Goodbye To Comparison - Goodbye (Week 2)

When we constantly compare, someone else’s success can feel like our failure. But God never called us to compete with one another. Watch as Pastor Chris David takes us through Week two of Goodbye, and what the bible says about comparison!

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That video is so fun, isn't it? I was selling first service. It's like when my kids were little and the movie would end and the songs come in when the credit rolls and we'd always jump up and say dance party and everybody would run around and dance. That song just kind of reminds me of that and makes me want to dance. I don't really know why I'm saying that. It's just it reminded me of it. But speaking of my family, I remember like it was yesterday, uh, it was a few years ago though, and I had planned and prepared an ultimate dream trip for my family. I mean, it was literally the type of trip that when I was a kid, I never could have actually dreamed that I would be able to visit a nation like South Africa. And here I was, able to take my whole family of five to South Africa. God had provided miraculously for us to be able to do this, and I was just so grateful. And I remember vividly boarding a plane in Dallas, and after getting my kids settled into their seats for their first ever transatlantic flight, uh sat down in my seat, and like most of us do, when we have a few moments to kill, we I pulled out my phone, started scrolling Instagram. Uh shortly after scrolling Instagram, I saw pictures of some friends of ours, some uh dearly loved friends that we were we love a lot. Um but their posts looked a little bit different than ours because their seats were in first class. Yeah, if you've ever flown first class on an international flight, you know, I mean it's it's nice. I mean, it's it's it's a nice experience. But somehow looking at that post, this dream trip that I had that I was so grateful for became a little less dreamy. Why? It's because of this sneaky little culprit called comparison. And today we're gonna say goodbye to comparison. In a 2024 Common Sense Media Survey, uh 48% of respondents said after using social media, they feel like other people's lives are better than their own. Some of us have felt that before. I certainly felt it when I was sitting on that plane. But also, and even more interesting to me is that 52% feel they always need to show the best versions of themselves on social media. So if we're gonna look at these two findings together, it might look a little something like this. I look at your life or your edited life, and I feel worse about mine, so I edit my life so that you'll feel worse about yours. Meaning I'm comparing my life to someone who's comparing their life against mine. It's this weird cycle that happens, and we compare everything. We compare careers, we compare houses, we compare bodies, we compare marriages, kids, money, or vacations in the case of my trip to South Africa. Unless we think that social media is the root cause of all this, I mean, obviously it exposes it in us, and it probably even exacerbates the issue in us, but it doesn't eliminate it when we come to church. We come into church and we just have a new list of things to compare. Who's the most gifted? Who's getting noticed? Whose kids are doing better? Whose small group is growing, who's more spiritual, who has more wisdom. And it's important to note that Paul, when he's writing the book of Romans, which is what we've been going through, when he's writing the book of Romans, he's writing to a group of people that live within a context and a culture of extreme comparison and competition. This is happening both inside and outside the church. There's extreme competition between the Jews and the Gentiles, between Roman citizens and Roman and those who were not Roman citizens. Rich, poor, slave, free, those whose family had came from honor, those whose family came from shame. All of these things had a huge effect not only on your social status, but really the quality of life that you could expect to enjoy as a Roman citizen. All this depended on where you ranked, where you compared with everyone else. And this, the church was not exempt. The church itself actually was probably even heightened due to some important historical context that you need to know about when you're reading Romans. In AD 49, Emperor Claudius issues an edict basically removing all Jews from Rome. Now, this is referenced in Acts chapter 18, verse 2. It's also confirmed by secular historians. Most historians kind of argue they don't really know why Claudius did this, and not sure about the reason, but the fact that it happened is a historical fact. The Jews were removed from Rome in AD 49, and that included Jews who were following Christ, Christians. So for the next five years, Gentiles ran the church. They were leading, they were growing, new people were coming into the church. All of them were Gentiles, meaning not Jewish. And in AD 54, Claudius dies, the edict lapses, and Jews begin to return back to Rome. But the church that they returned to is not the same church that they left. Some of the traditions had changed, the leadership had changed, the people that were in the church had changed. And you can just imagine if you're a Jewish person coming back, you might be thinking, hey, listen, we're the ones who know the scriptures. We know the law. We know the traditions. All of this story of Jesus, including his family line, came through us. And then you can see the Gentiles thinking, um, well, that's great and all, but we've been doing this for five years, and I think it's been going okay. God's using us now, and we're leading right now. Oh, and by the way, it wasn't it you guys that had Jesus crucified over in Jerusalem anyway? Oh, the division is real, the competition, the comparison was rampant in this church. So imagine being part of that church when this letter to the Romans is read aloud. Romans 1 through 11, Paul is dealing with weighty theological issues. It's very theological in nature, but