Fighting the Green-Eyed Monster - Part A

That's how insidious envy is.

It's so bad that Paul the Apostle puts it in a list of works of the flesh with some pretty gnarly sins in Galatians chapter 5. Envy is a toxin, a spiritual toxin. It poisons our soul. It puts us at odds with other people.

It clouds our ability to see things clearly. One writer even said envy is the last sin Christians will confess. Envy is often a subtle sin, but it's also one of the most destructive.

It steals your peace and distorts everything around you. Today on Connect with Skip Heiting, Skip examines this sin that's incredibly destructive but goes so easily undetected and what you can do to avoid it. But before we begin, we invite you to catch Skip's Sunday Message live at 9 and 11 a.m. at Live.CalvaryNM.Church. That's 9 and 11 a.m. at Live.CalvaryNM.Church.

Now we want to let you know about a resource that will help you grow stronger in your faith. What would it look like if God threw a party? Well, the Old Testament shows that the Jewish calendar is anchored with regular mandatory holidays and celebrations.

And the Book of Esther says that God wants his people to experience light and gladness, joy and honor at such times. Sound like your family celebrations? Listen to this insight from Skip Heitzig about one of our own regular holidays, Valentine's Day. Happiness, Holiness and Holidays is a four DVD collection of celebration messages from Pastor Skip, messages that could be a game changer for your family. Take holidays from toxic stress to celebrations of light and joy.

Here's a sample. You are loved by God, not because you deserve it, but because, just because. That is his nature.

It is his decision. Imagine that foundation for the next holiday on your family calendar. This selection of some of Pastor Skip's holiday teachings is our thanks when you give $25 or more to help connect more people to God's word. Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy of Happiness, Holiness and Holidays with Skip Heitzig.

Now, we're in Genesis chapter 37 and Acts chapter 7 as Skip Heitzig gets into today's message. So there were two guys that lived in a town. They had grocery stores on the same street, just across the street from each other, large windows in the front so they could look out and see the other competitor, what they were up to. They became fierce rivals over time. And it got pretty bad to where when a customer would go into the other store, the guy in his store would look out kind of with a snarl, jealous that the other guy got the customer and he didn't.

The other guy would gloat. And so it got bad and an angel appeared to one of these store owners and said, I'm going to grant you anything you want. Any wish you want will be yours under one condition. Whatever you request, your competitor will get twice as much. So you may want to be wealthy, extremely rich, no problem, I can do that for you. Just know that your competitor will get twice as much wealth as you asked for, as you get. And if you want to live a long life and a happy life, no problem. But your competitor will live longer and happier. And so the guy wanted to make a wish, but he didn't know what to ask for in lieu of the stipulation.

So he thought about it and he finally said, okay, here's my request. Strike me blind in one eye. That's how insidious envy is. It's so bad that Paul the Apostle puts it in a list of works of the flesh with some pretty gnarly sins in Galatians chapter 5. Envy is a toxin, a spiritual toxin.

It poisons our soul, it puts us at odds with other people, it clouds our ability to see things clearly. One writer even said envy is the last sin Christians will confess because it's so ugly. Envy has been called the green-eyed monster.

Have you ever heard that? People say, oh, you're green with envy. And I wondered about that. Who came up with this color scheme for things? It's like, who's blue, red, green?

So I was just curious about that. So come to find out, the idea of being green with envy comes from Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's famous play Othello, in which Iago warns Othello, it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on, a reference to envy. But you know, envy is a difficult sin to wrestle with.

It's sort of like pinning jello. Just when you think you got a grasp of it, it wiggles loose and doesn't stay down, doesn't stay tamed. But like other white-collar sins, it's serious.

It can ruin, it can destroy. There's an old Greek proverb that says, as rust corrupts iron, so envy corrupts a man. What is envy exactly? Well, you might look at envy as the art of counting other people's blessings instead of your own.

You notice what they have, where they are, what they're doing. Now we come to Genesis 37, which is of course the story of Joseph, a story you're probably all very familiar with. But the story of Joseph is the story of envy. In Genesis chapter 37, down in verse 11, it says, and his brothers envied him. So what we're about to consider is the story of the envy of Joseph's brothers against Joseph himself.

Then in Acts chapter 7 verse 9, Stephen later on, when he gives a message, sums up the life of this patriarch saying, the patriarchs, that is the older brothers, becoming envious, sold Joseph into Egypt. So you know that this is a story, kind of a classic rags to riches story. The pit to the pinnacle, you know, he's in the pit of imprisonment by his brothers, gets sold as a slave, but he makes it to the very pinnacle. He becomes second most powerful man on earth.

But before he reaches the pinnacle, he has to go down to the pit. And what you need to know, it was envy that put Joseph in that pit. Now as we look at a few verses in chapter 37 of Genesis, as we considered the green-eyed monster of envy, I'm going to make three simple statements, three truths about envy.

Envy has a history, envy has a recipe, that is there are certain things that make for it, and envy has a remedy. Let's begin with the history. I want you to notice something in the first two verses. It says, Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. This is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being 17 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.

