A sermon on envy from Psalm 73, exploring its consequences, diagnosis, and cure
A sermon by James de Costobadie (Costa), Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, on the sin of envy.
Summary
James de Costobadie (Costa) preaches on envy as part of Latimer Church's sermon series on "(Un)Acceptable Sins." Using Psalm 73 as his primary text, he argues that envy is unique among sins in that it brings no pleasure whatsoever — it is purely destructive. He identifies envy's root cause not as dissatisfaction with circumstances or other people, but as a forgetfulness of God — specifically, forgetting both God's sovereignty (his right to distribute gifts and circumstances unequally) and God's goodness (the thousand ways he has already blessed us). The cure he presents is threefold: remembering God's creation (that we are individually and lovingly made), God's salvation (that every spiritual blessing is already ours in Christ), and God's hope (the new heavens and new earth that await believers), each of which renders envy irrational in the face of what Christians already possess.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Universality of Envy
You've just come to the end of a long week, happy to be relaxing on a Friday evening, laying back on the couch. You get out the phone, and up pops a photo of an old friend lying back on a sun-kissed beach, drink in hand, somewhere on another continent. You quickly look past it, only to find another photo of a beautiful meal your friend is enjoying out at a restaurant — pretty much in live time — smiling away with their partner. If you're married, you can't help but notice how happy the couple seem to be in the photo. If you're single, you just notice that they are a couple. And if you're middle-aged, you can't help but notice they're still going out in the evenings. Before you have time to blink, another photo appears of a group of friends who've obviously just been away for the weekend, and you wonder whether the invitation got lost in your inbox somewhere.
With these wholesome thoughts now in your mind, you reflect slightly sadly on the state of your life and wonder how life has ended up as it currently is.
Envy is not just around us. Envy is within us. And just at the point where we think it's not our problem, bang — the pain is right there in us again. Someone makes a flattering comment about a colleague and we nod, and think at the same time: it's funny they didn't make the same comment about me. We find this rising from within. Or maybe we hear of someone else who's started dating or just got engaged, other people are congratulating them, and we find ourselves trying to do the same. It's the green-eyed monster that gobbles us up from the inside.
This evening we're going to spend a few minutes thinking about the sin of envy.
Defining Envy
Just to be clear: jealousy is guarding something that we ourselves have — guarding what we do have. Envy is desiring what other people have. It's closely related to coveting, as in "thou shalt not covet," but they're slightly different. The emphasis in coveting is on the thing that someone else has — don't covet their ox, or their maidservant, or their weekend in Queenstown, or that sort of thing — whereas envy is really about noticing the person, being envious of the person themselves.
And the problem with envy is that it's an internal monster — a resentful blight on our lives that is perhaps the only sin that brings no joy at all. Every other sin brings a little bit of joy, even if it's an illicit joy or a temporary joy. Even murder, I'm told, carries the pleasure of getting rid of someone you didn't want in this world. But envy is 100% destructive.
So let's have a think about this together, looking at the consequences of envy, the diagnosis of envy, and the treatment for envy, with a slightly loose look at Psalm 73 as we go through.
Psalm 73: Asaph's Candid Admission
Psalm 73 contains a remarkably candid admission by the author of the psalm, a man named Asaph, of how he found himself consumed by envy. Have a look at verse 2:
"But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked."
He looks out and he notices how other people are doing. It feels extremely contemporary, doesn't it? Written nearly 3,000 years ago, but there is nothing new under the sun. He notices that other people seem to be doing better in life than he is.
Verse 4: he notices that they have no struggles, that their bodies are healthy and strong. In other words, life for them seems to be effortless. We might feel like a proverbial hamster running around a wheel, but for these people, they seem to be sailing along on the clouds of life with hardly an ounce of effort. Their bodies are strong. They don't seem to suffer from mental frailties or learning difficulties or feeling tired — they just seem to have boundless energy. Life is effortless for them. And I'm sure you know one or two people you can immediately think of who might fit into this category.
Verse 5: they are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.
The Comparison Trap: A Personal Story
Every so often I go back to see my mother back in the UK, and I try to look up one or two friends from college or school when I'm over there. A few years ago I thought it would be good to track down an old friend of mine who I'd lost touch with. Not having any details for him, I Facebooked him and the name came up — as the senior managing partner worldwide of the most prestigious consulting group in London. I thought, well, that's obviously not Stuart. I mean, Stuart — I knew him when we played pool together at 21 in college, and he nearly got thrown out for getting a third in English. And then as I blew up the screen: hang on a second, that is him. Well, how's that happened?
