Broken Heroes #1 - Saul: The Trap of Comparison (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

In this message from 1 Samuel 18:5-12, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund exposes how comparison traps us in jealousy and envy—sins that Scripture warns can separate us from God's kingdom. Discover how embracing what Christ has done for us frees us from the toxic thoughts "they have it better" and "I deserve better," enabling us to receive life with joy and trust in God's provision.

Message Summary & Transcript - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/blog-post/2025/7/14/broken-heroes-1-saul-the-trap-of-comparison

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Transcript

Let's pray together. God, we thank you for how you've worked over the years and at this point, even generations through Kids Fest, how the story—your story—is being told in people's lives because of that. And, Lord, we pray that that would continue to happen through what just took place this week, the next few weeks, and in coming years. And, God, as we're gathered here in this moment, we ask that you would speak to each of us, and I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. 

So, obviously, if you're here today, you realize that Kids Fest is kind of a big deal around here. And I had somebody ask me the other day who wasn't really all that familiar. They said, "So is Kids Fest like just your version of VBS?" And I was like, "No, it's VBS on steroids." And that doesn't even describe it. 

So let me ask you: how many of you were campers at Kids Fest at one point in your life who are here? All right. Wow, look at that. All right. How many of you went to VBS somewhere at some church someday in your life as a child? 

All right, now here's what happens at churches all over the country, and that is, there's often a VBS, and a mom or dad somewhere will put together a lesson, and they'll get the kids around in the midst of whatever they do, and they will say, "Now's the Bible story." And they'll usually look at an Old Testament character, and they'll say, "And now what you need to do, kids, is you need to go and be just like that Old Testament character." So, for example, if it's Daniel who was courageous, it'll be, "Here's what you need to do. You need to go and be courageous, just like Daniel. Now go and be courageous." 

And if you've been around Orchard Hill for any length of time, you've probably heard me say, I don't think that's the best way to understand Old Testament stories. It's not like we look at them like one of Aesop's Fables and say, "What's the character quality that we need to emulate? Let's just emulate that character quality." And that's what God wants from us. And the reason that I say that consistently is because the Old Testament and the New Testament is not a story of all of these heroes that we're to emulate. 

It's the story of people who were broken. In fact, if you want to read through the Bible, what you'll see is it's the story not of the blessed good, but of the blessed bad and how God works in spite of the sins and the missteps of his people. In fact, if you were to just look through the Old Testament and part of the New Testament, let me just give you a few characters and tell you what their story is marked by. 

Noah drank too much and exposed himself to his daughters. True story. Look it up. Lot offered his daughters to a mob. Abraham lied about his wife being his sister so that he wouldn't incur any anger from the king. Jacob deceived his father in order to steal the blessing from his brother. Moses killed a man and then he struck the rock in order to get water when God had told him to trust him. Aaron constructed a golden calf for the people to worship. Samson had a relationship with a Philistine woman that was out of bounds. Saul disobeyed through offering sacrifices that weren't allowed in his day. David committed adultery and then tried to cover it up and ultimately had the husband of the woman he committed adultery with murdered on his behalf. Solomon married beyond the bounds of God's standard for that time. Peter denied Jesus, and Paul murdered Christians. 

And I tell you that because when we fall into the idea of interpreting the Bible that we're to be just like the characters, what happens is we don't allow for the grace of God to work in our lives. Now you may say, "Well, does that mean there's no standards, no lessons, no consequences?" Not at all. What it means is that we need to understand that these stories are ultimately about God. 

Here's what Daniel, chapter 9, verse 18 says: "Give ear, O God, and hear. Open our eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your name." Then it says this: "We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy." We come to God not because we do it right, but because Jesus has done it right on our behalf. And so the people in the Old Testament are looking forward to the Savior, the coming Messiah. And it's their hope that when they do it wrong, they say, "We have one who will make atonement." Today, we can say, "We have one who's made atonement even when we come on the wrong side of things." 

