Dennis Tuuri

We continue today on the 10th word, the 10th commandment in our series through the ten commandments. Last week we talked about greed. So covetousness is the specific thing, evil covetousness and improper desire, barred from us in the 10th word, and a failure to discipline ourselves leads eventually, in some cases, to greed—an outright idolatrous thinking that these things around us are what we really will find satisfaction in.

And this breaks down community. Another development of the sin of covetousness is the sin of envy, one of the seven deadly sins, as is greed. And envy is related then to the 10th word. And I wanted to spend a week here talking about it and to look at envy. Let’s look at, I think, at one of the first, the first occurrence of envy in Genesis 4, verses 3 to 8, the killing of Abel by Cain. So Genesis 4:3-8 is the sermon text.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. “And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. Its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.’ Now 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 killed him.”

Let’s pray.

Father, please use your word today to drive out the old man, the Cain in us that seeks to harm our brothers and sisters, even in the Lord. Help us, Lord God, with an understanding of your scriptures and the many warnings they give us about the sin of envy. Help us, Father, to apply this aspect of the 10th word and so bring more joy to others and at the same time bring more joy to ourselves. In Jesus’ name we ask it, and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

So what we’re trying to do here is to take the 10th word and flesh it out a little bit in several directions. It manifests itself, violations of God’s tenth commandment, in various ways that we don’t think of unless we’re self-conscious about it. God’s question to Cain, “Why are you angry?” is an excellent one to ask ourselves. So God’s word brings evaluation of the problems in our lives.

You know, Jesus on the cross is being killed by men, and look at the text later, but it says specifically that Pilate knew these people were going to kill him out of envy. And so our subject today is very applicable to the crucifixion and to all forms of fratricide, killing of brother. But Jesus says from the cross, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” Well, do they or don’t they? If they don’t, why are they held responsible? Well, they do at an inner level. They know who they are. They know enough, right? Romans 1 says to be held responsible. But man’s self-deception is great. And they didn’t realize that envy was their primary motivation. Pilate could see it, but they couldn’t see it.

Well, in our lives as well, we want to make sure that we understand what’s going on in our lives, that we know a little better what we do and look for manifestations of violations of God’s law so that he might remove them from us because they’re so destructive to community. Here we have the killing of brother by brother.

So what we’re trying to do here is to talk about the implications of the 10th word in a way that will help us to think a little bit and to meditate a little bit, and again, particularly in the context of our particular world right now. This is an important thing to do, and we’ll talk about that both today and in a couple of weeks as well.

On your handouts, you’ll notice I’ve bolded “covenant” and “desire.” They’re two different Hebrew words in Deuteronomy 5. They’re the same word in Exodus 20. One brief point there: I’ve inserted this in your handout under “covet”—that is, things of greater value, for instance, wisdom. These two words are synonymous. But there is a little distinguishment of the two of them in the Old Testament. That first word is usually, I think always, spoken of in terms of something of great value—you know, really something beautiful, diamonds, whatever it is, jewels—and so it’s talking about that. But the second word, if it’s differentiated from the first word, usually refers to things of what we would say is maybe lower value. And so one of the things the text does in drawing it out that way—Exodus equates the two, but in the Deuteronomy text it helps us to see the importance of marriage. It helps us to see the relative importance of protecting and promoting and nurturing the husband-wife relationship.

So I wanted to make that point today before we get into the actual discussion of envy. You know, so there’s distinguishments to be made here, but at the end of the day all of these sins are a failure to see proper value. As we said last week, the ultimate prescription for somebody who’s greedy is to recognize that God is his exceeding great reward.

Greed drives out thoughts of God. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. And the rich fool that we looked at last week—God was not in any of his thoughts. He was talking to himself. And so we talked about the importance of this. Somebody this week shared a text that was useful to them and meaningful to them. And I wanted to read a few verses out of Psalm 73 that essentially say the same thing—that text from Genesis where God tells Abram, “I am your exceeding great reward.”

The psalmist, and by the way, the context for this is he says, “I almost envy the wicked.” But in any event, he says, “Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with your counsel and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

In the first few verses of this psalm, verses 2 to 4: “But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”

So this envy is cured by going into the temple of God, seeing the end of them. But that drives him to an understanding that his ultimate source, the true fulfillment of all desire, is found in the person of God. He takes us by the hand. He guides us through this life. He is our exceeding great reward from one perspective—our only thing of value that we have. Now he’s mediated through relationships, etc. But this is the cure for violations of the 10th word: the great value of God.

