Covetousness: A Vice to Cast Off (Hebrews 13:5-6)

Hebrews 13 and the Call to Contentment

Hebrews 13, beginning at verse 1, "'Let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body.

Marriage is to be held in honor among all and the marriage bed is to be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money. Be content with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.

So that we may confidently say, the Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?''. Let's pray together. Our Father, we come now to Your Word with the confident expectation that in the opening of Your Word and in the unfolding of Your Word, You will shine light of truth upon our hearts and upon our souls.

We pray that in the unfolding of Your Word, that Your Spirit would work within us, conforming us to the image of Christ, showing us our sin, encouraging us where that is necessary and giving us understanding in Your Word that we may give and present to You hearts of obedience and love.

We ask this in Christ's name, amen. Well, there is no vice that ought to be more foreign to a Christian than the vice of covetousness. And there is no virtue that ought to be easier for the Christian to cultivate than the virtue of contentment.

And yet, Scripture continually reminds us to not be covetous and instead to be content. And that is because the love of money, covetousness, is a universal threat and a universal sin inside the heart of almost every person.

No, let me correct that. Not almost every person, inside of every person. Whether we recognize it or not, whatever that degree is, the various manifestations of it, covetousness, like pride, can be present within us without us even realizing that it is there or even realizing what forms it has taken.

It manifests itself in many ways. It robs us of our joys. It distracts our hearts from the settled peace and comfort and contentment which ought to be the lot and the enjoyment of every single believer.

Covetousness as a Disordered Desire of the Heart

And so we are here warned about this in this next subject that the author takes up in Hebrews 13 as he is applying the truth of our kingdom's citizenship to our hearts and our lives. Chapter 12, verse 28 and 29, he says,.

Therefore, since we have received a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. And then he begins to apply the truth of the first 12 chapters in this 13th chapter as he addresses the various loves and affections that we have or ought to have and corrects some of the love and affections that we ought not to have.

So we're told in chapter 13, verse 1, that we are to love the brethren, chapter 13, verse 2, that we are to love strangers, 13, verse 3, that we are to love prisoners, 13, verse 4, that we are to love our spouses and honor our marriage, and we ought to be corrected against the inordinate or lustful love or affections that ought not to have any place in our hearts, like sexual immorality, which would defile the marriage bed.

And then he encourages us to examine our hearts for covetousness and to be content in all things. These are the qualities that should mark kingdom citizens. And there is a connection between verse 4 and verse 5.

Verse 4 deals with sex and the role of it, and verse 5 deals with money. These things, both of them, reveal the inordinate desires and lustful affections of the human heart. The defilement that we are warned against in verse 4 has to do with affections that are driven by physical lust, lust for physical things, and the covetousness that is corrected in verse 5 deals with the love of money.

Both of these are disordered desires or affections. The law author here is addressing two things that cause tremendous damage in the lives of God's people. It is difficult to think of two things that have wrought more destruction in ministries, churches, families, and lives, and souls than an inordinate lustful desire for flesh and an inordinate lustful desire for things that we do not have.

Covetousness and sexual immorality poison and destroy everything that they touch, everything. It is not possible to host these two sins and these two lusts within the human heart without it utterly ruining everything inside of our lives.

Verse 10 of these six, verse 10 says, the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil and some, by longing for it, have walked away from the faith and pierced themselves through with many griefs. It is the love of money which itself is a cause of men piercing themselves through with many griefs and, of course, an apostasy, which the author in Hebrews has warned us against time and again.

Both of these vices are often found together in Scripture. It is not difficult to find passages where sexual immorality and covetousness are addressed side by side because they come from the same heart issue, which is a discontentment and a dissatisfaction with what God has provided.

God in His grace has given something to us and even if that is singleness, which means celibacy and sexual purity, or whether that means a spouse and a right outlet for that God-given desire, God provides something and we corrupt it.

And the same thing with physical things. God provides the things that we need in our lives. He gives to us the things that we need for our sustenance and it is an inordinate desire which takes those good things and desires something more, something on top of it.

So Ephesians 5, verses 3 -5,. "...immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. There must be no filthiness or silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting but rather giving a thanks.

