Covetousness - The Silent Killer of Relationships, Part 1

The other day I saw a sign that pointed upstairs where there were more items to behold, and the sign said, "More This Way."

Sometimes more is not enough. Sometimes more "this way" is pointed in the wrong direction. And sometimes, God does not want us to have more of the things in this life. He wants us to have more of Him. When we do not want more of God, but more of what our flesh desires, then we are entering the zone of covetousness.

What is covetousness?  Allow me to introduce a passage that I will be using.

⁶ Do you want to be truly rich? You already are if you are happy and good. ⁷ After all, we didn’t bring any money with us when we came into the world, and we can’t carry away a single penny when we die. ⁸ So we should be well satisfied without money if we have enough food and clothing. ⁹ But people who long to be rich soon begin to do all kinds of wrong things to get money, things that hurt them and make them evil-minded and finally send them to hell itself. ¹⁰ For the love of money is the first step toward all kinds of sin. Some people have even turned away from God because of their love for it, and as a result have pierced themselves with many sorrows. ¹¹ O Timothy, you are God’s man. Run from all these evil things, and work instead at what is right and good, learning to trust him and love others and to be patient and gentle. ¹² Fight on for God. Hold tightly to the eternal life that God has given you and that you have confessed with such a ringing confession before many witnesses. (1 Tim. 6:6-12).

I think this text in 1 Timothy 6 makes it clear what covetousness is, and that the battle against it is a battle against unbelief, or a fight for faith in the promises of God.  Because battling covetousness is a fight and involves unbelief to make it appetizing, and because unbelief is so often subtle and it is the one sin that sends people to hell, I refer to covetousness as a silent killer of relationships.  

The word “covetousness” isn’t used in 1 Timothy 6:6-12, but the reality is what this text is all about. When verse 5b says that some are treating godliness as a means of gain, Paul responds in verse 6 that “There is great gain in godliness with contentment.” This gives us the key to the definition of covetousness.

Definition:  Covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God. “There is great gain in godliness with contentment.”

The opposite of covetousness is contentment in God. When contentment in God decreases, covetousness for gain increases. That’s why Paul says in Colossians 3:5 that covetousness is idolatry. “Put to death what is earthly in you: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry.” It’s idolatry because the contentment that the heart should be getting from God, it starts to get from someone or something else.

So, covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God. Or, we can also put it this way: Covetousness is losing your contentment in God so that you start to seek it elsewhere.

Have you ever considered that the Ten Commandments begin and end with virtually the same commandment? “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3) and “You shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17) are almost equivalent commands. Coveting is desiring anything other than God in a way that betrays a loss of contentment and satisfaction in Him. Covetousness is a heart divided between two gods. So Paul calls it idolatry.

Now, what Paul is doing in 1 Timothy 6:6–12 is trying to persuade people not to be covetous. But let’s be real sure that we see how Paul understands this battle against covetousness. He gives his reasons for not being covetous in verses 6–10, and then in verse 11 he tells Timothy to shun or to flee all that — to flee the love of money and the desire to be rich, namely, covetousness.

And he says in verse 11b, instead of giving in to covetousness, “aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” Then out of that list he picks “faith” for special attention, and says (in verse 12), “Fight the good fight of the faith.” In essence, then, he says, “Flee covetousness . . . fight the good fight of faith.”

In other words, the fight against covetousness is nothing other than the fight of faith. This is one of the clearest proofs that the way to obey the Ten Commandments (which the tenth is, “Thou shall not covet”) is by faith. It’s also proof that covetousness is a state of unbelief.

Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” In other words, what it means to believe in Jesus is to experience him as the satisfaction of my soul’s thirst and my heart’s hunger. Faith is the experience of contentment in Jesus. The fight of faith is the fight to keep your heart contented in Christ — to really believe, and keep on believing, that he will meet every need and satisfy every longing.

So covetousness, then, is exactly the opposite of faith. It’s the loss of contentment in Christ, so that we start to crave other things to satisfy the longings of our heart. There’s no mistaking, then, that the battle against covetousness is a battle against unbelief, and a battle for faith. Whenever we sense the slightest rise of covetousness in our hearts, we must turn on it and fight it with all our might with the weapons of faith.

End of Part 1

Has God Predetermined Every Tiny Detail In the Universe, Including Sin?

Has God predetermined every tiny detail in the universe, such as dust particles in the air and all of our besetting sins?  How should we answer this?  Easy, with a resounding, YES!

There's a great quote from Charles Spurgeon about dust motes. What is a dust mote? Have you ever seen a beam of light coming through a window and in that beam are dust particles floating in the air? Those are dust motes.

Spurgeon says that every one of those particles is keeping its position and moving through the air by God's appointment.

Now the reason I believe this is because the Bible says, "The dice are thrown in the lap, and every decision is from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:33).

