Westtown Church
Westtown Church
Love Does Not Envy
The sin of envy has been placed by Western theologians among the list of Seven Deadly Sins, meaning envy is not simply a particular sin, like an individual weed, but a vice, like a crawling vine that takes over the yard. This is why Rebecca DeYoung says that envy is not so much like a broken arm but cancer, a cancer fueled, not by sugar, but by pride. This Sunday we will consider from 1 Corinthians 13 that "love...does not envy."
I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, chapter 13 this morning. 1 Corinthians 13. We're going to continue our drive through the letter of 1 Corinthians. And if you've been here, you know we pulled off at a senior overlook called the Love Chapter. And if you've been here, you know we pulled off at a scene overlook called the love chapter. That's what first Corinthians 13 is called the love hymn or the love chapter. Alan Redpath says it's a spiritual. You can get a spiritual suntan from the warmth of this chapter, and I think that's right. There's a certain beauty to this chapter and a certain warmth as we ponder not just the love that God puts in the hearts of his saints but also in God's love.
Speaker 1:The first three verses of chapter 13,. We see there God is emphasizing the necessity of love. We can give away all that we own, we can have faith that moves mountains, we can give away our body to be burned as a martyr, but if we do it without love, in God's eyes it doesn't mean anything. So you see there the necessity of love. And then he moves into verses four through seven, because in the first three verses he's getting that outward. Action without love is nothing in God's eyes. But in verses four through seven he's coming at it from the other angle. Love is not just something in the heart, it's something that acts. So you see, there's 15 action verbs. They look like adjectives here in our English Bibles but they're actually verbs and they're getting at the nature of love.
Speaker 1:Paul's trying to get the Corinthian church to turn away from its unloving ways, which we've seen as we've gone through this letter, some various ways. They weren't loving one another and he's trying to get them to put love, the love of Christ, into action. We've seen two positive aspects of the nature of love the last couple of weeks. Verse four love is patient and kind. Love is patient and kind. And now Paul's going to switch gears a little bit and he's going to give us five ways. Love is not. And so here in verse four he continues on and he's going to show us something of the darkness that's in our own hearts. He's going to show us, by contrast, what love is not. Verse 4, love does not envy or boast, it's not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way. There's the five things we're going to look at in the weeks ahead. This morning we're going to focus our attention on the fact that love does not envy. Love does not envy.
Speaker 1:Before we approach the subject of love, it's very important that we remember that. The Bible is very clear that we don't get right with God through what we do. We get right with God through faith in Christ and what he has done on our behalf, and so the apostle Paul calls that, and the New Testament calls that, even the old justification. So we get right by freely receiving what God has done for us. In that sense we're passive. We accept what God has done on our behalf to get right with him, christ having paid the full penalty for our sins and lived the perfect life that we have not. But the Bible is also clear that once we get reconciled with God, once we're justified, as Paul puts it, god saved us so that we could then grow to be more and more like Christ or to be sanctified when it comes to the Christian life, once we're accepted by God, which is nothing but receiving what God has done, now we're to be engaged and active in growing in Christ.
Speaker 1:Growing in Christ is not a passive thing of faith. Getting right with God is just like a beggar putting out your hands and letting God put bread in it and you receiving it, but growing in Christ sanctification. We're active, we're engaged. We have to strive and work at it Now. We have to remember we do that in a cooperative work with the grace of God. But listen to 2 Peter 1 5,. For this very reason, make every effort. You hear it. Make every effort. There's something for us to do or to engage. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. So the Bible never conceives that we would get right with God and then just cruise into heaven, to go on cruise control until we get to glory. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. I think the corollary to that, if we're thinking of a coin, that's the heads, the tails would be make every effort to exercise your faith, to be killing sinful vices in your life.
Speaker 1:The apostle Paul, when he wrote to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, he put it like this uses different language, but same idea put off the old man and put on the new man. Put off the old, put on the new. And he's speaking to forgiven people here. Their sins have already been dealt with as far as their record, but he's talking about the power of sin that still lives in them. We still have to deal with the residue. If you've ever emptied coffee out of a coffee cup, well, you look back in the cup. There's that residue in there. That's like sin in our life. We still have that residue of sin in our hearts and so we have to deal with that.
Speaker 1:And one great danger of the Christian life is becoming apathetic. It's becoming discouraged in our growth. And when we do that we can just quit striving to become more like Christ. I hope that's not the case with you, dear Christian. But that same apostle Peter, who says to make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue just a couple of verses before gives us the encouragement we need to actually make every effort.
