The Sin of Covetousness - Covet Not - Andre Bercot

And when you're a covetous, you value things, possessions, money, whatever it is, land, over people who are created in the image of God.

I want to talk this morning about the sin of covetousness. Some of this defines covetousness. This verse is going to come up in a second, but I think it's a good verse as we go. Ephesians 5:5, "For this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."

I want to begin my sermon by sharing a children's story you might all be familiar with. It's written by Leo Tolstoy, called "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" You might be familiar with that story. If you're not, I will share it anyway. It begins with a poor peasant in Russia. He says, "Boy, if I could just have some land, life would be so great. We peasants are so poor. We work day and night in having to rent other people's land. If I could just own some." Later, he hears there's a landlord in his village who's selling some land, and he says, "We got to get some." So he sells some of his cows and some of his beehives.

He scrapes together enough for a down payment, and they get 40 acres. And he says, "Boy, I am now all set." Everything goes good for a couple of years. They pay off the debt. He's growing grain, raising cattle, raising bees. And then one day, a peasant comes from another village, from the village near the Volga River. And he says, "Oh, if you go out here, the grain is as high as your chest. The land's so much better." And Joseph says, "Boy, I just live in this narrow hole. 40 acres isn't that much land. Out there, I could have twice or three times as much as I have now." So he sells his land and his cows, and he and his family head out to the Volga River.

And the peasant was correct. The land is so much better. He can grow grain to his heart's content and all the cattle he wants, but he's still not quite satisfied. He's just like, "Boy, if I could just have a little bit more, life would be so great." But he doesn't see how he can get any more.

Another day, another traveler comes and says, "I came from the land of the Turks, and you can get as much land out there as you want. I spent about $1,000, and I got over 10,000 acres." He said, "That's where I need to go. I get land for approximately two cents an acre. That is a good deal." So Joseph tells his family, "I'm going to go out there. We're going to get as much land as I can get." So he goes out there to the land of the Turks, and he meets the chief, and he says, "I want to buy some land." And the chief says, and Joseph says, "How much does it cost?" And the chief says, "I don't have a way to measure it, but you can buy all the land you can get by the day."

Joseph says, "What do you mean? If you want just a little bit, I can give you what there's a little bit, or if you want a lot of it, you just have to go around all the land you want, and it's yours on one condition. You have to come back to where you started." Joseph says, "What are we waiting for?" Joseph, they go to bed, and the next morning, Joseph wakes up at the crack of dawn and says, "Let's get going. I need this land."

So he gives the chief, puts in the chief's hat, the $1,000, and the chief says, "Remember, we're starting on this hill, and you have to come back by the end of the day at the hill, and it's all yours. If not, you forfeit the money." Joseph says, "I'm ready." So Joseph takes off his overcoat and grabs a bottle of water, and a sack of bread, and away he goes. At first, he's really pleased with why this land is so nice. And he goes approximately three miles. He digs a little hole to show, "Okay, this is my first line of my land." Now it's about like 10:00 in the morning. He says, "Well, I can go a couple more hours, and I'll take a little rest at noon."

So he goes a little bit longer, and now he's maybe 8 or 10 miles from where he started, and it's getting hot in the middle of the day. And he says, "Boy, I think I may be bitten off a little bit more than I can chew, but I can suffer for one day. It'll be all worth it. I can have all this land, whatever it is, maybe 10 square miles or something." So Joseph starts taking his next thing. He says, "Oh, look at that. There's a little creek. I'll just kind of go around the creek. That'll be nice. I have a little creek where I can have fish or what have you." Then I'll start coming back, and he says, "Whoa, I've gotten a little bit too far out.

Well, I make it in time." Now we're about 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. He says, "Well, I can tell the sun's getting down, but I am really bushed. But I can make it." So Joseph starts booking it as fast as he can. He's about maybe 15 miles back from the starting point. He says, "Oh, this is terrible. I'm pooping out, running out of steam.

The sweat's pouring off of him. His heart is beating really fast. Just with the heat, as we know, it can be hard, especially in the middle of the day." He's like, "Boy, can I make it?" So he says, "The clock is getting down." He starts more or less jogging. He says, "I got to get there. I do not want to lose this land. I don't want to lose my money." So he starts running. And then he's getting closer, and then he can see all the people on the hill are cheering him on, "You'll make it. You'll make it." So he starts really running, and then he sees, "Oh, no." He forgets the hill. So the sun went down.

