A Sunday school teacher was asking her class if anyone knew what the Tenth Commandment was, to which a little boy responded, “You must not take the covers off your neighbour’s wife.”
Pretty close.
Well, here we are—the last week of our series, A Return to Civility. When we started the series in June, I commented on how I was struck by how uncivil our society has become. I can’t remember if it was a personal encounter with someone or something I saw on the news or read on social media. But I do remember thinking: Why can’t we just be civil to each other, what can’t we just be nice?
It seems that a lack of civility has permeated our culture. It is no longer enough to disagree with someone, today it seems we need to villainize them. If they have a different opinion than us, then they are a bad person.
And without wanting to sound old, I do remember a time when people seemed to respect one another, even if it was only surface-deep.
Children respected their parents; students respected their teachers and for the most part citizens respected their leaders. Maybe it was a fear of the consequences if we didn’t show that respect, but regardless of the why, we seemed to live in a more civil society.
Politicians could disagree with the policies of others without making personal attacks. Christians could disagree over doctrine or theology without questioning the other person’s salvation or love for Jesus.
We have lost the ability to agree to disagree.
I wondered when that had changed, and as I pondered that question, I wondered if it happened when we lost our common morality. As fewer people attended church, we began to lose touch with the basic tenets of the things that seemed to hold society together. We lost our common morality, and a good part of that was wrapped up in that short list called the Ten Commandments.
So, here we are at the last of the Ten Commandments, which is found in Exodus 20:17 “You must not covet your neighbour’s house. You must not covet your neighbour’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbour.”
And after we’ve talked about murder, adultery, theft and perjury this one seems a little ho-hum. And maybe you’re wondering why it made the list, not once but twice. And that’s because it’s at the root of most of the others. Because we covet being like God, we seek to reduce him through idols and blasphemy. Because we covet the good name of others, we lie about them. Because we covet someone other than our spouse we commit adultery. Because we covet what others have, we steal it. And ultimately, in most cases, it’s because of the consequences of covetousness that we steal someone’s life.
The Collins English Dictionary defines Covet this way: To wish, long, or crave for (something, esp the property of another person)
But we don’t hear that term a lot in 2024, instead, we often hear about people being greedy,
The Collins English Dictionary defines Greedy this way: excessively desirous of food or wealth, esp. in large amounts; voracious.
So, for simplicity, let’s go with “Greedy”.
If we were honest most of us would have to say that we struggle with greed in some form or another at some point or another. It could be called “The cult of the next best thing.”
As we look at what we have and what we want the question shouldn’t be who wants more stuff? Instead, it should be “How Bad Do You Want More Stuff?”
In 1992 James Patterson and Peter Kim wrote a book based on extensive surveys of the American Public, the book was called; “The Day That America Told The Truth.”
Questions were asked concerning a wide range of topics from morality to work to family life. The results are really quite surprising. And while it’s easy to write off the results as being American, I’m sure that many of the results would have been the same on this side of the 49th.
One of the questions asked was “What would you be willing to do for Ten Million Dollars?” A follow-up survey was done asking about 5, 4, 3 and 2 million dollars and the results remained fairly consistent. It was only under $2 million that they began to see a fall-off in what people would do. So it would appear the price for many Americans was $2 million.
In 1992, Two Million Dollars was real money; you could buy more than twenty homes in Bedford back then for two million dollars.
Out of the ten questions asked 2/3 of the respondents agreed they would be willing to do at least one, and some several of the deeds. What were they?
Would abandon their entire family 25%, Would abandon their Church 25%, Would become prostitutes for a week or more 23%, Would give up their American citizenship 16%, Would leave their spouse 16%, Would withhold testimony and let a murderer go free 10%, Would kill a stranger 7%, would change their race 6%, would have a sex change operation 4%, or would put their children up for adoption 3%.
You say that you have no interest in a million dollars, come on? At least be as honest as Mark Twain who said, “I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”
This morning, we are looking at You Shall Not Covet or in today’s vernacular, you shall not be greedy.
American Psychologist Eric Fromm said, “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.”
