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Sermon: The Sin of Envy (Genesis 4)
155 Plays9 months ago
In this sermon, I go through the interaction of Cain and Abel and how the sin of envy can ruin our lives.
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme of Envy
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, thank you so much for tuning into the Office of Theology podcast. I'm excited to share some sermons that I've preached with you. In this message, I go through Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 about the sin of envy. I hope you are encouraged and challenged by it today.
00:00:16
Speaker
I'm excited to teach today as we continue in Genesis Foundation series. We are kicking off chapter 4. And I have titled my message, if you are taking notes, The Sin of Envy. So this is the first time here. Welcome. So glad you're here. Let's find out if you're envious or not. Sound good? This is uncomfortable. So let's move on. But I want to explore this one guiding thought with you. It is this.
00:00:41
Speaker
What you allow to dominate your thoughts will eventually dominate your actions. What you allow to dominate your thoughts will eventually dominate your actions. So we are going to pray
Opening Prayer
00:00:57
Speaker
and then we're going to kick this off. Jesus, we love you.
00:01:01
Speaker
God, we are here because of you, by you, and for you. God, today we want to make sure that you are honored, that you are glorified, that you are made known above all else. And we just come in a humble posture saying, come Holy Spirit and have your way. This is for you. And so you get to do what you want to do. We say this in your wonderful name.
00:01:24
Speaker
Amen. Amen.
Cain and Abel's Offerings
00:01:27
Speaker
So we're going to be in Genesis chapter four, one through 16, like I said, so we're going to get cruising and reading through this verse one.
00:01:35
Speaker
Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again, she bore her brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a worker of the ground, a shepherd and a farmer. In the course of time, Cain brought the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.
00:02:02
Speaker
And the Lord had regard for Abel in his offering. But for Cain in his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. Just some interesting observations real quick. So this is Adam and Eve's firstborn son after what just went down in the garden. We just talked about this last week. This is the first son, the firstborn. And also, remember in Genesis 3.15, the promise that the seed of Eve
00:02:31
Speaker
will come and crush the head of the serpent so who knows if Eve is like okay we have a boy here we go this is it this is the promised one but how we know the story goes that is not what happens people often debate that if the difference in offerings is the reason why God wasn't pleased with Cain's offering but was with Abel's
00:02:53
Speaker
But what we see in Leviticus 2 is that these are actually both acceptable offerings to God. So that begs the
God's Warning to Cain
00:03:00
Speaker
question, how come God didn't accept it? Thankfully, the writer of Hebrews kind of solves this mystery for us in Hebrews 11.4. Says it was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. But we'll break that down in just a little bit.
00:03:19
Speaker
Verse 6 says the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry and why has your face fallen?
00:03:25
Speaker
If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. See, Cain is not just internally wrestling, but clearly has moved to the outside. Have you ever
Consequences of Cain's Actions
00:03:45
Speaker
been in an interaction with someone? And they're like, what's wrong with you? And they're like, nothing. Why do you say, well, your face is telling a different story.
00:03:53
Speaker
Marriage is a great example of this sometimes. Like, I'm like, I always do this, I'm like, Kelly, are you doing okay? And she just has a face that says, hey, I might be intense. If you know my wife, it's true, and I love her very much. But I go, hey, are you doing okay? She goes, yeah, I'm fine. I'm like, are you sure? She goes, well, if you keep asking me, I'm not gonna be fine, right?
00:04:14
Speaker
All the wives are like, amen. Just let it be. I'll come to you when I want to talk about it. But sometimes you can see on the external that the internal of how you feel, you don't even know that it's starting to come out in your facial expressions how you move and how you act and how you look.
00:04:31
Speaker
See, right here we see the first stern warning to Cain from God. He's trying to help him see what's allowing to dominate his thoughts will eventually dominate his actions. His actions are showing where his heart is, or his thoughts are trying to convince him otherwise. He's trying to convince himself that what he brought to God is what God wanted.
00:04:57
Speaker
He's trying to be the one who sets the standard of the offering. Verse 8 says this, Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother, Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? He said, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? Bold strategy, Cain.
00:05:23
Speaker
His internal dialogue led to external actions of drastic measure. He did not consider God's warning or adhere to it, so when his inward frustration, resentment, and envy gave way, it led to murdering his brother. God's question feels oddly familiar, doesn't it? Just like his parents.