So Joseph screams, "I lost it." Then he realized, "Oh, they're in the hill. So the sun's not quite down." And he starts to, "I think I'll make it." And then they cheer him on, and he makes that one last umph, and he gets there. And as he gets to the top of the hill, if you remember the story, he tips over and more or less falls down right on top of the money. And the chief says, "He did it. He got it." And the servant runs over and said, "No, he's dead.

He died." So the servant takes Joseph's spade that he brought with him and digs a hole, a six-foot hole. That's all the land a man needs. That's, I think, a good object lesson that we can think about as we think about covetousness. What do we really need?

My dictionary defines covetousness as marked by an N-word, which means unsatiable or excessive desire for wealth or possessions or for someone else's possessions, meaning coveting somebody else's things. A covetous person is always wanting more and more things. He or she is never satisfied.

A good synonym of covetousness is greed or avarice, which is extreme greed.

Some thoughts of why I think covetousness is such a perverse sin, how it is so in contrast to God's ways. First of it, if you think about it, when you're covetous, you value things, possessions, money, whatever it is, land, over people who are created in the image of God.

Often, a person who's covetous, I don't think we can say 100%, but often they will do whatever it takes to get what they're coveting. Sometimes as far as going to aspects of stealing, cheating, things like that, because the covetousness is controlling their heart. They have to have it.

The other thing about covetousness, why I think it's completely against God, is it tells us, "I'm in control. I have everything made. I'm in control of my life. I'm taking care of myself. I don't need others. I don't need God. It's me. It's all self-centered."

Another idea of why covetousness is completely wrong is right here. It's equated to idolatry in the Bible. A covetous person ultimately can create an idol of riches, wealth, or things. He or she may not actually think in their mind they are worshiping their things, but they are. And if we think about the rich people throughout history, they're often worshiped by their community. They're looked up to. They're idolized. They're esteemed. Again, there's a worship that belongs only to God.

A famous Roman satirist says, "No deity is held in such reverence among us as wealth."

Another reason why I think covetousness is completely against God's way is that we ultimately think these things will make us happy. We will be satisfied by these things. The riches, the wealth, in this case, I gave the example of land, that we will find our satisfaction in something else besides God.

And unfortunately, the world teaches that. If you hang out and read any things online in books, the world teaches that money and wealth can buy you happiness. Why? I think we live in a capitalist society, and that is what drives it, that if you're wealthy, you will be happy. You can do whatever you want.

Another definition of why I think covetousness, you become a slave to your passion for the things, for the money, for whatever, as it says in the next slide. "But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and the snare into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

I want to look mostly at the New Testament teachings on wealth and covetousness, but if we all remember, it is specifically talked about in the Ten Commandments, covetousness and idolatry. The first commandment, this is found in Exodus 20:3, "You shall have no other gods before me."

And I think that's a very primary one. With covetousness, we are making an idol. The eighth commandment, verse 20 of Exodus, "You shall not steal." Again, covetousness can lead to stealing. And then the last one, which we're all familiar with, the tenth commandment, "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."

We're probably all familiar. I think the greatest literary example of a covetous person is Ebenezer Scrooge, found in the story of Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I think we've most likely read that story, and we can picture who he was.

And I think we can learn from that story. And that's why I just brought it up. I think it's something we can picture. What is the solution to covetousness? I think the obvious solution is to look to Jesus and his teachings. When we look at the Gospels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus came, when he began his ministry, he came preaching the kingdom of God. I'm just going to read one verse here. It says, "From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" And I just looked at the word repent or repentance. It is defined to be convinced of another way, to change your mind or convictions, and in response to being convinced in your mind and heart, changing your actions.

Repentance means turning from your own way to going God's way. If we think about what Jesus did, when he came, he came to show us a new way of life. His revelationary teachings show us how God created us to live from the beginning, as it says in Genesis. When he goes in his teachings, he says, "You have heard, but I tell you, it was not so in the beginning."

These teachings go to the core of the problem. They help us to see what is eternal and what is not eternal and what we should value. If you think about it, God did not create us to be selfish, to covet, to hoard, to not help others.