Verse 27 of Psalm 73 says, “For indeed, those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who desert you for harlotry. But it’s good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all your works.”

So God is our exceeding great reward. And then secondly, Psalm 73 also says that part of the cure of violations of the 10th word is to recognize the eschatology of the wicked—where those actions lead. And in terms of envy, it leads to the breakdown of culture in society. It leads to a brother murdering another brother.

In our day and age, we have reduced goods and services. I thought of this line. I posted on my Facebook status yesterday, I think, the chorus to a song by the Foo Fighters: “It’s times like these you learn to live again. It’s times like these you give and give again. It’s times like these you learn to love again. It’s times like these, time and time again.”

And the point is, it’s times like these—of the new normal, of reduced expectations, of reduced wealth—that we sort of do learn to love again by helping people. More people have need. Sounds like a bad thing, but in actuality, God uses more people with need to cause us to love again and to give and to give again and to learn to love in ways that we knew, but we had not applied, because wealth produces typically independence and isolation from community.

So let’s look at this sin of envy today and try to understand its relationship to the 10th word. You know, the 10th word says, well, don’t desire what somebody else’s covenantal thing, and the word means actually don’t defraud them, don’t take it from them by deceit. And of course it includes as well the earlier commandment: don’t steal from somebody, right?

So coveting says: you’ve got something, and because you have it I want it, and I’m going to try to get it, okay?

But combined with covetousness, envy differentiates that from saying that I want it but I can’t get it. So Max Schaeffer, in his book on the seven deadly sins, he said that envy arises out of the joint examples or experiences of covetousness and impotence. So when you blend covetousness with impotence and inability to get the thing you want, that is what breeds envy, and that’s what distinguishes envy from wrong or sinful covetousness.

Brian Grant said that the rarity of human experience—or rather, that in human experience there’s one thing that almost everyone does almost all the time but that never feels good to anybody. There’s something that almost everybody does and we do it all the time and it doesn’t feel good to anybody. And he’s talking about envy. It doesn’t make you feel any better. And yet we do it all the time. It’s part of our Adamic nature.

Another man said that there’s something in us that warms the heart at the spectacle of a friend’s misfortune. Have you ever noticed that? Something bad happens to somebody, and for a moment perhaps you feel a little happiness about it. Don’t be afraid to face that. “Oh no, I never do.” No, you do, probably. There’s something about us that does that thing.

One of the best movie depictions of envy is Amadeus, with Salieri. You know, Salieri envies Mozart, and he ends up being part of his destruction.

So envy wants to destroy the thing that you want, that the other guy has, or destroy that man for his giftings, because you can’t have them. It does you no good, but it’s what you want. Now, envy itself—the word comes from a word, “invidia,” and it means to look against. “Video,” the V is short for “video.” So it’s got to do with sight, but it’s looking at something. But you really end up looking not wanting it, but wanting to destroy it. You’re looking against something. And that’s what envy is, distinguished by from coveting. It wants to destroy the thing.

Because it’s related to sight and to look against something, Dante, it is purgatorial. There are these areas of the seven deadly sins as he’s going through purgatory. And most of them have drawings on the area that is related to that sin. But the section of purgatory that is given to those who are envious, it has no drawings. And those that dwell on the cornice of envy, their eyes are sewn shut with metal threads. Because you see, their very sin is related to seeing, wanting, and then turning against what they see. And so Dante captures that in his Purgatorio.

There is one way to think of it: a phrase that some have come up with is “invidious proximity.” Proximity. Envy is related to invidious proximity. It’s a neighbor thing. It’s something that you see that somebody else has, typically, have proximity to it, but it’s a proximity that arouses envy—a desire to look against something rather than actually trying to accomplish it. If your neighbor breaks a leg, somehow you think you can walk better the next day. That’s envy.

Augustine talks about envy and gives a particular definition of envy. But where is it? Well, I can’t find it, but let’s read Webster instead. Webster’s 1828 dictionary has a definition for envy: “To feel uneasiness, mortification, or discontent at the sight of superior excellence, reputation, or happiness enjoyed by another. So they got good stuff. You don’t have it. You can’t get it. And you don’t like it. 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.”

It’s interesting because whenever you envy somebody else, you’re really confessing the superiority of the other person. So it’s a very weird kind of twisted deal, and yet very common.

