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Kingslayers
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We're in a series we're calling King Slayers, where we're taking some kings from the pages of the Old Testament and dissecting what it was that ended up taking them out. Today the king is a guy named Saul, and the King Slayer is a little thing called Envy.
Even though it pretends to be little, Envy is not a little thing. Just like the other two King Slayers we've already talked about — Nebuchadnezzar and his pride, and Solomon and his isolation and poor relationship choices — this one, Envy, can take you and me out in a hurry, or it can just suddenly erode your soul a little bit every day.
All of these would-be assassins in this series have an opposite virtue. For example:
Envy opposes all those virtues. It defiles everything it touches. It desires that no good thing happen to anybody else, be owned by anybody else, or be in relationship with anybody else.
Envy is also different from all these other King Slayers in another way. Nearly all the others start out with at least some little degree of pleasure — lust might give us some pleasure before it goes south, anger gives us the release of temporarily blowing up before we have to go deal with the aftermath. But Envy is different. Envy starts out bad and just stays bad.
Envy is defined in one dictionary as an evil eye. It's a sin that begins with our eyes — a coworker closes a big mega deal and gets a huge bonus, and your eye turns toward envy. A stunning woman walks into the room and all the other women give her the evil eye.
Here's a definition I've given before, but it's worth repeating:
Envy is resenting God's goodness in other people's lives while ignoring his goodness in mine.
Think about it this way: Envy is an absolute affront to God's sovereignty and goodness. We're saying, how come she, how come he, why'd you bless them God, what were you thinking, what about me?
Envy is against anything that might be considered a blessing if that blessing is received by somebody else. It's when you can't stand it that somebody else got a 25% discount and you had to pay full price. You can't stand it that somebody else got invited and you didn't. It eats you up that somebody else's kid made all-stars and yours didn't. It's scrolling through your social media feed comparing your life with other people's highlight reel, complete with filters and fabrication.```
Several years ago, Grammy award-winning artist Olivia Rodrigo got honest about all this in her song called
"Jealousy." Some of you may have heard this song, where she writes:
I kind of want to throw my phone across the room 'cause all I see are girls too good to be true, with paper white teeth and perfect bodies. Wish I didn't care. I know their beauty is not my lack, but it feels like that weight is on my back. I can't let it go. Comparison is killing me slowly. I think too much about kids who don't know me. I see everyone getting all the things I want. I'm happy for them, but then again I'm not.
Anybody been there? There was another songwriter — didn't win a Grammy, but his name was Asaph — and he gets super honest with God about what comparison was doing on the inside of him. I love this song, the honesty of it, Psalm 73:
I almost lost my footing, my feet were slipping. I was almost gone, for I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness. They seem to live such painless lives; their bodies are so healthy and strong. They don't have trouble like other people; they're not plagued with problems like everyone else. Did I keep my heart pure for nothing? Did I keep myself innocent for no reason? I get trouble, nothing but trouble, all day long; every morning brings me pain. And then I realized my heart was bitter, and I was all torn up inside.
That's what envy does to you — it just tears you up inside, and it can never be satisfied. And listen to me: it always, always leads to a bitter heart.
Isn't it true that you and I tend to be most envious toward the people who are most like us, or in our same season, or who compete in the same arena? Engineers aren't envious of chefs — they're envious of other successful engineers. A mom doesn't envy a professional athlete; she envies other moms who seem to have their family life all together. Musicians envy musicians, teachers envy other teachers, athletes envy other athletes, politicians envy other politicians, coaches envy other coaches, pastors envy other pastors, kings envy other kings.
We meet King Saul in the Old Testament book of Samuel. He becomes the very first king of the nation of Israel, showing up on the scene right after Israel had passed through some 300 years of leaders known as judges. The people come to Samuel, the judge leading them at the time, and essentially tell him: it's time for you to retire, your sons aren't like you — they're greedy and incompetent — and besides, we've noticed how all the other nations have a king. We want a king like them.
See how envy is driving an entire nation? How come they have strong warrior kings, and we've got some old broken-down prophet like you? It breaks Samuel's heart because he knows it's not a good idea, so he goes to God. God tells him:
Do everything they say to you, for they are rejecting me, not you. This is not about you, Samuel — it's all about me. They don't want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have constantly abandoned me and followed other gods, and now they're giving you the same treatment. So do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about the way a king will reign over them.eople brush him off: yeah, yeah, we hear you, but we want a king like all the other nations. So God says to Samuel: this will be a real teaching moment — just give them what they want.