If you think about Jesus' teachings on covetousness, wealth, and accumulation of possessions, they mark a complete paradigm shift referring to wealth. I will explain what a paradigm means in a second. This shift is both from how the world views wealth, like I said, it teaches you to accumulate, to hoard, to be selfish, and even what the Old Testament talked about wealth, where that wealth is often a sign of God's blessing in your life. If you think about King David, King Solomon, and I'll just explain. A paradigm is a model with basic assumptions and concepts to help you understand life. And as I said, Jesus changed that paradigm completely from both what the world teaches and even, like I said, the Old Testament.

A paradigm shift is to replace one way of thinking with another way of thinking.

I think we've all, the one I just thought of as an example is Sir Isaac Newton taught a certain way of physics, saying, "Which held time and space to be in the same everywhere for all observers." And then when Einstein started his idea of the theory of relativity, it holds time and space to be relative to the observer's time of reference. It's actually based on your, so it's based on your location.

Here are just a few teachings of Jesus on wealth and accumulation of things found in the Gospels. I'm not going to share all of them, and I'll give you a few references I won't look up. The first one is Matthew 16:19-21, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

I'm just going to read two verses, but this is Matthew 25:34 and 35, but the complete passage is Matthew 31-46. Then it says, "Then the king will say to those on his right hand, 'Come, you blessed of my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in.'" This is Luke 6:20. And it says, "Then he lifted up his eyes toward his disciples and said, 'Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.'" Matthew 19:24, "And again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through an ivy needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 13:22, "Now he who receives seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful." Two more. Mark 8:36, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?" And one last one that I'm going to read out loud is Luke 12:20-21, "But God said to him, 'Fool, this night your soul will be required of you. Then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.'" Just a few other verses that you can look up if you have time would be Matthew 19:16-24, Matthew 6:24, Luke 14:26-33, Luke 16:25, and Luke 12:33.

And that's not a comprehensive list. There's many other verses that are out there. I found a very good quote in this book, Secret of the King and Life, written by my father, just talking about these ideas of the commandments of Jesus on wealth. I will just read this quote here.

It's going to be on two, three, I think it's three slides. The starting point is to try to understand why Jesus gives us this commandment. Jesus' compelling motive for giving us any commandment is his deep love for us. So remember that he doesn't give his commandments concerning money and material possessions to be harsh and unkind. He is not trying to make the journey difficult for us. It's just the opposite. He's trying to make the journey feasible for us. He is interested in our eternal welfare.

The reason Jesus bids us to detach ourselves from material things is because it's not possible to serve him and also pursue riches. He explains in Luke 16:13, "No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."

End of this quote. These statements are not a commandment. Here's something much stronger. Jesus is stating the facts of reality. No one can love two things diametrically opposed to each other.

Jesus' teachings turned upside down the importance of wealth and the value of wealth. They brought in a paradigm shift that is much more significant than any other paradigm shift in human history relating to wealth and, I would say, anything else. They show us what is important in the light of eternity.

Now I want to look at a few practical ways to help you and I overcome covetousness and the sin. Step one, and I know this is not a comprehensive. I know I left a few things out. Step one, examine yourselves, your beliefs, your values, your actions in the light of Jesus' teachings. I just remembered what Dean Taylor, one of his favorite mottos is, "What if Jesus really meant everything he said?"

You should look at yourself, I mean, to honestly examine yourself. Have you completely embraced the kingdom of God and the revolutionary teachings of Jesus on wealth, or are you a fence-sitter? Have we made the necessary paradigm shift of what is truly valuable in eternity? Or deep down in your innermost thoughts, do you still believe and embrace what the world teaches on wealth?

Jesus' teachings on wealth and accumulation and materialism are in direct opposition to what the world teaches on wealth. Do we believe Jesus' warnings? He said that it's easier for a camel to go through the ivy needle than for a rich man to enter in the kingdom of heaven. That's a pretty radical statement, but it's coming from the Lord and Creator of the universe.

Do you also believe what Jesus said on what it means on being poor? He had two statements, one in Luke and one in Matthew. Luke has said, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven." And in Matthew, this is in the Sermon on the Mount, it says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

I'll just explain a little bit on the poor in spirit. It said all of the early Christians who talked about this verse on being poor in spirit understood it to mean one of two things. Being humble in spirit are those who voluntarily chose or embraced poverty for spiritual reasons.

