parable of the rich fool. It comes right after Jesus speaking about the importance of acknowledging him before men. Beginning in verse 13, someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to me, man, Who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? And he said unto them, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, What shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops." And he said, I'll do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax. Eat. Drink. Be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. And now we turn to our old Testament reading, which will be our text for this evening. The, in the book of Joshua, Joshua chapter seven, verses 16 through 26, beginning with verse 16, Joshua chapter seven. So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near, tribe by tribe. And the tribe of Judah was taken. And he brought near the clans of Judah. And the clan of the Zarahites was taken. And he brought near the clan of the Zarahites, man by man. And Zabdi was taken. And he brought near his household, man by man. And Achan, the son of Carmi, son of Zebedee, son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah was taken. Then Joshua said to Achan, my son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to him and tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me. And Achan answered. Joshua, and they can answer Joshua. Truly, I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did. When I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them. And see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent. with the silver underneath. So Joshua sent messengers and they ran to the tent and behold it was hidden in his tent with the silver underneath. And they took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua and all the people of Israel and they laid them down before the Lord. And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah and the silver and the clove. and the bar of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his donkeys, and sheep, and his tent, and all that he had. And they brought them up into the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today. all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned him with fire and stoned him with stones, and they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day, the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor." Well, here ends the reading of The Word of God, let's keep our Bibles open to this point, to this passage of scripture as we work through it tonight. And let's go to the Lord's throne in another word of prayer. Father, I so appreciate all the prayers that have been lifted up for this service and for me as I preach tonight. And Lord, I just ask you to give us hearing ears. We can all, beginning with myself, examine my own heart and our hearts. In regard, Lord, to this sin of coveting, Lord, work in our hearts as you see fit, apply your word, and Lord, that we might know how better to live for you. Train our children, exalt your name and bring glory to you while exalting you, Father, and being thankful for all you have given us. Do your work in our midst. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Have you ever thought I've gotten, I've got by with that sin. I've got by with that sin before human eyes. We know we can't get by with any sin before the Lord God, of course. The all-seeing God, the all-knowing God, all-powerful God. But have you thought you've escaped your parents' knowledge, your shepherding elders' knowledge, knowledge of other family members, your children's knowledge even? Maybe it was a visit to a porn site. Maybe it was a lie that no one caught. Life went on. No one saw it. I would imagine this is what the subject of our text tonight thought for a little while anyway. Aitken. Within the time span that this sin took place, we have to remember that any number in Israel were rescuing faithful Rahab and her family from their dwelling, from her dwelling, I should say, where she had waited faithfully for the Lord's deliverance, depending upon the words of the spies as being true words. And Achan was somewhere else in that city of devoted to destruction at God's command and everything in it was devoted to destruction. And he was there. I was later discovered he had taken some gold and silver. and a cloak, and he made it back to his own tent. No one outside saw him in the midst of all the action and everything that was going on. Evidently his family saw it because they were judged with him, but they didn't say anything. They may, I don't know, I'm speculating, they may have been glad to have some extra wealth to start the new life in the promised land with. I don't know. But he got back to his tent, and he even buried it successfully, and now no one, no one would be able to see that silver That gold, that beautiful cloak, it was theirs to enjoy, to profit from as they entered the promised land and they would have a head start on everyone else. Tonight we want to see what actually happened Because God's way of bringing our hidden sin of coveting to light is very real, very true, and God will accomplish His purposes in it. And we want to look at this tonight and begin by defining what is coveting or coveting defined. Well, it's a hidden sin. I entitled this sermon a hidden sin because it's within our hearts. I can cover it and no one can see it. Janie doesn't know what's going on deep within my heart necessarily. She can't see therein. God always sees. But it's a hidden sin arising in an overly desiring that which does not belong to us. I didn't say we