Download Greed is not good - Charlestown Presbyterian Church

Date: 18.9.16
Text: Exodus 20:17, Philippians 4:10-20
Title: Greed is not good
Place: Swansea/Charlestown AM
File: Command #10
Preacher: Stephen Taylor
Slide 1
A group was taking a tour of a mental institution one day when in one cell they saw a man
beating his head against the padded walls. He kept saying, "Linda, how could you do it?
Linda, how could you do it?" The guide explained that the man was in love with Linda &
when Linda left him, he just couldn’t cope. He completely lost it.
Slide 2
The tour went onto the next cell, and there was a man saying, "Linda, Linda, how could this
happen? Linda, Linda." The visitor said, "Who’s he?" The guide said, "He’s the man who
married Linda." The point being that sometimes the things we desire are not always the best
things for us.
Slide 3
One famous story about Abraham Lincoln involved a time he was walking with two of his
boys who were both crying. Someone asked the President what was wrong and he said,
“Exactly what’s wrong with the whole world. I have three walnuts and each boy wants two.”
Sometimes not getting the things we want causes us great pain and distress.
Slide 4
The American writer and preacher Chuck Swindoll once quoted this poem…
It was spring, but it was summer I wanted; the warm days and the great outdoors.
It was summer, but it was fall I wanted; the colorful leaves and the cool dry air.
It was fall, but it was winter I wanted; the beautiful snow and the joy of the holiday season.
It was winter, but it was spring that I wanted; the warmth and the blossoming of nature.
I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted; the freedom and the respect.
I was 20, but it was 30 I wanted; to be mature and sophisticated.
I was middle-aged, but it was 20 I wanted; the youth and the free spirit.
I was retired, but it was middle-age I wanted; the presence of mind without limitation.
My life was over; but I never got what I wanted.
Slide 5
Today we are going to look at our wants, our desires and what we covet. For I believe this is
a sin that often gets under the radar. We all know that murder is wrong. Everyone would
agree that stealing is unacceptable. But coveting? Greed is good isn’t it? In fact Spurgeon
said of the thousands he had seen saved he never heard someone say they were saved from
the sin of covetousness. LaSalle was a famous priest of the middle ages and he said never
was this sin confessed to him.
So this might be a sin that we may not even know that we are committing. This might be a
sin that has truly taken a root in our lives. For I believe the global budget for the advertising
industry is some 450 billion dollars. 450 billion dollars. And surely one of their aims is to
make us discontent with what we currently have so that we desire what we don’t have.
Slide 6
1. Don’t desire things
So today we are looking at the tenth commandment, the last commandment, “Thou shalt
not covet! And if we just remind ourselves of the previous 9 commandments we see that
the tenth heads off in a different direction.
The first four commandments have an upward look, they deal with our relationship with
God and the need to put him first in our heart, soul, mind and strength. The next commands
5 to 9 bring about an outward focus. We are to love others by not murdering or stealing or
lying or committing adultery. But today we are going to say that the tenth commandment
has not an upward or outward focus but an inward focus. The life that pleases God is not
just about our love or our actions, it affects our heart, our desires, our wills. So sin is still sin
when it only affects our thought world, when it only affects our emotions and our desires.
And that is why this sin could well be our Achilles heel today.
So, let's turn to God's word, and hear Exodus 20, verse 17: "You shall not covet your
neighbour's house. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, or his male servant, or his
female servant, or his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."
Did you notice the repetition in this commandment? There are seven things we are told not
to covet. You're not to covet your neighbour's house. You're not to covet your neighbour's
wife, his male servant, his female servant, is ox, his donkey, and then in summary, anything
that belongs to your neighbour. Seven. A nice round Hebrew number indicating the totality
of that which belongs to your neighbour. You are not to covet anything he has.
Slide 7
Let’s look at each of them in turn. You are not to covet your neighbour’s house. How hard is
that? You drive past a house that is a little bigger than your own, or has a pool, or a tennis
court, or a nice garden or is easy to maintain. It’s new, Its modern. It has all the latest
appliances. And we drive back to our own house and it is so easy to be dissatisfied.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or husband. Why can’t you be like them, we ask
our spouse? Why it would be so much better if she was younger, prettier, more sporting,
more frugal, more glamourous, more …., well you fill in the word that fits your situation! But
once you are dissatisfied with what you have, it is easy to desire what you don’t have.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s servants. Ok, maybe we don’t covet servants as much
these days. But how about their dishwasher or their microwave or their car? They all serve
your neighbour so do you covet their Mercedes, their Bosch, their iphone, their Mac?
You shall not covet their ox or donkey – To the people of Moses’ day, an ox, a donkey or
beast of burden was essential if one was going to make a living. They were his source of
income. Without them, he could not bring in his crop. So even today it’s very easy to covet
another person’s job or their source of income. They get things so much easier than I do.
They have those powers, those privileges, that pay packet that would make my life better.