Here’s another definition from Grimm’s German dictionary in the 19th century: “Today, as an earlier language, envy expresses that addictive and inwardly tormenting frame of mind—the displeasure with which one perceives the prosperity and advantages of others, begrudges them these things, and in addition wishes one were able to destroy or to possess them oneself. Synonymous with malevolence, the evil eye.” I don’t know if it’s the same as the stink eye or not, but it’s the evil eye. To look against something, to like it, but to want to destroy it because you can’t have it.

Now notice that it’s inwardly tormenting according to Grimm’s German dictionary. And it is—it doesn’t produce any benefit to you. It just makes you worse and worse and worse, less and less happy. So it’s a sin that is truly destructive of community and of one’s very self as well. And again, the emphasis in this particular definition on the perception that drives the sin, the perception of something that somebody else has—some value, some gift, some ability, some friends, whatever it is—that gives rise then to the consciousness of impotence. You can’t do it yourself. You can’t have this thing. And as a result, envy jumps into place.

The Westminster Larger Catechism has relatively short statements on the sin of covetousness. But I thought I could read part of this. I’ll read the whole thing. It’s very short: “What are the sins forbidden of the tenth commandment? The sins forbidden the tenth commandment are discontentment with one’s own estate. Well, that’s certainly at the heart of envy. Envying—specifically, it says that—and grieving at the good of our neighbors. So when the Westminster Catechism describes the 10th word, it actually focuses on the sin of envy, this grieving at the good of our neighbor, this envying and this discontent with our own state, together with all inordinate notions and affections to anything that is his. Well, that second part is probably more directly related to covetousness. But most of their prohibition lies in a prohibition that Westminster divines said of envy.

“Question 147. What are the duties required in the tenth commandment? The duties required in the tenth commandment are such a full contentment with our own condition, so from discontentment to contentment, and such a charitable frame of the whole soul toward our neighbor, so that all our inward motions and affections touching him tend unto and further all the good which is his. So we tend not to like what he has that we can’t have and hate it and want to destroy it. And the cure for that, the thing that the 10th word requires, is actually making his thing even better. If he’s got what you don’t have, give him more. If you can help him to get more of that thing, do that, and be content with your own station.”

All right, let’s go briefly and quickly through a portrayal. Envy is about video—it’s about seeing. So let’s get the picture of envy by looking at several key stories in the scriptures. And of course, the first one is the one we just read.

There are some Old Testament examples. And so the first one is Cain and Abel. And Dante—I mentioned this Purgatorio, where he’s got the seven deadly sins, and envy being one. And he has voices as you come upon this particular part of purgatory where those that are envious are either moving on or they won’t. But you hear voices, usually at each one of these places. And the voice that cries out as you go to the cornice of envy is: “Everyone that finds me shall slay me.” See, so that’s Cain’s statement. So the very first thing you’re reminded of in Dante’s Purgatorio is this first act of envy recorded in the scriptures, which is the death of Abel by Cain.

Now, what’s Cain’s problem? Well, this text is varied and interesting, and there’s lots of things we could say about it, but one thing that we clearly see here is what he is upset about has something to do with the fact that Abel’s offering is accepted. God has respect, favor for Abel’s offering, and he doesn’t have respect for Cain’s offering. So Abel has something that Cain didn’t have, doesn’t have, and apparently he thinks he can’t get it. God tells him, look, you can—you can get accepted. But Cain instead goes off and kills his brother.

So Cain is driven by this kind of envy. He sees and perceives, believes that Abel is accepted by God. He’s not accepted by God. And therefore he wants to destroy the one who has been accepted by God. So we have this text that reminds us immediately, as we look at why brothers hate brothers, that envy is behind it a lot. And any parent knows this. Of course, any parent knows that if you’ve got children, you’ve got a couple of brothers or couple of sisters or siblings—envy is one of the first things that happens in the context of a family, because our children are fallen.

So the this between sisters and sisters and brothers and brothers is very much part of how envy manifests itself. And as a result of that, it’s one of the earliest sins that we can actually begin to train our children away from. So if we apply the simple statements of the Westminster Catechism, for instance, that a contentment and a desire to better the things that our brother has, that we don’t have, that he might even grow in that more—if we begin to train our children from an early age, that will do well for them, because they manifest the sin of envy early on. And also to be very careful that we don’t spur envy on in the way we talk.

Now, we don’t want to blame the environment. It’s not the parents’ fault, but there are parenting styles that can enhance envy, maybe without knowing it. Now you can’t avoid envy. God is the best parent. And he had those two kids, Cain and Abel. And still there was envy that went on. Now he went to the one who looked envious and tried to get him to correct, or told him how he should correct. It’s not that God failed, but showed him how he should correct. And yet he didn’t do it.