can't desire anything. We look forward to our vacations and we look forward to a raise and pay or graduating from high school or getting that first car, et cetera. Notice I said an overly desiring and inordinately desiring of that which we do not have. It leads to discontent of where we are in our life or of who we are. Mark Twain says in Tom Sawyer that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, It's only to make it difficult to attain. And that's what we have to guard ourselves against. It's a sin of inordinate desire. And secondly, under this definition, we want to point out that it is rooted in our hearts. This is exactly what our Lord said in Mark chapter seven, verses 21. through 23, for from within out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and they defile a person. Notice that coveting is placed in the same a sentence by our Lord himself with theft, murder, adultery. And there are other sins here that we would say, how could they be any similarity to those? But we all know our God is a holy God. He cannot stand to look up on any sin. And any sin will send us to hell without God's atoning grace, Christ's atoning blood being applied to your life and my life. There are no neutral sins. It's rooted in our hearts. It arises from our own self-importance or what we think is our self-importance of always wanting more. We go back in the Old Testament, and you remember Ahab, King Ahab, had so much. He had so much. But you know, he didn't have Naboth's garden, Naboth's vineyard. And that's what he wanted. But Naboth wouldn't give it to him because it was in the family. And biblical law said it was to go from generation to generation in the family. And faithful Naboth said no to the king. So what does Ahab do? Well, he immediately goes in and lays down on his bed and turns his face to the wall and would eat no food. Now Ahab, that was just the beginning of the outworking of the evil sin of coveting. We don't have time to go back to 1 Kings chapter 21 and see how this sin worked itself out to even greater sins. You can do that on your own. But Ahab thought himself to be so self important that Naboth and what he rightly owned didn't matter because it was all about him. You ever think about that? Something I have to deal with in my own life. How do we apply this to our own life? Well, we have to be even more on guard today because we have to realize it would be considered an acceptable sin today to covet. In fact, that's what many ads in print, on internet sites, commercials on TV, The movie theaters, we cannot get away from these ads. No matter what media device we're using. And there are many, so many of them are built on getting us to covet. As I prepared this sermon, I thought back to commercials of bygone days. of some of them. You may remember some of them. Soon there will be two types of people in the world, those who have computers and those who have Apple. Or what about a potato chip ad? Bet you can't eat just one. Got to have more, don't you? You can come up with your own. to make you dissatisfied with what God's given you, with your state in life. And that's exactly what they want to do. We have to be on guard. We have to teach our children, brothers and sisters, how to watch commercials. We have to have a Christian view of commercials. how to use them for God's glory, how to approach the internet and the commercials they own in the same way. We want a Christian view of commercials to see what the object behind them is and to guard ourselves from discontent, murmuring, complaining. It's a great contributor to our Lord's betrayal, wasn't it? We read in John chapter 12, verse 6, after the expensive bottle of oil was poured out to anoint Jesus And he said, Judas said, in the verses preceding to what I want to read, why did the woman, and I'm paraphrasing here, why did the woman spend the money this way? That money could have gone to feed the poor. Then in John 12, verse 6, we read. Judas said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. And having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. I wonder how many times he did that secretly, and he got away with it time and again. Of course, he didn't get away with it before the Lord God, before the eyes of God. God knew about it, but our merciful God was giving him time to repent. But he didn't do it. And he betrayed our Lord for 30 pieces of silver. To him, that 30 pieces of silver was worth more than the son of God. See what coveting, how it can lead. Then finally, we want to mention that we, you and I, if we do not repent, we will face God one day for coveting. on the day of judgment. If we think we've gotten away with it in this life, we still have the Lord God to face for all of our sins on the final day. We read in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul writes to the church at Corinth, beginning in verse 9, these words, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. But we know how this verse goes on, or this passage goes on in the next verse. And such Paul writes were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. And by the spirit of our Lord, brothers and sisters, I hope every one of you falls into the description in verse 11 and that you were. what was said forth in verses 9 and 10. But you looked to the precious blood of Jesus to cover that sin of covetousness. In the midst of these applications tonight, I want to give you that hope, that certain hope. It's what the Christians at Corinth had experienced. And once again, we see covetousness or greed put into the same category of homosexuality and where adultery is