Speaker 1:Listen, god's divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. God's power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness so we can grow in Christ, we can overcome sin in our life. God's given us the resources. Even as we strive. We're not striving in our own strength. We're striving in those resources, in that divine power that God has granted us.
Speaker 1:What divine power? Through the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. I always like to remind folks grace, the power of grace. Grace is not just, it's not like an impersonal electricity, it's not a thingy. Grace is the personal, empowering presence of the Holy Spirit within us. So we're cooperating with a person, and that is namely God. Those who have faith in Christ, god sends, and he has the Holy Spirit dwell and make his home in us. We become little temples of God in that sense, and so we have that resource of God himself within us to empower us to grow, to be more like his son. And so the same spirit, or the same God I mean, who deals with the penalty of sin through Christ. He then applies what Christ has accomplished on that cross by sending the Holy Spirit into our hearts, and then he breaks the domination of sin in our life. But we still battling sin is still a struggle and so, but the good news is, one day he'll eradicate the very presence of sin from our hearts and lives, for those who know God.
Speaker 1:Now, with that brief introduction, I would like to ask you, invite you to stand if you're able. If you're not, that's okay, but if you're able to stand, I'd like you to stand and I want to read God's holy word to you from 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. It says the inspired and fallible holy word of the living God. He sends it to you in love. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.
Speaker 1:Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever. God's people said amen. You may be seated. Thank you, heavenly Father. It is a marvel that you speak to us and your very holy voice comes into our sinful ears and you plant your holy seed of your word into our sinful hearts. We give you praise, god, that light does shine in the darkness and we need the light of Christ today to help us to grow to love you more and more and one another more and more. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. I'm going to approach this by simply dealing with love is not envy, with two questions. So everything else I say is going to hang on these two questions, not necessarily equal time for the questions, but question number one how can we detect envy in our lives? How can we detect envy in our lives?
Speaker 1:Some of you remember the Brady Bunch, even some of you younger kids. My kids used to love to watch the classics. But the Brady Bunch. You remember Jan on the Brady Bunch. Remember who she was envious of? Somebody said it. Who was it? Marsha? Okay, marsha, marsha, marsha, right, her older sister, because her older sister was so popular in school and all of that. Isn't it remarkable that envy even infected the Brady bunch? I think that's quite amazing. It could even affect the Brady bunch.
Speaker 1:But I want to think about envy. Jan's a classic example on a TV show, but it's helpful to know, I think, that the Christian church has thought about the virtues of godliness and the vices of human sin for 2,000 years, have reflected upon it even longer if you go into the Old Testament. But some of you may even recognize envy is one of the what's been called by christian theologians one of the seven deadly sins, one of the seven deadly sins, or sometimes it's called one of the seven deadly or capital sins, and so envy's up there with those other deadly sins called vainglory, sloth, greed, unjust wrath, lust and gluttony. That's the seven. Fueling them all is pride. So there's one sense in which we can say that there's eight deadly or eight capital sins. Now, all sins deadly in one sense. But that's not what it's getting at. I want you to notice murder did not make the cut, adultery did not make the cut. Lying and cheating, they didn't make the list. Not saying they're not serious, they most certainly are, but they're not identified in the seven deadly sins. And that's interesting and I think we can learn from this. Rebecca de Young, marshall Siegel, joe Rigney, brian Hedges, they've all written profitable things in our own day about the seven deadly sins. But let me just share a few things.
Speaker 1:Back in the latter fourth century so we're talking the late 300s one of the desert fathers his name was Evagrius. He was an Eastern monk. He lived that solitary life out in the desert with his fellow monks and there was actually also some nuns out there as well. But Evagrius noticed as he was pastoring to other monks in the desert, that these same sinful thought patterns were emerging. He began to notice patterns. There's a certain pattern to sins and how they operate. And so, even though there's a certain mystery in all sin, there's also certain things that we can detect and we can see relationships between them. And so he wrote down this deadly list of sins.
Speaker 1:This idea, this pastoral observation was picked up by John Cassian. He was a disciple of Evagrius, and Cassian brought the pastoral wisdom of this list then into the Western side of God's church, the Western side of Christianity. Gregory the Great he was the Bishop of Rome back in the 6th century. Good guy, he noted that pride was the root of all of these seven deadly sins. He's the one that made that observation. And then you go on in church history. You got people, famous theologians like Peter Lombard. In the 12th century. You got Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. They too affirmed this list of virtues and vices.
