The Dangers of Envy
Download MP3I invite you to open your bibles to James chapter 3. James chapter 3. We'll begin reading in verse 13. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.
Jeffrey Heine:But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Jeffrey Heine:What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this? That your passions are at war within you. You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
Jeffrey Heine:You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulteress people, Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Jeffrey Heine:Pray with me. Our father, we are thankful for the opportunity to come up, come here in this room and open up your word to hear from you. We pray that your spirit would come, Open up dull minds, crack open hardened hearts. Lord, help us to hear things in this moment that will be difficult to hear. I pray there would not be a room in our hearts, Lord, that right now in this moment, we say mine, it's off limits.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord in this moment, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. The epistle of James is perhaps the most practical book in the new testament.
Jeffrey Heine:As a matter of fact, it reads a lot like the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, with all of the instructions, all of the words of wisdom, how we're to live our life instructions. It's also similar to the book of Proverbs. It's similar to the book of Proverbs. James understands wisdom to have the same function as, the holy spirit. For James, he will present over and over again this issue of wisdom coming up in places you would think you would mention the Holy Spirit, but James actually never mentions the Holy Spirit in his letter, which is extremely rare, for a new testament letter.
Jeffrey Heine:It's extremely, you know, just, hard to believe in a letter that's about how to live a holy life that James would not mention the holy spirit. But what he does do instead is he mentions a whole lot about wisdom. He talks about wisdom the same way that the apostle Paul will talk about the spirit. Like the holy spirit, James says that wisdom comes down from above. Like the holy spirit is received by faith.
Jeffrey Heine:And just like we are to continually ask to be filled with the spirit, we are also to continually ask to be filled with wisdom. And then look at James 3 17. When he says, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, and good fruits, impartial, and sincere. Sounds a awful lot bit like Galatians 5 when Paul is listening to fruits of not wisdom, but the fruits of the spirit. And so, I wouldn't say James uses wisdom in the spirit exactly the same way, but they certainly have the same function in James.
Jeffrey Heine:And I, and I bring this up, not just to throw you a little informational tidbit about James, But I think it's helpful when thinking about the Spirit to understand one of the main functions that the Holy Spirit has in our life, And that is wisdom. I have found that when most Christians pray to be filled with more of the spirit, Generally, what they are praying for is, is some kind of super experience, maybe some feeling, maybe an extra, you know, chill bump during a song. They they, they want something like that. And that's what they mean by being filled with the spirit. But here, the holy spirit functions as wisdom, a living wisdom to us, an act of working wisdom in us.
Jeffrey Heine:Both wisdom and the Holy Spirit give us not only the ability to understand the truth, but the ability to apply the truth. And so, we need wisdom to apply the gospel to our marriages, apply the gospel to our jobs, apply the gospel to all of our relationships, apply the gospel to how we are to suffer, how we are to treat the poor. We need wisdom for that. Now, in this section of James here, James contrasts the wisdom of God with the wisdom of the world. He says the wisdom of the world, if you want to paraphrase it, it's it's pretty much it's survival of the fittest.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? It's very Darwinian. The wisdom of the world says, it's a dog eat dog world. And so if to get ahead in life, if you need to slander somebody, you slander somebody. If you need to step over others, it's fine.
Jeffrey Heine:Step over bodies, get bloody, do whatever it takes to advance. And James says that is not holy living. That is not wise. And he says, this wisdom of the world, this way of walking through life is actually working its way into the church. Look at verse 12 in chapter 4.
Jeffrey Heine:What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. I love it when we, when we idealize the early New Testament church. You know, people always, like, I wanna get back to what the church was like in the beginning.
Jeffrey Heine:Those very, you know, those very first moments. Let's get back to the church in Acts. Well, James is the oldest, book we have in the New Testament. Here, we're getting the earliest picture we have of the church, and we see it looks a lot like the church I grew up in. It's full of jealousy, envy, quarreling, fighting, people hating one another.
Jeffrey Heine:James lets us know right here that there's no such thing as a perfect church. If you ever find a perfect church, don't ever go there because you will run it the moment you walk in with your sinfulness. Stay away. There is no perfect church. But hear me on this.
