0547 How Shall We Then Live?(part 7of 8)

Transcription

1 0547 How Shall We Then Live?(part 7of 8) 0547 How Then Pt 7 Quotes for TV & Web 12:00:20 The attempt to deceive is inevitably an attempt to damage the other person. This is considered abuse. 12:18:37 When God acts we never say That isn t like Him. That is because He is utterly consistent and wonderfully true. 12:21:44 Where there is truth, there are lies. When God is at work in our lives, He sweeps His broom of truth through our hearts. Sermon: If you turn to your bible this morning, I m going to read just a couple of verses from Exodus chapter 20; the second book of the old testament. I m going to read the first two verses just to remind ourselves of the setting in which these ten commandments, we ve been looking at over recent weeks, are given and who is speaking, therefore what authority lies behind them. Verse one Exodus twenty, And God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. Then I m going to read one commandment to you and in some senses this one is not as exciting in some way, or as dramatic as some of the other commandments that we have looked at. But it is something the bible has a lot to say about and it s something which is extremely dangerous and I want to say to you also something which is prevalent within the church of Jesus Christ. I m going to read verse sixteen: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour. It s bad enough to give false testimony. That is spoken about elsewhere, Leviticus 19 it says very explicitly, you shall not lie. But this is more specific than simply that general do not bear false testimony, is do not give false testimony against your neighbour. In other words, it s primarily about slander. Let me read to you a newspaper report from Britain. This is what it says: Lying is about to become easier in Britain as two German alibi agencies open for business in the next six months. They offer to provide fictional cover stories for clients. Alibi services are already on offer in German for people who need to hide their tracks or supply concocted evidence to a spouse or a boss. Perfect Alibi, that s one company, and Alibi Agent, that s another company, are both coming to Britain and are examples of companies that construct elaborate excuses for their clientele. People wishing to dodge a meeting, a relative, a friend, a creditor, or a spouse can secure alibis, simple or elaborate, from prices ranging from in Canadian dollars forty dollars to two thousand dollars a day. The firms do not offer, says the newspaper, now the firms do not offer alibis for dodging the tax man, official business creditors, or the police that, after all, would be immoral. (Laughter). Now I want you to notice something very subtle here. These alibi agencies are not just about concocting stories and lies, they re all about abusing people. Whether it s our spouse whom you want to deceive, or your boss, or a relative, or a creditor and the intent to deceive is inevitably the intent to damage the person against whom the deception is

2 being perpetrated. And this is the concern in the law of Moses. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. Now it is an attack on the destruction of truth of course but that is secondary in this particular commandment to the attack on your neighbour; the attack on other people that is spoken about here. Now all lies ultimately heart people and so the law is about protecting people from the abuse of false testimony. Later in the book of Deuteronomy, this false testimony against your neighbour is described as an evil that needs purged from amongst the people. Let me read to you Deuteronomy chapter 19 and verse 18. Speaking about the law courts, the judges must make a thorough investigation if the witness proves to be a liar giving false testimony against his brother, then do to him as he intended to do to his brother. That is, he gets the penalty that he was hoping to inflict through his false testimony. And then, he adds, this is God speaking to Moses, You must purge this evil from among you. And if it is evil as it is, why then do we do it? Why do we deceive one another? Why do we distort the truth? Why do we lie? Why do we gossip? Why do we slander? And if you think in talking about that I m speaking about a wicked world out there somewhere, you need to be disillusioned. Because actually scripture speaks about this taking place amongst the people of God. In the new testament, there s several references to this in churches of the new testament. For instance, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 20, he said I m afraid that when I come, I may not find you as I want you to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder. Not a particularly healthy description of a church is it? But if there in the early church, the Corinthian church, Paul says I m concerned when I come amongst you there ll be factions and there ll be slander, there ll be gossip. And later James writes in his book James 4 verse 11, Brothers do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. And Peter in his first letter, 1 Peter 2:1 says, Therefore, rid yourselves, speaking to believers, of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind. And these are speaking to Christian believers and we can be sure if it was prevalent in the New Testament churches it would be prevalent in today s church, may I be blunt, prevalent in this church, that we talk and we gossip and we slander. Because the old nature actually enjoys that as we ll see in just a moment. Now it seems to me that in society at lardge we have developed a culture of deceit that is so widespread that we have a vocabulary to disguise it and it has become acceptable to us. So for instance, politicians now employ spin doctors. What s the purpose of that? The issue is no longer how things are, but how they are portrayed and the slant and the spin that s put on them. Statistics are massaged. You know you can make statistics mean anything. Balance sheets are adjusted. Difficult issues are evaded. We lie at work about hours and lunch breaks and expenses. People lie at home they say things like no really your hair looks lovely. (Laughter). I thought that there was more in our account than that. No, I don t mind missing football to visit your mother. (Laughter). no of course you re not fat. (Laughter). We deceive. And I want to talk realistically about this, this morning because the tongue wealds enormous power. Now I want to talk about three kinds of false testimony that it seems to me there are. First of all, there is false testimony that is defensive. What I mean buy that is this. That sometimes things go wrong in our lives or in our circumstances or in our work place or in our marriage especially when we have been hurt by this we have learned that the best defense is an offence. And so our defensive instinct is to incriminate others and to circulate things

