An in-depth look at the Word of God, the Plays On Word community, and the Plays - with original music - we perform, that are based on the Word of God. New episodes drop Fridays at 7AM EST! To find out how Plays On Word Theater can perform 'LIVE on YOUR STAGE' and to support this missionary & podcast visit: https://playsonword.org/
"Envy quietly steals joy, distorts God’s goodness, and damages relationships. Scripture exposes its danger through Rachel, Leah, Saul, and others, while teachingcontentment, gratitude, and trust in God’s provision. Are you comparing anything in your life with others instead of recognizing God’s goodness?"
We walk through how envy works in the human heart and why Scripture treats it as a serious spiritual danger, not a small personality issue. We also build a practical path toward contentment in Christthrough Genesis, Paul’s letters, Proverbs, and a simple gratitude challenge when life is hard. • Transitioning into the Genesis 'JOE' season and why dramatized Scripture still carries real spiritual power • Expository preaching as a way to let the Word set the agenda and confront hard topics • Rachel and Leah as a clear picture of envy, jealousy, and discontent inside a family • Biblical examples of envy in Cain and Abel, Saul and David, and the Pharisees toward Jesus • Jealousy versus envy and why they are closely related but not identical • Envy versus admiration and how to check what is happening in our hearts • Contentment as “great gain” and why desire for riches becomes a snare • Money as a tool and the danger of letting money have us • Proverbs 30 on neither poverty nor riches and the spiritual risks of having too much • Thanking God in trials because He is with us even when feelings say otherwise
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Lord, you know you're now listening is the best. They envied Jesus because the people were gravitated to Jesus because he spoke as somebody who had authority, not somebody who was like, well, the teachers, the teeth let me quote some of the rabbis, let me quote some of the te no. Jesus said, You've heard it's writ it is written, but I tell you, he spoke with authority, totally different, and the Pharisees wouldn't dare do that, first of all. And that made them completely envy Jesus.
Thank you for joining us on this excursion today. Let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr., the founder of Plays on Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God.
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Okay, okay, well, welcome to all of you listening to Plays on Word Radio. Yeah. We are back in our Southern Command studio. And thank you very much, Katie Kenny and Josh Taylor, for the introduction. Thank you for every single person listening to this, checking this out, taking a little bit of time out of your day to just go through some of the scriptures and just think about the good Lord with me today. Really absolutely appreciate every single person that has tuned into this and checked us out. And today we are going to talk about, we're we're actually transitioning into our Genesis Joe season, where we will be doing Genesis Joe throughout the fall. And we have some, we're in the process of getting some tour set up. And uh we're really looking forward to that. I'm I personally am looking forward to doing Genesis Joe at my home church because we're teaching through the book of Genesis right now. We're rolling through that on Sunday mornings. So Genesis Joe is good, which takes place between Genesis 37 through Genesis 50, with the minus out Genesis 38, but we are looking to do that at our home church, and so it's it's just gonna be really cool. I think where we're scheduled is November, and we're not gonna be finished. I don't think I don't think we'll be finished with Genesis Joe, with the study of Genesis. It's really nice to we've had churches that were working through Genesis, and then they would have us come in and do Genesis Joe, the play, for their congregation, so they could actually say the scripture. That's one of the things we do. We're really excited to just let the living word of God live through us. And you know, people come up to me, oh, you brought the scripture to life. And I always correct them. I'm saying, uh, guess what? It's already alive. I'm cheating. Yeah, it's already it's already living and active, sharper than any sword or anything, any kitchen knife, the word of God. And I it's amazing to see the word of God work, even the acted out word of God, the dramatized word of God, it's still the word of God, and it's alive and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And it and it's amazing to see it work in people's lives. And I see people just get so excited about the word of God, especially when they see it. Uh, and that's one of our directives. That's one of the reasons we do what we do. We we love the word of God, we let it live through us, and people catch that life. And that's why the plays we do are are just more than just a dramatic production. They are there you know, when we do a play, when I'm quoting the scripture, man, that's that's some next level ministry right there. You know, when I'm acting out the scripture, that's ministry. So yeah, that's one of the things we are just really excited about when we do our plays. It's not like we're just doing plays just to act and just to sing and get the music that we recorded out there. Now it's not that's not it. It is and will always be about the word of God, and from that things flow.