But not everyone agrees, Ivan F. Boesky said “Greed is all right, by the way … I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”
And Donald Trump said, “The point is that you can't be too greedy.”
On the other hand, Jesus Christ clumped Greed together with Mark 7:20–24 And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.” Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre. He didn’t want anyone to know which house he was staying in, but he couldn’t keep it a secret.
So, with all due respect to the Donald and Ivan, maybe Greed isn’t all right. But it’s something that most of us have struggled with, that ever-consuming quest for more. After all most of us would agree with Woody Allen when he said, “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
Let’s begin with what most people think this means, We Covet When We Are Greedy for Stuff The Bible speaks a lot about money, but contrary to popular opinion it’s not opposed to making it or keeping it. After all Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Job and many others in the Bible were very wealthy.
However, the Bible gives several warnings concerning how we acquire our wealth, what we do with it after we have it and what it does with us after it has us.
I’ve mentioned before about getting ready to move to Australia in 1990. We had sold most of our furniture, and our car and the man had just come to pick up my Motorcycle. I was struggling with how little we had actually accumulated in 8 years of marriage and even more with the fact that I didn’t have any of it left.
And it was then I realized not how much stuff I owned but how much stuff owned me.
This quest for stuff is as old as time itself and history is filled with accounts of the depths to which people were willing to go to get stuff. The Bible warns in 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.
Sound familiar? It even works when we change it to read 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of stuff is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving stuff, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.
The Bible is saying to be careful about what motivates you, that’s why Jesus said in Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.
It was John Wesley who taught the early Methodists Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Not bad advice, even after 250 years.
The second type of greed that we can fall prey to is self-centeredness. We Covet When We become Greedy for Self. We become like the little girl in grade one who went on a tour of a dairy with her class and after the tour when they had finished seeing everything the dairy had to offer the guide asked the class, “Now are there any questions” and the little girl replied, “Did anyone notice that I’m wearing a new jacket?”
Alice Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, said this about her father “Father always had to be the centre of attention, when he went to a wedding, he wanted to be the bride. When he went to a funeral, he was sorry he couldn’t be the corpse.”
We get to the point that all that matters in our life is me and my family. It’s not just that we want the very best for ourselves, it’s that we don’t care if we have to take it from someone else. And then we justify it as looking out for our loved ones.
Sometimes it goes to extremes. Do you remember, Wanda Holloway? She was the mother in the States whose daughter was trying out for the cheerleading team in high school and in an effort to distract one of the other contestants so she wouldn’t do well in the finals, she hired someone to kill the other contestant’s mother. Luckily the would-be hitman got cold feet.
And even though none of us would go that far, I hope, what goes through your mind when you are competing for a position, or one of your kids is trying out for a position on a sports team?
And it’s natural I know, that when you hear of a fatal accident on a highway that a loved one is travelling you pray “Please don’t let it be my husband or wife or child”
That’s not wrong, but in it not being your loved one it’s going to be someone else’s spouse or child. I hope when you say “Thank you God for it not being whoever” that you take the time to pray for the family that suffered the loss.
When Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome he said this Romans 12:10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honouring each other.
Other translations say giving preference to one another. Without trying to make people feel guilty at all, well maybe a little bit, how close do you try to park to the front door on Sunday Mornings? Do you try and leave the best parking spots for others, in particular for our guests?
A number of years ago I came up with Guptill’s theory of spiritual relativity and it says “The depth of your personal commitment to Christ is directly proportional to the distance you park from the front door of the church.” And you don’t want to even get me started on how I feel about the best parking spot in the church parking lot having a sign reserving it for the pastor. You don’t want to go there.
It might be worth asking visitors to churches how they feel when they arrive, and the best parking spots and the best seats are taken by the regulars.
And do know what, it’s my fault; it’s my fault for not educating you. If we are serious about reaching our community then we need to say to our guests: “We value you, we value you enough to give you the best parking spots, which are the ones closest to the doors and we value you enough to give you the best seats, which are the ones in the back and the ones on the isles.” “We value you enough to give you our time before and after the service, even though we have friends to talk to.”
