This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day four together, week four, and I've looked through 1st and 2nd
Samuel. Great last three days as we've looked at David and Goliath. What
positive stories about faith in that battle.

But today we look at a strange battle. There are a lot of strange battles in 1st
Samuel. The Philistines defeating the Israelites, the Ark defeating the
Philistines, David slaying Goliath.

But maybe the greatest battle of all in some ways is Saul's fight with the
green-eyed monster with jealousy in his life. What Shakespeare called the
green-eyed monster. It was a fight to the death and Saul lost.

This monster of jealousy in his life, it is a hidden enemy in all too many of
our lives. It is the destroyer of many marriages and businesses and friendships
and churches. Many relationships and lives.

So we're going to take the wraps off of this monster the next couple of days.
We're going to look at it for what it really is. It's going to help us, I pray,
to be honest about whether this destructive force is in our lives.

Help us to see how to slay this green-eyed monster. You may not have heard many
sermons or messages on jealousy. And the truth is we should hear more.

Because one of the sins that tears up many believers' lives is this sin of
jealousy in our lives. So we're going to look at the life of Saul and let the
negative example of his life teach us the positive truth of what God wants to do
in our lives. Let's walk through Saul's life and begin by looking at the
beginning of jealousy.

Where in the swamp this green-eyed monster emerges from, how does jealousy
begin? As Saul watched David defeat Goliath from the safety of the sidelines, he
showed forth two of the most powerful roots of jealousy. Number one, Saul failed
in his responsibility.

And number two, Saul focused on another's success. That's where jealousy comes
from. First, he failed in his responsibility.

Who should have been fighting Goliath? Well, Saul was a head taller than anybody
else in Israel. Goliath may have been nine feet tall, but Saul was taller than
anybody else in Israel.

And Saul was the king. He was the leader of the people. It was his job to be out
there fighting Goliath.

Yet he didn't. And David did, and David was victorious. It's a strange thing.

The guilt that comes out of our shrugging off responsibility often grows into
jealousy. Just think about how this happens at work. You don't do a job you're
supposed to be doing.

You knew you were supposed to do it. You just didn't get to it that day or
whatever. Someone else does the job.

That someone else gets praise and you get jealous. Or this works at home. One of
your kids cleans their room and the other doesn't.

And you reward the one who cleans the room and the other one gets jealous. They
should have just cleaned their room. Or you work way, way later than you should,
many, many nights in a row.

And you come home and you recognize that your husband or your wife, there's not,
I'm not talking about an affair here, but there's some friendship in their life
with another man or another woman, a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ
even. Your husband is out watching sports with this guy or your wife is sitting
talking with this woman and you begin to become jealous of their relationship.
And the truth of the matter is you weren't there.

You weren't there. Saul failed in his responsibility and he had guilt about
that. And we need to recognize, be honest about the fact that jealousy is often
an indication of our feelings of guilt.

Something we haven't done causes the situation of jealousy. But far more often
it's this second thing. Saul focused on another's success.

David was victorious. And we see in chapter 17, verse 33 and 37, Saul never
expected that. "Oh, go fight him," he said.

He expected him to die. But he said, "Well, he's going to do it. We'll have to
let him do it.

" But David is successful. And David continues to succeed and Saul couldn't
handle it. Listen to what happens in chapter 18, verses 6 to 9.

When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the
women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and
dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes. And they danced and
they sang, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. "
Saul was very angry.

This refrain galled him. They have credited David with tens of thousands, he
thought, but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?

And from that time on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David. Here's Saul becoming
jealous because David was getting more recognition than he was. We feel like
when we're jealous that their victory somehow exposes our failure.

We want the spotlight. That should have been me. And this song they sang, "Saul
has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands," that song played in
Saul's mind as he went to sleep.

You can just feel it. The question is, what's playing in your mind as you go to
sleep? When you lay your head on the pillow, struggles over another person's
success, words of praise they received that you didn't, recognition that they
got that you wanted to have, when you feel that happening at night, you know
you're having struggles with jealousy.

So there was the root. There's where jealousy began. And then we begin to see in
Saul's life the growth of jealousy.

It's like a piece of moldy bread. You leave it untended, it just grows. The mold
just grows.

That's an ugly, unpleasant picture, but jealousy is an ugly, unpleasant
attitude. So let me just show you in Saul's life the steps of greater and
greater jealousy and where it went in Saul's life. You might ask yourself if
you're somewhere on this scale.

The truth of the matter is, as I look at my life, I can see times when I wasted
time looking at somebody else's success, thinking about them rather than
thinking about what God wanted me to do. You ever been there? You ever been
there?

Where are you maybe on this scale? The first place is envy. That's where
jealousy begins, just looking at somebody else thinking too much about them.

Envy grew into suspicion. That's the growth of jealousy. You see this in chapter
18, verses 7 and 8.

