Thou Shall Not Covet

It was the most exclusive club in the world. To belong to this club, you had to meet very strict criteria. Some of the names of some of the members were Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Vanderbilt, Pollitzer, Macy, Goodyear. We've all heard of those people. We know that there are some of the wealthiest families in the history of the United States. Anybody here know where this club is? Where? Jekyll Island, Georgia. Jekyll Island, Georgia at one time was the most exclusive club in the world. The rich people would go there, and it was just for summer getaways, summer vacations. So they didn't really build big houses. They just built cottages, not like their other houses. Of course, these cottages had 20 to 25 rooms, including servants' quarters, because you'd always bring your servants with you when you traveled around like this. And you would go there. Sometimes they'd spend a couple weeks. Sometimes they'd spend a month. Sometimes a couple months. Maybe the husband would leave the wife and the children there while he would do some traveling. But this is where they went for vacation. They get away from the heat of New York, in New York City, or some of the other places that they had their large homes. It was remarkable in that it was exclusive. For over 50 years, you couldn't go on that island unless you were a member or you were invited. They had a clubhouse, and that clubhouse is still there. Now, I haven't been to Jekyll Island for years, but it used to be, and I think it still is. You can go there and you can eat in their clubhouse. Of course, back then, a normal meal was 10 courses and took three hours to eat, and you got dressed. You got really dressed up to go there. They had boat docks where you could take your yachts and tie up your yachts, or you could go fishing. You could go hunting. They stalked that island with everything you could think of. From deer, alligators, pheasants, things that, you know, marsh hens, some things that were native and some things that weren't. But you could hunt there. When they were all summer long, they needed a license. It was a club. And so it's interesting that you can look and find out some of the... they kept track of all the everything that they killed so they'd know how to restock it. You know, one summer's hunting could be four or five deer, you know, 50 birds, and a couple alligators. And that was just what you did for fun. They had a golf course. It was just an amazing place to be. And those houses were decorated with some of the finest furniture in the world. I mean, this is where people want to be. This is the absolute wealth. This is the pinnacle of success at least for many people in our society. You could just be like those people. And there are people that have worked their whole lives. There are people that have sold their lives, wasted their lives, spent their lives trying to achieve that and never achieving it. Let's face it, we're fascinated with the rich, right? The rich and the famous. We want to know about the secrets of their lives. And many people envy them. They want to be like them. On the way back from North Carolina, my wife's always wanted to see Biltmore. How many of you have ever been to Biltmore? Many of you have. It's expensive. Nonnies are expensive to get in, but they make sure they get your money all throughout. I mean, you've got to buy a souvenir. You've got to eat lunch. You've got to buy... You go to the winery where they give you all this free wine testing and then you have to buy Bala wine. I mean, it just... You're just like, wow, we're spending all this money. But it is amazing to go to Vanderbilt's home. It's the second of Vanderbilt's homes I've been in. Another was up in Rhode Island. How these people lived, it's just absolutely amazing.

The amount of wealth... And it's easy to say, oh, if I could live like this. My wife just kept saying, why do you need all this house for three people? Why do you need all this house for three people? But it was beautiful. It was amazing. I mean, the most amazing thing to me was in two of the rooms, they had these beautiful tapestries. Beautiful, huge tapestries. Maybe 12 feet by 12 feet. From the 1600s, hanging on the walls. Tapestries in the 1600s fascinate me because it took them 10 to 20 years to make them because they were made by hand. And the amount of work... And they all tell stories. Whatever was all Bible stories. And you could pick out all these Bible stories as you looked at the tapestry. They're priceless. I mean, the other time I've seen tapestries like that are in Paris, France, and museums. And they just had them hanging on the wall. The rich. Now, it is not wrong, by the way. Bibliically wrong to be rich. In fact, many of the great people of the Bible were rich. Abraham was rich. There are lots of rich people in the Bible. There's also many people of God that were poor in the Bible. Elijah didn't have much. Others didn't have much of anything. Paul didn't have much. Some of the great men and women of the Bible didn't have anything. And then there were everybody in between. So there's rich people, there's poor people, and there's everybody in between. And nobody seemed to be judged by God by how much they had. But we are judged by God by how we react to and our attitude towards what we have. This is the last of the sermons on the Ten Commandments. And I waited to do this because this sermon actually ties into the Feast of Tabernacles. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. It ties into some of the lessons that we're to learn at the Feast of Tabernacles. Let's go to Exodus 20. Exodus 20.