Speaker 1:But one of the great pastoral insights that I want to point out to you this morning, one of the great insights of the seven deadly sins in general, and then envy in particular, is this I want you to picture a large tree. We're going to call this the vice tree. It's the vice tree and I want you to notice, on the vice tree picture the roots, and those roots are tied in with a very thick trunk, the roots in the trunk. That's pride. That's pride. And out of this tree, this massive trunk, come these seven very large branches. Envision those as the seven deadly sins. Seven deadly sins, including envy. And then off each one of these seven large branches you have smaller branches and even gets down to twigs. That represents particular sins that flow from each of these deadly sins, including envy. Each vice, including envy itself, each of these deadly sins, has its own children, its own offshoots of sin, and I think it's very useful for us to realize this. As Christians, we typically think of our sins as individualized, as a bunch of BBs in a bucket or something, but actually there's a relationship with our sins, and I think it's very useful for us, when we confess our sins, to realize that there's sin beneath the sin and that there's things that fuel our sins. There's a whole branch of sin behind and underneath our particular sins.
Speaker 1:Think about Cain in Genesis, chapter four. If you had to name on a test what's Cain's great sin, what would you say? And you know what it is. It's murder, right? He murdered his brother Abel. Now why did he murder his brother Abel? Well, he envied the favor of God upon Abel and his sacrifice. And so the sin behind Cain's sin of murder is actually envy.
Speaker 1:And what fuels envy? It's pride. And so it's not just that he murdered, it's not just that he did that one wrong. It's connected in his heart to something deeper, it's rooted down in the depths of his heart, and this is one reason why sin is difficult to eradicate. Rebecca de Young notes advices are more like cancer than a broken arm. It takes hold in your heart, takes hold in a patterned way, and in the case of envy, it's a patterned response to the blessings of others. It's a patterned response to the blessings of others. Envy is a patterned response to the blessings of others. It's not just a sin, but it's a vice. It is a sin but it's a vice, like cancer in you, because envy becomes pervasive. It's hidden within, it's hard to treat and therefore it's hard to eradicate.
Speaker 1:Think of Corinth. You think of ancient Corinth. What was that city like? It was a city that was consumed with status seeking. They were very status conscious people in Corinth. They were sort of proud of their cultural wisdom, so to speak. You saw that in the early chapters of 1 Corinthians, and anytime somebody is consumed with one's status compared to other people, envy is crouching right there at the door. It's crouching right there at the door, ready to make you miserable.
Speaker 1:And so what had happened? The apostle Paul had gone out, preached the gospel in Corinth, and many of these adult Corinthians had come to know the Lord. It was not a very old church. Many of these Christians were relatively young Christians who had they been discipled by before Christ showed up through the apostle Paul's preaching. They'd been discipled by the world. We're always being either discipled by Satan in the world or by Christ and his word and they being either discipled by Satan and the world or by Christ and his word, and they had been discipled by the world, and so they had these deeply ingrained patterns within them. Of course there's a sense in which all sin is deeply ingrained, but patterned sin. There is something to a patterned sin and if you've lived the Christian life any length at all, you understand what I'm saying to you.
Speaker 1:This envy that was rooted in their pride of their status seeking was not immediately expunged when they became Christians. Sin was broken. They began to grow in it, but it was a tough fight and they were losing much of that battle at the time and Paul writes this letter. One reason is to get them to begin to love one another more, to put that worldly thinking out of them to be about the business of dealing with their envy. Think about 1 Corinthians 11 and the Lord's Supper controversy. You remember what happened there? The wealthy Corinthian of dealing with their envy. Think about 1 Corinthians 11 and the Lord's Supper controversy. You remember what happened there? The wealthy Corinthian Christians were coming in and they wouldn't even wait for the middle-class and lower-class folks to come in. They would just go ahead and have their feast. What was ever left over, if anything, was there when the laborers showed up at the end of the day and the wealthy were even most likely sitting in the most prominent spots.
Speaker 1:In chapter three, verse three, the apostle Paul says there's jealousy and strife among you Corinthian Christians. Well, why was that? Well, they were even proud about who they followed in discipleship. One said well, you know, I follow the apostle Paul followed in discipleship. One said well, you know, I follow the apostle Paul, he's my man. Another said well, I follow Apollos. I'm better than you because Apollos, you know, greatest Paul is Apollos is better. Another one says no, no, I follow Cephas. He was the head of the band that's Peter. Cephas is another name for Peter in Corinthians, and then others, you know so on.
