discovered, how freeing it was to not have the onerous responsibility they had worked with for years. And when I would hear those stories, it would rise up inside of I deserve that.
Jeff Iorg:I deserve something that they have that I don't have. I deserve that. And then jealousy, envy would take over. That's an unseemly confession, but it's real. You may feel jealous because you feel you deserve something that you don't have.
Jeff Iorg:Second, you may be jealous because you feel you deserve something that someone else has. You deserve something that someone else has. Now again, this is
Jeff Iorg:what happened to me last year. My wife and I had a particular plan to celebrate our retirement by taking a trip together. Now I won't go into the details of it. We had planned it for years. It was going to be an extended time away for just the two of us.
Jeff Iorg:It was gonna be a time to decompress and reconnect and really think through and pray through and talk through where we were going forward in this from this point in our lives. Well, of course,
Jeff Iorg:that trip did not happen.
Jeff Iorg:Now, you can't make this stuff up. God allowed three different people that I had never known before. He allowed me to meet them, and in casual conversation say, things about life and about family, and in casual conversation, three different times, three different people that I had never met before started telling me that they were going on a trip with their spouse, and it was the exact trip that my wife and I
Jeff Iorg:had planned to go on. This happened three times. First time it happened, I got really mad. I said, God, what
Jeff Iorg:are we doing here? Do they
Jeff Iorg:get to do that? I kind of walked away thinking, well, you know. Then it happened a second time and I got even more angry. Then a few weeks later,
Jeff Iorg:it happened the third time. Now when it happened the third time you know, I'm slow, but eventually I get there. When it happened the third time, I remember actually praying something like this, Lord, you're kidding me. Right?
Jeff Iorg:I get the message. Third time you sent somebody by to tell me this, I've been angry with you and jealous and envious because I think I deserve something that someone else has, and I'm jealous because of it.
Jeff Iorg:Then the third reason that you may feel jealous or angry or envious is you feel that God or life or others or someone has treated you unfairly, that
Jeff Iorg:you didn't get what you deserve, that you deserve something that someone else has, you deserve something that you didn't get that you thought you were supposed to get. You do the equation however you want to, but somehow you feel like you were treated unfairly. Because of that, you have something rising up inside of you, jealousy or envy. Now,
Jeff Iorg:if that's your situation,
Jeff Iorg:what do you do about it?
Jeff Iorg:Well, last part of the podcast. How do you confront the problem of jealousy? Well, you have to confront it directly.
Jeff Iorg:First of all, you gotta call it for what it is. Just admit it. You are consumed with jealousy. You're jealous of another person.
Jeff Iorg:You're jealous of another person's situation. You're envious because somebody else got something you didn't get. You're envious because you feel like you didn't get something that you should've that you should've gotten or that you deserved. You can just go down the line, but you have got to face up to the reality of it and confront it and call it what it is, jealousy,
Jeff Iorg:envy, and admit that it's a problem in your life. That was a tough day for me because like
Jeff Iorg:I said, I never really had a big problem with this. I've struggled with other things, believe me, but this was just one that wasn't that big
Jeff Iorg:of a problem until it was.
Jeff Iorg:And when it was, it took me months before I finally admitted this is what's going on with me. And that's when I dug into the Bible, got serious about studying it, figuring out what I've been teaching you about today. So step one,
Jeff Iorg:admit it, confront it, own it, label it. Let it be real that you decide you're gonna deal with it. Number two,
Jeff Iorg:Second thing you have to do is reaffirm God's sovereignty
Jeff Iorg:and submit to God's providential care and provision.
Jeff Iorg:To get down on your knees and say, God, you didn't give me the car I wanted, the church I wanted, the family I wanted. You didn't give me the money I wanted, the clothes I wanted. You didn't give
Jeff Iorg:me the trip I wanted. You didn't give me the life I thought I deserved. But Lord, in your providence, in your care, and in your provision, this is the life I have. And I'm going to reaffirm my commitment to and my submission to your sovereignty and accept your plan for my life.