I read an article one time by an atheist who said he was going through how useless most of the Ten Commandments are. And this one really angered him. He said, this is all about thought control. What kind of evil being would want to do thought control over people? It is about thoughts, and it's about emotions. Verse 17 of Exodus 20. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's. So here we have one of the Ten Commandments that in one way you can't see if this is being done. You know, you can see if someone's stealing, you can see if someone's killing, you can see if someone's committing adultery, dishonoring a parent, using God's name in vain. Someone can be coveting and nobody else knows. Now many times it will exhibit itself in other ways, but unless you can read someone's mind, you don't know if they're coveting. How serious is this? I mean, it's easiest to say, oh well, it's just an emotion, it's just a thought, it's not hurting anybody. And of course, that's one of the big mantras of the modern world. As long as it doesn't hurt anybody, it's okay. Well, coveting doesn't seem to hurt anybody, right? How would anybody know if you're coveting? And yet throughout the Scripture, we see this as a very important issue. I mean, this is one of the big ten. It's one of the big ten. Let's look what Jesus said in Mark 7. Mark chapter 7.

Mark 7. Let's start at verse 20.

Now, the discussion here is about rituals and how rituals were important to the Jewish society and how people were considered richly unclean and defiled if they didn't do these ceremonies. They were somehow spiritually unclean. So Jesus is answering that. And let's start in verse 20 here. So it's the middle of what he says to them. And he said, what comes out of a man that defiles a man. He says, look, you're looking at these rituals. It's what is inside the person that is exhibited then in the way they act, in the way they talk, in the way this is what defiles. This is what makes a person spiritually unclean. So he's talking here about spiritual uncleanness. This is the context. Basically, what separates us from God? He says, for from within, out of the heart of men, perceive evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man. So you and I are spiritually defiled by covetousness. Now we can see these other things. Well, of course, deceit, that hurts somebody else. You know, theft, stealing, that hurts somebody else. Pride, well, of course, pride does because it makes you arrogant. That would, I could see that, but why would covetousness be in this list? We have to understand that covetousness defiles us spiritually. I'll explain why in a couple minutes. And it makes us miserable. It makes us totally unhappy. So what hurts us spiritually defiles us, actually, what Jesus says, and it destroys us emotionally. The biggest problem we have with covetousness is it is an emotion. Emotions are so hard to deal with because we always assume that how I feel is right. And the truth is we can't trust our own feelings. The Apostle Paul talks about the dangers of covetousness. Let's go to Ephesians 5. And here he says something that we're really going to have to explore a little bit as we go through this sermon to see what he actually means by this. So I'm going to read a couple verses to get to context and then let's see exactly what he says. This is Ephesians 5, verse 1, Therefore, be imitators of God, his dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication, so now he gets into all kinds of sins that defile us, fornication and all in cleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be named among you as it's fitting for saints. So I'm in. We're talking about sexual sins here. And he puts covetousness, he says, that shouldn't even be named among Christians. It shouldn't be something that all people look and say, oh, look, that Christian covets. Should be as strange as, oh, look, that Christian is sexually immoral. Now, this morning in Murfreesboro, after this sermon, one of the older men walked up to me and said, you know what? I've been listening to these sermons, these 10 sermons. We break the Ten Commandments all the time. And he said, we sure do. All the time.

This is why you understand the spirit of the Ten Commandments is so important. Because we are not only just to keep the letter, but the spirit of this law. Let's look at what he says here now. Verse 4, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, as any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. To be covetous is to be an idolater. He connects these two commandments together. Well, idolatry is worshiping statues of Baal. And Paul says coveting is just as serious an issue as worshiping statues of Baal. That's tough, isn't it? Well, it can't be that serious. Jesus said it defiles us, and He listed it with murder, and thefts, and all other kinds of sins. And here the Apostle Paul says it keeps us out of the kingdom of God. So we better understand what it is. I mean, okay, how is it like adultery? What exactly is covetousness? Well, let me put it into a simplest of definitions. To covet is to have a passionate and obsessive desire for something or someone that is not yours to own. It is a passionate and obsessive desire for something or someone that is not yours to own. Do not covet your neighbor anything that is your neighbor's. And we can covet anything. You can covet money, house, job, status. You can covet a person, clothes. Anything that we can have this obsessive, passionate desire for that isn't ours is coveting. Now, there's actually two ways that we can covet. The first, I think, is probably the most obvious is that when we're coveting something, we have this obsessive, passionate, driving desire for something that's unlawful or immoral. You know, if you covet your neighbor's car—oh, I wish I had that car. Maybe a car—I mean, not too many people covet their neighbor's car necessarily. You might covet the guy that has the position above you at work, and you will do anything to get it.

It's immoral or unlawful. Another way is that we passionately and obsessively desire something that's lawful, but in an unlawful manner. I can give you an example of that. It's the woman that comes up to me and says, this man over here follows me around. He's been doing it for months. He won't leave me alone. He constantly is asking me out. He doesn't seem to get it. I don't want to go out with him. But he keeps telling me, oh, I just need to have you as my friend. I just need to have you as coveting. As coveting.

