Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1880
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as you have: for He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5.
THE Apostle warns us against a tendency very natural to our race. “Let your conversation be without covetousness.” I am afraid that the precept is even more needed, now, than in the days of the Apostle. We are still more sharp and keen in competition and men in trade are even more anxious to accumulate money than they were in Apostolic times. It is not easy for a man to keep his heart clear of covetousness, or his hands clean from moral bribes. There is a singular stickiness about gold and silver. They have a great tendency to birdlime our souls and hold them fast, so that they cannot rise superior to their influence. The Revised Version reads our text, “Be you free from the love of money” and it puts in the margin, “Let your turn of mind be free from the love of money.” May we all enjoy that freedom and may our turn of mind lead us to seek better things than the miser is able to hoard!
There is a laudable pursuit of gain, without which business would not be properly carried on, but there is a line, scarcely as broad as a razor’s edge, between diligence in business and greediness for gain. We can so easily pass from the one into the other that we may hardly be aware of it. When a man is increasing his investments, when he is extending his agencies, when he is enlarging his warehouse, when he is employing a larger number of persons than formerly, or even when he is bemoaning the depression of his trade and his heart is aching because he has only half as much business as before, covetousness may insinuate itself into his conversation. It is a snake which can enter at the smallest opening. It lurks in the grass where it is long, but it glides, also, where the pasture is bare. It may come in either in prosperity or in adversity and it is necessary to whisper in the ear of each Believer, whether going up or down in the world, “Let your conversation—your daily conduct—be without covetousness.”
Any Brother here—and it is to the Brothers, mainly, that the temptation comes, I think—any Brother here may have present need of such a warning as this. And if he does not need it just now, he may lay it by till he does, for it will keep. But let me not restrict the text or the sermon to the male side of the house. The Sisters may fall into a like temptation, in the saving, as their husbands in the getting. You godly matrons, you industrious Marthas, “Let your conversation be without covetousness.”
The Apostle here hints at what is the real cure for covetousness, namely, contentment. This is a rare drug in the market. The words of the Apostle make up a golden sentence—“Be content with such things as you have.”
It is supposed by most persons that they could be content if they were not exactly what they are and where they are. But the precept exhorts them to be content with their present circumstances. If they had a little more, they would be satis-fied—but that is not the contentment to which we are exhorted! It is written, “Be content with such things as you have.” If God has multiplied your possessions, you ought the more readily to be content with such things as you have, though I am not sure you will be, for there is a saltiness in the water which comes out of wells dug by the Philistines, so that he who drinks from them shall thirst again. I once thought that a million would satisfy any mortal man, but I have been assured by one who has considerable experience in that direction, that he who has one million is unable to see any reason why he should not have two or ten!
However, I may let that pass, for millions or thousands are not likely to tempt the most of us who are here assembled. If you have little possessions, yet still listen to the voice of Wisdom, which says, “Be content with such things as you
have.” You now have a measure of trouble by reason of the straitness of your means. You might have more trouble with the breadth of your means if you had all you would like to have! It may not be quite easy to travel when your garments are too short, but it is much harder to keep them from dragging in the mire when they are too long. Though a single staff is such a convenience that a traveler without one may sigh for it, yet a dozen canes would be a load which would make the burdened man prefer, rather, to have no staff at all than to have so many to carry. I believe that it is an advantage to have wealth when wealth is kept in its right place, but the difficulty is that the horse often runs away with the rider and he who has wealth too often loses his liberty and falls into sore bondage by becoming the slave of his own possessions! “Be content with such things as you have.” After all, contentment drinks the cream of life. So far as earthly things are concerned, he is the happiest, no—he is the richest man who is content with such things as he has!