So yeah, we're we're looking at our home church, we're in Genesis, and this past Sunday, I was in Genesis 30, and we came across some topic. And what we do, we don't do topical sermons that much. We really don't do, and I didn't do one this Sunday, uh, this past Sunday. What we do is expository preaching, uh, where we go verse by verse through the scripture and let the word speak, and the Lord will often show us different things through the passage. You can go through a passage of scripture and you can go through it a bunch of times, and then one time the Lord just shines a light on something, maybe connects some dots for you, and that's one of the powers of expository preaching. What I I really like because besides going through the entire council of God, you there's nowhere I can't just pick like my favorite topics and just stay there and you know, and avoid difficult sections of scripture that I'd rather not actually, I don't want to deal with that. Oh man, that's too controversial. That's too difficult. When you go through the scripture like a snowplow, you you have to you just get you keep going, you gotta go through, and you're gonna you end up dealing with every topic you can imagine. So that's one of the benefits of going verse by verse, and some people might see it as a drawback because wow, now I've got to deal with this topic, but I I don't know. I look I look at it as a blessing, a challenge from God, and you you know, you can't just stay on your mountaintop verses. You you know, there's a a wide spectrum of the word of God that deals with every aspect of life, every aspect of what we're doing. It's the manual for a living, man. It is the it it's the manual. I mean, it it is the manual for this life, and within it are all kinds of stories and all kinds of directives and directions and admonishment and warnings and all kinds of
stuff. One of the things that we dealt with this past Sunday is the story of Jacob when after he married Rachel and Leah, and the topic of envy and jealousy came up because Rachel was envious of Leah, and Leah was envious of Rachel, and it caused all kinds of grief. The other aspect, it's almost like the opposite of envy or and jealousy, which are not exactly the same, and I'm gonna get to that, is contentment. Yeah, being content. And we touched on that a little bit, and I just wanted to share with you guys the greater plays on word audience, because you guys might not have our Calvary Chapel Southport app, so you're probably, you know, and you're busy doing your own thing, so you might not have heard the message. I'm not gonna play the full message, but I'm gonna play a little excerpt from it so you can see where I'm coming from, and I pray that this blesses you. Check it out. It says that she envied her sister. She was not happy about that. And envy is a reaction to lacking something that another person possesses. Now, biblical envy is presented as a distressing or resentful recognition of someone else's advantages combined with a wish to have them. We think of Cain, Abel. Cain was really envious of his brother because his brother had the acceptance of God, but God didn't accept Cain's uh offering. But it ex it but his brother Abel, so he wanted God's acceptance. And it was it didn't turn out good for either either one. Cain ended up killing Abel. King Saul envied David. We're gonna get to that when we get to the study of David. But King Saul, he was the king. And when they when they were coming back, all the women were shouting, Saul has killed his thousands, and David has killed his tens of thousands, and it gold saw, it really got him. He wasn't happy with the fact that he was they were cheering his name, he was more upset that they were cheering David more than him. And then you you look at the Pharisees and Jesus. Talk about envy. They envied Jesus because the people were gravitated to Jesus because he spoke as somebody who had authority, not somebody who was like, Well, the teachers, the teacher, let me quote some of the rabbis, let me quote some of the no, Jesus said, You've heard it's written it is written, but I tell you, he spoke with authority, totally different. And the Pharisees wouldn't dare do that, first of all. And that made them completely envy Jesus. It's very close to jealousy, they're not exactly the same, but they're like two leaves on the same branch. What I highlighted here said jealousy is enmity prompted by fear, envy is enmity prompted by covetousness. Now, we're gonna look at Leah and Rachel. The amazing thing to me that really sticks out is they both had something, but they both wanted what the other had. Let me give you an example. Rachel, she had, I mean, Jacob loved her, absolutely loved Rachel. She had Jacob's love, but she had no children. She wanted Jacob's children. She wanted to have children by Jacob. Leah had children by Jacob, but not his love. And that caused a Jerry Springer type of dysfunction in this