It's not unlawful for him to look at this person and say, oh, I would like to be that person's friend. But it is unlawful in the way he's treating the person. It has now become coveting. So we look at the big way we can covet, but there's a whole lot more subtle ways that we can covet. And every time we do, not only does it build a barrier between us and God, but what it does to us emotionally is absolutely devastating. Coveting has one of the most destructive forces on us that we can imagine. I mean, to desire the new car isn't a sin. To become obsessed over it so that you don't pay your ties, so that you don't take care of your family, so that's all you can think about, on all you talk about. It's coveting.

When you buy a new fishing rod and your children go without shoes, it is not unlawful to own a fishing rod. It is unlawful for you to have your children go without shoes. See? So coveting doesn't always mean something that's unlawful. It's done in an unlawful way. And this is how it becomes idolatry. Because what happens to us is the thing that we want, whatever it is, person, place, status, house, clothes, it doesn't matter what it is, we now make that a priority greater than God. Once we make anything a priority greater than God, so that God is not the center of our attention and our thoughts, but this thing is the center of our attention and thoughts, we are now coveting and we're now committing idolatry. See how it fits? You've placed this thing above God. You know, as the person that says, I want to keep the Sabbath, I believe in the Sabbath, you've convicted me over the Sabbath, and I will as soon as I get my house paid off. At that point, they have made their house an idol through coveting. Are they worshiping their house? No. But why would Paul say that? Once you really think about idolatry, you start to realize, I mean, for coveting, you realize it is idolatry. We're taking that thing and making it more important in terms of priorities. And once we do that, once we remove God from being the number one priority, we're guilty of idolatry. So what are some of the symptoms and results of covetousness? We're going to go through a couple lists today of things. The first one is going to be a list of symptoms and results of covetousness. So we can begin to see what happens in this, and then we're going to go through the process of covetousness. How covetous works in our minds. Because when you're coveting, you don't think you're coveting. So let's start with this understanding of the symptoms so we can start to see in our lives and the results of it. The first one is covetousness leads to overt acts of sin. Stealing, cheating, lying. Many times the reason for those sins is we're coveting something. We want something that's unlawful for us to have, or we're pursuing an unlawful way to get something. I think a prime example of that is Aiken back in Joshua. Remember they were told to go into Jericho and don't take anything. And Aiken went in and he took some things. And he even says when he's gone, he says, well, I coveted these things. And we begin to realize through this story that there is no logic to coveting. When you really break it down, it's an irrational emotion. Because when you read the story, he went into Jericho, saw some clothing, some gold and some silver, and stole it. Because God said, leave all that. Now God is punishing Israel. Moses gets up and says, who did this? And Aiken's quiet. They cast lots and go through the entire nation of Israel until the lot falls on him. And they asked him, why did you do this? And his answer is, I coveted these things. Well, where is it? It's buried in my tent. Of course it's buried in his tent. He couldn't wear the fancy clothes around him. Everybody said, where did you get that from? He had a huge bar of gold. You can't walk around saying, look at my huge bar of gold, or a bag of silver. Look at my bag of silver. Where did you get that from? It makes no sense because he couldn't do anything. He couldn't buy it anything. He couldn't use it. He couldn't display it. He couldn't show his friends. He buried it in his tent, all because of covetousness. And so he committed an overactive sin. But when you get down to it, it's so irrational. Why steal something that you have to hide? You don't even get to look at. Secondly, covetousness produces obsession, anxiety, and unhappiness.

It produces anxiety, and it really makes us unhappy. There's an interesting proverb in Proverbs 21. Proverbs 21. We start here in verse 25.

The desire of the lazy man kills him, for his hands refuse to labor. His desire is to be lazy. It's interesting, the scripture contains, especially with the instructions given to ancient Israel, there were a lot of instructions on how to take care of poor people. Things that would seem strange in our society. Farmers, when they cut their fields down and took the produce away to sell, they had to leave the corners of the fields. Your property, you own it, but by law, you can't use everything that you grew.

You had to leave it for poor people to come harvest. So you'd go in your field, you'd cut it down, and you couldn't take everything. Even you worked for it, it was your property, but you had to leave it. But the poor people had to come harvest it themselves. In other words, they had a responsibility. You had a responsibility to leave it, and they had a responsibility to come harvest it. The lazy person won't even go out and harvest what's left for him there under the law of God.

His desire kills him. Then notice verse 26, He covets greedily all day long, but the righteous gives and does not spare. The righteous give, they're giving people. But this lazy person, he just, all day long, he covets. All he does is look around and say, look what this person has. Look what that person has. Oh, I wish I had, I deserve what they have. They just covet all day long. They look what other people have and say, I should get that. Well, now there are people that are, there are many poor people that are not lazy.

I've seen some very, very hardworking people that because of job situations or whatever, never could rise above a certain point. So that's a totally different thing. And the Bible deals with that totally different. People who are poor because of health reasons, or they just fall on bad times, or they just have a job where they can't seem to break out, those are totally different reasons. And the Bible deals with those specifically. Here we're talking about a lazy person who covets all the time. They won't work, but all they do is look around and see what other people have, and they want it.

