Rising Above the Comparison Trap.

So if you guys want to turn to Genesis, or not Genesis, Genesis 29. I just spoiled who we're talking about today. Genesis 29 and 30, if you have your Bibles, we're going to be camped out there because there is a lot going on.

So I think it was about November, the birth month of my wonderful sister-in-law Abbie Sawczak, and I wanted to do something nice for her birthday. So I thought, you know what, she doesn't really like going out because she has a small child at home. So I'm going to pick up her favorite food and show up and do something nice for her for her birthday. So of course, I go to Olive Garden and I get her order and I'm ready to pick it up.

I think my order was ready at 7. So I'm like, okay, I'll be there a few minutes after 7 o'clock. So I pull into the Olive Garden pickup spot. If you ever pick up food, you can click "I'm here" and then they bring your food out. So I pull in and it was almost 7 o'clock, but I hit "I'm here" and then I wait. I wait 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I keep checking my app and refreshing. They're saying someone's bringing the food out to your car. Someone is bringing the food out to your car. I'm refreshing and I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and no food is coming.

So finally I call. This really sweet woman, Michelle, answers the phone. She's like, hi, it's Michelle at Olive Garden. I was like, hi, Michelle. I'm out here waiting for my food. And very pleasant interaction. I wasn't mad or upset, of course. She's like, oh, I'm so sorry. Somebody came out and they couldn't find you. I'll send them right back out. Where are you parked? I'm like, I'm right out front. Okay, great. So five minutes goes by, ten minutes goes by.

Now Michelle calls me. Michelle's like, "Hey, Abbie, we can't find you." And I'm like, okay. She's like, "And you're on the east side location?" That one, like, yes, I'm on the east side, not the west side.

Now I'm getting a little irritated. I'm not mad, of course. It happens. But I'm like, guys, I'm here and I'm waiting. So it happens again where they send them out. They still can't find you. So finally I call Michelle. Now it's like 7:30. I'm like, my food is going to be cold. I'm a little irritated. I'm being very polite, trying to be polite, but internally I'm really irritated. I'm like, hi Michelle, I'm still here like I still don't have my food. She's like, and you're sure you're at Olive Garden? And I look up. I was at Chili's. I was at Chili's next door this whole time. So no wonder that Michelle from Olive Garden cannot find me because I wasn't at Olive Garden. I was at Chili's. And then I realized in that moment, I am the problem. This is me. My tone instantly changes from "Michelle, where's my food?" to "Michelle, I am so sorry. I am at Chili's." To which she informs me, she goes, "It happens all the time." I'm like, those are completely different restaurants, but they're next to each other, so I get it. So this moment of poor Michelle losing the ability to find me, and me getting frustrated until I recognize I am the problem.

We are continuing today our series "Am I the Problem?" where we are looking at stories in the Bible where at times we can say they're heroes of the faith, there was nothing wrong with them. Or we're like, what was going on? And saying, Lord, would you come in and would you maybe show us through the power of your Holy Spirit? Would you show us the areas where maybe we're the ones and the decisions that we've made and the choices that we have made have led us here? And if we could just take time to acknowledge them and surrender them to the Lord and repent and turn back towards him, we could get the thing that we were longing for.

Identifying when we're the problem

So today we are going to recap really quick last week. Pastor Ned Malice talked about this idea of how do we know when we're the problem? How do we identify when we're in the problem? And what are some of the reasons that we don't always want to admit that we're the problem. There are three things that stop us from being able to identify when we are the problem or when the choices and the things that we're doing are what's going wrong. The first is that we can justify just about any behavior that we have. We justify things.

The next was that we often don't have a community of accountability where sometimes we can't see the things that are going on in our life that are actually preventing us from growing closer to the Lord or being more like him because we don't have people in our lives that speak honestly into it. And then the third one was that we don't slow down long enough to reflect, that we just are so busy, we keep rushing past things that we never take time to fully acknowledge that there might be some things I'm doing and I might be the problem.

We're going to pick up in Genesis chapter 29. Abraham receives a promise from God, and God said that he's going to bless and multiply the nations through him. So Abraham and he says he's going to do this through him and his wife Sarah. Well, Sarah can't conceive, so they take their maidservant Hagar. Hagar has Ishmael, and God's like, that wasn't the child I wanted to bless. So then finally, in her old age, Sarah gives birth to Isaac. Now Isaac has two sons. He has Esau and he has Jacob. The birthright, that promise and blessing, would have belonged at that time, culturally, to Esau as the eldest son. So then we see in Genesis 27 where Isaac is going to give his blessing to Esau.

