Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for this new day. Thank God it is Monday. I trust you had a blessed day in the Lord in His house with His people. The Lord blessed us wonderfully. It is a great joy to serve Jesus. One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Genesis 37- how the brothers of Joseph were consumed with envy towards their brother Joseph. They hated him and conspired to kill him.
In the movie Amadeus we meet a young Mozart who was blessed with talents which set him apart from all his contemporaries. Mozart's music was complex, moving, exciting, inspired. It was clear that God had endowed him with extraordinary gifts. Nevertheless, Mozart was also immature, vulgar, obscene, lustful, and irreverent. The other main character was Antonio Salieri, court musician to the King of Austria. Salieri had dedicated himself to serving God, promising to write music that would glorify the heavenly Father. From his youth on he dreamed of composing music that would lift the hearts of people heavenward. Salieri was committed to serving God and asked only that God might permit him to create the kind of music that would reflect His glory. However, God had not endowed Salieri with such gifts. Salieri was able to compose pleasant tunes, but not masterpieces. He could compose music which would entertain its hearers, but never immortalize its composer. Despite his immense popularity, Salieri knew that his was a mediocre talent and that his uninspired work would soon be forgotten. Salieri sat through Mozart's concerts and programs and the beautiful music sent tears down his cheeks. Oh if only he could compose such music! But it was not to be. He didn't have Mozart's talents. The story line shows us what happens when a good God-fearing man like Salieri is filled with envy. We have to say that Salieri was consumed by his envy of Mozart's talents. Salieri's envy led him to scheme and plot against Mozart at every turn. He stole Mozart's compositions, bribed Mozart's servants, and informed the king about Mozart's indiscretions. Salieri's envy eventually drove him to insanity. The movie ends with Salieri cursing God for denying him the talent which He gave to Mozart. Scripture tells us that envy is our natural, sinful desire (Gal 5:19). It is in our DNA. It is our natural, sinful desire to have and to keep for ourselves alone what others have. It is our natural, sinful desire to hate and despise the person or persons who have what we want. Because of this, envy is found everywhere. It is found in the church. It is found in the world. None of us, I'm afraid, are immune to it. It can strike any of us at any time.
In more than one place the Bible warns us against the sin of envy. It tells us about the consequences of envy and generating envy:
(Job 5:2) Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple. (Prov 14:30) A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. (James 3:16) For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
To put it simply, envy is destructive. The church fathers of the Middle Ages tell us that envy is one of the seven deadly sins that can lead to the everlasting destruction of hell fire. As the story of Salieri shows us, unchecked envy can alienate a person from God as well as his fellow man. And, Paul tells us those who envy "will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:21). We see unchecked envy in the story of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph's brothers envied his coat, they envied his dreams of position and grandeur, they envied the love their father gave him. Joseph's brothers envied him. So what did they do? Scripture tells us "they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him." And, when given the opportunity, they sold him as a slave to Ishmaelite traders. Their envy resulted in years of unresolved grief, pain, and anguish for their father and almost brought him to a premature grave. The Bible abounds with other examples of envy and its dire consequences. I think of the story of Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel because he envied the favor which Abel gained in the eyes of God (Gen 4:5). The plans of Saul to kill David resulted from Saul's envy of David's popularity (1 Sam 18:6-9). And, it is out of envy that the scribes and Pharisees had Jesus crucified (Mt 27:18). Envy is evil. Envy is destructive. As Paul makes clear in Galatians 5, envy is one of the acts of our old sinful nature. But as people who have been born-again by the Spirit of God, we are not to live according to our earthly nature; rather, we are to live and walk according to the Spirit. We have died with Christ and have been raised with Christ. Therefore, we are to consider ourselves as having died to sin and been raised to righteousness (Rom 6:1-14; Gal 5:16-26; Eph 4:17-5:21; Col 3:1-17). This means, congregation, that envy has no place in our lives and ought not to be found in the church.We are to overcome envy. How are we to do that? When all around us people have or possess what we want for ourselves, how can we keep ourselves from envy? The first and foremost thing we can mention is the tools the Holy Spirit uses to make us more and more like Christ. For it is only by becoming like Christ that we can leave behind us the sins which are so deadly to our souls.
A good contemporary example here is Joni Eareckson Tada whom I had the great joy of meeting in person in Baltimore, in 1982. She became a quadriplegic as the result of a diving accident. A life of sports, travel, and fun seemed to be over. The promise of a professional career and a happy marriage appeared to be gone. She was confined to a wheelchair for life instead of being free to live the happy life she had anticipated for herself.How easy it would have been for Joni to envy others who were able-bodied. How easy it would have been for Joni's envy to make her into an angry, bitter person.Instead of looking at and envying those around her, Joni looked at herself and counted the many blessings and opportunities God had given her. She discovered that because of the horrible thing which had happened to her, she was equipped to minister to other handicapped persons in a way that is impossible for those who are not disabled. Furthermore, she has been a source of inspiration and perseverance for countless believers facing trials and afflictions.
In Jesus our Saviour,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvuLJ3z_dsk
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