They just want it. They're unhappy. They're obsessed. They're angry because of what other people have. This is what coveting does to us. You know, it's interesting going through the Biltmore. To me, it was fascinating. I sure didn't feel envious for what they had. I thought it was fascinating for what they had. I wouldn't want to live that way, by the way.

I wouldn't want to live in that house. I thought one of the things that was interesting is, of course, this was the son of the Vanderbilt that built the railroad system across the United States. But his wife, she spent many of her days, they had 200 people working on a farm system because they had 125,000 acres. They had this huge farm system where they grew so much food they would give it away to poor people.

And then they had so much more left over, they actually set up more companies to sell what they had because they couldn't even give it away fast enough. They had a couple hundred people working for them. People came from all over the world to work for the Vanderbilt because they paid such a high wage, they wanted to come work for them.

Now, back then, a work day was 12 hours, six days a week. That was a work day. That was common. But they got nice accommodations. They got a decent pay. They were treated nice. And it's very interesting that Mrs. Vanderbilt, and all this luxury, her favorite thing in the afternoon, was to go down to the farms and sit on the stoops and talk to the ladies.

They had pictures of her. And they actually had some film they had done of some older people that knew them. And of course, everybody's dead now that knew them, but the film was taken years ago. And the ladies were saying, oh, we just loved it when she would come down because she'd sit and talk to us. And when anybody was sick, she brought soup. She'd leave the big house and you'd see her walking down towards the farmland, or come in in her carriage with soup.

And she'd go in and she'd take care of the kids and stuff. And she said, but we knew she liked cake. So whenever we found out when she was coming, one of us would bake a cake. And all the ladies would get together and eat cake. Now, all that luxury, she wanted to go sit and talk to people, help people. That was more important than some of the things she had.

A lazy person doesn't give anything. They have nothing to give. And this is what covenants does. A third thing it does, it corrupts our character, and in doing so actually destroys our loyalty to God. This is how it becomes idolatry. Go to Matthew 19.

Verse 25.

I'm sorry, let's start in verse 16. 16. We've heard this a hundred times, but let's really try not to make this a cliché. Let's look at what it actually says here. Now behold, one came and said to him, Good Teacher, speaking to Jesus, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? How do I have eternal life? And he said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one that is God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. Do what God says. He said, Which ones? So what we're, you know, the rabbis teach us about, there's 613 commandments. It's okay, let me give you a list here to start with. The young man said to him, All these things I have kept from my youth, what do I still lack? And Jesus didn't say, Oh, you've never done those things. That's not what Jesus said. He said, I've done these things. What's still missing? And he said, I've done these things. What's still missing? Young man said, or in verse 31, Jesus said to him, If you want to be perfect, go and sell what you have and give it to the poor. And you shall have treasures in heaven, and come and follow me. Now you look at that list of the last of the 10 commandments, all the ones that have to do with loving your neighbor, but there's one missing. Don't covet. What am I missing? I do keep those things. I don't steal. I don't lie. I don't bear false witness. Okay, sell what you have. Be my disciple. Now remember, he asked him, what should I do for eternal life? Jesus is offering him eternal life. You want eternal life? Give it up. Come follow me. Verse 22, But when the young man heard what he was saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Covening was the issue he could not give up. God has not asked me to give up everything, but you know, there's been times I've worried about that. What have you ever asked me to give up everything? You know, like Ezekiel, go naked in the streets so everybody will pay attention to you. I really don't want to do that. What is it you hold on to that God may ask you to give up? What possession do each of us have that we may not want to give up? God may say, you have to give that one up. What is it? In order to do his work, in order to fulfill what he once fulfilled, now you see why covetousness can be idolatry. Another thing it does, a fourth thing, is it perverts justice leading to bribes. All through the Old Testament, both Israel and Judah are condemned because leaders and judges pervert justice for power and money. Aren't you glad nobody in our country does that?

Pervert justice for power and money. It's covetousness. Fifth thing, as part of the symptoms and results of it, it leads to a life of never being satisfied. So one of the things we learn from Ecclesiastes, and this is why, in the Jewish community, many times Ecclesiastes is read at the Feast of Terradex, because it's the time when you have more than you have any other time during the year. You have the harvest abundance. In our case, we will have more money to spend than we usually do throughout the year. We'll be going to places and doing things we can't do. And there will be a great emphasis on the spiritual but also the physical part of the feast. And they're supposed to be. We're supposed to rejoice. We're supposed to eat. We're supposed to... it even says we can have wine if we want to. Here we have the Feast of Tabernacles, which is not only a spiritual celebration, but it is a physical celebration. And there are some lessons in that. Have you ever, about the fifth day of the feast, said, I don't care if I eat another big meal again the rest of my life?

