Speaker 1 0:00

Good morning friends. How are we doing? Hey, my name is Larry, I'm one of the pastors here we are in the fourth week of this series called kill the spider, kill the spider. I got this idea from a book by a guy named Carlos Whitaker . He wrote it read in the beginning of this great story. And really what it's pointing us to is that we often find ourselves dealing with a lot of cobwebs from something else in our life. And what we need to focus on is not clearing the different cobwebs out of our life as much as we need to deal with the root of it, which is usually found in the spider. And so we said, what are some common frequent spiders in her life? And so we decided to have a conversation through the seven deadly sins. So when week four of that funny story, for the first couple of weeks, I told a longer story about the book that I read. And right at the beginning I read this story is by Carlos. And then I kind of joked, I was like, Carlos, bro, you gotta call me and be like, don't do my book like that dude. Cause I was saying like, just throw it, it's no good anymore. We had everything we needed out of it. And then this last week he reached out to me. I was in my office and I was and I was like, no , it was good. And he was super pumped and it freaked me out more cause he said some of his friends came and visited here and then sent a message and then he watched it and I was like, Oh gosh, that was it Carlos. Um , so anyways, what do you welcome? No joking. Um , so these seven deadly sins, the first week we talked about pride and how we need to call pride out. Um, and that manifests in all these different ways in our lives. And we needed to identify it, call it out and say no thank you and get rid of the webs that really lock us into a prison that keep other people out, trap us in and allow us not to receive love or give love like we should. And even from God, the second week we talked about greed and we looked at it from a different place of this intense desire, selfish desire for something, for ourselves to slow down. And really to ask ourselves are the things and the decisions we're making, whether that be judgment being right, the way we're treating other people for ourselves or they're being greedy or do we need to slow that down? And then last week John got to share with us about slothfulness and how a CEDIA as really what slough is and that really the biggest way to battle that is to be in community with God and with people. And then it was fun . We have a podcast that we put out every week. So we got to go a little bit further this last week with John and a CDN into the more the mental health part of things as we unpacked a CD a little bit more. So it's been really great watching people take steps and next steps in their journey as they've identified these spiders and then are figuring out how to attack them. And so today I get to share with all of you in here today. And those are what ? This one online about envy, envy. And some of you might sit here and say, I don't have a problem envy or I've beaten it. Some of you are already kind of freaking out a little bit cause you're like, here we go, you're gonna call it out to me again, like most of these conversations, this is, I'm just talking to you, not the person next to you. This is an elbows in situation. So here's the definition. We're going to work off with envy. Envy is this, those negative feelings about other people's achievements. So gross, right? Those negative thoughts about other people's achievements. NV has also a lot of other things that have to do with comparison that I want to take a little bit of a look at. Many of you know that when you get into the place where you become envious and where can be destructive is because we get in this thing called the land of earth. I know many of you have discovered the land of earth , the land of earth where you see everybody else is richer, skinnier, smarter, taller or like real tall. That's awesome, prettier, happier, hipper, married her for my single friends that are out here and it's this land of earn . It can be really destructive and then we can go on in like a really like destructive way cause we're like want to combat it hardcore and we want to be like superior to other people. So we started saying, well they're like a little heavier. They're a little shorter, they're a little Cingular than me. And to try to make our field self feel better because of the envy that we're struggling with. As I wanted to look at, well what are some of the webs that we deal with that kind of lock us in and push people out when it comes to the spider of NB debt is a huge one. We find ourselves being webbed up by debt because we're envious and see what other people have and we spend money cause we're like, we gotta get this, they got this, I got to wear this and we don't have the money to do it. So we're killing ourselves with debt because of it envy issue in our life and it's causing all kinds of webs in our life. Another one is some of us are dieting ourselves to death because we think we should look like that person and we don't. It's sort of like killing ourselves and you know , this is how we're supposed to be this I'm supposed to look. And so because of our envy is driving us that we're literally dying ourselves to death. Some of us are , are, are struggling with dating. So we're actually some of the men or women in here lowering their standards or their morals because they're envious of other people who are married. And I just want to get there. I just want to , that's what it's supposed to happen. That's what the world keeps yelling at me what I'm supposed to be. And so I'm like dating myself to death and going through all