And if we don’t value our guests then we might as well shut the doors.
When we were beginning to talk about building in Truro I had one of our regulars ask me why we were building and that he never had a problem finding a parking spot or a seat. And that was all he was concerned about.
When you rush out for the potluck today, will you be trying to get closer to the front to make sure you don’t miss out on the very best of what was brought. By the way, there will be lots of Hot Dogs.
James the brother of Christ gave the early Christians a warning in the letter he wrote to the early church, this is what he said. James 3:16 For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.
We Covet When We Are Greedy for The Spiritual This is kind of an interesting twist on greed.
Maybe you are wondering exactly how you can be spiritually greedy.
How you could want too much spiritual stuff? I mean isn’t it good to be spiritual? As Christians shouldn’t we want more and more of the spiritual?
Let me digress a bit with a quote about money, now I know that we’ve already talked about money, that I’ve made my point about money and we really don’t have to revisit the first point at all.
However, bear with me. J. Paul Getty was one of the richest men of his time. He was a multi-millionaire when a million dollars actually meant something and he had this to say about wealth: Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.
I have met people who are as tight with their spiritual knowledge as Scrooge McDuck was with his money. They go to every conference offered, listen to ministry podcasts galore, watch nothing but Christian programming, have read all of the latest Christian best sellers, have 47 different translations of the bible and have no interest in spreading that spiritual knowledge around at all. And money’s not the only thing that begins to smell if it’s not spread around.
People who are spiritually greedy begin to view themselves as spiritually superior to others in the church, they’ve read more, heard more, and consumed more. But they haven’t shared more.
They never considered ministering to others with their knowledge, it’s like they are afraid that if they give it away, they won’t have as much for themselves.
They are the great white sharks of Christianity, on a constant feeding frenzy, they aren’t discriminating about what they consume, as a matter of fact, they take in so much from so many different sources that they don’t even know what they believe. And like the great white shark, they perform no useful function.
Every Christian, every believer has been called to minister. I don’t mean we’ve all been called to preach but we’ve all been called to minister.
When your life is done and you stand before God and he asks, “What did you do to advance my kingdom” What are you going to say? Well, I listened to every sermon that Billy Graham every preached. And I only read Christian authors and only listened to Christian music. I went to all these seminars, and used five separate daily devotional guides and, and, and … And then God will say “But what did you do to advance my Kingdom?”
You ever wonder why God leaves us here after we become Christians? If our only reason for existence as a believer was to gain more spiritual knowledge and worship God wouldn’t we be able to do that better in Heaven? He left us here to make a difference, and that will only happen when we minister to other people.
So what is the secret? The secret to not being greedy? Well the secret is keeping first things first. Matthew 6:33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
Not making stuff your primary concern, not making self your primary concern, not even making spiritual things your primary concern, but making the Kingdom of God your primary concern.
But how do we do that? First of all, find out what the Kingdom entails, and you can only do that by reading the book, this book. The word of God. By talking to God, and listening as he talks to you, that’s called prayer. By learning about the Kingdom of God, that means coming to church and getting involved in a life group. And then taking what you learned about the Kingdom of God and apply it, do something with what you learned. You say that sounds like it requires work. Yeah but if it’s a priority then it gets done. Right? Jesus said Matthew 19:23–26 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
You say that’s impossible, well that’s the same response that his followers had The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked.
Here’s the secret Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”
And when you know that you can’t do it by yourself then it’s time to ask for help. In John 15:15 Jesus makes the most incredible statement, remember this is God, the creator of the universe, master of the cosmos speaking and he says John 15:15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.
Did you catch that, “Now you are my friends?”
He isn’t just your God, He isn’t just your creator, He isn’t just your Saviour, He wants to be your friend. And He’s the one you need to call.
You have the opportunity to ask Almighty God for help, and here’s His promise to you, get a pen out and write it down it’s found in Psalm 91:15 When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honour them.
I can personalize that by adding my name. And you can personalize it as well, this time you fill in the blank as we read it aloud.
