We were talking about, in Genesis 13, about Lot, and it’s interesting—the Hebrew word here, as we’re speaking toward covetousness—we’re talking about avarice, we’re talking about greed, but the root word here is very interesting.  It implies gain by fraud or extortion.  So, part of covetousness has to do with the sin of oppressing the poor.  Most of the wealthy have gotten rich by oppressing or taking advantage of the poor.  Poor gets irritated, starts unions.  Unions get out of control, demand one hundred dollars an hour to look at their phones, so all of the stuff goes to China to be made at three dollars an hour by slave labor and abuse.  A billion souls, oppressed by ten thousand people.  It’s the world we live in and it’s the nature of man.  It’s the same sin nature that’s in every one of us.  Greed, a thirst for more.  How much is enough?

Ephesians 5:3 tells us that this is one thing— “covetousness—that should not even be named among us.”  And any of us who are sitting around and our conversation is always about money, the market, “You can make more here, you can make more there.”  This kind of spirit shouldn’t even be named among us.  Why don’t we spend that same time encouraging each other in contentment and in godliness?  You think that’d be a better use of the time?  I’m not saying that we don’t help and instruct others.  First Timothy 6 makes it very clear that those of us that are rich are to be ready to communicate or to give and help others out.  We’re also to be able to help others understand how money works.  We’re actually probably going to be putting together a Friday night or two that we’re going to use to help some of us learn some of these laws.  Part of the reason is most of us here, until recently, didn’t have anything to save or invest.

We were just out in California again not long ago and drove by that apartment that I was in when I was going to Bible college in Bethany.  And they raised the rent five dollars, and we had to move.  There’s no way in the world we could come up with five more dollars.  I thought nothing, never crossed my mind, the stock market.  You’ve got one pair of blue jeans for the whole year, right?  I did happen to have designer Levi’s.  They had a name on them, Levi.  Founded in 1849.  Everybody wore the same designer.  Check out these Levi’s.  Just for some of you old-timers, you wore them differently, right?  Between the East Coast and the West Coast.

There were those that tucked under, there were those that rolled up.  There were those that ironed creases in them.  Some of the cool guys out in California would sew the creases in, but they were Levi’s.  There’s such a variety today.  We spend more time trying to decide which brand we want, there’s so many of them.  Oh, contentment.  I don’t know about you, but I could use more contentment in my life.  I know I can sure use more humility in my life.  I’ve given away a lot of money in my life, but I could sure give away a lot more.  Beware of covetousness.  Is there discontentment?  Do we have to have just a little bit more?