3 about them which are not true because in the light of that it puts us in a better position. And as a false testimony that is defensive, initially. And the trouble is if it s repeated often enough and we learn to spin it well, and we give ourselves some reasons for it, we end up convincing ourselves that what we say is true. I ve heard things from people that have been clear, evident, untruths and I ve had to conclude they ve actually convinced themselves this is true, cause you repeat it often enough. But it s not true. and as Jeremiah 17 verse 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And it is we who become deceived sometimes by our own hearts when we become defensive in this way. I heard a story about a man who was on a charge in court and at the beginning of his trial he pleaded not guilty. And at the end of the first day of evidence, he asked the judge if he could change his plea to guilty. And the judge said well why didn t you say this earlier to which the man replied, Well to be honest, your Honour, I d forgotten that I was guilty until I heard the evidence. (Laughter). Well that s a defensive response and we kid ourselves and that s why, by the way, watch your tendency to defend yourself. And if you re in any position of leadership any position of influence, you are going to subject to criticism and in all likely hood to gossip. Oswald Smith used to say of his critics of which he had many, No defense, no attack and there is real wisdom in that. And I ve learned myself unless I have to and called upon to do so, it is best to not defend yourself in any situation, allow whatever kind of nonsense circulates to circulate because it s not our business to defend ourselves. Now of course we all deserve criticism from time to time, but there s a proper approach to that. As Paul said to the Ephesians in Ephesians 4 verse 14, We re to speak the truth in love to one another. And from time to time we need that of course. Anybody whose never made a mistake is never accomplished anything and we recognize that. But this is criticism to others. This is where there is the lack of courage to face anybody face to face and to join in slander, which is usually vindictive in its purpose and intent on destruction that is the purpose of it, to destroy. And if I may share with you four reasons that I have found helpful to guard against being defensive. Firstly, if the attack is personal on you personally, know that the truth about you is probably a lot worse that your critics realize. (Laughter). That is certainly true in my life and I know that, that there are things in my life if my critics knew about wow they would have a field day. But it s worse than what they do know. Because you see, my heart is desperately wicked too. Secondly, if you try to throw water on a deception or distortion, you usually end up throwing gasoline instead of water. And that s usually what your critics want. They want to fight, want it to flare up. So don t throw water over it. Thirdly, learn from your critics. However distorted the gossip may be, learn from its root cause and in this way our critics do us good and we can learn from them. And fourthly, know that judgment day will come. Because Jesus said in Matthew 12 and verse 36, I tell you that man will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. There is going to come a judgment day and by the way, you and I will be in the dark as well as our critics, there s going to come a judgment day and leave that to God. But the moment we go on the defensive we are as likely as our attackers to begin to spin and distort and be selective about the truth ourselves. And so do not give false testimony against your brother. One of the first reasons is we re being defensive and false testimony is a false testimony that is defensive. But secondly, there is a false testimony that is deceptive. It is called lying. Now deception has become an everyday way of life in our society in such a way again we hardly notice it. If I turn on