Or you look at the nice accommodations you're in and you say, you know what? I'll be glad to get home on my own bed. Right? See, if we're not careful, we become so absorbed with the physical part of the feast, we miss the spiritual. I mean, I've heard people say, oh yes, oh, it was so bad, you know, the first couple days the feasts were okay, but then we had planned to go to some amusement park, the kids were all ready, and you know, we had to leave right after services, and then it rained, it was miserable. Just ruin the rest of the feast. Well, why were you there? Well, why were you there?

What were the sermons about? What were your conversations about? You know, well, we went to this great steak restaurant. It was fantastic. Okay. God tells us to do that. You can afford it. You can't. Well, I had this great hamburger place I went to. Okay. But what did you talk about with the people you were with? Was it God's way? Was it the millennium? Or was it the physical things? You know, it's interesting. Here's the conclusion that Solomon came to in Ecclesiastes. He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, and he who loves abundance with increase. This also is vanity. He didn't say it's wrong to own silver. He said, but if you love it, you'll never have enough. You'll never have enough. When we went through the Biltmore, they had one room that had been closed off during World War II behind steel doors and had actually two armed guards in front of it all the time. What had happened was they'd taken all these great paintings out of the Smithsonian and brought them there just in case Washington got bombed. So they were protected. They figured nobody would look, you know, at this house out in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina in the mountains, and so they'd hid them there. Afterwards, after the war, they took the steel doors off, guards went away, and then there was this fireplace. And no one could remember what the fireplace was supposed to be like. You know, everybody was busy and they were buying new things and no one cared. And it wasn't until decades later they went to restore the room. And I can't remember whether it was in the basement or a stable. They found the fireplace. And it was this priceless fireplace. But what was even more amazing was above it, and it was designed just for this to sit above it, was a huge engraving from the Middle Ages. Priceless. They'd forgotten about it. When you get that much stuff, you get all this stuff, everyone forgot. Yeah, well, it was supposed to go up there. It was these priceless engravings.

Never satisfied. Why? They had to buy more engravings. They did. They just kept buying more more engravings. They loved engraving. He loved engravings. Is it wrong to love engravings? No. Is it wrong to have engravings? No. Is it wrong to be a collector of engravings? No. But when do you have enough? Now, he had enough money to buy more.

But how many people would bankrupt themselves buying things they didn't need to have? The sixth thing is it creates wrong priorities of life. Luke 12. Luke 12.

Now, once again, another passage that we know too well, so we miss the importance of it sometimes. Verse 13. Then one from the crowd said to him, said to Christ, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. So it was an issue of law. And the man said, You know, my brother is cheating me, and I want you to tell him to give me my inheritance. And Jesus was able to look at this man and discern. This wasn't just about the law. There was another underlying issue here, so he deals with it. But he said to him, verse 14, Man who made me a judge or an arbiter over you, and he said to them, Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. Then he spoke a parable to them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man yielded plundefly. And he thought with it himself, saying, What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops? And he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and I will store all my crops and all my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. Now, the point of this, we're going to get into a minute, isn't that the man shouldn't have built bigger barns.

He had more stuff he should build bigger barns. It isn't that he shouldn't prepare for the... I've seen people say, Well, what this is saying is that you shouldn't prepare for the future. That's not what this is saying. Go read the Proverbs. There's all kinds of Proverbs about preparing for the future. My wife and I are preparing for the fact that someday we may retire. And there's one thing we know from that. Our standard of living is going to go down dramatically. Like most of you know when you're going to retire, right? It's just going to go down. Unless you have made a lot of money all your life, then great! Yours won't go down. And that's okay. There will always be people... always in the Church of God be at different levels of economics. The important thing is that we work hard, and that we live God's way. That's what God cares about. And we live His way. So what is the point now? We're going to get into this. So the guy built barns. It was doing great. He said, while this is great, now I'm finally going to be able to sit back and have an easy life. But God said to him, verse 20, Fool, this night your soul shall be required of you, then whose will those things be which you have provided. So is he who lays up treasures for himself and is not rich towards God. It's our priorities of life. God has to come first. And this is all in the context of covetousness. It's like the old saying, he who wins is the one who dies with the most toys. And I keep asking, when's what? I've never had anybody answer that. What do you win? Tell me. I'll go buy more toys. What do you win if you have the most toys? I don't know, you're dead. Somebody else takes your toys. Which is what Solomon said. Well, when I'm gone, everybody gets all the stuff I've accumulated.

I told my son one time, Chris, someday I'll be gone and you'll get my empire. He said, what am I going to do with 100 different translations of the Bible? That's my empire.

It just sets these wrong priorities. That was this man's problem. It wasn't the barn, the goods, the fact that he was successful. It was his priorities that were the problem. Any time our careers, our money, our things keep us from our prayer, our study, and our relationship with God, and living God's way, and what we are as covenants, and we are idolaters. That's hard to think about. This commandment is just as difficult as the rest of them. It's just we don't think about this much. The last thing it does is it really leaves this number seven. It leads us to resentment and bitterness towards others. We resent people who have it all, who got things that we don't got.