For this you know with certainty that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.". In the passage that we read earlier, Colossians 3,.

"...therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and greed which amounts to idolatry.". You see how these things, the sexual immorality and the greed, they are found together in Scripture and it is because they are often found together in the same heart.

These sins, both of them, can be hidden from others and that's scary simply because of how destructive they are in the lives of God's people. And then both of these sins destroy the testimony of Christ and wreak havoc wherever they are found.

And therefore it should not be surprising to see these two things, sexual immorality and covetousness, addressed in close proximity to one another. And it's somewhat humbling to have to read in a passage of Scripture a warning against covetousness.

Because as I said, I'll try it again, as I said at the beginning, as I said at the beginning, there is no virtue which ought to be more easily cultivated in the life of a believer than the virtue of contentment.

When you think about what contentment is and what we have been given, this should come naturally to us, but it doesn't. And there's no vice, there's no vice which should be more absent from the life of a believer than covetousness.

And yet we are warned time and again about this virtue and this vice. Spurgeon said this, and I have, I quoted it up, four quotations from Spurgeon. There was part of me that wanted to get up here today and just read the passage and say, now, go read Spurgeon's sermon on this text because it is better than anything I could give you.

And then I could just close in prayer and we could all leave here 45 minutes ahead of schedule. But I have four quotations here from Spurgeon. Some of them are a little long, but they're worth listening to.

Here's the first. Spurgeon says this, 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 character be free from the love of money.

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 again, the saints are warned against covetousness, which is idolatry. Of all the sins that you and I might be prone to, covetousness is the one that seems quite odd and out of place in the life of a believer.

Let me give you a few reasons why. First, because our life consists in another world. This is Colossians 3, set your mind on the things of heaven. Our life consists in another world. Our Savior is not here, physically.

Our inheritance is not here. Our destiny is not here. Our reward is not here. Our glory is not here. The people that we love and we're going to spend eternity with are not here. Well, I mean, other than the people who are here are here, but I mean, all the saints that have gone before, they have all gone on ahead, and then we're going to get to spend eternity with them.

And our life consists in another world. We are waiting for a kingdom that is to come, a city that is going to come whose maker and architect and builder is God, a city that has foundations. Everything here is a shadow of what is to come.

And we know the end of this world, that everything that we possess and everything that we touch and everything that we handle and everything that we work for ultimately in this world is going to be burned up.

That is the physical things here. The rewards and the things that we earn and that are of a spiritual significance, those go ahead of us to eternity. And so those aren't even here. And everything in this creation is going to be consumed in a fiery judgment.

We can take nothing with us. And we know that this life is short. It is uncertain. Any one of us could die today or tomorrow or this week. We have no guarantee that any one of us is going to be here a week from now.

And yet, as fallen creatures, we plan as if we are going to be here and rule this little patch of turf for all of eternity in this life. And we know the nature of wealth and riches in this world where we are warned in Proverbs 23, verses 4 and 5, do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it.

When you set your eyes on it, it's gone, for wealth certainly makes itself wings and like an eagle flies toward the heavens. So our entire faith is premised upon the principle that everything that is of value to us is in the world that is to come.

That is as fundamental to the Christian view of reality as anything else that we believe. The hunger for this world materially, since this is all we know, can easily grip our hearts and so we have to be warned against the love of money and against covetousness.

Because you and I can be tricked into thinking that the shadows of this life are actually better than the reality of the life that is to come. Because we live in a culture and in a world where everyone around us is grasping at this world trying to get as much as they possibly can.

And as Spurgeon said, it is hard to live in a place where greed grasps all and not be tempted to clutch a little for ourselves. In other words, when everyone around you is rabidly collecting everything that they can and storing up treasures here, it is difficult for us to resist the temptation to join in the game.

Because covetousness and greed is like a gravity force that draws the hearts of all people toward it. And then when everyone around you is accumulating things and they are working for this life, it is easy for us to get distracted and to think that we ought to join in with them.

So thus we need this warning about the love of money and covetousness, which we find in verses 5 and 6. And I'm going to give you an outline here for these two verses. We notice three things here in these two verses, verse 5 and verse 6.