mentioned and any number of other sins because I want us to see that coveting is an abomination to the Lord just as is homosexuality and adultery and these other sins. Catch from our text that Achan was of the Messianic line. He was of the tribe of Judah. See, the fets all lines, the fets all families. It's something we all have to be on guard against. So here we have the definition of coveting. Next we want to see how coveting develops itself. It starts out, in our hearts, it starts out as a hidden sin. But how does it develop? Well, we want to begin by seeing that this city of Jericho, the first city to be conquered, by the Israelites. The whole land was given to the people of Israel by God's grace. Because the Amorites and the other tribes in that area, that promised land, had lived there for years and God had given them years to repent. And as he told Abraham years earlier, Their cup of iniquity is not yet full. But now it was. And God, through the Israelites, was going to drive them out of that land because judgment was going to fall upon them by the holy God for their unrepentant sin. But God said, and Joshua chapter 6, I require the first city to be destroyed and everything in it, and the gold and the silver and every vessel of bronze and iron are to be holy to the Lord and to go into the treasury of the Lord." And Achan and the children of Israel knew that. as they went in. It's a great test for them because they didn't live like we do today. They really had nothing. Their parents and grandparents had been slaves in Egypt. That generation had died off in the wilderness. Now here were children and grandchildren of slaves coming in to inherit. this land that was freely given to them, but God said, I want first city. Give it to me in faith that I'm going to give you the entire land. So that's the backdrop. And how was this coveting, this sin of coveting manifested? in a strange, unexpected way, surely, to Achen and his family. After Jericho fell, they went out to conquer the smaller town of Ai. And instead of conquering it, the Israelites were defeated. Thirty-six of them, around thirty-six, scripture says, were killed. There was sin in the camp. It had to be dealt with at God's direction. And so Joshua was to call forth the various tribes and see who would confess to the sin and what that sin was. So we read that in verse 16 of our text, as we begin to look at this text tonight, that Joshua rose early in the morning And he brought Israel near by tribe, tribe by tribe. And the tribe of Judah was taken and we see the result of that. The finger was upon Achan in verse 19. And Joshua said to Achan, my son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to him and tell me, what you have done." To me that's a great sentence. That our confession of sin brings glory to God. Because we once again say that God's Word is true, His law is true, and I am the offender, not God. Oh may God give us these times of confessions for our sins, that God would be exalted. This confession from the heart, God would get the glory even in our confession of sin. And Joshua says, tell me what you have done. And Achan convicted, answered Joshua, and he said, truly I have sinned against Israelites." Now he doesn't begin there. I've sinned against the Lord God of Israel. Is that where your confession goes? Covenant children, Covenant youth, is this where your confession goes? You have such an appreciation, such a beginning understanding of the holiness of God. We say that our sins are against our parents or against someone else, a sibling or husband or wife, but it's against the Lord God of Israel. And this is what I did. And then he goes and he recounts taking approximately six pounds Of silver. Believe my math is correct there. Be sure and correct me if it is not. And about one and a quarter pounds of gold. And he saw a beautiful cloak and notice how this sin, uh, this temptation manifest itself. He says in verse 21, when I saw. And he didn't just see, you see, evidently he kept gazing, he kept looking at it. That could be mine. And he looked around probably to see, is there anyone else around? Maybe just some of his family members were there to help cover it in their garments and get it out of there. He says, I coveted them and took them. and see they are hidden in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath." Takes us right back, doesn't it, to Genesis chapter 3 and Eve's sin, followed by Adam, our covenant head's sin, regarding the forbidden fruit. You see all these possible spoils in Jericho. were forbidden fruit because God said, don't take it. It's to be devoted in the sense of the gold and the silver to the treasure of the Lord. You've got the whole land. Adam and Eve were given the whole garden, but one tree. Israelites here, generations later, were given the whole land, but one city. But he saw, and his gaze lingered. He coveted. And he took. But notice also from our text, these very important words here. They are hidden in the earth inside my tent and the silver underneath. He took them. But he couldn't enjoy them. Another great prayer request for us to lift up to the Lord. Lord, if I act on my coveting, don't let me enjoy it. Give me quick repentance. It's what we should want. Quick repentance. He could not enjoy it. Adam and Eve did not enjoy their coveting of the forbidden fruit. The rich fool in Luke chapter 12 didn't enjoy the productive crops that God had given him because that night his soul was required of him. May that help us to fight against the sin of coveting when it arises, or the temptation, I'm sorry, the temptation of coveting