And so we're just... what they have. What right do they have to have that when I don't have it? It's not fair. It's not fair. Yeah, so it's not fair. People have different talents. People sometimes... they're just fortunate. I mean, a lot of the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilt, some of those families ended up with family members who squandered their part of the fortune. Just squandered it. By the end of their lifetime, they were broke.

Couldn't even... you know, they had it all, but they couldn't keep it. Some people work hard all their lives and never quite, you know, don't even own the house. That they've lived in all their lives. And worked hard. They weren't lazy. Nothing fair about this. But we can be so bitter because I don't have what other people have. I say, okay, I see the symptoms. I see the results. Why do I covet? Well, let's look at then... I want to go through this whole cycle of covetousness. What causes it? First, you notice the object. At this point, you have it sinned. Oh, look! I like that new car. Oh, look! I like that new dress. You have it sinned. And the second thing you do, you really start to think about the desirability of it. You know, I would like to have that. I'd like to own that. Wouldn't that look good on me? Wouldn't I look good driving that? Wouldn't it be fun? Or maybe it's just a matter of when. If I had that truck, I could do more work. You sort of mean seeing the object and then, step two, desiring the object isn't sin. But you've got a couple things you have to do here. First of all, you have to ask, is that lawful? I mean, if the dress is way too short and cut way too low, it is not lawful. So, no, you shouldn't have it. Sometimes we rush off and do things that we never think, is it lawful? Okay. Is it lawful? No. I can't stab my coworker in the back so I can get the promotion. Having the promotion is lawful. Stabbing your coworker in the back is unlawful. You say, well, so what? He's a pagan. It is unlawful.

To treat someone in an unlawful way, in an immoral way. So, okay, is it lawful? Can I afford it? How should I plan to get it? Okay. I want this dress. It's lawful. It's perfect for me. It looks good, but it's expensive. I can put it on my credit card. No. I'll save for three months to get it. Now, of course, here's the problem or the interesting thing. A lot of times, about six weeks into that, you're saving money and you think, I don't care anymore. But if you stick to it and you want it and you go buy the dress, okay, you haven't coveted it. That's planning. They get something that's lawful and you're going in a lawful way. But here's the problem. When it doesn't happen right away, we get fixated on it. We become obsessed with it. I need the dress. That dress will make me happy. In fact, I'm unhappy thinking about the dress. I'm not picking on women. You can put anything in this. Okay? Whatever. Guys and their toys or whatever, you know. I need a new pickup. I need a new power drill or whatever, you know. And some of these things are needs, you know. We need a new couch. It's falling down. It literally, you sit in it, you know, and it sort of folds up like this. I need a new couch. So, I don't personally, but some people do, right? The last one I had, I needed a new one because I kept getting, you know, just... When I sat, when I stood up, I couldn't stand up straight because it was like crushing me in. But I need a new couch. Whatever it is, we become obsessed. We become fixated. And now is an emotional issue. I must have it. I need it. My happiness depends on me having it. And at this point, we have crossed over into covetousness. My happiness depends on me having this thing.

And at this point, if we're not careful, we can begin to... The obsession begins to create attitudes in us that lead us to sin. So we begin to notice it. We now desire the object. But now we're doing it in an unlawful manner. So we begin to build a strategy, how to get it. And the problem is, the strategy at this point can hurt other people. I need it. If other people are keeping me from getting it, right, I resent my wife because she's upset because I wanted a new hunting shotgun. And she said, we can't afford that. The kids need braces. You know what? I'm just tired of her being in charge. It's time for me to stand up and be the man, tell those kids that I had crooked teeth when I was a kid, and get me a shotgun. Some of you have been here.

That's covetousness.

I don't care what happens to these other people. I need it. I'll be such a more mighty hunter if I have the new shotgun. Then you take action to get the object. That's where you decide, no, I'm going to go ahead and take that expensive dress I can't afford, and I'm going to put it on my credit card, and I don't know how I'm going to pay it off. Or, no, I'm going to go ahead and get the shotgun, and my family will suffer. You're driven now by this made-up emotional need, and other people are suffering because you are an emotional mess. When we say covet, it doesn't hurt other people. It sure does. Maybe it hurts us when we do it. So now you get the object. And the fifth thing that happens... Well, there's two things that... There's two emotional reactions you can have. One is you don't get the object, and you become distraught and depressed. You're just depressed. I didn't get it. I wanted it. I wanted this more than anything else in the world.

You know, we're like little children. Remember a child, maybe you as a child or other children? And the most important thing in the world was being able to go to school with six little pencils that were all colored and had an eraser on it. And no, we're not going to buy those six pencils. But mom is at the Dollar General, so it's only 99 cents. No, you have pencils. But these have little sparkles in it. No, you're not going to get those. And they're just this weeping. But I need those! We simply replace six pencils with other stuff. That's all we're doing. We're like little children. We've replaced the pencils with other things. We would laugh at children for that. No, they're emotionally distraught just like you and I are. Because I didn't get a Mustang. I always say that because I always wanted one and I never would get one. So I could be all distraught, I guess, because I didn't get a Mustang. You know how important Mustangs are in a life? Zero. Absolutely zero. Absolutely zero. That's how important it is. It's zero.

