Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT
## Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is found in the book of Genesis, chapter 4, verses 1-8. Genesis 4:1-8.

And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep. But Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

And Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

And Cain talked with Abel his brother. And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

—

I wanted to announce before I dismiss the children that the announcements this morning are in error. I’ve decided to take this message on envy and make it go at least two weeks, maybe three. So next week we won’t be preaching on anger yet, and also the responsive reading then is incorrect.

Having said that, it’s now time to dismiss the younger children whose parents desire them to go down to the Sabbath schools for their instruction at their level.

—

We’re continuing this morning with a series of sermons on the seven deadly sins—something that every schoolboy throughout most of the last 2,000 years was familiar with. Certainly every parishioner was, and yet we’re hard pressed to be able to name them today.

We began last week with a section talking about the sin of envy. We started with pride. The second of the deadly sins in the historical order is envy, and the next one is anger. But we want to take some time here on envy. First, we wanted to differentiate envy from covetousness. Envy has its roots in covetousness—a violation of the tenth commandment—but it is really a separate, particular sin if we deal with them very specifically.

And so we wanted to make some distinctions. Remember last week we said that covetousness says, “You have something that I want, and I’m going to take fraudulent means to obtain what you have.” Envy says, “You have something that I want. I can’t get it, and therefore I’m going to destroy it or hurt you somehow.”

Those are differences. Greed says, “I just want more of what I’ve got. And I may even use the correct means to get that stuff, but I place my satisfaction in life not in my relationship to God but in my material possessions.”

Jealousy, on the other hand, says, “I have something that is rightfully mine, and I desire to hold it.” And jealousy is normally in the scriptures a good thing. The most obvious cases are where God is jealous for his people. That’s used time and time again throughout the scriptures—we’re his people. God is jealous. We are his possession. He is going to maintain that. And the husband is correctly jealous when some other man attempts to seduce away his wife, or vice versa.

So jealousy is normally a good thing in scripture. We dealt with that a little bit last week. These other things are actually sins.

—

Now, covetousness—we dealt last week with the 10th commandment. We started there where we have the prohibition against coveting your neighbor’s property. And then we moved on from that to look at Jesus’s inspired restatement of the 10th commandment when he was speaking to the rich young ruler.

Remember, he said there he didn’t use the word covet. He used the word defraud. He said, “Defraud not somebody.” And we said that helps us to understand that back in that original occurrence of the Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus, the word covet means a desire, but it also means an action. That particular Hebrew word means both. And so coveting is desiring something that isn’t lawful with the desire, and it also is taking fraudulent means to obtain that thing.

In the question-and-answer period, we talked about broken-field running. I think Reverend Rushdoony uses that illustration in Institutes of Biblical Law. The tenth commandment says you can’t be a broken-field runner, dodging around the explicit statements in the other nine commandments. And so you can’t say that well, you got something technically, legally, and yet really defrauded your neighbor—that’s not okay.

The 10th commandment prohibits that. The tenth commandment internalizes a lot of those other nine commandments as well.

Now, in terms of this distinction that we wanted to draw, Vine’s Expository Dictionary has a definition of covetousness and envy. They’re using this in the context of a specific word which we’ll look at a little bit later. They say this—they talk about the relationship between this particular word for envy and the word for zeal or covet. And Vine says this particular comment: the distinction between covetousness and envy is this—that envy desires to deprive another of what he has, whereas covetousness desires to have the same or the same sort of thing for itself. And that again helps to draw that distinction out.

And that’s mostly what we’re going to do today: review what we said last week and then talk about conceptually what envy is. And then we’re going to conclude by looking at some Old Testament and New Testament examples of envious actions. And so really we’ll probably only get to the first part of the outline that’s there before you.

—

I wanted to just say a couple more comments about what we said last week. The idea is, well, I have a quote here from John Calvin relative to covetousness that might help us to remember what that was.

He says, “When the businessman has fleeced one and robbed another of his goods and deceived one and snared another, immediately when he makes up his accounts, he shall say, ‘Blessed be God who has prospered me so well.’ The fact is that you will hear the greatest deceivers in the world say, ‘Ho, God be thanked. I have made a good profit today. I have prospered this month. I have made good progress this year.’