So it’s not the parents’ fault, but it is the parents’ job to notice the emergence of this sin of envy in children and then to try to do something about it. So brother-to-brother stuff and sister-to-sister stuff is the first example by way of implication from the brothers to brothers to sisters that is given to us in the scriptures. So you know, human violence against one another begins with envy.

The second story is Isaac and the Philistines. And I’ve given you the references on your handouts. It’s in Genesis 26:11 and following. And we read, specifically in verse 14, that Isaac had a whole bunch of stuff. He had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, and great store of servants. And the Philistines envied him. What do they do? “All the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped them and filled them with earth.”

So they envy Isaac and the blessings, the material blessings he has. And what do they do? Do they try to steal things from him? No, they try to destroy what he has. So they stop up his wells. They can’t get water out of those wells then either. But if they can’t get the water, he’s not going to have the water either. And so these Philistines do that. It’s another example of this envy. And Isaac just keeps digging wells. He—you know, that’s what we’re supposed to do. And when we’re attacked, we’re supposed to keep doing what’s right.

I don’t know. But I haven’t actually seen the video, but Tim Tebow, I guess, got mocked by a couple of Lions players a couple of times in a recent NFL game. He’s a very outspoken Christian. Praise and all this stuff. And it was sort of like our modern version of gladiators, right? So they’re in this stadium, and it’s the Lions against Tim Tebow, the Christian, and they sack him, and then they mock his praying somehow. I didn’t actually see the video, but showing, you know, sort of the same kind of thing. We’ve got modern-day Philistines who like to mock or to destroy Christians, but what Tebow’s got to do is just keep praying. And Philistine, you know, even though the Philistines, moved by envy, stop up Isaac’s wells, what he’s got to do is just keep digging more wells. And so he does that.

So another example of what envy is. Now Abimelech tells Isaac to move on. He knows that envy is being produced by Isaac’s blessings, and he’s trying to save his—you know, protect his people from doing stupid things by getting the guy that’s everybody’s going to envy out of there. And so throughout history you have examples not only of envy but also of envy avoidance in a culture and a society, because people know—if people are wise, leaders are wise—they know the horrific nature of envy. They know that it produces fratricide and revolution, other problems. Apparently this is still a practice in the Middle East: plugging up the wells of one’s enemies. Envy is alive and well in the Middle East to this day.

The third example is Joseph and his brothers. And of course they hate him more and more as his father likes him, as his father honors him, and as God gives him these dreams. They’re getting more and more angry. And we read specifically in Genesis 37:11 that his brothers envied him, but his father observed the saying. And so then when the time comes, they try to kill him. So the brothers of Joseph are specifically designated in the text as being subject to this sin of envy. And they, you know, essentially symbolically kill him and sell him into slavery.

Now what good does that do them? Do they—does their father like them more because of that? No. Does his father like Joseph less? Actually the reverse happens, right? His father pines for him even more, and his heart is even more moved toward Joseph. Envy doesn’t produce satisfaction. It produces a continuing cycle of more and more envy, more and more difficulties, more and more violence. And this text in the scriptures tell us about that. So it doesn’t help—it actually hurts the person that’s envying.

You know, the story is told of a man who envied somebody that had a statue built for him. And in his envy, this guy hated that guy. He’s dead now. But what he did was he would go out every night and chip away at the statue, at the foundation of the statue, because he wanted to destroy this guy’s image out of envy. And of course eventually what happens is he’s chipping away and the statue falls over at some point and kills him. That’s envy, and that’s the results of envy. And that’s the result of what happens to Joseph’s brothers. It doesn’t really help them at all.

The fourth story is Eldad, Medad, and Joshua. And this is in Numbers 11. And you know, the gift of prophecy is going to go upon the seventy rulers that are chosen to help administer things by Moses in the wilderness. With Joshua. And of those seventy, two of them stayed in the camp. And so when the Holy Spirit comes upon the sixty-eight that are gathered, that’s one thing. But in this case, these two men, they’re still in the camp, and the spirit of prophecy comes upon them. And so they prophesy in the context of the camp. Joshua sees this, and Joshua is Moses’ successor. He looked at this, and he doesn’t like it. He gets kind of upset by it. And he says, well, he goes to Moses and says, “Why don’t you tell these guys to knock this off?” And Moses tells him, in verse 29, “Moses said unto him, ‘Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit upon them.’”

