Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Scripture is found in 1 Samuel 18:6-12. 1 Samuel 18:6-12. And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, that the women came out of all cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tabs, with joy, and with instruments of music. And the women answered one another as they played and said, “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him.

And he said, “They have ascribed unto David ten thousands. To me they have ascribed but thousands. And what can he have more but the kingdom?” And Saul eyed David from that day and forward. And it came to pass in the morrow that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house. And David played with his hand as at other times. And there was a javelin in Saul’s hand. And Saul cast the javelin, for he said, “I will smite David even to the wall with it.” And David avoided out of his presence twice.

And Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him and was departed from Saul. Halfway through, in case anybody’s sleeping, get them right up. Okay, we’re going to continue this morning going through our series of sermons on the seven deadly sins. We spent three weeks on pride and it looks like we’re going to be spending three weeks on envy as well.

The outline you have this morning is the same as the outline you had last week. I want to explain a little bit why we’re kind of taking this approach.

What we started by doing last week with the sin of envy, and actually we spent a week before that talking about covetousness apart from envy. Covetousness, as you should know by now, says, “You have what I want and I’m going to try to take what you have by illicit means.” Envy says, “You have what I want. I can’t get it. So I’m going to destroy it or destroy you actually.” So the object of envy isn’t so much what you do or what you have. Essentially, it becomes you as a person. Your very being becomes objectionable to the envious one.

But what we did last week is we spent about half the time reviewing and then giving some definitions and some comments about what envy is. And then we began looking at the biblical pictures that God gives us—some of them about the sin of envy—by going through seven Old Testament pictures and two New Testament ones.

We got through the first three of those. And we’re going to pick up today by going through the last four of the Old Testament and then two in the New Testament. And then after we get done with that, we’ll look at some wisdom literature in the scriptures relative to the sin of envy. And then after we do that, we’ll talk about application to our society.

Envy is a very important factor to realize what it is, to realize the inevitability of facing it in the world around us. To realize that we live in a culture today where envy is not suppressed but actually encouraged. And we’ll talk a lot more about that next week. And envy—you know, if envy is a burning flame in the hearts of wicked people, the last thing we need is for a culture to fan those flames. And that’s exactly what we have today in America. And so it becomes a very important factor to realize and understand.

Now, frankly, when I first started getting into the differentiations between envy and covetousness, I could see the intellectual points being made. And I think I mentioned last week a book by Helmut Schoeck called *Envy, a Theory of Social Behavior*—a monumental work on the subject. But I wasn’t convinced the scriptures made such distinctions. I am convinced now that there is this distinction to be made. And that’s why we’re taking a long slow approach at the scriptures.

What I’m saying is that you know, the radio show this week on KPDQ, one of the little segments I’ve got on there, I talk about how we’ve got to go to the law and the testimony—to the scriptures—for understanding of things in our world around us. And so we don’t want to accept some sociologist’s definition of envy versus covetousness based on his observations of society. We want to say what does the word of God say about it? Does the word of God draw that distinction? And if it does, what other points about envy does the scriptures tell us that are important in analyzing our culture around us?

Okay. So I guess what I’m saying is we’re taking some time on this. We’re taking a couple of weeks because we want to have that biblical evidence well in hand, understood clearly, and then look at the analysis of our culture and how to take care of the sin of envy in ourselves and how to prepare for it in our culture as well by applying all that next week.

Okay. So today we’re going to look at the four examples from the Old Testament we didn’t get to and we’ll be drawing some observations from those examples.

The first one we’re going to look at is Eldad, Midad, and Joshua for Moses. And this is a bit of a different one in Numbers 11:26. Why don’t you go ahead and turn there? Numbers 11:26 and if you’ve been in this church a couple of years, you remember when we preached on Old Testament offices and the calling of the seventy who were to act as administrators to help Moses deal with—specifically food problems—the same way the deacons were appointed in the New Testament church to deal with the food problems that existed as God blessed the church.

In the wilderness or God blessed the church in the book of Acts. Great numbers grumbling over food. God appoints people to help Moses in the Old Covenant and God appoints people to help the elders in the New Covenant in terms of administration, not ruling, not judging, not teaching, but administration of the people. And those seventy men that God sets aside for Moses—He takes the Spirit that was upon Moses and puts it upon them. Very important for showing the correlation between the office of deacon and elder and the chorem or the officer in the Old Testament and its relationship to the judicial or teaching offices of the Old Testament.

I’m trying to say is that it’s not as if elders are Spirit-filled and deacons aren’t. They’re both on a particular—on the same plane. One has administration over teaching and ruling. The other has administration over the administrative physical aspects of the church. And so anyway, that’s the context for what happens in Numbers 11:26.