00:05:48
Speaker
After Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God said, where are you? This question of discovery, God knew exactly where they were, but what he was doing was inviting them into confession. He brought the same question to Cain when he said, where is your brother? He is asking him to give him a chance to repent and confess, but what does he do? He does a sassy remark back. At least that's how it sounds in my brain.
00:06:14
Speaker
He says he doesn't know where his brother is. Am I my brother's keeper? Similar to his parents, he shifts the blame. Instead of answering his responses, who's responsible for Abel? Let's read on verse 10.
00:06:29
Speaker
And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you were cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. Verse 12, when you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength, but you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer of the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear.
00:06:59
Speaker
Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, from the place that he's at, and from your face, from his presence.
00:07:07
Speaker
I shall be hidden, I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer of the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Verse 15, then the Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain lest anyone found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod east of Eden.
00:07:33
Speaker
And that last sentence is heartbreaking. He moved away from the presence of the Lord. See, the consequence
Significance of Intentional Offerings
00:07:41
Speaker
of Cain's action sounds familiar once again. Like parents, like son, I guess, in this moment, the curse upon Cain was that of Adam's curse would be amplified in regards to him. And bringing forth food from the earth, it would be hard for Adam. It would be impossible for Cain, who was a farmer.
00:08:00
Speaker
And if Adam were driven from Eden, Cain would find no resting place in all of the earth. And so Cain's anger towards God and his brother led to being dominated by the sin he was warned of, the sin of envy, because Abel had it better, so Cain got bitter. So there's three main takeaways that I want to wrestle through together in this. The first one is bring God your best.
00:08:30
Speaker
Bring God your best. So there are two sacrifices. Let's break these down for a moment. The first from Abel was the firstborn of their flock and the fat portions. So this shows, I love Leviticus. I don't know a lot of people I talk to. I'm not a big fan of Leviticus. I'm like, I absolutely love Leviticus. It shows the intensity of sin and how far and just how seriously God takes our brokenness and the requirements it takes for us to be made right. But this is not a sermon on Leviticus. It's Genesis, so I'll get back.
00:09:00
Speaker
This shows Abel's offering was extra special. The fat of the animal was prized as its luxury. It was to be given to God when the animal was sacrificed. Leviticus 3 and 7 talk about this. The burning of the fat in the sacrifice before God is called a sweet aroma to the Lord. We see this in Leviticus 17.
00:09:22
Speaker
See, Abel's offering was intentional. It was extravagant. Abel understood who he was offering to, and that makes a big deal. See, Abel understood, like I said, who he was given an offer to, so that impacted why and what he did. Cain gave an offering of the fruit of the ground.
00:09:44
Speaker
No thought obedient, but without consideration. Many commenters talk about how Cain's offering was flip it and done out of what should be done, an effort of empty religion and works.
00:09:59
Speaker
The reality is this is the tension for all of us in this room, not just Cain and Abel in this story. The tension in all that we do for God lies in the realization of who we are honoring, not just what we are doing. So as we live our lives, as we do things in our day-to-day life, as we honor God with our life and our habits and our thoughts and the patterns that we have, it is the realization of who we are honoring, not just what we are doing to honor them.
00:10:29
Speaker
You see, Ken and Abel, even according to Leviticus, those are both acceptable offerings. But if they were both acceptable offerings, why did God accept one and reject the other? It's not just what we are doing, but it's understanding who we are doing it for.
00:10:47
Speaker
Not that we are doing something required of us, but that we understand the gravity of who we are honoring. So like during the time of music and singing, why do we sing these songs together? We're not just playing Christian karaoke. Like we're not here just to sing songs because, well, that feels like a good melody. That sounds like a good tune. Ooh, that rhymes really, really well. Like, oh, those musicians are absolutely killing it. Like, that's not why we sing.
00:11:15
Speaker
Why we sing is an overflow of who we're singing to. That when we realize that God is worth every bit of our emotions, He's worth us getting uncomfortable and vocalizing these promises over our life that He is absolutely worth singing to. He is worth honoring. He is worth giving adoration and praise to. It's no longer why am I singing, what am I singing about? It's who am I singing to? Who am I singing to?
00:11:44
Speaker
Why do we gather together as believers? Is it because it's Sunday and we should, and that's when Christians go to church? No, we gather together for the edification, the building up of one another, that when we come in this room and we worship together and we talk with one another, that we are encouraged in the Lord to go out from here, not just come here and hunker down, but we motivate and encourage and exhort one another to leave this room and be Christ-like in the areas that we have.