Another case of envy. Now this envy is not so much for Joshua. It’s for Moses. That’s what Moses says. You’re envying for my sake. You don’t want my authority be diminished by other preachers coming along and speaking the word of God in a way that might diminish mine. That’s what’s going on. You’re using the occasion of their separation from the seventy, but what’s really going on in your heart, Joshua, is you’re envying those guys for my sake.

So envy is so bad it can actually be on behalf of another person. Does—you’re a follower of somebody. You envy—that you envy against other people who might be better than the person you follow. And so you try to tear them down. Now, you know, a couple of things here. One, notice this is Joshua. This isn’t Cain we’re talking about now. This is the great Joshua. So all of us, if we’re as good as Joshua, even, are prone to envy. And it will come out in our lives.

Number two, Moses does exactly what—or he points Joshua exactly to what the Westminster divines did. He says, “Well, no, I’m not going to tell them to stop prophesying. In fact, I hope they prophesy more, and I hope all of God’s people are prophets.” And by way of implication, he’s saying, “I hope they do a lot better job than me.” That’s the right attitude. But men in positions of authority, or women in positions of authority, can guard—that can want to guard—that from people that are better than them. And if they can’t, you know, become better themselves, what they’ll try to do is just shut the mouth of the people that are better than them. You’ll see this in the corporate world all the time. And so there are people coming up, but if they have too much promise, they’ll be cut off, because people want to protect their positions. And they can’t do it by becoming better. That’d be, you know, trying to create a desire that actually leads to something positive. They’ll do it instead by destroying the thing that would be a competitor to them.

And so Joshua here is a case of superior-driven envy. And Moses gives exactly the right prescription that the Westminster divines saw as well. We should seek the well-being of others and the furtherance of their gifts.

Hannah and Peninnah. You know, this is in 1 Samuel chapter 1. And it’s a strange story because you’d think that Hannah would envy Peninnah. These are the two—you know, Hannah is the mother of Samuel, and she is barren. Peninnah has kids. You’d think the story would tell us that Hannah is envious and wanting and angry at Peninnah. But actually the other way around. Peninnah is the one who envies Hannah. Why? Because Hannah’s given a double portion by Elkanah, her husband. He’s—she’s loved by her. And so it shows you that even if you may get particular kinds of blessings—children, in the case of Peninnah, that the other person doesn’t have—there’s still something in them that you can envy. In this case, the love of Elkanah for Hannah motivated Peninnah to anger and to want to hurt.

And she would speak these words to Hannah, reminding her of her impotence. And so envy can—I you—there’s no end to it. You can’t take care of it through equalizing things or giving people other blessings that, you know, would make them happy. No, envy just will find something else to find itself discontent about, and it will lead into destructive acts of one person toward another. The way Peninnah seeks to destroy Hannah with her tongue.

Saul and David. You know, the big problems start happening when David goes out and is successful in battle. And then Saul and David are out there fighting God’s enemies. And the women then say—write this song. You know, all these problems happen with singing and dancing. So they’re singing—that’s not true. Singing and dancing. They go out to meet King Saul, and they’re singing. And the women say this: “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.”

Oh. His king, safely ensconced. He’s killing thousands. He should be happy and content that he’s got a right-hand guy here who’s going to be able to kill, you know, ten times as many as he, and he should be happy that’s what God has provided for him. But he’s not. The text explicitly tells us that it creates envy in him. Verse 9: “Saul eyed David. He gave him that evil eye. He gives him that envious eye from that day forward. And it came to pass on the tomorrow that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he throws a spear at David trying to kill him.”

So Saul is motivated by envy, which is driven by appreciation of others for the job that David is doing. Now David is loving Saul. He plays for him. The evil spirit goes away. David is serving the king. I mean, David is doing everything right. But all that just further aggravates Saul’s envy, because the more he sees the goodness of David that he doesn’t have, the more he’s motivated to kill that and to get rid of that, to get it off of his eyes. Of course, it doesn’t leave his mind. It doesn’t leave his heart. And so there’s no benefit to Saul from trying to kill David, but that’s what he tries to do. It produces fear and paranoia. Saul gets afraid of David. He gets paranoid about what David is really doing. The paranoid king, here, he envies what he can’t have. He’s kind of a picture eventually of Herod, right? And Herod envies Jesus, becomes afraid of him, afraid of God and what his people will do.

