14.08 | Jealousy Blinds
Acts 13:13-52
‘The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him.’
Acts 13:44-45
The Judaism of the First Century was a religion of waiting.
Whatever faction you belonged to, wherever you lived in the Roman Empire, there was a common thread of waiting woven into the worship and teaching of their faith.
They were waiting for the restoration of Israel.
They were waiting for the coming of the Messiah.
They were waiting for the arrival of God’s own Kingdom.
And, had they truly remembered their Scriptures, they were waiting for the life and reign of God to overspill into every nation on the earth.
Waiting defined their prayers. It pulsed in their songs. It was explained by their teachers. They lived in the gap in between promise and fulfilment, awaiting God’s intervening moment when their hopes would be met by a move of God.
But waiting is a dangerous game.
Because you can be waiting for the wrong thing.
Or you can get fed up with waiting and look for something else.
Or—and maybe this is the most tragic—you can be waiting for something, and then completely miss it when it arrives.
Paul and Barnabas arrive today in a different Antioch.1 This Antioch is in Pisidia in Galatia (for us, in southwest Turkey). They go to the synagogue, and as Paul begins to preach, he declares the the promises of God, as incubated in the Scriptures have been fulfilled.
He reminds them of liberty from Egypt, Judges and King David. He shares about the now famous character of John the Baptist, and the predictions of David that God’s coming Holy One would not see the corruption of death.
He tells them all these things, each one pointing to Jesus. Each one showing their hopes fulfilled. Each one naming the fulfilment of their waiting.
Some listen. Some accept. And yet, as yet unconvinced, some want to hear more.
The next Sabbath, the city gathers, hungry to hear this word.
And here we get the tragedy.
Because the Jews—despite all their long waiting—reject the message.
Why?
Luke, our author, gives us a single reason:
Jealousy.
They are jealous of Paul’s success. They are jealous of the size of Paul’s crowd. They are jealous that his ministry and his work is appearing so greatly more successful than theirs.
Jealousy is a crippling disease of the soul. We know it more often through words like comparison and competition and insecurity and FOMO. Jealousy looks inwards where love looks outwards. It is the turning the success of another into a threat to self. It creates competitions that we never needed to play. Jealousy encapsulates the perspective of the self-absorbed and the grabbiness of the entitled. It has as its goal the preeminence of me.
For the Jews in Antioch in Pisidia, it is this very issue that blinds their hearts to the fulfilment of the promises that they have preached, prayed, sung and heard for their entire lives.
And so they miss it. Paul and Barnabas shake the dust from their feet.
R.T. Kendall put it this way:
“Jealousy - the sin nobody talks about - is the downfall of many a gifted person. It blinds. It eats on one’s spirit. It consumes our thoughts. It seems right at the time. …It has often been said that the greatest opposition to what God is doing today comes from those who were on the cutting edge of what God was doing yesterday…. The reason: jealousy.”2
Jealousy blinds.
Be on your guard against jealousy, my friends, for it leads to blindness to His unfolding work. Soften, let go, release the need to be front and centre, and we may just find ourselves ready to encounter a fresh move of God, and to greet it with simple joy.
Reflect:
What provokes jealousy, comparison, envy, insecurity in me?
Lay these things down.
Invite the Spirit to soften your heart, unto the easy acceptance of God’s new workings in our generation.
Pray:
Father,
When I see your work,
For other people,
Sometimes,
It gives me great joy.
But, Father,
There are times,
When I feel
A little jealous.
Jealous of their comfort,
Jealous of their success,
Jealous of their miracles,
Jealous of their joy.
But Father,
I don’t want to be this way:
It is small; it is miserly; it leads to bitterness.
Rather,
Come and make this heart so soft and generous and willing and ready
That the taste of your work gives me the greatest joy
And that I,
My Father,
May see your work,
Rejoice,
And find my place within it.
In Jesus’ Name,
And in the power of your Spirit,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Jeremiah 50 | Psalm 99
The Syrian king Seleucus had, likely rather confusingly, named sixteen cities across the region after his father Antiochus.
R.T. Kendall: The Anointing, p.80, 145