Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

The Sin of Mary Ann and Saul

by Dave Wilkinson

1 Samuel 18:1-9

May 27, 2001

The Seven Deadly Sins Theme

Tune: Gilligan’s Island Words: James Mitchell

Today King Saul and Mary Ann

Will show us Envy's face

The nagging fear that someone near

Leaves us in second place

Sweet Mary Ann saw Ginger as

The girl that she was not,

Her envy left her discontent,

Unhappy with her lot

(Unhappy with her lot).

King Saul Saw David much the same

And struggled from the start

To find and kill, against God's will,

The man of God's own heart.

We run aground when we are found

inviting these things in

There's Sloth, of course, and Gluttony,

Our Anger and our Greed,

The lure of Lust,

Pride and Envy, the

Seven Deadly Sins!

A bunch of years ago, a friend and I were wandering along the rocky beach at the base of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. As we worked our way around the point, we came upon the rusting remains of a ship which had come to grief on the sharp rocks.

Our first thoughts were of an unknown prize -- maybe even a fortune in pirate gold. But the words, "Class of 73" and "George loves Angela" -- along with the rest of the graffiti, showed us that we had stumbled on yet another tourist attraction.

Still, the wreck was a sad sight. There lay the ship Dominator on the rocks -- its masts fallen, its superstructure gone -- with seagulls flying above it and the waves sounding a sad note as they pounded the remains into nothingness.

But there are shipwrecks among people as well as among ships. The greatest wreck of all is the wreck of a human soul. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of such a wreck -- of a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. He was not speaking, of course of the fall of a house but the fall of a soul --- "and great was its fall."

Perhaps the greatest example we have of a shipwrecked life is that of Saul, the first king of Israel.

You know something? Scientists do the strangest things to rats. They force them to smoke cigarettes, ingest more saccharine and drink more food coloring than most of us could stomach in a thousand years. There is one experiment, however, which tells us something interesting. A scientist found that after rats have been kept angry and frustrated for an extended period of time, an opaque film forms over their eyes. They literally become blind with rage.

Well Saul was a man with a flaw and this flaw was to eventually blind him to the truth. Saul's flaw was envy.

As the army of Israel returned after victory over the Philistines, the women of Israel came out to meet the army with tambourines and other musical instruments. And they danced before the army singing:

"Saul has slain his thousands,

And David his ten thousands."

The Bible then records that Saul became very angry and declared: "They have credited David with ten thousands and me with only thousands. Next they'll be making him their king."

From that time on, Saul kept a jealous watch on David. Twice he attempted to kill him with his spear. He tried to get his son Jonathan to assassinate David and later almost killed his own son because he was jealous of his friendship with David. He killed the priests of God because they aided David in his escape from his anger. Despite the fact that David twice spared Saul’s life when he could easily have taken it, Saul continued to seek to kill him.

Saul hated David and harmed his own family because of jealousy. He was jealous of David's popularity with the people. He was jealous that David had received the blessings that had been withheld from him because of his disobedience at Gilgal. He was jealous because his own son admired David more than his own father. He was fearful that David would take the throne from him.

Saul was filled with envy and this envy was to drive him to the very edge of insanity. Saul loved David and yet hated him. He wept over him and yet tried to kill him. Nowhere else in scripture do we see so clearly the devastating corrosion of jealousy in the human heart.

The title of this sermon is "The Sin of Mary Ann and Saul" -- for each of the seven deadly sins, is modeled by a character from Gilligan's Island.

Last week we saw how our medieval brothers and sisters looked into their own lives and developed a list of what they called "the deadly sins" pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. They recognized these sins as particularly deadly because they are originating sins -- kind of the mother ships for the lesser sins. All other sins flow out of these seven.

Last week we looked at the Sin of Gilligan and David, the sin of sloth. This week we come to the devastating sin of Mary Ann and Saul -- the sin of envy.

Now most guys I know liked Mary Ann just fine. They preferred her to Ginger. But Mary Ann never knew that. She wasn't the movie star. For the first seasons she wasn't even in the song -- she was just one of "the rest." And Mary Ann always wanted to be Ginger. "Why aren't I sexy like Ginger? Why aren't I glamorous like Ginger?"