And so what we're going to do over the next couple of weeks is we're going to go back to VBS for a couple weeks and we're going to study Saul, David and Solomon just for a few weeks. And so these are the three kings of Israel in the United Kingdom. So if you've ever tried to read through the Old Testament in a year or the Bible in a year, you come to about first Samuel, and you start to get the era. So there's Judges, and then first Samuel, you get the first king Saul. Then you get David, then you get Solomon. 

Here are their kingdoms. So Saul had the dark green, David the light green, Solomon—it went all the way into the blue. In other words, the kingdom grew. And then in first Kings, second Kings, you get the division of the kingdom, you get the divided kingdom. And this is where you get all the weird king names that you read throughout the Old Testament. So you have three kings, united kingdom, the three, which is Saul, David, and Solomon. And then you get the divided kingdom. And we're just going to take a week and look at each of the three kings of Israel and why they were broken heroes. 

And today we're gonna look at Saul, and we're gonna look specifically at 1st Samuel 18, where he has this encounter with David, who becomes king. But in this encounter, the problem is he has a son, and his son's name is Jonathan. So he wants Jonathan to become king. And what happens is David starts to gain acclaim and success, and Saul becomes really suspicious of him and convinced that he is out for him. And his sense of comparison becomes this trap. And so he spends years chasing David when David was loyal to him. And ultimately, David does take the throne. And so this is the context of this. 

And in order to talk about this, I want to just talk about two kind of thoughts that come into our minds. And I'm going to say they serve as traps. And here's why I want to set this up this way. My guess is, many of us, when you hear me say we're going to talk about Saul and the comparison that he had with David, here's what some of us did. Immediately, you're like, "Oh, good comparison. I don't do that. I'm a person who's just for everybody. I don't compare. So it's not my issue." Or you said, "Oh, okay, comparison. Okay, it's not that big a deal. I mean, sure, I've looked at somebody else's house and thought, that's nicer than mine, but that's about it. And it's not that big a deal, is it?" 

And so we have this tendency to minimize. And so I want you to think about this like somebody who's gone fishing. I don't really fish. But if I did, what would happen is you throw a line into the water, you have a lure, and the fish come along, and the idea is to have the fish not believe that the lure is a trap, but to instead think it's a meal. And so they swim along and they go up and they bite the lure, and there's a hook in there that traps them, and they're pulled from the water and it's over because they didn't understand the danger. That is what happens with comparison in our souls. 

And so what I'd like to do is just talk about two thoughts that serve as traps. They're lures. The comparison trap. And the first one is this. And that is just the thought that says, "They have it better." 

"They Have It Better" 

They have it better. And this is one of those things that is very subtle and sometimes not so subtle, because you can look around and you can say, "Oh, they had better parents, better upbringing, better opportunity than I had. They have a better spouse. They have more money. They had better opportunities. They have better gifts. They're better looking. They haven't had the health challenges I've had. They haven't had the difficulty I've had." 

And so we come with these ideas and we say, "They have it better. They have a better reputation. They have something that I don't have." And what happens is we stop having joy in whatever we have. We stop having joy for other people because we start to say, "They have it better than I have it." 

The story's told about Jim Harbaugh and John Harbaugh's dad, who is a football coach. So John Harbaugh's coach of the Baltimore Ravens, Jim Harbaugh, the Chargers, was University of Michigan, 49ers before then. But when Jim and John were growing up, they moved a lot, because football coaches move a lot. It's just part of the industry. And what would happen is every time they would come to a new city, Mr. Harbaugh, the older Harbaugh, the dad, would say, "Who has it better than us?" And he made his kids in the backseat shout, "Nobody." Okay? This was like their little thing. And they had a whole deal about this when they met in the Super Bowl a few years ago. 

And so he would say, "Who has it better than us?" And until they would shout enthusiastically, "Nobody," he would just keep kind of drilling this thing. Now, why would he do that? I don't know all the theory of it, maybe it was just a goofy little game with his kids. But here's my guess. My guess is when the kids had finally made friends and become assimilated to their schools and they were told they had to move again, they had a sense of saying, "Our life isn't that good. They have it better than us. Other people have it better than us." And the dad intuitively said, "You know what I need to do? I need to help our kids see that nobody has it better than us." 