4 my computer, go to the internet often I get a popup screen that says something like Congratulations you have just won fifty thousand dollars. (Laughter). What nonsense. Or you get a telephone call saying, is that Mr. Charles Price? Yes. Well I just want to let you know you ve won a five day Caribbean cruise can I take five minutes to tell you about it? We I sometimes say well I think the five minutes explanation will be probably longer than the cruise. (Laughter). I saw an advert that said something like this, Lose all the weight you want whilst eating all the food you want. (Laughter). If you could believe it. You see an advert, Fly to London for seventy five dollars. Yeah that means fly on Christmas day and come back next Christmas or swim back, seventy five dollars. (Laughter). Here s a good one, open wide this won t hurt at all. (Laughter). My wife and I were needing to purchase something for our home a while ago and it was not a cheap thing and we needed it. And one day she came back home and said I passed by a store which had a big sign this very thing for forty nine dollars. We thought wonderful, so a few days later we went to look at it. The cheapest we could find there was more than ten times the forty nine dollars. But it worked it got us in the door. So we ll talk about you shall not covet next week. (Laughter). But it s deceptive. Do you know Microsoft have released a latest version of Encarta the Encarta is the online encyclopedia and dictionary. And when they released it, they explained there are nine separate editions of the Encarta there is an American edition, British, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Brazilian. Each apparently edited to suit how each nation likes to understand the facts about themselves and about their history. So Microsoft s director of marketing was quoted as saying if you like at the battle of Waterloo in the English Encarta and the French Encarta you get to quite different versions of things. Like, for example, who won the battle. (Laughter). Well the French have got it wrong let me remind you. (Laughter). we fiddle the truth to suit our own convenience. I remember once being invited to speak at an independence day celebration in California one July the fourth several years ago. And after all the patriotic stuff, I was to speak and I got up and I said thank you so much for inviting me today to share in your rebellion day celebrations. (Laughter). And there was uproar I said but I m British it was a rebellion come on now the spirit of rebellion lies at the root of America. Well they didn t like that very much. (Laughter). somebody asked me at that event do you have a July the fourth in England, and I said well that s an interesting question we have a July the third and we have a July the fifth, I m not sure about a July the fourth. (Laughter). We just don t celebrate it the way they do. Well these are just perspectives but you know it could become distortion. But if truth seems to be sliding away from us in our culture, it s because the very essence of truth is questioned these days. It is a popular notion that there is no absolute truth, only relative truths. And there s as many relative truths as there are people on this planet. And any truth there is, is a personal thing, it s a private thing, it s truthful maybe it s not truthful for me and you and I ve had conversations what some of you would have done with a number of people who ve said to me something like Well that may be true for you, but it s not true for me. I said I m not interested in if it s true for you or true for me, is it true period. Is there such a thing as truth and there is. Now listen, every time you fly a plane you believe there s such a thing as truth, that the engineers have not just thrown this thing together. They have assembled this aircraft according to very precise specifications because there is truth about what makes an aircraft fly and what causes not to fly. When you go to visit your doctor, you hope that you re not just depending on the whim of your physician. But