At least Jan Brady had a reason to be jealous. Jan was a geek. Marcia really was "all that." Mary Ann had no cause for her feelings. But she had them just the same.

Now Mary Ann's was a "G-rated" envy. But envy isn't always rated "G".

You may remember the news story from a few years ago of the horrible consequences which can result from envy. The story covered the murder of an attractive teenager from a California high school. This all- American girl had tried out for the cheerleading team and had won a place among that elite group. The cheerleaders in her particular school were elected by the student body. To win a position on the team was to be publicly crowned as one of the cutest and most popular girls on campus.

Unfortunately, such contests inevitably leave behind a string of losers. Among the losers of this election was a girl whose envy had no limits. She had lost out to a rival of long standing who time and time again had won the recognition she craved. Her envy got the best of her. Eventually she murdered her competitor, and was able to take her position on the cheerleading team. When the tragic truth was finally discovered, emotional shock waves ran through the school and the community. The incident demonstrates the extremes to which envy can go.

Envy is like idolatry. Envy means that the provision God has given us is viewed as inadequate. We want something else, and that something else isn't God it's status or things or recognition. God isn't enough. We want more, and someone else appears to have it and we want it so badly that we need to step all over them and God to get it.

Frederick Buechner writes: "Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are." He's right -- as long as we remember that the measurement is personal and subjective. Saul was successful. He had slain his thousands. But there is always someone more successful. Jealousy and envy appear in our lives when we think that someone else is receiving what we deserve. It is a sign of pride because it shows that we are the center of our own universe and are not trusting God to give us what we need.

Envy destroys happy friendship and marriage. Dorothy Sayers wrote of the voice of envy in Creed or Chaos: "In love, envy is jealous and possessive. My friend and my marriage partner must be totally wrapped up in me and must find no interests outside me. That is my right. No person, no work, no hobby, must rob me of any part of that right. If we cannot be happy together we will be unhappy together -- but there must be no escape into pleasures that I cannot share."

In Galatians 5, Paul lists envy and jealousy among the deeds of the flesh. In 1 Corinthians, he cites jealousy as a sign of the people's selfishness. In James 3:16 it declares: "Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing."

Saul certainly found this to be true in his own life. The last years of his life are a monument to the wreckage of a soul that can be caused by envy.

The play Amadeus was praised by the critics. The movie made from the play won an Academy Award. Both the play and the movie brilliantly carried us into the subjective consciousness of a good man who was destroyed by envy. Antonio Salieri, court musician to the King of Austria in Vienna, encountered the teenage musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Young Mozart was obviously blessed with talents which set him apart from his contemporaries. His virtuosity on the harpsichord was dazzling. His music was complex, moving, exciting, and reflected his total mastery of virtually all forms of composition. It was clear that God had endowed him with extraordinary gifts. Nevertheless, Mozart was immature, vulgar, obscene, and lascivious.

Salieri, on the other hand, had dedicated himself to serving God, promising to write music that would glorify the Heavenly Father. From his youth he had dreamed of composing music that would lift the hearts of people heavenward. However, God had not endowed Salieri with such gifts. Salieri was able to write pleasant tunes, but not masterpieces. He could compose music which would entertain its hearers, but never immortalize its composer. Despite his immense popularity, Salieri knew that his was a mediocre talent and that his uninspired work would soon be forgotten. Because he envied Mozart's gifts, he violated the commandment against covetousness and became obsessed with envy which led him to plot Mozart's destruction. This obsession eventually drove him to insanity. In the climatic monologue of the play, Salieri curses God for denying him the kind of talent that He granted to Mozart. In this play we see a brilliant illustration of how envy can alienate a person from God.

Envy certainly deserves its place on the list of the seven deadly sins.

But another right up there with envy is wanting to be envied. The fact is that most people enjoy being envied and work hard at encouraging others to envy them. This desire to encourage envy is clearly apparent among children. As a child I would tell a lie to create envy. Every youngster knows that it is more fun to be the one envied than to be the envier. So do advertisers. How many ads of my childhood urged me to be the "first one on my block" to have "whatever"?

