"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox,
nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's."
In the twelfth chapter of Luke our Saviour lifted two danger signals.
"Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. . . .
Take heed and beware of covetousness."
The greatest dupe the devil has in the world is the hypocrite; but the
next greatest is the covetous man, "for a man's life consisteth not in
the abundance of the things which he possesseth."
I believe this sin is much stronger now than ever before in the
world's history. We are not in the habit of condemning it as a sin. In
his epistle to the Thessalonians Paul speaks of "the cloke of
covetousness." Covetous men use it as a cloke, and call it prudence,
and foresight. Who ever heard it confessed as a sin? I have heard many
confessions, in public and private, during the past forty years, but
never have I heard a man confess that he was guilty of this sin. The
Bible does not tell of one man who ever recovered from it, and in all
my experience I do not recall many who have been able to shake it off
after it had fastened on them. A covetous man or woman generally
remains covetous to the very end.
We may say that covetous desire plunged the human race into sin. We
can trace the river back from age to age until we get to its rise in
Eden. When Eve saw that the forbidden fruit was good for food and that
it was desirable to the eyes, she partook of it, and Adam with her.
They were not satisfied with all that God had showered upon them, but
coveted the wisdom of gods which Satan deceitfully told them might be
obtained by eating the fruit. She saw,--she desired--then she took!
Three steps from innocence into sin.