family that we're gonna see unfold here. Envy's never, it's never good from a biblical perspective. Never good. In fact, from a biblical perspective, it's listed among some pretty heavy things here. In Romans 1.29, Paul's writing, and he says, you know, they're filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, they're gossips. They don't listen to their parents. He just goes on and on and on. But the thing is, envy is mixed in that. So envy's not some light thing. And we have to guard against it as Christians. Let me tell you, we have to guard against it, like even from a church perspective. Look at that church, they have their own building. We could fall into that, you know. Oh, that church, they have a full worship team. Meanwhile, I know of a church they wish they had these two TVs that we have. My man Isaac in in Uganda, they took mud and hooked up like this oven thing. They took the mud and they took this form and they started making bricks, putting it in the oven, making their own blocks, cinder blocks, and they built this wall. Then they went and got branches off trees and strung it across the top for the roof, threw a bunch of grass and stuff over top of that, and then threw mud over top of that. That's their building. And they're happy. They're worshiping the Lord. They have a dirt floor, worshiping God, praising God, full-on worship, trusting God, not being envious of all the other bells and whistles that we have. So we I'm just basically saying we can fall into that. We have to be very careful. Paul says also in Galatians, he lists envy with drunkenness and rivalries, dissension, anger, rivalries too. That's that's another one we're going to come up on. Jealousy, strife, all these different things. Peter says, put away all malice and deceit, hypocrisy and envy and all slander. So the New Testament, listen, the New Testament and the Old Testament, there's nothing, nothing good said about envy. Nothing. And here Rachel was envious. And Leah was, and they're both envious of each other. They both wanted what the other had. Let me give you one last quote from our brother Paul. He says in 1 Timothy, but godliness with contentment is great gain. Can we be content? Listen, it's not just great gain, it blesses the Lord. It puts a smile on his face when we're content with what he has given us. Rather than grumbling. Over and over, the grumbling is really what he's not happy about. Yeah, man. It's uh so my question is you know, is there anything that we are envious about?
Listen, there's a difference between envy and admiration. I mean, back in the day, I admired Michael Jordan and the way he played ball. I was a Knicks fan, so it definitely hurt me. In fact, I went to a Knicks game with my dad, and many, many years later, I I want to say like 20, 2004-ish, somewhere around there, when they retired Patrick Ewing's jersey, and Michael Jordan was there, and a bunch of other, you know, uh, NBA all-star type people were there to celebrate the retirement of Patrick Ewing's jersey. And the garden, Madison Square Garden, they booed Michael, they booed him. And Mike just stuck his hand up and he he he you know he acknowledged it. He's like, Yeah, I know y'all are hating on me. I know you guys are hating on me because I kept you from getting your championship. Little side note, ADD. The Knicks did win this past year, though. So I'm I'm 100% stoked and happy. I wish my father was still alive to see it. Oh man. I think I even prayed. I said, Lord, could you let Freddie Fred know that the Knicks won? If that's possible, could you just let him know? But so Freddie Fred's my dad, for those of you that don't know my ADD rant right now. So, but Michael Jordan, you know, when some people were cheering him, an uneasy cheer, like I don't, I'm a Knicks fan, I really don't want to cheer for this guy, but wow, I gotta give him his props. And as a basketball fan, I I admired, man, the dude was unstoppable. Arguably the greatest of all time. We had an opportunity to see him play. And so I admired him, but I didn't envy him. I didn't want to be on the bulls, and I didn't want to have the the rings he had or the accolades or the money he had, but I admired him. So there is a difference. You can we we can admire, but we have to be very careful on our heart. The Lord tells us we need to guard our heart and our mind, our thoughts. The enemy wants us to be in envy. Oh, they have you don't have what they have. You should have what they have. Whether that's respect, uh power, money, influence, a car, house, clothing, skin tone, hair, for those of us that are follically challenged. The older I get, the less hair I have. And I'm like, what's up with that? Muscles or you know, physique, whatever it might be. And so we need to be absolutely we we should be careful about that because that's not the listen, the Lord did not hang on the cross for us to live that way. You could admire somebody and and be content.