Rebecca, the mother, was like, actually, I think Jacob, you should have it. So they tricked Isaac into thinking that Jacob was Esau. Now Jacob has the blessing. So after Jacob receives the blessing, Isaac, his father, tells him to go and find his uncle, Laban. Jacob has been journeying. He's trying to find him. During this time, he has that dream and all these kinds of things. We're kind of picking up now in Genesis 29.

When Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern people, there he saw a well in the open country with three flocks of sheep lying near it. Because the flocks were watered from the well, the stone over the mouth of the well was large. When all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone away from the well's mouth and water the sheep and they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well. Jacob asked the shepherds, "My brothers, where are you from?" "We're from Haran," they replied. He said to them, "Do you know Laban, Nahor's grandson?" "Yes, we know him," they answered. Then Jacob asked him, "Where is he?" "Well, yes, he is," they said. "And here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep." Look, he said. "The sun is still high. It's not time for the flocks to be gathered. Water the sheep and take them back to pasture." "We can't," they replied. "Until the flocks are gathered and the stone has rolled away from the mouth of the well, then we will water the sheep." While he was talking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherd.

Genesis 29:1-9

So Rachel, she was a working woman out there. She was a shepherd tending after the flock.

When Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his uncle Laban, and Laban's sheep, he went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered his uncle's sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and began to weep aloud. He told Rachel that he was a relative of her father and a son of Rebecca. So she ran and told her father. As soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister's son, he hurried to meet him. He embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his home. And there Jacob told him all these things. Then Laban said to him, "You are my own flesh and blood." After Jacob stayed with him for a whole month, Laban said to him, "Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me or me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be." Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful.

Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, "I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter, Rachel." Laban said, "It's better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me." So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife. My time is completed and I want to make love to her." So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah, so not Rachel, and brought her to Jacob. And Jacob made love to her. And Laban gave his servant Zilpah to his daughter as her attendant.

When morning came, there was Leah. So Jacob said to Laban, "What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me?" Laban replied, "It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. Finish the daughter's bridal week. Then we will give you the younger one also in return for another seven years of work." And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her attendant. And Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.

Genesis 29:10-30

I feel like when I read this, the first things that come to mind is just yikes. This story is wild. So there's so many things about here that I feel like I want to be like, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. You know, there's things that start when it says that Rachel was more beautiful than Leah. And there's those moments where you want to be like, well who said that? You know, like who wrote that? Who decided this? But you start to see where things start to get pretty problematic for everybody involved in this situation.

Comparison leads to chaos

Today we're really going to focus on this idea of comparison, of what happens when we start to compare. Because you have these two sisters that now are going to be in this impossible situation and all sorts of things are going to continue to happen. What I want to focus on for just a minute before we get there is this reality. Both Laban and Jacob did things in these moments. They acted, they said things that were kind of problematic, that weren't great, that weren't good, and didn't really set Leah and Rachel up for success in their marriage, in their relationship with one another, in the way that they lived to honor God.

When I was younger, I have three brothers and sometimes we would be fighting as kids and when a parent would come in the room and say, "Hey, stop it. Stop hitting each other," I would never punch my brothers, but what I would say, you know, our first response would be like, "He started it. She started it." Our first response is always blame the other. They started it. But what I want you to think about is normally the parents' response is like, "I don't care who started it. Somebody just stop it." And the reality is that for all of us, there might be situations and circumstances that we're in that maybe we didn't start. Maybe we're not the one that started this chaos or we started this problem. But we can choose how we respond to it. We can choose whether or not we want to continue it, whether or not we want to contribute to it, or if we want to stop it, if we want it to stop with us.

In verse 31, it says:

When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive. But Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben. For she said, "It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now." She conceived again and when she gave birth to a son, she said, "Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too." So she named him Simeon. Again, she conceived and when she gave birth to a son, she said, "Now at last my husband will become attached to me because I have borne him three sons." So she named him Levi. She conceived again and when she gave birth to a son, she said, "This time I will praise the Lord." So she named him Judah.

Genesis 29:31-35

Then she stopped having children. When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob:

Give me children or I will die.

Genesis 30:1

So dramatic. She's like, "Give me children or I will die. That's it." So what do we see start to happen? What are the responses to the situation that they are put in? Well, we start to see that there's some jealousy, there's some envy, there's this desperation that comes into play. Have you been here before? Have you been in a situation where you wanted something so badly, so desperate for something, that whether you vocalized it in that way or not, you were living in a way or you were communicating to God in a way of saying, "Give me this thing or else. Like I'm done. That's it."

