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I want!
Text: Colossians 3:5
You can be occupied with what God has done for you or you can be occupied with what you don’t have and what someone else has.
- Covetousness is denying the Lord (Hebrews 13:5)
- Occupied with things you don’t have
- Joshua 7:21 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.
- Millions of people will sit on their couch, in a/c, running water, transportation, fridge with food, good plumbing, while a digital window tells them 24 hours a day about things they don’t have but need. Every 3 minutes you’re told about something you don’t have but will make your life better. Then you sit in front of a screen with people who look better than you, have more money than you.
- Then you listen to a sermon an hour or two a week trying to convince people inflamed in covetousness who’ve spent 8 hours a day in front of a screen lusting after every new, pretty, expensive thing, that Jesus Christ is the answer and the Bible is your meat and serving God is where joy is.
- Inability to make good judgment
- Exodus 18:21-22 in order to make good judgment you can’t be covetous.
- If you want stuff, you’ll set aside judgment in order to get more or not lose what you have.
- Listen to God’s word, but won’t practice any of it
- Ezekiel 33:30-33
- People leave saying that was a good sermon about missions. The preacher says we’re going to be taking up an offering for this missionary, and the same people who said that was a good sermon on missions say they don’t have the money to give.
- Measure spirituality and blessings by stuff and possessions
- 1 Timothy 6:3-5
- This is a theology of covetousness. It is literally a prosperity gospel.
- Psalm 10:3 For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.
- People with regrets are covetous people.
- Coveting what you don’t have leads to a multitude of bad options.
- Theft, adultery (you want someone’s wife or husband), crippling debt, apathy toward God, bitterness toward someone else.
- 1 Timothy 6:9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
- Not that they are rich or are poor, but they that WILL BE rich FALL…
- Covetous people are discontent people
- That is the definition of discontentment, covetousness.
- Covetousness can’t be satisfied by the thing that you’re coveting.
- Ecclesiastes 5:10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
- Covetousness is idolatry.
What do you do when this idol worship shows up in your life, because it’s in your flesh? Mortify your members.
- I want, I want, I have to have it. If that idolatry is mortified, you’ll save money, you’ll be more content, you’ll have more joy, and you’ll be able to honor the Lord.