5 his diagnosis and his remedy is based on experience that s been demonstrated to work in other cases. Now I know that medicine is not the exact science that we lay people would like it to be and we assume it to be we know there s all kinds of variables. But nevertheless, there s certain things that are true. Now my dictionary defines truth as being in accordance with fact or reality; genuine; not spurious or counterfeit; exact and accurate. And when it comes to dealing with God, God is truth. Now I ve pointed out before the ten commandments are essentially an expression of the character of God. That the reason why it says you shall not steal is because God is not a thief. The reason why it says you shall not commit adultery is because God is totally faithful. The reason why he says you shall not covet is because God is not greedy. And the reason why it says you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour is because God is truth. In fact several times he s described as the God of truth. Jesus once said, I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the truth. That means that God is true in all he is, utterly consistent, utterly genuine; utterly real. He is true in all he does. He is true in his word. He is true to his character. He is true to his nature. You never say of God, oh that isn t like him. Now we say that of people of course, we say of people I don t know what came over him. Or she acted completely out of character. But we never say of God, That is so unlike God. He is acting out of character at the moment because God is totally trustworthy and totally true, utterly consistent and wonderfully true. And that is why we are to be truthful. That is why there is to be truth in our inner being. In John 8:44, Jesus spoke of the devil as the father of lies. That is all which originates from him is untrustworthy and untrue. By clear implication therefore all that is untrue does derive from the devil because lies are his specialty, lies are his nature as much as truth is God s nature. And that s why it s so important our lives are characterized by truth or we give a foothold to the devil because that s his specialty. And when our lives are brought under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, truth becomes a preeminent issue in our lives. In Psalm 51, David expresses his repentance for his adultery is Bathsheba, you probably remember that story. And out of that act of adultery, there grew deceit and then destruction because he caused her husband to be sent to the frontline of the battle and killed. And David realizes with tremendous remorse and grief what he has done and he prays his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 and in verse 6 one of the things he acknowledges is that surely you desire truth in the inner parts. The reason for David s adultery externally was the lack of truth in the internal part of his heart. The reason for deceit which followed was the lack of truth in the inner part of his life. And David had been deceived by lies that told him adultery is okay. He had been deceived by the fact I can get away with this. I can cover my tracks. And so in his repentance he faces the reality that what you require is truth in the inner part and then the externals will begin to look after themselves. That s why Jesus always goes back to the heart. It s not do not kill, its do not be angry with your brother because it s the heart. It s not do not commit adultery, its do not lust after a woman because it s the attitude of the heart. That s where God requires truth. And you see if there s such a thing as truth as there is, there is also such a thing as lies. And if there is no truth, there are no lies. If there is no truth and there are no lies, they re only opinions and we re all on the same level and we could believe whatever you like as long as you could get away with it. When God is at work in our lives, he sweeps his broom of truth in our hearts. And so false testimony is defensive, first all, suggested to you, it s also deceptive. And thirdly false testimony is destructive, which is the real import of this commandment because it s

6 about slander. You will not give false testimony against your neighbour. Slander is an evil thing, it s a destructive thing. The oxford dictionary defines slander as the uttering of malicious, false and injurious statements about a person. It is always designed to be destructive. It involves, I m not quoting not I m telling you this, insinuations and inuendo s and speculations, false accusations, distortions of the truth. All with the intent to do harm. I didn t realize until I was studying this this week how widely the scripture speaks about slander. Do you know there are thirty separate passages in the bible that address this issue? In Leviticus chapter 19 God speaks to the people and he says, Be holy because I the Lord your God am holy. And then in the rest of that chapter he explains what it means to be holy. What does a holy man look like? What does a holy woman look like? And many of these ten commandments are repeated in some form in that passage but he says there in verse eleven. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Verse 16, Do not go about spreading slander among your people. It s one thing to deceive, but then to spread it about by whatever form. And to do so is to violate the holiness of God, you cannot be a holy Christian and be a gossip or a slanderer that is destructive to other people. Psalm 51 addresses the issue of holiness it begins with a question Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? That is who is it that may approach a holy God and he says in verse 3 as part of his answer, He who has no slander on his tongue and casts no slur on his fellowmen. You know David wrote that because like all people in roles of leadership he himself had been the victim of slander. He spokes about that several times. In Psalm 41 he talks of those who have malice towards him. And he says whenever they come to see me, whenever one comes to see me, he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander. That is accumulates some ammunition, then he goes out and spreads it abroad. People come looking for what s wrong with me, says David and they spread it abroad. And it s the spreading abroad that is so destructive. It s also called gossip. The bible has some things to say about gossip too. Proverbs 18 verse 8 says, The words of a gossip are like choice morsels, they go down to a man s inmost parts. Actually the old nature in us loves gossip, it s a sad fact but it does. And gossips keep things stoked up as Proverbs 26 verse 20 says, without wood a fire is free to go out, without gossip a quarrel dies down. And Paul was concerned about the church in Corinth when I come I m afraid I won t find I what I like to find, there ll be those amongst you who slander and gossip. And he links with that who are arrogant. You ve probably heard the well known story of a man in the middle ages who confessed to a monk that he had sinned by spreading rumors about someone in the local community. And he came to the monk and said what should I do? And the monk asked him to do a penance. He was to take a bag of feathers and place one feather on every doorpost every doorstep in the community. And the man eager to do that ran and put a feather on every doorstop came back to the monk and said I ve done that. And the monk said, Your penance is not yet finished. Now go back and collect every feather that you placed on the doorsteps. And the man said, But the feathers will have blown away by now. I will be able to regain them. And the wise monk said, that s exactly what happened with your careless and malicious words. You can be all as sorry as you want, but you won t bring them back. Let me finish by giving you three things to helps us in this area of dealing with slander. First of all, we need to be honest, that s the first thing. Yes, we do need to criticize and we need to receive criticism when we re wrong but there is a way to do that. Matthew 18 verse 15 Jesus tells us how to do that, he