And then the catch all phrase, you shall not covet anything, uh oh, anything that belongs to
your neighbour. Well once again God is leaving us to fill in the blanks. How about these; do
you covet someone else’s sporting ability, their marriage, their clothes, their bank account,
their figure, their kids – “Why can’t you kids be more like the neighbour’s kids!?” Do you
covet someone else’s teaching ability, or their singing ability or anything that you feel like
they can do better than you can do!
Slide 8
One of my favourite comic strips is the Wizard of Id. One time there was a picture in it
where one monk is putting up a sign on the bulletin board in front of his church while a
visiting monk watches. The sign read, “Thou shalt not covet.” The visiting monk said, “Boy, I
wish we had a signboard like that at our church.”
This is such a hard commandment to keep, especially in our modern world. There is always
someone better off than ourselves in every area of our lives. And this commandment tells us
that when we stare over our back fence at our neighbour or when we watch them on TV or
when we read about them in our books we can place a barrier between them and us if we
covet, if we strongly desire what they have and we don’t.
Slide 9
Now why do you think this is so? Let’s look at an example of coveting in Genesis 13 in the
story of Lot. God has blessed the lives of Abraham and Lot, they have left their home land
and followed God’s command and are now in the land of Canaan. But the flocks are growing
too big. And their shepherds are arguing with each other. So Abraham says to Lot choose
which part of the land you want and go in that direction and I will take the rest.
So Lot turned his eyes toward the good land. And he immediately begins to covet it. Now
that land was promised by God to Abraham not Lot. That land has the cities & the people of
Sodom and Gomorrah in it. But that land would make him prosperous, rich, self-sufficient.
So he put his own desires before his relationship with Abraham. He set his heart on things of
this world rather than on things of heaven. He wanted the things that he thought could
bring him satisfaction and pleasure, but all that they brought him was pain and suffering and
loss. Lot’s coveting destroyed him. He lost all of his wealth, he lost his wife, and he lost the
respect and admiration of others. Except for the intervention of God’s messengers, he
would have lost his life too. Coveting destroys all who give themselves over to it.
But it also destroys not just ourselves but our relationships with others. Because we start
being envious of them. We put a barrier between them and you. And so instead of loving
them we begin to resent him, desiring their things and so it leads to a breakdown in our
realtionships with others. For coveting will be the emotion that may well lead to murder, to
adultery, to stealing or to lying.
It also leads to a break down in our relationship with God. For as we drool over our
neighbour’s house, we forget that God has provided for all our needs. We start putting our
wants, our needs even before our God. So it is the tenth commandment that can lead to the
breaking of the other 9 commandments. It is the tenth commandment that deepens the
other commandments away from just our actions to our heart. “Don’t Steal” says keep your
hands off. “Don’t Covet” says don’t even think about it! So it reminds us that sin is not just
an action but thinking. It is not just what our hands do but what occupies our minds and our
hearts.
Slide 10
Paul puts this way in Romans 7:7-8 “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not!
On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have
known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." 8 But sin, taking
opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from
the law sin was dead. NKJV
Do you get what he is saying? Our sinful nature pushes me to covet what is around me. And
I would think that it was all OK except the law teaches me it is not OK. That is why the
Australian people are so lost. They don’t know God’s law. They don’t understand the nature
of sin. They think it is right and human to desire more things. And it is this law in particular
that helps to show us all that we are sinners. And that we need God’s forgiveness.
Galatians 3 puts it this way “Before this faith came, we were held prisoner by the law, locked
up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we
might be justified by faith.” When I realise I have broken this commandment the only place
that I can go to fix things up is to go to Jesus.
Slide 11
So I wonder where this commandment touches my life and your life? What are our weak
points? Is it wealth? Or our homes? Our jobs? Or our families? Our churches? Or our
relationships? Each of these can steal our love for God and our neighbour and even our love
for life itself.
Slide 12
So what do we do? How do we fight this unwinnable battle against our hearts, our minds,
our desires? Well let’s dig deeper still. The commentator Alan Cole in his Exodus
commentary says this. “Ultimately to desire and try to obtain the property of another is to
be dissatisfied with what God has given and thus to show a lack of faith in his love.”
Slide 13
2. Desire Contentment
So instead of desiring other things, the New Testament talks about being content. “11 I am
not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the
circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have
learned the secret of being content in any & every situation, whether well fed or hungry
whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all things through him who gives me strength…
And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
The medicine for coveting is contentment in Christ. The antidote to wrong desires is an
attitude of gratitude for what God has done through Jesus. As Christians we need to
remember that God is sovereign. So when we covet we deny that God is in control of our
lives. So the opposite is to be content with what God has given us through Christ. To accept
that good and bad both comes from the hand of our gracious Lord Jesus. To believe, to
really believe that God has so ordered our personal circumstances that no matter what
situation you are in right now, you have everything you truly need to be content.
It’s a myth that you always need more. A lie placed inside our hearts by the devil himself.
The truth is that what you have currently is what God thinks you need for your future. And
so you should be content with that and place your trust in your loving and merciful heavenly
father.