And yet for all that, if they examine their own hearts and sift through them thoroughly, they will find there that all was but robbery, extortion, frauds, and deceit. But the devil has so blinded their eyes that they have no more discretion nor scruple to say this is wickedness.”

And so that’s a picture of covetousness. I guess the best way—one image you could put in your mind is you always have the image, unfortunate I suppose though it is and it can be used in the wrong sense. You have the image of somebody who is—the term used to refer to somebody who was very shrewd in business dealings and could write a contract such that he could defraud the other person. Now the historical origins of that are a little more complicated than we want to get into this morning. And it really is not particularly an Old Testament Jewish trait. In fact, the 10th commandment prohibited that sort of deception in dealings to enrich one’s own holdings.

And that’s what covetousness is all about. It’s defrauding use of supposedly legal means to obtain what somebody else has. And last week we talked about how that’s been institutionalized in America in terms of the progressive tax rate, etc. And we’re going to talk about this morning has relevance to that as well, but it’s coming from a slightly different perspective.

—

Finally, we said last week that covetousness is idolatry.

Oh, by the way, one other thing. Remember the rich young ruler when he came to Jesus—he said, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And it’s interesting Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” Why did he ask him “good teacher” and why did Jesus rebuke him like that? Well, I think it’s feasible in terms of the whole context of what’s going on there that Jesus drives home the fact that he had defrauded people and he’d accumulated his possessions not properly and should give them all away. I think it’s legitimate to wonder if perhaps the reason why the “good” in there wasn’t the way that particular ruler approached everybody. I mean, that’s one of the best ways to defraud people—to butter them up first. And so here he was trying to obtain information on how to inherit the kingdom.

And the first thing he does is he tries to butter Jesus up. But Jesus is not like us. You know, he doesn’t get a puffed head when somebody says, “Oh, you’re really a neat preacher,” or “you’re really a good businessman,” or “you’re really good at whatever you do. How about help me out a little bit here for a little cut rate?” See, that I think is what the rich young ruler was doing when he used the term “good.”

And Jesus begins right away to drive home from his own sinful use of that term.

—

And then third, we said last week that at the end of that, Jesus tells the rich young ruler, he quotes the fifth commandment to honor your father and mother. And we said that covetousness is really idolatry. It is a perversion of God’s property rights and God’s system. And essentially, it’s a rejection of God’s authority. And that’s why we said rulers frequently—it’s one of the big sins they fell into—was covetousness.

And it’s one of the requirements of New Testament elders, of the state and the church. And it’s also a requirement of office bearers in the old covenant, very explicitly pointed out. A guy can’t be covetous.

Okay, so that’s covetousness. Today we’re going to talk about envy, as opposed to covetousness. And we’re going to, over the next two weeks or maybe three, talk about—first we’re going to give an overview of what envy, as opposed to covetousness, is.

Then we’re going to try to get the picture by looking at some excellent biblical examples that God has given to us in the holy scriptures to drive home to us what envy is, as opposed to covetousness. And then we’re going to wise up by looking at envy in the wisdom literature of the scriptures. We’re going to look at Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and then James.

And then finally, we’re going to bring the rubber down to the road and talk about the applications to our homes and to our country. And take two weeks, maybe probably three. We’ll see.

First, to get the picture. And by the way, I’ll just mention this now that these stories we’re going to talk about today from the Scriptures are excellent devices to teach your children. And that’s very important that you teach what we’re going to talk about today to your children.

And that’ll become clearer as we go along here. But one of the ways to do that is to incorporate these particular Bible stories into your devotions over the next few weeks. Okay.

—

So we’ve drawn a distinction between covetousness and envy. And that’s really what we’re going to be talking about—making sure we all understand that real well. If you don’t understand that, then you can’t understand how it applies to our families and to our culture.

One other thing in terms of covetousness, in terms of review again: if you read the Westminster Catechism, the teachings on the 10th commandment in the Larger Catechism, you will see that the catechism very appropriately and very deliberately refers to coveting what is your neighbor’s. Remember we said that’s the big thing where Christians get that wrong—they think any desire is a bad thing. Any wanting something badly is wrong. The catechism—and I think some of us were a bit surprised to hear what I said last week—is that it refers explicitly to desiring what your neighbor has, his property. But the Westminster Catechism very precisely defines the 10th commandment as desiring what is your neighbor’s, not desiring in general.

