Introduction: In preparing to teach Sunday, I’ve gone through Matthew’s gospel again and again. Each time I read through it, I discover what I believe to my core: God’s wisdom is unending. He cuts to the heart of the matter, which is the matter of the heart.

The text for Sunday is Matthew 20. Specifically, Christ is nearing Passion Week, his week of suffering in Jerusalem, Israel, where He would give His life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28). But in Matthew 20, Jesus continues to teach on how human pride is rooted in something even worse–envy. God hates it because it destroys everything it touches.

Context, context, context. Look at the last verse of Matthew 19: “But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mt 19:30, ESV). The same principle Jesus repeats in Matthew 20: “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Mt 20:16, ESV). Important? Yes.

In Christian theology, one of the most deleterious sins, one that corrupts everything and everyone it infects, is envy. It’s one of seven deadly sins, in certain traditions. It is, of course, addressed in the Decalogue: “You shall not covet . . .” (Ex 20:17, ESV). Envy reveals a spiritual insecurity that God detests.

Rather than finding one’s identity in Christ, envy reveals that one is looking to fellow sinners for approbation. It reveals that one is being a, to use biblical language, man-pleaser (Gal 1:10). Envy reveals a longing for praise from men rather than commendation from the Lord.

That’s why Christ hammers this point to His people. He is saying via gentle rebuke: “Who is your audience? Who are you aiming to please?”

When Jesus teaches via the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:1-16), he’s teaching that Christians are not to envy others’ giftings, influence, or blessings. Rather, be content with God’s grace towards you. Rejoice for those whom God is using to grow His kingdom; don’t envy them. The Lord does not need any of us, so just be faithful in the area of influence God has for you, be that vast or small. That’s the whole point: Many who think they’re first are actually last, and vice versa.

In one of the books I read recently, the author wrote the following: “The antidote to envy is security, the kind of security that allows us to rejoice in the strengths of others while realizing our own uniqueness in Christ.” That’s bull’s-eye, spot on.

Encouragement: It is understandable why the unbeliever would envy. He has no transcendent standard to which he thinks he is answerable; therefore, he measures all things via fluctuating preferences. That’s secularism in a nutshell.

But for the believer, for the man who is a true disciple of Christ the Lord, he knows that his giftings are by the sheer grace of God. “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7, ESV). Humility, therefore, not envy, is the posture of the Christian. God invariably brings the proud low and exalts the humble. Just ask Herod, Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, Ahab, Jezebel, Saul/Paul, etc. The list could go on and on.

If and when we come to understand our sufficiency in Christ, envy will recede and be replaced by humility, selfless service, and our identity being in the One who came down to us to rescue us from ourselves.