The Art of Loving: Rejoice in Other’s Accomplishments!

The Art of Loving: Rejoice in Your Spouse’s Accomplishments
1 Cor. 13:4-8

INTRODUCTION:
Josh Billings wrote: “Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.”

There were two young men who lived near each other and worked very hard at their respective jobs. The older of them was a farmer, and the younger owned sheep. They were brothers. Both men were devout people who regularly worshiped God They knew Him well and recognized His authority over their lives.

One of these brothers not only sought to worship God, but he was careful to do it just the way God had told them He wanted. This was the younger brother, and part of his proper worship was offering to the Lord a sacrifice of the firstborn lamb from his flocks.

The older bother, however had his own ideas about how to worship God. Showing a rebellious streak, he decided that he would not go to his brother to get a lamb to sacrifice. Instead, he would offer God some of the produce he had grown in his field.

Not surprisingly, the Lord was pleased with the man who had obeyed His instructions, and with his sacrifice, and He was not pleased with the farmer and his offering. He expressed this to the brothers.

How did the unfavored brother act? Did he repent of his willfulness and commit himself to worshiping properly? Did he praise his younger brother for his faithfulness to God? In short, did he learn anything?

No, he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he envied his brother's favor in God’s eyes. The dictionary says envy is “painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another, joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.”

That envy on Cain’s part gave birth to anger, which showed. God confronted him about it. “If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

But the young man did not listen to God. He did not learn the art of loving. Instead, he allowed his resentment to continue to grow in his heart until he eventually lured his bother into a field and killed him in cold blood.

Sibling rivalry has been around since the very beginning. I have a brother who is five years older than me and we use to physically fight. We also played together quite often - with Matchbox cars, army men, and other things. But we fought too. Of course, he always won because he was bigger than I am.

Envy is incredibly destructive. You can have a great basketball team but if you have players on the team who are envious of other players, it will cause the team to lose consistently.

There was an eagle who was envious of a fellow eagle that could fly better and higher. One day, the envious eagle saw a hunter with a bow and arrow. The eagle said to the sportsman, “I wish you would bring down that soaring eagle up there.”

“I would,” the man said, “if you’d give me some feathers for this arrow so it will fly farther and straighter.”

So the jealous eagle pulled out his own feathers and gave them to the hunter, who put them on his arrow. But his shot still fell short of the high-flying eagle.

That led the envious eagle to pull out another feather and then another for the man’s arrows, until finally he had pulled out so many that the bird couldn’t fly. The hunter then took advantage of the situation, turning around and killing the now-helpless bird.

There are a lot of fables that deal with envy because it is such a universal human predicament. Envy almost always backfires. The story of Esther in the OT is a great example of that…

Haman had been honored by the King of Persia. Everyone bowed before Haman except the Jew, Mordecai. Haman resented Mordecai for his disrespect and his envy led him to build a gallows to hang Mordecai and a plot to destroy all the Jews living in the Persian empire. Yet, before Haman could fuffill his wicked plans, the king found out that Mordecai - in a completely unrelated matter - found out some men were planning to kill the king. So, the king honored Mordecai and in the process, Queen Esther was able to tell the king about Haman’s wicked plot and Haman wound up being hanged on his own gallows.

But Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:4: “Love does not envy.” A loving heart is not pained when others do well or find favor. It doesn’t resent their success or happiness. It certainly doesn’t get angry about what others have. Instead, love rejoices with those who are rejoicing (Rom. 12:15).

God’s word also tells us that “A tranquil heart is life to the body, But passion [envy] is rottenness to the bones” (Prov. 14:30).

James, the Lord’s bother, wrote: “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing” (James 3:16). If anyone had a reason to be envious, it would be a brother of Jesus! Perhaps that’s the reason why Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him at the beginning.

God’s word commands us: “putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” (1 Peter 2:1). But it’s not enough just to get rid of something bad; we have to replace it with something good. And the opposite of envy is thankfulness. A loving heart is a thankful heart - thankful for life, thankful for God’s grace, thankful for friends, thankful for family, thankful for the beauty of the world, thankful for freedom, thankful for a host of other things.

FOCUS:
Now, what it really boils down to is this: what do you focus on? It’s a matter of what we choose to think about.

We all have problems. We all have a list of things that we want. Some of us want more time in our day. Some of us want more money in our pocket. Some of us want more love from our spouse. Some of us want more respect from our children. Some of us want a better car in our driveway.

Our problem with envy is not that we haven’t been blessed; it’s that we’re not thankful and content with what we do have. The blessings we do have - we tend to take them for granted. Instead of looking at what we have in our own hands, we see what someone else has in their hands and we want that!