Jeffrey Heine:If the church is truly functioning the church is supposed to function, there will always be sinners in the church. You will always be drawing sinners into the church because that is what Jesus did. The gospel attracts sinners, not the righteous. Okay? So it's those who have made a big mess of their life, who are more likely to want to hear the gospel.
Jeffrey Heine:The morally pure, the morally righteous out there don't want any part of the gospel. And so, we should expect that actually inside these walls, our morals will actually be worse at times than those outside these walls. We will struggle more with fighting, more with jealousy, more with lying, more with pride than those outside, because we are drawn to the gospel because of our fallenness and our sinfulness. I like to think of it this way, just like a hospital will contain more seriously sick people in its doors than outside the doors. The church will contain more serious centers inside of its doors than outside of its doors.
Jeffrey Heine:But also, like a hospital, we receive the medicine of the gospel that transforms us into a place of sickness, into a place of health. That's what sanctification is. We should be growing. We should be healing. We should be coming more filled with the holy spirit, but this can take time.
Jeffrey Heine:It's taking time in James. As I was looking at this, I I actually had a strange thought. I feel actually a lot of comfort in knowing that the early church was this way, and that had a lot of fighting, had a lot of quarreling, and the church has always felt that for 2000 years, always experienced that because it lets me know that God's the one in charge of the church. Because if a church that says we need to be all of these things and then constantly fails at doing it is still around after 2000 years. It shows that it's not depending upon man, it's depending on God to preserve and take care of the church, and I find a great comfort in that.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's look at all this fighting going on here in James. He says it's a result of jealousy and selfish ambition. Look at chapter 3 verse 14. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, you just gotta love James. He doesn't mince words. He's like, hey, jealousy, selfish ambition, they're demonic, okay? They're from the devil himself. This is his way of saying when those things are at play in the church, that is the way that the devil enters into the church and tries to destroy it is through jealousy and selfish ambition.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, let me define jealousy here. Some of your Bibles might use the word envy here instead of jealousy. And I actually think that's a better translation, because envy is what's being talked about. Jealousy can be used at times positively. You know, a husband could be jealous for the love of his wife.
Jeffrey Heine:That's a positive, good thing. But when jealousy is negative, that's envy, and this is a negative evil jealousy. So, so envy is a good word and appropriate word used here. And often in the New Testament, the words for envy and the words for jealousy are used interchangeably. So let me define envy.
Jeffrey Heine:It's envy is wanting someone else's life. It's when you obsess over what you don't have, but want to have. In chapter 4 verse 2, it's translated as coveting. When it says you covet, it's the same word there as jealousy, same word as envy, but it goes even farther than just what we think of as coveting because envy doesn't just want somebody else's life. It wants their life ruined.
Jeffrey Heine:Doesn't just want it. It it it wants their life destroyed as well. It resents their life. When envy sees someone else having a better life, it can never ever rejoice with that person. It weeps over what they see as their own miserable life, and it's bitter at what they see at that other person's life.
Jeffrey Heine:I've heard envy defined as the opposite of praise. Envy's only happy at another person's unhappiness. Envy's only happiness comes when somebody else's happiness is utterly destroyed. So let me kind of paint a picture of what envy looks like. Envy would look at a wealthy man with a nice car, the nice wife, the, a very easy life, and he would look at it and he would really want it.
Jeffrey Heine:He would want it so much it would make him sick. He wants it so bad, but he can't have it. But then let's say the stock market crashes and that person loses all of their wealth. They are so happy. They're just happy that another person's life was destroyed.
Jeffrey Heine:That's envy. When the perfect couple that, you know, you know, that perfect couple who lives the perfect life you find out is getting a divorce and you secretly feel a little good about it. That's envy. When your friend uses the extra vacation time that they have to go to the beach while you're at work and you find yourself looking at the weather at the beach and hoping it will rain? I've never done that.
Jeffrey Heine:That's envy. You you you want the other person who's got something better than you. You want it to kinda be a little miserable for them. You're only happy at their unhappiness. I read a parable recently to describe envy and it goes like this.
