Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1449
“Let your con versation be without co vetousness; and be content with such things as you ha ve: for He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do to me.” Hebrews 13:5, 6.
IS it not deeply humiliating, beloved Friends, that the best of Christians should need to be cautioned against the worst of sins? May the consecrated become covetous? Is it possible that the regenerate may drivel into misers? Alas, what perils surround us, what tendencies are within us! Although a man may be a sincere Believer in the self-sacrificing Jesus, yet it is necessary to say to him, “Let your conversation be without covetousness.” Covetousness is a vice of a very degrading kind and it is, therefore the more surprising that those who have a renewed nature and in whom the Spirit of God dwells should require to be warned against bowing down their souls before it. But such is the necessity that once and again the saints are warned against “covetousness, which is idolatry.”
As long as Israel is in the wilderness, she is not out of danger from the golden calf. There would be no superfluous text in the Bible had there been no peril; there would have been no precept but, alas, the best of saints may be betrayed into the most base sins. Moreover, the common talk of the people with whom we daily mingle in business is so much about buying and selling and getting gain that we are apt to be entangled in their nets and find ourselves in the meshes of their craft before we are aware of it. It is hard to live where greed grasps all and not to try to save a little for ourselves out of the wreck. “Take heed and beware of covetousness,” is a necessary caution for these latitudes.
It appears from our text that the children of God need, also, to be exhorted to cherish that most simple and natural of virtues—contentment. One would think that at least, in some instances, they would have this good thing as a matter of course. Among our villagers we have met with persons so well satisfied with their lowly lot that they would not cross the sea to gain an empire! Yet their contentment has sprung up wild as the daisies and buttercups of their own meadows, for they have not been acquainted with the Truth of God as it is in Jesus, or the blessed hope which makes trials light to bear! Do Christians, then, need to be admonished with precepts and stimulated with promises to make them yield the commonplace virtues of life? Do their fields refuse to grow “the herb called heartsease,” which simple folk have gathered unsown from their little garden plots?
Must Believers be exhorted with earnestness if you would have them content? It is even so! Against the worst of vices they need to be warned and towards the humblest of virtues they need to be exhorted. O Lord, You know us better than we know ourselves, for You understand what poor, faulty things even Your own children are! The best of men are men at best. Unless the Grace of God had engaged to keep them every moment and to defend them from the temptations of their many foes, they would long ago have utterly perished from the way! Great need have they to say, “The Lord is my helper,” for if He is not, they will fall prey to covetousness and discontent!
Plain is the sailing; the rock is conspicuous—shun covetousness! The haven is open—anchor in content! Yet we need, even here, the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that we may shun covetousness and cultivate contentment. Plain and pointed are the words, “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as you have.” May our lives as plainly show these commands written out in act and deed by the Holy Spirit. Our discourse, therefore,
like the text which dictates it, must run out in three distinct branches. There is a covetousness to be eschewed, a contentment to be entertained and a confidence to be established—this last is referred to in the words—“So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do to me.”
I. First, I shall have to say a little about COVETOUSNESS. We are told that our conversation is to be “without covetousness.” The term, “conversation,” includes, as you know, the whole of our lives. It is true that we are not to talk covetously, but conversation means far more than speech. It includes thoughts, words and actions—in fact, the whole of life. Taking the first meaning of conversation, namely, talk, we ought not in our words to be on the side of those who grip for wealth or growl for wage—who grasp for power or grind the poor. We ought not, in our talk, to take part with the churl and the bigoted.
If we hear of a mean transaction and it is called a sharp stroke of business and commended as something clever, we are not to sanction it even with a smile, but make our looks and our language, alike, discountenance over-reaching and oppression. The skinning of flints and driving of screws are practiced by many people as if they were positively meritorious and there are those who, while they would shrink from doing anything so questionable, themselves, will smile at the crooked policy of others, perhaps feebly blaming the fraud, but all the while admiring the cuteness which carried it out and pocketed the result.