in Romans chapter 12, he gets real practical. So we're gonna read today's scripture. If you would, and if you're able, go ahead and stand to your feet for the reading of God's word. We're gonna read from Romans chapter 12, verses 9 through 13. It says this let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality. This is the word of the Lord. You can have a seat. You know, just a quick reading of this passage can feel like it's just a list of disconnected directives that Paul is giving the Roman Church. But in reality, what's happening is Paul is giving us a whole new way of living, a whole new operating system, if you will. Whereas the way of the world would be competition and comparison, which everyone listening to Romans read aloud would be very familiar with. The way of the world is competition and comparison. The way of the gospel is love and honor. So let's take a moment to just look at the way of the world Paul is directly confronting. Why is it a big deal? What's at stake if we don't get this right? What does it do to us if this stuff is in our lives? But number one, comparison turns people into competitors. It turns people into competitors. When you're playing the comparison game, let me tell you, nobody wins. There's no winning outcome from the comparison game. You really have two, one of two outcomes. If I look at your life and I think that my life is better than your life, I makes me feel superior and will express itself and result itself in pride. If I look at your life and I feel like I'm doing worse than you, it's gonna make me feel inferior and expresses itself through shame. So when we're playing the comparison game, there's really only one of two outcomes, pride or shame, neither one of which are places that we want to end up as believers. So if I am staking my identity based on my comparison to you, there's no way that I can actually genuinely love you because instead of being my brother, you've now become my competitor. The second thing that comparison does is it kills contentment. Comparison rarely stays in our head, it always ends up showing up in our actions. And this is where we get ourselves in real trouble. Comparison leads to discontentment. Your buddy gets a new F-250, and now all of a sudden the F-150 that you've been driving for five years suddenly is not good enough. You see another family's vacation, and all of a sudden you feel guilty that you can't take your family to places like that. Someone moves out of their apartment into a house and all of a sudden your apartment feels way smaller. Their kid made varsity, yours didn't. Their marriage looks easy, your marriage feels really hard right now. Maybe they're 58 and talking about retirement. You're 58, wondering if you're ever going to be able to retire. Notice what happened in all of these different situations. Nothing about the situation changed. Nothing about circumstances changed. The only thing that changes in these situations is what you're comparing to. And if we don't deal with it, if we don't deal with comparison, comparison starts making our decisions for us. It looks a little something like this. We compare, it leads to discontentment. That discontentment leads to some unwise actions, which can even lead to relational strain in your life. We end up taking the vacation we can't afford. We buy the truck that we don't need, and now we have a $1,300 car payment. We work more hours than we need to because someone else got promoted. We resent our spouse because someone else's marriage looks different than ours. We're up to our eyeballs in debt trying to maintain a life that looks successful to people that ain't paying our bills. And listen, it doesn't matter whether you make $60,000 or $600,000 a year. Comparison will always find somebody with more. The oil-filled worker who's driving around all day will compare his paycheck, his hunting lease, his truck. The mom on the sideline compares her kids, her body, her marriage, her house. The empty nester compares his retirement account and vacations and whose kids still come to visit. The teenager compares clothes and followers and who gets invited to what party. The pastors aren't immune either. We compare attendance and budgets and buildings and influence and who gets invited to speak where. And to be honest with you, right now, if I weren't speaking a whole message on comparison, I might go home this afternoon and begin comparing how I did as compared to how Pastor Andrew did last week. I'm just being honest right now. I'm not gonna do that, but only because I got to practice what I'm preaching, all right? It's well, you got to do that, right? But it's natural and it ends up hurting us. It ca you know, comparison doesn't care about what you have. It doesn't care about how much talent, how much gifting, how much money, how much success you have. All comparison needs is someone else who has more. It causes me to overlook what God has given me because I'm preoccupied by what God has given you. And this is a real danger. It does something to our soul when we start thinking that it can make me resent what God is doing in you and actually be completely blind to what God is doing in me. It puts our soul in a weird place. And we can get really funky when we go down the road and we play the comparison game. So, what's the answer? What's the answer to this? If comparison game is a game with no winners, Paul starts off verse 9 telling us that genuine love changes the game. Verse 9 says this. It says, Let love be genuine. He just starts right out the bat with this. This word love that he uses is actually the Greek word agape. Agape is a word that means selfless, unconditional, focus on the well-being of others. Actually, you may be familiar with that, with that Greek word agape, because typically, when it's used, it's used to describe that the love that God has for us, a perfect, selfless, unconditional love. And Paul is writing this to the Romans saying, Let this type of love mark you. But he doesn't even stop there with this impossible type of love that he's