Here's the first quote. Archelaus, this is talking about the humbleness, explains, "Jesus did not refer to those who are simply poor in worldly substance, but to those who are poor in spirit. That is to say, who are not inflamed with pride, but have a gentle and lowly character of humility, not thinking more of themselves than they ought." And Clement of Alexandria wrote, "It is not simply the poor whom he pronounces as blessed, but those who are become poor for righteousness' sake. These are the ones who have despised the honors of this world in order to obtain to the good."

Step two, and it's something I came across when I was reading an article. It defines it, "Remember generational forgetfulness or amnesia." That's a new concept. When I read it, it's something I think we can all think about and agree with.

Generational forgetfulness can be defined as the idea that the present generation that we live in has forgotten how the previous generations lived. And it has a profound effect on the way that we see the world. And unfortunately, all of us come to suffer from it no matter how young or old we are.

Every generation is handed the world that has been shaped by their predecessor and then seemingly forgets the facts. Consider how we think about technology. The current generation's idea of technology means smartphone, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, or the internet, but it wasn't always so. At one time, technology was centered on pneumatics or steam rather than silicon.

Some inventions are so commonplace that we've totally forgotten that there are even technologies. And this person gave the example of a chair. That's an example of a technology, but we don't take it that way. Someone had to figure out how many legs to put on it, how high to make it, the dimensions.

As a result, the average person today lives in a life with so many advances and luxuries that even the most privileged and rich people from the past could only dream of. If you think about Cleopatra or Caesar Augustus coming to where we live today and they can see the present world, they would marvel. We have electricity, air conditioning, modern travel.

We have refrigerators. We have indoor plumbing, etc.

You might think about, well, how does this affect covetousness? But it does. We take everything so for granted, and then we're no longer even satisfied with what we have. We want more. I think if we're all honest, we most likely have been affected by the American dream, which is, quote, a term coined because we live in the US, but I think other countries have the same idea. That is, that anyone, regardless of where they came from, can obtain their own version of success with upward mobility, meaning being more and more well to do. And often it usually means we live a life better off than our parents.

I can just give a few examples. One example of my own life, when Elizabeth and I were first married, we had one car. Most of you maybe had one car, and we made it do for approximately three years. And then we ended up with two cars, and now I don't think we can go back to one car.

And we think, boy, something like that. My dad shared with me, he grew up in the Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, Texas, in the 1960s. Virtually nobody in the 1960s had air conditioning. Air conditioning was, I think, invented in the 1940s. But they made do. Harlingen, Texas, the average highs are in the 90s from May to September, October.

They had fans, like attic fans, ceiling fans, fans in your window, and they opened windows up, but they made do, including the public schools. I think nowadays everybody would say, "What? You can't have no air conditioning? This is the state of Texas."

Something else that even hit me is we were talking, Elizabeth and I, if you remember this author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, she wrote books about her life from the 1870s to approximately 1890s. In the book, Little House in the Big Wood, she describes one of her family Christmases. Now, I'm going to read you these quotes about her Christmas, and just let you think about what about your own Christmas or birthday presents or anything like that. Just think about what she got. "In each stocking, there was a pair of bright red mittens, and there was a long flat stick of red and white striped peppermint candy, all beautifully notched along each side. They were so happy they could hardly speak at first.

They just looked with shining eyes at those lovely Christmas presents. But Laura was happiest of all. Laura had a rag doll." And there's a similar one in the book, Little House on the Prairie, with this Christmas scene again a couple of years later. "Then Ma said, 'You may look now, girls. Something was shining bright in the top of Laura's stocking. She squirled and jumped out of bed. And the shining thing was a glittering new tin cup. Mary had one exactly like it. Then they plunged their hands in the stockings again. They pulled out two long strips of candy. It was peppermint candy striped red and white. The stockings were an empty get. Mary and Laura pulled out two small packages.

They unwrapped them, and they each found a little red heart-shaped cake. Laura and Mary never would have looked in their stockings again. The cups and the cakes and the candy was almost too much. They were too happy to speak. But Ma asked if they were sure the stockings were empty. Then they put their hands down inside them to make sure. And in the very toe of each stocking was a shiny, bright new penny.