You know, Jesus said that he lusted in terms of wanting to have wine and bread again with his disciples in his final consummative feast. So Jesus properly desired that kind of food fellowship, as it were, with his own disciples. And so wanting something badly isn’t wrong. It’s when we want what the other person has that’s wrong, and then take steps to get it. Okay.

—

But on to envy. Max Scheler has said that envy arises out of the joint experiences of covetousness and impotence. And it might be good for me to just read the quote by—I’m going to be referring to this book a lot over the next two or three weeks. This book is called *Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior* by Helmut Schoeck.

I don’t believe it’s in print anymore, but you can probably find copies fairly easily at a used bookstore at Powell’s or something like that. He quotes Scheler here. Scheler says this: “Mere displeasure at the fact that another possesses the thing which I covet does not constitute envy. It is indeed a motive for acquiring in some way the desired object or a similar one—in other words, by working for it, by buying it, by force, or by theft.”

And see, so that would be covetousness. He said, “Only when the attempt to obtain it by these means has failed, giving rise to the consciousness of impotence, does envy arise.” So you can’t get what your neighbor has that you want, and so you move on to envy, which is what you want—to destroy that thing that he has. And so there is this link between covetousness and the tenth commandment. In its most perverted form, it turns into envy—wanting to destroy the person or the object that person has that we want.

And that’s the relationship between covetousness and envy. Envy grows out of covetousness and a violation of the 10th commandment.

—

Brian Grant wrote that envy is one of the rarities of human experience in that it is something that almost everybody does almost all the time, but that never feels good to anybody. Everybody does it almost all the time, but it doesn’t feel good to anybody. It’s not satisfying at all.

Laurence Fucault wrote in his moralistic writings, he said that “there is something in us that warms the heart at the spectacle of a friend’s misfortune.” Something in everybody—that when you see a friend’s misfortune, there’s a twinge of satisfaction to it in all of us.

One of the old proverbs that Schoeck relates in his book—he goes back and looks at all these old proverbs from around the world over the ages about envy. One of these proverbs was that were envy a fever, the whole world would have been dead long since. And that particular proverb about the extensiveness of envy in our world has German, Danish, Swedish, Latin, and Italian versions. I mean, cultures all over the world have repeated that proverb: “If envy were a fever, the whole world would be dead long ago.”

Now, that sounds pretty severe, doesn’t it? To say that everybody is always envious most of the time. But if you turn with me to the book of James 4:5, for just a minute here, we’ll see indeed that envy does characterize the fallen man.

—

James 4:5. Well, I suppose we should start in verse three, or even verse two, I guess. Well, we can start with verse one, I guess.

Verse one: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lust that war in your members? Ye lust and have not. Ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain. Ye fight and war, yet you have not, because you ask not. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lust.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scriptures saith in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?”

So James is telling them here what their problems in this church are, and he’s saying you want things, you can’t get them, and he draws a correlation between that failure to fulfill their covetousness and then envyings and strife and wars and conflict between one another. Between covetousness and envy, he draws those connections in the first few verses. And then in verse 5 he says, “Don’t you know that the spirit that dwells in us lusteth to envy?”

Now there’s a lot of discussion and debate about how that verse should be particularly translated. But the end result, no matter how you translate the thing, is that James is contrasting the Holy Spirit of God with the spirit of fallen man. And the spirit of fallen man is driven, pants after, lusts to, envy. So James characterizes their problems as coming from the spirit that is fallen. And that spirit is characterized as one that is just hellbent, as it were, to envy—going right for it.

And so we have these proverbs from all over the world that are simply recounting what has happened historically in the history of man. Fallen man always ends up being driven by envy. It is one of those things that pervades all of societies. So indeed these sayings by these people about the pervasiveness of it is correct, and so it should be quite important to us.

—

Now we said when we talked about pride there is a physical look to pride. We talked about the camel nose, the upturn nose—you know, always looking down at everybody else. Envy also has been characterized by writers over the last 2,000 years or more as having a particular appearance. That appearance is a slit eye—eyes kind of looking at somebody else. The term “evil eye” refers, in its proper sense, to envy.

Now that’s a good way to think about it. The word envy itself comes from the Latin word *invidia*. And *invidia* comes from two words: *in*, which means to look upon, or “to see against”—rather, its proper meaning there—and *videre*, which means to see. So *invidia* is to look with enmity at something else or somebody else. It is to look with slit eyes, as it were, with narrowed eyes. It’s to look with an evil eye upon what my neighbor has that I will attempt to destroy.

