Friday, July 24, 2009

How Much Do You Need? The Danger of Coveting, Part 33 of 60

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).

IDEA: Covetousness is a deadly disease; it needs God’s grace as a remedy.

PURPOSE: To help listeners realize the danger in coveting.

I suppose you know what influenza is. We call it the flu for short. It’s more dangerous than a bad cold. It can lead to pneumonia. Each year about 114,000 people in the United States are hospitalized with the flu, and about 20,000 people die because of the flu. Folks over age 65 are more vulnerable, but children less than 2 years old are as likely as those over 65 to have to go to the hospital because of the flu. I’m sure that at one time or another, you’ve had influenza. If you’ve had it, you’d like never to get it again.

There’s another disease that sweeps our culture and it’s called affluenza. In some ways, it’s as dangerous and deadly as influenza. But it doesn’t send us to the hospital. At the same time it can send us to the grave.

Affluenza is another way of talking about affluence and our addiction to acquiring things. Quite frankly, it’s another name for what the tenth commandment calls covetousness. It’s prevalent in our society, but, unlike influenza, there are no campaigns to wipe it out. In fact, it’s encouraged. We’re constantly being urged to buy more and more of what we have enough of already.

But it does kill people. Watch the businessman who gets up early, goes to bed late, works seven days a week. He says that he’s concerned about his bottom line, but if you look closely, he may have a bad case of affluenza.

Or that woman over there: she seems healthy enough. She’s not wearing a hospital gown or a bathrobe. In fact, she’s dressed in the latest fashion. But if you took a look at her credit card or credit cards, you might see that she has spent far more than she takes in, and she simply pays the interest on what she owes to the banks. She’s suffering from affluenza, and the pressure she feels each month to pay her bills could be driving her to the grave.

When people die, they put on the death certificate something like “heart attack,” but if they told the whole truth, they would say that the person died of affluenza. Or putting it in biblical terms, they died from covetousness. It’s hard to estimate how many lives are lost in the pursuit of getting more and more of what we have enough of already.

Leo Tolstoy, in his short story, “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” tells about a peasant named Pahom. This peasant had become a man of property, and his ownership inflamed him with a desire for even more land. He heard of vast lands beyond the Volga River that could be obtained for almost a pittance from a far-off nomadic people called the Bashkirs. So Pahom traveled to this distance land which was virgin soil, flat as the palm of one’s hand and as black as poppy seed with grasses chest high.

And what will be the price?” asked Pahom.

“Our price is always the same: one thousand rubles a day,” replied the Chief.

“A day? What kind of measure is that? How many acres would that be?” asked Pahom.

“We do not know how to reckon it out,” said the Chief. “We sell it by the day. As much as you can go around on your feet in a day is yours, and the price is one thousand rubles a day.”

Pahom was surprised: “But in a day you can get around a large tract of land!”

The Chief laughed: “It will all be yours. But there is one condition. If you don’t return on the same day to the spot whence you started, your money is lost.”

That night Pahom couldn’t sleep. But shortly before dawn he drifted off and began to dream that he was in his own tent and heard laughing from outside. Going out, he saw the Bashkir chief sitting in front of the tent holding his sides and rolling about in laughter.

As he came closer, he saw that it was no longer the chief, but the devil himself with horns and cloven hoofs, chuckling away. In front of the devil lay a barefoot man wearing only trousers and a shirt. Pahom, in his dream, looked closer and saw that the man was dead - and the man was himself. He awoke in horror. “What things one does dream!” he thought.

Pahom reached the plain as the morning red began to kindle. Placing his thousand rubles in the fur hat the Chieftain had set on the ground, he began walking. His pace was neither slow nor quick, but as we walked through the land, he picked up his stride because with each step the land seemed better. In an effort to include a particularly inviting field, he went much to far before he set his marker and turned. Then he hurried along fasted under the hot sun which had begun to sink in the west.

Exhausted after circling such a huge tract of land, Pahom turned back toward the starting hill, walking with difficulty, his legs beginning to drag. His chest worked like a blacksmith’s bellows, his heart beat like a hammer, his legs sometimes seemed to fail him. But he could see the hill with the Bashkirs cheering him on.

Tolstoy concluded the story with these words: “Pahom looked at the sun, which had reached the earth, one side of it had already disappeared. With all his remaining strength he rushed on, bending his body forward so that his legs could hardly follow fast enough to keep him from falling. Just as he reached the hillock, it suddenly grew black. He looked up–the sun had already set. He gave a cry, “All my labor has been in vain!” He was about to stop, but he heard the Bashkirs still shouting, and remembered that though to him, from below, the sun seemed to have set, they were on the hillock and could still see it. He took a long breath and ran up the hillock. It was still light there. He reached the top and saw the cap. Before it sat the Chief laughing and holding his sides. Again Pahom remembered his dream, and he uttered a cry. His legs gave way beneath him, he fell forward and reached the cap with his hands . . .

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grace long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all the land he needed.”

R. Kent Hughes (in Disciplines of Grace) reminds us that Pahom’s race is being run through streets in Tokyo and New York and in suburbia with the same tragic ending. Covetous greed diseases the soul of humanity. We reject the disease as sub-Christian, but every day somewhere a buttoned-down brother or a well-coiffed sister is buried after they sacrificed everything in the headlong charge up the elusive hilltop.

This is why God’s tenth commandment is such a monumental word of Grace. Understood and lived out, it silences hell’s amusement and invites the laughter of heaven to grace our footsteps. This word was given to God’s people, not just to people in the world. It is for all of us with no exceptions. “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.”