They had never even thought of such a thing as having a penny. Think of having a whole penny for your very own. Thinking of having a cup and a cake and a stick of candy and a penny. There never had been such a Christmas."

This now leads us to my step three. I need to examine my own life and in relation to a previous generation's standard of living and my own standard of living in the light of Jesus' teachings. If you had that for your Christmas present or your birthday present, would you have been excited? If you think about it, a penny, a tin cup, a piece of peppermint candy? I like peppermint candy, but I know some people don't. A little cake, like a cupcake. And then Laura was excited about a little homemade rag doll. I think if we're all honest, that would not get any of us very excited. I know this is the 1870s. A penny would buy a little bit more than nowadays.

But just how far have we come that she was, and I know these books were written way after she lived, but they even write that they were excited and they were happy by so little. And that's like, she made the comment, "There never has been such a Christmas." This is something to think about in your own life with yourself and your children. How far have we, or my own standard of living, moved to make something would make me content and happy? I didn't even realize it.

I thought about my dad growing up in South Texas without AC. We are blessed. We live in Pennsylvania where it doesn't get quite that hot, but still it does get warm. And I think we're all very thankful for AC, but do we complain? Are we discontent when our AC doesn't work? I just thought about that. I mean, my dad, he was Texas, and I lived in Tyler, Texas, which is slightly cooler than Harlingen, but it's the same way. It does not cool off. You would not call their winter a winter. You would call it a spring here.

The idea, we look at our neighbors or other people in our church and say, "Oh, we live just like everybody else. We're not wealthy. I have the same standard of living as everyone else. They have two cars. I have two cars. We have a two-story house or a rancher. We're fine." But that's not where we get our standard of wealth. It's by looking at each other, looking at our neighbors.

The correct way to determine where wealth is, we look at the teachings of Jesus. What did he say is wealthy?

He is the standard, not our world around us.

And when we look at Jesus, we have to take what he says at face value for what it says, not, "Oh, it was for another time period," or, "It doesn't mean this." I say, "Well, I really like Dean Taylor's. What if Jesus really meant everything he said?" Which I think he did. I don't think it was he didn't say.

Why I think this idea of this examination and comparing ourselves to Jesus is I want my children to see that their dad wants to follow Jesus. They will pick up from how I live. Do I really want to follow Jesus or do I want to follow my own ways? I think we all know that, that our children, their ears, their eyes see what mom and dad say is important and is not important. And what do we want to leave for them?

Step four, and I think there's no step, is the idea of to overcome peer pressure and the influence that it has on to be covetousness and discontent. Peer pressure, this is a little simple definition. You have a herd of your peers. You want to be part of it. You want to be accepted.

And you all go do stuff together, whatever. We actually, as a congregation here, we do have peer pressure on each other. As I said, peer pressure is not bad, but it can have negative influences. As it says, this is my next slide, 1 Corinthians 15:33-34. "Do not be deceived. Evil company can corrupt good habits. Awake to righteousness and do not sin, for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame." Here's an example of how I heard about how peer pressure can lead to covetousness. I heard from an acquaintance that when they have family gatherings, the husbands often will sit around talking about their newest car, their newest, whatever it is, truck, boat, what they're going to do, what they're wanting to get for the future.

The wives talk about their clothing, their dresses, their head coverings, their purses, their shoes, their bags. And there's always this, "How can I want to be the most stylish?" They talk about their fancy vacations, their fancy homes, their fancy cars.

And of course, this person shared it makes them very discontent and dissatisfied with what they have. And I know that's maybe an extreme example, but I think if we're not honest, we all probably accept have that. I think the best defense against peer pressure is, again, to follow Jesus and look at his teachings. But I think there's two other ideas. It's to think ahead of time when we are put in a bad situation, what will we do? So we have an escape plan, as we talked about this morning. And number two is make sure our peers that we hang out with are people who are pointing us in the right direction, who are trying to follow Christ seriously.

If we hang out with people who are saying, "Well, I want the latest this. I want the latest that," it's probably not going to help us in our spiritual walk.