These seventy are set aside by God. Now, two of the seventy, sixty-eight of them are out at a particular place, but two of the seventy are back in the camp. And when the Spirit comes upon the sixty-eight that are appointed, the Spirit also comes upon Eldad and Midad who are back in the camp. And so Numbers 11:26 and following tells us there remained two of these men in the camp and the names were given as Eldad and Midad and the Spirit comes upon them and they were of them that were written but they went not out unto the tabernacle and they prophesied in the camp itself.

And there comes a young man and he tells Moses in verse 27. He says, “Look at these guys are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua the son of Nun—Joshua who would lead God’s people into the promised land, Joshua the son of Nun, a holy man, a godly man committed to God—Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of the young men, answered and said, “My Lord Moses, forbid them.”

Joshua was Moses’ right-hand man. And he sees these guys prophesying and having the same spirit upon them that Moses had upon him. And Joshua says, “My Lord Moses, forbid them.” And Moses answers to him. He says, “Enviest thou for my sake? Are you being envious toward these people for my sake? Would God that all of the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them.”

Joshua was being envious. Moses tells us he saw them getting something that his leader, the guy he worked for, the prophet that he knew and respected had as well. And he didn’t want to take what they had. He wanted to suppress it. He wanted to take away their right to prophesy, having the spirit of God rest upon them. They were envious. They sought to rip away—sought to take out their ability to prophesy. So we have here a very important example from the scriptures where we have a great man of faith, Joshua, falling into the sin of envy.

By the way, there’s a New Testament correlation to this as well where the disciples say that there are people out there who are casting out demons who aren’t part of us. And Jesus says, “Don’t forbid them. If they’re not against us, they’re for us.” And Moses tells Joshua the same thing. He says, “Why would you want to stop these guys from prophesying and exhibiting this spirit of God resting upon them? Would that all of God’s people had that great spiritual gifting that God has given me and now given these other seventy people.”

You see, one of the important parts of this story and why I bring it up in this context is the susceptibility that we all have—regardless of gifting from God, regardless of our commitment to God—the susceptibility we all have to the sin of envy. In this case, it’s envy of a subordinate to a superior. Joshua for Moses, who wants to suppress anybody coming up to his level. And it’s also a very good example to keep in mind and to teach our children because it tells us the correct response to envy.

See what Moses, a godly man that he is, gives the correct response to the envy that Joshua seeks to incite and exhibit here. Moses says would that all of God’s people had the same gifting.

Well, I was talking to Doug H. several months ago about him doing a sermon, and he said that in churches in the past he’s been with, pastors have zealously guarded the pulpit and we want other men in there. And I think that sometimes, and not always, there’s good reasons for making sure we understand who it is who is preaching from the pulpit and that it is biblical and in line with the confessional statements of the church, etc.

But all too often, I think pastors fall into the same sin of Joshua. They don’t want young men in the pulpit because they might be seen in comparison with them as being better or being as good and it would be threatening to them. The correct response—but this can happen at any ministry in the church. If you have a ministry, you do well, you may not want somebody else to get involved with that because they may do better than you do.

But your response to that, the correct response to that sin of envy creeping into our hearts is to say, gosh, we can have more people take part in this ministry and the ministry will then expand and will further the kingdom of God. The Moses correct response was based upon a desire to see the kingdom grow and kingdom work be done instead of his own territory be protected. And so we shouldn’t remember that same thing.

When we start to feel envious of somebody else, they thank God that they’ve been given that gifting by God or that talent and may they use it well and properly for the kingdom of God. Moses gives us the correct response.

Okay. Next example, Hannah and Peninnah. 1 Samuel 1. Turn there real quickly, please. Some Bible drills this morning. 1 Samuel 1:2 and following. We have the story of Hannah and Peninnah.

Hannah and Peninnah are the two wives of Elkanah. And Hannah will become, of course, the mother of Samuel. Now the term in 1 Samuel 1, we’re told that the two women, the two wives, one of them has kids. Peninnah has kids, but Hannah has no children. And of course, that’s a great—not a curse necessarily, it can be for his purposes—but that’s a great thing, the lack of children. Child rearing is a great example of God’s blessing upon us.

And so Hannah has no children. Bad deal. It was a bad deal then. We should want children today as well. We’d be content if God makes us barren in that sense, the same way that Hannah had been here.

Okay. Verse three: The man went up out of the city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli the priest of the Lord were there. And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters portions. But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion. And the word there means a double portion. Elkanah loves Hannah more than he loves Peninnah. That’s okay, isn’t it?