Jeff Iorg:That's what I had to
Jeff Iorg:work through myself, and I had to say, Lord, you called me a long time ago and I said I would obey you and now you've given me a new challenge and I had to say yes. And just because it was hard and just because I didn't initially get what I wanted or even got what I deserved, Lord, just because that doesn't mean that you're still not right. Father, you're sovereign. Your providence is providence can be trusted. Your care and your provision are real.
Jeff Iorg:And Lord, I accept them, take them, and have faith in you. So you're gonna confront it, then second, you're gonna reaffirm God is sovereign. His provision and his care is adequate. And then
Jeff Iorg:third, receive God's grace, which means that you reject your right
Jeff Iorg:to claim anything as deserved.
Jeff Iorg:You reject your right to claim anything as deserved. You know, if God gave you what you deserved, man, would you be in a bad spot.
Jeff Iorg:You'd be lost, cast far from him, hell bound, eternally separated.
Jeff Iorg:You are in relationship with God today by his grace,
Jeff Iorg:and that means you reject your right to claim anything as deserved. Brothers and sisters, you don't want what you deserve. You want what's yours by God's grace. This reminds me of another principle I learned many years ago. A preacher said, preaching from a passage in Acts, he said, make sure that you live a received life, not an achieved life.
Jeff Iorg:And make sure you live a received ministry, not an achieved ministry. Drew that from Paul's testimony in Acts where he said,
Jeff Iorg:I fulfilled the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. So I would challenge you today to remember that you are living a received life and doing a received ministry. You're not doing an achieved life or an achieved ministry. Receive God's grace. Recognize that it is by God's grace you have what you have and you are what you are and you do what
Jeff Iorg:you do. You don't have the right to claim anything as deserved. And if you got what you deserved, it would be catastrophically bad. Don't get past yourself on that. And then next, to get over your jealousy and envy, celebrate God's blessings on others.
Jeff Iorg:Communicate openly
Jeff Iorg:and often the pleasure of God's blessings on others and what that brings to you. Now, a few times in my life, I I have had a moment of jealousy or it's been problem a that I've dealt with rather briefly. I'm not saying I never had it in my life at all up until now. I'm just saying last year was a big problem. But I remember one time years ago when another seminary was doing really well,
Jeff Iorg:And Gateway was doing okay. But the other seminary was doing better than we were. They were growing faster, seemed to have more money coming in.
Jeff Iorg:And I remember feeling a little bit of envy about that, a little bit of jealousy. Like, God,
Jeff Iorg:why don't we get that?
Jeff Iorg:And I checked it pretty quickly back in that day, I said, Lord, wait just a second. Lord, I wanna thank you for blessing that other seminary. I wanna thank you for pouring out your resources on them financially. I wanna thank you for giving them more students. And, Lord, I don't wanna be a person who grouses about other people's successes as if it was supposed to happen to me.
Jeff Iorg:Instead, I wanna celebrate other people's successes. And I found that when I did that, it gave me a release from a lot
Jeff Iorg:of the jealousy that I could feel kind of rising up inside of me. This might seem silly, but I'll give you another one.
Jeff Iorg:For many years some of you know for many years, I was a amateur baseball umpire, twenty five years actually. And I umpired a lot of big games, a lot of big tournaments. Umpired on ESPN one night. So I got a lot of privileges and a lot of opportunities in that. And frankly, as I kept moving up the ladder, if you will, I kept getting more and more certifications and more and more opportunities.
Jeff Iorg:And frankly, finally, I got to the point where I was qualified to umpire in the Little League World Series. But the problem is there's usually one umpire a year or every other year that's selected from the Northwest Region to to umpire in that World Series. Two actually from the entire West, and usually there's one from California and one from the rest of the West. And so it was, you know, not common to get a place, but it could happen. But it came around every few years.
Jeff Iorg:Another guy at the same time I was getting qualified was also qualified,
Jeff Iorg:and he was a really good umpire. And wouldn't you know it, a couple years later, he got selected for the Little League World Series.
