Envy

Well, good morning. It's good to be back. Sorry, I missed last Sunday. I had a migraine headache. I woke up with a migraine headache and realized very quickly that between the headache and feeling sick to my stomach that I was not going to be able to preach. I thought I might be able to get started, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish. Some of you called me this week and expressed your sympathy for me and with me and I appreciate that. And I know some of you were concerned that I wasn't going to get a chance to watch the Super Bowl last Sunday, but I assure you that I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of watching football Sunday. That was a joke. We need a laugh track, I think. Andy, can you pull up a laugh track back there? But at any rate, it's good to be back in the House of God and good to be with the people of God this morning. You know, I was thinking about the sermon series and of course I've now had two weeks to think about a sermon, which is kind of remarkable in itself. Usually you only have a week to think about it at the very most. I called Mike Beatis last Sunday morning about 7.30 and he got up here with less than an hour, I think, or two hours to think about the sermon. And he also had Sunday school and all the rest of the duties that go along with the Sunday morning. And I heard Mike hit it out of the park, so we appreciate that, Mike. Thank you very much for all your service to us. But when you have two weeks to think about a sermon, that's almost too long to think about it in one respect. But as I was thinking about this this morning, and as I was sitting back there as we were beginning to worship this morning, and I was thinking, you know, especially with respect to the last song we were just saying. And for some reason my mind went back to a story I heard about Isaac Newton. And one of the privileges that I had a couple years ago was to go to Westminster Cathedral and actually see the grave where Newton is buried. And of course if you know anything about Sir Isaac Newton, you know that he was a world famous, a world class scientist. And that he thought a lot about the created order, the cosmos, the universe. And what a lot of people don't know about Newton is that not only was he a great scientist, but he was a great theologian. And he did probably more writing on the area of theology than he ever did in the area of science. And so here's a man that you know just really had a firm grasp on, you know, both God as the creator and the created order. And he wrote a lot about both those things. But I remember hearing a story about Newton one time when he was in his house. And he was writing, he was contemplating all these wonderful things about the cosmos. And you know he worked on this table and it was lit by a candle and he was working by candle light. And Newton was very fond of animals and he had a dog that was his pet, it was his sort of trusty companion. And as Newton was sitting at the table working on the mysteries if you will of the universe. And had all of his work laying out there, the dog bumped the table and the candle fell over and it burned up. It started to fire that burned up all of his works. Indeed, I think it burned its house down. And here was this man's sort of whole life's work sitting on this table. And from one bump by his trustworthy companion, that life's work disappeared into smoke. And after this was all over, Newton turned to his dog and he said, you will never, ever know what you have done. And I thought about that in relationship to us and our sin. You know that no matter how much we apprehend, no matter how much we think we understand our sin, the truth of the matter is is that we will never, ever know. This is what we sang this morning, isn't it? I'll never know how much it to see my sin upon the truth of the matter is, is that the depth of our sin, the profoundness of our sin, is something that we will never, ever know, will never really be able to grasp, will never really be able to comprehend what our sin has done, that our sin has put Jesus on the cross. And you know, I thought about the way that our whole service is arranged. As I was sitting back to this morning, I was looking at the bolt and I was following our service in the order of our service. God calls us to worship. He calls us into His presence. We come here to worship Him. We come here to praise Him. We come here to exalt Him. We come here to give Him glory and honor to lift His name up. He calls us unto Himself in worship. And then we have our prayer of confession. That place where we go to make confession of our sin, to corporately confess our sin, and then secondly to privately confess our sin. And I was thinking, you know, why do we do this? Do we do this because we have some morbid preoccupation with our sin? No. We do this because we recognize that we have offended a thrice holy God. We do this because we understand that we could never know how much it cost to see our sin upon the cross. So together collectively, corporately, we confess our sin because we know that we don't really know. We have an inkling. We have whatever God has been pleased to illuminate for us in the Scriptures to show us our sinfulness. Yes, we are the people of God and yes, our eyes have been opened. We sing about that amazing grace, how sweet the sound I once was lost. But now I'm found I was blind. But now I see, but even in seeing, we recognize that even in God's grace to open our eyes, there is still so much that we cannot see, so much that we cannot grasp, so much