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Season 3 Ep 8 Making Art: The 7 Deadly Sins- Envy
102 Plays2 years ago
Mentioned in this episode:
Introduction to the Spiritual Life by Brant Pitre
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Transcript
Introduction to Root Like Faith Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Ruth Schwank and I'm so thrilled you're listening in with us at Root Like Faith. It is our deepest desire to encourage and equip men and women to be rooted in God's Word, transformed by the love of Jesus, and moved by His mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more important.
Exploring Art and Holiness During Lent
00:00:17
Speaker
Well today we continue our series called Making Art. It's a series we are doing through this season of Lent. And we've been exploring the seven deadly sins and why pursuing holiness or virtue actually frees us to love God and others as we
Understanding Envy and Social Media's Role
00:00:32
Speaker
should. We started with pride, went to greed, lust the next week, and this week we're talking about envy.
00:00:38
Speaker
And as we've said from the beginning, Lent is a season where we are intentionally drawing closer to Jesus to be more like Jesus. And so we hope and pray that today's episode continues to help in that journey. Well, like I said, we are starting today talking about
00:00:54
Speaker
Envy, and I, you know, thanks to social media, I feel like Envy is a big time struggle. I mean, not like we never struggled before with it, but don't you agree, honey? It's like it's all in front of us.
Biblical Illustration of Envy: Saul and David
00:01:06
Speaker
Well, just to back up, like I'm envious of anybody that lives in just a warmer part of the world right now. Like we're marching through March. We're marching through March. Hey, you know what? How about that?
00:01:18
Speaker
We're marching through March like a boss. We're getting close to April. I'm already having visions of myself out in the garden planting new flowers. I remember when you came in, this was back in January where you came in and I was sitting in my yellow chair. You caught me reading a gardening book. A landscaping book and it's snowing outside. I'm like, honey, what are you doing? We've got a long time.
00:01:38
Speaker
But here we are. Here we are. We're going to make it. In fact, the sun is shining today. It's at least when we're recording this. It is the beginning of March and it is sunny and 40 degrees. So we should be thankful. 40 degrees. But to answer your question or to comment on what you said, yeah, Envy, of course,
The Corrosive Nature of Envy
00:01:54
Speaker
has been a part of the human heart since the fall is I think especially a challenge for us today living in the culture that we live in because of social media you just see everybody's lives and we usually post stuff that is good and successful and beautiful and so I think a really simple definition for envy just to dive right in here is that envy is sorrow over someone else's success. It's desiring what rightly belongs to someone else and so yeah you think about Instagram or Facebook or
00:02:23
Speaker
for those of us that are over the age of 40, Myspace back in the day. I don't know if it's still around. I hope not. Hopefully my page has been taken down. I can't even imagine that what I had on there back in the day was probably just ridiculous. But anyways, when you think about being on Facebook or Instagram and what people post and what we post, you can see why if envy resides in the heart, that just is like pouring gasoline on a fire.
00:02:49
Speaker
I love what Basil the Great who lived in the fourth century. He said, as rust wears away iron so envy corrodes the soul it inhabits. It's corrosive, it's rotting away, it's destroying the soul.
00:03:09
Speaker
true is that when you think about the human heart or the soul. I think the classic biblical example, if you wouldn't mind reading this, is the story of David and Saul found in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel. So 1 Samuel 18 verses 1 through 9 is a classic biblical example of just how dangerous and destructive this deadly sin of envy can be.
Recognizing Signs of Envy
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's always so helpful when we see these examples in the Bible because it's like, oh, this was going on a long time ago. This isn't anything new, but we can learn so much from it. So 1 Samuel 18, 1 through 9 says, After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David and he loved him as himself. From that day, Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family.
00:03:55
Speaker
And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David along with his tunic and even his sword, his bow and his belt. Whatever mission Saul sent him on, David was so successful that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the troops and Saul's officers as well. When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing.
00:04:24
Speaker
with joyful songs and with timbrels and lirs, and as they danced, they sang, Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands. Saul was very angry. This refrain displeased him greatly. They have credited David with tens of thousands, he thought, but me with only thousands? What more can he get but the kingdom? And from that time on, Saul kept a close eye on David.
00:04:52
Speaker
I mean, what a great example of really how envy resides in the human heart. And again, that definition, that envy is really
Embracing Mercy Over Envy
00:05:00
Speaker
sorrow over someone else's success. And so here's King Saul, who instead of being happy for David and instead of being happy for the people that God had called him to lead and celebrating him, cheering him on, he becomes envious of him. And David goes out, of course, and defeats this great enemy of the Israelites.
