Fighting the Green-Eyed Monster - Part B

Envy doesn't have to have the last word. God can. God has the last word. Yes, this happened to him, but God was with him. Meaning, his brother's jealousy didn't hinder the work of God. It only furthered the work of God. There's a great truth in Psalm 76 that says, Even the wrath of man will praise you, O Lord. That is all of the anger and animosity and opposition that mankind can muster can actually serve with God's sovereignty in view to glorify God ultimately. With every aspect of our lives displayed on social media, it's easy to become envious of others and their lives.

But we have to remember, it's not a full picture. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares the remedy for envy and how you can experience the freedom and joy you may be missing. Before we begin, here's a resource that will nourish you spiritually. Holidays and special days of celebration wake us up from the daily grind and provide a backdrop for creating memories. But beyond traditions, time off and intentional family time, holidays can illuminate spiritual truths as we hear from Skip Heitzig. You may not know that Valentine's Day has Christian roots, but time and secular culture have transformed what was a great celebration of those who would stay true to the Christian faith. It has turned into simply a celebration of romantic love. You can find spiritual significance with Happiness, Holiness and Holidays, a four DVD collection of celebration messages from Pastor Skip. And it's our thanks when you give $25 or more to help keep this ministry on the air.

Here's Skip with a strong thought on another holiday on our calendar. Because God is our Father, we never have to fear. Because God is our Father, I don't have to live selfish, myopic life. Because He is our Father in Heaven, there is no limit to His power from Heaven toward those of us who are on the earth. It's an incredible phrase, Our Father in Heaven. Call now to request your copy of Happiness, Holiness and Holidays. Our thanks for your generous gift, 800-922-1888.

Or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, let's dive into today's teaching. We'll be in Genesis chapter 37 and Acts chapter 7 as Skip Heitzig begins the study.

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 and tricking into 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. That'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. Or 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 three. Now Israel, that's a name for Jacob, loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age and also 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 Joseph had a dream. Now, this is not a smart move on Jacob's part. He is setting his son up for pressure in the future. If we were to counsel Jacob, if we could sit Jacob down, we'd say, Jacob, dude, you're going to hurt Joseph by showing him this special treatment because his brothers don't have that technicolor poncho that you gave number 11. There's just going to be a disparity. He's going to get in trouble by them, which is exactly what happened.

Now put it in modern terms. Let's say you have a child that you love and you dote over and you show preferential treatment toward, but you don't treat your other children the same way. So you give them a hard time, but you just, this other child, that one child hung the moon. Well, I can almost predict precisely that that kid's going to get beat up by all them at some point. So let's just say it happens and now it's grad night. The child's 17 years of age, the one that you dote over all the time.

Could do no wrong. It's grad night. Everybody piles out of the gym after the graduation ceremony and there in the parking lot is a brand new car with a sign on that says, congratulations, you deserve it.

Brand new car for this one kid. Do you not think that the other children in your family are going to be so filled with envy? Not just the family, everybody in the gym who comes out and sees that.

Parents included of the other kids. That kind of preferential treatment will bring envy. Partiality adds the dangerous ingredient to the recipe of envy.

And partiality can come from a boss, a girl at school, a friend, a teacher, a coach. Question is, why did Jacob do this? It was bad for Joseph. Why did he do it? Well, we're told that Joseph was the son of his old age.

Now let me just sort of flesh this out a little bit. Not only was he the son of his old age, Joseph was the son of the only woman he ever really loved. Her name was Rachel. He loved Rachel, wanted to marry her. Rachel's dad had an older daughter named Leah, pulled a trick on Jacob and Jacob ends up marrying Leah first, then Rachel whom he loved. They couldn't have children so he gets Bilhah and Zilpah thrown in on this crazy deal. But the only woman he really loved was Rachel. He loved with all her heart.

She has already died, the text of Genesis tells us. So that now this 17 year old boy, every time he shows up and Jacob looks at him, he is a reminder of his precious dead wife. So he pulls out all the stops, gives him this fancy coat. We don't know if it was a multicolored coat.

Some texts just say a long sleeve coat. Point is it was different from all their clothes, right? It wasn't a shepherd's robe, it was a ruler's coat. In fact, the coat that Jacob gave Joseph was to send a message to them. And the message was, none of you, even the firstborn Reuben, none of you get the right of being firstborn. I'm giving the right and the privileges and all that goes with that to Joseph.

How do we know this? 1 Chronicles 5 we are told, the birthright was given to Joseph and his children. So giving the robe was to show them none of you, not Reuben, not Simeon, not Judah, but number 11 is going to get all the rights and privileges of the firstborn. Let me just say ouch right there. So whatever is there to be envied has just gotten worse. So we have three factors that we can see, natural dissimilarity, social integrity, and parental partiality. Let me throw in a fourth. I'll put it nicely and it rhymes.

