Have you ever wished that you were somebody else? I'll bet everyone here, at some time or another, has wished that. And for some of us, it's been quite often that we've wished that we were someone else. Envy. Wishing you were someone else and had what they had. And it strikes you the moment you open up Facebook or Instagram, and you see the photo of one of your friends on the beach in Hawaii, and she's wearing a bikini that you couldn't have gotten into when you were 8 years old. And then you see a picture of her at a luau, having a good time. You haven't had a vacation in 3 years. And when you did, it was in a tent with mosquitoes. You were hit with envy as soon as you turned on Facebook. A friend buys a house and invites you to a barbecue. You go to the house, and it is beautiful. And as soon as you see his house, you think the house you live in, well, it's just a Mongolian hut. It used to be pretty good, till you saw how nice his house is. Envy strikes again. But you know, hey, what's wrong with wishing you were someone else, or had what they had? Just this: you become your own worst critic. Yes, you do. It makes you unthankful for the things that are so good and a blessing in your life. There's a voice in your head that says, "I'm a klutz socially. I wish I were like her. I gab. I never know what to say. My body's a disaster. I just don't look like her, and I can't wear a size four dress." "You know, I want a lasting relationship like my friends have. You know, a marriage that's long-term and close. I just can't seem to make it work. What's wrong with me that I can't make a relationship last?" Envy colors our life, and the color's not good. It gets worse. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins. Why? Why is it a deadly sin? Because it produces other horrible sins in our life. Envy always has children. David killed the giant Goliath, and the women of Israel sang the song, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." Saul came in second. He was still a great warrior, but second to David. And it says Saul was successful, but David was more successful, and Saul was very angry. Anger and envy travel together. It can be subtle, but the anger travels with envy. Saul's an example of something very common. When people are not happy with their own life, they will badmouth you, hoping others will not like you. They want to bring you down to their level. People who don't like themselves will badmouth those they envy. So take it as a compliment. When you hear you've been badmouthed, take it as a compliment. Envy was probably the root of it. Do you realize that envy motivated the religious elite to crucify Jesus? Did you know that? That's what the Bible says. It says that the Pharisees and the Sadducees looked at the popularity of Jesus, that He drew large crowds, and hardly anybody came to listen to them. He was so popular, and they were popular with no one. And the Scripture says they purposed to kill Him because they envied Him. There it is again. Envy is sneaky anger that produces bad behavior. Envy means sin is crouching at your door. You know, most people will never admit they're envious or jealous of another person. And for sure they won't admit they're really angry at how they keep coming in second place to the other person. It's anger. And that's the big message of the fairy tale Snow White. I don't know if you realize it's not a love story. The prince and the dwarfs are all just window dressing to the real story. Because I've been trying to say in this series that fairy tales were written, for the most part, in Europe a century or two or three ago, when Europe was highly Christianized. And these fairy tales really tell a story to interest you, but they're sneaking a Christian truth underneath your radar. There's always a great moral that's straight out of the Bible that they're sneaking through an interesting story. And in Snow White's case, it's the mirror on the wall that is the most important. Every day, the wicked stepmother, you know the story, asks the mirror who's the most beautiful in the land, and every day the mirror says, "You are." But one day, when she asks that question, the mirror says Snow White is the most beautiful. Snow White had grown up. She had matured, and she had blossomed. And now the stepmother comes in second to Snow White. And she is enraged. Do you remember that she tells one of those who works for her, "Kill her. Take her into the woods and kill her"? Envy turned the stepmother into a murderer. Notice that she was no less beautiful that day than she was the day before. She had not lost her beauty. But she wasn't as beautiful now as Snow White. Envy is the mistake of counting the blessings of others instead of your own. Envy is what makes your blessings turn into trash. Envy is essentially competitive. It's competitive. And losing the game makes you your own worst critic. I don't think