There can be all different things that at some point or another we have placed the value of what we want and that longing and that desire above the Lord. At that time, there was some reality to the fact that a woman's worth came mainly from bearing children. That was primarily where your worth was going to come. Can you bear me a son? And so there was some reality to if this wasn't going to happen then your husband could divorce you and there were a lot of repercussions for that. But this desperation of saying, "I want a child more than anything else, so give me this or I will die." Envy, jealousy, comparison.

Envy and jealousy can be hard to understand, but envy is really this desire to have what somebody else has, whether that's their position, their success, their achievements. Envy continues to lead into this cycle of comparison and jealousy. Jealousy is this strong feeling of possessiveness and ownership over something, and it's what leads to a lot of this rivalry and comparison and more envy and the cycle that goes on and on.

The first thing that I want to talk about today is what does comparison lead to. Comparison first leads to chaos. You see this in this story as they begin to look at one another and envy and jealousy and compare what they have and what they don't have and what they want and what the other person got. It leads to complete chaos.

Jacob became angry and said, "Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?"

Genesis 30:2

This is after she says "Give me children or I will die." She said:

Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me, and I too can build a family through her.

Genesis 30:3

More chaos is taking place. There's a lot of things that happen like this in scripture that I think it's really important for us to understand what was happening culturally there and filter it through the context of scripture as a whole and filter it through the character of God and who we know him to be, from Old Testament to New.

Because there are some things that happen in scripture like this where somebody else is being given to someone that it makes it feel like, man, like why did God let that happen? Why is that in scripture? Just remembering that these stories are stories for us to learn from. They're stories that are being described to us and told to us, not like prescribed as "do this." This is not something that we should do today or how God wants people to be treated. But this woman was essentially given to Jacob saying, "Give me a child." So that's some of the ways that we need to remember to read scripture.

It says:

So she gave him her servant as a wife. Jacob slept with her. She became pregnant and bore him a son. And Rachel said, "God has vindicated me. He has listened to my plea and given me a son." Because of this, his name is Dan.

Genesis 30:4-6

It says:

Rachel's servant conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, "I have had a great struggle with my sister and I have won." So she named him Naphtali.

Genesis 30:7-8

When Leah saw this, that she had stopped having children, she took her servant and said, "Here, Jacob, take her as a wife." So Leah's servant bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said:

What good fortune!

Genesis 30:11

And named him Gad. Leah's servant bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said:

How happy I am. The women will call me happy.

Genesis 30:12

So she named him Asher. During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the field and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah:

Please give me some of your son's mandrakes.

Genesis 30:14

But she said to her:

Wasn't it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son's mandrakes too?

Genesis 30:15

Very well, Rachel said:

He can sleep with you tonight in return for your son's mandrakes.

Genesis 30:15

More just chaos happening here in this story.

God listened to Leah and she became pregnant and bore Jacob a fifth son. Then Leah said, "God has rewarded me for giving my servant to my husband." So she named him Issachar. Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, "God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor because I have borne him a sixth son." So she named him Zebulun. Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and enabled her to conceive. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, "God has taken away my disgrace." She named him Joseph and said, "May the Lord add to me another son."

Genesis 30:17-24

The next thing that I see in this scripture that the Lord highlighted was that comparison leads to competitiveness and not in the good way. Not in the like, oh, this is a fun person to play games with, but in the really ugly, sinful way. We see that this almost became a competition between these two sisters of, okay, who's going to give him more sons? And this competitiveness just starts to become their identity, and all they want to do is win. All they want to do is be the best.

And sometimes we forget that when we are just wanting to win and to be the best, are we then saying that the other people are the worst? Are we saying that they're not good, that they're worse off than we are? They let this rule their lives. They made having children into a competition. Think about some of the names that they had. But there's some good that still came out of this, and that's really the beauty of all of this. That as we continue to address the things in our life and name it and give it to the Lord and repent and turn back towards him, like he is going to use those things and continue to forgive us and to use us.

The first son was Reuben, which literally was just "see, there's a son." That was kind of like the name. And she's like, here he is. And then we start to see that there was the second son, Simeon, whose name is "God has heard that I was mistreated or hated." So there's that name. Then we have the third son, Levi. And after that, it says, because I've given my husband a third son, he's going to love me now. Like now it's all going to be good. So you see that core desire to just win.