Paul, I mentioned that in that little clip there. Paul mentioned Paul said in in his letter to Timothy in chapter six, he's he says, But godliness with contentment is great gain. We didn't we brought nothing into the world, we we could take nothing out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. And then he goes on to say in verse 9 of chapter six of First Timothy. He says, But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation into a see that desire, the heart. There it is. That's the problem. The wants of the fallen flesh and the heart, the and that includes the soul, the inward corrupted soul now. Deepest desire. What what do you want? Well, those that desire to be rich fall into a tent into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Think about what some people have done just to be rich. The sad thing is there are a lot of people that are that are rich that are it didn't make them happy. I I personally I'd like the opportunity to find out. Oh man. But hey, no, with all jokes aside, I I see myself as the probably the richest man in the world, the most prosperous. If you're in Christ and you know the Lord, man, and you are saved, and you have a relationship with the king of the universe. Not only that, he knows you and you have him on speed dial or or you're you're you're on a FaceTime or a Zoom call with him at all times. Hey, man, come on, now you're the richest person in the world. Just think about that. So that's kind of how I I look at it. But back to Paul in First Timothy here, he you know, he talks about these people's fault, they've ruined their lives chasing chasing money. You can see it, especially with people that have a gambling addiction, a gambling problem. They will take a chance. Just for just to get that win, man. Just to get a get that win. And you know, that's why in all the casinos there are ATMs. Yep, take your money out, man. Come on now. Go ahead. You might win big. And there's a lot of people that failed to win in the homeless camps in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I've seen them with my my own eyes. And I'd be I've never been to Las Vegas, flew over it, but never been to it. I would imagine in Vegas it's the same thing. And Paul goes on to say in verse 10, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. Man, it is a it is a pull, a draw, the love of money. And it's it's at it's not that money itself is a bad thing. Money's just a tool, man. Money is like a like your car is just a tool to get you from point A to point B. You have a car. The car shouldn't have you. You can have money, but money should not have you. Or the acquisition of money should not have you. And that is the the real real trick there. Now, Paul he talks about being content in Philippians, in the in the book of Philippians, and he says in chapter four, verse 11, he says, Not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. And the point being, Paul was focused on Christ, not his circumstance or what the world would be putting in front of him as a desire he should have. You should have this a little bit more, just a little bit more. Or look at what they have. You should have that too. And Paul's like, listen, if I have the Lord, man, that that's that is the that's the key. That's the secret of being either hungry or having everything I need.