that we will never truly and really know how much our sin. So we should go, we started a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. And again, we don't do this because we have this morbid preoccupation with sin, but rather because we don't know the profound depth of our sin. And we do this and we study this because we want to fully be able to appreciate what happened on the cross. And that's why we go to that next step in our worship service, the assurance of pardon. You see, you can't fully appreciate the pardon that Christ won for us on the cross without having some appreciation for what you sin. And so we talk about sin here, not because we have this morbid preoccupation with it, not because we're dark, not because we don't, we can't stand the thought of having joy or gladness or delight. No, to the contrary, we of all people have joy and gladness and delight because we can see by God's grace our sinfulness and because we can see our sinfulness and because we appreciate it for what it is, we can appreciate the pardon that we have received through the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And so as we look at these seven deadly sins so far, we've looked at two of them. We have looked at pride and we have looked at greed. And this morning I want us to look at envy, not again, not just to look at envy, but so that we can appreciate the assurance of our pardon, so that we can appreciate the fullness of the grace, the amazing grace that God has bestowed upon us. And I want us to look at envy coming from Genesis chapter 4, very familiar passage of Scripture for us in Genesis chapter 4. It's the story of Cain and Abel. And if you're like me when you first think of the story, envy is not the thing that pops right into your head. Maybe anger, because it says Cain was angry, maybe murder because we know that Cain killed his brother. He murdered his brother, maybe Fratricide, which is more precise definition of what it means to murder one's brother. Those sins may pop into your head, but envy doesn't, isn't the first thing that comes into your mind? Is it when you think of the story of Cain and Abel? And as I was thinking about this text over the last couple weeks, one of the things that I thought about was that's just like the sin of envy. Not one of those explicit sins. In fact, one thinker whose name is Gonzalo Fernandez says that envy is the only sin that we never admit. And if you think about it, you're greed and lust and gluttony and laziness and all these other sins, including the seven deadly sins, those boast about them in our culture today. But envy is the one sin that we never admit. It lurks in the shadows, it hides in the darkness, it resides in the depth of the human heart. Just as we don't see it in our text, we don't really see it in our lives, but I want to submit to you that it is there nevertheless. And if we look at this text, we will see envy. And the first place we see it is someplace where you might not expect to see it. You see it in a birth announcement. Here is the first birth announcement, if you will, in the Bible. And there is a hint of envy in the birth announcement itself. It says Adam lay with his wife even, verse 1 of chapter 4 in the book of Genesis, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man. Later, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now the word Cain, the name Cain means to acquire, to get, to possess. And there is a play on words here. On the one hand, Eve is saying, with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man child. That is, I have possessed a man child. I have acquired a man child. I have gotten a man from the Lord.

But the tragedy is that Cain ends up living up to the meaning of his name. His name means to acquire, to get, to possess. And Cain ends up living up to his name. And Eugene Rosenstock, who see has said that the history of the world is in names. You ever thought about that? The history of the world is in names. And indeed, the history of the Bible is in names, isn't it? Think about how you know your Bible. You know your Bible largely through names. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Jesus. See, in each of those names is almost an entire narrative, entire history. The history of the Bible is in names. Think of it this way, too. We think of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Saul and David, Herod and Jesus. See, not only is biblical history written in names, but if you will, the history of envy is written in those names. And every one of those stories, and every one of those couplets, and every one of those pairings of those names, you see the sin of envy. If you think about the importance of names, think about what God did when He created the earth, the heavens and the earth. One of the first things that God does when He creates heaven and earth, and everything in it, and man and woman, male and female. One of the first things He does is He names very first things that happens in Scripture, is naming. And then what does Adam do? Adam begins to name all the creatures that the Lord brings beforehand. And what happens here, right? Chapter 4, verse 1, Adam and Eve are naming their children. Fast forward to the end of the ages, fast forward from creation, all the way to the consummation, the fullness of time, the end of all things, the new heavens, the new earth. And what do we find out? We find out that we have received what? A secret name, a name only known by God, right? Revealed to us only that. And then think about Him between times, the time in which we live, the