Speaker 1:So who they were following even became a thing of spiritual competition, which is ridiculous, of course. Why? Because they had this envious spirit. They had this envious spirit and when it came to spiritual gifts God had given to others, they acted as if it was a competition who could outshine other people with their gifts? They had lost focus about it. And so that's why, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, the chapter right before 13 that we're in on, love is dealing with spiritual gifts. And so out of 1 Corinthians 12 flows 1 Corinthians 13 to use your gifts not as a competition, but to love one another. What basically happened with the Corinthians is something that happens to all Christians at one time or another. We lose focus of Christ and his cross and what it means what it means to us and what it means to the church, what it means to our relationships, what it means to us and what it means to the church, what it means to our relationships.
Speaker 1:Envy feeds on local competition. Take note to this. One of the first steps to defeating an enemy is understanding how it works right, understanding how the enemy works Well. Envy feeds on local competition. Without competition, there's no envy, and so envy is fostered and kindled like a fire in your heart in a particular kind of way. If you're a local basketball player here, you're not envying Covey Bryant or LeBron James or, back in my day, michael Jordan or Larry Bird or whoever it was. Why? Because you are definitely not like them. You can't shoot like Jordan or LeBron. They are in a league all of their own. You're not envying them. I'll tell you who you'll envy, though. You'll envy your classmate who starts on your local basketball team over you while you sit on the bench. See, that's how envy works. It's local. It's like these little market stands out. You know you get local hunting. That's how envy is. It's local, that's how it works and you need to be aware of that. If you're a businessman or businesswoman and you're doing well in your career in its own right, you're not going to be envying Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or somebody else. No, but I'll tell you who's going to be eating your insides out. Perhaps, if you have envy, be where your brother is.
Speaker 1:Socially, envy operates in our own circles. It operates in our relationships, amongst our peers and friends, neighbors, workers, siblings. And you see, this is why envy is so dangerous because it's a relationship killer. It will kill relationships. We see this, for example, with Joseph. Genesis 37 to 50, right.
Speaker 1:Remember his brothers. They hated and despised Joseph because they envied him, because his dad, their dad, had Joseph as a favorite son. And then Joseph had a multicolored coat that symbolized their father's favor. And then Joseph was even given dreams by God that said that Joseph was destined to rule over his brothers. Joseph did not handle that information well. Well, at first they were going to take him out of town. They threw him in a pit. They were going to leave him there to die, if you remember the story. But one of the brothers sort of pleaded the case, at least leave the guy alive and they got him out of the pit and they sold him to some Midianite traders who were going by on their way to Egypt. So they sold their own brother off into slavery, who was then taken down to Egypt, and it's a story of envy. Now that's the underbelly of the story. It's actually a story of great hope because of the grace and goodness of God's providence. But envy is key in that story.
Speaker 1:1984 movie, the classic Amadeus. It's a historical fiction movie, but the brilliant young composer from Vienna named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Love that name. He finds that he has a fierce rival. That rival is Antonio Saleri. Now Saleri, he's consumed. He has to be greater than Mozart has to. He has to be greater than him and he resents not only Mozart that he isn't, he resents God, who enabled Mozart to be greater than him. Saleri was a very talented composer in his own right, a religious man, but he just couldn't stand that Mozart outshined him, couldn't live with it. All the while Mozart's living a life of worldly pleasure and Salieri's like the prodigal son's elder brother in Luke 15. Absolutely miserable. Absolutely miserable. Before it's over, it has consequences for both Salieri and Mozart, envy.
Speaker 1:Some of you may remember the famous Scottish runner, eric Liddell. His rival was Harold Abrams. Now Eric Liddell. He realized God had blessed him. He says when I run I feel the pleasure of God. It gave him joy and freedom to run. Of God, it gave him joy and freedom to run. He enjoyed the running period just knowing that it was a gift from God. But Harold Abrams, he didn't have that kind of mindset towards his gift of running. He too had a gift of running, but his self-worth was based on winning, and so he always lived in fear of failure, a telltale sign of a spirit of envy. Because Abrams was miserable unless he was better than Liddell. Why? Because his self-worth and identity were bound up with winning and being the best, not being outshined by anyone. Some of you remember, not all that long ago there was an Olympic skater, two Olympic skaters, tanya Harding and her envy toward Nancy Kerrigan.