The wording here is interesting. It says, This is the history of Jacob, and immediately begins telling the story of envy, of how his brothers envied him. Now when he says this is the history, it means this is the account of, or these are the generations of.

But what's interesting is where he begins. He says, Here's the history, now let me begin with son number 11. So if you know the history of this family, you know that this isn't the first born son.

The first born son is Reuben, then there's Simeon, Judah, etc. And you come down to Joseph, but he says, Here is the history, and then he begins with Joseph. And we discover why that is later on, because Joseph is the guy that saves and preserves the generations of Jacob, by where God is going to take him as the Prime Minister of Egypt.

But I found that interesting. Here is the history. This is the history of Jacob. And actually, if you think about it, the whole history of Jacob and his family is a story of envy. Envy is like in every era of Jacob's life. In fact, you might even say Jacob learned envy from his mother. It was Rebecca, his mother, who was envious of the fact that her other son Esau had the blessing that Jacob, she thought, should have. So she got him to envy his brother, dressed little Jacob up like he was his brother, and tricked the father out of that blessing. Then later on, Jacob's brother Esau envied Jacob because Jacob had managed to steal the blessing.

Then later on, when Jacob is in Laban land, working for his uncle Laban, or his father-in-law Laban, Laban becomes envious of Jacob because Jacob has more flocks and herds than Laban does. So, no matter where you slice it, we're dealing with a family history of envy. But envy goes back further than that, all the way back to Cain and Abel, because one brought a sacrifice that God was pleased with, and Cain became envious of Abel. You see, envy happens to be a part of human nature.

There's not a person in this room who hasn't struggled with the vice and the sin of envy. Now that doesn't make it okay. It doesn't make it excusable.

But it is what it is. It's deeply rooted in our human constitution. Even Jesus noted that envy is part of what happened at the fall. It's part of the human heart. Jesus said this, So it's a part of all of us.

It's part of fallen humanity. Heck, I even noticed my dogs envy each other. If I give one dog something, I can just tell the other dog thinks, Why did he have that?

Why does she have that? So there was a documentary even on television about wild dogs in Africa, and the commentator said, They seem to display the human emotion of envy. So I thought, okay, envy is everywhere, even in wild dogs in Africa. Now where does this show up with us? Where do we as believers in Christ struggle with envy?

Pretty easy to answer that. Every time someone around us becomes successful, gets promoted, gets blessed, we are going to deal with envious thoughts. There's a great text of scripture in Romans 12 verse 15. It's beautifully put. It says, Isn't that beautiful? It's beautiful, but try doing that. One part is easy, the other part is hard. You'll discover weeping with people who weep is pretty easy. Rejoicing with people who rejoice is pretty tough. It's easy for us to bend down and put our arms around somebody who has lost something, or is struggling, or is hurting because they're hurting, we're not.

They're struggling, we're not. So I'm just going to come and console you and weep with those who weep. But when somebody else is blessed and you're not, to rejoice with that person is in a whole different league. Now you might think, well, that's not my issue. I'm above all that. I don't struggle like that.

Really? Let's play a little game. Let's play a what-if game. What if you lost your job, you get fired, you get laid off, and you also discover your coworker in the same department gets promoted and gets given a raise? Do you find it natural inclination to rejoice with that fellow coworker? Probably not.

What if a parent or a set of parents, who, by the way, happen to be critical of your child, what if those parents discover that their own child was caught cheating? Is there a sense of smugness and even serves them right, kind of a feeling that comes over you? Probably. What if your own son drops out of school while your friend's son gets given a four-year scholarship to an Ivy League school? Do you struggle with envy? Probably.

What if you miscarry and your girlfriend calls and says they're having twins? There are so many different levels at which we are going to be confronted with this issue. And why do we feel that way? Why do those struggles come when those other things happen? Because those things amplify our own failures or perceived failures.

Somehow us not being there or having that or doing those things just makes our failures seem much bigger. David Paul Tripp wrote, Why do we all struggle with envy? We struggle with it because our greatest allegiance is to ourselves and our own happiness.

There's simply no denying it. Life on this side of eternity is one big unending war of kingdoms. Much of our inner turmoil and interpersonal struggles are the direct results of kingdoms in conflict.

So when somebody else gets something or is blessed or prospers or is successful, our tendency is to turn inward toward ourselves rather than upward and outward toward others. That's what envy will do. So envy has a history. There's a second thing I want you to see here and that is envy has a recipe.

What I want to show you is four contributing factors that make for the perfect storm here. There are other factors that would contribute to a person being envious, but I want to show you a few in this text. Number one is what I'm calling natural dissimilarity.

That is, we compare ourselves with others because though we're similar in some ways, we're different enough that we make comparisons. So look at verse two. This is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers.

Now, that statement gets qualified in the next sentence. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. Notice that's plural. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father. So you know that Jacob had four wives. There was really only one that he loved.

I'll get to that in a minute. But there were four women. There was Leah and then Rachel and then there was Zilpah and Bilhah who were handmaids of these other gals and so they produced children for him at first. So just think of this scenario. Here are twelve brothers from four different moms.

Do you think there's going to be problems? I mean, I'm one son of four boys from one mom and we had problems. We had issues. And what was the problem? Well, we were always comparing ourselves with one another.