Remember we said last week Jesus seems to love some disciples more than he loves others. How can we understand that? And how can we put that together with his love for all of us that led him to lay down his life for us? Well, we don’t know. The point is you better get used to it because the scriptures seem to teach fairly clearly that. And it’s going to be that way in heaven, too. It doesn’t mean he loves you less. Somehow he just loves them more.

Well, in any event, Elkanah loves Hannah more and he gives her a double portion. He gives her twice what he gave to Peninnah. Now Peninnah had more really because she had kids who also got portions. But regardless, Peninnah gets envious of Hannah.

Verse 6: Her adversary also provoked her sore. Her adversary is Peninnah. She provokes Hannah sore to make her fret because the Lord had shut up her womb. And so in verse 7, and as he did year by year when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her. Therefore she wept and didn’t eat. And so what we’ve got here is Peninnah, who is fruitful, provoking Hannah, who is barren at this point in time, making fun of her and being envious toward her because of the affection that she’s received from her husband.

Hannah’s loved more. Peninnah doesn’t like that. Peninnah doesn’t try to make herself more attractive to her husband. That would be, you know, covetousness or a proper emulation of qualities that deserve affection and love. No, Peninnah simply wants to rip down Hannah’s well-being with her husband. So she provokes her. She’s picking at her all the time, trying to bug her. She’s envious of her and sets out to destroy Hannah’s person.

Now it’s a very interesting case here because you would normally think that it would be the barren wife who would be envious of the wife with children. But that’s not the case here. Hannah isn’t envious of Peninnah. She wants children. She properly wants to emulate Peninnah’s childbearing, but there’s no indication in the text that she’s envious. Hannah’s a godly woman and godly women understand God’s providence in life and they don’t get envious over somebody else having more kids than they do.

And Hannah’s a great picture here to us of contentment with the status God gives us, but also a desire to be blessed by God without being envious of persons that have children.

Hannah’s response to this is to pray and to cry. And Elkanah says, “Why are you crying?” And she then goes to Eli at the temple there and she makes an arrangement where she pledges her son if she’s given—if she gets a son from God she pledges him to be consecrated to the service of the temple. Then God does indeed bless her with Samuel. She’s a very godly woman.

So there we have an example of somebody again being envious, and it gives us a picture of envy not trying to take what the other person has—the affection so much—but just trying to destroy the envied person by picking at her as she does. And it also gives us a good example of contentment even though she’s in a situation—Hannah—that is where she could become envious of the woman with children.

Okay, moving on to Saul and David. 1 Samuel 18. Go a few more chapters into the book of 1 Samuel there. And this we could spend lots of time just on this one. There’s some very important examples in the story of Saul and David in relationship to envy.

And of course, what’s happening here, as you heard me read a couple of minutes ago, they’re coming back from the slaughter of the Philistines. And the women start singing the song of rejoicing. And by the way, you notice they sing responsibly. It says in verse 7, the women answered one another as they played and said, “Saul hath slain his thousands and David his tens thousands.” And so there’s this antiphonal thing going on that we’ve talked about in this church before.

That’s why we do the Psalms—the antiphonal Psalms are written antiphonally back and forth reinforcing a double witness and teaching us to respond to God correctly. Well, these women were rejoicing in the victory God had given them. And they were singing this little song about Saul has slain thousands and David is tens thousands. Now I am sure there’s no indication in the text that these women were being somehow mean or disloyal to Saul who was the king.

No, they were rejoicing in the gifting of David for battle that he had. Saul doesn’t have to be the greatest warrior in order to be king. He’s placed there by God. And so there’s nothing. It’s a fairly innocent thing the women seem to be doing here, not trying to get Saul’s goat. But Saul hears this and gets real upset. And he starts saying, “Oh my gosh, if they’re ascribing David all this strength, he’ll want the kingdom next.”

He starts to feel threatened in his own holding. And verse 9 tells us that Saul eyed David from that time forward. You have that idea of the eye that looks upon somebody. And the verse, the scriptures go on to say about how Saul throws a javelin at him in the next verse. It doesn’t mean that Saul eyes him and admires him. It means Saul eyes him for the purpose of destroying him. He casts the evil eye, the slit eye as it were, upon David and wants to do harm to David.

He doesn’t want to improve his own military strength. He doesn’t go out and practice so he can kill more Philistines. No, he wants to tear down David. And then for many chapters, that story goes on of Saul trying to destroy David. Now this is a very important set of scriptures. It gives us some very important points about envy.