Personal simplicity. The kid is just a little naive, I'm thinking, because follow me here, look at verse 5. Now Joseph had a dream and he told it to his brothers and they hated him even more. And so he said, listen to his dream, please hear this dream which I have dreamed. There we were binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright. And indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf.

Now dude, do you think they're going to go awesome? That was a great dream. Got any more? His brother said to him, shall you indeed reign over us or shall you indeed have dominion over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Okay, but we're not done yet. Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers. Really? You're going to tell him this one too after that?

Oh yeah. And he said, look, I've dreamed another dream and this time the sun and the moon and the 11 stars bow down to me. So he told it to his father and his brothers and his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream that you have dreamed?

Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you? And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. This kid just seems painfully naive. He may not be, but he sure seems that way to me. And I got to say in reading this, I understand the feeling of these other brothers and their reaction.

Here's a handsome 17 year old Joseph standing in his little technicolor poncho. They already hate his guts. And then he says, here's a dream. And if he thinks he's going to score points with them by telling them the dream, he's wrong.

He'll be disappointed. So do you guys, any of you remember the show that I grew up with watching, Leave it to Beaver? Okay. So a lot of you don't. I don't know why this service especially, but first service, there's a lot of people who knew Leave it to Beaver. So in Leave it to Beaver, the beave, sort of like the main character, this young kid, is just this naive little guy and his older brother Wally and Eddie Haskell and Lumpy. These are all his older brother's friends. They kind of all conspire and they use him and he just sort of plays around and plays along with it.

And it's very gullible and very naive and very sweet. And so I look at Joseph as the beave of the Old Testament. So he has two dreams. The first dream is filled with agricultural motif. It's about sheaves and the harvest. The second dream has celestial motif, sun, moon, and the stars.

If there's any question about the meaning of the first dream, which there wasn't, there would be no doubt as to the meaning of the second dream. And so these brothers looked at him and they thought that pompous little arrogant upstart, that little squirt, self-focused brat, I mean they're just filled with envy and hate. And they said, do you think you're going to reign over us? What's the answer to that?

Uh-huh, I am actually. I don't know it now, you don't know it now, but God knows it and he's going to arrange things where I become the second most powerful man on earth and one day you're going to stand before me and you're actually, this isn't just bragging, this is God speaking. This happens to be prophetic truth. So I find it interesting in verse 11, his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Do you suppose that Jacob may have had second thoughts going, hmm, now why would he have these dreams and why would he tell us these dreams?

And just perhaps, just maybe, these dreams aren't the result of a late night pizza with onions. Maybe this is the Lord that is speaking to him and foretelling this. And it turned out to be that way. So these then are four elements that created an environment for envy to grow. That does not make it okay, it is not an excuse for his brothers.

In fact, the big error is that his brothers were so blinded by their envy for that one brother that they couldn't see or weren't even open to God moving through all this. Now you see, this is why envy is such a sin, because envy puts us at the center of the universe. When we envy someone, we hop in the driver's seat and we play God and we decide who should have what or who should be where. And you don't deserve that and you shouldn't have this.

We're playing God. That's why envy is even more deadly than greed, because greed says I want more, whereas envy says I want you to have less. With envy, I'm not just obsessed with my own happiness, I actually resent your happiness. And somehow, your blessing becomes my curse.

That's how insidious it is, that's how bad it is. And that's why Proverbs 27 verse 4 says, Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy? But there's a third statement I want to make in closing, and that is envy has a remedy.

It has a remedy. And what is the remedy for little Joe? A 17-year-old, very honest, very handsome, very hated. What does he answer for this kid?

Because though he is very honest and very upright, and maybe even very naive, he's the guy that gets treated so horribly. So what would you tell him? Well, we tell him what the text tells us. In Acts chapter 7 verse 9, if you have that open, you may want to look at that. There are two verses we want to look at. Stephen, giving this speech, summing up the life of Joseph, said in verse 9, And the patriarchs, those are his older brothers, becoming envious, sold Joseph into Egypt. What's the next sentence say? But God was with him. Now, if you wouldn't have put that in there, you have nothing to say to Joseph. You just say, yeah dude, I'm sorry, that's bad.

That's how life is. Some people just get sold as slaves to Egypt. But no, that happened. But God was with him, so everything changes. And then he describes it in the very next verse, verse 10, And he delivered him out of all of his troubles, and gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and made him governor over Egypt and all of his house.

In other words, envy doesn't have to have the last word. God can. God has the last word. Yes, this happened to him, but God was with him. Meaning, his brother's jealousy didn't hinder the work of God. It only furthered the work of God. There's a great truth in Psalm 76 that says, Even the wrath of man will praise you, O Lord. That is all of the anger and animosity and opposition that mankind can muster can actually serve with God's sovereignty in view to glorify God ultimately. So all of their plotting, all of their scheming, all of their deal-making, all of their lying didn't ruin it for Joseph.