Enter Saul, a young man who certainly looked the part — described as the most handsome man in Israel, a head taller than anybody else, with wisdom and humility about him, at least in the beginning. But as so often happens, the power goes to his head. He starts to see himself as the man, starts playing God, disobeys and rebels against the Lord, and turns away.
Some of the saddest verses in the Bible are found in 1 Samuel 15:
Then the Lord said to Samuel,
If we will stay in step with the Spirit — genuinely listening to Him throughout the day — He will enable us in the moment to respond with loving comments. Comments like:
Just things that you genuinely rejoice with — rejoice with those who rejoice without a hint of "what about me." So: you resist comparisons, you respond to other people with love, and one more — this is huge — you reflect on God's goodness.
Remember, envy is resenting God's goodness in other people's lives while ignoring His goodness in mine. So just stop ignoring His goodness in your life, and start counting up all the things God has done for you. Count your blessings and develop this attitude of gratitude on a daily basis, thanking God for what He has given you, and just see what it starts doing to the envy inside.
Philippians 4 is one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible — there is so much good stuff. Paul writes this, incidentally, from a prison cell where he is unjustly incarcerated for just following Jesus:
I know what it is to be in need, I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. For I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.
I have it circled in my Bible — that word where Paul says I have learned. He learned how to be content. How do you learn anything? You practice, right? That's how you learn it. You see somebody play guitar, you go, "Man, that guy must practice." You hear an amazing concert pianist and think, "Man, they must practice." You watch somebody shoot a 60 on the golf course, you think, "Man, they must really practice." You hear someone like me preach, you go, "Dude needs to practice." But you learn anything by practicing.
So if the antithesis of envy is contentment, you learn contentment by practicing gratitude. If envy is an evil eye, then gratitude is what corrects our vision.
I love what Ellen Vaughn writes in her book Radical Gratitude. She says:
Radical gratitude is powerful, provocative, life-changing. It's like a pair of glasses that gets progressively sharper the more we thank, the more we see to be thankful for. Gratitude is the lens that reveals God's incredible grace at work, and it is the key to tangible, everyday joy.
So look around. Start to notice. Start to count. Learn to look at your life through the lens of gratitude.
As you reflect on the goodness of God, consider the Hebrew people's prayer practice — what they call "the 18s," or the eighteen benedictions. The word bene in Latin means good, and dictions means words — so it just means "the good words," or what the Jewish people would call blessings.
Every day they would stop along in the day and just thank God for what He had given them. They'd stop and pray things like:
Blessed are You, Lord, for You have given us food to eat. Blessed are You, Lord, for You have given us clothes to wear.
They prayed these benedictions — these good words — because they realized that God was a benevolent benefactor, that He was the source of everything that is good. They knew that they were just the beneficiaries of God's good gifts. They were the ones who were blessed by God with life and shelter and with a planet that provided everything they needed. And they had a name for these good gifts that God had given them — they called them his benefits.```
In Psalm 103, David writes about this:
Praise the Lord, oh my soul, all my inmost being, praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all of His benefits — who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things.
The more I chewed on that passage, the more I realized: I don't deserve anything good from God. I just don't. But He is the super generous benefactor, and I am simply the beneficiary. So I'm just not going to compare my life, my money, my looks, my talents, my stuff with other people. And I'm not going to worry about my volatile 401(k) or the rising cost of health care, because I already have amazing benefits.
All throughout the Old Testament, you see the nation of Israel stopping to stack up rocks. They would make these altars as a place of remembrance for what God had done in their lives. Throughout the years, as a family was traveling through the countryside, they might come up on a broken-down pile of stones, and a kid would ask, "Hey mom, hey dad, what's this stack of rocks? What is that?" And it would give a parent the opportunity to say, "Oh, let me tell you about God's goodness," and tell a story about how faithful God had been.
When you and I stop stacking stones, we stop telling stories of God's goodness. I'm not suggesting you run out of here and go build a stone altar, but maybe you could:
One of the ways to develop a heart of gratitude, and to climb out of that comparison trap, is to put yourself out in service. If you have trouble with envy over other people's homes, maybe go work in a homeless shelter for a little while. Maybe go on one of our global mission trips, or spend a few Saturdays working in the food pantry, and just see if your perspective doesn't start to change.
If you look at other people and think, "Man, if I just had that body, then I'd be somebody," then maybe you should volunteer at the nursing home, or volunteer to serve at our Sore Prom for folks with disabilities. It'll take your eyes off of you and onto the needs of other people — and onto the goodness of God.
So what do you say — let's get after this: resist comparisons, and respond with love.
