The Tenth Commandment

The most interesting thing about a child's behavior is how they always want what another child wants, what another child has. They might play with a certain toy for months or years. It may be a toy that's way out of their age range, something for a baby when they're a toddler. But when another child picks it up, there's something about them that just craves that toy. They covet it. And because they're children, they express this very clearly, usually with a tantrum. We have a certain toy in our home that, well, when guests come over with children, we hide it in our room because it's just been clear there's a pattern set. When other children are there, they play with this toy and it brings about a ruckus with the children. As we all recognize this covening in children, we have to realize we have it in ourselves. How often do we see something somebody has and we never realize we needed it until we saw that someone else had it. Maybe it's a new car someone got and you realize, well, yeah, my car is looking kind of old now. You go to someone's home and they have a large screen, a big screen TV, you realize, wow, my TV is so small. You see things that other people have and you realize that your things just aren't as satisfying anymore. Or you see someone with different gifts and talents. We covet people's athletic skills. We covet people's musical skills. Who should say I? I covet people's athletic skills. And I covet people's musical skills. We long for the things that we see in others. And the amazing thing about this is we would be content if we hadn't seen those things. We covet what we see others enjoying, hoping that it's going to bring us satisfaction and delight. We're constantly swayed by our coveting hearts, and this leads to discontentment. Our message this morning is simple. We're still looking at the Ten Commandments. The message this morning is this. Christ grants us contentment. Therefore, we are called to stop coveting. Christ grants us contentment. Therefore, we must stop coveting. It begins with what Christ gives us and then we can obey the law. Now, I have to admit to you, this is, as I prepared this sermon under the circumstances of the week, this has been difficult. I am completely discontent. While I had a very hospitable host, not being in my home with my power and my luxuries, I've realized how many things I covet. And so, we are going to look to God's law and all be corrected together this morning. As always, that is. We're in Exodus. The last term of the Ten Commandments. God has called His people to be His nation. He's now giving them the law so that they are His obedient people as they go into His land that He's given to them. We're looking at the Ten Commandments. The last commandment is this week. As always, we'll have four questions. What does the command mean? What is the rationale of the command? What is the backdrop? What is the bigger picture there? So first, what is this the basic command mean? Secondly, what is the big picture of the command of the Old Testament? Then the very important command for our message, how does Christ fulfill that command? And then finally, how does Christ heighten that command or how does it apply to us as a new covenant body? Exodus 20, verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, nor shall you covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servants, or his female servants, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's." Now, a few observations. It is the last commandment, and it's not the least commandment. If anything, being the last commandment, there's an end stress here. Because this commandment is unique in two ways. First, this is a commandment that focuses on the internal. You know, there's two tables of the commandments. There's the first table or those commands that tell us how to love God. The second table are the commands that tell us how to love our neighbor. Here, we're still in the neighbor. We're not supposed to covet. And most of the other commands regarding the neighbor were external actions. Do not commit adultery. Do not lie. Do not murder. Do not bear false witness. Here, this command is not focused on the action as much. as the internal desire. It's unique on this table. It's unique in the sense that it's really getting at the sin behind all the other sinful actions. Because we lie because we covet. We commit adultery because we covet our neighbor's loss. We still, because we commit, we covet other people's things. So this one is important. It stands out because it's really getting at the internal desires that we had to see of all the other commandments. Secondly, it's the last commandment, and I think it bookends with the first. The first command is to have no other gods before Yahweh and to make no idols. Well, covening is actually called idolatry in the New Testament. You see the book ending there. We covet the things we worship. We long for the things we worship. We are to worship God alone. We are to long for Him alone. We covet the things that we make idols. So, we're just circling back and recognizing yet again another idol, the things we idolize. The things we long for. And so, I believe that the first and the last commandment, they book in one another, they complement one another. The last one brings us right back to the first. The things we long for are the things we worship. So, what does it mean to covet? Well, simply, it's wanting something we do not have, or wanting more of what we already have. That's a simple definition, but the coveting is looking and saying, I want that, I crave, I long for that. Or realizing you have something that brings you a