A great deal of adult behavior is generated by the desire for this same kind of gratification. Economic theorist Thorstein Veblen claims that the spending habits of people are highly influenced by the psychic enjoyment which comes from getting others to long for what they possess. It is Veblen's contention that it is possible to get people to buy products that are not particularly superior in quality, by publicizing widely that the products are very expensive. Expensive possessions stimulate the envy of those who do not have them and gives great satisfaction to those who do have them.

Veblen believes that this principle of envy extends even to marriage. He claims that some people turn away from loving relationships because their prospective partners will not elicit the envy of others.

Tony Campolo tells about a man who was engaged to a fine woman but refused to marry her because he knew that his friends would not be impressed by her appearance. She shared his interests and was a stimulating conversationalist. They had similar values and held the same Christian convictions. Nevertheless, he married another woman who had striking beauty, but few of the sterling qualities of his former fiancé. He lost out on an opportunity that would have brought him significant happiness because it was more important to him to have a wife who would make him the envy of others than one who would make him happy.

So how do we get rid of envy and the desire to be envied? Well, we will not put an end to envy in our lives by trying harder. If you learn one thing from this series of sermons on sin, learn this: we cannot remove any sin from our lives by trying harder. Sin is a condition of the heart, and only God can change a wayward heart.

We can, however, cooperate with God in the process of healing. This starts as we open our hearts to His love. Remember that God wills the very best for us. This doesn't mean that what God wants is always realized right away. There is sin in the world. But God is a good God who wills for us all of those gifts and attributes essential for us to live our lives in the fullness of joy.

And the good news of the Gospel is that God cannot be stopped. The good that He willed for each of us will come to pass in God's eternal kingdom. Any blockage of His intentions is temporary. Eventually the good that He wills for us will be realized. Regardless of the frustrations and the barriers we encounter, we have this wonderful assurance: We know from Romans 8:28 that "in everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose." Part of that fulfillment is during our earthly lives, and part of it in heaven.

Instead of being resentful and envying those for whom things seem to have turned out better, we are called to trust God and to believe that in the midst of our present circumstances, He will find a way of providing opportunities for each of us to experience joyful service and total fulfillment.

I know of no better contemporary example of this than Joni Erickson Tada. I had the privilege of hearing her speak in Pasadena about a year ago. This incredible, vivacious young woman became a quadriplegic as the result of a diving accident. A life of sports, travel, and fun seemed to be over. The promise of a professional career and a happy marriage appeared to be gone. She was in a wheelchair for life instead of being free to live the kind of happy life that she had anticipated for herself.

As Joni tells her story, she explains how easy it would have been for her to envy others who were able- bodied, and how envy could have made her into a bitter person. Instead, by the grace of God, Joni discovered some truths that healed her life.

First of all, she came to recognize that what had happened was not something that God wanted to happen. She realized that God did not want her to suffer and to be crippled for life. She came to see that Satan wanted to use her tragic accident to cause her to hate God, but she was determined not to let Satan have his way. Once she realized that God did not will her accident, and that He suffered with her as she had to live with its consequences, she found it easier to love God and worship Him.

Secondly, Joni discovered that in the midst of the difficult circumstances in which she found herself, God could give her meaning and joy. She discovered that because of the horrible thing that had happened to her, she was equipped to minister to other disabled persons in a way that is impossible for those who are not disabled. Even though God did not will her to be crippled, He could work in the midst of her adversity to produce something of infinite importance.

Seeing how God could use her because of her condition became a source of joy. Her testimony, now heard around the world, has influenced countless persons.

Now note. This doesn't mean that she loves her disability. She lives in the hope that someday, all the good things that God willed for her from before her birth will come to pass. That is what heaven is for, and Joni knows it. But she is able to use as a weapon against envy the knowledge that eventually she will lack for nothing that is good. She knows that someday she will walk again, even if that someday is in heaven.

Do you struggle with envy?

Put your heart in God's hand today. Ask God to take your grasping, possessive, covetous old heart and replace it with a grateful, thankful heart. When God moves in our heart, God always does something to our eyes as well. God changes the way we see the world and we see ourselves. With God's help we can see how precious and how gifted and how absolutely unique each one of us is. And envy melts away when we grow in love with the Giver of all good gifts.