7 says Go to the person just between the two of you. Don t pass around for prayer to your friends. Prayer is the most subtle of gossiping actually we say I want you to know this for prayer. Just the two of you. And in most cases that will resolve the issue either there s misunderstanding or there s a problem that needs to be solved. But if it doesn t, then said Jesus take one or two others along with you, again don t ask everybody to be praying for you, one or two others, that the testimony said Jesus be established with two or three witnesses either the second or the third if it s one or two others. Now the event then will usually with other people involved clarify the issue and then maybe you ve misunderstood it or maybe you know there are things which are not as you thought they were but two or three others will help to bring clarification to that process. But supposing it doesn t, take it to the church. And he said if that doesn t solve it, then treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector, treat them as an outsider. Now notice that the resolution of this issue, according to Jesus, didn t not necessarily involve reconciliation that was the goal of course that s always the goal, at least it s the highest desire. But resolution, in this instance, involved not reconciliation but separation because they would not face the issue and deal with it and acknowledge the wrong. So we need to honest and scripture gives us plenty of grounds for dealing honestly with things that are wrong that we see in other people. Secondly, may I say this, be honourable as well as being honest. You see legitimate criticism of others needs to be in an honourable fashion. I heard about a church that was going through a hard time of divisions and there were accusations and counter accusations and criticisms and this was wearing a lot of people down. And then one day the minister announced that he was going to start a mutual encouragement fellowship he called it. He said this is when we re going to encourage one another rather than discourage one another, who would like to join? And most of the hands went up. And he said there s only one criteria for joining and that is you think before you speak. And then he put onto the screen an acrostic for the word think. First of all T, is it true? The first question to always ask yourself of anything and if you don t know if it s true, keep it quiet until you do. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is this designed to build and to help? Thirdly, I is it inspiring, is this designed to bring about something that s better and good? N, is it necessary? Do I need to be involved in this, do I need to talk to others about it? And K, is it kind? And I encourage you to think before you speak, and some of us need to learn to do that. To think, is it true, is it helpful, is it inspiring, is it necessary, is it kind? And if we re to honest, we re to be honourable. Thirdly, we re to be holy, do you know the first test of holiness in scripture is actually our speech. Jesus said in Matthew 12:34, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And the context in which Jesus said that is when some people, some Pharisees were criticizing him for healing a blind man on the Sabbath day. And Jesus said a good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. Jesus said your hearts are so corrupt, he called them vipers. And therefore what you say is going to be bad and your motive is going to be bad. And that s why it s God desiring truth in the inmost being that is the beginning of this process as we allow the Holy Spirit within us to bring that purification. When Paul speaks of being filled with the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 5, he gives the command, Be filled with the Holy Spirit, and the next word he uses is speak to one another with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. The point is that the result of being filled with the Holy Spirit is you speak, something happens to your mouth. In fact on the ten occasions after Pentecost