Slide 14
So you see the last commandment points back to the first one. “I am the Lord your God who
brought you out of Egypt.” Remember it is God who has already saved you. It is God who
has placed his hand upon your life. It is God who has taken you away from your slavery to
others, your slavery to sin, even your slavery to wanting and coveting other things. It is God
who has given you Jesus. God has been good to you, very good to you. And for us here in
Australia we have such a beautiful country to live, such wealth, such freedoms, such stable
government. And as Christians we have faith, hope and love. We have eternal life. We have
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit with us at all times. So yes he is the God who blessed
us in so many ways.
But what does the first commandment say, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Put
him number 1. Love him with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Don’t look over
at the back fence at your neighbour’s house, look upward at your heavenly Father. Don’t
desire his job, remember that Christ has already given you a job, to glorify him & enjoy him
forever. Don’t want more but be satisfied, with what the Holy Spirit has given you now.
Slide 15
Count your blessings, name them one by one, Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one, & it will surprise you what the Lord hath done!
Slide 16
3. Desire God
So how do we deal with our coveting? How do we covet contentment? The answer is that
we can never learn to be content until God himself becomes our reward. Think for a
moment about Adam and Eve, they had no need to covet anything because they had the
infinite riches of their God as their delight. But Satan used coveting to hammer a wedge
between them and their God. He deceived them by saying they needed the fruit from the
tree of the knowledge and evil to be ultimately happy. And by their coveting they put aside
their desire for their creator and took up their desire for the created things that God has
made. And this led to this fractured world.
Maybe Abraham Lincoln was right. This is the problem with the world. Our desires are for
things when you and I should be desiring our God. Now the modern writer that has
explored this area the most fully is American writer and preacher John Piper. His website,
his ministries are even called Desiring God. Let me give you some quotes from Piper to help
us see how desiring God should fill our thoughts and our lives.
Slide 17
His big slogan is this. “God is most glorified when you are most satisfied in Him.” On this
subject he says this. “I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a
distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.” Elsewhere he says “Knowledge
about Him will not do. Work for Him will not do. We must have personal, vital fellowship
with Him; otherwise, Christianity becomes a joyless burden.”
He says this in his book Desiring God “...all the evils in the world come not because our
desires for happiness are too strong, but because they are so weak that we settle for fleeting
pleasures that do not satisfy our deepest souls but in the end destroy them. The root of all
evil is that we are the kind of people who settle for the love of money instead of the love of
God (1 Timothy 6:10).”
Slide 18
And then he goes on to say. “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and
the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord
finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about
with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who
wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the
offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
In conclusion he would say “The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is not an “extra” that
a person might grow into after he comes to faith. It is not simply a way to “enhance” your
walk with the Lord. Until your heart has hit upon this pursuit, your “faith” cannot please
God. It is not saving faith. Saving faith is the confidence that if you sell all you have and
forsake all sinful pleasures, the hidden treasure of holy joy will satisfy your deepest desires.
Saving faith is the heartfelt conviction not only that Christ is reliable, but also that He is
desirable. It is the confidence that He will come through with His promises and that what He
promises is more to be desired than all the world.”
Slide 19
So the answer to this commandment is to desire God; to love God with all your heart, soul,
mind and strength. Sometimes we Presbyterians love God with our mind but what about
our emotions, our wills and actions? Sometimes other denominations love God with their
emotions but they still want their wills to remain sovereign, they still want to name it and
claim and hope that God will give them what their hearts desire.
But we need to love God with all that we have, mind, heart, soul and strength. So how do
we do that? Practically we are to learn about what God is like and what God has done for his
people through Christ. We pick up God’s word and read his promises and hear of his
blessings. But then we allow that knowledge to sink deep into our hearts and our souls. We
sing songs to him out of thankfulness for what he has done. We meet with people who have
had an experience of God during the week. We make worship a priority each week. And we
put what we learn and what we experience into practise.
Slide 20
And at the heart of desiring God is desiring a personal relationship with Christ. Jesus says in
John 6:35 “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever
believes in me will never be thirsty”. Jesus is the one who satisfies. Jesus is the one who will
fill your life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He is the light of the world. He is the way,
the truth and the life
Slide 21
8
And in John 10 he says, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have
come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them… 10 The
thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have
it to the full.”
Do you want life? Life to the full? Then don’t covet your neighbour’s
things, cling to Christ. Don’t look outwards, look upwards. Turn to your good shepherd. Eat
from his hand the bread of life. Trust Him. Love him. Follow him. Desire him.
A few years ago there was a funeral in Beverly Hills, California. A wealthy widow who was
worth millions died. People gathered around the grave. Someone said, “It’s a shame, she
had so much to live for.” But someone next to her said, “No, she had so much to live on. She
had nothing to live for.” How about you? What do you live for? Created things or the
Creator of all things. Things that lead to life or things that lead to death? Do you covet or are
you content in Christ?