One that we’ve talked about before is that comparison is the root of envying. Saul is thrust into a position of comparing himself with David and seeing other people compare him with David. And that becomes the root then for his beginning to envy David and wanting to destroy him. Comparisons are the root of envying. And if you know that, then you got to be very careful about comparisons you make to yourself. And you got to be very careful about comparing other people. You don’t want to rouse up envy in other people.

People. Comparisons are the beginning of envyings. Oscar Wilde—who we know obviously a reprobate man—but he told a story of a Christian hermit and this hermit had various demons come to him and tempt him to various sins, you know, different kinds of moral sins and whatnot, and he would not fall. He kept resisting and he kept being upright and holy.

Well, then Satan comes along and says, “You guys don’t know the proper methods to tempt people. Let me tell you how it’s done here. Stand aside.” And he goes up to this godly Christian, the hermit. And he says, “I bring you good news. Your brother has just been made the archbishop of Alexandria.”

And as soon as he says that, according to Oscar Wilde, the story goes that envy sweeps through this godly man. You see, comparing himself to his brother and his brother getting more blessing from God—becoming a bishop—is where this man was capable of being tempted and falling into the sin of envy.

Envy does that. Envy occurs according to Bacon, as soon as two individuals become capable of mutual comparisons. And here in the story of Saul, we have comparison being the root of Saul’s envying of David.

Secondly, envy blows things way out of proportion. One of the proverbs that has been said for thousands of years in different cultures is that envy turns a blade of grass into a palm tree. There’s many proverbs such as that in various languages about how envy takes, you know, a molehill, makes it into a mountain, etc. Envy blows things way up out of proportion.

The envious man thinks too much about little things like this little song that women sing about the victory that God has given the covenant people over the Philistines. Saul looks at that very little thing and begins to meditate on it, begins to think about it and pretty soon it is a big deal and it is a challenge to his very kingdom. And so envy begins with comparisons and it moves on to blow things way out of proportion.

And then third, envy doesn’t come to rest. The rest of Saul’s life is consumed with envy for David. He doesn’t—now I say it doesn’t come to rest apart from repentance of the sin. Of course, God can deliver us from the sin of envy. But once a man starts to exercise envy toward another person, as Saul did, it can become all consuming and normally is. Envy eats a person up.

Another old proverb is that envy is a beast that will gnaw on its own leg if it can’t get anything else. Once people start envying, they’ll even start to gnaw on their own leg if they can’t destroy somebody else. And so Saul’s envy begins to eat him up because envy doesn’t come to rest apart from repentance.

Fourth, the more kindness is shown envy, the worse it becomes. David at various points during this cat-and-mouse game between Saul and David has the ability to kill Saul and he shows Saul kindness and respect and reverence as being the king of the anointed of God. But does that appease Saul? No, it doesn’t. It simply rouses him up even more. The more somebody gives in to a persistent envier, the worse the envy grows in that person because see, you’ve been shown a favor. Now Saul was shown a favor by David and it puts him in an inferior position to David and that’s what’s driving envy.

Envy really kind of springs out of pride. Pride wants to be number one. The world around us tells us you’re not number one. And as a result, then one way to deal with that situation is to destroy whoever else is a competitor to number one. And so Saul wants to rip down David. And if David shows Saul kindness, that’s just reinforcing the idea that Saul isn’t number one. You know, you give kindness to somebody because you’re in a superior relationship at that particular point in time.

Envy is not taken care of or placated by giving people things. That’s quite important for our discussions next week about what do we do about societal envy. The answer is not to give into that envy and try to level out possessions. Completely wrong. Envy has is deceitful and involves itself in deceitful kindnesses. Couple of verses down here in 1 Samuel 18, we read about Saul giving his daughter Michal to David. And it sounds like a nice thing to do. He lets David marry into the family.

But the scriptures are real clear that the whole purpose of that is so that David will fall by encountering the Philistines. Saul says to his followers, “Go tell him the king looks highly upon you and favors you and wants you to marry his daughter. And then David says, “Well, that’s an interesting idea.” And they talk about it. And then Saul says, “I want as a bride price here. I want you to bring me one hundred foreskins of Philistines.” You see, Saul’s purpose in buttering up David and promising him his daughter was not to really help David. It was to hurt him. It was to cause him harm.

Next week we’ll talk about envy and the way it uses language. But it’s important to notice here, this is what usually envy does. It will butter up the person that is trying to destroy. And that’s what Saul does to David.

And then sixly, the envier hurts himself most. That’s also clear in the account of David and Saul. Saul’s envy only results in David becoming king. Saul’s envy has as its end the destruction of his kingdom. The very thing that got him started on the whole path to envy was his fear of losing his kingdom. And that’s just what happens at the end of as his envy is worked out in the world around him. The envier hurts himself most.