Why do you have that? How come I'm this? That's what brothers do. There's enough dissimilarities between us.

And envy will grow when we compare ourselves with others, which we do a lot because we're different enough. Some are tall. Some are short. Some are skinny. Some are not. Some are dark.

Some are light. On and on and on. There's enough to compare ourselves with, good or bad. I used to have a barber. In fact, he's still my barber. But I remember years ago him saying, I came in to get my hair cut one day and I said, so what do you notice about all your clients?

He goes, well, there's a common theme. Nobody's happy with who they are. He said if they have straight hair, they want curly hair. If they have curly hair, they want to get it straightened. If they have dark hair, they want a blonde.

If it's blonde, they want to darken it. And so I found that fascinating. Now, I am unsure how the other brothers in this story looked in their physical appearance were not told. But interestingly, we are told how Joseph looked. In chapter 39, verse 6, it says, Joseph was handsome in form and in appearance.

Okay, so that's a red flag right there. So in this text that we're reading, he's how old? He's 17 years old. So now you have a young, handsome, capable upstart.

He's got all the things stacked against him. Enough for his brothers to make comparisons with. Now, I think that you and I wrestle with this comparison issue in the silliest things like social media. We got on Facebook, we got on Instagram, and those people are posting pictures of their vacation in Bermuda, under the palm trees, on the boat, and we're not there. Or that new house that they got and we don't have it.

Or the perfect family that we're not a part of. And so in that comparison, we may decide, I'm not going to push like. In fact, I'm going to push unfollow. It's silly, but it happens. Envy always compares and asks, why them? Why should they deserve that?

Why should they be there? So natural dissimilarity, we all make comparisons. There's a second factor I want you to make note of, social integrity. Did you notice in verse 2, it says, Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father? So I would say, from my high school days, he knarked on them. That's what we used to call it, right?

He was a tattletale. Now there's something that I notice about all people, but young people in particular, all people need to feel accepted. We want to feel loved and accepted.

We have a need for that. But younger people in particular have a huge need to be accepted, more than the average person. And the idea of rejection is devastating to especially a younger person. That's the reason young people will sometimes do things that are against their better judgment, because they don't want to risk being ostracized by that group.

So group think is huge at a certain age. Now Joseph, it says, is 17, so he too needs to be accepted. He would love to be accepted by his brothers, but he makes a decision to tell on them, which tells me that there's some internal moral compass that is stronger than his need for acceptance, which I find commendable but unusual. So he reminds me of Daniel in the sense, where Daniel was young, but it says he purposed in his heart not to defile himself.

He just said, I'm going to live a certain way, I'm going to do what's right. So to make things worse then, you have a handsome kid with an overdeveloped sense of honesty. Do you remember what you felt like when your brother or sister told mom and dad on you? You're thinking, yeah, just wait. Well, that's what happens here. It cultivates envy.

Question, and I can't promise that I know the answer to this, but I think I do. Why do you think Joseph was so brutally honest in telling his dad about the brothers? I mean, why didn't he round the numbers? Why didn't he say, well, you know, they're doing okay. But he said, no, they're not doing okay, they're doing bad. And he flat gave them a bad report. There's no embellishment of the story, no exaggeration, he's not overstating, it's just a matter of fact.

Why? I don't know for sure, but perhaps he had learned this by just watching his family over the years. Dad, his own dad, had been dishonest with his father in getting that blessing. Also, when Joseph was 11 years old, his sister Dinah was raped. And these other brothers killed Shechem and Hamor and all the guys in that village, essentially tricking them and tricking dad, so Jacob, the father, felt dissed, felt slighted, felt like he had been deceived and tricked, and he took umbrage to it. And he remembered that shame, and he probably looked at all of those things and said, not me, I'm going to live above reproach.

I'm going to live a different kind of a life. So there doesn't seem to be malice on Joseph's part, just honesty. But his brothers see it differently.

His brothers, in looking at this, just see a pretty boy who's a tattletale, and they're out to get him. Let me just say something. If you're an honest person, I applaud you, but look out. If you're the kind of person who says, no, wherever I'm at, I'm going to live above reproach. I'm going to live with integrity. If I see evil, I'm going to make it known. I'm going to call it out. It's a great, commendable way to live. We ought to live that way, but at the same time, you are putting a target on you, where people are going to call you all sorts of names, from Miss Goody Two-Shoes to Mr.

Perfect to much worse. So a couple of factors are going on here, natural dissimilarity and social integrity. Let me give you a third.

Parental partiality. Notice verse 3. Now Israel, a name for Jacob, loved Joseph more than all his children. That's Skip Heitzig, with a message from his series White Collar Sins. Now, here's Skip to share how you can help keep this broadcast going strong, connecting more people like you to the good news of Jesus. The greatest trials in your life are often your greatest opportunities to reflect the gospel, and we want to connect friends like you to God's truth.

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Skip has several Bible reading plans available in the YouVersion Bible app. Simply download the app and search Skip Heitzig. Next week, Skip Heitzig shares the remedy for envy and how you can experience the freedom and joy you may be missing. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.