But we can drive ourselves crazy with this emotional, I didn't get it. Now the other emotional reaction is I got it. And believe me, when you've got something you've been coveting for a short period of time, you're on a high. It's great. I got exactly what I wanted. Look at this new dress. All the women in church are going to envy me. When I show up in that new truck, when I bring everybody over and I see my new couch, every time I sit in my couch, I just feel happy.

Well, this brings us to point number six on this cycle. And that is the quirky thing about you in nature that Solomon talked about. If you love silver, you'll never have enough silver.

Now I just bought a new Taurus. I bragged about it a couple of times because I'd be cash for it, right? Save for five years to make cash for a used car. Now for a lot of you, that's not a big thing. But that's a big thing for me. I saved and bought this car. Well, my old car was a Taurus. I loved that Taurus. It was gold. Gold Taurus. Big plush seats. CD player. Man, I loved that car. And about the second week I got it, it was only a year old, you know, didn't have a whole lot of miles on it. And we went to church and there were lots of people there with little kids. And what it looked like is someone with a baby buggy was walking along and didn't even notice. And they left this little, little scrape through the passenger... no, it was the driver's side door. Can you remember now? Front and back. Now up to this point, every time I got in that car I thought, smell the new car smell. Of course it wasn't. They had to spray that in there because it was an old car. But it didn't matter. Smell the new car smell. Turn it on and listen to it. Just listen to it. Oh man, can you already hear that thing? Turn on the CD player and my wife and say, oh stop that! Why do you have the noise that's on? Listen to that. Put it in gear. And now, all I could think about was, that's great. The car that I looked at and was in love with for weeks, couple weeks, I looked out and said, it's ruined. I might as well just shove it off a cliff.

I went in and asked how much does it cost to get it fixed. They said hundreds of dollars. I said, forget that. I just drove around with them. All of a sudden, I like the scratch in it. Looks good with that scratch in it. See the funny thing about owning things? Now, of course, it didn't take long to forget the scratch, right? And enjoy the car for years. So I finally blew the motor up.

But what happens is when we've coveted something, because the desire was so high, so obsessive, and so irrational, you can't maintain that once you get it.

That's why coveting another person is so dangerous. Because if you ever get them, you will be unhappy. Because you can't maintain that level of expectation. And then, of course, it's like, well, this isn't exactly what I wanted. I don't feel as happy as I thought. So you know what the seventh step is? The cycle starts all over again. You simply look, find another object. This person, this object, this thing, this is going to change me and make me happy. And you're just driven by it. This is what covetousness does to us. Where we're driven so that we're never content. I'm going to complete or finish with just two scriptures on how to combat covetousness. One is in 1 Timothy 6. And this is an obvious one from what we've been talking about. We have to keep our spiritual priorities straight so that we have everything in its order.

I talked about Solomon, who was a very wealthy man. We talked about Abraham, who was a very wealthy man. David was very wealthy. There's lots of people in the Bible very wealthy. Let's talk about Paul for a minute, who seemed to have lost everything to follow God. He doesn't have any wealth at all. So, we're now at the other end of the spectrum. A guy who travels around creating churches, being a tent maker, just to pay his own way. Doing manual labor just to pay his own way, but he doesn't really seem to have a place to live or a house. He just travels all over. And he's not staying in the Holiday Inn Express. You know, where there's oatmeal in the morning, bad coffee. That's not where he's staying. He says, verse 6 to Timothy, now godliness with contentment is great gain. Living God's way, righteousness with being content, this is good. Because life is a lot of ups and downs. You know what was interesting about the Vanderbilt's home? At 51, he died of complications from appendicitis. Within a few years, his wife could not maintain it. They had all kinds of problems trying to maintain that property. They had to shut down whole sections of the house. They could even live in it. He wasn't there to keep producing the money, and the money started to run out.

He says, verse 7, for if we brought nothing into this world, and it's certain we shall carry nothing out, and having food and clothing with these we shall be content. Now, he's looking at life from a different viewpoint. What Solomon said, I have all these things, and it's okay, it's good to have all these things, but I have to learn to be content. He wasn't content with all these things. Paul's looking at life on the other extreme and saying, I don't have anything, but I have to learn to be content with not having anything. Godly contentment is the issue that's more important than what you have.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and too many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. He said, you know, driving to just be rich, he said sometimes that's self-destructive. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some abstrain from the faith in their greediness and pierce themselves through with many sorrows. I think that's very interesting. He says there are people who have left the faith because of their greed, because they just want more and more and more, and they are now filled with sorrow. That's what I found interesting about the Vanderbilt. They seem to have been, at least in a little bit we know, fairly happy people. That's one of the reasons why they were always involved with helping others. They just didn't hold their wealth. They were always involved with helping others. So keep our priorities straight. Learn to be content. There are times when you're up and there are times when you're down. That's the way life is. And when you are really down, then we have to trust God. That brings us to another point I want to bring out. We maintain spiritual priorities. We have to have faith that if we do our part in serving God, He's going to take care of us. There's nobody here that's going to live in a place like Biltmore, at least I don't think. And if you do, that's wonderful. Most of us won't. But when times get tough, which everybody faces tough times, we have to believe God will take care of us if we're doing what's right. We do our part and we do what's right. Look at Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13. Verse 5.