The cure, of course, is to look for the good in life. What we allow our minds to dwell on shapes our attitudes and sooner or later, our words and our actions. I emphasized last week that we are in control of our thinking.

One Sunday, a preacher was preaching to his church, which was full of stingy people, and he spoke a hard lesson on the importance of giving. After the lesson, he passed his hat to take up a collection. When the hat had made its way to all the people and back to the preacher, the preacher turned it over to see what would fall out - nothing! He said, “Let’s pray,” and he thanked the Lord that he had gotten his hat back!

Counting our blessings isn’t a one-time thing. We have to keep at it - work at it - on a daily basis.

What triggers envy? We compare ourselves in some way to someone else and we don’t like what we see. Cain compared himself to Abel and the end result was murder. One man compares his house or boat or camper to his neighbor and the end result is envy and covetousness. A student will compare her test scores with a fellow student, perhaps even the smartest kid in the class.

In Matthew 20, Jesus tells the parable about the workers in the vineyard. A landowner goes out early and hires men to work in the vineyard. They agreed to work all day for a day’s wage, a “denarius” in Roman coins.

He hired men at 9 AM and then at noon, then at 3 PM and then around 5 PM, an hour before quitting time. When evening came - 6 PM - the owner had his foremen call the workers and give them their wages. He began with those who had only worked for one hour - and they received a salary for a whole day’s wage! Those who had worked all day then got excited, thinking they would get even more than the denarius for which they had agreed.

When those men got to the foremen, they only received one denarius. They were envious of the other men who got the same pay as they. Then their envy turned to anger at the landowner and they complained at him.

Those men did not take any satisfaction in having given a good day’s work for an honest day’s salary. They did not appreciate the fact that the landowner had given them a job, nor the fact that the landowner paid them the common wage for that day and time. They ignored the fact that they had “signed a contract” to be paid that very same amount. They did not rejoice with the other men who actually got paid more than their work deserved.

There was no love in their hearts. There was no gratitude in their souls. Only envy and anger.

Comparing ourselves to others will always lead to envy, disappointment, frustration, and anger. Why? Because someone will always be better than we are. There will always be someone more handsome or prettier or smarter or more talented or more skilled…

THE WAY TO HAPPINESS:
The way to happiness, the “art of loving” in this case, is to appreciate what we have and not focus on what other people have.

James even tells us that we need to consider it joy when we encounter trials, knowing they help us grow in Christlikeness (James 1:2-4). In Hebrews 12:1-3, the writer gives us the same message. Gratitude produces happiness; ingratitude produces unhappiness. It’s just that simple.

A few years back, there was a wealthy couple who were out sailing with their small children on a 35’ sloop. A fierce storm came up and their boat capsized. All their goods were thrown overboard and lost. The family had to be pulled out of the water by a rescue team.

The couple was interviewed by a reporter and the woman kept saying over and over again: “We’ve lost everything! Everything was in that sailboat - all our money, our clothes, our possessions - and the yacht wasn’t insured! We’ve lost everything!”

That’s the way I felt when our apartment was broken into in Montgomery back in 2007. I wonder how long it took for that women to decide to be thankful that her family was still alive. It took me about 3 days to quit focusing on stuff and be thankful that Rachel and the girls weren’t in the apartment when it was vandalized.

We focus on things we own and we get unhappy. That woman and her husband had lost nothing of any real value. Someone once said, “If you can count your losses in money, you haven’t lost much.”

You and I need to be around people who are also thankful, to give us the right, encouraging example.

WHAT GOD EXPECTS:
God expects us to be grateful for His blessings rather than envious of anyone else.

Daily, we should give Him thanks for what He has done and does for us. We should love Him and praise Him and worship Him out of gratitude for all He chooses to give us.

Let’s read some text from Deuteronomy 6. First, verse 10 - Israel would be blessed with great prosperity. Then, God warned them in verse 12. Look over at 8:10-11.

God knows that when things are going well for us, we are likely to get cocky and envious and self-sufficient. So He warns His people in the OT and NT not to be ungrateful.

A thankful, loving attitude that is not envious is the sure way to happiness. God knows how we’re made; He knows what we need; He gives us what we need when we need it.

I want to end by sharing with you this passage from Proverbs 30:8-9: “Keep deception and lies far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God.” That ought to be the prayer of every Christian.

When we realize we have everything we need from God through Jesus Christ, then we realize that we don’t have to blow out some else’s candle in order to make our own burn brighter. I can love others without feeling jealous or envious.

Take home message: Let’s work on being grateful and do our best to expel envy from our hearts.

Start an evangelism conversation: “Do you go to worship? Why / why not?”