Jeff Iorg:And again, I felt a little twinge inside me like, oh, I wanted to do that. But I was so happy for him instead that I called him and said, Hey, I want to congratulate you. I'm so glad you got the opportunity. I'm so proud of you. Represent us well.
Jeff Iorg:He said, You know, Jeff, could have gotten this just as easily as me. I said, No, no, no. Stop now. You're better than me. You deserved it.
Jeff Iorg:I want you to go, yeah, I'm on the list. Maybe I'll get it someday. Maybe I want. And of course, won't, and I never will now. But at the time, I was really trying to celebrate him.
Jeff Iorg:And in doing that, I just felt the jealousy oozing out of me. It's like that just went away because I made a decision to celebrate somebody else. You know, I was in a meeting a number of years ago with a really prominent Christian leader, and he was a person that was very prominent in prayer and revival movements. And he he made this statement in a sermon. He said, are you praying that revival will come to your community?
Jeff Iorg:And almost everybody in the room said, amen. Yes, brother. Yes.
Jeff Iorg:And then he said, would you be just as happy if it came to the Methodist churches instead of the Baptist? And there was silence in the room. He said, there's something wrong
Jeff Iorg:with us if we're seeking God's movement among us so that we can brag that it happened to us.
Jeff Iorg:God help us. Man, that stuck with me. I thought, that's how I have prayed.
Jeff Iorg:I prayed, God, revive us. Send revival to
Jeff Iorg:our community. But what I really meant was make our church look good. Man, that
Jeff Iorg:was humbling that day. Then he went on to say, you'll know you're in the right place when you can pray, God, send revival, and to whomever it comes, I will rejoice and be grateful that you poured out your blessing on them. Celebrate God's blessing on others. It evaporates jealousy from your life. And then next, shift your focus from your deficiencies to God's abundant blessings.
Jeff Iorg:Thank God and others for the good things in your life. A couple years ago, my wife did her own study on the subject of gratitude. She came to conclude that she was drifting toward a life of entitlement and of thinking that she was entitled. It really, really bothered her, and so she went deep into a deep dive in the Bible on the subject of gratitude. Now this was a wonderful thing because it changed her life and reshaped how she approached so many things, but it also was a convicting thing because she became this super grateful person, and I'm still a selfish pig, quite frankly.
Jeff Iorg:So it was very convicting to live with her during this process and still today sometimes because it's really residually true in her life. She's perpetually grateful to God and others for what they do for her. I've noticed something that when you do that, it also erases jealousy and envy from your life.
Jeff Iorg:Focus on gratitude as an antidote to jealousy.
Jeff Iorg:And then finally, when you do have moments of jealousy and envy and you confront it, allow it to reorder your eternal priorities because it helps you to refocus on what really matters. I mean, does it really matter that someone else has a better car or a better house or a bigger church building or someone else got to take a trip or got got more recognition or got a nicer plaque or something like that? Does it really matter? It matters in the moment, but it doesn't matter for eternity. And jealousy helps us to take a step back and say, man, I'm getting too caught up in stuff that just doesn't really matter.
Jeff Iorg:Lord, help me reorder my priority. Well, today on the podcast, I've told you a little bit about my story. I had a couple of really significant growth points. I've talked to you about both of them now on the podcast, jealousy and envy. Jealousy never been a big problem for me.
Jeff Iorg:Occasionally, yeah, a little flare up, but I was able to manage it, but last year got the best of me. It started just consuming me where I was thinking about a lot, what I deserved, what I wasn't getting, how somebody else had something I should have gotten, how God had let me down and made me angry and frustrated and frankly, I was embarrassed, shameful. But finally, by God's grace, was able to, through his word, learn some insight, confront some behavior, repent of some sin, and then put into practice some positive things that have helped me to restore my equilibrium, if you will, and make jealousy just a little bit of a problem, not one that's burning me up from the inside out. If you're struggling with this problem, get into the Bible, see what it says. Maybe some of the insights I've shared today will help you as well.
Jeff Iorg:Pure jealousy, take it on strongly, confront it boldly. If you don't, it'll do serious destructive damage in your life. You can't let it happen. Instead, you gotta lead on.