8 when the term to be filled or to be full of the Holy Spirit is used, something always happens to the mouth. Holiness and speech go together. Our speech is the revealer of our hearts. Out of the overflow of the hearts the mouth speaks. And wrong speech can block the Holy Spirit, can grieve the Holy Spirit, can quench the Holy Spirit in our lives. And you cannot speak maliciously about other people and remain in a wholesome relationship with the Holy Spirit. You are grieving the Holy Spirit. And Ephesians 4 verse 30, it s this very thing which Paul says grieves the Holy Spirit Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, that grieves the Holy Spirit, rage, that grieves the Holy Spirit, anger, that grieves the Holy Spirit, brawling, that grieves the Holy Spirit, slander, that grieves the Holy Spirit every form of malice, that grieves the Holy Spirit. Instead be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, as in Christ God forgave you. And Paul says that you could grieve the Holy Spirit with your mouth. You don t have to go out and commit adultery to grieve the Holy Spirit. You can grieve the Holy Spirit sitting in the back of the church, talking in the back of the church and telling somebody else some slur on somebody else and you shut off the Holy Spirit s working in your life. You know we can t look at these commandments and know the conviction that they bring to us and that the Holy Spirit brings to us through them. We re not talking about something that s cerebral, here s the theory, here s an idea, we re talking about how we live our lives before God. And as I close I wonder if there are some here this morning and you need to confess before God the way you ve used your tongue or your pen, whatever the form by which you might communicate. You see if it s out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks, then the way to change our speaking is to allow God to change our hearts. And as we have looked at this commandment this morning, maybe the Holy Spirit has spoken to your conscience and you have a choice. You could resist the conviction of this commandment in your conscience. You have the right to go out of hear this morning, even to go out of hear angry that you ve heard what you ve heard. You could resist. Or could respond to the conviction of the commandment in our conscience. And to respond is to say Lord, forgive me. And I m going to invite you in just a moment, I m going to give a moment of silent prayer. In that silent prayer I want you to ask the Holy Spirit, how is it that I need to clean up this part of my life? You ve been involved in gossip, slander, distortion of truth? You need to confess it to God and you need to put it right with the person, some of you may need to make a telephone call. Write a letter arrange to see somebody. But we re not here this morning just to find out what does the bible say, we re here this morning to bring our lives under its authority. That is what does the bible require me to do as I seek to live for Christ. If you don t want to live for Christ live as you please, but if you want Christ to be Lord in your life and I make that assumption that you re here this morning because you re hungry to know Christ. Maybe you don t know him yet but the Spirit is drawing you to himself. And as you come to know him and as you open your life to Jesus Christ and invite him to come and live within you as your savior and to forgive you of your past, he comes to restore you to godliness, to holiness of life to produce his character in you which means you ll not bear false witness against your neighbour. Pat Russell singing

9 Trust His Heart All things work for our good Though sometimes don t see how they could Struggles that break our hearts in two Sometimes blind us to the truth Our Father knows what s best for us; His ways are not our own So when your pathway seems dim, And you just don t see Him, Remember he s still on the throne God is too wise to be mistaken God is too good to be unkind So when you don t understand, When you don t see His plan, When you can t trace His hand, trust His heart. Trust His heart. He sees the Master plan. He holds the future in His hands So don t live as those who have no hope All our hope is found in Him We see the present clearly, But he sees the first and the last And like a tapestry, He s weaving you and me To someday be just like Him God is too wise to be mistaken God is too good to be unkind So when you don t understand, When you don t see His plan, When you can t trace His hand, trust His heart He alone is faithful and true He alone knows what is best for you God is too wise to be mistaken God is too good to be unkind So when you don t understand, When you don t see His plan, When you can t trace His hand, trust His heart When you don t understand, And when you don t see His plan, When you can t trace His hand, trust His heart.

10 Reg Extro I believe that as a result of today s teaching and the issue of honesty that God has spoken to your conscience and to mine. I trust that our response today is the same as that of David, create in me a clean heart oh God and renew a right spirit within me. Would you pray for courage as you seek to obey the Lord s direction to make restitution and restore relationships that have been broken? We encourage you to write to us and let us know how the word of God is bringing change and cleansing to your life. Next week on Living Truth, Charles Price deals with the subject coveting: the seed of greed.