The Other Man’s Grass (Part 2 of 2)

When we made a guard, they greedily devour the nutrients they take over the space. We don't root them out will destroy the flowers or the vegetables we planted coveting can similarly consume our hearts and destroy our relationships today. Untruthful IPO to learn how to weed out covetousness Alastair biggest teaching from Exodus 20, part two of a message titled the other man's grass. Whatever happened to biblical content. What ever happened to her satisfaction in the awareness of the five God has not pledged himself to baptize our materialistic emergencies.

Christianity there is nowhere in the whole Bible that assumes that we want to be healthy, wealthy and wise. As a result of our commitment to Jesus Christ and to teach that way is an absolute violation of the Bible, and yet we hear it all the time and day out. I put Jesus first in my life I've scored more touchdowns now than I ever did. I put Jesus first in my life and you are coming driving my car. I put Jesus first in my life and my company is gone through the roof and his profit message messages. Jesus is a guru on the way to materialistic happiness doesn't sound like the words of Jesus doesn't.

If anyone would like to follow me. Let them take up his cross, everyday die to himself.

Me if any man would be my disciple. Let them burn the bridges and go let him pull his boat up on the shore and follow me leave everything behind loved ones. We got it's all upside down and living with it for so long that when somebody turns the Scriptures the right side out for us it starts to sound like heresy to I came here in October and August 3, 1983 I started trying get intelligently the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal Wednesday, October 12, 1983. This headline and inside full-page advertisement in the Wall Street is headed demoralized. My neighbor okay this is an Aston Martin. For those of you who are car aficionados is one thing to trundle Brian a Bentley Jagger Mercedes or the like. Everyone in your neighborhood is one of those. It's quite another thing to come in for a landing in your logon and if you get an Aston Martin that all the poor clowns in your neighborhood that only dry Jaguar Mercedes and BMW. You gonna make them go to bed feeling really appealed to everything is good and is sensible people think this stuff Bible relevant to our sin is fully applicable to our day it gets to the heart of the issues. Now if the Evans of coveting is plain for all to see. What about the effect of coveting this coveting half let me say four things that coveting will do simple things obvious. Perhaps, let me just underpin number one coveting spoils relationships and lines behind many of our disagreements, coveting spoils relationships and lies behind many of our disagreements, you take a couple of of youngsters who try to get her through school. They were the best of friends.

They spent overnight, they did homework together. They were there were neck and neck all the way through the graduated well. He went on to college while they were still neck and neck but after college.

One of them went orbital in terms of financial success and the other one went on a slower track.

The slower track fellow can't stand the success of this guy. And so when he calls these no longer is interested. Their friendship is no longer cemented their care for one another is no longer what it was because this guys get a covetous heart can't stand the success of another that happens between brothers and sisters in a family. It happens in churches it happens between pastors spoke to a friend of mine on the phone a couple weeks ago and I asked him I said, have you spoken to acts lately whose another friend of ours is a pastor. No I said I haven't I haven't spoken to annexation. We were together in the summer. That is this guy and I too am speaking civil I don't feel so bad about being on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. If you haven't even spoken to them and you only live 12 miles away from I said you don't understand X is in the big leagues now.

I don't know all that means, but I know there's something of covetousness in that guy's heart. There's something he's not dealing with because there are no big leaks. Secondly, covetousness breaks the summary commandment of Jesus, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

It's impossible to really love somebody and to be coveting their stuff when we should say, my, that is a very pretty color on you are covetous hearts say nothing and we get in our car, saying I don't know why she got that he can't have a covetous heart I can have a covetous heart and really love you. Thirdly, a covetous heart makes me essentially selfish makes me always ask what is best for me. How will I do in this how my going to come out of this will happen to me in this deal and fourthly a covetous heart and perhaps worst of all, makes us think that life is all about material things that a abundance of life is really what we've got, that he who dies with the most toys wins would buy the whole package Nelson Rockefeller interviewed by a newspaper report from one occasion was asked how much money does it take to be happy. Rockefeller reply just a little bit more. Think about think about it when you're a child if I said you can have this much of an allowance you really thrilled you please draw you nothing before he said that he said and then he gave you your throat, do you walk outside and you said your friend. I think you mean a lot to me a dog fence is like that get me to find. I work in a covetous heart.