we realize that envy is competition against everyone. And so what does the stepmother do? She wants to eliminate her competition, and she says, "Kill her." Envy puts anger in her heart, and she becomes a murderer. Why is envy one of the seven deadly sins? Because it wants to harm, even destroy, the one envied, to eliminate the competition. But hardly anyone will ever admit they envy. You just know they do by their behavior, which seeks to harm and destroy another person. That exposes the engine of envy. Let me give you a list of dead-on symptoms of envy, since most people will never admit it. Hatred. Just intense anger towards another person. That really is hard to admit. Ill will towards someone. You just really hope bad things happen to them. Malice. This really is a desire to harm the other person in some way. Resentment. Hard to admit, but "I really resent this other person." Why? No good reason. Judgmental and critical of them, always. Envy is critical of the other person because it wants to lower them down to its level. Gossip about them. When a person is gossiping, almost for sure it's because they envy the person they're gossiping about. They want other people not to like them. So they tell stories on them. Relentless criticism. All of us at some time feel critical of somebody else, but relentlessly? It never stops. Envy is the reason for more crimes in Salinas than we realize. And this is also why good people do bad things. People ask, "Why do good people do bad things?" One of the big reasons is because of envy. And like the stepmother, they want to remove the competition. I came across this cartoon this last week that I just love: "I was going to quit all my bad habits. I really, really was. But then I thought to myself, 'No one likes a quitter.'" We have all kinds of excuses why we can't quit. But the Scripture says in 1 Peter 2:1, "Strip off yourselves malice, envy, and slander of every kind." Get rid of it. Because it's going to produce other bad things, bad behavior in your life. So how do we strip it off? Well, first, you've got to get your eyes off of other people. And believe me, that's a revolutionary act in America, because everything around us is designed to get us to watch, to get our eyes on other people. Refuse to play the comparison game, because happiness is getting your eyes off of other people. Believe me, you cannot live a happy life if you live with your eyes on other people. The comparison game is a loser's game, because eventually you're going to come in second. Someone's going to be more talented, more handsome, have more money, a better marriage, smarter children, be a better athlete. You're going to come in second. It's a loser's game. It's competitive. And sometimes we will not win. Sooner or later, comparing yourself to others is going to make you feel defective, because you aren't them. You have talents and gifts and other very positive assets, but you can't see them if your eyes are on the other person. You can't see it. All you can see is what you're not. I think it's stunning that less than 1% of women in America like the way they look. That's really surprising. And why is that? Well, because women are constantly invited to compare themselves to other women, aren't you? Yes, you are. Entire industries profit from seducing women to play the comparison game. It gets us to spend and spend, even go into debt. It's profitable for industries in America to get you to play the comparison game. Megan Fox thinks she has the face of a pig. I don't think she looks like a pig, do you? She does, because she plays the comparison game and lives in Hollywood among so many beautiful women. And that gets her down on herself, because she's seen something in them she doesn't have and forgets all the assets that she does have. Saint Thomas Aquinas defined envy as sorrow at another person's success. That's a great definition. That's a sure indicator of envy. The famous author Gore Vidal said he died a little bit every time a friend of his had a success. I've known people like that. Especially men, when another man succeeds more financially. Lou Gehrig, the great ballplayer, had stats that were nearly equal to the great Babe Ruth's. But Gehrig, the highest salary he received, and I read his biography, Lucky, and another biography, the highest salary he got was $7,000. Babe was paid $70,000. But Gehrig was never envious of him. He never complained about this. He never complained that Babe was the focus, even though they were pretty equal on the ball field. And what you find is Lou led a very happy life, till he got that disease at the end. And Babe Ruth was never very happy, because he always wanted more. He always wanted more. Leonard Bernstein was asked, "What's the hardest instrument to play in an orchestra?" Do you know what he said? "Second violin." Second violin. Snow White's stepmother was second violin, and she