describing. He actually uses a qualifier for it. It is the Greek word anipokrit, see if I say it right, anupritos. And this word actually means without hypocrisy. And if you're familiar with Greek theater, which I'm sure all of you guys are Greek theater experts in this room, it's very common. Uh, but if you're familiar with group Greek theater, someone that was a hypocrite would be someone that would wear a mask to pretend like they're something that they're not. So Paul is giving us almost an impossible command right here. He's saying, love, you know, agape one another genuinely, like real agape love. And in West Texas, we're really good at nice. We're really good at kind. I can be, you know, we've got that bless your heart mentality, you know, like, oh, bless his heart. I can be really nice to you, but not love you. I can be really kind to you, I can be really polite to you, but not have love for you. That's not the type of love that Paul is talking about here. He's talking about agape, unconditional love that's focused on the well-being of others, and that's not fake. It's not a show, it's real. He goes on to say, abhor what is evil. Some of your translations may say, hate what is evil. Now, hold on just a second. I'm getting whiplashed because Paul says, love, let your love be genuine, and then he talks about hate. It's like, which one is it, Paul? But it's not a separate thought. Paul is describing what genuine love looks like. He's saying, abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good. Some of your translations may say cling to what is good. But genuine love is not just nice, it's not affirming, it doesn't ignore sin in others. It actually hates the things that could destroy them. Genuine love recognizes and actively confronts things that can bring harm to our neighbor. Not to bring them down, but to lift them up. When we see things rising up in those that we love that could destroy them, it's actually out of genuine love that we confront those things and we we guard against those things that can destroy them. But love also sees the good. Genuine love wants what's best for others. It holds fast to good and encourages others to good works. Genuine love has substance. So if genuine love is changing the game, then how is it changing the game? Number one, it's turning competitors into family. Genuine love turns competitors into family. Verse 10 says, love one another with brotherly affection. If you're just reading through this in English, it looks like he's just repeating himself because he talks about gen let your love be genuine, and then he says love again. But in the original Greek, that's actually two different words. I've already told you in verse 9, he's saying agape, but in verse 10, he's actually using the word philadelphia. Philadelphia love, we have a city in America called Philadelphia. It's the city of brotherly love, right? So he's saying, love one another with a brotherly affection. This brotherly affection is actually an adjective in the Greece, in the in the Greek, and it's the word philosophos, and it actually means deep, loyal, a family-like kind of love. And some of us in here, I just as I was praying through this and preparing for this message today, I just felt like the Lord just dropped something in my spirit that there may be some of you in here today that when we talk about a brotherly love or a family-like type of love, it's actually a hang up for you because it has a negative connotation. Maybe you grew up constantly being compared to a brother or a sister or a cousin or an aunt or an uncle. Maybe because of that comparison, maybe because of that competition the competition that was fostered in your family, that was may have even been out of your control, it's been a hang up for you all of your life. You've continually compared yourself. Where do I rank? Where do I fit? What is, you know, am I the best at this? And if I'm not, then I'm then I'm not worthy. And if that's you in here, today is a day for you to lay that at the feet of Jesus. And we're gonna have a moment for you to do that at the end of this sermon. But let me tell you, the brotherly type of love that Paul is talking about here in Romans chapter 12 is not that kind of love. It's a deep, loyal, protective love. And even within a family, you can disagree with family and still love them. You can disagree and still be family. This is the type of love that Paul is asking us to have. The other way that genuine love changes the game is that it gives us a whole new scoreboard. I love this second part of verse 10. Paul says this. He says, outdo one another in showing honor. It's like, wait, Paul, I thought we were supposed to kill comparison. You're like, hey, Chris, we're uh the title of today is goodbye comparison, and now you're saying we need to outdo one another. I love this irony in the Bible that Paul's writing. He's saying, outdo one another in showing honor. It's it's it I just I crack up sometimes when I read the Bible because sometimes we just read it like it's just like words, and then we don't really realize the personality that's there. And I love the the the almost the sarcasm that Paul is given here. He's saying, hey, if you're gonna compete, compete to give away honor, compete to show to see who could show the most brotherly affection. Paul doesn't just tell the Romans to stop keeping score, he actually hands them a whole new scoreboard. He says, The game is flipped. What you thought was the score in Roman context and culture is literally flipped. And I want you to hear me on this. This is the reason why love is the answer to a culture of comparison and competition. It's the reason why genuine love changes things. Because at the moment, Roman culture said, compete to receive honor. Paul says, compete to give honor away. Comparison says, notice me. Love says, let me notice you. Competition says, celebrate me. Love says, let me celebrate you. Comparison asks, where do I rank? And love says, Who can I lift up? That's why everything in the verses that follow are active. He's giving