00:05:19
Speaker
And people are cheering him on and giving him great credit for what he had done. And again, instead of celebrating that, cheering that on in him, he becomes envious. In fact, begins to keep a close eye on him. And as our listeners will know, our Root Like Faith family will know that he'll even try to kill him later on. And so envy is incredibly, incredibly dangerous and destructive to the human soul. It's just one biblical example. Proverbs 14.
00:05:46
Speaker
Verse 30 says, a heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. And so again, very similar to that, basically the great quote, this idea of how envy can invade the human heart, it can corrode it, it can rot the bones, that it just spoils us. It spoils our perspective, it rots our attitude, it even rots or corrodes relationships.
Biblical Insights on Overcoming Envy
00:06:09
Speaker
You know, we said this earlier on, I can't remember which episode it was,
00:06:14
Speaker
But we were talking about how oftentimes we struggle with envy with those that we're most similar to. Not entirely, but a lot of times, again, pastors will compare themselves to other pastors. And they'll be envious of this pastor, that leader, and that church. Moms will be envious or compare themselves to other moms. And so when we think about this idea of envy, pay attention to those that you're in a similar stage of life.
00:06:43
Speaker
and or that you're most similar to maybe in your occupation, in a relationship, in a profession, maybe in school. And so oftentimes in the effects, those that were most similar to would begin to compare our life with theirs. We look at social media, we compare our marriage to their marriage, their family vacation to our family vacations.
00:07:05
Speaker
And there's all sorts of ways, then, that envy can rot the bones or corrode the soul, as the scriptures are saying. Yeah, and I don't think it's just with people like us. I mean, I think the thing with social media is now it's so much bigger than that, too. Yeah, we were talking about that earlier, right? With just how back in the day, it's like if you had a People magazine, that was...
00:07:27
Speaker
You saw The Rich and the Famous that way. Remember that show called The Rich and Famous? But nowadays it's like everybody that has a phone and has Instagram, you're watching influencers who are making lots of money just by virtue of...
00:07:42
Speaker
you know, silly things. And now you have kids that are growing up and watching that and their desire in life is to be famous or to be rich. And they become envious of this person or that person. And so you just see it in so many different ways, seep into not just adults, but kids as well very early on.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, and going back to this verse that we've maybe shared almost every episode, this passage of scripture from Mark, I just want to share it again because I think it's applicable to all of these seven deadly sins as we talk about them. Mark 7, 21 through 23 says, for it is from within out of a person's heart that evil thoughts come, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy,
00:08:29
Speaker
slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person. Yeah, I want to connect that passage again. We spent some time in the previous episode talking about that, so I don't want to say too much about that again, but that idea that yes, sin is a problem within, and the heart needs to be first and foremost converted by repentance and faith in Jesus.
00:08:53
Speaker
and then sin needs to be rooted out or purged through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus, again, just saying that our sin problem is really a heart problem and envy comes from within.
Practical Steps to Cultivate Mercy
00:09:05
Speaker
One of the interesting things in connecting that passage to Exodus chapter 20 verse 17, of course, Exodus 20 is when God is giving the Israelites the 10 commandments. He saved them out of Israel. He saved them out of their slavery in Egypt.
00:09:18
Speaker
And he's going to march them towards the land of promise. But again, as other people have said, he's got to get Egypt out of them. He's gotten them out of Egypt. But he's got to get Egypt out of them. And so he's going to call them to live a different life. And he gives them these Ten Commandments. But this is a really interesting point.
00:09:34
Speaker
that Brandt Petrie makes in his book, which we've mentioned before, called The Introduction to the Spiritual Life. But he quotes Exodus 20, verse 17, which is really about having envy or being covetous towards other people. Verse 17 says, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. And this is really at the heart of what envy is. It's
00:09:57
Speaker
It's not just sorrow over somebody else's good, but it's wanting that for yourself. But the point that he makes that I think is so important is he says all of the other commandments that God gives there are external, but envy or coveting is internal. And so you think about that like, you know, God's command there next to this 20 not to murder. Well, you can't like murder somebody.
00:10:20
Speaker
I mean, of course, murder begins in the heart, Jesus will say, but it's an external act, right? So it's much easier to spot is the point. But with being covetous or being envious, like that's something that's internal that you can't see sometimes yourself or that other people can't notice. And so it takes real wisdom. It takes God's help to be able to spot envy.
00:10:42
Speaker
in the heart in order to crucify it, in order to kill it. And so maybe we kind of turn our attention there here and spend kind of our last, you know, 10 minutes or so talking about, you know, how do we spot envy in our own life? Well, and I think that's why in Proverbs where it says, envy rots the bone, that's rots the bones. That's such a powerful picture because it is internal and it's rotting away. You know, it's rotting us away.