certain kind of delight and saying, I must have more of this. It's the desire to try to find a happiness, satisfaction in things of this world. Now, coveting, when it actually is entertained. It brings about something that's ugly. It makes us act ugly towards others because we start seeing what they have and we long for what they have and we either become jealous or become thieves. It brings about more sin. We covet. That is what we do. And our society, it encourages this. We're consumers. We look at all the things that we want and we go buy them. We look and we see them constantly in commercials. This is what you need to be happy. Our society does nothing but encourage coveting. That's why it's so dangerous, because I believe we actually consider it an acceptable sin. What I mean by that, it's not acceptable. It's one of God's commandments not to do it. But in our culture, it's one of these things that, well, it's everywhere. We're told to covet. As we look to the law, we must remember its clear purpose. to convict us. The law is meant to correct us, to point out our sins so that we go to Christ, find forgiveness, and repent. This is what Paul clearly says about coveting in Romans 7. He would not have known he had coveted if it were not for the law. Now, one way to understand a term better is to compare it to other concepts. So, when we're looking at covet, as I was studying covet, I kept coming back to a question. How does coveting relate to lust? And so, I'm going to go down this path. I hope it's helpful for you. It was very helpful for me. But what I want to do is compare what does it mean to covet over against, or in comparison to, what it means to lust. And the first thing I want to say is these two terms are very interchangeable. To covet and to lust, they're very interchangeable, but they also have some unique things about them. So, just picture here a Venn diagram. I see some heads nodding. Alright, you're with me. A Venn diagram, you've got two circles, and they come together somehow, right? So, they overlap, and depending on how much they overlap, that shows how much they share. I think coveting and lusting, they share more than they have different. So, let's talk about the things they share. Coveting and lusting. Well, they're both internal desires, as James show us. Actually, coveting and lusting could be used there in James 1, where he says, we're enticed and lured away by our own desires. So it's something that comes up from within us. It's created by our own heart. But each word has something unique, and I want to just point out some of the things that I think help us understand the difference between coveting and lusting. And again, this is so we can understand coveting better. Coveting would be the internal desire more connected with stealing, whereas lust is the internal desire more connected with adultery. We see this in the New Testament. Luke 12, Jesus says coveting is connected with hoarding and keeping. We'll look at that passage a little later. In Matthew 5, he says lusting is the desire connected to adultery. So we can see the two external actions of adultery and stealing. They have the two different desires. Now, again, they're very similar, but we can start to parse out the difference. To covet means you want what you do not have or you want more. To lust means you want something for the wrong purpose and the wrong end. To covet means I just want to take it. To lust after something means you want to take it and twist it. into something it's not meant to be. To covet, we ask what or how much we want. To lust, why do we want it and what we use it for. In summary, coveting wants something we don't have and lusting wants it for the wrong reason. There's another difference. I believe covet can be used in a way that isn't sinful. I covet your prayers. That's a good way of using that term. You covet something and it doesn't always mean you're sinning. I covet your prayers. I believe this actually could be similar to what God says when he says, I'm jealous for your love. He would covet our love. He longs for love. Whereas lust is never used in a positive manner. Lust is always twisting, corrupting and perverting. Now, this distinction is helpful for a couple reasons. One, I hope it helps us understand coveting over against lust, but our calling is to be able to diagnose our sin well. Our calling as Christians is to be better, to always be growing in our ability to diagnose sin. Now, this is the truth of most people. This is true of most people. We're experts at diagnosing other people's sin. You laugh because you know it's true and you've probably been diagnosed by others. We're quite good at figuring out what's wrong with them, but we're really bad at figuring out what's wrong with us. Where is my sin? We're bad at diagnosing our sins. To parse out, where am I coveting and where am I lusting? Or how do I see that I'm actually guilty of both of these at the same time? Which is typically the case. Because sin runs rampant in our hearts. So what is the basis or the rationale of the command? We'll ask our second question. What is the rationale of the command? Again, we go back to Genesis 3. Adam and Eve, they wanted to be like God. This was a temptation from Satan. You will be like God. They wanted what someone else had. They coveted the knowledge that God had. The lie was they would become like God. They believe the lie. They were unsatisfied. They were dissatisfied with being made in his image. They would rather be God himself. It wasn't good enough just to be made in his image and to be his ambassador and to enjoy his presence and obey him. No, they wanted to be like God's