Anyway, he's a very nice, very humble guy, and we had lunch together on a Thursday in the middle of London. As lunch was coming to an end I said, "Oh well, you probably need to rush back to the office." And he said, "I actually don't work on a Thursday." I said, "What?" He said, "Well, when I took the job I told them I could only work" — I can't remember if it was three and a half days or four days a week — "and I didn't think they'd be stupid enough to give me the job, but they did. And that's what I do."
I had that moment — you know the one — where I thought: the one thing I've been clinging on to here is that you've sort of sold your soul to do this job, you've gone down the wrong track in life, and at least I've lived my life as something worth doing. Now I find you don't even work a five-day week. This is horrendous.
Well, that's a bit like Asaph here. He looks out at other people who are free from common human burdens — like actually having to work a five-day week. And what you see here is the chief tool which the devil uses to leverage envy against us: the tool of comparison. Asaph seems to have been completely fine until he saw other people and how they lived life.
The Consequences of Envy
So let's have a think about some of these consequences. I think you can bracket them into relationships — it's all to do with relationships: with God, with others, and with self.
Instead of having his eyes on God, the effect of envy for Asaph was to lower his eyes onto others. And that is what envy does. It steals our focus away from God. We become consumed by other people instead of consumed by God — God whom we ought to have our eyes upon, whom we ought to fix our hearts upon, whom we ought to be meditating about, adoring, giving our life to and enjoying as we do so. Envy leads to resentment and is so corrosive for our relationship with God. So quickly our view of him gets distorted. We look at others and think: why has God given that to them and not to me? And verse 2: our foot begins to slip. "As for me, my feet had almost slipped. I nearly lost my foothold" — as in my spiritual foothold with God. Instead of thinking of God as he really is, Asaph begins to develop a distorted view of God.
I think that's particularly true if you're the kind of person who's tried to live a good life. If you try to do the right thing, the dutiful thing, the Christian thing — you eat your organic food and say your prayers and you're faithful at church — and then you find that no one wants to go out with you or be friends with you, or whatever it is, then you feel kind of hard done by. Well, God, how does this work in life? So envy robs us of contentment in God.
It also affects our relationship with others. Of course it does. "Love does not envy," says the apostle in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 4. Envy therefore makes us unloving, because it drags us into a miserable competitiveness driven by petty and sinful motivations. Why was that person thanked and I wasn't? Why were they remunerated better than I am? Why has the boss recognised that person and not me? Why is the child or grandchild of that person being recognised and not mine? Competition can be good, but bad competition wants me and my reputation to be enhanced at someone else's expense — and that's what envy does. It steals our love for people.
We see this in the very first instance of envy in the Bible, when Cain killed Abel — out of envy, because Abel did something right, and Cain was envious of him. In other words, envy stops us from rejoicing with those who rejoice. It stops us from taking good news for other people and wanting to share in their joy. Even as we congratulate them, envy finds the words sticking in our throats. We find it so hard to be happy for them that a ring has gone on their finger. In fact, sometimes it's not just that we wish we had what they had — we think it better that neither of us has it, rather than them having it and us not. So it mars our relationships with others. Sometimes we look up to them, wishing we had what they had — I think you get that in the psalm, the envy that seems to wish Asaph had a body that was healthy and strong. Other times we end up looking down at them: well, yes, they do seem to have more in some department or another, but at least I'm living for the better thing than what they are — which is really envy by a different route.
And then thirdly, it affects our relationship with ourselves. We know how this plays out. So quickly we become self-pitying. You get that in verse 13: "Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted and every morning brings new punishments." He feels it was in vain that he lived for God. I may as well have been an unbeliever. If that's what life's like, you can't beat them, join them. What's the point of it?
In other words, envy makes us feel insecure, makes us discontent with our lot in life. It poisons our joy. Before the photo popped up, we were perfectly fine. And then suddenly we weren't fine. We began to feel a bit sad about the state of our life. We don't have their job or their career or their friendship group or whatever it is, and suddenly we can't enjoy anything. We can't see anything good in our lives at all. It feels as if we've got nothing. Well, that's what envy does for us. In fermenting discontent, envy destroys our ability to enjoy all that we do have in life.
The Diagnosis of Envy
So those are some of the consequences. What about the diagnosis of envy? With any disease, it's easy to look at the symptom — the symptom is the thing you can see, the thing that hurts. But if a deep cure is to be found, we need to see the heart of the problem, not just the surface issue.