He can be content with the dollar in your pocket for worrying about the father. The guy next to you the two bucks and that's what happens in churches. What happens in companies to hams and fundies within the question is obvious if the problem is is endemic is that if it is as deep rooted is that if it is as crucial as that on the world are we going to rooted out when we going to will the answer is that we need to bring an eternal perspective to bear upon the effects of time in order to do that when you return with me to a story that is recorded for us in Luke chapter 12 and will make this our concluding illustration with chapter 12 in verse 13 someone in the crowd said to him teacher. This is the Jesus teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me, all attorneys tell me they never seen as many squabbles in their life is when they have to do with wills and the reading of wills. In a perfect friends become total enemies forever after they come into say the last will and testament of Reginald Bowes and get his fall is in the person or things that I made a bundle gets nothing and goes and goes to the jogger Humane Society to display cats or something that people get really ticked off over that stuff. I believe I'm justifiably so. Especially as it relates to cats but that's another question altogether. The fact of the matter is, there was a problem between these characters.

Presumably, one had it all and didn't want to give it all up in one didn't have it and wanted to get so you got the perfect recipe for the guys got it in one given out. My guy hasn't got a musket that's strike so he says tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me, Jesus, as he not in the business of dividing inheritances is not why I can throw people to can take care that he said but since you're so concerned about stuff you clearly are, and since you're so concerned about having an inheritance. Let me tell you a story about a guy who was so sure that he had a good inheritance and then he goes on to bring this eternal perspective to bear upon the circumstances of possessions. Let me try and summarize it for as if if I may, first of all, he says to the individual. Watch out verse 15 or be alert. Don't just go with the flow. Don't just accept when people say everybody wants to be number one. Be alert to go over that and say hey when a minute. If everybody wants to be number one, it can be number one, we had a problem. Everybody else is two, three, four, five and six and since I've spent most of my life being a good seven run eight or nine or 10, but not much chance of me being number one. The process think these things out. Secondly, beware be on your guard. He says against all kinds of greed all kinds of greed. The comprehensive nature of greed is addressed here by Jesus. He says make sure that use you appoint sentries and the doors of your life and the avenues of your existence that against the inroads of greed. You know, he says the things that that creek that responds within you. Make sure that you set it up in such a way you are not only alert to his advances. But you are ready for the events and thirdly be clear, he says be clear about this man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

Now I ask you loved ones is not a revolutionary statement or what because today in our culture prestige and power and recognition and influence are almost exclusively Thai to possessions. Think about in an earlier generation, perhaps, although we then live there and we can say with with authority in an earlier generation, it would appear at least that certain things were valued above possession. For example, the schoolteacher with a caring heart then instructed Green Gables okay. The doctor who is prepared in all days and times and conditions, go out for the delivery of the baby and everything else. The pastor who was prepared to bring spiritual comfort and care to the dying and to the bereaved into the wayward and the loss those things may have been involved in earlier generations, but by and large in our contemporary culture. The substance of a man's existence and his prestige is directly related to external, superficial, non-lasting stuff now.

Loved ones. If we don't believe that we not ask yourself the question why it is were spending so much time to get stuff and why we attacked such significance to this stuff when we get is because we have bought into the mindset of our generation. Now all of us are tinted with none of us but we got outlawed early drop can say we are not into it's not a problem of the haves is a problem of the have-nots as well as the Habs. Indeed, many of us who have not maybe a more covetous heart than many of the people in one of the indications of our covetous heart is that we like to badmouth the people have just because we have a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions were there for life is the words so way, which means the essence of a man's life.

There is another word in Greek for life, which is the BIOS from which we in biology, which is the way of life. Jesus doesn't say that I'm not the way of a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. He says the essence of a man's life is consistent abundance of his see my good friend in Scotland who died on Thursday from cancer had a lot of possessions he had a Rolls-Royce. Here, the largest Ford dealership in Scotland. He had power.

He had influence.

But he's also the guy who when he took the Ford dealership only had 2000 pounds to his name that his dad left him when the Ford dealer came to him and said Mr. corner you will open a Gary job here in Aberdeen.

Yes, I am Jason will let me show you the prospectus of how you do it. This is how form once the places opened up said this is the opening times Stephen looked at the opening times. He said I got a problem… Is on the one open on a Sunday is swimming in a little notice on the sublime about open on a Sunday said I go to church on Sundays.