themself. Cousin is a desire from our heart now. Coveting is a desire from our heart and how we define the heart determines every other doctrine. What we think about our own hearts defines and determines every other doctrine. Are we by nature good? Are we by nature evil? Or are we by nature just a blank slate waiting to be stamped by someone or something? Scripture gives very clear answers to the heart of man. Adam was good until He fell into the temptation. And now we can look and see that the scripture says something very different about the heart after the fall. Here's three truths about the heart that we need to recognize as we look at the desire of coveting. First, the heart is dangerous. The heart is dangerous. It seeks sin. Matthew 15, 19, for out of our heart, Come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual morality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. The heart is dangerous. It needs to be restrained. We must recognize our inclination to impurity. Apart from God's grace, there's nothing good that comes from within us. Our hearts are impure and they create impure desires. The entirety of the law is focused on how dangerous our hearts are. Do not do these things that you're so inclined to do. Do not commit adultery. Do not lie. Do not steal. The whole point of the law shows us how dangerous we are that God is restraining our sin. The second thing we see in Scripture about our heart. It's deceptive. The heart is deceptive. The heart loves the lies of sin and proactively participates in. A clear verse here, Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Above all things, above everything else he could say about the heart, it lies. We deceive ourselves. This is why we are so bad at diagnosing our own sin. We're self-deceptive. We want to pretend we're righteous. We want to look at others and pretend we're better than them. That's why we're able to diagnose their sin better than our own. The heart is deceptive. It's sick. That's the lust. That's the perversion and the twisting of all things good. We're broken. The heart is broken, it is not able to desire correctly, it is not able to discern truth. Third, the heart is dead. The heart is dangerous, the heart is deceptive, the heart is dead. Ephesians tells us. The heart is unable to respond to things of God on its own. The heart is, another way the scripture talks about this, It's hardened, it's not soft to the things of God. We, by nature, by our own sin, apart from the grace of God, we resist the truth of God. As we think about the things of our heart, it's dangerous, it's deceptive and it's dead. We have to recognize there's lies that weld within us. We've recognized we need others to admonish us. We need to be careful and be on guard of justifying our sin. We need to look to God's word and see God's will for a correction. The fact that our hearts are dangerous, deceptive, and dead, that's why the prosperity gospel is so powerful. The prosperity gospel says if you ask for something from God and you ask with all your heart and you do what he wants you to do, you'll get whatever your heart desires. It's such a powerful lie and we're all susceptible to it. I would actually go so far as to say we've all been guilty of it at some point. The prosperity of gospel takes for granted that what we want must be good because we want it. It assumes you already have a good heart that has good desires. The prosperity gospel already assumes that God is there to please us with good things. It begins with the heart and then goes to God and says he must fulfill it and obey it. We're predisposed to the prosperity gospel, friends. I know everyone here, you you've denied it if you're here, most likely. But the prosperity gospel is. It deceives us, it's still there lurking in our hearts because we think, what is what is God going to do for me? What is the cure for coveting? What is the cure for coveting if if coveting comes from our deceptive hearts, our our dead hearts, our dangerous heart, what is the cure for coveting? Well, it's. It's being content. And as I wrestle with the different kinds of advice I've gotten over my life for being content, I wanted to share them and just kind of walk through the trajectory to get to where I think, well, gives true contentment. The first piece of advice I thought of was stop coveting the things you don't have. That's good. It says just don't do it. And the other way of saying this is, be thankful for what you have. Stop wanting the things you don't have. And so it's just looking around and saying, I'm going to stop wanting the things that aren't in my possession. I'm just going to be thankful for the things that are in my possession. This is helpful, but it's really not great because an atheist could actually give you that advice. This is a truly Christian, explicitly Christian advice because an atheist could actually give you that advice. We do need to be thankful. We do need to stop wanting the things that people want, but I don't think we've gotten far enough because we haven't yet even gotten to God with this advice. So second, the second option, be thankful for how God gives gifts to everyone. Now, this is better. God is there. And so now you're looking around and it isn't just I'm not going to want those things other people have. You go a step further and you say, I'm going to be thankful that that person has them. This is making progress. This is this is good. It's not just saying I don't want them anymore. You're going further and you're saying, I'm glad my neighbor has a better car, a bigger house, whatever it is you long for. There's still something wrong here, though. I see this advice