That is the trouble with covetousness. It actually never delivers. You say, ‘If only I could get this, have that, get this promotion, achieve this, then I shall be fulfilled and I shall be happy.’ Well, you get there; you get that leg up, and straight away you are looking and straining for the next gain. You are never at peace because these things don't satisfy. You can see that in spite of his wealth, he is saying, ‘I dare not lose this harvest. I need it for myself in the future.’ He was discontented and insecure, and his whole life was a life of care. How limited his thoughts were! Why wouldn't you think a man in his position in those days – a wealthy man with servants and many, many possessions – would have some depth to him?
Is this the way we think? Selfish thoughts, possessive thoughts, conceited thoughts? Not only that but they are very arrogant thoughts. Look at the words again: ‘He thought within himself, saying, What shall I do?’ Wouldn't it have been nicer if we could read there, ‘What should I do?’ Isn't that a better question? What should I do with all this windfall that has suddenly come my way? But instead it is, ‘What am I going to do? What am I going to decide to do?’ There is not consideration of what is right to do, what God would have him do; it is, what do I want to do? That is how he speaks all the way through, in a very arrogant way. ‘This will I do: I will’ do such and such a thing, and I will say. Not a thought for what is right, what is reasonable. So he is possessive, he is arrogant, and he is selfish.
But we have to ask ourselves, ‘Without God, is this how I am thinking? It's my life, what am I going to do with my life, with my abilities, with my possessions, with my future?’ Are we thinking in exactly the same way? Not, ‘What ought I do, what would God have me do, what would my Creator want me to do?’ But, ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, or as the old preachers used to call it, ‘I disease’. Not ‘eye disease’, but ‘I disease’. ‘I’ stands for independent of God; it also stands for ignorant of God. ‘I’ is so important, ‘I’ come first, ‘I’ matter most, I have no duty to my Creator. Now is that how we think?