He dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me”… And his brothers were jealous of him.
Envy is a feeling common to humanity. It is also a monster—a giant that can eat anyone alive.
How do you struggle with envy? Who are those in your sphere of influence or your field of vision who are experiencing favor or success, and with whom in some way you wish to swap places? We must be careful. “The odious passion of envy,” writes George Lawson, “torments and destroys one’s self while it seeks the ruin of its object.”[1] Envy tends to destroy the envier.
They did not yet know it, but Joseph’s brothers were on the road to the evils of deceit, malice, and slave-trading their own sibling—to the most detestable forms of cruelty. The first step on that road was their jealousy of him. But they did not see it, and so they walked towards actions they presumably had not countenanced when Joseph first started sharing his dreams of grandeur.
We must learn to see our envy and to deal with it. So how can we handle others’ success without succumbing to bitterness and jealousy?
First, we recognize that God is sovereign over the affairs of man. God determined for Joseph to have what he had and be what he was—and He determined a less significant position for Joseph’s brothers. If they had been prepared to consider this, although it might have been hard, they would have been spared the self-inflicted pain of their envious hatred.
Second, we turn to God in prayer. F.B. Meyer, a great 19th-century preacher, once told of how another preacher came to minister in the same area in which he was already ministering, and suddenly there was a drift from his congregation. Jealousy began to grip his soul, and the only freedom he could find was to pray for this fellow pastor—to pray that God would bless another’s ministry. Prayer loosens the grip of envy on our hearts.
God is the one who sets up and brings down. If Joseph’s brothers had grasped this truth, they would have had no occasion to be envious. God is also the one who gives us every breath as a gift from Him. If they had grasped this, they would have had more desire to give thanks than to grow bitter. Today, search your own heart, recognize and repent of any jealousy that has taken root, and bow in humility and thankfulness before your sovereign God.
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