as telling someone in anger management, whenever you get angry, just start saying serenity now. You're just telling somebody, just pretend you really don't want that thing. And eventually you're going to explode with anger if all you say is serenity now, and you're going to explode with coveting if this is your only solution. So third, the Christian advice. Seek the peace that Christ provides. Seek the peace that Christ provides. The other two pieces of advice are wrong because they're actually still playing on just this worldly level. They're still just playing on this world is what satisfied and gives peace. Be thankful for what you have and what your neighbor has that's still saying this world is what you were created for and this world somehow can satisfy if you just get the right perspective. No. God alone satisfies. We were created to be delighted in Him. We were created to delight in Him. We were created to be satisfied in Him alone. Until we find that delight and that satisfaction in Christ, we will covet and look for that satisfaction in all things of this world, never being satisfied. So if we want to be content, we have to seek it in Christ and stop seeking it everywhere else. Well, here we'll ask our third question then. How does Christ fulfill the commandment? How does Christ fulfill the commandment? Well, first he came and he obeyed the Ten Commandments perfectly. He came and obeyed perfectly. First and foremost, he was satisfied in God. He was content in God. We see this in his temptation. We see this when he was fasting for 40 days and was led into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan. After not eating for 40 days, Satan said, just turn those stones into bread. He could have done it, he had the power to do so, but he had to be content with what God had willed for him to do. He had to be content that he knew God would provide food for him and his timing, and more so his answer is so important. Man will not eat, men will not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from God. He knew that true contentment wasn't going to be in quenching his hunger or satisfying his thirst. No, it was going to be in trusting God and His goodness and His will. The third temptation, Satan takes him to a mountain and says, look at all these kingdoms. You can have all the authority over all these kingdoms if you just worship me. What great contentment that would be. What great satisfaction that would be. Look at all that you could rule and possess. I said, no, you worship God alone. That alone brings satisfaction. We see this in Gethsemane. Twice he prays, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. As Christ is sweating blood, as Christ is growing more and more anxious of knowing what is lying before him. Not just the gruesome death on a cross, but actually being forsaken of the Father. He goes and he says and he prays, Father, is there any way this could pass from me? Not your will. But mine. Christ was able to be content with God because he knew God's word and he knew God's will. He saves us from our discontent. He saves us from our coveting. Let's just look at a few things that characterize or describe the salvation of Jesus Christ. First, Christ reconciles us. Christ reconciles us. We're discontent because we were created to be satisfied in God alone. When we rebel, we remove ourselves from God. We actually create a great gulf that's not empty. It's full of God's wrath. God has wrath poured out upon us and we are far removed from Him in experiencing His relationship. All we ever experience is His judgment in that case. Christ reconciles us. He reconciles us by taking the wrath that God has against our sin upon himself, removing God's judgment from us. And then he reconciles us. He brings us near. As he was forsaken by God, he did that so that he could draw us near to God. He becomes sin for us so that that sin is no longer keeping us from knowing true satisfaction and delight in God. Secondly, the salvation of Christ redirects us. It redirects us. It gives us a new heart. We, if we're believers, we're called and we are given a new heart that is not directed to the things of this world. It's directed to the things of God. We look up to find joy and contentment. Third, and I think this is one of the most important as we look at contentment and coveting, Christ redefines us. He gives us a new identity. Oftentimes, that's why we're coveting something. We see that somebody has a certain gift, a certain talent, a certain thing, and we tie identity into what we have. The key to battling coveting is to know your identity in Christ, to know that your treasure is in him, your delight is in him. It doesn't change with our emotions or experiences or what we have or do not have. Our identity is in Christ. That is where we're supposed to find our peace, our sure and steadfast anchor. Fourthly, the salvation of Christ renews us. If we continue to read in Colossians, we're to throw off the old self, which covets, we're to put on the new self. The salvation of Jesus Christ, it renews us so that we are given a new heart. with new desires that then we can obey so that we don't have to be masters of our sinful desires. Now let me pause here. If you're not a Christian here this morning, I pray that you are convicted of how you covet other people's things. I pray you will see how unsatisfying those things are, how unsatisfied you are in longing for the things of this world. I pray you'll be convicted by the law that coveting what others have is sin and offensive to God. And I pray that you will see that Christ alone can forgive you of the covenant. Christ alone can satisfy what you're