On the basis of that, in fact, in Matthew 20, remember we said last week that Jesus told the parable of the guys who were hired at different times, and the ones who got hired early in the day got paid the same as the guys who got hired late in the day. This is all in Matthew 20, and Jesus said there—and we quoted him last week—as saying, “Are you envious because of my generosity? I’m generous to these guys who get hired at the end of the day. Are you envious because of that?”

Well, the word that’s translated “envious” in the New American Standard and other modern translations—that word actually means “evil eye.” Do you look evily? Do you eye evilly on me because of my generosity? And you see there’s that origin then. So envy is a good term for what that’s talking about there. And it’s a good picture to have in our minds—this idea of the evil eye as it looks towards somebody else.

—

Envy really, though, is not particularly concerned so much with the thing desired as it works its way out, but with you, the person that has the thing that’s desired. In other words, it doesn’t want to destroy the thing. It wants to destroy it and hurt you who own the thing that it wants. Okay?

The color associated with envy, of course, is green. Kind of a sickly color to think of in terms of a man’s face. So if the picture of envy is a green, green face, slit eyes, the evil eye, and something that they want—

In Dante’s Purgatorio, remember we’ve mentioned this before, the seven deadly sins are all dealt with in purgatory by Dante. And while this church does not believe in the doctrine of purgatory—it’s not biblical at all—still, it’s a good historical example from a day when the church understood the seven deadly sins and what they were all about.

Remember, we said that in Dante’s Purgatorio, the first cornice—the first level as he goes up the mountain of purgatory to get out of there—the first was pride. And remember on that cornice there it was white, and there were images carved into the marble to teach the people about their own pride and what humility before God should look like.

Well, the cornice of envy—its coloring is not white. Its coloring is black and blue. And the particular word that Dante used was the color for bruise, because the envious are bruised by other people’s prosperity. And the people that are on that cornice—there’s no images drawn into that bruised-colored cornice as the envious go through the repentance there. The reason there’s no pictures is because it wouldn’t do any good, because the penitents at that level all are huddled together, leaning against one another as they weren’t in their life.

And they all have their eyes sewn shut with metal threads, because you see their envy was a result of their evil eye looking and desiring other people’s things. And so these people had voluntarily shown their eyes sewn shut to try to relieve themselves of this sin of envy. Good picture for us.

—

Now, let’s get on to some definitions of envy that have been given to us over the centuries.

In Webster’s 1828 dictionary, we have a definition of the word envy that is pretty good. And I’ll read both the definition for the verb form and the noun form from Webster’s 1828 dictionary.

He wrote: “To feel uneasiness, mortification, or discontent at the sight of superior excellence, reputation, or happiness enjoyed by another. To repine at another’s prosperity, to fret or grieve oneself at the real or supposed superiority of another, and to hate him on that account.”

That’s the verb form. The noun form is: “Pain, uneasiness, mortification, or discontent excited by the sight of another’s superiority or success, accompanied with some degree of hatred or malignity, and often or usually with a desire or an effort to depreciate the person and with pleasure to see him depressed. Envy springs from pride, ambition, or love, mortified that another hath obtained that which one has a strong desire to possess.”

Now I’m going to be repeating this in different definitions several times here. Don’t get impatient. It’s real important that you drive home in your mind here what this is, and that’s really what we’re trying to do today—is to drive home and secure in your mind this definition of what envy is.

Webster—you know, the 1828 dictionary is a real nice dictionary because he had good, sound biblical definitions of these things. It’s also good because he gives us various quotes by people that are really excellent at bringing the point out. And he quotes Alexander Pope in this particular definition. And Pope wrote the following:

“All human virtues to its latest breath finds envy never conquered but by death.”

And so Pope pointed out there the perpetuity of envy in people’s lives. Envy goes on and on and on, and it’s real hard to break away from it.

As long as we’re quoting from Pope here, Otto Scott wrote an article on envy that Jack Phelps published in *The Seventh Trumpet*, and we’ll be talking about—we’ll be having more quotes from this article next week as we get to the third point of the outline you have there. But Scott also quoted from Pope, and as saying this about envy.