Jeffrey Heine:There are 2 neighbors who live in a grand kingdom and for some reason, the king summons these 2 neighbors before him and says, I'm going to, I'm going to grant each one of you one wish. There's only one condition though, the person whose wish I grant first, the person who comes second gets double your wish. Well, the man he asked first, what do you desire? The guy was a really envious man, had always been envious of his neighbor. And so instantly he's in this quandary.
Jeffrey Heine:He's like, you know, I'd love to ask for a mansion, but then my neighbor's going to get 2 mansions. He just thinks about it for a while and he doesn't know what to do. And finally he says, I'd like you to pluck out one of my eyes, pluck out one of my eyes. Great story of envy. Your only happiness comes when somebody else's lives, life is utterly destroyed.
Jeffrey Heine:A study done by a man named Robert Frank. It's a, it's a little known book named Luxury Fever. I don't really recommend reading it, but it's got, it's got a good chapter or 2, but he showed that the majority of people actually struggle with this kind of envy. He, he did a survey in which he gave people 2 choices. He said, here's choice a, you can make $80,000, $85,000 and everyone else on your street will make $75,000 that's choice a choice B is you can make a $100,000 but everybody else on your street will make $125,000 Which will you choose?
Jeffrey Heine:The vast majority of people chose the 85,000 because they couldn't stand the thought of other people surpassing them. They would rather them have less even at their own expense. Envy is only happy when others fall and are unhappy. There's a lot of places you could go in scripture that deal with envy. I think perhaps the best is Psalm 73.
Jeffrey Heine:Psalm 73 is a Psalm that deals with envy and it reveals much of the things we envy over. You can mark it and read it later. I'm gonna just quote you a couple of verses. This is what he says. He says, but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled.
Jeffrey Heine:My steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant. When I saw the prosperity of the wicked, For they have no pangs until death? Their bodies are fat and sleek. That was a good thing. They're not in trouble as others are.
Jeffrey Heine:Stricken like the rest of mankind. And then later on he says, they're they're always at ease. They they seem to always increase in riches. And so, here you have the psalmist envying everything about another person's life. He is envying their wealth, their looks, and their, you know, healthy, sleek bodies.
Jeffrey Heine:He's envying the fact that they've just had a more easy life than him. He doesn't like it. And he works like this. You know, if you go, if you go to the gym to work out women, I know that when you go to the gym, you spend a lot of time watching other women. I've heard.
Jeffrey Heine:And and and you can see that. And and so, you know, one one woman, you you notice another woman there who's got a huge rock on her finger. You know, it's it's it's so large. She has to go down and wait just just to lift it up. She's she's wearing, you know, those super trendy workout clothes like the Omega sign.
Jeffrey Heine:Is it a, is it a Lululemon's? Yeah. You know, at the summit, you know, and the, the, the outfit she is wearing, you realize the outfit she's just going in to get sweaty in will cost more than your nicest outfit you have at home. To make it all worse, she looks really good in it. Really good.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, she's slender, she just looks great, and as she's sitting there laughing with her personal trainer, you you begin to have these thoughts. These emotions come up and you begin thinking, shoot, I'd look like that too. I mean, if, if I had a life like that, if, you know, if I could get my nanny to come and watch all of my kids while I got to go and sip my lattes and then maybe go work out at the gym, I could look like that. If I had made to come in and do all of my laundry and all my vacuuming, if I didn't have to cook my own meals. Sure.
Jeffrey Heine:If I had all of this extra money and could go and buy a cute little outfit like that, I would look fine too. Envy. That's envy. And we we we've all been there. Envy is so pervasive.
Jeffrey Heine:Did you know that every known language, both past and present, has a word for envy. Every culture, every people group, and every time period has had a word for envy. They've all struggled with it. You could say it's actually part of our human nature. One of the most fundamental parts of our human nature, and James is going to allude to this later, but here is the dangerous part about envy.
Jeffrey Heine:No one wants to admit it. I mean, it's got such a stigma to it. Nobody wants to say that they are envious. It is perhaps the hardest sin to confess. Joseph Epstein, he wrote this book on envy.
