You Shall Not Covet

Good morning. It's good to be with you all. We are going to continue in the study of the Ten Commandments. Today we are on the Tenth Commandment, which is about coveting. And it's sort of a unique commandment in that it actually repeats itself twice in the commandment. It tells us twice in this commandment, you shall not covet. Now, you may recall way back in the beginning, in the introduction, Different groups divide the Ten Commandments differently. And the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, what they do is they squish the first two commandments together so that the command against graven images is sort of buried within the first commandment. And they divide you shall not covet into two commands. So you have the you should not covet your neighbor's wife.

and you should not covet his goods. So they try to make these two different commands. This is interesting if you recall last week Dave's sermon on images and how awful they are for us and how prevalent our desire to worship images are. It's not an accident that the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans tried to bury this. What's interesting is they still have to have 10. And so then they divide coveting into two, but they never deal with them as separate things because you can't. They're all sort of integrated. There is no need to divide it. The sin of coveting is born out of the same root, and it comes from a lack of faith and a distrust in God and in his providence in our lives. So if you would please stand.

Our scripture for today is Exodus chapter 20 and verse 17, but I am going to read the first two verses of chapter 20 and then read verse 17. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Then God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. out of the house of slavery. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So what is coveting?

It's probably a good place to start when the command tells us we should not covet. What is coveting? The word covet is a simple word. It's actually a neutral word. It means to desire something, to want something. And desires in and of themselves are not wrong. We have a desire to worship. That's a good desire. Food is a good desire. Drink is a good desire. Strength is a good desire. Sex is a good desire. We could go through and through and name all these different things that we, as men and women, desire. And they're good. God created us that way. In fact, not having these desires is wrong. It's something wrong with our nature as a human being if we don't have these desires. However, each one of those things that I mentioned, and there are many, many more we could mention, is easily corruptible and can be bad. We have a desire to worship, but if we worship creation rather than the creator, it's evil. Gluttony, that is overindulgence in food, desiring too much food, is wickedness. Drunkenness,

It's wicked. The desire to be strong isn't sinful, but vanity is. And if your strength is all for show so that everyone will look at you and be attracted to you, it's wicked. The desire for sex with someone who you're not married to or some sort of perverted form of sex is wicked. And so we're not Buddhists, right? This idea in Buddhism that desires are bad, that the key to nirvana is to remove all these desires, right? You have to wonder if the desire to not have desires is a bad desire, right? It's sort of self-contradictory. We're not called to just get rid of our desires. No, we can recognize that God has given us desires, and throughout Scripture, we actually see that God promises us many things. And what is the promise but God setting some hope before us that we ought to desire, we should covet God's promises and the things that he's promised, and we should pursue those things. God makes us promises of a future unity, of a oneness, of perfection, of joy, of lavish.

home up in heaven that he's prepared for us, of streets of gold, of riches and wealth, of wiping away every tear of no more pain. And all of those things we should desire. We should, if you will, it sounds strange, but you should covet that. So the command we have here is not to desire. That's just, it doesn't make sense to say we shouldn't desire something because that is who we are as humans. God has put desires within us. But the command is against wrong desires. It's against inordinate desires. What is an inordinate desire? Well, inordinate desires mean things that we might obsess over, that the desire becomes the ruling thing in our life, that we will subject everything else, subject everything else in our lives in order to achieve whatever that desire is that we have, whether it's money or high or something. A desire that by hook or crook, we will do whatever it takes to accomplish and satisfy. We'll flush these things out more as we go along. Coveting is, what I want to do is help us to understand how big of a deal

coveting is. It's huge. The 10th commandment is comprehensive. So much so that when we first hear it and we start thinking about it, we might almost think that the 10th commandment is a redundant commandment. It's a precursor. It's mixed up then. Maybe we would say the 10th commandment is almost the mother of all the other commandments that we break. I mean, think about it. The first commandment is that we should have no other God before us. Why would we want another God? We have a desire. Maybe we want a God that is sexually permissive, right? And so the Greeks covet, and they create all these gods that allow them to do whatever they want. And think about Eve in the garden. What was the temptation?

God doesn't want you to eat this fruit because in the day that you eat of it, you shall be like God. Eve wants to be God and she covets the place of God. So she eats of the fruit. And the second commandment is that we should not make a graven image. All idolatry is aspirational. All idolatry is aspirational. What does that mean? It means that when we idolize something, it means we take the virtues and the things that we want, And we place that up above it, and we say, that's what I need to be like. And that is covetousness, where we see these things that we want, and we desire that. And then we place that in place of God, and then that's who we strive to come after. That's why we don't have idols, right? Because then we strive to be like the idol, not like God. He should have the highest point. That's who we should desire to be like.

