IT BROUGHT DOWN A KING, IT COULD DO THE SAME TO YOU – COVETOUSNESS 1 Kings 21

Sermon by Andrew Loh:

1.                 COVETOUSNESS – WHAT IS IT?

• an envious eagerness to possess
• extreme/insatiable greed/desire for material/wealth
• reprehensible acquisitiveness
• undue craving for that which one has no right describes in Prov 25:28 – a man that has no self-control over his spirit
• A grave heinous sin (in tradition, one of the 7 deadly sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth)
• it amounts to being idolatrous (Col 3:5 therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire & greed which amounts to idolatry.)
• the 10^th commandment. Ex 20:17 – you shall not covet your neighbour’s house, wife, servant, ox, donkey, anything that belongs to your neighbour. I am sure we understand what neighbour means.
• another rendering : don’t hold as precious or as a treasured possession something that does not belong to you.

we would sum it up as ‘an obsession for possession’.


S'pore workers 'world's-unhappiest' Straits Times May 30th 2011
It seems that the average Singaporean is very caught up with living the Singapore dream of material wealth at the expense of their health, family, relationships & spirituality. We are envious of our neighbours' possessions, looks, clever children, success,

Reflection
Q1: Do we all feel this way sometimes? Are we envious of others' lifestyle that we try to imitate them and hate what they have achieved?

We cannot love and rejoice with others, because deep inside, there is a brewing sense of godlessness or ‘lessgodness’. God is not in the centre of our lives, we had not learn to trust Jesus.

COVETOUSNESS – WHY?
We know that covetousness is a result of godlessness. Godlessness is emptiness, a life of meaninglessness. (We can never declare that life is meaningless because that itself is inherently a meaningful statement). Ahab’s life reflects that. Having set his mind to be godless, selling himself to do evil, he craves to find meaning in his life.

THE NEXT GREAT THING
One of the ways is to live our lives from one great thing to the next. We become excited about a certain thing, goal in life and we seek to pursue it with all our heart thinking that it will satisfy us only to find that it could not.

DISAPPOINTMENT. Ahab basically did many things to fill the vacuum in his life. In everything he did, he was disappointed. He sulked and vexed even after great victories in battle with Aram, after his offer was being rejected by Naboth and even after he had possessed it immorally. A godless life could not find lasting fulfillment as he does not lives according to god’s ways.

Jesus said - the ultimate measure is not in the abundance of his possessions. v21 – the ultimate measure is ‘rich toward God’.
3 points to make this applicable to our lives. It has to do with our needs, contentment and values:

1. SIMPLIFY OUR NEEDS
v22-28 – Jesus says that our physical needs are very simple and we should not be anxious about it. look at the birds and the lilies. isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? consider who we are, we are God’s children, why are we overly worried about these things. don’t you think God cares and provides for you. furthermore, our lives are in god’s hands and not ours. 

Bonhoffer in ‘the cost of discipleship’ – “earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety.” Illustration – a church leader’s decision to change car

2. SEEK CONTENTMENT
v29-31 – Seek god and find ultimate contentment in him. don’t sweat over worldly things like the way the people of the world does. seek contentment in God and he will add to our lives what we need. Our focus is to seek God and God’s focus is to give accordingly to what we need and we should not be impatient & get these roles switched.

Prov 30:8,9 – Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is my portion, lest i be full and deny thee and say “who is the Lord?” or lest I be in want and steal and profane the name of God.

ILLUSTRATION
Danny simpson, 24, robbed a bank in canada of $6,000 in 1990. he was convicted and sentenced to 6 yrs in jail. he used a .45 colt semi-automatic which was later discovered was an antique that is worth $100,000. ironical, isn’t it. in other words, danny already had what he needed. that what we already possessed i.e. our relationship with god is what we actually needed but we forsake it to chase after things that are infinitely worthless.

CS Lewis in mere Christianity – “if you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next…aim at heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.”

3. SET VALUES
v32-34 – we need to set the right values for our lives.
Values are very important in our lives as it is the guide for us to navigate this earthly journey filled with enemies whose unrelenting goal is only to destroy us. We are unlike the world because we must first put our trust in God (faith) v 32.

If you compare Ahab’s and Naboth’s values, you would see the difference between the ungodly and the godly. e.g. the way we value a piece of land. to Ahab : possession of land to is bring pleasure, to titillate but to Naboth : a holy inheritance that God gives for his good purposes.

Reflection Questions:

Q2         What are some needs in my life that I can simplify?

Q3          How can I seek God?

Q4         How can I find contentment in what I have?

Q5         What is one wrong value that I have lived by and how can I set the right values in my life?