I worship the Lord on Sunday and I believe that Sunday is the Lord's day the guy says you cannot afford franchise. If you don't open on Sunday. The guy says well then I don't have a form franchise but I'll tell you what he said you trust me with afford franchise sell more cars for you in Scotland in six days than anyone else was selling seven guys as well. It's against the rules against the protocol, but will do it. I want to tell you something. The people who will attend the funeral service for Stephen corner will not be there because he had a Rolls-Royce.

Most people don't even know he's got. They will not be there because of the abundance of his possessions. They will be there because that clarity of his Christian testimony soul pervaded everything about that man's life that it was impossible to know without knowing that a man's life does not consist in the abundance of what he possesses. Some of us, whether with much or with little with their teenagers or kids have never crossed that bridge we know it. Theoretically we do not believe it experientially and we live cripple by a covetous heart will never ever have enough. According to our perspective. Once that becomes a rock that heroin addict cannot shoot up in, nor can the material's talk to anyone who's in retailing around the malls of the city and they will tell you that there are people who are not only on the lists get the little card that says come for our sale by there on the special list of high priority list which says the minutes, a new shipment of thing arrives. Call me because I cannot stand the possibility that my neighbor comes down the street with advanced were talking about intravenous materialism at that point would talk about shooting up big time and Jesus says it's absolutely bogus. So, he illustrates he says the guy decided that he would keep for himself what he might've given away to others.

He stored up for a future that never came. He says to himself. In verse 19. Now say to myself you the plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, drink and be merry plenty of time. He had plenty of stuff in no time. He was foolish enough to presume that he would have forever to enjoy what he had made and he was wrong. I got to preach this to someone you man as well and you know you misunderstand the dialer preaching to you anyway.

I have buried more men than I can tell you who refused to stop working. It was not because he didn't have enough money. It was because they were consumed with their annuities and their investment. The one thing they were not going to do was touch principal and if I work a little bit longer I get a little factor that will mean we will live off the interest always in the nest that will be big and the wife you say they offer me. Why don't we go for a little trip.

We sail on a boat when we take a train. One week hold on on on on a wait a minute. Just let me go for another weave while when I finish you want to seek you will be on vacation like we're going on around the globe many times as you want. I will never have to type some principal. That's what I love never ties the principal import-export audit because he's dead and I say when his wife is wads of money and she's lonely and she's an and she was always going to have the vacations the never ever came because he stormed for a future that he couldn't bank on what's the lesson from that you don't plan for the future know that would be silly. The lesson is carpe diem sees the day you want to take your wife a walk, take a walk this afternoon because if you plan it for next Thursday. You may not be you want to buy her children ice cream by now you want to snuggle them in their beds and snuggle them tonight. Don't smell them when you become smart enough to take four days off a week. You may never long enough snuggle them tonight is the only night you got love your wife today. It's the only day you have usual resources this afternoon because it's the only time that you may use them. Another benefit of generosity of the fun of giving stuff away when your dad that your attorney has the chance to dish it out to everybody and a lot of fun and that well. Our time is gone. The lesson is clear.

Covetous heart can only be driven out by the explosive power of the new affection the explosive power of a new affection. The psalmist statement is as challenging as any I can ever read when he says whom have I in heaven, but you that's good we can all say that a man who have we in heaven, but God answers no one but God and then he says, and are has nothing I desire besides you. Psalm 73 verse 25. I'm not there yet. I don't know if you are, but I'm not but I want to be. I want to find out what that means. I know for sure it doesn't mean stripping yourself naked and lying in a cave somewhere.

I know that's not it. Jesus never taught, I know it's not about going in a Monastery. I know it's not about not about communism.

I know it's about the fact that some of us are going to be given more than others, and whatever were given we go to make sure that we use it to the glory of God. We don't covet what other people have. We don't look down our long noses on others because they never blessed in the same but is a hard one, and I wonder when's the last time you ever heard a sermon on the sin of coveting that you can remember one because nobody wants to preach on coveting because there's a whole lot of coveting going on and nobody can avoid these books. I know I can't. Don't try.

Don't have to be poor to covet anyone can come. It's not just about possessions listening to Truth for Life Alister Bragg with part two of a message titled the other man's grass.

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