JEALOUSY
(Gen.37:3-11)
It starts in a child at an early age and can last a lifetime; it can wreck the love between two people who thought they were inseparable; it can bring nations to war and the most powerful people to ruin. I’m talking about jealousy defined as feeling resentful, bitter, grudging, envious, covetous. The jealousy you feel when someone else likes your man or woman more than you think they should; the jealousy you feel over a rival who got the job or position or the custody rights you wanted; the jealousy you feel because they live in a better house, drive a nicer car, have more money than you do. The jealousy you feel because she got preferential treatment over you due to the color of her skin or her age or his gender. You know what I’m talking about because too many times we have been stung, hurt, betrayed, devastated by the jealousy we felt in our hearts that was so strong its grip made us say and do things that we knew were wrong.
Many of you know the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors; I read it again to you this morning. Here was a favored son, the baby of the family, who received from his father a special present, a beautiful robe that did not go unnoticed by his older brothers. In Gen. 37:4 it says: “…when (Joseph’s) brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.”
To aggravate these jealous feelings, Joseph shared two dreams he had with the family and in the dreams it was as if the other members of the family were all paying homage to Joseph. It says in verse 11 and his brothers were jealous of him.
They were so jealous they wanted to kill him and almost did had it not been for a caravan of Ishmaelites passing through the region on their way to Egypt. The oldest brother, Reuben, convinced the others that rather than kill Joseph why not sell him into slavery- they could be rid of him and at the same time make some money as well. The wrong of jealousy wreaked its havoc again as the plot was carried out and an extra lie was added to tell father that a wild beast had killed Joseph and all that was left was his blood stained robe handed to a shocked and devastated dad.
This time murder was avoided but it wasn’t when Cain killed his brother Abel because God preferred Abel’s sacrifice over Cain’s (Gen.4); and all of us know what happened when the prodigal son came home and the Father had a feast for his return. The older brother was so jealous that anger and resentment raged within him as he told his father in no uncertain terms:
…all these years I serve you and behave myself and you never throw a big party for me but then this son of yours (not my brother mind you) this son of yours goes out and lives like a tramp and you kill the fatted calf for him. (paraphrase Luke 15:29ff)
And those are only three examples of a sin that is as countless as the sands of the sea from one generation to the next over the centuries of time to this very day. Why should he be paid a million dollars a year with another 5 million in stock options; I’m as good as he is and who does she think she is with her fancy clothes and sexy looks, someday she’ll get hers. It is any wonder that the tenth commandment says: thou shall not covet.
One of the worse features of jealousy is that it strikes most often in the family—people that are closest to us, people we know well and work with on a day to day basis end up being the source of our jealousy- my brother (Cain or my younger brother), my closest friend, people I’ve known for years. The stranger or the outsider who may make us feel jealous comes and goes but the family member, the friend, the coworker is there month after month, year after year. And did you notice in the biblical examples as is so
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often true in life today the damage to families is not readily repaired but the hurt and consequences from the sin of jealousy can last for a long time.
What can we do about our jealous feelings? It would be nice just to brush them aside from our mind, like we brush aside an annoying fly but that is easier said then done especially when over and over again the favored child keeps coming out on top. And of course there are those who would quote scripture after scripture and there are plenty:
“Fret not yourself because of the wicked, be not envious of wrongdoers.” (Ps.37:1)
--Let us not desire vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another (Gal.5:26)
---..Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat; neither for the body, what you shall put on. The life is more than meat and the body is more than clothing. (Lk.12:22)
Certainly we don’t want to deny ourselves the avenue of help that comes from taking a scripture and allowing the power of its truth to cast out our sin. David said in Ps. 37:7
“Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; fret not yourself because of him who prospers in his way.”
Such a verse taken to our heart and allowed to take control may be just the right medicine for our wounded and envious spirit. Such a course of action -- taking a powerful scripture and allowing its healing truth to transform us takes time and discipline- something we often run short of. In such a strategy another helpful guide is given and that is to admit to our self or to recognize that jealousy and its cohorts of envy, resentment and bitterness have gotten a hold on me; otherwise, why would you want to take a verse like Ps. 37:7 and makes its truth play out in your life. Isn’t it surprising as we grow older how little we really know about ourselves yet we think we know.
Oswald Chambers talks about how God tries to show us who and what we really are as we make those efforts to spend more time alone with Him.
Read January 12 devotional from My Utmost for His Highest……………………..
And that leads me to my final point on how to contend with jealous feelings. Going back to the story of Joseph, we learn that years later after many ups and downs he became the vice president of Egypt, a position of leadership second only to the King/the Pharaoh. And just as his dreams had foretold years before, his family came to pay homage to him.
His brothers obviously had a lot of hidden left over guilt and shame feelings for what their jealousy had caused them to do. And to them Joseph in a gracious act of forgiveness said:
“…you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many
people should be kept alive, as they are today…(Gen. 50:20)…so it was not you who
sent me here, but God….(Gen. 45:8)
A lot of jealousy results from discontent—I want something that somebody else has:
--I want the kind of money he has; I want the love she has found; I want the healthy child and nice home they have…
When Joseph was a slave servant in Potiphar’s home, he wanted his freedom and to return home to his own family; when he was unjustly imprisoned and then helped one prisoner, the King’s butler, to realize his freedom and was forgotten by that freed prisoner for 3 years, there were times when Joseph’s discontent was unbearable. But it finally became clear to Joseph later on that his whole life had a destiny mapped out and directed by a sovereign God from the time of his youth when he had dreams of rulership and authority
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that he did not understand to the time 30 years later when he said to his guilt-ridden and unnerved brothers: “you meant evil against me, GOD meant it for good…”
My life, my times are in His hands and have been so from birth to this very moment.
How could Joseph feel or continue to feel jealousy (bitter, resentful, envious) when he
believed without a shadow of a doubt that I am not my own—that it’s just not me out there trying to make my own way. No, no, there is a heavenly Hand upon me guiding and directing me- pulling me up out of the pits of despair and imprisonment, rescuing me
through the problems and deep waters of life to a divine destiny that God has appointed me to.
I’m wondering as a Christian this morning do you ever have that feeling about your life? Do you ever get a sense that something more than just you is at work in your life-
something good, something powerful, something way beyond what you could explain or understand? How I ask are you going to be jealous or envious when deep down inside you there is this gnawing truth that God has a hold on me and is moving me to His appointed place, to His appointed duty for me. And it is not a choice I have it is a divine destiny appointed unto me before the beginning of time.
Said the Lord to Jeremiah:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jer.1:5)
And I am saying to you this morning that such a destiny is not reserved for only men and women of the Bible but for you and me who claim the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. You want an answer to jealousy, I’ll give you one said Joseph.
Wake up to the destiny God has appointed for you; you will become so overwhelmed by the power and majesty of God working in your life and the duties He has for you, you will see life and what’s happening to you in a whole new perspective. More and more you will see with Christ’s eye instead of yours, and your feelings including jealousy will be less and less from the flesh and more and more from the Spirit, the Holy Spirit working within you. How else could I say this day: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good……”
As I mentioned earlier your divine destiny and mine is not a choice; destiny to me implies something fixed and settled in the sense that this will be the final outcome, just as we believe that Christ will come and one day reign victoriously. Some people like to think of God as a choice as if there may or may not be a god. There is a God and He is the same yesterday, today; and forever and for those of us who will trust and obey there is not just a God but a destiny and as we awaken to it as Joseph did, as Jeremiah did, as Mary did, as Paul did we too will realize that I am not my own but I have been bought with a price and no longer do I live but Christ lives in me transforming me from one degree or glory to the next by His grace and to His glory.