The fourth son was Judah, which means praise. And we know Jesus comes from the line of Judah, so that's a significant thing to take note of, that lineage. God did see Leah and he chose Leah, even in all of her misery and her feeling like she was mistreated. He said, you're someone I want in my lineage. So that's pretty cool.

But at this time Rachel's still barren. When there was the fourth son and so that's what she gave her servant, and the first son that her servant had was Dan. So there's a picture here to kind of show you as I talk through this and help you visualize like all the sons, where they came from, all of that. Then Rachel conceives again and the son Naphtali, which means "wrestled," because Rachel felt like she was wrestling with her sister Leah for Jacob's affection. So these names, they are some of them really beautiful and some of them are coming from not a great place.

Comparison leads to control

The next thing that we see is that comparison leads to control. Comparison leads to control. So many people in this story were trying to control the narrative. They were trying to take control into their own hands. And this is something that if we sit long enough to really reflect, we've probably all done at one point in our life where God has spoken something to us, he's given us an invitation, he's asked us to do something, he's invited us to be a part of something, and instead of waiting for him, we start to take things into our own hands, and we start to try and write our own narrative.

We take control. Now, here's how I want to talk about this today. I brought my coffee up here, and I drink black coffee, which is really, really good. It tastes great. And it's also really good for staining your clothing. I am known for spilling my coffee on myself constantly. It's like a miracle if I make it a week without staining a piece of clothing with my black coffee.

So I went downstairs and I found this nice towel from the living room. This towel here that has some stains, right? Some things have been sitting there for I don't even know how long. So there's some stains in this towel, things that have been sitting here.

When we're talking about control and how these two sisters started to control the narrative, there were some things that had been like so deeply set into them because of the patterns in their family line and their family history. We talked earlier, right, that we had Abraham who had that promise from God and this is waiting for the promise. His wife Sarah said, "Hey, let's take it into our own hands. You have a maid servant here. Go have a child with her." And then that happens. Taking control into their own hands. Then you go to Isaac and his wife Rebecca and Rebecca, instead of following what would have been the promise that belonged to Esau, she took control and she took it into her own hands, right? And then now you come to Jacob who he's seen this done. So he's saying, "You know, this is the sister I want, this is how I want it." And there's things that have just been so soaked, so deeply into who they are. There are things that they have just been marinated in for better or for worse.

For all of us, we have those things. Whether we recognize it in this moment or not, we have those things that if we have not taken time to address it, if we have not taken time to soak it the right way, things have sunk deep into who we are. And so it becomes our default response.

For these sisters, their default response when things started to not go as they had planned was to take control into their own hands. Because that's what they saw. That's what they knew. Was it the way that God wanted it? No. But is it what happened? Yes, because they took control into their own hands because that's what was so deeply embedded into who they were.

Which is why when we have moments where we talk about things like comparison or envy or jealousy, that we can sit here and just be like, okay, everybody, it's bad. It leads to bad things. So we just all need to stop. Stop comparing. Just stop doing it anymore. We're not going to be able to just stop comparing. We're not going to be able to just stop being jealous. We're not going to be able to just stop envy. There are things that are so deep into our core sometimes that we can't just say stop and it's going to stop.

But rather, we have to do what Pastor Ned Malice talked about last week. We have to name what's happening. We have to look at the things going on in our life. And you have to say, okay, what is soaked so deep into me? Right. Like, what is this stain? Which isn't always fun to evaluate when you're looking at dirty clothes or things that are saying, what is this? And then if you've ever had somebody in your life, it's my mother that she can get any stain out. I swear, anything. She can soak it with the right thing and she can get the stain out.

We have to address the things and the problems in our life. We have to address it in a way and start to work towards changing it. And then we have to surrender it to the Lord. I'm going to invite the worship team to come back as we get ready to close.

As I was praying over this message and this word today, and the Lord kind of began to give me these pictures, I really truly felt like that last one, like when it comes to comparison and this idea of control, is one of the hardest things for us to get out. It's one of the hardest things for us to remove from our life, is this idea of thinking that we can control things. And a lot of that comes from comparison. We're going along just fine, but we start looking at other people, right. We look at the people next to us. We look at our neighbors. We look at our co-workers. We look at our friends. We start to see what they have, and we start to compare that to what we may or may not have. We start to see the things that they've accomplished, and we compare that to the things that maybe we wanted to accomplish but we haven't been able to yet. The things that we thought God wanted for us but we haven't received yet.