Pope said: “It’s a monster of so frightful a mien as to be hated needs but to be seen. Yet seen oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

Envy—when you think of it, and when we confront you with these biblical stories—is a disgusting picture of sin. But the point that Pope so accurately points out is that once you get into it, you really have a hard time getting away from it. You justify it, and you end up just kind of feeding on yourself, and envy goes on and on and on. Very hard to eliminate from one’s life.

—

Again, in Webster’s 1828 dictionary, they draw a distinction between emulation. Webster says that “emulation differs from envy and not being accompanied with hatred and a desire to depress a more fortunate person. Emulation looks at you and a quality you may have in your life and says, ‘I’d like to be like that and I’ll strive to do it.’ Envy looks at that quality and wants to just destroy it in you because it doesn’t think it can have it.”

It has that impotence factor to it.

Helmut Schoeck, in his book, quotes a German definition, which is probably about as good as any I’ve seen. This is from the Grimm’s German dictionary, their definition of envy:

“Today, as in earlier language, envy expresses that vindictive and inwardly tormenting frame of mind, the displeasure with which one perceives the prosperity and the advantages of others, begrudges them these things, and in addition wishes one were able to destroy or to possess them oneself. Synonymous with malevolence, ill will, or the evil eye.”

That’s what envy is all about.

—

Augustine said that “envy is sorrow for one man’s well-being or good and joy at another man’s harm.” Okay? Sorrow at their well-being, or their prosperity, or good, and joy at when they get hurt.

Spencer wrote in the *Fairy Queene* the following bit of poetry relating to envy:

“And next to him malicious envy rode upon a ravenous wolf and still did chaw between his cankered teeth a venomous toad that all the poison ran about his jaw. But inwardly he chewed his own maw and neighbors wealth that made him ever sad. For death it was when any good he saw and wept that cause of weeping none he had. But when he heard of harm he waxed wondrously glad.”

A little expanded version of what Augustine said. It hates it when you get something good, and the envious person loves it when something bad befalls you.

Okay? It is essentially the reverse of Romans 12:15. Romans 12:15 says you’re to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and you weep with those who are weeping. And envy does just the reverse. It weeps when others rejoice, and it rejoices when you weep.

—

There’s a terrible example of this. A couple of years ago, Anthony Compo relates in his book on the seven deadly sins. There was a high school cheerleader—or actually, she was wanting to be a cheerleader. She had to try out for the cheerleading team. That was the most popular thing—to be a cheerleader in the high school, etc. And she was bested by a rival of hers who had been a rival for years and had always competed with her and usually won.

And this girl lost her place on the cheerleading team. And in response to that, the envy had grown to such a state in her that she ended up killing the other girl and then took her place on the team before she was discovered. It’s a good picture of envy.

In Jewish folklore, there’s a terrible tale to demonstrate what envy is. It says that the angel went up to one man and said he would grant the man a wish. But the only condition was that the man’s rival would get twice as much as he got for whatever he wished.

In other words, the man had a rival who he was envious of. And the angel said, “I’ll give you one wish. The only condition is that you’re envious of—he’s going to get twice of whatever you get.”

And the envious man, without blinking an eye or without hesitating, wished for one of his eyes to be blind. That’s how bad envy is.

—

Envy is a factor in the marketplace. It’s a factor in the polling place. It’s something you had better understand, because when you deal with people in the world who are not believers, they have no choice but to be given over in various forms to envy. And so it’s all pervasive.

This means we got to understand what it is in order to be able to deal with it. Additionally, since envy is such a devastating personal sin, if we don’t drive it out of our lives, then we’re going to have a hard time dealing or coping with society in general, and we’ll end up kind of isolated, at least in our minds, from other people.

The two tasks that Schoeck lays out in his book are, first, to try to find a system or try to find teaching that’ll deliver us from envy, and secondly, to protect ourselves from those that envy and as a result will try to hurt us. Okay, that’s kind of by way of introduction to what envy is.

—

Now we’re going to move into a discussion of the biblical pictures or portrayals of envy—at least some of them that I’ve pulled out here. There are many others that we could look at as well. Okay?

Cain and Abel. Why don’t you turn back to our Genesis 4, verses 3-8. I’ve got them all printed out here so I don’t have to turn. Turn back to Genesis 4:3-8.