And at the heart of envy, the root of envy, is a forgetfulness of God — or at least a forgetfulness of what God is really like. What happens is this: we allow circumstances to influence our view of God. Because of this and this and this, or because of this person here or that person there, I begin to deduce that God is not living up to some kind of imaginary bargain that I think I've struck with him. But what am I really saying? A bargain? With God? Is that how life works — we try and do the right thing and God gives us the right life in return? Is that really how we think life operates? That's not really a Christian understanding of God, or of us, or of God's grace.
So maybe there are two things we're forgetting here in particular.
The first is we're forgetting the godness of God — that God is in charge, that he decides how people's lives will work out. Right from the beginning in the Bible, God has treated people unequally. Not unfairly, but unequally. God has never treated people the same. To some he gives good health and to some poor health. To some he gives wealth and to some poverty. To some he gives a happy upbringing in a stable home and to some a much tougher upbringing in a difficult home. God is God. He is in charge and we are not. But when envy seeps into our heart, we forget that he is in charge. We forget that maybe he wanted me to have less of something than someone else has. Maybe he didn't want me to have what he has given to someone else. Maybe he wanted that person to be more gifted in that area than he wanted me to be. To be envious is to forget that God is God.
Not least because envy causes us to be the judge of other people. Envy actually makes us God in a way. Here's how it works — and we'll all recognise this. When you're envious of someone, you act as if you know everything about them. You look at someone else's relationship, someone else's marriage, and they all seem to be so full of laughter and vitality compared to your own. But be careful, because none of us knows what life is like on the inside of a marriage. It's not unusual to come across a marriage about which people make all kinds of unwarranted assumptions, only to discover that there is an aching sadness on the inside, or something worse in that relationship, even over a long period of time. So when we're envious of someone, we take one part of their life — one photo even — and assume that obviously their life is brilliant. We promote ourselves into God's position as if we were the judge of their life, when really we only know a tiny fraction about it.
We forget the godness of God, and we also forget the goodness of God. It's rather instructive that at the beginning of Psalm 73, Asaph actually talks about how good God is: "Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart." He starts on such a radiantly positive note. And then the envy sets in. "But as for me" — his eyes go down onto others. He forgets how good God has been to him as part of Israel. And that is absolutely typical of how envy works. It causes us to forget how good God has been to us. You're envious of someone because of some instance or some comment or something you see, and immediately you forget how good God has been to you in a thousand ways. Just because I don't have one thing that they have — I don't have the thousand close acquaintances that they have, I don't have the one special friend that they have — suddenly it feels like I have nothing. And we can easily be accusatory towards God: why is their life like that and mine isn't? As if there were no good parts of my life at all. As if God had not blessed me in a thousand ways when really he has.
We can feel hard done by. And we know this is ludicrous as a way of thinking. Imagine a child who was always given what they wanted in every direction. What kind of child would you end up with? A selfish child. And if we were to have what we wanted in every direction, what would we be like? An absolute nightmare for everyone else. But we persuade ourselves that life would have been better if we could have had what we wanted — which is probably what someone else has got.
In other words, here is the core of the problem. It's not the stuff. It's not the situation. It's not the deficiency in us. It's not actually the other person. When we feel envious discontent, it's because we've forgotten God, or forgotten the truth about God. We have allowed the lies of the devil to distort our view of God. The Scripture's view of God and our view of God changes into something it shouldn't be. And the hard truth is we have ignored his sovereignty and trampled on his goodness.
The Treatment for Envy
Which therefore leads us to the treatment. Because once you understand the diagnosis, you're positioned to understand the treatment the Bible gives. And this is the really wonderful good news of the gospel. If you're here tonight and you're not a Christian, I want you to listen in to this, because to be a Christian, to understand what God has given to us, is so wonderful it will actually change the whole shape of our life if we're able to accept it.
Psalm 73 helps us to understand this. Have a look at verse 16: "When I tried to understand all of this, it troubled me deeply — until," verse 17, "I entered the sanctuary of God." What changes for Asaph is when he comes into God's presence, when he sees God as he really is, when he lifts his eyes back away from the people he's been envying, back to the God who made him and loves him.
We are to remember God — and particularly in three aspects.
