Overview
This teaching examines “Brotherly Love vs. Comparing Part 1” through Acts 7, Psalm 105, Ecclesiastes 4, Matthew 27, showing how envy, know, success shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Transcript
Understanding Brotherly Love vs. Comparing Part 1
Please turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 13. As Ted mentioned, we’re gonna be taking a look at comparing versus brotherly love. In other words, envy versus honor.
Have you ever been successful and rode that wave super high, but eventually you needed another accomplishment to feel good about yourself? Or maybe you thought you were successful until you saw how it looked on somebody else. This is what happens when we put our value in our accomplishments. When this happens, we need success to feel that we are good enough.
You know, think about it. Success could start to prove to yourself or others your own personal value. I know I’ve done this, where you have a successful moment and your opinion of yourself just goes right up there.
Then you add it to your resume, but when that moment is finished, you often find yourself looking for the next thing to prove your value to yourself or other people. Our culture has hijacked how we value and most people base it on your last accomplishment and whether you’ve been successful by worldly acclaim. You know, maybe as a kid you were so trained to think that you were good enough if you performed well.
If you got an A. If you hit a home run. Basically, if you didn’t mess up. Have you ever gone into your adult life with a performance-based approach to God? Like we’re only as good to him as our last ability to perform well.
God didn’t create us to live like that. The enemy has hijacked how we view value and most base it on success. We live in a world that devalues a brother and rejects a brother based on comparison.
And usually that worldly success is measured by money. It’s measured by appearance. It’s measured by things or objects such as houses.
It’s measured by accomplishments. By the amount of followers that you have on social media. Their question? What have you accomplished lately? People tie value to things and it’s often to magnify their own works.
The undercurrent of culture is that you have to strive to be better than somebody else. So much so that you outdo them, so that you can prove value of yourself to others. The weight, when the weight of our value of others is dependent on their performance, I’d say it’s pretty darn easy to reject and devalue a brother.
The Biblical Foundation
1st Corinthians 13, we’ve looked at this in verse 4. Charity suffereth long and is kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth not itself.
It’s not puffed up. When you think about these attributes of the love of God, these are attributes of our God. God, as we just heard, is long-suffering.
He is kind. He does not envy. Who does he have to envy? He doesn’t vaunt himself.
He’s not puffed up. The love of God is our escape to live above the world. You know where the love of God is? Envy is not.
Please turn to Acts 7. Envieth here, it means to have a feeling of warmth for or against something. At its root, it means to boil with heat, to be hot or glow. Sounds like being hot and heavy about something that’s not very godly.
This word is also used to describe Joseph’s brothers when they sold him as a slave. In Acts 7, let’s take a look at verse 9. Sorry to throw you off to you. Most of the time, I’m gonna be using the ESV.
Occasionally, I’ll kick in the KJV, just so you know. Acts 7, 9. And the patriarchs, they were moved with envy. They sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him, and delivered him out of all of his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
And he made him governor over Egypt and all his house. In the life of Joseph, envy marks the rejection of a brother by the people who were supposed to be cheering him on. But what they do is they discard him.
Examples and Spiritual Lessons
He was rejected by his own flesh and blood. And you know what? Psalm 105, 17 adds some further insight into his life, and what happened to him when he was sold as a slave. It says that his feet were hurt with fetters.
His neck was put in a collar of iron. You know, a lot happened in the life of Joseph, and I love how this record provides the highlights. His brothers were moved with envy.
They sold him as a slave, but God was with him, and delivered him of all his afflictions. Well, that pretty much sums up a lot of decades of his life. And let’s not forget that God led the way.
God paved the way for Joseph to be second-in-command in all of Egypt. We’ll get back to that. Please turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 4. You know, the rejection of Joseph and other examples throughout the Word, they clearly outline and parallel the ultimate rejection of Jesus.
The rejection of Jesus was also motivated out of envy. In fact, Matthew 27, 18 says it this way, that Pilate knew that the people would release Jesus Barabbas instead of Jesus the Christ because of envy. By rejecting him, the people were seeking to rid themselves of this man.
They were seeking to depreciate his value, his self-worth. You know, often when we become envious of other people and compare ourselves with them, that happens frequently when we look at their success. In Ecclesiastes chapter 4, we believe this was written by Solomon, there’s this great insight in verse 4, “…then I saw all toil and all skill in work that comes from a man’s envy of his neighbor.