As a truism in these various accounts we’ve been looking at from the Old Testament. So the story of Saul and David talks about comparisons. It shows those comparisons then are blown way out of proportion by the envier. He never comes to rest. He gets more envious the more kindness is shown to him. He engages in deceitful language and conduct—deceitful kindness, the kisses of an enemy as it were. And then finally, envy hurts himself the most.

Okay, let’s move on. A good mother and a bad mother. 1 Kings 3:16 and following. You probably all know this story. Hopefully most of your children know this story. I’ll mention that again. These are excellent stories to teach your children in your devotional times to warn them of the disastrous effects of the sin of envy. Particularly in a day and age, in a culture when envy is actually looked upon as a good thing and where people are being incited to envy by the media, by politicians, etc.

Your children are going to face the temptation. They’re going to face a fan trying to blow any embers of envy in them up to a roaring fire. Teach them these scriptures. Teach them the end of the envious and the wickedness of it.

Okay. A good mother and a bad mother—can—hopefully know this story. You’ve got two ladies, two harlots actually. And they both have children. One woman rolls over on her child during the night. Child dies. She steals the other woman’s child. The other woman takes the case to Solomon. Comes before the king and after a series of appeals, I suppose, and they come together and they’re both claiming to be the child’s rightful mother.

And what is Solomon going to do? Solomon exhibits his wisdom. He says, “Okay, if you both say he’s yours, let’s just cut the baby in half. We’ll give each of you half.” And one of the two women says, “Oh, no. If that’s what you’re going to do to him, let her have him. It’s better that he be alive than that he’d be dead.”

And the envious woman says, “No, go ahead. Cut him in half. That’s fair after all. Let’s do that way. That’s the fair thing to do.”

You see, envy in the case of the woman who stole the child moves or grows out of covetousness. And that’s the first principle that’s the first principle we want to glean out of this passage. Covetousness becomes and broods into envy. The woman is covetous of the child. She takes the child. But that taking of the child does not become then her primary motivation. It turns into envy when she can’t have the child.

And envy seeks to destroy the baby then rather than see the other person get it back. So envy would just assume the child was dead and that it was returned to the rightful mother. But the righteous woman in this case says no, it’s better that the child live even with the unlawful mother. And so envy comes out or grows out of covetousness. Once covetousness finds its impotency, its inability to take the thing it wants, it turns into envy.

You may notice this with your children. There may be a particular behavior you do, a cuddle night or some sort of favor, spending time with one of your children. And sometimes your children can—if they’re not going to get the particular benefit that evening, they’ll just assume nobody gets the benefit. You see, that’s envy, pure and simple. When they’re not content to have anybody get the thing they want, the child is moved into envy.

And they must be taught that they must be taught that’s the sin they’re engaging in and the disastrousness of it.

T. Robert Ingram wrote a book called *The World Under God’s Law* and it’s really a small book. It goes through the Ten Commandments. Excellent, excellent little book. And he talks about this particular instance of the woman if she can’t have the child then destroying the child. And he says it in this way.

He says there’s one aspect of covetousness—one more aspect of covetousness to consider. There is a universal mark of the covetous person. Like the false mother before Solomon, he says, “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. If I can’t have what belongs to somebody else, destroy it. For someone else to have what I have not is unfair. If I can’t be rich, then divide the wealth, share it, wipe it out.

If I can’t have a first class education, then divide it, water it down, destroy it, and don’t let anybody have it. If I can’t raise a good crop of cotton and make a good year, then divide the entire crop and don’t let anybody make it. Justice is perverted from equal enforcement of punishment to redistribution of wealth. If I can’t have it, nobody can.

I don’t know if I mentioned this or not, but Marlowe and his work *Faustus* has the seven deadly sins appear. So many of those works, you know, four or five hundred years ago understood the perniciousness of the seven deadly sins and it’s a very short account of the seven deadly sins. Envy comes by and the only thing envy says is “I cannot read and therefore wish all books were burned.” Good picture of envy. Good picture of this wicked envious woman. Envy comes out of covetousness but envy moves to the second point which is that destruction is the end of envy.

Envy wishes to destroy what it can’t have. The third thing I want us to notice from this particular account is something we’ve mentioned before. The idea of what one author calls it invidious proximity. Invidious proximity. Envy is usually between neighbors. Envy is not usually directed against somebody way out away from us. It’s more directed to the person next to us. And so in this account, for instance, you’ve got two women of the same social status.