They will watch him promoted further. Now that's a hard truth to swallow, but I want to say this. If you're a person prone to envy any one of God's people, God might just get you first row seats to their promotion.

It'll drive you crazy, but that's part of the fun. Is that your envy doesn't stop what God wants to do in that person's life. And moreover, what this shows me is, no matter what your background is, no matter what your environment, no matter what choices other people have made for you, you can live honorably regardless of your environment or what your ex-husband did or what your kids have done or what your parents have done. You can never use those as an excuse. You can't blame where you are today on other people's treatments of you.

I know we're fond of doing that. Well, I am the way I am and I am where I am because this person did this and that to me. Okay. But God was with him. And so if God is with you, none of those things ultimately matter. They can only serve to further God's purpose.

You just need to discover why you went through that pain so it can bring healing to others. Now, a word to those who are not targeted, but you are the ones who like to inflict envy. You like to unfollow people or write bad things on their social feed, whatever. What you need to realize is just how destructive envy is. You say, yeah, that's why I'm doing it because I'm going to destroy them.

No, no, no. It's destroying you. The envy doesn't destroy them. It didn't destroy Joseph. Maybe temporarily it set him back, but it pushed him up pretty high because of where God allowed it to take him.

But it will destroy you. Proverbs 14 30, a sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones. It's a great story in Greek history of a wrestler who was envious at another wrestler. The wrestler that was the envy of everyone was Theagenes, the pro wrestler in the Olympics. He was the prince of wrestlers for all of Greece. But there was another wrestler who was so envious of Theagenes that he couldn't be consoled until one day Theagenes died and made the guy feel really good. That's how bad he was. So when Theagenes died, they put a statue of Theagenes in the center square and it was said that this wrestler, who was envious, would go out to the statue and grab a hold of it and wrestle it. Like, you know, I'm the big bad wrestler now.

Until one day he pushed too hard, knocked the statue over, and was crushed underneath it. He was killed by his own envy. You need to realize how destructive an emotion it is to entertain it. And then let me give you a word of advice if you are prone to envy. And that is, live your life better than the one you envy. Well, how do I get back at that person? Just live above reproach.

Live high. If in envy you put yourself at the center of the universe, then put the person you envy at the center of the universe. Now, I know that is contrary to everything you feel. It is so unnatural.

It is more natural to snub them, to walk up, to not say anything, to unfollow them, whatever it might be. So I'm not asking you to live naturally. I'm asking you to make a choice that is a supernatural choice.

God's choice. You honor that person. In fact, you encourage that person. In fact, you send them a text or a note or a phone call and say, I'm praying for you. And you actually pray for them.

And just say, I think you're doing a good job. That's going to do something that is transforming. In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 1, Peter says, laying aside all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy, all envy, all evil speaking, desire the sincere or pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. In other words, he's saying get rid of junk food, feast on real food. The junk food are the poison toxins including envy. So think of it in terms of a diet. Imagine a person who eats all the right things, counts the calories, looks at saturated fats and cholesterol and he's just so into diet and exercises all the time but abuses drugs and alcohol.

Where's the consistency in that? That person may think he or she is healthy but they're introducing a lasting lingering toxin in their body that could destroy them. So likewise, if a Christian has a good spiritual diet, they're reading the Bible, going to a Bible teaching church, writing notes in their little journal and serving in the body of Christ but at the same time holding onto things that are toxins like envy, same result, it poisons the unit, it destroys that person. So what does Paul say? He says, love suffers long and is kind, love does not envy. So if you run around saying I love God and I love people but you envy people, then you don't because love does not envy. So your long term strategy needs to be gratitude. That is when you have the first thought of envy at that post or that promotion or that success and you start envy, you immediately catch yourself and you replace the envious thought with the thought of gratitude. Thank you Lord that I have breath in my lungs, thank you Lord for where I am, thank you where you have placed me, thank you for all these blessings that I have forgotten to count but I'm remembering them now.

So your long term strategy is to replace envious thoughts with thanksgiving and you will watch, you will see your heart being transformed and the feelings that you once had melt away for the reality of God is with you and with them and you leave it where it needs to be in God's hands. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from the series White Collar Sins. Now here's Skip to tell you about how you can keep encouraging messages like this coming your way as you help to connect others to God's love.

You know we all have a past, a time when we tried to live life on our own terms. The good news is that when you hand your life over to Jesus, He redeems your past, gives you a future full of hope and joy. We want to share that great news with more friends like you all around the world and you can be a part of that work to change lives. When you give a gift today to keep these messages from God's Word going out, you can help redirect someone's eternal future. Here's how to give. You can give online at connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you. Tomorrow Skip Heitzig shares how bitterness gets planted in your heart and how you can weed it out and cultivate good things in your life. Listen, of all the human emotions that are out there, this is one that you ought to fear the most because bitterness is emotional cancer. As one leader put it, bitterness blows out the candle of joy and leaves the soul in darkness. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.