Why would he choose "the dice is cast into the lap"? It's because he's trying to think of the most random thing he could think of. And he says that. So randomness may look like randomness to us, but not to God.

God is not the least taxed by keeping every sub-nuclear particle in its place. Everything in the middle of the molecule moving, and the electrons—he's got them all in orbit, just like he has the planets in orbit.  So the macro-world and micro-world are all managed by God. Which means, every horrible thing and every sinful thing is ultimately governed by a sovereign God.

Now this appears to be a problem, but the center of the solution is a choice you have to make about the cross. When you think about such thing, it is good to keep yourself centered.  When you go to Acts 4:27-28 and you read that Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the Jews were all gathered together to do what God's hand and God's plan had predestined to take place in the killing of Jesus, you have God's plan and hand predestining the most horrible sins ever committed.

Pilate's choices, the soldiers' cruel mockery, the piercing of his side, the cries, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"—these few hours in history were the climax of the worst wickedness that has ever been performed on the planet or ever will be. And God planned it so that we might be saved from those sins.

In other words, what the devil did in unleashing all of that was commit suicide. Therefore, when you contemplate believing in a sovereign God who governs the dust motes, the waves (including tsunamis)—when you contemplate believing in a totally sovereign God, go to the cross so that you will stay center. Because you'll go crazy otherwise.

These things have driven people mad. But it won't drive you mad if you say, "He loves me. And he governed the most wicked thing that ever happened in the world, the crucifixion of my Savior and my God." If you stay right there and then just work out from there as far as your mind can handle, then you'll be safe. Your mind will be safe and your heart will be safe, because you'll be kept humble.

The Role of Experience in the Christian Life

We’re living in a day when personal experience has been elevated above everything else as the final criterion of right and wrong. Just think of all of the people who try to justify themselves on the basis of what and how they feel. Divorce is routinely excused on the basis of a married couple’s no longer feeling like they are in love. We are told that homosexuality should be embraced as a moral good because some homosexuals report having felt an attraction to the same sex from a young age. Even many professing Christians make their decisions about right and wrong based on how they feel.  

It’s hard to have a discussion with someone who makes their experience the final arbiter of reality. Many people embrace the old adage that “a person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.” But it this really true?

Ultimately, we have to disagree with this assertion, but not because experience is not a valuable tutor. It can help us connect theory to practice and abstract concepts to concrete situations. It assists us in sifting through the nuances of living in this complex world. Experience can be a valuable asset when it is used correctly.  There are even some experiences that seem to prove that experience trumps argumentation.

I think of the example of Roger Bannister. Before 1954, many people argued that no human being could run a mile in under four minutes. Bannister broke that record, proving by experience that the argument was invalid. The problem is not that experience can never outweigh an argument; we know from the history of science that the experience of empirical investigation has often overturned prevailing arguments. The problem is the idea that the person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument. In many cases, sound argument does indeed trump experience. This is particularly true when the debate concerns personal experience versus a sound understanding of the Word of God. 

Too often many Christians subject the Word of God to their experience. When our experience conflicts with the Word of God, we set aside the Scriptures. We might take refuge in public opinion or the most recent psychological studies. We allow the common experience of people around us to become normative, denying the wisdom and authority of God in favor of the collective experience of others, especially those who have a title, such as pastor, doctor or expert.

But we have to admit that at times we all know that experience is often a good teacher. But experience is never the best teacher. God, of course, is the best teacher. Why? Because He instructs us from the perspective of eternity and from the riches of His omniscience.

Sometimes we try to cover up our reliance on experience with more orthodox-sounding language.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard Christians tell me that the Holy Spirit led them to do things Scripture clearly forbids or that God gave them peace about their decision to act in a way that is clearly contrary to the law of God. But that’s blasphemous slander against the Spirit, as if He would ever countenance sin. It’s bad enough to blame the devil for our own decisions, but we put ourselves in grave danger when we appeal to the Spirit to justify our transgressions.

One of the most powerful devices of manipulation we’ve ever designed is to claim that we have experienced the Spirit’s approval of our actions. How can anyone dare contradict us if we claim divine authority for what we want to do? The result is that we end up silencing any questions about our behavior. But Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit leads us to holiness, not to sin, and if the Spirit inspired the Scriptures, any experience we have that suggests we can go against biblical teaching cannot be from Him.

As long as we live on this side of heaven, we must deal with the fallenness of our bodies and souls. Seeking to make our experience determinative of right and wrong means repeating Adam and Eve’s sin. Why did they disobey the Lord? Because they trusted their experience that told them “the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). They ignored the promises and warnings God revealed to them regarding the fruit of the forbidden tree. Experience can and should teach us, but it can never be the final arbiter of right and wrong. That role belongs to our Creator alone, and His Word gives us the standards by which we must live.