Remember God's Creation
First of all, we should remember God's creation — that this world was made as God wanted it to be made, and you were made as God wanted you to be made. Psalm 139 verse 13: "For you created my inmost being," says the psalmist. "You knit me together in my mother's womb." Every person is individually handcrafted by God out of love — not just thrown together, but handcrafted by God. And in reference to the gifts that we have, 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 7 in the New Testament: "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." In other words, God makes us good at different things just as he wants. He wanted you to be good at this and that person to be good at that. When someone has the gift of socialising — it's a useful gift to have, they can draw people in, all that sort of thing — that's because he wanted them to be like that. And he wanted you to have a different gift. It is God who made you with the body shape that you have and the gifts that you have, just as you are.
So why are you not happy with that? Because God is happy with his work, so we should be as well. As the old negro spiritual said: he don't make junk. God is happy with his creation. And it's a rebuttal to the world that keeps screaming at us that we should be taller or thinner or fatter or shorter or more olive-skinned or more white-skinned — all the way to entirely culturally inscribed notions of what makes someone attractive, which change over time as it is. The main thing we need to know is that we're desirable to God because he made us as he wanted us to be. And if the creator is happy, if the potter is happy, then we should be happy with his work.
To be content with the person that God has made you to be is such a blessing. It takes such a weight off our shoulders. It enables us to walk out of the door in the morning with our head held high — not because we're so fantastic, but because God is so loving, has been so kind. And if he is happy, you can look in the mirror and be happy as well with the way that he's made you. It enables us to have this rich contentment. And it's actually liberating, because it sets us free to put our energies and thoughts into other people rather than being worried about how they think of us. We can look to how we can meet their needs, because our needs have already been met in the loving personal handiwork of our loving creator God. It's a recipe for happiness — ours and other people's.
Remember God's Salvation
So be thankful for God's creation. Then be thankful for God's salvation. In the gospel of Jesus, God has brought us to himself. You have been loved by God in the gospel of Jesus with a love that is beyond understanding. The love of God in Jesus Christ is a love that is full, is free, is unconditional. Every other love in this world will go up and down, will wax and wane. But his is a love which is enduring — like an infinite rope of steel, it is wrapped around us. You will never be less loved than you are today if you are in Jesus Christ, and you can never be more loved than you are today.
And incidentally, when you know this love of God in Jesus, what love that other people have could we be envious of? Because you have the greatest love of all. When we say that Jesus was perfectly fulfilled in the love of his Father, it's not just a sop to make single people feel better about life. It is a reminder to every one of us that there is no greater love than the love of God shown to us in Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for us.
And through this love, God has given us every blessing. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." That is, if you're a Christian — whether you've been a Christian five minutes or fifty years — and you therefore know the Lord Jesus Christ, every blessing that God has ever invented is already, now today, in real time, yours in Christ. You don't have to do anything for it. It is already yours in Christ. The only thing you need to do is open your spiritual eyes so you can understand it.
Because in that passage in Ephesians 1, Paul goes on to delineate what some of those blessings are. The blessing of knowing you've been chosen by God — the humbling privilege of election. Who are we that God should have chosen us? And he did. The blessing of being holy and blameless before God — the blessing of confidence that we are in right standing with God and we can never wreck that relationship. Who are we to have been given that? But we have, in Christ. The blessing of forgiveness, and therefore the blessing of a clean conscience no matter what we've done, because our sins have been washed away in Christ — that puts a smile on your face. The blessing of redemption — belonging to God, with his arms wrapped around us; he redeemed us back to himself, that we would always be his, today, now, and forever, and he will never let you go. The blessing of adoption — that we are now his precious children in his family, to which he's also brought brothers and sisters from across the world, so that we're part of the same family, able to encourage one another in this life. The blessing of the Spirit of God — his presence always with us.
And most of all, as Asaph knew back in the Old Testament, the blessing of knowing God himself. Have a look at verse 25: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing — I repeat, nothing — I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Meaning that if you have God, you have the greatest. You have all you need. You have everything for this life and the next.
And when you realise that every blessing to be had is already yours in Christ, cascaded down upon you in love — how could we possibly be envious of someone else? How could we be envious of someone else, as if they had more than we have? Envy melts away in the face of God's love to you in Jesus. Rather be a Christian than be a prince or a king or a tech titan. "To live is Christ, and to die" — when we will be with Christ — "is only gain." If you're a Christian, you have the pearl of greatest price. You have the treasure of most value. So why are you envious of those who are holding a plastic trinket?
That's why Paul says in Philippians chapter 4 verse 12: "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation." We say: what? Tell me the secret, Paul. And he says one word: Christ. He's the secret. Because if you've got him, you have the greatest. And if you have the greatest, then you will be content in each and every situation. Paul looks at his own life and says: I can be homeless, I can be isolated, I can be without sleep, I can be without clothes, I can be beaten, I can be shipwrecked, and I'm still content in every situation. In other words, he's actually bulletproof in that regard, because he knows that in Christ he has the best.