time, if you will, between Jesus' first coming and Jesus' second coming. We come to faith, or we have a child, and we bring that child up here, what? To be baptized. And what is baptism, primarily? Edmund Clowney says that baptism is a naming ceremony. It is a ceremony in which we receive our family, the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. O Baptist minister named Herbert said that when he was exhorting his fellow pastors in the 16th century, he encouraged them and warned them not to accept any frivolous names. For baptism. What do we say to people when we bring up, when we bring, that are bringing their infants out to be baptized? The minister asked them a question. We ask them, what is the Christian name that you give this child? There is a section in the newspaper, I don't know if you're aware of it, but I was not aware of it until last week. But there's a section in the Orlando sentence called ticked off. Have you ever seen it? You ever read it? Ticked off. And well, of course, you don't probably don't want to admit the reading it because it's in the section called the gossip columns, but that's another story. Could you play the live track, Andy? We're obviously having some communication problems there. And in that column, people write in to say what they're ticked off about. Somebody cut you off in traffic, the way people drive in the parking lot. Somebody wrote that they were ticked off because they saw somebody's husband cheating on somebody's wife in their neighborhood and so on and so forth. One person wrote in that they were ticked off about a birth announcement because the parents had the audacity to name their child God Satan. Can you imagine? God Satan. See, names means something, don't they? They not only tell us what we are, they tell us what our parents hope to become. When you bring your child up here for baptism, it's a way of hoping. It's a way of expressing your vision for that child's life. Name means something and here, right in the beginning, in this birth announcement, what you see is a hint of envy. Here's a child that is born, that is going to live out the fulfillment of his name to acquire, to get and to possess. The second thing that you see here, not only do you see it hinted in the naming of the child and the birth announcement, but you also see it where you don't expect to see it. Namely, you see it in church. Now Abel kept the flocks and Cain worked the soil and the course of time he brought some of the fruits but Abel brought the fat portions from his flock. The Lord looked with favor upon Abel and his offering but Cain and his offering did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. You know, we had said when we talked about greed, that greed was first and foremost a worship disorder. And see what you see here is that something is wrong between Cain and Abel because something is wrong between Cain and God. As Bruce Walkie has said, Cain fails at the altar and because he fails at the altar, he fails in the field. But with the fail at the altar is to fail in one respect at life. If your worship is at right, then nothing else is right. If your relationship with God isn't right, then nothing else is right. And so that has to be right first. And of course this is what we see over and over and over again, isn't it? And as we look at the world, as we look at culture, as we look at our own lives, as we look at what's going on, you know, and people's personal lives. You know, I've been doing this now for 20 some years, I think, 20 some years. And I have to tell you that 95% of the time when people come for counseling or for advice when they come and are looking for answers because if something that's gone wrong with their children or something that's gone wrong with their marriage or something that's gone wrong at work or at school or any other area or arena of life that you can think of, it seems to me that most of the time is because something has gotten out of order in their lives. They've gotten their priorities mixed up and envy just like every other sin is a form of worship, just somehow we get it wrong. And if you get that wrong beloved, then things get out of whack throughout all your life. And what I want you to see here is that Cain's problem is not first and foremost with able. Cain's problem is first and foremost with God. I don't think Cain is suffering from man envy, I think that Cain is suffering from God envy. I think like, and this is true of really all sin, isn't it? That all sin is an attempt to make yourself the God of your life as one old Puritan said, it's a secret kind of atheism, unbelief. It wants to establish the self as the one who is in control, the self as the one who has power. And then if you look, not only that, you see it in the birth announcement, you see it at church, if you will, but then you see it crouching behind the door as it were. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. There are desires to have you, but you must master. Here's a picture of sin as a beast crouching so it can be hidden from its prey. Have you ever watched animals do this before? There's a cat in my neighborhood and occasionally I've been working at my desk in my office and I look out and I'll see this cat coming up on a bird. There's a cat do. I've seen big cats out in the wild. I've seen lions and cheetahs do the same thing. They crouch down low so they can surprise their prey. They hide. It's about stuff. It's about being out of sight, hiding behind the door, hiding around the corner. Have you ever gone home and had the sense that somebody was there in your house? Have you ever had that feeling? I don't know where that comes from but every once in a while you'll go home and you pull in and you unlock your door and you go in and you have this sense that somebody is in your house? Have you ever done that before? You start looking around, right? You look at the obvious places, you pull the shower curtain back, under the bed, behind the doors. Have you ever done that? But what do you usually find? Nothing there. There's a similar thing going on here. Sin is hiding. You have the sense that it's there but you don't see it and the sin of envy is most like that. Of all the other sins, the sin of envy hides I think better than any other sin. And so we know what happens, right? Sin is crouching at the door. And you know our failure to acknowledge sin in this time in which we live is an example of the hidden nature of sin. It's hiding. It's hiding in the intellectualism of the 1920th and 21st century. It's hiding in the therapeutic nature of our culture. One of the best books I think written about sin was written by Carl Meninger, a psychologist of the 20th century, who wrote a book said, whatever happened to sin. Where did it go? What became of it? Is it just that we're sick or criminal, emotionally disturbed? Whatever happened to sin? That's what happened to it. It's crouching. And our fail to recognize that about sin makes us very susceptible to it. And no sin crouches lower. No sin is more stealth. No sin is hiding better than the sin of envy. Now, Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field and while they were there in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Brother against brother, sibling rivalry, fracture side, whatever you want to call it, homicide. In one sense it was theoside. Cain didn't just want to kill his brother he wanted to kill God, but he couldn't, so he killed the image of God. Kill the next best thing. You know, I've been thinking we've been praying for Kenya for several weeks now since December 27th and they held their elections and we have several church planters over there, several pastors that we support. What's the problem in Kenya? Tell you what the problem is. You've got two brothers, one called Luel and the other called Kakuyu. And one is a minority and the other is majority and the minority is envious of the majority. And here is what was almost a success story for Africa. Here is the most Christianized nation of the entire continent. Here is the most progressive, if you will, technologically and sociologically. You know, as I talked to my friends over there for the last ten years, what they've been telling me is they are about one generation to be free from tribalism altogether. And then they had this one election where it all goes bad and what happens? The place explodes. Do you think it just exploded because of that one event? You think that's all it was to it is that they had this one event, they had this close election and suddenly it just explodes. No, it has exploded because they have been nursing their envy for decades since the end of colonialism. The other tribe has been nursing its envy of the other tribe and now this is just the straw that broke the camel's back and suddenly now because they've been nursing that envy is exploded into murder. And blood if you trace the history of the world, what do you think fascism was? The nation of Germany nursing its envy of the rest of the Europe for the way it was treated after World War I. That's what fascism was. What do you think communism is? If the sin of capitalism is greed, then the sin of communism is envy. Class envy. What do you think terrorism is? There's maybe a lot of reasons for terrorism but I think at the root of terrorism is one people envying another people. And here's the thing about envy. Envy doesn't just want what the other person has. It wants the other person not to have it. And it doesn't care what it costs. That's why they will so easily give up their lives to take yours and to take what you have. That was true in fascism is true in communism is true in terrorism and it's true in our own hearts. It's the inability to be happy for the approval, the acceptance and the favor of your brother. It's to sorrow that they have been blessed or that they have been favored. And you can pretty much trace the whole history of the entire of the world through this one sin. And as this story tells us, it can happen in the family. But now it happens in the family, it happens on the job. When somebody gets a promotion or somebody gets favor from your boss or your supervisor or your CEO, there it is. It happens in school when a professor seems to favor someone else over you. It happens all over the place. I just got to call this past week from two calls I got. One was because somebody got blessed and the other was because somebody was disappointed that they were blessed and that they were not blessed. It's right there. Pilot sought for what it was, didn't he? He said the Jews at hand, Jesus over to him. Why? Because of envy. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do give you thanks for your word. It's the only word that matters. We ask God that your word would now penetrate the depths of our heart that it would expel them of the sin in our hearts and that it would expel us of the envy that is in our hearts. This can only be done and only be accomplished through the personal work of Jesus Christ. And we ask, Lord, that that work would be done this morning in His name. Let's stand together as we respond to this song.