And that’s where envy is pictured. And it’s interesting seeing this one in relationship to Saul and David because we move there from Saul and David, the very height of rule and authority in the kingdom, down to two harlots. And yet envy is in both places. Envy is pervasive throughout society and it usually occurs—we are envious of those people we are in close proximity to and all these stories that we’ve looked at so far from the Old Testament demonstrate that term invidious proximity.

We’ll be looking probably next week at Ecclesiastes 4:4-6 and that actually is the—you know, is the Vulgate translation of the Hebrew—it is the two Latin words that mean invidious proximity. So that’s a term that comes right out of Ecclesiastes 4:4 and we’ll be talking about that some next week.

So envy from this account we see that envy grows out of covetousness. It moves to destruction. If I can’t have it, if I can’t read, all books should be burned. And then third, envy usually occurs in the context of our neighbors. And then the fourth thing I want us to notice from this account before we move on is that envy is demonstrated here to be the root of a senseless crime.

Now in this case no crime actually occurs. But this mother, this mother who lost her son is so envious that she is willing to destroy somebody else’s child. Envy doesn’t make sense. And as long as you have a criminal justice system that is intent on making sense out of people’s crimes, you’re going to miss the point of many of the criminals that come through the system. Many crimes cannot be explained and cannot relate to any other cause than envy.

And envy isn’t logical. It doesn’t make logical sense for the woman to destroy somebody else’s kid. It doesn’t bring her kid back to life. But that’s what envy wants to do. And many crimes throughout the ages really have as their motive factor envy and nothing else. Very important when you design a criminal justice system or evaluate one that you make room for that in there—that you’re going to come across envious people.

Okay, that concludes our seven Old Testament pictures of envy. And now we’re going to turn to a couple of New Testament ones. And of course, the most obvious one is Jesus and the Pharisees. We talked about this before. Matthew 27:18. Situation is Pilate has Jesus before him. And Pilate does an interesting thing. He says, “Well, I’ll offer to the people to let Jesus go. I’ll give them a choice and I’ll give them the option of letting Jesus go.”

And then the inspired text tells us in Matthew 27:18, “For he knew that for envy they—the Pharisees—had delivered him up.” Pilate rightly ascertained the Pharisees’ motives. The Pharisees were envious of Jesus. And I suppose we could fill in the reasons. The scriptures don’t do that. But we could say that, you know, they were envious of his popularity, of his knowledge of the scriptures. Lots of things in Jesus they could be envious of. But Pilate does an interesting thing.

He says, “Okay, the leaders are envious, but the people they won’t be filled with that same kind of rage.” But what happens? The people want him killed as well. The people say, “Crucify, crucify.” The people also are demonstrated to be envious of this man.

And it gets to what I was talking about last week. All these Old Testament pictures we’ve seen are really simply forerunners of the great envy that Satan has and directs people toward—the envy that he has toward the Son of God and toward man in God’s image. Satan hates Jesus Christ because he envies him, his position.

Milton in his *Paradise Lost*—I didn’t bring the book that I could have quoted it out of and probably it’s too long and the language is somewhat archaic anyway for you to catch the thrust. But in Milton’s *Paradise Lost*, he has a dialogue. It talks about the creation of the world, talks about Satan, talks about Adam and Eve, and he traces the motive for Satan’s work as envy throughout that. Satan’s envy first of Jesus Christ. And then secondly, Satan’s envy of Adam leads him to want to destroy Adam and Eve.

All the Old Testament pictures are simply pictures of people’s envy of Jesus Christ and his goodness and his righteousness.

*Pilgrim’s Progress* has the story in there, the trial of Christian and Faithful. And at this trial, three witnesses are called up to testify against Christian. And one of the three witnesses is Envy. And if you look at what the reasons are, what his testimony is in the trial, it becomes apparent that it is simply that Christian holds to principles and holds to those principles in a righteous fashion that causes envy to want to testify against Christian and have him destroyed and put to death. Envy is envious of goodness in other people.

*Cinderella*, of course, is a great picture of that. I picked up a book at Multnomah School, the Biblical School of the Bible at their library on Cinderella. It’s a big long psychological analysis of envy as related to the Cinderella case. And it’s real tough reading, but it is certainly a good picture of envy too.

Cinderella might be good to go through with your children to see how the sisters who didn’t have the moral purity of Cinderella—you know, she served them. She was good. She was subjected to, you know, a lot of torment and whatnot. The author points out they tried to put her in the dust, cleaning out the dust, the ashes of the fireplace, etc., which is the place of death. They really wanted to kill Cinderella. And Cinderella responds with obedience and kindness and she does her job well and of course they just hate her all the more for that.

I guess there are some versions of Cinderella where the name is changed to Scarface because the women want to scar Cinderella and hurt her. Point is that when the Pharisees and the people envy Jesus, they do it because of his moral goodness and his uprightness.