So Saul becomes increasingly crazy, insane, paranoid, clinically so, because of envy. That’s what begins it all is the comparison between him and David on the part of the songs of the women. Nothing wrong with what the women did. Comparisons were okay. You got to be careful with them. They will stir up envy. But the text doesn’t tell us that the women were at fault here. Clearly, the blame is upon Saul.

Helmut Schoeck said that—and I should have mentioned him—Helmut Schoeck has a book called Envy. I actually have in my office. I was going to bring it out and show to you, but René Girard gives us mimetic desire. We’ll talk about that in a couple of weeks. And he’s the guy you want to read on that. But the best work on envy, in addition to kinds of authors on the seven deadly sins, is Helmut Schoeck, who has this classic work on envy, this thick, excellent book. And he says in that book that envy occurs as soon as two individuals become capable of mutual comparison. And so this mutual comparison of David and Saul is what creates envy in the context of that tale. And the result of that, Saul plots to kill David, and we have another brother-kind of murder thing going on.

Envy doesn’t see right? There’s an old proverb that says envy turns a blade of grass into a palm tree. So envy, in seeing something that it can’t have, magnifies the thing. You know, the way you’re obsessed with something, and pretty soon Saul thinks David is, you know, has these incredible feats. So it magnifies things. Envy never comes to rest. Envy, as one author said, is a beast that will gnaw off its own leg if it can’t get anything else to gnaw upon.

The minute kindness is shown to envy, it gets worse. And the story of Saul and David shows us that David is kind to Saul. But it just makes it worse, right? The worst thing you can do for an envious person from his perspective is to show your superiority by giving him a kindness or a gift or a blessing. It won’t work. His problem is envy. His problem isn’t that he’s not loved enough. The problem is he’s not loving enough.

And so when you try to give an envious person a gift, a kindness, whatever it is, he just perceives that as your superiority over him being shoved in his face. And so he’ll just continue on his task of envy and get worse and worse and worse. And maybe that’s what it means to be kind to someone and put burning fire on their head, because that’s certainly the effect: more anger and more fire on the part of the envious person.

A good mother and a bad mother. One of the most horrific examples of envy is 1 Kings 3:16. There’s these two women who have babies. One dies in the night. The bad mother steals the baby from the good mother and replaces her with the dead baby, dead baby, right? So you got two women, one good, one bad. Both have babies. They’re both taking care of their babies in the same house. Nobody else is there. It happened. It’s the story of the Bible. And the bad mother’s baby dies, and she replaces it in the middle of the night with the other woman sleeping. And then, you know, so the good mother comes to Solomon and says, “I want my baby back. She stole my baby.” And the other woman says, “No, it’s my baby.”

So you got two people. And of course, this is the great example of Solomon’s wisdom. He says, “Well, I’ll tell you what we do. We’ll just cut the baby in half.” The living baby will be cut in half and give you each half. And what he did by that was to show the heart of the two women. And the good mother says, “Oh, no. Let her have it.” And the bad mother says, “Sure, cut the baby in half.”

What does it show us about the bad mother? She had become envious, after her baby died, of the other woman’s baby. And she’s willing to have that baby put to death. You see, somehow she thinks that’ll make her feel better. Her baby died, and so she wants the other baby dead. She’s perfectly fine with that. And that’s the way Solomon distinguishes between good and bad. And the wisdom is to discern the envious person through seeing their desire to destroy rather than for life.

So we have all these biblical examples that help us to get the picture of envy in various ways, in various circumstances. And it shows us, in this last case, you know, if she can’t have it, nobody will. That’s what envy says: if I can’t get it, nobody else can.

In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the seven sins appear, and envy appears and says, “I can’t read, and therefore I wish all books were burned.” So I can’t read, so I want to destroy all books, envy says. And then, you know, nobody else could read either. It’s the only sin, I think, that doesn’t have some delight attached to it. It, you know, it doesn’t really help you in anything to destroy somebody else. I guess there is some strange, twisted delight. But, you know, in a lot of the sins, if you steal something, when you got the thing, you know, if you do other sins, you know, there’s some joy to it. It’s twisted joy. It’s twisted love. But this one, there’s no love in it at all. There’s no joy in it really at all. It just brings down the person who, through invidious proximity, destroys other people and their goods. And at the same time, they’re really ultimately destroying themselves, as that man who chipped away at the statue, as a reminder.