And as you’re turning, I’ll mention to you that as I mentioned, Dante’s Purgatorio—the second cornice was the cornice of envy. And in each of these cornices there was a whip and a rein. At the beginning he would have the whip of the particular sin—the whip of envy—which was a positive example of what they were supposed to be doing. And then as you’re about to leave the cornice there would be the rein of envy, which was a picture of the disastrousness, the judgment, of that particular sin.

As the person goes through the first cornice, the rein of envy—there are two voices that come to him roaring at him. And the first voice that roars and crashingly sounds in his ears says, “Everyone that findeth me shall slay me.” As you’re walking over the cornice of envy. And that cry, of course, is the cry of Cain in his judgment for his envy at his brother Abel.

And so in Genesis 4:3-8, we have the account of Cain and Abel.

—

And we have there very interestingly a couple of things I want to point out. We just read this. I won’t reread it for you. But notice first of all that the first recorded case that we see here of envy—and I’ll say that in terms of man against man. There is something to be said for looking at the devil’s motives as being envy and his attempt to destroy man. But talking about man versus man, Adam and Eve fell because of the sin of pride, rather.

And then we have the first murder recorded here based on envy. And so we have the first account of the disastrous effects of envy in a life. And that account happens in the context of a family. It happens between brothers in the household unit, and it leads toward murder.

—

Now, what happens here? They bring out their offerings. And of course, there’s lots more that could be said about Cain and Abel. This passage of scripture, like so much in these opening chapters of Genesis, are just full of meaning. And we could spend long days discussing what Genesis 4 means in much more detail.

There’s the correlation, of course, between Abel and Jesus, and Cain and Adam—Adam tilling the ground and Abel taking care of the sheep, and Jesus the good shepherd. And of course, Jesus dies because of the sin of Adam. And you know, you can go on and on. But what we want to see now, in terms of the sin of envy, is notice this first of all: in verse 5, Cain and his offering is not accepted or respected by God.

Now we don’t know what that means exactly, but we know it was not respected. And the result of that, Cain reacts then to a circumstance over which he has no control, and Cain is very wroth, and his countenance falls.

Now there is no indication from the text that I know of—and if you think there are, you can talk to me in the question-and-answer time—but I can see no indication here that Cain should have necessarily known what to offer. This could have been simply a device whereby God wanted to bring both Cain and Abel to an awareness of the correctness of one sort of offering and the incorrectness of another. Obviously pointing to the sacrificial death of Christ, the animals of Abel represented.

What I’m saying is it doesn’t say here that God lashed out at Cain or judged Cain because of his sin. It says simply that his offering wasn’t accepted, and as a result of his offering not being accepted by God or having been given respect, Cain’s countenance falls.

—

But notice here what God does. God doesn’t come in and judge Cain and condemn him at that point. The Lord says unto Cain, “Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou do well, shalt thou not be accepted? There’s another day. If you do well here, if you conquer this, and you move in righteousness, you’ll be accepted just like he was accepted.

And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be its desire, and thou shalt rule over it.”

The point of that verse is: Look at Cain. You’re on the verge here of a real bad deal. Sin is crouching at your door here. You’ve got to master it. You’ve got to get self-government in order here. Pull yourself together here and master the sin that’s coming over you.

God warned him and taught him and brought him to self-consciousness about the disastrous effects of the road he was going down.

—

What does Cain do? Cain goes out and talks with Abel, his brother. And we don’t know what that talk was, but it didn’t help Cain. It didn’t help Cain. Cain to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him.

And you see, it does Cain absolutely no good to kill Abel. Is that going to make his offering acceptable to God? That’s what he was upset about—was the failure of his offering to be acceptable to God. Is his offering going to be acceptable now? No. Can he have Abel’s offering? No. The point is it does no good whatsoever.

Cain is envious of Abel. He is mad because Abel has been shown favor by God. He has fallen into disfavor, and to take care of that, rather than bring himself up in corrective measure to what God had told him to do, Cain strikes out and kills his brother. That’s envy. That’s envy.

An attempt to rip away the life of the person that makes me feel bad because he has something that I don’t have.

—

Now, this is a real important piece of scripture here because it shows us that envy rears up its ugly head right in the context of our families. Brother against brother. And you know, it doesn’t take too much thinking to realize that our children are born with that nature—that fallen nature that James talks about—that lusts after envy. And it isn’t too long in their lives before they begin to demonstrate that envy in the context of their brothers and sisters.