Now you can say, "Well, that works nice for the Harbaughs, and they turned out okay. But people do have it better than me." So what happens when I have that thought? Well, we need to see what does happen when we allow that thought to germinate. Here's what we see with Saul. 

This is in 1st Samuel 18, it says that David had gone out and had killed Philistines. And the women came out of the towns of Israel to greet King Saul and David. And they sang this little ditty. Verse seven, "Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands." Now, this was probably customary when people came back from war, that the women would come out and sing their praises. And yet here we get this moment where the ditty is, "Saul, you've done well. But David's the real hero." 

And all of a sudden, Saul is just pricked with this. He says, "He has it better than me." And what happens, verse eight is he becomes angry. It says the refrain displeased him greatly. They've credited David with ten thousands, he thought, but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom? And so what happens is he moves into this anger, this dissatisfaction. And now it morphs to suspicion, where he says, "Not only is he getting praise, but I'm now living in a place where something that I feel is for me isn't going to be for me." 

And then verse 10, it says, "The next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully on Saul." And you may be troubled by that. I think here this just means in a sense that as Saul allowed himself to compare this, the evil spirit just reinforced this and took him along the path he was already on. And it says, "And he was prophesying in his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it at him, saying, 'I'll pin David to the wall.' But David eluded him." 

So notice that his suspicion that came out of his dissatisfaction, his anger led him to broken relationships that led him to bad decisions in his life. And you may think again, "Well, okay, I don't have this issue. This isn't what happens in my life." But in Romans 12 we're told in verse 14 and 15 that we're to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. And what happens when we allow comparison to rule is we have a hard time rejoicing with others, and we have a hard time weeping with others because all of a sudden we're saying, "They have it better than me. Why would I rejoice with them? Why would I weep with them?" 

Paul David Tripp writes about this, and he says, "The driven, watchful envy of a horizontal, pleasure-oriented heart will make us crazy. It will not only rob us of our satisfaction and joy, but it will make us more like brutes than friends. It will eat out our hearts and consume our souls." 

And you may say, "Well, okay, the answer then is just simply to do what Romans 12 says. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep." In verse 10 in the ESV, it says that we're to outdo one another with honor. So what I need to do is rejoice. I need to mourn, I need to give honor. But if you've ever tried to do that, when something in your heart says, "They have it better than me," you know just how hard that is to actually do. 

And it doesn't matter, by the way, if you have all kinds of great things in your life, you will generally find the one area where somebody has it a little better. And you'll say, "They have it better than me." It can be something simple, and all of a sudden it just eats at you. You see this sometimes with kids in sports where they'll enjoy a game. And then all of a sudden somebody gets more acclaim and what was enjoyable to them all of a sudden becomes a burden. You see it in theater, you see it in music, you see it in business. You see it in families where sometimes somebody says, "Well, that child has it better than I do because mom and dad like them better, or they've had it easier than me." And we may never say it, but it's there and it's part of our way of thinking and it hurts us at a soul level. 

And this is true, by the way, spiritually, for many of us. Last week, Mike Chilcote spoke, and he gave an illustration about swimming and comparison. And he was using it to talk about moral comparison. He said if you tried to swim from Southern California to Hawaii, and that was God's standard, he said, "It's 2,500 miles." And he said the best swimmers in open water can swim about 130 miles. So even if you get better than the best and you go farther than anybody to 150, 155 miles, you're still way short of God's standard. And our problem often is that we compare ourselves. 

And then he talked about Grandma. I think it was his grandma who might be able to get in the water and swim 200 yards. And he's like, "Grandma didn't make it." My takeaway is, you don't want to be Chili's grandma. 

But beyond that, comparison in the moral arena is actually deadly to our souls, because what we do isn't just end up with some kind of negative consequence in ourselves. But we start to say, "Since I'm better than [others], I don't need Jesus." And the teaching of Scripture is, you can't swim far enough, all have sinned, come short of the glory of God. Therefore we need Jesus and comparison is dangerous. 

So the lure, the trap of saying "they have it better" has negative consequences. By the way, Jonathan and David are said in verse one to have been knit together in spirit, that they had this sense of being friends. And often we think of Jonathan, because he was Saul's son and had the right to the throne, as being very benevolent in this. But here's something that you may not have picked up, and that is we think of them as being the same age. 