00:12:12
Speaker
It's not just to sit in a room. Why do we take communion? And I won't steal Justin's thunder because he's gonna walk us through this later, but communion is an important symbolic thing that we remember that reminds our heart of the victory of the cross.
00:12:26
Speaker
Justin talked about giving. It's because we have to understand that every part of our life is given unto the Lord. And we don't give because we ought to. We give because we get to. And he gave us the ability to earn in the first place. Loving one another.
00:12:47
Speaker
not loving those who just love you back. Paul speaks strictly to this as even the pagans love people who love them back. The different and the mark of Christians are the ability to love in the middle when someone doesn't love you back. Why do we do these things? Is it because we should? Is it because we ought to? Is it because we were told from a very young age we should? But what we need to realize is that all of these things are unto the Lord. It's an offering to the Lord. It's not just
00:13:22
Speaker
If all your faith, if all your actions, if all that you do is simply because I ought to, you are missing the deep love of Christ. You are missing the opportunity to love Him from a deep, deep place, not just with what you do, but with how you feel, with the honoring of your heart. There is such a beauty and understanding that we get to do these things because God is worth every bit of doing these things for.
00:13:52
Speaker
And so when we look at Cain and Abel, there's a stark difference between understanding who we're doing these for and what they were giving to and who the offering was to. So when you find yourself in here this morning, I wanna ask you this question. Why do you do the things that you do for God?
00:14:12
Speaker
Now I'm not sitting up here as a perfect person. I can give you a long laundry list of things that I do out of selfish pride that look a lot like Cain. But my prayer in this is that we begin and understand the heart of Abel and ask God to convict me and correct me and show me where to return back to him in this area. I should probably go back to my notes. I got a lot to go.
00:14:35
Speaker
We see this in King David. He talks about an offering that costs you something. In 2 Samuel 20, 24, there's a story of King David was instructed by the Lord to build an altar and to give an offering.
00:14:49
Speaker
There's this person, Arona, who had a place where David was to build this offering. But what he did was he offered the oxen for the offering. He wanted to give King David the offering. He said, here, I know that you have to do this. The Lord has called you to build this altar and to do a burnt offering. Here, I want to gift you these oxen and listen to King David's response. No, I will buy from you for a price, for I will not offer a burnt offering to the Lord my God that has cost me nothing.
00:15:21
Speaker
It's not an offering when it doesn't cost you anything. And how often in my faith and how often do I bring things to God that don't actually cost me anything? It's like, here God, you can have the extras, you can have the things that I don't really want anyways. You can have my sin, you can have my brokenness, you can have all the excess stuff that I don't really want anyways, and I mask it and put a bow on it and say, here's my offering to God, look how spiritual I am.
00:15:53
Speaker
But it didn't really cost me anything. But it didn't really, it wasn't really a sacrifice. And I wonder why, when I offer things to God that didn't cost me anything, there feels like a disconnect. Could it be that God
00:16:17
Speaker
wants your heart. He wants your priorities. He wants your thoughts. He wants all that you are, not for the sake of to make you miserable, but to understand that He is worth all of it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, if we increase the value of Christ in our life, we wouldn't have to decrease the cost of following Him.
00:16:42
Speaker
If we increase the value of following Jesus, we wouldn't have to try to decrease the cost to follow him. We see this in all sorts of parables, like the man who found the pearl of great pride, he found the pearl in the field and he sold everything to buy that field because he knew how valuable it was. And when we get a glimpse of God in our life, what Jesus has done, we say, of course I'm gonna forsake and offer all of this because that is far more valuable than whatever I'm trying to hold on to now.
00:17:12
Speaker
that we have to understand that He is worth everything to give to Him. He is worth every little bit of what I have give to Him. Where I want us to evaluate this portion of scripture and personally want to ask you is this why? Why do you do the
Exploration of Envy
00:17:30
Speaker
things that you do? Is it costing you anything? Cain forgot why he was bringing an offering, but Abel didn't.
00:17:40
Speaker
Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. Cain's anger was undoubtedly rooted in pride. He couldn't bear his brother's offering, was accepted before God, and his offering was not. In this moment, he shifted blame and was unwilling to own his real intentions. Blazing resentment toward God welled within Cain, which became directed at his brother Abel.