Step five is develop a spirit of contentment and the spirit of gratefulness. Be content with the simple things. I really appreciate all of you who send these pictures of the sunrise, the sunset. Just think about that. God created something that's beyond worth anything that we can make. Those sunsets I see pictures of are the sunrise. To view that, that is extraordinary. But be content with that. To truly grasp that our life is not made of our riches, our wealth, our possessions. Contentment will free us from so much misery and free us from the rat race that we see in the world around us.

The state of being satisfied with what you have, even if it's very little.

1 Timothy 6:6-8, "Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these, we shall be content." A related concept is gratefulness, a feeling of appreciation for what we have. Being appreciative of our spouses for what they do for us, our wives or our husband, for our children when they help us, for our congregation, for God with his blessing. I just thought about, we are blessed. It was very hot last week, and we got a cold front, and we got some rain. That is a blessing if you think about it, that God provided that for us, worth more than anything else.

If you think we don't get rain, everything's going to die. So that is worth, I'd say, more than anything else. As it says in 1 Thessalonians 5, "Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. And everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

Step six, reevaluate your giving. As Jesus said, "What is done to the least of my brethren is done to him." Is our charitable giving woven throughout the fabric of our lives? I'm not talking just about an occasional giving of charity. I'm talking about, do you live with a constant desire of sharing both money and your time to bless others?

Romans 13:9, "For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness, and you shall not covet. If there is any other commandment, they are all summed up in this saying, namely, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" Hey, do you know, I'd like to make comments with William Lawson. This is sure a few ideas that he shared on this idea.

If there be nothing so glorious as doing good, if there is nothing that makes us so like to God, then nothing can be so glorious in the use of our money as to use it in all works of love and goodness, making ourselves friends and fathers and benefactors to all our fellow creatures, imitating the divine love and turning all our powers into acts of generosity, care, and kindness to such as are in need of it.

Every exhortation in scripture to be wise and reasonable, satisfying only such wants as God would have satisfied. Every exhortation to be spiritual and heavenly, pressing after a glorious change of our nature. Every exhortation to love our neighbor as ourself, to love all mankind as God has loved them, is a command to be strictly religious in the use of our money. For none of these tempers can be complied with unless we be wise and reasonable, spiritual and heavenly, exercising a brotherly love, a God-like charity, and all use of our fortune. These tempers and this use of our worldly goods is so much the doctrine of all the New Testament that you cannot read a chapter without being taught something of it.

That concludes William Laws, and this is a quote by C.S. Lewis. "I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comfort, luxury, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charity does not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we would like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them."

Again, I think having our standard is Jesus, not the world around us. The next idea I have is step seven, to prioritize our life. As Jesus—sorry about that. That's the next thing. Sorry. As Jesus said, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Matthew 6:33.

I pondered what if you just think about what Jesus said. Seek God's kingdom first, and everything else in our life must be considered secondary. Jesus said a similar statement in Matthew 16:24, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

God promises us our needs, not our wants, our needs such as food, shelter, and clothing when we seek his kingdom. These couple quotes in priority. "If it is important, you will find a way. If not, you will find an excuse. Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important."

I have two last things and we'll be done here in a couple of minutes. Step eight, remember that Jesus gave his teachings and wealth to prevent us from doing harm to ourselves. They were for our good. Our Creator knows how we are created and what is going to be the best for us. If I ignore Jesus' teachings, I ultimately bring harm to myself and most likely others.

This is the quote for William Law. "If we waste our money, we are not guilty of wasting a talent which God has given us. We are not only guilty of making that useless, which is so powerful a means of doing good, but we do ourselves this further harm that we turn this useful talent into a powerful means of corrupting ourself. Because so far as it is spent wrong, so far it is spent in support of some wrong temper and gratifying some vain and reasonable desire, in conforming to those fashions and pride of the world, which as Christians and reasonable men we are obliged to renounce.

If therefore you do not spend your money in doing good to others, you must spend it to the hurt of yourself." And one last one. "So that money thus spent is not merely wasted or lost, but it is spent to bad purposes and miserable effect, to the corruption and disorder of our heart, to making us less able to live up to the sublime doctrine of the gospel. It is but like keeping money from the poor to buy poison for ourself."

My last step is following the teachings on wealth and accumulation and sharing with others will ultimately bring the greatest happiness and joy and satisfaction in our life.