But here's what we know, and that is Saul reigned for 40 years according to Acts 13:21. David became king when he was age 32, according to 2nd Samuel, chapter 5, verse 4. Jonathan was fighting for Saul as part of the military there according to 1st Samuel 13:1, in the third year of his reign. And according to Numbers chapter 1, verse 3, soldiers had to be at least 20 years of age. Now, if you didn't track with all of that, and I doubt you did, it means that Jonathan was 27 years old when David was born. 

Now, why does that matter? Because he wasn't just with a peer and a friend. This was a baby he watched grow up, who now was getting the acclaim and likely going to take the throne. And he says, "My heart is knit with you, and I will be for you." Instead of saying "he has it better," he was willing to step back. 

So there's this "they have it better." But the problem with this is really the second trap. And that is when we say: 

"I Deserve Better" 

Not just "they have it better," but "I deserve better." You see, we tend to think the problem is often the person. And once I have something, then I won't have the problem anymore. And that I won't be jealous anymore. I won't be envious anymore. But the issue is that when we say, "I deserve better," what we're really saying is, "God, you shorted me. Somehow, God, you caused my health not to be what theirs is. You caused my loss. You caused me not to have the things that I think I deserve. Somehow, God, you made a mistake. This isn't the way it ought to be." 

And as soon as I start saying "I deserve better," I'm not just simply wanting something better, but what I'm doing is I'm saying, "God, you have somehow shorted me, and, God, you owe me." And when we get close to actually being delivered spiritually is when we start saying, "God doesn't owe me anything. God doesn't owe me, and therefore I can receive life as it comes." 

My wife sent around a little video to our family the other day. She has two dogs. And I said that the way that I intended to say that. She has two dogs. And she sent around this video. And so this is our smaller dog, Zoe, and she's playing with a ball. And this is the big dog who wants her ball. And he has a ball that he had. So the orange ball was his, the yellow ball was hers. 

My wife had given the big dog the orange ball. He was happiest to be running around the house squeaking the ball, just having a grand time until she gave the little dog the ball. And now he wants her ball. And he's not happy with the orange ball. And so now he's trying to figure out how to get hers. There she is in between them, and she's trying to get him to go back to his ball. He doesn't want his ball anymore because he says, "Why would I want this ball?" And then here he is a couple minutes later, success. He got the ball. 

Now, I show that it's goofy, but it makes the point that as soon as we start to say, "I deserve better," we stop seeing what we have that is good, and we stop enjoying what it is that God has given us. And it would be a little bit like this. Any of you who've had kids and have tried to do Christmas in a way that's equitable, some of you have spreadsheets and Excel documents to try to keep it all just as even as can be. Imagine if one of your kids came in on Christmas morning and started tallying everything up and was like, "You shorted me. I deserve better." That is what we are doing when we come with that attitude. We're saying, "I should have better than what I have." 

But here's what I want you to really see, and that is that envy and jealousy is not just something that it's good advice to avoid, or it's a good idea to avoid. Because in Galatians, chapter five, we have a list. And the list we often lose, because right after it is the list of the fruit of the spirit that talks about how God puts His spirit in people and it brings about these good things. But right before that, there's this section, and it's called the Acts of the flesh, verse 19 of Galatians 5. 

It says the acts of the flesh are obvious: "Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord"—I mean, that's a list, right? What's next? "Jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." 

You see, the problem with comparison isn't just that it's unhealthy and it breaks relationships. It's that it's an affront to God. It's a sin. And the issue that we need to understand: jealousy is saying, "I don't want somebody else to have good. I don't like what they have." Envy is "I want it for myself." And what comparison does is it puts us in a place where we say, "They have it better. I deserve better." And it allows us to allow jealousy and envy to flow through our lives. And when we do that, what's happening is we're not trusting God in our lives. 

Philippians 4, verse 19 says, "My God will supply all your needs." And that word in the original language, supply, means the beneficence of benefactor. So it's somebody supporting the arts, really, in that context. And it's saying, "God will give you everything you need." But what we need to understand is that God leads through what he provides, but he also leads sometimes through what it seems like he doesn't provide. And what he's doing is he's working on us in a way, in our lives in a way that we may not like and may not understand. But if we believe that God is for us, then we're able to say, "I don't necessarily deserve better." 

