Friday, May 24, 2019 -
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Deuteronomy. 5:21).
This, the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” encapsulates much of the ills of the church today, and of our nation. Covetousness (envy) causes one to become a workaholic to the neglect of the family. It causes us to go unduly into debt. Envy is the root of materialism which plagues the church. And, when you come right down to it, it’s behind the epidemics of pornography, abortion, and divorce, which plague the church at similar rates to that of the world.
Because the church today so greatly violates the 10th commandment, it has lost its societal influence on the American culture. Jesus said in Luke 14:33-35, “So, therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his possessions. Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Jesus in this Scripture is giving us both of these principles, reiterating His teaching that we are to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33) and the fact that we “are the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13-16).
Because the church is no longer neither salt nor light, society becomes a society plagued by envy, to the point that the majority of the younger generation is embracing ludicrous schemes and proposals of political thievery, which has become common rhetoric among Democrat progressive candidates for the president of the United States.
Candidates are scrambling over one another to prey on those who have no moral conjunction or compass – because Christians today have so little influence – using sinful motivations God expressly condemns, such as envy and the lust of the flesh.
They tell people that envy is perfectly fine, often shrouding it as their entitlement, that those who’ve worked hard (which is a Biblical value) to gain wealth, or been blessed by God, are greedy and are themselves, thieves. Often their deception is framed in such a way that makes these progressive politicians seem as if they are champions of justice or equality when the opposite is true. What is good has become evil and what is evil has become good (Isaiah 5:20).
In fact, their lies foster the sin of envy, conning people in a great theft conspiracy of getting what someone else has, without deserving it. And those fostering these lies, garner for themselves power and a small portion of “the take,” which can amount to millions, even billions, of dollars. Naturally, these power broker politicians hide their motives, as well as the truth, and pass themselves off as “righteously indignant.” But then their message today merely seems to be “vote for me, and I will take stuff away from those who don’t deserve it, and give it to you who really deserves it!”
But frankly, the materialism of the church, which may not be thievery, but is still based on envy, is envy the same as the thievery of the progressives. We just have a different means of obtaining it. And we can expose their con-game for what it is, which is good; but unless we, too, as the church, begin to put aside our own materialism, which is indeed a form of envy or covetousness, and begin using our own efforts instead to make disciples, our days as a nation free from tyranny are truly numbered. It’s time the church truly repents of its sin and becomes the light shining on the hill once again!