Of New Testament examples: Well, you know, it’s interesting because we got Cain and Abel—two different worshippers, one received, one not, and one killing the other. And that’s just what happens with Jesus, right? Jesus arrives in the context of the Jews, and the Jews end up killing him. And as I said earlier, very specifically in Matthew 27:18, we’re told that Pilate knew that for envy they had delivered Jesus up.

So the Jews’ ultimate problem is envy. Now they’re self-deceived. They probably don’t see it in themselves, but the text of scripture shows us that, because it wants us to know and to beware of the envy in us that rejoices in somebody’s calamity and is disappointed in somebody else’s fortune. That’s who we are in Adam, in Cain, in the Pharisees. When something good happens to somebody, we’re sort of a little bit sad that that didn’t happen to us. And when something bad happens to somebody, well, we’re a little bit glad because that didn’t happen to us, too. And that’s who we are. That’s envy. That’s the sin of mankind that explicitly is tied to the putting to death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The long string of all those enviers we’ve talked of, who’ve delivered up and who’ve killed the innocent, ultimately find their ultimate meaning as telling us what humanity will do with the King of Glory, with the Lord Jesus Christ, with the man that never did a thing wrong and did everything right and helped incredible amounts of people. Yet he’s put to death. He’s put to death through envy.

Now I mentioned that man who chips away at the statue. And that’s what the Jews are doing here, right? They’re trying to destroy God’s image by destroying God’s chief image bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ. But what does the scripture say? The scriptures say that Jesus is the rock that will crush them. That will crush them. So they, in the same way, chip away, deliver up Jesus, but at the end of the day, he’s going to squeeze them off at that cross. He’s going to destroy them. He’s the rock that will land upon them.

It didn’t stop there. The apostles as well, over and over again—I’ve given you a number of references here—but the apostles, over and over again, are the subjects of envy as well. Just like Jesus was envied, so the apostles are. In Acts 13:44, “The next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.” The apostles are preaching the word of God. “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and spake against the things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.”

There it is. They’re envying as well. And this happens several times in the accounts from Acts. In Acts 17, verse 4: “Some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas, the devout Greeks, a multitude, and of the chief women, not a few. But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city in an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason.”

So here we have the same thing going on. And we could read more citations. But it doesn’t stop with Jesus. It happens to his people. It happens to Tim Tebow. It happens to you—to the extent that our righteousness is perceived by others with invidious proximity, to that extent they’ll want to destroy you. That’s what envy does.

And what God would have us do is remember that this sin burns in our hearts as well and to drive it out in its small horns. The proverbs say that envy is rottenness to the bones. Now, that doesn’t just mean it’s, you know, going to get you sick. The bones, you know, it’s the structure. It’s the foundation of who you are. If you let the sin of envy continue in your life, then it’s going to rot away the foundations—the very foundations, the building thing that God puts everything else on, down to your base. Envy will make you rotten and destroy your ability to stand against anything.

So that’s what the Proverbs say. There’s other references I’ve given you as well. Ecclesiastes talks about envy quite a bit. So the wisdom literature, of course, talks about it. Solomon says that “for every good work that for this a man is envied of his neighbor.” See, again, it’s the thing that he’s doing good things, and the result is his neighbor envies him and wants to destroy that very thing.

James says, “If you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not. Lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is an earthly, sensual, devilish wisdom. Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.”

Now we can apply this directly. There are various theological controversies that fill the air. I’ve always said that Reformed people are kind of the anti-mafia. You know, the mafia—it’s never personal, it’s always business when they have to knock somebody off. But what I’ve seen 90 percent of the time is with Reformed people in Reformed circles in American Reformed circles of today: it’s never business. It’s never really theology. It’s always personal. There’s an element of envy, comparison, desire to destroy people that you can’t be like and that have incredible giftings. And as you destroy them, of course, you mock them. You don’t tell what a great person you are.

So this is evident, this kind of work in our own circles. Now it’s true, on the other hand, that Helmut Schoeck, in his book Envy, said the one group that are best equipped, that seem to manifest the least amount of envy, are the Calvinists. I don’t think she was one, but sociologically he saw that Calvinists were in the best shape to take care of this. Why? Why? Well, because Calvinists know that God is in control, right?

Calvinists know that whatever my neighbor has ultimately has been given to him by God. And so Calvinists have the answer to all of this, which is an appreciation for the sovereignty of God and his divine selection of whom he’ll put his gifts upon or not. So Calvinists know that, because first of all, they believe in the sovereign God. Secondly, they believe that the glory of God is the ultimate end of everything. And so if—and they know that God sovereignly, even the wrath of man will praise him, that God will even use sinfulness of people to praise God. So they’re less tempted toward this sin. And yet it is a real sin and involved in our hearts as well. But we’re in a good place to try to combat it.