us, he's he's fleshing out this idea of genuine love. In verse 10, he says that we need to outdo one another in showing honor. In verse 11, he says that we need to serve one another. In verse 12, he's saying that you need to hope and endure and pray for one another. In verse 13, he talks about showing uh hospitality, practicing hospitality and meeting the needs of those around us. Paul is not just telling them to stop comparing, he's giving them something to do instead. And this is a problem with us as human, uh, as humans. We tend to be really bad at stopping things by just thinking about trying to stop them. Like, for example, don't think about a big elephant right now. Everyone's thinking about a big elephant. Don't think about a pink convertible, don't think about it, don't do it. The more we try not to think about that thing, the more that image is ingrained in our minds, right? And this is why Paul is not just telling them stop comparing, he's actually changing the game for them and replacing it with genuine love. He's saying, when envy starts rising up, honor somebody else. When you're tempted to resent someone else's success, celebrate them. When you're focused on what they have, give something away. When you're when you're wondering why nobody is noticing you, notice somebody else. When comparison makes you withdraw, practice hospitality. This is what makes Romans 12 so applicable in our lives. And listen, I don't have to be a prophet to know that all of us, in some way, deal with comparison. It's innate. From an early age on the playground, we're competing. Who's the fastest? Who's the smartest? Who's the most popular? Who wears the coolest clothes? Who's the funniest? We all want to know where we rank, even as small kids. But as we grow older, it's not like it goes away. It sneaks its way into our life and can cause unwise action and relational strain. Some of you in this room, even as I've been talking, you've been thinking, yeah, that's why I ended up in that relationship. It's because of comparison. You're thinking, yeah, that's why I end up in the financial situation that I'm in right now, is because I was trying to keep up with somebody else. And if that's you today, my question to you is, are you ready to lay down comparison? Are you willing to lay it at the feet of Jesus? This is my backpack. Um, I love this backpack. I got it as a gift. Actually, I got two of these as a gift because of miscommunication, but that's a whole other story for another day. Um uh, but this is my backpack. Pastor Andrew had one just like it. I wanted to be like him. And uh I got it, but I got it in a different color, so I wasn't all the way copying him. But uh this backpack carries most of the things in my life that I need throughout the day. And this week I was getting ready for work and I just decided, you know what, I just got a wild hair and I started pulling stuff out of it, you know, books that I finished reading or books that I weren't should be reading but weren't not reading right now. Um a few other things, just pulled it out of the backpack and threw my backpack into my car, went to work just like any other day. And when I got to work, pulled my backpack out of the car, threw it on my back, and I was genuinely shocked, just surprised because I had forgotten that I took that stuff out. But but I threw it on my back and it just was so light. And I didn't realize how much weight I had been carrying around all this time until it was gone. And there are many of you in this room that you've walked with the weight of comparison for so long, you don't even know what it would feel like to not have it there. You're like, I didn't even realize that's what was weighing me down. You can't imagine life without this weight of comparison. You can't imagine a life without having to constantly look at where other people are at, engage, and I and get your identity based on what other people what God is doing in other people's lives. But let me tell you, I'm here to tell you today that Jesus offers freedom from comparison. He's here today, and he just wants you to lay it down at his feet. I love how Romans actually starts, Romans 12 actually starts. Uh Paul writes, therefore I urge you, in view of God's mercy, so all of these things that we're talking about is in view of God's mercy in our own life. There's actually no way that we can provide genuine love for others without first being loved by Jesus. And and he's here today, and he wants to bring that love into your life. He wants you to lay down that comparison at his feet, and he wants to replace it with his genuine love, his agape love that allows you to walk in that genuine love toward others. Today's the day for a lot of us to lay that down at his feet. So let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for your presence. Thank you for your agape love that you have shown us. If you're in here today and you just saying, Yes, uh, I'm dealing with comparison. I have dealt with comparison, and it's something that you want to lay at his feet today. Freedom is here for you. And I just want you to, just as an act of of a physical act representing a heart prosture, I just want you to lift your hand in the air and I want to pray for you. Jesus, you see these hands, and more importantly, you see every heart of the person of people that are that are lifting those hands, God. I pray that you would meet them right where they're at, Lord, that you would that you would fill um fill their backpacks with love, Lord, as they take it out, as they lay this comparison at your feet, God, that you would teach them what it means to experience and embrace your love. You would teach them what it means to actively show your love to one another. Instead of asking, where do I rank? Asking who can I lift up? Instead of asking, what honor am I receiving? Asking, what honor can I give away? God, I pray that you would just you would do that work in their hearts, God. That today would be the day that they would lay this down. They would say goodbye to comparison in Jesus' name. Amen.