Cain wanted favor, but he didn’t get it that day from God. Our children want favor. Now, some people will look at this verse and say that really it’s God’s fault because he should have shown Cain favor too. Instead of just correcting him, he should have had favor on Cain to begin with. And they’ll tell you as a parent that it’s your fault that your child falls into envy because you pay more attention to one child than you do the other child.

Well, while it is true that we have to be very careful in raising our children to be aware of the tendency to envy and help deliver their souls from that dreadful sin, it’s also true that they are responsible for their actions.

And God sets up a world which can never be equalized. We’re going to talk about that in a couple of weeks, maybe next week. It is a myth to think that child rearing or the civil state can produce an equal society that will eliminate envy. It cannot happen. God doesn’t give us that sort of world.

—

Now our children are very good. It’s interesting. Schoeck talks about the avoidance of the term envy in the last 100 years in this country, or 50 or 60 years. And he says it’s obviously a case of repression, because people don’t mention envy anymore. They call it a lot of other names. And you can see that with your kids.

You know, your child doesn’t say, “Don’t give Johnny or Susie that piece of candy that I can’t have. That’ll make me envious of them.” They don’t tell you that, do they? No. They say, “That isn’t fair. That’s not fair, Mom and Dad. We should all get the same thing. We should all be equal.” And of course, it’s not fair that she’s taller or he’s taller. What are they going to do about that? Nothing they can do.

And if you don’t teach them to cope with those sorts of things, their hearts can be given over to envy.

I don’t think we have so much repression. And I think Schoeck probably misses this. People used to write a lot about envy because they were taught from a biblical perspective that was a nasty sin that their kids would probably fall into. And the kids were taught to be able to not let their own hearts deceive them—that what they were doing, comparing themselves to other children, what other children get as opposed to what they get, that was envy. That comparison was the root of envy.

But today, kids aren’t taught that. Today, kids are taught from the earliest age about fairness and equality. “This is a just democratic society. One man, one vote, you know. Everything’s equal.” And so I think today the problem isn’t so much envy repression in terms of the term. It’s just that our children haven’t been taught that it is a vile, deadly sin welling up within them toward their brother or sister that they’ve got to deal with.

—

Now, this is a real important beginning place here because it brings it right down to home for all of us. If you’ve got a family, if you’ve got kids, believe me, it is your responsibility to go to those children when you see envy begin to raise its head and instruct them in the biblical way.

Well, we should be like God here. See, we should be going to our little Cains. Okay? And we probably have. If you understand the scriptures, we should be aware that our children are all born good little Cains, and not good little Abels. It’s only by God’s regeneration and God’s new birth that they become Abels instead of Cains. And we pray for that, and we should be moving our children in that direction.

But in any event, our children are going to manifest that sin impulse to envy. And it’s important that when they do that—when we see their countenance fall. God saw that on Cain. He didn’t mean it obviously, but we do. We look at our child and their countenance fall. Something changes about the demeanor in relationship to one child being favored and the other one not being shown that favor.

We should immediately, just like God did, knock down the door of the room, talk to them. Help them to realize that they’re about ready to be eaten up by a terrible, terrible monster that will destroy their lives. Literally, they’re about ready to be eaten up by envy. And warn them about that and help them to get through that by some of the things we’ll be talking about in a couple of weeks in terms of how to avoid those things.

Children are naturally prone to envy in their very first days, and they manifest it.

—

I had a quote here from Angus Wilson wrote in a book called *The Seven Deadly Sins* about the comparisons and the tests that children are always involved with. He talks about one of the very first places where envy strikes up is in children in the demand that they all lose with a good face.

Wilson says: “Save the boy or girl who can show enough annoyance to give vent to his feelings, even allow himself an open expression of regret at the success of his particular rival, and then pass on quickly, but not too quickly, to the next business of the day.”

Well, we wouldn’t really want to agree with that. The answer to envy is not encouraging the child to lash out. That’s not it. But he is right in his analysis of who becomes damned in this sin.

He says: “Damned or cursed is the boy who slinks off with twisted faith and slouching gait, or the girl who bursts into tears of rage when bested by another. Twice damned the boy who tries with an effectively adult drawl to express his contempt for the exam, his surprise that anyone should have expected him to do any better, or his rival less well. Twice damned the girl who now suggests that boys or dress had taken up all her preparation time.”