One of the proverbs, Proverbs 30, listen to this, man. This is this is Solomon writing this. And arguably he had everything. I mean, in today's wealth, he would probably be the richest guy in the world. So what's Elon? Elon Musk? I mean, he's he's got billions upon billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. Well, Solomon probably was had more wealth than him. Yeah. I mean, Solomon, legally, Solomon could he he had wealth and power. He had the power of life and death. If you looked at him the wrong way, there's no no record of this, but he if you looked at him, he could just say, kill him. And there's nothing anybody could do against that. No court's gonna, he's not going before no court, any court, anything like that. Elon Musk can't really pull that off. He can say have somebody killed, but he also can be brought before a court. Because he's breaking the law. But Solomon, whatever he does was basically legal. Yikes. He had power, money. And he writes this, listen to this. It says, Remove far from me falsehood and lying. This is verse 8 of chapter 30, Proverbs 30. Remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. So it's it's just striking to me. He's saying, Don't, don't, Lord, don't let me, don't give me too much, because I don't want to forget you. And that is a real, that's a real possibility. Everything's going good and fine, and you know, you don't really need God. That's one of the problems with the American church, the church in America. My brother Mike Morgan, he said, We've gotten fat. We're prosperous. We don't have a need for God. Now, of course, he's not speaking about every single person. There are many people that need God desperately right now. And, you know, but whether they're whether we're aware of it, generally, the majority of people going about their lives and everything, okay, they're dealing with their regular struggles and everything, but there are other places in the world where they they have nothing but God to look to. And so prosperity has been, in some ways, has been a negative because people have a tendency to forget God. I mean, you look at the book of Judges, man, the book of Judges and the whole sin cycle, the cycle of sin. These guys they fall into sin, they get oppressed by one of the nations around them. They get really oppressed, bad, and they're being mistreated and foul. And so then they look up and they cry out to the Lord, and the Lord sends a judge so that the judge will deliver them, and the judge delivers them, and yay, there's prosperity, and then, oh, this is great. Okay, okay. But then after the prosperity kicks in, they kind of forget about the Lord, and the tendency is to be to to drift away from him, they don't need him, so they fall back into this oppression, and then you know the sin cycle starts over and over again. They start sinning against God, and the Lord allows them to be oppressed by another nation, and then the they cry, they they finally say, Oh Lord, we need you, and they reach out to him, and then he sends another judge. That is the in essence the book of judges, the sin cycle that happens over and over in the book of Judges. But that is a picture for us. Let us, like Solomon said, man, that let us not be, you know, don't give me, don't give me more than I need. And I don't want to get full and deny you. And then it also says, Don't let me be so poor that I end up stealing and then just put it tainting the name by which I'm called. And that is equally as important. So let us be people that are content in, and we find our contentment in Christ first from there, and everything flows from there.
And I challenge the body of believers at Calvary Chapel Southport in the devotion I do. I send out a devotion every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday. I send out a devotion based on the message, and I forget what day. And hey, if you want to, if you want to get that devotion, just reach out to me and I can, you know, I'll put it in your inbox. Just send me an email to this in the show notes. I'll put a link. Or there's an email. You can contact us or an email. And if you want to get the devotion, and it's not long, it's short, boom, boom, boom, to the point, and helps with, you know. Okay, that's enough of the commercial for the devotion. But the point being, in the devotion I put out this week on one of the days, and I forget which one it was, but I challenged the body to if you're in a in the midst of a difficulty, can you thank God? First of all, thank him for it. And that sounds really ridiculous, but thank him in the midst of a difficult situation that you might find yourself in. Just give a thanks to him. Say, Lord, I'm gonna thank you. I'm gonna just say thank you, even as this sounds ridiculous. I'm gonna, Lord, I'm gonna thank you for this trial, this challenge. And if you don't, if you don't know where to start and to thank him, start by saying, Lord, you know what? I'm gonna thank you that you're with me in this, that I I actually can have an audience with you, that you're you haven't left me here, Lord, that I know that you hear me. I'm gonna start there. Lord, thank you for that, that you're with me in this. Start there. An attitude of gratitude, even for difficulty, but the gratitude is not for the trial or the difficulty. It's really that the Lord is with you in this. That's what Paul's talking about. I have learned the secret to be content. And I can find my contentment in him. Because believe me, this whole thing, this whole thing we call life right now, this is temporary, you guys. This is temporary. And we can we'll be grateful when we look back and say, wow, look, God was with me, man. And some folks go through very difficult situations, and their difficult situation doesn't stop until they get on that train to glory, until they transfer at the train station to glory. But to have the Lord with you in that, in the midst, he will not leave you nor forsake you. He is with you even when you feel like he's not. That's where we need to know that the word is true. In spite of how we feel, the word of God is true. Stand on that today. Amen. All right. That's all the time we have for today. Until next week, you guys. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you Hallelujah.
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