Let your conduct be without covetousness. The way you act, now that's an interesting way of putting that. Your action should have no covetousness in it. No obsessive desire, needs that aren't lawful or that you're doing in an unlawful way. Be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So what is the source of this contentment? What is the source of the contentment that God says He will never leave us or forsake us? There were times when Paul had nothing. He didn't have food to eat and he always believed that God was going to never leave him or forsake him. And a meal came along from someplace.

So that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what can man do to me. The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what can man do to me. There's a difference between physical happiness and the joy which is the fruit of God's Spirit. The joy that is the fruit of God's Spirit can help us even when we don't have anything. It can help us stay focused even in the bad times and have contentment. There are no millionaires on Jekyll Island today. Is anyone going there for the feast this year? A few. There are no millionaires there. During World War II, the early days of World War II, there were burning ships off the coast of the Carolinas because the Germans were sinking merchant ships all over the place. The American government realized something. If they could get this close and be sinking our ships by the hundreds, they could land commandos on Jekyll Island some summer and wipe out the entire financial basis of the country. All the banks would go under, everything would collapse. Basically, they evacuated Jekyll Island. After World War II, the older people really didn't want to go back. They lost interest. None of the younger people did. They had more exciting places to go. Jekyll Island, let's face it, sort of laid back. Beaches. They wanted to go to the Riviera. So they didn't go back. Within a few years after World War II, the club sold Jekyll Island to the state of Georgia for a pittance. Compared to the value of the states on there, it was just a little amount. And a lot of it just sort of fell in decay over the years. They've sort of fixed it up now because it's a great tourist attraction. All the homes of the rich people and the famous people, all the stuff, all the furniture, all the things everybody wants, they had, they got bored with. And they didn't go back. There is something on Jekyll Island that I believe is still there. It was there years ago. And if you're there, this year, look for it. It's the ruins of an estate. And there were, at one time, at least last time I was there, there were two stone lions out in front of these ruins. Edwin Gold, James, or J. Gold was a famous financier and industrialist, and his son had a nice cottage there, and a casino, by the way. He ran a casino on the on the island. And his son, Edwin, his son, Edwin Jr., was out hunting on the island one day, and there was an accident, and he was he was accidentally killed. Edwin, who had everything that we think would make us happy, everything people covet he had, he was so devastated by his son's death, he left Jekyll Island and never went back. He never went back. Eventually, his beautiful mansion just deteriorated and deteriorated until they just tore it down. They just tore it down. There was nothing worth, there was nothing in it that was worth anything anymore. The building itself had no value. The materials were just beginning to decay. So here it was, what everybody wants, and they tore it down. All that's left is a foundation and a couple stone lions. I assume they're still there. That's it.

Next time you find yourself consumed with the race to make money, that you sacrifice your relationship with God, you sacrifice your family, you sacrifice your relationship with each other. Next time you find yourself obsessed over that dress, or that car, or those shoes, or that fishing rod, or that new video game, or whatever it is we become obsessed over. I must have, I cannot have happiness without that. Next time that promotion at work is just, I've got to have that, or I'll never be happy. Next time you're faced with that, remember what God has given to you. No one can take away the fact that you can listen to nice music. You can experience nature. You can sit in your air-conditioned home and drink a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, or have some iced tea, or a beer, and you think, well, so what? For over half of the world, they envy you for that. They envy you because you can have a glass of iced tea with real ice in an air-conditioned house instead of the hovel where rain comes through the ceiling with no electricity and an outside toilet. It's hard to believe that, isn't it? You and I, for much of the world, are the objects of their covetousness. But we compare ourselves with what? The Vanderbilt's.

It's never satisfied. It's always one step higher. You and I have a luxury. You and I live in things that are just unbelievable. Unbelievable what you and I have. And yet we covet, don't we? The next time you're faced with that covetous feeling, I want you to do something. And at the feast this year, when there's some point when it's physically not working out, the stake wasn't just right. And the accommodations weren't just right. Or it rained today. When the physical things of the feast don't work out just right, part of the lesson of the feast is Ecclesiastes. And when that happens, I want you to remember two stone lions in front of a ruined mansion.

There's no better illustration of what it is to have it all and how meaningless that can become, just like that. Remember that. And when you do, you will remember what Jesus said. Take heed. Beware of covetousness. For a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things he possesses.