truly longing for. What you must believe is that you have sinned against God, that Jesus Christ has died for you as a sinner to take God's wrath from you, that he's risen again. And if you believe in him, you'll be forgiven and you'll receive a new identity. I would love to talk to you about that afterwards, if you're convicted and wanting to get a new life in Christ. Fourth. How does Christ heighten the command? How do we live out this command of the New Covenant community as New Covenant believers? The first thing we realize is coveting comes from within. This is clear from James 1 or Matthew 15 that we read earlier. Our problem comes from within us. This changes everything. We don't blame other people for our sin. We recognize that everything wrong with us comes from within us. This changes the way we pursue life, this changes the way we look at God. What is wrong with us is from within us, and we must ask God, who is the word of life with his royal law, to come and correct us and give us new life. The second thing when you see from covening and the according to Christ is that it's selfish. In Luke 12, he makes this very clear. Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or arbitrary over you? And he said to them, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in abundance of the possessions. And he told them a parable saying the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns, the larger ones, and there will store up all my grain for my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things you've repaired. Whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. Cressus, be on guard against coveting. Be on guard against it because it's such a. It's so easy to fall into that sin. We look and we see what we have. And here this this fellow, he's not looking at what others have. He's saying, look how great the things I have. Let me build up my identity, my satisfaction, my joy on all these goods. Christ makes it clear he was he had a treasure only unto himself. If you read the story again, listen for how many times I and myself is mentioned here. He's selfish, coveting is selfish, he's only rich towards himself and God is going to take him out of this life and he can't take any of it with him. He was poor towards God. The next thing we need to see about coveting, it is of the old man. Ephesians 5, but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not be named among you, speaking to Christians as is proper among the saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral, or impure, or who is covetous, that is an idolater, he has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. You see this again in Colossians 3, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, listing covetousness with it which is idolatry. We covet, that's the old man. When we come to Christ, we repent. of coveting, we repent of adultery, we can we repent of foolish talk. We're called to repent and we talked about putting off. This is like taking your clothes off. You take off the old garment, you put on a new garment, you change the way you live here. It's changing the way you desire. And there's only one way to change the way you desire. It's by replacing your love. We love things. We worship the things we love. We have to change the way we love. And we do that only by the power of God. And it begins first by knowing what God wants us to love. It's looking to God's word. It's praying, God, let me love the things you love. It's praying as we did congregationally. Let your will be done here on Earth as in heaven. Let your will be done in my heart. Let me, let my heart desire the things that you desire so that I can truly be satisfied as you have designed me to be satisfied. From the same passages, we see covening as idolatry. We're idol factories. We worship everything and anything we could possibly put our eyes upon in this world. We long to worship. We're designed to be worshipers. We will worship anything and everything. We must discipline our desire to worship to be for the one who is worthy of that worship, and it's God alone. Finally, I want to give us the warning. Coveting is too easily seen as acceptable. We're told all the time, if you only have this, if you only get this, if you take this, if you have this, if you have what your neighbor has, then you'd be happy. For we have to recognize the things that we want, we must want them for the glory of God. That's how you know if you're coveting something sinful, if you're coveting them for the right reason, because everything must be used for the glory of God. If you want them just for your own selfishness, for your own delight, for your own pleasure, because you think that's what's going to finally make you happy, that's sinful coveting. Whatever we want, we must want it so that we can worship God with it. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, forgive us. For we long the things that are not you. We long for the good gifts that you give us, whereas we should be longing for you. We long for those things that only increase our longing. We thirst for those things that only make us more thirsty. Lord, you are the one who satisfies. Let us learn to praise you and sing our hallelujah because you satisfy us. Lord, if someone here does not know Christ, help them to see their longing. for nothingness. They're longing for you, but they're trying to find that in everything else. Help them, Lord, to be redirected. Give them a heart that responds to the gospel. Lord, help us as a church to be individual members of your body who are committed together to worshiping you alone. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.