Remember God's Hope
Here is the secret that helps us never to envy others — it's to do with seeing how much we have in Christ. And that leads us to remembering God's hope.
According to God's own word, 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 13, we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth — a time when the current heavens and the current earth will come back together. The earth, we're told, will be burned up and renewed as those two are put back together. And when we enjoy this renewed earth, we will enjoy an earth that is full in its splendour — with no sin, no sickness, no sadness, and no Satan to ruin it — but instead a radiantly beautiful physical creation ten million times what we currently enjoy on this earth. Where yes, there will be animals of every kind that you can stroke and pat, luscious plants, soaring mountains, crystal rivers. Where relationships will be so deep and fulfilling that you and I will no longer remember the word lonely — that word will mean nothing to us in the new creation, for that is the quality of the relationships we will have. Where misunderstandings will be abolished, for we will all be walking in the truth perfectly. Where we ourselves will know no frailty but only pureness of heart. And where, best of all, God himself will be present for us to effortlessly worship, adore, and be with — and where he will personally tend to us.
I think it's really instructive that when you come to the book of Revelation, it doesn't just say that there will be no tears in the new creation, though there won't be. It actually says that he will wipe every tear from our eyes. It speaks of the tender care of God for every one of his people.
Here is a place that is more enjoyable than we can possibly imagine. And yet, in a funny way, we don't have to imagine it, because anything that you currently enjoy on earth that is good will be there as well. Heaven — the new heavens, new earth — will not be of a completely different order to the current one. We know what it is to live on earth, and therefore anything good on this earth we will find in the new creation as well. And if you love your sports or your crafts or your walks or your music, whatever it is, those things will be magnified — yes, the same order, but of a completely different scale of enjoyment.
We already know how this can work. Think back to your days at preschool, when you used to play music. You'd pick up a tambourine, bang, bang, bang. Well, the musicians who are on stage tonight — they were like that in preschool as well. They weren't playing grade 8 violin. They were just picking up a triangle and bashing it. But look how they've improved. So we know what it is to grow in this life in our appreciation and abilities. And to move from the current earth to the new heavens and new earth will see a transformation — not of a different order, the same order — but a transformation that will enable our enhancement of enjoyment to be through the roof.
And that being the case, this being your hope if you believe in Jesus — look, this is just around the corner. It might seem like a long time away now, but really it isn't. Why would you be envious of someone else at the moment? This is your hope. One day we're going to be there. So how can that not satisfy us even now as we look forward to it?
If you were about to go to the garage tomorrow and pick up a brand new Maserati that someone had donated to you because they love you that much, and you saw someone tonight fiddling with a toy car — would you be envious of the person with the toy car? Of course not. If you were getting married next Saturday and you saw tomorrow a couple having a first date out at the riverside — would you be envious of them? Of course not. And if you knew that you were going to the new creation, a new home of heaven and earth, and you saw someone in this world who had something that you didn't — would you be envious of them? Of course you wouldn't, because you would be looking forward to what is just around the corner.
The Better Vision
Here is the better vision that the Bible gives us. And in each one of these sins that we're looking at, there is a better vision. A couple of weeks ago we looked at greed, where the better vision is the abundance of God in this world, but especially in the next world, and the generosity of God that will enable us to enjoy it. Last week we looked at selfishness, where the better vision is a vision of serving other people — because what's better in life? To be with a whole community of people you can serve and enjoy their company, or to be the hero of your story in a story of one person? Boring. And here, here is the better vision. Rather than being stuck in envy, how about enjoying the rich contentment that is yours in Christ?
On which note, brothers and sisters, let's at least help ourselves in this regard — or more to the point, help each other. Reminding each other, encouraging one another of what we already have and of what is to come. Being thoughtful as to why we post certain things. I'm not saying it's wrong to post, but why post certain things? Does that have the effect you would want it to have on other people? We do want to learn to share in other people's blessings and rejoice with those who rejoice — and sometimes that's a battle for us. On this side of the line, we'll certainly be thoughtful not to put people under a temptation of dissatisfaction or discontent.
And in all of this, to help one another to remember God. Remember God's creation — he wanted you just as you are; be thankful for that. Remember God's salvation — you have every spiritual blessing in Christ already; be thankful for that. And remember God's hope — that one day we will live together in the new heavens and the new earth with Jesus himself on the throne. Be thankful for that most of all.