“Too late for such sophisticated excuses. Not to have worked hard in preparation for examinations appears an elegance only for those who were successful.”

See, we should begin to think through. When our children start saying things like, “Oh, it wasn’t important to me anyway,” they’ve begun a course there of failure to accept the providence that God has worked out in their lives. They’ve had a reaction against it that isn’t good and proper. That isn’t thanking God for the giftings of the other people they’ve come up against, for instance, or for their own particular set of giftings. But rather, it’s attempt to rationalize their feelings of disappointment at the whole thing. Okay.

—

One other thing I’d mention here is that nothing—with our children that we should watch for—is that our kids early on, at least ours did. I don’t know if yours have or not, but early on most children, I think, also try to prompt other children to envy. They’ll say, “Well, I’ve got this toy and you don’t have it.” You see, they’re trying to urge the other person to envy them for what they have.

Veblen in his social studies talks about conspicuous consumption—about how adults sometimes buy a car or even marry a particular wife or a particular husband, or buy a particular item simply to be envied by somebody else. And we’ve got to be careful that our children don’t do that.

We got to teach our children that’s a very dangerous thing to have well up in somebody against you. And it really does harm to their soul to try to get them to envy what you have. Okay.

—

So I mentioned that there were two voices of the rein of envy in Dante’s story. The first was Cain, saying what he did in terms of God’s judgment. The other voice that Dante portrays as he leaves that particular cornice of envy is the voice of somebody named Agoris. And this is in mythology. Agoris—I’m probably not saying that correctly—Agoris was the daughter of Crops, the king of Athens. Her sister was Hersy. And according to legend, Mercury fell in love with Hersy and arranged with Agoris to set up a date, so to speak, between him and Hersy.

But then Agoris didn’t like the fact that her sister Hersy was going to consort with a god. And so when Mercury comes by to have his date with Hersy, Agoris meets him at the door and says, “She’s not home. You can’t come in.” And Mercury is so upset then that he turns Agoris into stone. And so the second voice that Dante portrays is the voice of Agoris.

And he does that—he uses those two particular reigns of envy to drive home the point that envy frequently occurs among equals and particularly in terms of our households—brother against brother, sister against sister—with resultant terrible judgments.

And so it’s one of the great sins that wells up in the childhood of boys and girls that we as parents must be very conscious of and help them avoid and help them deal with biblically.

The doom brought on by envy cries out its voice of brother sinning against brother and sister against sister. Christian parents then, beware. Be diligent to teach your children about this deadly sin and help them to avoid it.

Okay, let’s move on to Isaac and the Philistines. Genesis 26:11 and following.

—

Turn to that passage. Genesis 26:11 and following. Isaac and the Philistines. May take more than two or three weeks.

Isaac and the Philistines. 26:11. We got Abimelech charging all his peoples not to touch the wife of Isaac. And in verse 12: “Isaac sowed in the land and received in the same year a hundredfold. And the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great and went forward and grew until he became very great, for he had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, and great store of servants. And the Philistines envied him.”

The Philistines envied him. Then the next verse: “For all the wells which his father’s servant had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them and filled them with earth.”

The Philistines envy a man who is being prospered by God in their midst. And in result, in reaction to that envy, do they then move to take away what belongs to Isaac? They don’t. What do they do? They stop up his wells. They try to take away the source of his prosperity—the water springing out of the ground—which he could use to feed his flocks and to grow his crops. And so the Philistines here give another picture to us of envy.

—

Now, I’ll just mention here for some of you who are into a study of these verses, there is here, as there is in the book of James, a difference of interpretation over how this should be interpreted. Did the Philistines stop the wells up before Isaac came along, or was it in response to his envy? The text can be interpreted as saying either way as you go through the rest of the text there.

But for two reasons, I want to suggest to you that it seems overwhelmingly that they stopped it up as a result of their envy. One, because God chooses to put that account in verse 15 immediately following the statement that the Philistines envied him. God puts the envying by the Philistines of Isaac in proximity to immediately be in front of this action of them stopping up the wells.

The second reason why I think it’s kind of silly to think that they stopped up the wells after Abraham had left before Isaac could come along is: why would they do that?