And we demonstrate our love to Christ by keeping his commandments. I'm going to read this one verse about that. We're very familiar with John 14:15-21 and 23-24. "If you love me, keep my commandments. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my word, and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father who sent me."

Again, as I said, Jesus taught us how to live and what is truly valuable and what is not valuable. One last quote from C.S. Lewis. He said, "All that is not of eternal use is eternally useless." And here's the last two quotes from William Law on this idea of that God's ways are for our own benefit, what is going to make us the most happy and satisfied. "If religion has laws against laying up treasures upon earth and commands us to be content with food and raiment, it is because every other use of the world is abusing it to our own vexation and turning all its conveniences into snares and traps to destroy us. It is because this plainness and simplicity of life secures us from the care and pains of restless pride and envy, makes it easier to keep that straight road that will carry us to eternal life.

If religion says, 'Sell that you have and give to the poor,' it is because there is no other natural or reasonable use of riches, no other way of making ourselves happier for them. It is because it is strictly right to give to others that which we do not want ourselves, as it is right to use so much as our own wants require.

For if a man has more food than his own nature requires, how base and unreasonable is it to invent foolish ways of wasting it and making sport for his own full belly, rather than let his fellow creatures have the same comfort from food which he has had?

It is so far, therefore, from being a hard law of religion to make this use of our riches that a reasonable man would rejoice in that religion which teaches him to be happier in that which he gives away than in that which he keeps for himself, which teaches him to make spare food and raiment be greater blessings to him than that which feeds and clothes his own body." William Law.

In conclusion, I want to leave this challenge with you. Examine your life, your beliefs, your actions in light of the Jesus' teachings and wealth. And where they differ, I want to challenge you to change your ways, your paradigm to where it conforms with Jesus' teachings.

Thank you. I don't know if anyone has any thoughts or corrections, comments. I was convicted by what you said. There are some things just going on in life that cause me to want to hang on to things that I've been able to accrue.

And I need to have a different view of it. And I need to be able to find joy in letting things go and not planning so far into the future with things that I'm blessed with. I really appreciate your message.

Yep. All right. I think what you brought out about peer pressure is pretty powerful. I remember when I first started hearing these types of teachings from this perspective about wealth and what we have, I was convicted about that. But then it's like, well, I look around, well, so-and-so does this, so-and-so does that. You kind of get comfortable just doing what everybody else around you does. And so then those things that were convicting you before kind of goes away.

But just to be reminded about what the scriptures actually say about that. And another quote that really hit me was about, was it John Wesley, I think, that was talking about this poor woman asking for something. He didn't have anything to give her because he had just bought a picture or something to hang on his wall. And I was like, well, that seems like something that's not that big a deal to buy a decoration for your wall. But yeah, we really do think about what we spend our money on. It can be pretty convicting. Amen.

Yeah, I think what happened when he was a student at Oxford, if I remember correctly, he had just bought something for his wall, and then a maid came by and he said, "Yeah, how can I help you?" And then he reached in his pocket and he realized he'd bought something.

I really appreciated the message as well. It just makes me think about, I think John Wesley said one time, he said, "He knows a man is truly converted when his wallet gets converted too." Amen.

He said, "When his wallet gets converted as well." Yeah.

I like that quote from C.S. Lewis on, "We should be in a position, it should happen frequently, that we can't afford something because of what we're giving to others that doesn't leave us enough room for something that we might want to get for ourselves." He wasn't saying we can't spend anything on ourselves, but we should be experiencing that regularly, that, "Yeah, I can't afford this because I've already committed that money to the poor." Amen.

It's for our benefit to learn God's way. And it's funny how if you take money, for example, and you watch someone accumulate it and it's all for themselves, it ends up destroying them. And that's not what they think's going to happen.

But if you actually do it God's way, you end up blessing others and saving yourself from that destructive way that accumulation and whatever serving yourself does to yourself. It's an upside-down. Amen. That takes place and it happens right before your own eyes and it says, "Don't be deceived." And I think that's what happens. You get deceived into accumulating and whatever, just churning on it, and you don't know it.

So it's really important to follow it. Amen. That's why as I was reviewing this, it's something I'd really thought about this, the being deceived and putting Jesus' teachings that they're the foremost, that we can actually see them for what they actually are and what they mean.