Sins of the World - Lust Of The Eyes

The second sin of the world that John speaks about in the following scripture is the Lust of the Eyes.

I John 2:16 - For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.

The lust of the eyes is sin formed in the desires that are aroused by our eyes. Sins of riches, fame, importance, beauty, all the outward things of the world. They produce greed, covetousness, envy and the desire of possession.

Joshua 7:21 says this "When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. And there they are, hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, with the silver under it.

After the nation of Israel entered the promise land and defeated Jericho, they went into battle and were defeated at Ai. They were instructed to take no spoils from Jericho, but one person did, which caused the defeat at Ai to occur. In this scripture, Achan is confessing that he has sinned against the Lord. His sin was a lust of the eyes. He saw the beautiful items, began to covet them, his greed took over, he ended up taking them and hiding them in his tent.

Do we not also have these issues today? We see our neighbors new fifty inch flat screen TV and think, I ought to have one. Or we see the beautiful women on the cover of every magazine and think I should look that good. Then off we go to get our hair changed or buy that thing we really can't afford. The reality is, these things often draw us in so that greed, lust, covetousness and envy take over. Instead of doing what God would call us to do; we begin to feed the lust of our eyes.

It is especially hard here in America. We after all, are the land of opportunity. We are the land of excess, we can have anything we want, any way we want it. Don't get me wrong, in America we have some really great freedoms that others around the world would love to enjoy. We also however; have so much excess that feeds into the lust of the eyes. Sometimes, less is more...

I am no stranger to these feelings. For so many years, my husband and I bought into the great American dream. We should have the big house with plenty of nice things. When we accomplished that, we would be successful. We were successful alright, successful at accumulated a large sum of debt. About myself, I thought that as long as I was thin and beautiful, that I doing things right. Although, God wants us to love ourselves enough to take care of our bodies, He is really more concerned with our hearts. Actually, our outward beauty presented in an inappropriate package can cause lust of the eyes and lead someone into sin.

We crave to be important, to feel like others think we are important. There is a natural part of us that has this craving, but instead of driving us to seek attention, importance or fame, it should drive us to God. He is the only one that can fill that craving and give us our importance. It is in finding out about His character and drawing near to him that we get our importance.

After Cain brought his offering to God in Genesis 4, Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. God said this to him in Genesis 4:6-7:

"Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it."

God is trying to tell us, that sin lies at the door, it is all around us, and its desire is for us, for us to enter into it. But we are called to rule over it! We do that by the spirit and only by the spirit.
Everyday we must fill ourselves up with the power of the spirit so that we will rule over the sins of the world, not it over us.