00:18:05
Speaker
His bitterness was so intense that no one can miss it. And this is the beautiful part. This is where God meets him. Second point is this. An unchecked heart leads to brokenness. Verse 6 and 7 say this, the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?
00:18:28
Speaker
And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. God's warning to Cain is gracious as it is intense. God is speaking to what's going on within Cain. But the reality is how we own our sins and how we deal with our frustrations greatly matter to God. Because the reality is sin is crouching and waiting at all of our doors.
00:18:59
Speaker
It's so easy to look at stories. It's so easy to read these from afar and remove ourselves from the text, and we want to be able, don't we? We do so bad. And I will say to give us some credit, there are some areas of life where we have able moments, but I would be full of pride and arrogance if I didn't realize that sin is crouching at my door just as much as Cain's. And I love you enough to say that sin is crouching at your door just as much as Cain's.
00:19:30
Speaker
The sin at the door was Cain's own sin. The beast that he was warned about was within himself. And we learn from James chapter one, when sin is allowed to grow, it will bring death. This warning from God is where we see the grace of God. In the middle of this tragic story, God always brings grace and the choice to confess, to be healed, and even in the worst situations.
00:19:55
Speaker
However, Cain chose pride. And in his pride, envy ran unchecked and was allowed to flourish. I need to take a breather for a second. I'm getting a little rowdy. I want to answer this question real quick. What is envy? Envy is more than jealousy.
00:20:17
Speaker
Jealousy is I want what someone else has. On Good Friday, Pastor Ryan recommended a book called Glittering Vices. It's phenomenal. Get it, but get ready to cry while you read it, okay? This is the definition of envy from this book is, envy's view of the world is essentially antagonistic. It's me versus you, my good or your good. Never both.
00:20:43
Speaker
In the zero-sum game, when they lack the good that they need, the natural reaction of the envious person is to undermine and destroy the good of their rival. Envy says it's either me or it's you, it's not both of us. Either I'm better than you or you're better than me.
00:21:01
Speaker
It is a competitive part of our heart that is saying, I need to dominate you. I need to rule over you. I need to be better than you. The envious person wants to be superior for their self esteem and their identity depends on outranking others in the relevant field of comparison.
00:21:25
Speaker
She goes on later talking to this book that we very rarely envy celebrities or super rich people, whatever this is, like these people that feel like they're not even in the same context as us because we cannot achieve where they're at. We may be jealous of them, but where we grown, envy is someone who's in the same circle as us. Cain was outranked in the field of offerings to God.
00:21:50
Speaker
And that grew and that led to an action of murdering his brother. When we are envious of others, we are quick to discover what you find most valuable in your life. Does someone make more money than you if that's close to you? Is someone better looking than you? Is someone fitter than you? Does someone have more friends? Are they in a relationship? Are they married? Are they funny? Are they athletic? Are they successful?
00:22:17
Speaker
What things in your heart do you envy about the people that you find yourself surrounded with? When we envy, we compare. Comparison puts us on top or on bottom, but never neutral. Comparison is the fuel that adds to the fire of envy in your heart. The reality is this, the envy destroys love.
00:22:45
Speaker
The commandment is to love your neighbor as you love yourself and the envir can do neither. The commandment is to love your neighbor as you love yourself and the envir can do neither. They can't love the person next to them and they can't love themselves because their identity and self-worth is wrapped up in defeating someone.
00:23:09
Speaker
Just a way of observation. This isn't the only time we see envy lead to eradicating the quote, competition. You see this with Jacob and his son Joseph. He loved him more than his other children. He gave him a robe. He paid a lot of attention. So what did his siblings do? They plotted to kill him.
00:23:29
Speaker
The reality is that we choose to allow envy to go unchecked and to grow in our life. We aren't just rejecting and plotting against others. We are turning our back on God because those people are image bearers of God. There's this Charles Spurgeon quote that makes me sound smarter than I am, so I'm gonna read it. The cool abundance of Cain is an indication of the state of heart which led up to his murdering his brother.
00:23:59
Speaker
And it was also a part of the result of having committed that terrible crime. Listen to this. He would not have proceeded to the cruel deed of bloodshed if he had not first cast off the fear of God and been ready to defy his maker. And here's the heartbreaking reality of envy that we see in Cain and Abel.