First, there is a vice that we are to cast off that is covetousness, a vice that we are to cast off. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, the text says. Second, there is a virtue that we are to cultivate, namely contentment, being content with what you have.

And then third, there is a verity that we are to cherish, which is God's companionship. A vice that we are to cast off, covetousness, a virtue that we are to cultivate, contentment, and a verity that we are to cherish, which is God's companionship.

And you know how this works. With an outline that good, there's no way I'm spending all three of those points in one Sunday. So we'll just see how far we get with that today. Sorry, you will see how far we get with that today.

I already know how far we're going to get with that today. Notice two things. First, in verses 5 and 6, there are two quotations from two different Old Testament texts. Verse 5 says, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.

And verse 6 is the result to that truth, that verity of God's continual companionship. Therefore, we have the confidence to say, the Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What will man do to me? And second, I want you to notice that there is language here that is similar to the language we used last week with putting off and putting on.

There is a conduct, a behavior, a lifestyle that we are to cast off, to put off, that is covetousness. And then there is conduct that we are to take up, that is contentment, which should be there. So we are to stop being covetous.

We are to start being content. And then there is a truth that is to inform our minds in that process. And that's the quotation in verses 5 and 6, the truth that God is with us continually, and therefore we can say that we have the confidence that we need to fear absolutely nothing.

Casting Off Covetousness and the Love of Money

So let's look first of all now at this vice that we are to cast off, which is covetousness. It says in verse 5, make sure that your character is free from the love of money. The King James has a bit of a different translation, and if you're in one of the older translations, King James, and I think the New King James renders it the same, let your conversation be without covetousness.

That's a little bit different than let your character be free from the love of money. You can see the overlap between love of money and covetousness, but it might be a little bit more difficult for you to see the connection between conversation and character.

The word that is translated as character in the NASB or conversation in the King James is the word tropos, and it has kind of a wide range of meaning. All of these meanings kind of overlap one another, they're very similar.

It can refer to your way of life, your manner of life, your course or the path of your life. It can refer to the way you conduct yourself, your turn, your mode, your deportment, your way of speech, your way of behavior, your means of living, the path that you choose, your way, your customs, your routines, your modus operandi, and you can see why the translation of character would fit in well with this because your character kind of defines or describes and sort of sets the course for the rest of your life.

But this word describes more than just one's character, it describes also our way of thinking and our affections, our speech and our language, our day-to-day living. A better translation would be, make sure your entire manner of living is free from the love of money.

Not just your conversation, the words that you say, and not just the way that you think, but make sure that your entire way of living is free from the love of money. Far-reaching implications of this.

This describes then our use of our time, our view of work, the way we approach leisure, the way we approach rest, our savings, our spending, our investing, our buying, and our selling is all incorporated under that.

And let me make application here to something that probably you've never heard this applied to before. It also applies to our voting. If it is covetous for me to take my neighbor's stuff and use it as my own, it is covetousness that motivates for me to vote for someone to take my neighbor's stuff and give it to me.

Do with that what you will. But the entire reparations movement is built upon nothing but covetousness. I want his stuff, so I will elect somebody to take his stuff and give it to me. That's covetousness.

And therefore, I never, ever, ever vote for somebody who would promise me to do that. The love of money, the word love of money here is the word afilaguras, afilaguras. You hear three different words in there, afileo for love and aguras, which is the word for silver.

It literally means without, ah, without the love of silver. We've seen the word fileo used with the love of strangers, the love of the brethren, the love of prisoners, etc. We talked about that love. Here we have an inordinate or a disordered desire, and that is the love of money or the love of silver.

It's used twice in the New Testament, this word, 1 Timothy 3, verse 3, where it is used to describe an elder who must be free from the love of money, the same word is used there. The phrase lovers of money is used as a description twice in the New Testament, once of the Pharisees in Luke 16, 14, and once of men, of what would characterize men in the end times, 2 Timothy 3, verse 2, for men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, etc.

So it is a character flaw, it is an inordinate love or lust or desire for other things that will characterize people in the end times, and it is something that we are here warned against. Now, loving money is only one form of covetousness.