I’ll talk in a couple of weeks about the social implications of covetousness, greed, and envy. And I’ll bring those comments on your outline into that talk in two weeks, as we celebrate Christ the King and think about the civil implications of much of what we’ve said on the 10th word.

Suffice it to say that the French Revolution is one of the greatest examples culturally of envy that we have, and it is a horrific example. And it should be a great warning to us in a time today when envy is being stirred, that pot of envy is being stirred again. And as we see the kinds of things starting to happen with anarchy, etc., envy is what really spurred on the French Revolution. And a lot of people thought it was a great thing until the guillotine started dropping everywhere. But that’s what happens. That’s what envy moves toward. It’s Cain killing Abel. It’s Cain killing any perceived Abels as well as actual Abels. And it’s a hard thing to stop once that fire—the bonfire of that particular vanity. Tom Wolfe’s book, Seven Vanities, he does a great job of representing envy.

When that bonfire of that particular vanity of envy is started, it is hard to put out. It is hard to put out. But may the Lord God put it out in our own hearts. May he do it by recognizing God’s sovereign property rights over us. That’s number one under D, the cure of envy. Ultimately, it’s God’s gifts that he’s dispensing as he wants. Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale says that envy was against the grace that God has given to another. Therefore, envy is the worst of the sins that spring from pride, because it is against all virtues and against all goodness.

So recognizing God’s sovereign gifting of other people is very important for us. Contentment with our own particular giftings. You know, you’re not whoever the other guy is or the other woman is. And that’s okay. The Lord God has sovereignly made you what he is. You have to have an appreciation for God’s unequal giftings in the other person. But you also have to have a contentment with how God has established your life—a godly contentment.

And of course, that’s the answer to all of the manifestations of the 10th, violations of the 10th commandment: contentment with one’s own giftings. Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Green is the color of envy. Content yourself with the grass that God has given you.

Thanksgiving for God’s world. Envy grumbles against and murmurs against God’s goodness. And so when we enter into this season of thanksgiving in a couple of weeks, that’s one of the great antidotes to envy: a thanksgiving to God for his world and what he’s done in it.

Confession of our sin. Sin is sin, and it needs to be confessed and gotten out of the way. And if you’ve recognized envy in yourself in today’s sermon or this week as you go through it, confess it as sin. Ask God to purge it from your heart.

Prayer for our adversaries, seeking their well-being, seeking not just, you know, praying for them in a general sense. But if there’s something we envy in somebody else—boy, I wish I had as many friends as that person had—pray that they would have more friends. They have a gift of friendliness, apparently. It’s going to be used for the kingdom. Seek their advancement, you know. Don’t talk about the person negatively to others. That’s what we do. We don’t—we’re not going to kill somebody here, but we can use our tongues to talk against each other. Yeah, they’re really good at that, but did you know this? You know, the “but” is thrown into our conversations. Or yeah, they’re good at that, but what about this other guy? He’s really good at that. Comparing them with others. See, we have subtle ways of running down each other and of having envy do its work of trying to slander each other and kill each other.

And God says don’t do that. God says act. Do things to help other people. Assist other people. Do good things for them. Seek their advancement. The very things that cause you to envy, seek their advancement in those particular things. You’re supposed to act the way you want to feel. A little cliché. If you act like you want to feel, then you’ll feel like you act. That’s usually the case. To root out feeling, we change our actions, and we change our actions of speech and habit, and the emotions will follow those things.

May the Lord God use these texts, these examples, these tremendous warnings to root out any envy that may go on in your heart, in your family, in this church, and in the broader community. May he use these warnings to steel us for what comes next over the next year. Elections a year from today, and envy is going to be one of the prime motivators by some of the candidates running. May he use this to steel us against that kind of destructive sin that emanates forth from violations of his tenth word.

May he give us contentment, thankfulness for one another, and an advancement of each other’s gifts.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you that you are sovereign, that you’ve sovereignly dispersed your gifts, your blessings to different people. Help us, Lord God, to really try to get down to the root sin of envy in our hearts that causes us to have difficulty in relationships. And bless us, Lord God, as we seek to repent of envy, to turn from it, and to seek the well-being and the betterment of those that we live in context of.

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.