these dates and not, not ready to figure out and make sure I'm focused on what's right for me and some of the other webs for us of just that we drive blank crazy. We're driving somebody crazy like we're driving our kids nuts because we're envious of other people in their kids and like you need to perform like this, practice more. I'm tired of that family getting all the accolades or everyone being excited cause they're like the all star and you're not, and you're driving your kids crazy. Or with schoolwork or with all kinds of things. Accomplishments. You can put it in. You're driving them crazy. You find out too that then you're driving your spouse crazy. Maybe you're driving your spouse crazy because you're envious because they're working in a job where they don't make as much money as you think they should make and you're driving them crazy because that's so important because you're envious of all these things of what we should have or how we should feel or what we should own it . And you're driving them crazy because it's just not ever matching up or accomplishing and envy is causing all kinds of webs. Maybe you're just driving yourself crazy, like you're driving yourself nuts. You're putting yourself through like literally a living hell because of the things that you're envious of, that the world is telling you that you need or that you have, especially when you're on Pinterest and you realize , I don't, I'm not, I'm not living my best life. I've never even been on Pinterest, but I see what it does in my wife. That's all good. I love you. So the Bible talks a lot about envy and the old Testament, the new Testament, the wisest man that ever lived, his name was Solomon. He wrote a book called Ecclesiastes in the old Testament and it says in Ecclesiastes he's for as he's giving us some great wisdom, he says, and I saw that all toil, all the things that we do and achievement spring from one person's envy of another. Isn't that gross? That what he's literally saying is that I saw people determining that where they were was based on where everybody else was. You've been there. Am I doing okay? Let's look at someone else. What's this picture look like? That literally all the toilet achievement is based on other people. He says this, this too is meaningless. It's chasing after the wind. It's meaningless. He's saying, this is crazy that we live this way, that we're, that we're envious of other people. We're watching them. The destruction that happens in our own life and the webs that that causes, it's meaningless. It's like chasing the wind. Every scene like a dog chase the land or its tail. It's laughable to a degree and that's what I'm saying . It's meaningless. Says fools fold their hands and ruin themselves cause they're constantly just grabbing at things. I've got to do this, this, this , this is the next place I need to get. So he says better is one handful with tranquility. Like this open, tranquil content. It's free. Then two hands with toil chasing after the wind better is one hand like this in one hand like this, cause we work, we do things, we achieve things than two like this. So what's tranquility? Tranquility is satisfaction. Contentment, peace. It actually just feels good to say those words. If you ever like satisfaction, you're like, that felt good. Contentment. Peace. So how do you have tranquility? I'm just holding your hand open. So here's the problem is that we continue to look at other people around us to see how we're doing. We look at our neighbors, right? You look at your neighbor, you know how you're doing, what do they do? What do they have? How are they doing? You make these assumptions and then you look at your neighborhood. Where do I live? I know, especially around here, friends, I struggle with this myself too. I will be evaluated based on the zip code that I have. Hmm . Oh, how am I doing? Where do I live? What zip code am I am about your kids, you evaluate based on how the kids are doing at school or uh , um, achievements. Um, if they're behaving, if, if, if there's a lot of things siblings. Oh it's so gross. Yeah. You evaluate yourself on how your sibling is doing. This is how I know how I'm doing. So it's either real bad cause you're like, Oh wow, the perfect kid. Mom and dad love them . They get everything or it's like they're a loser. It's like one of the other, the bank, right? Oh that's a gross one. Uh , the mirror , just looking in the mirror and we all have this little voice in our head. I know I have this little voice in my head too , right ? That says you need more of what they have to be respectable, acceptable and lovable. That little voice that continually whispers them . You need more of what they have to be respectable, acceptable and loved. And so I want to poke at this whole idea of envy that I think that many of us don't attach to is that when we find ourselves really at the root of the spider of envy, are we saying, did God shortchange us? Because I don't have that. I want to poke at the growth side of this just a little bit. Let me give you a story in the form of a parable that Jesus gave him the new testable Testament, but does our satisfaction with what we have, say more about how we feel about God, then how we feel about the people to whom we compare ourselves to. Yeah , that's kind of gross. It's a gross idea, right? It's kind of an insidious idea that God owes us something. But when unpack a little bit our , our dissatisfaction with what we have, does it say a lot more about how we feel about God than how we feel about the other people that we're comparing ourselves to? So in Matthew , um , you find this really common parable that's going to be really familiar to many of you. It's not probably