IDEA: Covetousness can keep us from God and covetousness can keep us from going deeper with God.
TEXT: "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" (Exodus 20:17).
"You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s" (Deuteronomy 5:21).
PURPOSE: To help listeners deal with a covetous spirit.
Do you ever come to a passage of Scripture that you were going to teach and you feel a strong urge to try to explain it away?
One such passage may be the interview that Jesus had in Matthew 19:16-26.
The problem is not the truth of the passage but that Jesus seems like a terrible evangelist.
I. The one person you would expect Jesus to have won to Himself is the person who walks away.
A wealthy man comes and asks Jesus a crucial question: "Good teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?"
Have you ever had anyone ask you that question?
If so, have you ever had anyone ask you that question and you didn’t try to lead them to Christ?
Suppose someone asked you that question, what would you say to them?
But Jesus’ response is that if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. That’s the last thing I would think about saying to someone. What would you say if you were in Jesus’ position?
The young man’s response is as strange as Jesus answer. He asked, "Which ones?" And Jesus spelled out five of the commandments and a summary commandment (Matthew 19:18). And the young man said, "All these things I’ve done from my youth. What do I still lack?"
Jesus focuses on the one commandment that he had not mentioned: covetousness. "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, give to the poor, and you’ll have treasure in heaven" (v. 21).
When the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions.
II. What do you think that passage is teaching about having eternal life?
If you want to bargain your way to heaven by keeping the law, you can’t do it. This young man is convicted in the same way that Paul was convicted by the tenth commandment.
God’s arrangement for entering the kingdom of heaven is on a totally different basis from works.
Matthew 20 (in the parable of the workers) says that many who are first would be last and the last would be first. This says that they order in which we do things on earth is totally different from the way things are done in heaven.
III. There is also in this passage a suggestion of how to deal with covetousness.
Give your money away to those God cares about.
This is the way we deal with other desires that get us into trouble.
What do you say to someone who is an alcoholic about alcohol?
What do you say to someone who is addicted to pornography?
As radical as it sounds, if you are afflicted with covetousness, you need to deal drastically with what causes you to covet.
You might do well to cut out visits to the mall.
You might consider moving to a different neighborhood where you’re not tempted by your neighbors’ possessions.
You might take the money you were going to spend on what you covet and give it away to the poor or to those who have much less than you.
If your response is, "You can’t ask me to do something like that," that’s also the response of this rich young man who missed out on eternal life