In fact, when you read the word covetousness in other places in the New Testament, it is a different word that is used than the word that is used here. There is overlap between loving money and covetousness.

Covetousness is the heart desire or attitude that manifests itself in a love of money. It desires something that it does not have, but money is not the only way that covetousness can manifest itself. There are other things that can be the objects of this disordered desire, this perverse heart passion, which we call covetousness.

So I'm going to use covetousness and the love of money somewhat synonymously this morning because there is overlap here, but I'm going to expand this because I really want to diagnose beyond just the love of money, the heart attitude, which motivates the love of money, and a hundred other ways that we spend our passions and give our passions to things that are not appropriate.

So for the sake of our purpose here, we can deal with these two together. So let me define covetousness generally speaking, and you can see how this describes the love of money. Covetousness is the disordered desire of the heart that manifests itself in the endeavoring to acquire and possess more than God is pleased to give us.

It is the attitude of the heart which desires to possess and enjoy more than God has been pleased to give us. In other words, God has circumscribed the parameters of my life, and I have and enjoy all of this, and then I say, but I want more, something that is outside of that.

That is the heart attitude of covetousness. It is an attitude of discontent, a desire for things, a longing for them, and it is the setting of our hearts and affections on them, whether we possess them or not.

It is possible to be covetous of what other people have, and it is also possible for you to have a strong, inordinate, sinful passion for the things that you actually possess, because just because you possess them does not make covetousness go away.

Something has to happen to the heart for the covetousness to be cast out. And money is not the problem, but it is the love of money. It is the love of money. Money is a tool. It can be used. It can be abused.

It can be misused. But when money becomes the object of our affections and our desires, and we have an inordinate desire for it or a strong lust after it, that is when covetousness reigns in our hearts.

You know that there are some believers in both the Old and New Testament who were very wealthy, wealthy beyond the imagination of many of us, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, et cetera. In the New Testament, it is the same.

Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man. There are wealthy people in both Testaments. The problem is not money. That is not the issue. It is the blessing of the Lord that makes one rich, and He has no sorrow to it, Proverbs says.

If you have things that God has given to you, then that is God's blessing upon you. We recognize the hand that has given us those blessings. But is the love of covetousness, or sorry, the love of money, is the love of those things in our heart?

This is a little bit more difficult to diagnose and to answer. Coveting is so sinister and so secret that it can reside in the heart of a person and that person not even know it. To quote Spurgeon again, Spurgeon tells a story of somebody that he had this conversation with, and here is what he says.

Spurgeon says, I asked a question some years ago of a person whom I believed to be one of the most covetous individuals in my acquaintance, and I received from him a singular reply. I said, how was it that St. Francis de Sales, who was an eminent confessor to whom persons went in the Romish church to confess their sins, found that persons confessed to him in private all sorts of horrible sins, such as adultery, drunkenness, and murder, but never had one person confess the sin of covetousness?

I asked this friend whether he could tell me why it was, and he gave me this answer, which certainly did take me rather aback. He said, I suppose it is because the sin is so exceedingly rare. Spurgeon says, blind soul, I told him that on the other hand, I feared the sin was so very common that people did not know when they were covetous, and that the man who was most covetous of all was the last person to suspect himself of it.

I feel persuaded that it is so. And then Spurgeon goes on to say, Covetousness breeds insensibility in the heart, a mortification or a deadening in the conscience, and a blindness in the mind. It is as hard to convince a man of it as it is to make a deaf ear hear its own deficiencies.

It's so common. I think that's an insightful diagnosis. It can exist, and sometimes in the most powerful and passionate ways, without the person in whose heart it exists even realizing that it is there.

It is universal, covetousness is, and there are none that are immune to it, none that are exempt from its temptations. It can reside in the heart of the rich and the poor alike. Some people think that only the rich are greedy, only the rich are covetous.

He's got a lot of money, he's got a successful business, he has lots of things, therefore he must be greedy and he must be covetous. And that is a lie. You can love money in a mansion, and you can love money in a cardboard box.