There’s an excellent movie I’d recommend that you rent. I know that most of you wouldn’t read the book written by Herman Melville. The book is *Billy Budd*. And it’s really a short novel—been called one of the greatest novels in American literature. And it’s a very interesting account. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it at all, but there’s this Billy Budd, a good upstanding young man, and he gets impressed into military service on an English military boat—a ship rather—a sailing ship.

And the master-at-arms, I believe it was, named Claggart, hates Billy Budd. And he is the one who is envious of Billy Budd and wants to tear Billy Budd down in whatever way he can. And Billy Budd is like the picture of Jesus really and I suppose Claggart is a picture of Satan and Melville develops the envy motive for Claggart very slowly.

It’s over forty pages I believe of the account before he gets into discussing forty pages worth of discussion about Claggart’s possible motives before he kind of leads you into the idea that it really is envy. He has a whole section that deals with this that is the title of the section is “Pale Ire, Envy, and Despair” and he talks about its motivations. Those three terms, “pale ire,” envy, and despair are terms that Milton uses to characterize Satan in *Paradise Lost*.

And so we have a picture in Claggart and Budd of Satan and Jesus. And Claggart’s motive is repeatedly then—as soon as Melville builds you up to it, then kind of lays it on you—he repeatedly then refers to Claggart’s sin being envy of Billy Budd.

In the movie version, it becomes quite clear that’s what’s going on. They have, I think it’s Robert Ryan, who’s real good at playing bad guys. What he does is there’s a scene in which he accuses Billy Budd of some evil and Billy Budd has this problem where he starts to kind of lose control of himself. He starts to stammer and can’t speak when confronted with evil. And he sort of strikes out, you know, he’s lost control of himself and Claggart accuses him of the stuff before the captain of the ship and Billy Budd strikes out and kills Claggart with one blow.

And in the movie just before Claggart dies he looks up and he kind of smiles at Billy Budd. He’s done what he intended to do. He has destroyed the righteousness in Billy Budd. He has caused him to sin. He’s driven him to murder and he’s happy now. Well, I suppose envy has those short minutes of happiness.

And it is a good picture for us there of envy trying to destroy somebody else. And it’s a good picture of the Pharisees wanting to do that to Jesus Christ.

The long string of the envious who deliver up the righteous throughout the Old Testament that we’ve looked at—and there are other occurrences as well—are but foreshadows to the greatest evil of all: envy. The delivering up of our Savior out of pure envy.

Pilate had it right. Cain delivering up Abel to death. The Philistines wanting to kill or destroy Isaac’s productivity. Joseph’s typical death, burial, and resurrection as it were that at the hands of his wicked brothers. Peninnah’s cruel mockery of the godly Hannah who was an archetype, a predecessor of Mary who would give birth to the Savior. Saul trying to destroy David, of course, a type of Jesus Christ. The wicked harlot even who seeks to destroy a child that can never be truly hers.

These are all pictures of the great battle between the two seeds in history. All these are but an outworking of Genesis 3:15. There’s a great publication that is now being produced by the church that Dr. Bahnsen is pastor of along with Pastor Curto—just came out. It’s called *Antithesis*, a new magazine. And in an article by Bahnsen talking about the idea of antithesis, he quotes Genesis 3:15 where God says he puts enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

All of the scriptures and all of history is a picture of this enmity. And that enmity frequently and repeatedly throughout the scriptures and throughout history is because of envy. One seed envies the other and seeks to have hatred against it and bring it down and tear it down. That’s what we see being outworked in all these stories. And finally, in the great envy that drove the Pharisees to seek Jesus’s death.

Satan is envious of the Son of God and wants him dead. Again, however, as with the case of Saul and in all these other occurrences, Satan’s envy leads to his own destruction.

There’s a Greek myth, a Greek story about a man who had an athletic rival in the games. And this rival of his was going to have a statue built in his honor. And the man hates this rival. He is envious of him. And the man determines that he is going to destroy that statue of his rival. Through his envy, wants to pull it down, this image of his rival. So every night he goes in with a little chisel to this public square and starts to chisel at the base of the statue. And sure enough, after a number of weeks of doing this, the statue does indeed topple and is destroyed.

But it falls right on the man who is chiseling away at the base. You see, that’s what happened to Satan. Satan’s envy of Jesus Christ led him to cause people to motivate them to work out their envy against the righteous Christ to bring him to death. But that death was the death blow of Satan. And so in the same way throughout all these pictures, we see God’s sovereignty at work taking the envy of man and bringing about God’s purposes through it all.

