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This is day five together, our last day of week four that we'll look through 1st
and 2nd Samuel. We began to look yesterday at jealousy. For most of us, I like
the first three days of this week when we're looking at faith and David
defeating Goliath, that's where I'd like to live.

But the truth of the matter is if I'm going to live there, I've got to face up
to some of these things in my life that sometimes I struggle with jealousy, with
envy over another person, with thinking too much about them and their success
and not enough about God and what he wants to be doing in my life. And we saw
yesterday some of the process, some of the places that jealousy can take us.
Today, I want to look together at some of the actions of jealousy.

When you see these in another person's life, you can pray for them because
they're probably struggling with jealousy. When you see it in your own life, you
can bring it to God and ask him to heal you of this jealousy. What does jealousy
do to you?

This green-eyed monster, it's a parasite that sucks the life out of you. And
there's no better example than Saul. Actions of jealousy.

Number one, outbursts of anger. Chapter 18, verses 10 and 11. The next day, an
evil spirit from God came forcefully upon Saul.

He was prophesying in his house while David was playing the harp as he usually
did. Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it, saying to himself, "I'll pin
David to the wall. " But David eluded him twice.

First, before we get into this, there are many people who have questions about
this evil spirit from God. How can something evil come from God? The idea here
is that God allowed the measure of Saul's sin to take place in his life.

He allowed him to act out what he had been feeling in his heart. And we could
take a longer time to look at that. There's a much deeper study here.

But the evil wasn't from God. The evil was in the fact that Saul had allowed
this thing into his heart and God allowed it. God allowed it.

And because he had this evil heart, he tried to throw a spear at David and pin
him to the wall. You and I, when we get angry, we might throw words, we might
throw fits, we might throw our temper. Saul had spears and that's what he threw.

Now in this case, David had no doubt about Saul's jealousy. Sometimes you
wonder, is somebody jealous? Is that why they're treating me a little bit like,
what's going on here?

No doubt with David and Saul, he picked up a spear and he tried to throw it at
him. He knew that their relationship had gone sour. Is anger, let me just ask
you, is anger constantly welling up inside of you, toward your spouse or your
children or fellow workers or fellow Christians?

There's a lot of causes for anger in our lives, but you got to ask yourself
honestly, is jealousy a cause of this anger that I keep feeling in my life? It
may be something else, or it may be this jealousy. Words of anger are one of the
indications.

A second action of jealousy is plotting, plotting to tear someone else down. In
verse 20, now Saul's daughter, Macaul, was in love with David and when they told
Saul about it, he was pleased. I will give her to him, he thought, so that she
may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against
him.

So Saul said to David, now you have a second opportunity to become my
son-in-law. He had to become his son-in-law, proving how much he was faithful to
Saul by going out and single-handedly killing a bunch of Philistines. Saul
literally wanted to motivate David to death.

He felt that David would try so hard to prove himself that he'd get himself
killed. That was his plot. Now, for us, we're not kings of a country, so for us,
most of the time, this plotting, it occurs in our daydreams, not even in real
life.

We just sit and we think, wouldn't it be great if this happened to this person?
Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened to this person? And we dream of
another's demise.

We see them groveling before us in shame. We see us replacing them. If you have
those kind of daydreams, that's plots to tear down.

And the Bible says, we're to build each other up, not tear each other down, but
jealousy puts that into reverse. If you're dreaming of tearing another person
down, the question is, who are you jealous of? It's causing those dreams.

A third action of jealousy is just irrational acts. You just start doing crazy
things. Jealous people become irrational.

They're looking at life from the twisted perception of their jealousy, so they
just do the craziest of things. In chapter 22, there's a terrible story. It's a
story, well, let me read verse 11 and begin this story with you.

The king sent for the priest Ahimelech son of Ahiathab and his father's whole
family, who were priests at Nab, and they all came to the king. And Saul said,
"Listen now, son of Ahiathab. " "Yes, my lord," he answered.

And Saul said to him, "Why have you conspired against me? You and the son of
Jesse, giving him bread and a sword and inquiring of God for him, so that he has
rebelled against me and he lies in wait for me, as he does today. " Ahimelech
answered the king, "Who of all your servants is as loyal as David?

The king's son-in-law, captain of your bodyguard and highly respected of your
household. " Ahimelech goes on to say in this story that he was serving David
because he felt that David was serving Saul. But Saul can't hear it.

And because he can't hear it, he orders the officials to kill all of these
priests. The priests won't do it. So he orders an Edomite, a foreigner named
Doeg, to kill them.

And down in verse 18, "That day he killed eighty-five men who wore the linen
ephod. " That means they were priests. "He also put the sword to knob the town
of the priest with its men and women, its children and infants, its cattle, its
donkeys and its sheep.

" Now Saul was king. He could do anything he wanted. So when he became
unreasonable, the result was horrific.

Innocent priests killed all because of Saul's jealousy. Now you and I aren't
going to see it this obviously. It happens in our heart.