00:24:22
Speaker
Even after Cain killed Abel, he got what he wanted, it still wasn't enough to do what he really wanted, God to accept his offering. Even when he
God's Grace and Redemption
00:24:35
Speaker
got exactly what he wanted, he plotted, he executed, that was kind of an unintentional pun, like he killed his brother, like what happened is he got what he wanted.
00:24:45
Speaker
But it didn't really give him what he ultimately wanted and what he needed. And what he wanted was his offering to be acceptable and accepted by God. Because reality is this, no matter how hard you try to scratch the itch of envy, it will never satisfy what your soul really needs. A trust and faith in God.
00:25:14
Speaker
Envy is just a downward spiral of self-focus and others destroying that will never satisfy what your soul really needs. And that is to be in this deep, beautiful relationship with God, our creator, and recognize everything I have is worth offering and giving to him. But this is the beautiful part of God. Number three, grace and failure.
00:25:46
Speaker
One thing I love about God is that even in the midst of failure, stubborn, unrepentant hearts, emotions, frustration, anger, erratic behavior, God is still so gracious. He's always providing an opportunity for you and for me to receive his grace and repent of our ways and return back to him. We see this so clearly in this story of Cain and Abel, but first I want to examine Cain's response to God's judgment.
00:26:14
Speaker
His response to God banishing him from where he lives and out of his presence is this, my punishment is more than I can bear. Cain didn't feel bad for sin, but only about his punishment. This attitude did not end with Cain. Like many of him, many people, we only feel bad about our punishment and our consequences, but not the sin that we committed. Another way to say is, I'm not sorry for what I did. I'm sorry I got caught.
00:26:44
Speaker
There's nothing recorded of Cain repenting, confessing, or owning up to what he has done. The punishment is what Cain had an issue with, not what he was being punished for. Whoo! I don't like to admit it, but when I read that and I look at this story, I'm like, that feels a little too close to home. That feels a little too close, that feels a little too personal. Come on, God, this is a story about Cain and Abel, the first jacked up brothers, like this is not about Brennan.
00:27:13
Speaker
Holy Spirit says, oh no, no, no, I love you way too much to keep yourself away from this. The Spirit of God loves you way too much to allow this to continue to run rampant in your life. Because it is a toxic poison that is slowly dripping in your life that is killing areas and affecting relationships more than you or I may know.
00:27:36
Speaker
because one of the clearest marks of sin is almost our innate desire to excuse ourselves and complain if we are judged in any way. How ironic, the murderer was afraid of being murdered. Cain's worry is still about himself. He is sorry, he isn't sorry about murder, sitting against God, and that he is leaving God's presence, nothing. He's still worried about his punishment.
00:28:04
Speaker
Because one of the consequences of sin is that it makes the sinner pity himself instead of causing him to turn to God. One of the first signs of new life is that the individual takes sides with God against themselves.
00:28:21
Speaker
The reality is this sign, this clear understanding of this new life that we are walking in, in Christ, a clear response is that I trust God's judgment over my life, over my judgment, over my life. Because what happens is we want to judge ourselves based on our intentions, not our actions, right?
00:28:42
Speaker
Well, I didn't intend to do that. I didn't mean to do that. Well, what I actually meant to say was this, but it doesn't matter what shows is what the actions show what has been dominating our thoughts. Well, I didn't mean it like that. It doesn't matter what I meant like it's what it came out as.
00:29:00
Speaker
By God and his amazing grace protects Cain even after all of this goes down. Goes down. By all estimates, God's mark, whatever it was, was an amazing grace to Cain's life. Cain was cursed and separated from God, yet God guarded him. Cain's life still belonged to God. There's
Reflection on Personal Faith and Repentance
00:29:23
Speaker
an astounding amount of grace right here in one of the darkest scenes in Genesis.
00:29:28
Speaker
We can see that God did not abandon guilty Cain. When Cain brought his sparse offering to God and God saw his evil anger, God did not turn away from him. That is grace. God, in fact, engaged Cain with questions to get to his heart. That's grace. God then exhorted Cain to withstand the temptations in his heart. That is grace.
00:29:52
Speaker
After murdering, the Lord listened to Cain's unrepentant, self-pitying plea, grace. Finally, God placed a sign upon Cain that protected him for the remainder of his natural life. What an amazing grace from God. Someone throughout this entire story,
00:30:20
Speaker
refused at every turn to heed to God's direction and guidance. And God still showed grace. And people are like, I don't like the God of the Old Testament. He's just wrathful, vengeance, and angry, and a zero grace. Have they read the scriptures? Look at this. I would have handled it way different than thank God I'm not God, right?