Jeffrey Heine:He wrote it for a series, the New York Public Library and Oxford Press did a series together on the 7 deadly sins, they're outstanding, I owe a lot of what I've come to think about envy to this book and to this man, other articles he has written. But hear what he says in this book about envy. Of the 7 deadly sins, envy surely is the one that people are least likely to want to own up to. For to do so is to admit that one is probably ungenerous, mean, and even small hearted. Envy is certainly a charged, supercharged word.
Jeffrey Heine:It's one of the few words left in the English language that retains the power to scandalize. Most of us could still sleep decently if accused of any of the other 6 deadly sins. But to be accused of envy would be a serious distressing. So clearly does an accusation go directly to character. Although the other deadly sins all have the disapproval of religion, None of them so deeply demean, diminish, and disqualify a person.
Jeffrey Heine:Not least of its stigmata is the pettiness implicit and envy. That was incredible insight. Nobody wants to admit, confess that they're envious because that would be con confessing, you're petty, small hearted. So you just refuse to acknowledge it. You know that friend of yours that you have who is a good friend, but for some reason, really, really gets under your skin?
Jeffrey Heine:Do you do you know what I'm talking about? You've tried everything, but they they still really get under your skin. Other people can talk about things like buying a new sofa, and and and they could tell you that story and you could be happy for them. This person tells you that they bought a new sofa and it irritates the heck out of you. Other people can talk about how much they love their family or how their spouse is so helpful and you're happy, but when this person tells you that your blood boils and they're your friend.
Jeffrey Heine:Other people can talk maybe about how difficult their life is, And you can hurt for them. You can feel sorrow for them. But when this person talks about how difficult their life is, you get hypercritical, judgmental. You say, that's right. You're reaping what you sowed.
Jeffrey Heine:That's envy. Let me tell you, it is so hard to confess because it shows how petty and small hearted you are. It is hard to get rid of because it hides so well. It hides from yourself and it hides from others. Let me tell you how we hide it from others.
Jeffrey Heine:Often, we hide envy by using false admiration or flattery. Envy hides behind words of admiration and flattery. So, so that person, you know, who I just mentioned, where instantly there was a person who popped up in your mind who greatly annoys you, even though you're, they're your good friend. That person likely is the one you compliment more than anybody else. The closer you are to somebody, actually, the more envious you can become of their life.
Jeffrey Heine:It's hard to envy somebody on the other side of the world, but somebody who's so close to you, you begin to get envious. A lot of times you grow close to them because you want those things and you want to see them fall. So, we shower these people with flatter. We, we say things like, you have such smart children. They certainly take after you.
Jeffrey Heine:That's not at all what you're thinking. Or you can say, oh, how wonderful that you get to go on another vacation. That's, that's great. Nobody deserves that more than you. Nobody.
Jeffrey Heine:You work so, so hard. That husband of yours is coming home early from work again to help you out with the kids. Wow. Well, you know, yes, you you do work really hard and you deserve that. We we flatter to hide our envy.
Jeffrey Heine:We also hide it from ourselves. Something the Lord has been exposing to me is how I hide this from myself. And one of the ways we hide it from ourselves is we say that we are passionate about justice. That's what really this is about. It's about justice.
Jeffrey Heine:And and let me say justice and envy are very closely related, very closely related because the rallying cry of envy is this, why not me? Why did they get this and I didn't? It's not fair. Why not me? This isn't just.
Jeffrey Heine:That's the rallying cry of envy. Why do I not lose weight when I eat less? I work out more than my friend. Why? It's not fair.
Jeffrey Heine:Why was that person born with parents who could pay for their entire college education, and I had to work tooth and nail to to pay my way through? Why? It's not fair. Why didn't I just get that break that that my colleague got? We ask these questions not because we actually care about justice though.
Jeffrey Heine:That's the disguise we put on envy. We just don't wanna admit it. We say we're just concerned about fairness, but it's not the truth at all. And have you ever noticed that you were never envious over someone who's worked really, really hard and has risen up and they've worked for everything they have received in life? You are rarely, if ever, envious of those people.
Jeffrey Heine:Because justice is out of play, can't say that's not fair. They worked really hard. It's the people who just got lucky. Ticks you off. The people who were just born with a perfect body, born with a great face that will open up every job opportunity in the world, you know, or you have to fight tooth and nail for it?
