Why Envy Is a Danger for the YRR

And behold, I saw a white horse. Its rider’s name was Success, and Envy followed him.

Envy is a movement killer. And if you ask me, it is probably the fundamental danger facing the modest movement called Young, Restless Reformed (YRR) in the years ahead. Envy is a movement-killing sin precisely because it combines such deadly opposites. Envy is a gaping maw, a roaring lion seeking to devour, the relentless ache of the shriveled heart. At the same time, envy is a chameleon, masquerading as the smooth flattery of imitation one minute and righteous indignation at injustice the next.

God Multiplies a Movement

 

If you listen to the Old, Settled Reformed talk, they’ll tell you that 30 years ago, there was no Reformed “movement” to speak of. Sure, there were Reformed churches that preached the whole counsel of the sovereign God who saves helpless sinners with unfathomable grace. But there was no larger “movement” of God-centered theology and worship and preaching.

I’m told that in the late 1980s, there were only a handful of Reformed conferences nationwide. Now you can forego church altogether and just attend Reformed conferences year round (I exaggerate, but only a little). Now there are multiple organizations dedicated to planting biblically-rooted, Christ-exalting, sovereign-grace-proclaiming churches in America and around the world.   Continue at Joe Rigney

The Lost Sin of Envy - What Envy Wants

Today I want to wrap up my short series on the sin of Envy. Yesterday I looked at How Envy Behaves and this morning I want to show what Envy wants from you and then to give some instruction on putting him to death. There are at least four things Envy wants from you.

Envy Wants to Destroy Your Joy

 

Envy is unique among the sins in that you never, ever enjoy it. Envy never brings any satisfaction. If you commit the sin of adultery, you enjoy the fleeting pleasures of the flesh; if you commit the sin of gluttony you get to enjoy the taste of food while it slides down your throat. These are very fleeting and fleshly pleasures, but they are pleasures still. Envy only, ever makes you more miserable than you were before.

Envy also bring misery by making you unwilling or even unable to confess the sin. He cuts so deep, he exposes so much of what you really want that confessing that he exists requires a true baring of the deepest, darkest recesses of the soul. You may not know just how ugly and dark your sin is until you look into your soul and see Envy and then go digging around to try to get him out of there, to find the source and to uproot it.

When I am walking with Envy and allowing him to influence me, I cannot enjoy anything in itself because I only see what I have and what I am in comparison to someone else. I am not popular, I am less popular than he is. I don’t sell books, I sell fewer books than he does. In every case, I can never be joyful, because everything the other person has calls me into question.

Proverbs says that Envy is rottenness to the bones (14:30). Envy makes you sick with grief and dissatisfaction, rotting you from the inside out.   Continue at Tim Challies

Satan’s Schemes by George Whitefield

He is full of hatred, envy, and revenge: For what other motives could induce him to molest innocent man and woman in paradise? And why is he still so restless in his attempts to destroy us, who have done him no wrong?

He is a being of great power, as is evident in his being able to act on the imagination of our blessed Lord, so as to depict some sort of vision to Him of all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and all this in a moment of time. His power is also displayed in the transporting of the sacred body of our dear Savior, through the air up to the highest point of the temple; and also of his driving a herd of pigs so furiously that the whole herd rushed down a steep bank into a lake and died in the water. Yes, so great is Satan’s power, that, I do not doubt, that if God was to permit him to use his full strength, he could turn the earth upside down, or pull the sun out of its orbit.

But Satan is most known for his remarkable ability to use his cleverness against mankind. Since he is not given power from God to take us by force, he is therefore required to wait for opportunities to betray us, and to catch us by the use of deception. He, therefore, made use of the serpent, which was the most crafty of all the beasts of the field, in order to tempt our first parents; and accordingly he and his accomplices are described in the New Testament as being cunning and crafty in their deceitful scheming. In the words of our text, this morning, the Apostle says, “We are not unaware of his schemes:” thereby implying, that we are more in danger of being seduced by his system of deception, than overpowered by his strength.  Read it all HERE