It happens in our words. It happens in some little slight that we give to
somebody else or some way we try to make sure that they don't get recognition.
What has jealousy been doing in your life?

You see, when you're jealous, you actually get what you get is a life consumed,
a life that is not lived but consumed, a life consumed with that jealousy. Saul
ends up chasing David all over the country because of his jealousy. Jealousy
will do that.

Jealousy sucks the life right out of you because of the bitterness. You become
consumed with the hatred in your life. Is there some jealousy in your life
that's been consuming your life?

How can you begin to let go of that and live the life that God has for you? Is
there someone that you know that's struggling with this kind of jealousy that
right now in your mind you could pray for? God release them from this jealousy.

How do you slay this green-eyed monster? You see, too many people, too many of
us as followers of Jesus, we're trying to keep green-eyed monsters as pets in
our hearts. It starts small.

It's like keeping a lion as a cub, and that's great when it's a cub, but guess
what? It's going to grow up and it becomes a destructive lion. You cannot keep
green-eyed monsters small.

You either slay them or they grow and they grow and they grow and they consume
your life. So how do you slay them? Well, everyone knows you slay a monster with
a sword.

And the sword of the spirit, in the book of Ephesians, we're told the sword of
the spirit is the word of God. I need God's word in my heart to come up against
these feelings in my heart. That's the only thing that's powerful to cut through
my wrong motivations, to cut through my wrong perspective, and help me to see
fresh new life again.

So let these words penetrate into your heart. You might even memorize some of
these words and live these words in your life. To kill jealousy before it
begins, let these words sink into your heart.

Galatians 6-5 tells us that we're to bear our own responsibility before God.
Each one shall bear his own load, his own responsibility. If you want to make
sure that you don't have jealousy, fulfill your tasks before the Lord.

Forget thinking about what other people are doing. Do what God's given you to
do. Put your head down.

Start doing that. That's what defeats jealousy. You want to kill jealousy before
it begins?

One of the greatest verses I know is Romans 12-15. Weep with those who weep and
rejoice with those who rejoice. When you and I can do this, we're going to
defeat jealousy every time.

Weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. I've found as
followers of Jesus, we're better sometimes at weeping with those who weep,
walking through troubles, than rejoicing with those who rejoice. That's when the
jealousy starts.

That's how you handle another success. You have joy in the fact that God's at
work in their lives. And you think, "Well, it's not God at work.

They're prideful. They made it happen. " Well, God can sort that out.

You let him sort that out. You rejoice in the God part of it and what he's
doing. That's how you kill jealousy even before it starts.

How do you kill it when it already exists in our lives? Some of you, as you've
listened these last few days, it's been very uncomfortable because you know
there's a jealousy in your life that you need to deal with. There's many, many
verses in the scripture, but let me just give you two to hang on to.

First Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. How do you slay jealousy that's in your life? You
trust in the Lord with all your heart.

You lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, you acknowledge him,
and he will direct your paths. You get your eyes off of them, you get your eyes
on the Lord.

You trust in the Lord with all your heart. You get your eyes off the path
they're taking, and you get your eyes on the path that God has for you. You let
that verse go through your mind again and again and again.

That's what I'm going to do. You want to slay jealousy that already exists, you
also have to do Ephesians 4, 32. You have to forgive.

That verse says, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each
other, just as in Christ God forgave you. " You may have been wronged by
someone, that's why you're jealous of them. Or they may not have wronged you,
but you've made it into a wrong, and so there's a forgiveness issue in your
life, and you need to forgive.

You don't always need, in fact, most of the time you don't need to go to the
other person and tell them, "I'm forgiving you. I'm forgiving you because I was
jealous of you because of all this prideful success that you had in your life. "
It's not really forgiveness in that case, it's blame.

Just start with you and the Lord. Now if there's an issue where you've wronged
them, you need to go with them and make it right. But you start with you and the
Lord, and be kind and compassionate, forgiving each other.

I need forgiveness, you need forgiveness, they need forgiveness. You've got
jealousy in your life, you know someone who has jealousy in their life, pray
that God's word would come into our lives. It's the only thing that has the
power to change the direction of our hearts.

Lord, as we pray together today, we just pray these verses, we pray that these
truths from your word would come into our hearts. We want to be these kind of
people, the kind of person who bears the responsibility you've given to us, who
weeps with those who weep and rejoices with those who rejoice, who trusts in you
with all our heart, who is kind and compassionate, forgiving other people. We
need your Spirit, we need your power to do that Lord.

So we pray, we pray right now that your Spirit would empower your word in our
lives to enable us to think and act in different ways, to enable this person
we're thinking of who's struggling with jealousy, to think and act in different
ways. You're the one who can make the difference, so we pray that you would
through your Spirit. We trust you right now Jesus, in your name, amen.

Well next week we're going to begin with a look at Jonathan, a man with a
divided heart but a great faith, and then focus on David, on how to have a heart
for God. See you next week.