been taught to like this to many of you. Um , and so we're going to take a little bit of a different look at it. It's found in verse, excuse me, chapter 25 and Jesus is teaching this and he says this again, it would be like a man going on a journey. This is a made up story. That's how these parables are to make a very specific point, which is what we're going to do today. A man that's going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted them, his wealth to them. So he gave wealth to them. This is not a little bit of wealth. This is a lot of wealth. There's all kinds of conversation about how much has actually is. But I want us to understand that this is a lot of wealth. And he gave five bags of gold bags of gold to one to another, two bags into another one bag. So just for the purposes of this story, you're all two baggers. Okay? A bunch of two baggers in here just so you can understand why. Because some people have five bags, some people have two bags, some people have one bag. And so in here I want you to see that you can be envious of someone else, but someone is always typically in being you. Yeah. So the one bagger isn't being used, so you're two bagger . So he gave him each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey and went away. Then it says that the man who had received five bags of gold when at once and put his money to work and he gained five more bags. So also the one with two bags gained two more. So he took his five and worked with it. What he had and gained more so too with you, the two baggers that are in here, the man, but the man who had received one bag went off. This is a familiar story to you. He then dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money after a long time. So this is when Jesus gives these stories, these parables, he's not talking about just like a period of time. He's talking about a lifetime. So after like a long time, a lifetime, the master of those servants returned to settle the accounts with them for man who had received five bags of gold, brought the other five and said, master, he said, you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See , I have gained five more. Look what I did. Look what I did with what you gave me. You gave me five bags. I went out here and I gained five more with celebrate with me because look at what I did with what you gave me. As we start to unpack this, his master replied, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with few things at this point. They would have grasped a few things, five back . That's like a lot of things. So I will put you in charge of many things and now you need to come and share in my happiness. Now some could say, well, it's because he made back his investment, but he's saying, well done. Look at what you did with what I gave you. You did what I expected you to do. I entrusted you with something that continues on and says, I have two bags of gold. Also came and he said, master you and trust me with these two bags of gold. See, look, I've gained it done two more. Look at what you did with what you gave me. And he said, well done. Good faithful servant. You've been faithful with a few things. Well you just said that about the guy with five bags. I mean that's a little different. No, no, no. Well done because what I gave you and you did, you did these things and so you've been faithful with it. I'll put you in charge of many things. Come and share in the master's happiness. But the man who had received one bag of gold came and he says this, I knew that you are a hard man harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you do not scatter seed.

Speaker 2 15:48

Okay ,

Speaker 1 15:49

so I was afraid started. I know that you did this and I want you to know before I even tell you what I did, this is your fault. You're the one who decided to give me one bag. That guy had five and that guy had to , what did you expect me to do? This is your fault and I know what you did. Was you expecting to, I got afraid. I went out and hit your golden the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. What am I supposed to do with this? He's saying, he's like, well, of course they dug it in the ground and put it there. It's this whole if , then of course, if then of course, well if then my family hadn't split up when I was a young kid, of course I'd be doing great. If I had that job. Of course I'd be doing awesome. If I was married, of course this would be happening to me if I got this promotion. Of course. What'd you expect me to do? I only got one bag. His master replied, you wicked. Remember, this isn't a real story. It's really intense. You wicked lazy servant, wicked right there in the Greek sexually transmitted to worthless, which makes more sense with lazy. You wicked lazy servant. You knew that I harvest where I no longer sow and gather where I have no longer Saturn seed. Well then you should have at least put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned I would've received it back with interest. So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has the 10 bags. You didn't do anything with what I gave you and what we ask , like who determined who got what the master, right? This is one of the big points of the story. A lot of times it's, well, let's focus on what they did with what they were given. What we start realizing is that he was frustrated because of what he was given. Why didn't I get the five bags? Why didn't I? I'm not there yet. Hold on. You're going to see the answer to this question. I'm asking you just a minute. Cheaters. He was frustrated, right? He was like, Hey, I didn't get the five bags. I didn't get the two bags. I got one bag. This is your fault. Why didn't I get