00:30:47
Speaker
We can see the grace of God so clearly in this story, so I have a question for you today. As we're allowing our heart and our mail to be read by the Holy Spirit this morning, will you respond to His grace today the way that you have been acting like Cain? Will you allow the goodness of God to bring you to repentance? Because the reality is this,
00:31:17
Speaker
We are no better than Cain. We are no better than him. There's areas of every single one of our lives. That's why I love scripture. No one can hide from it. That's why I love the Holy Spirit. No one can hide from his conviction. We can try to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist and try to drown out the voice of God in life. But the reality is even how noisy you make your life, the voice of God is always in there somewhere.
00:31:50
Speaker
Because the reality is when we walk into this room, we listen to this text and we wrestle with the text that we are sitting with an opportunity to respond to the gospel. We just had our Easter service and Good Friday service and boy, it was emotional and it was beautiful and it was heart wrenching and it was hopeful and it was joyful. It was all the emotions in one. Because on Good Friday, we sat with the weight of our sin.
00:32:17
Speaker
We sat with the weight of what it cost Jesus to make us right with the Father. We were faced with our own brokenness. We were faced with our double-minded ways. We were faced with our sin and our shame and our guilt and our hidden sins.
00:32:36
Speaker
But then on Sunday, we got to celebrate Jesus' death over hell, over Satan, over the grave that now in him, in faith, in Jesus, we are able to walk in this free gift of grace. So I wanna extend an invitation to you this morning. Will you either sit at a distance
00:33:02
Speaker
Or will you engage with the Spirit of God this morning and say, Jesus, I repent of my ways that have been contrary to your word, that has been contrary to how you made me, that I have been living in these cane-like moments of my life. Will you say yes to the grace of God and will you allow the grace of God and the goodness of God bring you to repentance this morning? May we never forget the beauty of repentance.
00:33:30
Speaker
Whether you've been a Christian one day or 50, 60, 70 plus years, may we always remember that repentance is a beautiful, beautiful opportunity given to us by the grace of God. And would you return
Embracing Scripture for Spiritual Growth
00:33:45
Speaker
back to the creator? So two questions I want to ask before we end this. Where are you obeying God, but lacking intentionality with what you're with your best?
00:34:00
Speaker
Maybe for the people in the room, you've just been doing what you've always been doing because you ought to, or you were told to. You've either never made this relationship with God personal, or you've simply forgotten who you're doing this for. The second question is this, where are you comparing yourself with others to the point of anger with God or anger with them? You've made someone who is the image of God an enemy to you.
00:34:31
Speaker
Or maybe you find yourself angry with God so you're punishing him and putting him at a distance.
00:34:43
Speaker
I want to close with this one last reading from Philippians 2, 1 through 4, from Paul writing to the Philippian church. It simply says this, so if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy and be of the same mind and have the same love be a full accordant of one mind. Listen to this.
00:35:09
Speaker
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not only look out to his own interests, but also the interests of others.
00:35:25
Speaker
Now I'll remind you of our guiding thought today. What you allow to dominate your thoughts will eventually dominate your actions. If you allow scripture, the love of God and the spirit of God to dominate your thoughts, it will eventually dominate your actions. Would you pray with me? God, would you reveal in every single one of us
00:35:57
Speaker
where our hearts have been wayward. We've got our offerings that we've been giving you cost us absolutely nothing. We've just been giving you half-hearted offerings and doing things that we ought to do. Holy Spirit, would you convict us to return back to the goodness of God, the grace of God, and allow your word, not just to be words that we hear, but that Spirit,
00:36:22
Speaker
You put these deep into our lives, God, and cause us to respond and understand that you are worth every single bit of our life and everything that we have, Jesus. I pray that we lay our lives down, God, that our lives become an offering, that our lives become a pleasing aroma to you, Jesus.
00:36:42
Speaker
God that we're not here to build us up and to make us the best person. God that you would root out the envy in our hearts but Holy Spirit that we would come to you and that we would find fresh new life, fresh and new perspective and understanding of the goodness of who you are Jesus. I thank you for all that you're doing. We say this in your name, Amen.