Sometimes we can even look at other people and we see the peace that they have with God. We look at the way that they can trust him and we start to compare. We allow the enemy to magnify the emptiness inside of us, our brokenness, our unfulfilled desires. And so we start to envy. We get jealous. And our default response starts to come out. What do you do when you start to look and you start to realize you don't have the things you want, you're not where you thought you would be, when you start comparing your life to not only other people but sometimes comparing it to your expectations of the things you wanted at this point in your life, the things you were hoping to have accomplished when you arrived here? And our default response starts to come out. The things that have been marinated, the things that have soaked, the things that have stained our lives, start to come out and chaos starts to happen.

And a lot of times we cause it by getting competitive, by taking control. For many of us, there are things that are so deep inside of us that it's going to take us naming it, it's going to take us addressing it, and then it's going to take us really soaking it in the presence of the Lord, spending time long enough in his presence for him to cleanse us. For him to not only reveal to us what it is that is going on, the problems inside of us, but to heal it.

Release it to the Lord

And so this whole series we're talking about this idea of like, what is the big so what for this series? It's recognizing that we might be the ones causing some of the problems. It's taking some of that control in a way, the good kind of us, in responsibility to say, "I can change," right? And recognizing we don't have to stay this way. If you're hearing these words and you're recognizing that, "I think that maybe I still have moments where I'm struggling with comparison or envy or jealousy. I feel like I've been competitive. I feel like I have been trying to control things in my life." You don't have to stay this way. We can change because of Jesus.

And so what do we do with that? We name it. We take time to look at our lives and say, what do we see? Invite the Holy Spirit into that process. Do you see chaos? Do you see yourself longing and grasping to have control? Do you find yourself being competitive? Name what's going on and then address it. Do something about it. Ask the Holy Spirit, "What do I need to do about this? What is the approach?"

And can I suggest this? As a church, we follow something called the rule of life, which is a set of practices that we are committed to. Formation practices that we believe are going to help us be with Jesus and become like him so that we can represent him well and live like him in our everyday life. And one of the reasons that we talk about these practices is recognizing that we are all constantly being formed.

And part of that idea of like, we've been marinated in some things, we've let things soak into us, whether it was our choice or not. Maybe it's just how we grew up, like that's what people did. There are things that we had that have formed us. And so we can't just say, okay, I'm going to stop comparing. But we have to say, what is the counter-formative practice that is going to not just stop and leave me empty, but it's going to help form me to be more like Jesus?

And so one of the practices that we have is saying, what does it look like if we practiced ending our day and examine where we take time to reflect on our day and ask the Lord, "Where were you in these moments? What happened? What did I feel in those moments?" Like, take time to really address who you are and what's going on. And then end in gratitude. And that's the practice that I truly believe can help some of this come out, is gratitude. It's to practice being more content with not only where God has us but who God is. And that's part of the release.

When we're naming the problem, we're addressing the problem, and then we're releasing it. Part of that release is fixing our eyes back on our Creator God, fixing our eyes back on the gift of his Son, Jesus, who made a way for us to be changed and not have to live like this anymore. I've heard it said this way before. We can glance at what's going on in other people's lives. We can take time to glance and reflect on what's happening in our lives. At the end of the day, we need to gaze at God. We need to gaze at Jesus. We need to gaze at the Holy Spirit and who he is.

And I truly believe that if we want to address the things that are happening in our lives, the things that are separating us from God, if we want to name it and address it and we want to release it to him, that it's going to take time for us to just soak and sit a little bit in his presence because that's what's going to cleanse us. That's what's going to remove what's going on.

So I want to invite you to stand with us tonight. And the worship team is going to play a song. But I want to invite you that if you're here and you're like, yes, I think that there's real struggle in my life in comparison, you can even now in this moment practice gratitude. Start naming the things that you're thankful for. And not like, "Thank you, Lord, that my job is better than this person." No, because that's still comparison. But you know, "Thank you, God, that there is light. Thank you, God, that there's breath in my lungs. Gaze at who God is." That is the counter-formative practice that is going to form us more into the likeness of Jesus.

So we're going to take a few minutes to just give you time. If there's things that you need to name and you need to ask the Holy Spirit to show you how you need to address, do that. I'm going to ask Pastor Ned Malice to be available for prayer. If you want prayer ministry today, if you want someone to partner with you in prayer, you can do that. And then we're just going to spend a moment. The worship team is going to be singing. If you want to sing along, you can, to just practice that gazing at the Lord and who he is and being thankful.