Now it is a fact, however, that envy doesn’t stop. Envy doesn’t stop with the destruction of somebody or something. And so if we move on into the New Testament, past the gospel accounts, we see the Pharisees still being driven with satanic urges. They are children of the serpent, Jesus said, a brood of vipers. They still aren’t being envious toward the New Testament church even though Satan knows he’s been dealt a death blow by Christ at the cross.

And so when you look outlined there in the apostles and the Jews in Acts 5:16, 13:44, 17:4, etc., we have various accounts where the Jewish unbelievers—the Pharisees and the various people in these communities—are envious of the New Testament church and its preaching. You see, envy, even though it’s dead in the water, still wants to strike out and destroy. It’s impotence to do anything simply leads it to further envy.

And so we have an example there in those passages from the book of Acts. A proof that this is envy we’re talking about that wanted to kill Christ. Even after that is accomplished, they still are envious then against his followers. It should be pointed out as well that the envying and the destruction—the attempted destruction of saints and sometimes the murder of saints due to envy—that occurs in the book of Acts doesn’t stop with the inspired text.

The first couple of centuries of the church saw envy as well leading to martyrdom. Clement of Rome, one of the very first of the church fathers in his epistle to the Corinthian church warned them of the great dangers of envy to the church and to the body—the covenant community there. Clement cited seven martyrs of the Old Testament—many of the ones that we’ve gone through and some others—that fell to envy.

And Clement goes on then to cite seven martyrs of the early church who also were martyred because of envy. And a close historical analysis of Clement’s letter yields historical evidence to indicate that it was envy in the church—perhaps between Jewish and Gentile believers—that kindled the fires of martyrdom in Rome. Envy led people to talk to the Roman authorities about seditious Christians. Envy within the church.

Now I’m talking about and so led to Nero and the martyrdoms of Rome that occurred with the Christian church. Such a horrendous sin is this envy that leads to martyrdom within the church. Brother killing brother, sister killing sister, Christian killing Christian through the authorities at Rome.

This we should find warned against again and again in the scriptures and these accounts we’ve looked at do that. They serve as a vivid illustration to us of the great destructive force of envy. And next week we’ll look at wisdom—the wisdom literature. If what I’m saying is true, we’ll expect to find there as well great warnings and truths about envy that is necessary for us to know to avoid it ourselves and to learn how to deal with it when others envy us as well. We’ll look at that next week.

I want to as we move to a conclusion of today’s talk, though, kind of sum up some of these things we’ve talked about.

First, think through all those accounts that we’ve just read from the Old Testament and New Testament and look at the various objects of envy. Look at what things can be envied. Cain envies Abel’s worship. Worship is a focal point of envy. The Philistines envy Isaac’s agricultural production. Joseph’s brothers envy his love from his father and a dream he has. Joshua, speaking for Moses, envied the spiritual gifting of Eldad and Midad.

Love of husband is envied by Peninnah versus Hannah. Success in defeating God’s enemies is the object of Saul’s envy against David. Children, the very fact of a child is the envious factor leading the bad mother to try to seek the destruction of the good mother or her seed. Popularity and the righteousness of Jesus Christ is the object of envy as well.

The point of this I’m trying to show you here is that it’s very wrong to think of envy as primarily motivated by material possessions. Envy strikes at many other things that the person sees himself in an unfavorable comparison to. Many things can arouse these sentiments of envy and will arouse them in people that we walk in the context of in the world and sometimes even within the church if we’re to believe these historical accounts.

How do we deal with envy? Just briefly, we’ll talk about this more next week. But I think it’s what we can do is we can look at some of these Old Testament examples and get pictures there of the correct way to respond when we’re the one being envied. Next week we’ll focus more on what to do to avoid envy in ourselves and in our culture, but what are some of the things we can learn from this?

Well, with Isaac and the Philistines, Isaac was persistent. He didn’t lash out when the Philistines stopped up his well. He dug them out again. He kept working. He kept moving on. Isaac’s answer to the envy of the Philistines was persistence in well-digging. Joseph’s answer to the envy of his brothers was patience. Joseph didn’t despair. He waited patiently for God’s deliverance.

He believed what God had told him in those dreams. And when he was envied and set upon by his brothers, his reaction wasn’t to lash out at them. His reaction was patience and then finally forgiveness after bringing them to a realization of their sin. He moved beyond the envy exhibited toward him to try to deliver his brothers of that envy as well later when they came to him. Joseph looked after the affairs of his brothers with love and not in vindictiveness.

Joshua—his Moses—for Joshua the correct response to envy there is correction, teaching. Moses instructed Joshua, don’t be envious. The way to avoid envy or the way to avoid…