Because that heart desire can be there in the heart of the person who has a 20 ,000 square foot mansion on the beach of California and has it filled with all of the luxuries that this life can give. Covetousness can reside in that heart, and covetousness can reside in the heart of a person who just lives in a ramshackle house with a leaky roof who has none of this world's goods.

Both of those people can be consumed with avarice. It has nothing to do with what you possess, or how much of it you possess. You can love money with a house full of this world's luxuries, and you can love money with barely anything to your name.

Because that desire, that passionate lust, can exist in the heart of both of those people. Someone who lives paycheck to paycheck can be covetous, and somebody who has millions of dollars a month in income to spare can also be covetous.

It's universal. It has nothing to do with how much you possess. It's an attitude of the heart, a desire of the heart, because one person can have everything and another person can have nothing, and yet both of them can be consumed with avarice.

And by the way, the flip side of that is, you can't look at somebody and tell whether or not they are really covetous. You can look at somebody and say, he just went out and bought himself a new truck, a new car, or he just bought his second home.

That guy must be consumed with covetousness. Not necessarily. You don't know that. It's a heart's desire. It's a heart's passion. Somebody might have this world's goods and yet not care about any of it.

I've known people who are loaded with things that blessings just fall into their lap and they have all kinds of stuff, and somebody looking at from the outside might say that's the sure sign that that person is consumed with greed every waking hour of his life.

No, because that same person I happen to know doesn't care about any of those things. He's very generous. He gives. Those things don't have any hold on him whatsoever. So you can't tell whether somebody is greedy or not by how much they have or by necessarily what they spend their money on, because it is a subtle sin.

And changing the possessions doesn't change the heart. Another lie we often believe is if I just had a little bit more than I would be able to be satisfied with that. That is never true. Ecclesiastes 5, verse 10 says, "...he who loves money will never be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with his income.".

Now take that from somebody who in his day silver was accounted as worth nothing because it was so common. That's Solomon. You love money, you'll never be satisfied with money. You can have all the possessions in the world and it does not satiate greed because the very nature of covetousness is that it is a lust that consumes us from the inside out and it is a lust that can never be satisfied.

Never be satisfied. Spurgeon said this, "...it is so very easy a thing to be covetous that no class of society is free from it. A man may be very poor and also covetous, and a man may be exceedingly rich and still may think that he is not half rich enough.

It is not possible to satisfy the greedy. If God gave them one whole world to themselves, they would cry for another. And if it were possible for them to possess heaven as they are now, they would feel themselves in hell because others were in heaven too.

For their greed is such that they must have everything or else have nothing. Unless they can have all things theirs, they are as miserable as Haman who, although all Susa bowed down before him, he was not content because one poor Jew who sat at the gate would not pay him homage.".

That is tremendously insightful, which is why you should read Spurgeon's sermons and not mine. Contentment is not a matter of your possessions, it is a matter of the attitude of your heart. And the manifestations of it are just as varied as the amount of people or the number of people or the kind of people that can fall prey to covetousness.

Somebody who hoards things, hoards things because they're covetous. And somebody who has nothing but hoards money and buys nothing, that same person is covetous. See a covetous person will take all their money and buy things so that they can stack them up in their house and hoard all of these things.

And a covetous person may spend maybe what my grampy used to call a skinflint and never spend any money whatsoever and live like a miser so that their bank account will swell. Both of those are the love of money, the hoarder as well as the person who lives like a miser.

You can have nothing and love money, you can buy everything and love money. Saving every penny and living a meager existence is covetousness. And spending everything so that you have all kinds of stuff is covetousness.

Both meager spending and lavish spending are expressions of greed. It's just a matter of what you are greedy for. One person loves things and so he spends his money to accumulate the things and the other person loves money and so he saves his money and keeps his money so that he can accumulate his money.

One person loves money because he likes it in his bank account, the other person loves money because it gives him access to all the things that are the idols of his heart. And both of those are motivated by covetousness.

Wanting to take from others, wanting what belongs to others, wanting to possess it, being willing to take for it, and yes, being willing to vote for somebody who will take it for you on your behalf, those are all expressions of covetousness.