this family? Why don't I get this person that did this to me? Why did he give me these kids? He was frustrating . What we, what we realize is that he, here we go, is frustrated with his master, caused him to focus on his inequity we didn't have versus the opportunity of what he did have and form that that causes us to be so envy that at the root of envy is this is this insidious idea that we can have that God owes us something. This is your fault. I'm driving a bit crazy. This is your fault. I'm in this thing of webs because you haven't given me something. So I wanted to look at, well, who's the person in the Bible that like , like, you know, could be envious of someone and I think a great, great reference. He wrote a book in the new Testament. His name is James. He was the younger brother of Jesus. Talk about being envious. I'm like, could do no good. Like who gets better? Like, yeah, your brother's more awesome again James . Or it's like he gets tapped on and Jesus is like, no, he's lying. And you're like, you couldn't do that to me. You're not supposed to know these things. Sorry, you're not getting my Bible jokes. I'll stop. So James even talks about this, who was probably a person who looked up and said, Kylie , like, I can't ever get these things right. I'm not giving this. You're like, everyone loves you. You sell it every show. Everybody wants to be your friend and all of these things. And so he says, for where you have envy and selfish ambition, this gross word envy again, this, this idea of those negative feelings about other people's achievements was like deep desire that changes you forever. You have envy and selfish ambition there you'll find disorder and every evil practice say mares when that's where that lies . The spider that causes all these issues in our life. So here's the question that you need to wrestle to the ground, like to really dig deep into this, to understand how to kill the spider of envy. And it's this, what do you plan? What are you planning to do with God? What God has entrusted you? What are you planning to do with what God has entrusted you? That might be a great question today to ask yourself or to sit down at lunch with someone and say, what are we planning to do with what God has entrusted us with? Are we doing what we should be doing with what God has entrusted us with? Or because of we're envious of something or chasing, where are we chasing the wind? So what are we doing today? Or what do we need to shift? And we get caught up in looking at everyone else and what everyone else has and they don't have that disease or they still have that parent or they don't have that house or they have that great child. Any you can get lost in that. It can literally start to tear you apart because you can't focus on what you do have. And , and you start saying, well, but I want this perfect image. And the reason we do that is because we look at like this, this picture, and we say, well, this family over here has a beautiful family. They're all happy. They're the Brady binders . Their kids are so great. This person over here has this great education. This person over here has this, these finances, this person looks this way, this person has this job, this person has this education. And what we find ourselves doing is trying to take these little pieces from there and say , if we could just take that because I don't want it , the whole thing cause but this is great and take this and take that and take this. Then it's like this perfect picture. It's this perfect life for us and we never can accomplish that. It never looks like that. And what happens is when we start to compare is that comparison diminishes your uniqueness and your unique potential friends. There are 7.4 billion people on this earth and you are unique. You have been made as a unique individually. You do unique things, you have a unique smell. I don't even know what that means. You look just like you, whatever that means. You know there's no one else that looks like you. That's why even with your brain and how you, how you grow, it's beautiful how it comes out. It's so unique and it's creativeness or the way it writes. That's why you've written papers as you've gone to school and it's nothing like anyone else's paper, and if it is, you got a lot of trouble , but it's unique to you, your uniqueness. If you, if you compare that all the time, it can diminish your unique potential. So what are you doing with what God has entrusted you? So here's how we kill the spider. Here's your takeaway. Here's what you're going to chew on all week. Here's where we're going to land this plane. It's these two things. Celebrate what God has given others and leverage what God has given you. Man , envy takes away the opportunity to celebrate when we are envious of something. How hard is it for us to celebrate? It's kind of gross when you think about it because we feel like it was, Oh , does that person that you were, you were up against for promotion and they got it and you didn't? Did you go celebrate with them ? No. How hard is it? It's gross, right? You see it? I can even see with my kids, my kids are in here so I can talk about it. But like one kid can come up and they're like celebrating. Looking at what I did, I worked so hard. I used what was given to me, I used my abilities and I leveraged them all the way and I got an a right. Another kid can be standing there that has a C and you're like, let's celebrate. And they're like, no you're stupid. And then the one that has an egg goes, well I did have the a interesting idea but we can't celebrate cause we can't celebrate cause it's, we're in comparison to something else. So how can you celebrate? How many of us haven't celebrated something that someone just shared with us just this last week or like on Friday that you're sitting next to right now that came home. It was just excited. It was a small thing. It was really good day or this really good thing happened. I just feel a lot better about this. And you just didn't want to celebrate with him . You just don't want to be like, that's awesome. Or instead it turned into like your own stuff. Well, I'm glad you had a good day. My name . It was all bad and then it was really rough and I hate my life. It's really bad. Just waiting for 2020 it's already bad, right? Or you hear somebody else and you do this. Are you kidding me? Like another good thing, this is gross. Why does this keep happening to them? They just came and they're like, look at my kid going to this awesome college. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is awesome. We can't celebrate. Right? So there's your like easiest take home . Who do you need to celebrate with? Who do you need to celebrate that God has given something to someone else according to the ability or not. They leveraged something and God gave it to them . How can you celebrate with them and then how can you leverage what God has given you? How can you look around and say, this is how I've been uniquely made. This is who I uniquely am. This is the circumstances that I am uniquely dealing with. I did not sign up for this. I did not want to be in this club. They should be sitting right next to me. I shouldn't be having to go through these treatments. I should have had that job. How can you leverage what God has given you so the spider of envy doesn't just tear you up. Just put webs all around you that don't allow you to be loved like you should be loved or to love. Stop chasing them friends. Maybe we kill the spider of envy and celebrate with him a good and faithful servant. I mean we leverage everything that's been entrusted with us. The good and the bad for he will be with us and he will transform us and help us take next steps. Would you stand with me? Some of you are in here today and you are enclosed in webs. You are truly in a prison of webs. Some of you feel like something's dead. We say this every single week. We'll continue to say it. There's nothing so dead in your life that God cannot resurrect it again. There is hope. There is hope. Some of you in here may feel so lost, just wandering around. There's nothing so lost that God cannot find it again. Only through him and his transformative work. Again, friends, there is hope and there's nothing so broken. There's nothing so broken that he can not mend again and begin doing a mending work in you today that only he can do if you'll allow him to do it. Let's knock down those webs and let's let the great healer, the hope giver transform us. So we're all about next steps here. Some of you already know your next step. You're going to be walking outside being like , um , we need to have a party. Um, you told me that thing and I was kind of upset and am I going to say I was that ? But now we're going to go all out. Why not? Let's do this. Sunday afternoons are awesome. So there's your next step this week. Celebrate. Celebrate with somebody else. Write somebody a note. You already got to do it. Some of you, your next step. Just evaluate and leverage. You have a purpose. It's beautiful. Find it, leverage it. Use what God has given you. Stop looking around everybody else. Look right here and for some of you, your steps is to take a next step and allow God to start doing his transformative work in you. So how do you do that? Because some people have front , they would love to pray with you. I also had this journal, tons and tons of people. It's so cool. Taking next steps this way it's called this changes everything. It's 21 day journal. For those of you who are ready to get out of the webs and let us save your come and save you, which is what he came to do and get rid of those webs in your life. This is what your next step is that says like, Hey, I can't do this. I need the hope. I need the healing. I need the resurrection. I need the mending. This changes everything. It's 21 days. I'll follow up with you. We'll check it out, see how it's going and see where you're at. Some of you might just be in a journey like, I don't even know if I need this, but I need something that sounds interesting. This is for you. It's a gift for you. They have them upfront . The prayer people do, or there's a booth out there. It's our gift to you as you take a next step. So everybody in here has a next step. Yes. Celebrate. Leverage. This changes everything. Walk into it, get rid of it. I love you all so much. I want to give you a blessing before that. If you're new with us, super pumped. You're here. Um, come back around. Get some friendly faces to know we have a gift for you. Um , we have anybody in here. I'll show you where to go. Um, thank you for your generosity. Um, it's because of that. Like we said, the treasure box is here. And talk about, you know, that story. Talk about celebrating and leaning all the way in and leveraging what God's given to you. Amen to Danielle. And they're just their whole family. It's beautiful. What's happening there. Sorry, side note. That was awesome. Um, but thank you for generosity, prayer requests . It's all good. I would love you to hold this posture. It's just a blessing saying, Hey, I'll receive this, or I give up. I don't even know I'm right here. May you be blessed with this friends that you celebrate this week, what God has given you because he's giving you something and that you leverage everything that he has given you as well. Go in peace at that. I love you all so very much. I'll see you next week. Thanks.