Saul envied David's position and that set his mind to thinking, what's he going
to do? Is he going to take my kingdom now? Saul knew that Samuel had told him
that someone was going to tear his kingdom from him.

It was going to be given to someone else. So now he begins to be suspicious.
Maybe David's the one.

Now that suspicion happened to be right, but he's filled with the suspicion. And
this suspicion colored his every thought of David, making it impossible for
reconciliation to occur. He began to suspect that everything David was doing was
a personal attack, a plot against him.

We're going to see next week that David did everything but plot against Saul,
but he saw it all as a plot. Suspicion justifies our envy because we begin to
think they're doing it on purpose when they're not doing it on purpose at all.
So envy grew into suspicion and then suspicion grew into fear.

In chapter 18, verse 15, when Saul saw how successful David was, he was afraid
of him. David's success brought about Saul's fear. When you see someone else
succeeding and you're afraid because of it, you know that jealousy is at the
root.

You just know that your life is going to fall apart. You just know that
something important is going to be taken from you, and you know it's that other
person's fault. The fear of losing what you have is one of the most devastating
results of jealousy.

Now it's usually a false fear, by the way. Usually they are not threatening what
you have at all. But even if your fear is real, even if they get your job, your
jealousy of them keeps you from looking to the next job, keeps you stuck on
them.

I'll never forget years ago talking to someone who felt some famous person had
stolen a song from them, and they were telling me this story of their stolen
song 10 years after they thought it had been stolen. I felt for them in the
theft that they thought had happened, but I also was thinking at the same time,
how many songs didn't you write in the last 10 years because you were focused on
this other person? You were focused on your fear of what they had taken.

Don't let someone else control your life in that way. This suspicion grew into
fear, and the fear, number three, grew into hatred. Chapter 18, verses 28 and
29, when Saul realized that the Lord was with David and that his daughter,
Macaul, loved David, Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his
enemy the rest of his days.

There comes this point, and it happened with Saul, that the battle lines are
drawn, the trenches are dug, the artillery is set. There's no longer any shades
of gray. It's black and white, you against them, battle to the finish, hatred.

Let me ask you, do you see any opportunity for Christian love in that kind of
attitude? The truth is, the truth is, Jesus has something to say about this to
us. You look at somebody and you say, "But they are my enemy.

I'm not just making this up. They are my enemy. " Well, even in that case, Jesus
says, "Love your enemy.

" There's no excuse for you and I as a follower of Jesus to hate anybody. We're
challenged to love everybody, love our neighbor, love our enemy, love one
another. Fear because of jealousy grew into hatred, and then, number four,
hatred grew into open conflict.

Chapter 19, verse 1, Saul told his son, Jonathan, and all the attendants to kill
David, but Jonathan was very fond of David, and we're going to get to Jonathan
and his relationship with David this next week, but here you have Saul saying,
"I want to kill him. " He could say that because he was the king. You may not be
able to say that about a person, but what if you could?

What if you did hold that kind of power? What if you did hold the power to throw
somebody in prison the rest of their lives? How much better it would be, you
think, if my enemy was out of the way?

And so Saul ordered the death of David. You ever wonder how someone could hate
enough to murder or even want to murder? You don't have to be crazy.

You just let jealousy grow. This is what it grows into in a life. So look at
your heart.

Look at your life right now. Maybe you're caught up in a jealousy over something
that somebody has or some success that somebody has gotten or some job that
somebody got or some way that they seem to be victorious over you or some
relationship that they got that you didn't get. Maybe you're caught up in a
jealousy right now.

It happens to all of us. It's one of the sins that Satan often tempts us with.
So where are you in this scale?

Is your jealousy an envy, looking at the other person and thinking, "Why did
they get what I didn't get? " Is your jealousy a suspicion, looking at the other
person thinking they're plotting against you? Is it a hatred?

They have become your sworn enemy or has it become open conflict? Where are you
on this jealousy scale? Saul teaches us that jealousy is the road that we go
down that ruins our lives, that saps our very heart and life from us.

So before we get to the solutions tomorrow, I want to take a moment today to be
honest about the sin and just give you an opportunity to talk to the Lord about
it. He'll hear you. He loves you.

Just say to him in your heart, "Lord, as I've listened to this today, I realize
there is some jealousy in my life over this person, over this circumstance, over
this thing. Lord, I don't want to be jealous. I don't want to live that kind of
life.

I want to live the kind of life that you've given me and you've given me such a
great life. You've given me so much to give me, even in the struggles of life.
So I pray that right now you'd help me to begin to let go of this jealousy and
grab onto instead forgiveness and the life that you have for me.

Thank you, Jesus, for your love for me. Thank you for your word. Let it speak to
my heart in a way that helps me to live not in jealousy but in faith and in
love.

I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. " Tomorrow we're going to look together at the
actions of jealousy and God's solutions for jealousy.