This also is vanity and a striving after the wind.” Envy of a neighbor and their success, it’s like chasing the wind. We feel the breeze coming through here, we had a flag completely get blown over by the wind. Somebody had to chase the wind and bring it back.
When you chase the wind, you can’t chase it, you’re endlessly running. Verse 5, “…the fool, he folds his hands and eats his own flesh.” That doesn’t sound good. Verse 6, “…better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after the wind.” Solomon speaks of those whose efforts are crowned with success.
He speaks of all the work and ambition that is motivated by envy. This word skill and work, it refers to success and the dexterity of it. We’re not to strive after our neighbor’s success, because it’s rooted in comparison.
Faith in Action
We live in a culture that worships success and the things that success brings. Don’t get me wrong, our Heavenly Father wants us to be successful, but where it gets derailed is when it’s motivated out of envy, to outdo a brother. You know, as brothers and sisters in Christ, your value is not based on your accomplishments.
It’s not the new car you bought. It’s not the new house. It’s not the number of degrees you have, your intellect.
It’s on something, our value is put on something so much greater than that. It’s based on God’s love, and that’s something that this world cannot touch. They can’t take that away from you, because nothing in this world can separate you from God’s love.
You know, many things can separate us from each other, but we can’t undo what God did in the sacrifice of his Son. Have you ever felt your life straddled between two worlds? The one world of accomplishments, striving to achieve to be better than peers, self-seeking, self-glory, and the other world of honor, honoring others, love of the brethren. These worlds oppose each other.
You know, when success is motivated out of envy, it’ll get you along for a little while. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this, but eventually it’s going to leave you exhausted and empty, even when the goal is achieved. Often the temptation that we have to gain success could be to prove other people wrong when they put limitations on your ability, but when success is motivated out of anger and resentment, it will eventually lead to depleted strength.
In other words, once the goal is achieved, there won’t be that satisfaction or even that sense of accomplishment, because it’s not fueled by God’s love, because it’s not led, it’s God’s grace in your life and not your own works. It seeks self-honor, it seeks self-glory, and Solomon here in Ecclesiastes refers to such movements as vain and striving after the wind. This phrase, the fool, folds his hands and eats his own flesh.
Who is the fool here? The one who engages in the selfish act of envy. To put it simply, this could be understood as the fool consumes his own strength when he engages in the selfish act of envy. Comparison is a depreciation of your own self-worth.
It’s a devaluing of self, and as a result, a cycle of restlessness ensues. But don’t worry, this phrase is a figure of speech. Your flesh won’t literally deteriorate if you’re envy of your neighbor.
Walking in Love and Confidence
I saw some of you start to look at your hands. I’m kidding. Verse 6 says, better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil.
Quietness could be rendered rest. Rest in contrast to the restless behavior of envy, which robs a man or woman of themselves. To the hunting after gain, an honor which never has enough.
The handful of quietness, that handful, it refers to an open palm, while the two hands full refers to clenched fists. The striving of someone who laboriously seeks only themself and loses themself in the restless act of envy is truly striving against their own well-being. Because it’s perceived that if you use two hands, you’ll be able to be more successful to get more accomplished.
But not if those two hands are full of envy. Please turn to Romans chapter 12. I have a story for you.
Comparison or the rejection of a brother is like running in the mud. Are there any runners out there? You know, I enjoy running and find it relaxing and fun until you have to run in the mud. You know, some of you may think it’s fun, excursion to go out in the mud, but can you imagine paying money to run in the mud? Well, I did this once some years ago.
My brother was really into those tough mudder races. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. It’s a 10-mile military style obstacle course, but the kicker, as you can gather, was mud.
And you know, the course is not just surface muddy, so you slip around. It’s about 10 to 12 inches deep for the full 10 miles. That was just to keep things interesting.
And if you ever have run in the mud, you know that it requires an enormous amount of physical exertion, which leads to fatigue at a faster rate. You know, comparison will do this to us. It will cause us to use more mental and physical exertion, but at the end of the day, we’re not getting anywhere anytime soon.
It’s like striving after the wind. I have to tell you that the climate conditions of this race was a little less than perfect. It was in Columbus, Ohio in the month of May, which should have been decent weather.