Speaker 1:You remember that sad tale, sad. Remember that sad tale, sad? There's a movie about it. But there's an old Jewish story Illustrates the same thing on the nature of envy. You had envy and greed and an angel appears to them both and told them they could have anything they wanted. But here's the catch the other one got twice as much. Uh-oh, that's a dilemma for envy. So envy thought for a moment and then said I would like one of my eyes gouged out. And in that what you see is just the irrational nature of envy and how it even turns to become self-destructive when it takes over a soul.
Speaker 1:Envy is rooted in pride. Something else we need to know about envy it's rooted in great insecurity because another person's blessings, another person's talents, another person's good looks, another person's talents, another person's good looks or better education or higher position, another person's promotions or achievements or praise or relationships maybe it's their family or their marriage or their home or their car or their freedoms. Whatever All these threaten an envious person. Whatever All these threaten an envious person, everything around you becomes a threat because it's a threat to the envious person's sense of self-worth. They have a fragile, self-made image and identity and that's a scary place to be, and that's a scary place to be their sense of being unlovable, that they don't achieve or win or conquer the other. This is what's in the heart of a bully. Bullies are eaten up with envy and insecurity. Why? Because they have to be on top and they got to keep you in your place. It's an ugly form of envy. The Lion King. What about the bully Scar?
Speaker 1:Something else about envy? It's not only rooted in insecurity, it breeds fear, not love. Think about this for a minute. Even when the envious person wins or comes out on top, they now have to live in fear, even if they're on top, because what? There may be a time coming soon where I'm not number one. You see how you cannot win with envy. You see how irrational Whoever stays on top except Jesus Christ, he's the king forever. He'll be number one forever. The rest of us, no. The envious person lives in fear. Well, what if they're more beautiful, if they become more beautiful? What if I'm not at the top and someone else becomes more successful, or more this or more beautiful? What if I'm not at the top and someone else becomes more successful, or more this or more that or whatever? We see this in Little Miss Sunshine, the movie Old Uncle Frank. He lives in fear because after he loses his educational prowess, he's no longer the number one Proust scholar. Well, he can't live with that.
Speaker 1:So one commentator says envy takes others' excellence as a personal insult and this breeds unhappiness, grief and misery. You see the children. Envy breeds Unhappiness, grief, misery. It stews in self-bred resentments. And so this is what Proverbs is trying to warn us of with some wisdom, proverbs 14.30, that envy will put rot in your bones. It will rot you out from the inside.
Speaker 1:This is the Marxist impulse in many people today. If they can't rise up, got to bring others down. Let's level things out. Everybody gets a trophy. Okay, if it's first grade, I get it, but by high school, get over it. Some people are better than you. God has gifted some people to be better at sports, to be better at education, to be better at certain. God has gifted some people to be very good looking and others not so much. God is God and the envious person can't, at the end of it, put themselves meekly before God to accept their lot in life in the Incredibles. Remember Syndrome's quest for power.
Speaker 1:I think there's something very sinister in our day Can't have a valedictorian and salutatorian anymore. Why do our schools not teach all the rest of the kids? They're excellent, let's rejoice in what God did in their life. But you see, we can't have that now, can we? Do you realize that that's a very root of worship? To worship and to acknowledge that, which is most excellent, and that's the very principle that's being rooted out of our society. The more godless we get Because we can't turn to our kids and say what's the matter? What are you crying for? They were studying when you were messing around, or they were more disciplined. You did your best and that's okay. Rejoice in what they have. You're probably better at other things than they are. Just look around and rejoice at what God has blessed various that's slipping away in our society.
Speaker 1:We're afraid we're going to hurt somebody's feelings. Why are we afraid of that? Because we have to create our own self-image, our own self-worth, and we don't get our self-worth from God. There's no end to it. King Saul in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 18-20, david kills Goliath. What do the women start singing about? Right, saul has killed his thousands, but David has 10,000. That ate Saul up to the point. He wanted David dead.
Speaker 1:The self-righteous Pharisees. They hated Jesus. And one of the reasons they hated Jesus? They were supposed to be the Navy SEALs, spiritually, in Israel. They'd always held that position proudly. And then Jesus comes along and outshines them and they can't handle it.
Speaker 1:So how can we detect envy? We've spoken on that in the little bit of time we have left, I want to reflect just a little bit on question two. How can we kill envy in our hearts? Well, you first have to realize sin never lies dorm envy in our hearts. Well, you first have to realize sin never lies dormant in our hearts. It never lies dormant. It's like mold that grows in the dark. It's like a farmer who doesn't attend to the weeds of the field that can take over the crop. That's exactly how envy and other sin operates.