Jeffrey Heine:The people who were born into wealth, given a car. The people who just came into a great inheritance, did nothing to deserve it. And you're like, why not me? That's where envy comes from. And you try to tell yourself it's really all about justice.
Jeffrey Heine:Let me read you a section that, Joseph Epstein says explaining this. It says, you see something and you want it. You feel it's only sensible and right that it belonged to you and not for the person who has it. And once the injustice of the other person having it is established, and this usually doesn't take long, You think of his unworthiness. His unworthiness must be emphasized, at least in your own mind and your greater worthiness.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, that goes quite without saying. His loathsomeness doesn't. So it may have to be said over and over to yourself. Whatever the object of inordinate desire is, an item of art or luxury, the friendship or love of another person, the prestige that goes with a position or place or prize in life, the world begins to seem out of joint so long as he has it and you do not. And so we see what these other people have and how they just got it, and we just think, I deserve it more.
Jeffrey Heine:It's so unfair. And we deceive ourselves and think, I really just want justice, and we're masking over envy. And I have to confess, this happens to me all the time. You know, one of the ways that the Lord exposed this to me is, someone posted a tweet or a Facebook thing or something about, something David Platt had said one time, or it could happen to what another pastor says one time. And it got, I don't know, like a gazillion likes on it.
Jeffrey Heine:And, I was like, I have said that for 10 years now. For 10 years, I have said almost verbatim that exact quote. No likes. Like, 10,000. And and so I begin thinking that that's that's not right.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not fair. And so then in my mind, because I would never let this out. I've I've got to begin rationalizing this. I've got to begin saying why I am more deserving of this. And so I began thinking, well, at least we don't meet in a multimillion dollar church facility with theater seats.
Jeffrey Heine:We meet in Woodlawn. You can hear kids running all around car alarms, creaking floors. You know, I, at least I don't waste money paying for, you know, a secretary. That's always going to keep a distance between me and the people and, and, and kind of a guard all my study time. I don't have all of that study time.
Jeffrey Heine:You begin thinking of all these things. You know what that's called? Envy. James calls it demonic from hell. And, we have these thoughts all of the time.
Jeffrey Heine:And it disguises itself as just wanting things to be fair or right, getting what you deserve. Now, hear me. If you continue with envy, you will become a bitter joyless person. Envy is the only sin that I know of that is no fun at all. That has no joy in it.
Jeffrey Heine:At least with lust or anger, you know, there's a brief moment of happiness, of elation, of joy. At least there's a brief brief moment of that. Or even if you give in to, laziness or you give in to greed, there can be at least a small reward at the time for that, but there is no reward at any time for envy. It sucks you of all joy. Proverbs 14:30 says that, Envy makes your bones rot.
Jeffrey Heine:You start dying from the inside out. It is a poison that will kill you and you've got to deal with it. Envy will keep you from ever enjoying God's gifts, will keep you from enjoying the gift of your own body because you're always looking at others. It will keep you from enjoying your own spouse, your own jobs, the giftedness that God has given you. You cannot enjoy those because you're always looking horizontal instead of looking vertical.
Jeffrey Heine:Don't let it rob you of joy. So envy is gonna kill you from the inside out, and it's also going to kill the church. It's what James is talking about here when he says, you know, basically, it manifests itself through selfish ambition. Selfish ambition is really just another form of envy. It's when you're wanting what others have and you'll do anything to get it.
Jeffrey Heine:You'll step on whoever you need to step on to get it. And this is going to produce fighting and quarreling. Look at chapter 4 verses 1 through 3. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?
Jeffrey Heine:You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions. Now, I don't believe the people here were literally killing one another, but they were committing murder, slander all in their hearts.
Jeffrey Heine:Envy was bringing up all of these quarrels and this fighting, and people were actively wishing the demise of others in the church. And verse 3 says though that, you know, the people were praying, they were praying about the problem. They recognized that they had been envied, that this was a problem, but they were praying the wrong way. They're they're envious of others, so they're saying, Lord, it's not fair that this person's got that house. So why don't you give me a house like that.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? It's not fair that this person has a great job, so why don't you give me a job like that? They're praying their passions. They're saying the solution to this problem of envy is you give me something at least as good, if not better, than them. James says, that's why the Lord's not giving it to you.