Applying the Teaching in Daily Life
But this day happened to be 40 degrees with a wind chill, so that made it about 30 degrees. I know some of you from Montana are like, you couldn’t handle a race in 30-degree weather. Listen, it was going through the mud, 10 inches of mud, underneath obstacles, so you’re covered in wet mud for 10 miles.
So considering that, it was pretty freezing. It was not literally halfway through the race, and I was stuck in the mud, and I was freezing. Comparison is like that.
You feel stuck continually not going anywhere while exerting an enormous amount of energy. Let’s step back a number of years. I’m gonna give you a little further insight.
Some background of running this race is that once my brother reached high school age, he chose to spend his time behind a computer teaching himself how to program, and that paid dividends for him, even to this day. In the meantime, I remained active, and I quickly became more athletic and was always in better shape than my brother for the most part of our adult lives. Isn’t that something of an accomplishment when you can say you outperformed your brother, your older brother? It was for me.
Well, this all changed when my brother made up his mind to lose 150 pounds and compete in these Tough Mudder races all over the nation. No longer was I more fit. Going into this race, I didn’t realize how unfit I had become.
It wasn’t just physically being unfit. What made me unfit to run this race was how I measured myself next to somebody who I thought to be better. Sometimes we need to take a big step back where there is no comparison.
What if the measuring stick of success had nothing to do with seeking to be better with someone else, but rather from a vantage of the success of Christ and not of our own effort? What would such behavior look like? Rather than outdoing one another out of envy or comparison, instead it seeks to bestow honor to others. You see, before Christ, one was measured by their works. How did they measure up against the law? And such is still the case today.
Our culture enforces measurements of success based on your works. Let’s look at what it means to measure. In John 4 34, it states that Jesus Christ had the Spirit without measure.
A Life Shaped by God’s Word
This same word is used here in Romans 12 to indicate our measure being tied to Christ through his faith. And in Romans 12 3, it says, for by the grace given unto me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Everyone received the same measure.
Second Peter 1 1 in the ESV calls it equal standing. I’ll read it to you while you turn to Ephesians 4. Second Peter 1 1 says, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of God and Savior Jesus Christ. Romans 3 22 states it this way, it calls it there’s no difference.
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference. Ephesians 4 7, but the grace given to each one of us according was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
What was Christ’s gift? The fulfillment of the law, the fulfillment of works, the burden of our sins that was conquered. We have been given the measure of his works for us. It’s called grace.
This word also measure occurs in verse 16 of Ephesians chapter 4. This one I’ll read to you out of the King James Version. For from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. Our measure of Christ is what we bring to the party.
You know, that’s the part that makes us fitly joined together. And that’s you know, so many times we try to brush up the physical, but where we ought to spend the majority of our time is in the spiritual. That should carry the most weight.
That’s where we should invest our time and our effort. Before we take a break, I’ll leave you with this. The most important part of you was never designed to compare.
Did you know that the Spirit of God in you does not compare itself with the Spirit of God in the person next to you? Holy crap. The Spirit of God in you does not compare itself to the Spirit of God in the person next to you. Only God could orchestrate the proper fitting of His Spirit in us as the body of Christ.
God bless you.
Key Takeaways
- You know, as brothers and sisters in Christ, your value is not based on your accomplishments.
- You know, a lot happened in the life of Joseph, and I love how this record provides the highlights.
- Don’t get me wrong, our Heavenly Father wants us to be successful, but where it gets derailed is when it’s motivated out of envy, to outdo a brother.
- You know, when success is motivated out of envy, it’ll get you along for a little while.
- This same word is used here in Romans 12 to indicate our measure being tied to Christ through his faith.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main message of “Brotherly Love vs. Comparing Part 1”?
This teaching examines “Brotherly Love vs. Comparing Part 1” through Acts 7, Psalm 105, Ecclesiastes 4, Matthew 27, showing how envy, know, success shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Which scriptures are central to this teaching?
The teaching draws especially from Acts 7, Psalm 105, Ecclesiastes 4, Matthew 27, Romans 12.
How can believers apply this teaching?
This same word is used here in Romans 12 to indicate our measure being tied to Christ through his faith.
Scripture References
Acts 7; Psalm 105; Ecclesiastes 4; Matthew 27; Romans 12; John 4
This text was prepared from the teaching audio or source document. Please verify scripture references against your own Bible.