Envying and jealousy, and the number of objects that we have to covet is almost as endless as this world is big. We can envy somebody's money, their house, the security that they enjoy, financial or physical, their situation that they find themselves in life, their job, their reputation, the honor that men give them, the possessions that they have, one's health.

We can envy other people's health. We can covet other people's stage of life that they're in, or their ministry, or the praise that they receive from others. We can covet other people's families, the ease that they enjoy, the abilities that they have, the talents that God has given to them, the spiritual gifts that they have by which they serve the church, the recognition that they get from others.

You can covet their wife, or their husband, or their kids, or their grandkids, or their strengths, or their knowledge, or the grace that they have received. All of those can be the objects of covetousness.

I have another quote from Spurgeon, but I'm running out of time, where he describes the pastors and the ministers of his day, and he says, and he addresses the pastors, and he says, have you ever been in a situation where somebody else has a better giftedness than you, and you covet their giftedness?

That is one of the things that plagues people who are in ministry. They look at somebody else's success, or their platform, or their giftedness, and think, man, I wish I had that. And they secretly begin to resent at least just a little bit what God has given to that other person.

I wish I could preach like Spurgeon. I mean, I'm not covetous in the sense that I would take his gift for my own, but I might if I could, but I do find myself coveting, it is possible to covet other men's giftedness.

And they think, man, if I could just teach like that, I could just come up with a preaching outline like that that I could do in one Sunday instead of three. Man, if I only had that ability, if I only had his intellect, if only I could read Greek and Hebrew like that guy can, if only I could exegete the Scripture like that guy can, if only I could write like Phil Johnson could write, if only I could preach like Mike Riccardi could preach, if only I had the temperament and the demeanor of a Justin Peters.

There's just no limit to the things we can covet. That is why it is such an insidious and evil sin. The danger of covetousness is that it is a mother of many other sins, including worry. We worry over the future, if I only had more stuff, more money, more this, more that, then I would be secure.

It causes us to neglect our family and our home because we want to work more to get more and then to secure more what we worked more to get of. It causes perpetual craving for more because covetousness is an insatiable hunger because there is always something there, something else that we want, something else that we can fill, another void that we want to put something or someone or something into.

It causes us to complain, why can't I have this? Why doesn't God do that for me? God gave that person that thing and He has not given that to me. That is a covetous heart. It leads to bitterness and resentment, animosity, jealousy, envy, strife, division, schism in the church, in families, between believers.

It causes us to complain against God and to think that He is not wise in His bestowment of His gifts that God has given to that man, that thing, whether it is a talent, a skill, an ability, a platform, recognition, honor, whatever it is, or His family or His job or His ministry or His things, God has given that to Him and He hasn't given it to me.

And if only God knew better than He would do with that man's things, what I would do with that man's things. In other words, I would distribute them more evenly and give me a little piece of that. That's the heart of covetousness.

It suggests that God has failed us, that He owes us something that He has not given to us, that He has not kept His word, that He has not dealt with us appropriately, that He in His infinite benevolence and infinite wisdom has not done right by me.

That's covetousness. God in His infinite wisdom has not done right by me. And you and I don't want to see what it would look like if God did right by us, if God gave us justice. Everything we get is grace.

And really, covetousness is idolatry because it sets the heart on the things that God provides rather than the provider itself. Money becomes a path by which we secure and satiate all of the idols of our heart.

Whether that is a desire for security or things or attention or reputation or leisure or friends or the approval of men, power, status, pleasure, ease, comfort, influence, or the lust of the flesh, all of those are idols of the heart that money gives us the ability to satiate.

If we have the ability to satiate those idols and we do so and we give in to that sin, then we will find that those idols can never be satiated. They will always cry for more. They will always long for more.

And then loving money, another danger of it is, it is particularly alluring during times of persecution because this is what the first century Christians were facing. And it is understandable why He would say to them here, make sure your character is free from the love of money.

Because we read back in chapter 10, verse 34, you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.

And there in chapter 10, verse 34, the author tries to take their eyes off of the property that they had, the things that they had that had been seized, and put their eyes and focus on the reward that is to come, the blessings of what God has in store for them.