00:11:07
Speaker
So how do we even know you know how do we spot this envy in our own life? I think of one thing that I notice in myself I'm just gonna be really honest here is when I take a note here, honey
00:11:22
Speaker
When I am so focused on being critical towards something else, somebody else,
Living in Mercy and Love During Lent
00:11:30
Speaker
or something they're doing, it's always time for me to pause and look at myself. And that's where we always say it. That's an issue, not an ish-me type of thing. Right, right. Other kids love to say that.
00:11:39
Speaker
That's an issue, not an ishmi. That's the thing. It's like if somebody's being that way towards me, there's a lot of times where it's like, I don't know what's going on with you, but you know, that's an issue, not an ishmi. Here, you know, I'm turning that around on myself and saying, you know, when I notice that I'm being overly critical or pointing out somebody's mistakes or shortcomings, that's time for me to pause and say, wait a minute, maybe there's something deeper going on within my own heart. Those external words, right? We talked about how, you know,
00:12:09
Speaker
to Brant Petrie's comment that being covetous or being envious is internal so it's more difficult to see. But now when you start to use words that are overly critical, those desires are kind of taken on flesh and bones, if you will, like we can hear envy now and it sounds like being critical.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And so that's a great way. I think when we think about spotting envy in our in our own heart or, you know, spotting it in the life of somebody else, we're paying attention to maybe slander the ways that we tear other people down. We pay attention to gossip.
00:12:44
Speaker
A simple definition of gossip is just talking to a person about somebody else that's not a part of the problem or the solution. And so paying attention to the ways that we gossip, again, those words of slander or gossip are signs that maybe envy is the real problem in the heart. As you said, being overly critical, or just pointing out again that other people's mistakes are shortcomings, which is so easy to do. You think about Jesus's words in Matthew 7.
00:13:09
Speaker
You know, we point out the spec in a brother or sister's eyes and we just ignore that plank in our own eye. And so again, those are our signs that maybe envy is really, really present in our own heart. And if you can't celebrate with somebody.
00:13:26
Speaker
That's always a red flag to me. If somebody can't celebrate the things that in my life with me, if I don't have a friend who can celebrate, if that friend never celebrates or some to me, that's always a red flag. And the same thing goes for me. If I can't celebrate with somebody, then I again that there's something else going on there.
00:13:43
Speaker
It is funny, like you just think about, and we've sort of experienced that over the years of different book releases or things that we've done. And it's always interesting to me, those that just come and celebrate with sincere hearts, the release of a book, for example, or maybe the accomplishment of a son or a daughter and just how grateful you are when there's
00:14:02
Speaker
friends or family members that cheer you on just from a sincere place, a good place. And then there are those that they just, it's so hard for them to say anything good or to celebrate a success. And so yeah, just paying attention to those things in our own heart. Like do we have a hard time celebrating when somebody else gets the raise or a hard time when somebody else accomplishes something? Do we have a hard time saying great job when somebody else's child gets into the school that we wish our son or daughter would have gotten into?
00:14:32
Speaker
And so those are all, I think, really, really important ways, powerful ways for us to spot that deadly sin of envy. Well, and powerful ways for us to see the areas that we need to work on and ask God to change in our hearts, you know, that we can genuinely come from a place of, you know, humble,
00:14:50
Speaker
acceptance and celebration of our friends and their children and whoever it is that we know, we want to be able to celebrate them from a genuine, pure place. And I think that's when we recognize, when we recognize there's an issue there, that's an opportunity for us to say, Lord, change me, I want to be able.
00:15:10
Speaker
to walk alongside my friends. I want to be able to celebrate them. And that's just an opportunity for us to grow. Absolutely. And again, as we've been talking about, you know, in this series, making art through Lent, I mean, this is this week, we're really focusing on, again, this seven deadly sin, this deadly sin of envy. And so each week, each episode, we're going, OK, we want God by your grace to root out this particular sin. And so this week, just paying a special special attention, you know, to that that sin of envy.
00:15:38
Speaker
And so that's the vice, envy. Every week I do this. The virtue is mercy. But before we do that, another thing I thought about as you were talking there is not just paying attention to slander, gossip, being overly critical, but also just paying attention to our mood or our feelings, right? And so when we think about
00:15:56
Speaker
Not just what we say, but how we feel, which we've kind of talked about already, but that idea of how do we feel? What does it do to our mood when we see somebody on Facebook on vacation or at an event that we wish we were at? Well, I'm just in the middle of the winter. It doesn't do much for my mood.
