TOPIC: Greed, Spiritual Growth
REFERENCES: Hebrews 12:1, Joshua 6:27, Joshua 7:1, Acts 5
SERIES: Protecting Your Achilles Heel, Part 1

SUMMARY
You’re probably familiar with the mythic Achilles, greater than mortal man but not quite God, he’s a fascinating example of how great promise can fall victim to moral failing. Achilles heel has endured for centuries as the metaphor for a fatal flaw, a chink in the armor that permits the tip of an arrow to penetrate and to kill. It turns out that many characters in the bible have that same flaw, and chances are that most of us do too.

Most of us are a mixture of good and bad and most of us have our Achilles heels, those points in our character that we struggle with from time to time. The process of spiritual growth is promoting the good and overcoming and working through those areas of immorality and weakness. If we open ourselves up to spiritual growth, God will show us those entangling sins that we’re going to have to deal with in our lives if we are going to move forward in becoming the kind of person that He wants us to be and, coincidentally, the kind of person that we want to be. God reveals those in the sequence in which He wants us to deal with them. If we don’t work through the one that He is showing us at the time, then we will not get to the others and what we will experience in our life is spiritual stagnation.

When do we get finished dealing with those? Never.

In the 1987 movie "Wall Street" Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas, states that "greed is good." Now, maybe you don’t call it greed...of course, in your life, it’s not greed. It’s getting your just dues, it’s getting your tribute, it’s getting what you really deserve after all. The trouble with greed is that you can get what you want, but you’ll rarely want what you get.

In this sermon, we will examine two possible sources for greed in our lives as well as two destructive consequences of greed. One of those consequences falls into the area of needs. When needs go unmet in our church or in our community, it’s not because of a lack of resources, it’s because to whatever extent, there’s too much greed. And being that greed is on the rise in this country, if we as a nation have an exposed Achilles Heel it would have to be just that....greed. But let’s be careful not to generalize about everyone else, let's start with our own tent. And let's admit that there are common sins that entangle us, that find the crack in our otherwise moral armor, and become our Achilles Heel.


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