when it arises in our own life that ultimately we won't get to enjoy this because we've gained it sinfully. And then it involved his family. And we see in verses 22 and following what happened, that his whole family had to suffer all his possessions. Were put to death, were stoned to death. Because no doubt they went along with that sin. They were involved as well. They were guilty. What a reminder, don't go along with family sins. It's not worth it. It's hard to stand up against it, but it's harder not to in the long run. We can examine our own lives, and we look at America today and we see great evidence, and I'm speaking generally here, not Not in every situation, by no means. Think about all the storage units that are available for storage items. And there's any number of different reasons to have a storage item. Family might be going through, sadly, a divorce. I know when we moved, we were so thankful for our storage units to store furniture in. Many different reasons for storage units. I'm certainly not against the concept, but I'm saying I wonder how much of the popularity of storage units comes from coveting. You know, having so much, so many things that we run out of places in our homes, we as a nation, I mean. I don't know anyone's heart here. I don't know anything like that. So let the word apply as it does. But how much popularity is a result of coveting within the nation? Or how much gambling goes on right up the road and the town near us and in other ways with the same reason of wanting more, more, more? I can't answer this. We search our own heart. Maybe our own devotional life has been hindered by coveting because we're so busy thinking, how can I get these other things I don't need but I want it? And that wanting has become an inordinate desire because we've laid our devotional life aside to check sites on the internet to see what it would be on this site or, or that site, or where's the availability of this or that. Coveting works in all sorts of different ways to draw us in. And civil government doesn't help us either, does it? Because it covets, it sets the example in, in taxation and eminent domain, et cetera. It sets the example. Coveting is good. Coveting what others have. Can't get enough of it. Well, how do we fight this sin? That's what we want to do in the concluding minutes that we have. And I'll try to be brief here in this, because how do we defend? We looked at how to define it. We've looked at how it develops and now we want to look at how to defend against it by God's grace. Not an exhaustive list, not a list in order, except for the first one. And all of these, I think, are important according to God's word. And that is when we find ourselves coveting, we have to quickly repent and we want to plead, Lord, Forgive me. We want to pray for quick repentance because there is forgiveness with God. We have a God. We have Jesus, second person of the Trinity that left heaven. The glory therein came to this earth and was one who had nowhere many knots to lay his head. We don't know where many of his meals came from. But he never, in all of this, while he was here in his mortal flesh, he never coveted one time. And the reason for this, because he had to keep the 10th commandment that we can't keep. And he went to the cross to die there for every time you and I have coveted. That's why we can be forgiven for this sin and every other sin we've committed. That's our hope. Not only to quickly repent, but to think on Jesus, who took our every coveting. upon himself but who was tempted to covet but never coveted. We want to be regularly in the word of God. That's one of the best defenders, defenses. against coveting. Psalm 119 verse 36 and 37 says, incline my heart, the psalmist prays this, incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways. Brothers and sisters, how often do we pray for contentment? Because that's another way we can fight the temptation of coveting. Pray for contentment. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 5 says, keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. What wealth is there in Christ who's ever-present with us? First Timothy sits, verse sits. Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world And we cannot take anything out of this world. So we rest in the Lord. We rest in the spiritual blessings he has given us and enjoy all the physical things that God has allowed us to have. Coveting doesn't, not coveting doesn't mean we have to have a Spartan life physically. It means we don't inordinately desire that which we don't have. Give God thanks for what we do have. Pray for contentment. Tithe. Pursue obeying God. If at all possible, we need to have a mindset, I'm going to pay off my credit card bill every month. And that keeps us on guard. from buying stuff we don't need, from inordinate desire. Now we do all of this then for the glory of God. We've seen where coveting goes as it comes out of our heart as it erupts into consequences that aching nor we could ever imagine. May God help you and me to be diligent to apply his word to this temptation and all temptations for his glory that we might live more and more for him. Let's pray. Father we give you thanks for your word. We thank you Lord you teach us how to fight these temptations that are so common in our own day. We can get lulled into them. Give us strength this week, Father, to live for you and to fight these inordinate desires, Father, whether it be the 10th commandment or any other commandment. Lord, we want to be content in you and all you have given us. We plead that we will be. In Jesus' name, amen.