couldn't play it. Dante famously put the envious in hell, and he sewed their eyes shut, because he said sewing them shut was the only way to ever cure them of their sin. So who have you envied lately? Wish you had the car they have, the house they have, the job, maybe the marriage that they have, or that you looked like them? Who have you envied lately? Is it time to count your own talents and assets and get your eyes off of other people? Secondly, be like Jesus and ignore some people's opinion of you. That's being like Jesus. Some of you feel defective because of the opinion of someone important and influential in your life. It could very well be a parent. Many of us grew up in a family that always moved the goalposts further down the field. No matter what you achieved or what you did, it never was quite good enough to score. And you heard things about your body, about your intelligence, about your lack of sociability. You just heard things. And today they're still in your mind. You need to re-parent yourself. You need to start to re-parent yourself by cleaning out those memories and replacing their words with the Word of God. And the Word of God says, "You are His treasure." [applause] Everyone knows that something is worth what someone will pay for it. JFK's golf clubs sold at an auction for $772,000. Were they worth that? The buyer thought so. Something is worth what someone will pay for it. Napoleon's toothbrush sold for $21,000. Something is worth what someone will pay for it. And the proof of it is my wife going into these junk stores. What do you call those things? Antique stores, that's right. And I can't believe what she pays for these things. I hope she's not watching right now. So what are you worth? Have you thought about that? Jesus thought you were worth suffering on the cross and dying on the cross. Do you know the enormous suffering He underwent? Not just the nails, but being hit with hell for your sins. It's beyond me what He suffered for me and for you. He paid the price. The Bible says He ransomed you from the devil. That's the word used: ransom. He paid the price to set you free. You are a treasure. You are so expensive. You are a treasure, and I want you to put that on your bathroom mirror. And when you look in the mirror, not to see any wrinkles, you look in the mirror and say, "I'm Jesus's treasure." Can you say that? "I'm Jesus's treasure." I haven't convinced many of you of that. "I'm Jesus's treasure." That's how you re-parent yourself. Stop taking other people's opinions so seriously. William Shakespeare was a genius, and arguably the greatest author in history. On Goodreads, where people read books and then rate the author, he gets a mediocre 3.7. The population is giving him a C as an author. That says more about them than it does about him. That says they're literally, in literature, uneducated. Giving Shakespeare a C. Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest of playwrights, came back home after the opening night of one of his plays, and his wife asked, "Well, how did it go?" And I quote him. He says, "My play was terrific, but the audience wasn't so good." Stop taking the opinion of others so seriously. Paul was criticized for being a poor preacher, and people walked out on the sermons of Jesus. Celsus, the great Roman writer, said that Jesus was short and ugly. And there actually is a first-century church tradition that backs Celsus up: Jesus was short and ugly. Do you think Jesus took that seriously? One of my favorite passages in the Bible is where a desperate dad begs Jesus to come to his home and heal his dying son. And Jesus says, "I'll go." And He gets to the home, and there's a bunch of people there saying, "The boy is dead. There's nothing You can do for him." And the Bible says Jesus just ushered them out of the room and closed the door. And the great verse that I have on my mirror is: Jesus ignored them and healed the boy anyway. Never allow other people's opinions to make you feel defective or to kill a dream. God's opinion is that you are a treasure, and His opinion is the only one that matters. So I ask you: Who do you need to put out of the room and ignore their opinion? A true story in history: in 258 AD, the emperor Valerian demanded that the leader of the church in Rome bring all the treasure of the church to him and give it to him. So Lawrence gathered up a huge crowd of the crippled and the poor and the blind and lepers and the lame. And he brought them to the emperor. And as this crowd of misfits stood before the emperor, Lawrence said, "These are the treasure of the church." And you are. Even lepers. You are the treasure of the church. Who do you need to ignore? Because Jesus's opinion is the only opinion that matters. Lord, help us to be honest about that. To make no excuses, and to start to take action on this message, and to be set free. Lord, I pray for us. Help us. Amen.