00:16:13
Speaker
Why am I not there? No, I'm just kidding. Exactly. But yeah, those are I think things as well that take that internal struggle with the scent of envy and it becomes external. We begin to notice in our body language or the look on our face or again what we're saying and we point out, we become more aware of the scent of envy. But you were, yeah, you were beginning to talk about the virtue
00:16:34
Speaker
And so the vice, of course, is envy, but the virtue is mercy. And I think one really helpful way of just thinking about the difference between those two is, again, this is coming from Brandt Petrie's book, Intro to the Spiritual Life, where he says that envy grieves over another person's good fortune. I mean, that's a pretty typical definition. It's sorrow over somebody else's success.
00:16:54
Speaker
So again, envy grieves over another person's good fortune where mercy grieves over another person's misfortune. And so when you think about mercy, it's the person who doesn't celebrate when somebody else is, you know, they don't succeed when something else doesn't go, something goes wrong, but they're grieved by that. That's the mark of a person that really truly has mercy residing in their heart instead of envy.
00:17:19
Speaker
And so envy is rooted in a love of self where mercy is rooted in a love of neighbor. And so if you want to know if you really love somebody, a friend, a coworker, a family member, if you really love them deeply, then pay attention to the way that they succeed, but also pay attention to the way they fail or how you respond to when they succeed, but also when they fail. When things go well in their life, how do you respond?
00:17:43
Speaker
When things go terrible in their life, how do you respond? Is that an indicator of envy in your heart or is it an indication of mercy in your life? And so mercy is the positive side of the sin of envy. That's so powerful. Wow. 1 Peter 2, verse 1, when we talk about what's the solution to envy, just some practical things to close with.
00:18:04
Speaker
I mean, very simply, we need to kill it. We need to get rid of it. And we want to ask God to give us a heart that is full of mercy. You know, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 1, Peter says, therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind. And so the first thing that we need to do to overcome envy is that we need to just get rid of it. We need to slay it. We need to kill it. And that's really what Peter is saying.
00:18:30
Speaker
And I would say the second thing there that we just were talking about is we need to clothe ourselves in mercy instead. That is, that's so good. And I just, I love, I just love the idea of mercy being on the other side of envy that it's just so powerful to think of because it's a, it's a completely different perspective. Like instead of me having envy in my heart and when I'm focusing on having mercy, it changes everything. Absolutely.
00:18:57
Speaker
So I'm actually having this deep compassion for those who are struggling. It just changes everything. That's so powerful. Jesus says in Matthew chapter five, verse seven, blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. And mercy is not just a feeling, right? But it's an action. It's acting in such a way out of your love for them. And then I would just say finally, again, as we think about just really practical ways to overcome
00:19:26
Speaker
in our life would be just to pray and serve others, just to begin cultivating that virtue in our own life. Again, asking God to give us a heart that's marked more by love and mercy than by envy and just asking for the help of the Holy Spirit, but then in very practical ways, just to begin serving other people and loving other people, celebrating other people, praying for other people,
00:19:48
Speaker
As we do that, God continues to give us His grace and begins to change us again from the inside out. As we've said from this first episode, the goal of killing sin in our life, of slaying it, of just getting rid of everything that's dead and dying in our life, is that we might put on the character of Christ. We might walk in virtue of holiness.
00:20:07
Speaker
So that again, we're free to love others and love God as we should, that we're free to give the best of who we are to other people. And when our heart is marked by envy, when we can't celebrate them and encourage them and come alongside of them, but instead we're competing with them, we're comparing ourselves to them, we're upset when they succeed.
00:20:28
Speaker
We're not loving them as we should. We're not giving the best of who we are. We're really giving the worst of who we are to them. And so as we've said from the very beginning, this season of Lent is meant to, just in a more intentional way, draw near to Christ, repent of sin, prepare for Easter, emerge at Easter time looking more and more like Jesus, loving God more deeply and loving others more sacrificially.
Series Recap and Listener Engagement
00:20:52
Speaker
And in order to do that, we need to kill envy in our life and walk in greater mercy and love towards other people. That's so good. Well, friend, we are so grateful that you joined us today. I hope you have been enjoying this series, Making Art. We'll be sure in the show notes to put all of the links to the past episodes, as well as I know we talked about a lot of different Bible verses today and a couple of different resources. So those will be there.
00:21:19
Speaker
Um, if we haven't met yet, we want to get to know you. So be sure to follow us on Instagram at Patrick W. Schwank and at Ruth Schwank or on Facebook. Also those show notes, show notes I was referring to, they are at rootlikefaith.com forward slash podcast. All right, friend. Well, we will chat soon and we hope you have the best week.