Jeffrey Heine:You're asking the wrong things. He's not gonna answer those prayers. That's like a husband granting his wife's wish that she could have another lover. And him saying, yeah. Okay.
Jeffrey Heine:I think that's a good idea. Why don't you have that? It's not gonna happen. James actually uses that analogy when he calls the people an adulterous people. They were committing and verse 4 says, you adulterous people.
Jeffrey Heine:They were committing spiritual adultery. Their thoughts, their desires, where their mind went when they daydreamed was not on the lord. It was one of what others had. God no longer satisfied them. Well, how do we get rid of envy?
Jeffrey Heine:Well, in some ways, the answer to that, we're not going to really fully be able to get to until next week, James unpacks it further, but we do have hope in this, in this text. So at least open the door to that. And that hope is the word grace. Look at verse 5 and 6. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that scripture says, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace.
Jeffrey Heine:And this is the grace that God, the grace of God is this, that He passionately loves and he passionately pursues us even when we go after other things. Deuteronomy 4, you know, says, our God is a jealous God. God is god is jealous, but it's a good jealousy. It says, our god is a jealous god in all consuming fire. The actual word for jealousy is zealous in Greek, and it has the same thing as meaning zealous.
Jeffrey Heine:It's it's being heated with passion. And so when it says our God is a jealous God, and all consuming fire is saying, how is he jealous? His his jealousy is like an all consuming, warmth and fire. That's how jealousy is. And what is he jealous for?
Jeffrey Heine:He's jealous for us to call him our own, for us to love only him. That's what he's jealous over. And if you wanna see the blazing center of the jealousy of God, all you have to do is go to the cross. And when she says, how much do I love you? How much do I wanna pursue you?
Jeffrey Heine:This is how much. And, he calls us back to himself through grace. Psalm 73 also gives us a hint of that. If you wanna look in your worship guide, we had that written there. It's what we read at the start of the service and how it ends.
Jeffrey Heine:After thinking all about envy. 2 things the Psalmist says when he was getting overwhelmed with all of his envious thoughts. Verse 16, he says, but when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God. And right there, he's just saying, envy was overtaking him until he went to be with God and got in his presence. And God changed him and he comes to verse 25 and he says, whom have I in heaven but you, and there's nothing on earth that I desire beside you?
Jeffrey Heine:My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God, which is what James will talk about next week. I have made the lord god my refuge that I may tell of all your works.
Jeffrey Heine:The nearness of God, his presence frees us from envy. That nearness that was brought to us by the cross. I'll end here. I love the, I love when Jesus goes into the temple. Do you remember that when Jesus goes into the temple and he's overthrowing things, going crazy?
Jeffrey Heine:And they say, for zeal consumed him, was how they explained this. That's what they understood it as. Zeal consumed him. Well, the word for zeal is the same word for jealous. It's zealous there.
Jeffrey Heine:It's the zeal is the jealousy of the Lord consumed him. And I love it. It's like Psalm 73 being played out. When he goes into the sanctuary, when he goes into the temple, he's expecting the nearness of God. He's expecting to see the closeness of God and man.
Jeffrey Heine:Instead, he sees how man has given their hearts to all these other things. And so the jealousy of God burns bright. He becomes an all consuming fire and he begins getting rid of it all. Says, you will not go after other lovers. And he gets rid of everything and he stands alone as the sacrifice in the temple to make everything right.
Jeffrey Heine:That's our hope and word. It's the gospel. It's the grace of God. Pray with me. Lord, as I prayed earlier, I ask that there would not be a room in our heart at this moment that we stay off limits.
Jeffrey Heine:Holy Spirit, expose us. May our entire identity rest in the gospel, not in what we try to present before people, not in our own self righteousness. May we come to a point where we can acknowledge that there's parts of our lives that we are small hearted, petty, that we struggle with envy. Envy even of our closest friends. Lord, I pray that our bones would not rot, but they would dance.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