Now, I'm not suggesting that there's never a time for comparison or a time to say, "How can I make my life better?" I'm not saying that. But I'm saying the attitude that says, "They have it better, I deserve better," feeds—allows us to feed our souls on jealousy and envy. And what it does is it disrupts our relationship with God and makes it so that we can't trust God and receive life joyfully. 

You see, Jonathan, being older and the heir to the throne, was willing to give up what was in many ways rightfully his so that David could step into it. And what he was doing in many ways was showing us what Jesus is like. Because in some ways, Jesus is the greater Jonathan in this story. 

Because in Philippians 2, here's what we're told, verse 5: "In your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used for his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross." 

You see, Jesus gave up his rightful privileges so that you and I could have a relationship with God, so that we could be made much of. And when we come to embrace that, then we're able to be free from saying, "I deserve better. God, you somehow shorted me." 

Conclusion 

You know, as I said earlier, I'd guess that some of us, just as we hear this today, are sitting here and we're thinking, "Well, this isn't me. You know, I don't compare much. I just... it's not what I do. I'm for everybody, I'm a lover," kind of idea. 

And some of us probably are sitting here and we're saying, "Okay, you know, maybe, but it's a small thing. You know, I get a little irritated sometimes that they have it a little better. And sometimes I might say, well, I deserve better. But is it really that big a deal?" 

I want to just take you back to the fishing lure example for a moment. The fish sees the lure and thinks it's a meal. And they don't understand that they're the meal. And what happens when we allow ourselves just to say, "not a big deal" to compare to, say, "They have it better, I deserve better. It's like we're saying, it'll be okay, it'll work out." And we need to just look at the teaching of the scriptures that say when you allow jealousy and envy in your life, it even means that you won't inherit the kingdom of God. And I'm not suggesting that one dalliance into comparison takes us out of the kingdom of God. But what that's ultimately saying is this is a sin, just like any other sin that takes you away from God's goodness in your life, so don't let it reign. 

Some of us are here and we're saying, "Well, I have been comparing, and I know it," as we've talked, had just a little twinge of saying, "That person has it better with their spouse than I have it with mine. That person has it better with their job, their situation than I have it. They had better opportunities than I had, or I could have had what they have. They have a better situation. Why did I have to get this health condition that they didn't have to get?" And the list goes on and on. 

And so maybe you're here and you're saying, "Okay, okay, yeah, I've had some of that." Again, comparison is somewhat normal. But to allow yourself to say, "They have it better, I deserve better," means that what you're ultimately doing is you are saying, "God, you haven't been enough." 

And we could simply say, "Well, try harder to rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, to outdo one another with honor." But what we ultimately need is to be so taken with what Jesus Christ has done for us that we see his goodness on our behalf. And it moves us to say, "Why would I doubt that he's good today?" 

And when that's where we live, then we are able to say, "Yeah, they might have it better, but I'm okay. I don't deserve better. Because God is supplying all my needs. And sometimes he even supplies in what I don't see. In fact, he always supplies even in what I don't see." And when that's where we are, then we're able to not have the lure of envy and jealousy trapping us spiritually, and we're able to live and receive life more joyfully. 

Let's pray together. And just before I pray, I just want to say this. And that is, if you're here today and maybe you thought that your moral life was like the swimmer who is a little better than the people around you, so you're okay. And maybe today you've just recognized, even in your own willingness to compare, that you come short of God's standard. The hope that is offered to you is in Jesus Christ, that he did what you can't do. And you can receive that today by acknowledging your sinfulness before God and trusting Jesus as your savior. 

And God, today we ask that you would help each of us who's here to see envy, jealousy, comparison for what it is, to recognize the places where we're saying "they have it better" or "I deserve better." And to turn fully towards you in trust and worship and adoration and find freedom. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. 

Thanks for being here. Have a great week.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability. Any errors in transcription or interpretation are unintentional. This content is provided for educational and reference purposes.