Speaker 1:John Owen the old Puritan used to say be killing sin or sin will be killing you. That's why Jesus would say if it's giving you a problem, what? Chop it off, gouge it out. It's obviously metaphorical, but he's trying to say do you realize how much danger is within you? How do we kill envy?
Speaker 1:I'm going to give a few things that we can think about in this regard. First, learn to recognize the symptoms of envy. I think I've talked about that enough, except to say you may remember in John 21, near the end of John's gospel. There Jesus turns to the apostle Peter and he says to Peter he says you're going to have a very difficult trial coming up and you're going to have a very painful death. And Peter says what about John? And Jesus basically says what's that to you? You follow me. Jesus is Lord, not us, and he calls us to lower positions in life. Be careful when you hear yourself saying in your mind Lord, but what about him or her? You're on dangerous ground.
Speaker 1:Second, know there's forgiveness of sins, including envy and its whole cluster of bad fruit. Thank God for Jesus Christ. One of the sins he died for for us is envy and all the other sins, pride and the root of it and all these sins for every branch and twig in our life. There are days and I kid you not, I think there are days. I would despair if I didn't know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what you have to live out of. I would despair if I didn't know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what you have to live out of. Don't be making your own self-image. That's a recipe for misery. You will be a miserable person and it's a lot of hard work, because if you create your self-image, you've got to keep it up.
Speaker 1:I always wonder what these young, beautiful models do. When they turn, they realize I'm getting older. Oh, there's a line in my face. Oh, there's another one. Oh, you see, what you have to live out of is knowing that you're loved by God. Know your identity. I am a beloved child of God and God loves me, not based on what I've achieved or how great I am, but on how great Jesus is and on what he's achieved for me. Do you see how you can begin to relax in your soul when you realize I don't have to compete with other people? What is greater than knowing the love of God? Nothing, nothing at all. So live out of that and remember that you were bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. There's nothing more valuable in all the world than that.
Speaker 1:Third, fight your sins. Fight your sins and your vices through the grace of God. You remember the I may have mentioned. I just love that little skit with Bob Newhart.
Speaker 1:The lady comes in, he's going to give her counseling five bucks for five minutes. You remember this. And she says well, he goes, go on. And she says, well, I'm afraid of being buried alive in a box. He says is that it? She says, yeah. He says stop it. She's looking at him yeah, just stop it.
Speaker 1:We need more than just stop it it. We need more than just stop it. You and I, nikes, just do it. That doesn't work to root out sin. We need more than just do it or just stop it. We need the grace of God. We need God to go down deep into the very roots of our being and root it out from the inside out, to break these sinful habits, to reform and reshape our deformed, ingrained stains of our character, where we've built certain sin patterns. Some sins run and stains run deep, deeper than others.
Speaker 1:Fourth practice gratitude. Give thanks daily. Envy's like pepper spray. It blinds you. It blinds you to God's blessing in your life. So give thanks for what God's done for you, for those around you. Fifth practice meekness.
Speaker 1:Here's what I can say about this. Until we see the Christian life, yes, it's a joyful journey, but it also has much sorrow mixed in. And the New Testament is very clear that the Christian life is a crucifixion. It's growing downward and that hurts. It's a crucifixion. It's growing downward and that hurts, it's a crucifixion. We become a living sacrifice, paul says. And until we see the Christian life that way, we will never conquer something like envy.
Speaker 1:Listen to this book dedication I came across.
Speaker 1:I think it's the most beautiful dedication I've ever heard, dedicated to the memory of Ambrose Gilbert Sapp, a local church pastor who toiled in obscurity among the rolling fields of Kentucky, shepherding God's people in poverty, without any glory or recognition. He faithfully preached the gospel until he died. May God grant us more like him. There's something beautiful in that. There's something beautiful in that in a heart set free to be content with the love of God and work out his will, even if that's in obscurity. And lastly, let me say this Let us do something that we don't do too often in our society at large and even in the Christian church let's meditate on heaven more. Let's meditate on heaven. Do you realize that when we get to heaven, all the blessings that you have I will rejoice in, all the blessings I have you will rejoice in, and all the blessings we have we'll share, we'll rejoice. Your happiness will make me even happier and my happiness will make you even happier. It's going to be a glorious place, heaven, and we need to remember it more. Love does not envy.