Covetous people are blasphemous people. They blaspheme God by lying in his name to get what they want. Covetous people break the Sabbath. Their desires rule how they spend their time. They are unwilling to give their time to God because that would mean they can't do whatever, fulfill whatever desire that they have. And so the fourth commandment is broken by coveting. A covetous person dishonors their parents. They steal. They deceive. They want their inheritance, so they give them over to the doctors to drug to death. I mean, and it's easy for us to see how murder would be a violation of the 10th commandment. We want someone's stuff. We want prestige. We want power. We want, and the two most obvious ones, right, are the 7th and the 8th commandments about not committing adultery and not stealing.

You can't steal something without coveting it, without desiring it, right? And all forms of adultery are some sort of desiring of something that is not yours to have. And how much of coveting just involves telling of falsehoods? whether it's in the way we present ourselves or lying, cheating, and stealing in order to get the thing that you want. And so it's like when you look at the 10th commandment, it's easy to see how it breaks all of the commandments. It almost seems to be a redundant commandment. Like you can't break the other commandments without transgressing the 10th commandment. In fact, In Romans 7, 7, Paul sums up the Ten Commandments and he says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. For I would not have known about coveting if the law had said, you shall not covet. And so he's like, the law sort of is summed up by him right here. It's like, do not covet. In Galatians 5, 17, he says, for the flesh sets its desire.

Right? Coveting is desire. The flesh sets its desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things that you please. So we could ask, why then do we need a 10th commandment if it's already so much, like all the other commandments are sort of grounded and flow out of this? Well, it's very important in that the 10th commandment, you shall not covet, teaches us that God is concerned not just about your outward appearance, but about your heart. More than any of the other 10 commandments on the face of it, this commandment gets at the disposition of your heart. And in doing so, it's a key.

to demonstrate to us that the rest of the commandments are also not simply external check boxes, but they all have to do with our heart. It is not good enough to simply not steal. It is not good enough to simply not commit adultery. It is not good enough to show up on Sunday morning and go through the motions of standing and kneeling and singing. It is not good enough to just be present. at small group. God wants your heart. Mere external conformity does not please God. All you kids growing up in the church, do you hear that? Mere external conformity, mere obedience, showing up is not all that it takes to please God. You know what God doesn't need? He doesn't need more Pharisees.

The Pharisees, Jesus said, are people who are white on the outside, but inside, they're dead. It's like you look at this log laying in the woods, and it looks like this nice log, whatever, and you roll it over, or you flip this clean, pristine white stone. It looks pretty, but you flip it over, and what's underneath it? Decay and bugs and gross. That's a Pharisee. nice on the outside, but the inside is death. God doesn't need more people who are waiting for church to be over so that they can eat, so that they can get to their sports game, so that they can hang out with their friends and who are forgetting to draw near to him with their hearts. The 10th command is a command for us to guard our hearts who are prone to wander after lusts. Now, do you catch what I'm saying? The 10th commandment, You shall not covet is a command that you should not desire things that are not given to you and that all of our desires are to be in a proper place. Augustine says that coveting is a desire for man that is enough. He's saying you want more than enough. Like you have enough to be satisfied and you want more than that.

He compares it to Proverbs 30, 15, which says the leech has two daughters. Give, give. There are three things that will not be satisfied, four that will not say enough. Now, this means that you have violated the 10th commandment if you see a man or a woman who's not your spouse and you desire them. You see how easy it is for us to transgress this. You are out driving, and you see this sweet car that drives by, and immediately your thought is, that's sweet. I wish I had that car. And your smile just fades a little bit. That's all it takes. That's coveting. Now, you may dismiss the thought right away. You may be like, that's dumb. But you see how quickly our hearts can go after something.

And our joy can be stolen. Think about this. This is all of us. I wish my husband would treat me like her husband treats her. I wish my husband was handy and he didn't just break things but would fix them. I wish my husband would provide more money. You name it. It goes on and on. I wish my wife looked like that. I wish she could cook like so-and-so. I wish my wife kept my house. As clean as, I wish my wife could sing like that or dress like that or you name it. I wish I could go on a vacation like my friend just went on. Or maybe my friend went on four vacations and I only got to go on one vacation. Darn it. I have to work. How is that fair? I wish my kids acted like, oh, oh, here's one. I wish I could play soccer as good as.

I wish I was as good at baseball as, I wish I looked as good as. It's not fair. All the girls pay attention to him and they don't pay attention to me. Or how about your dreams? What kind of wickedness pops up in your dream? See, you feel a little overwhelmed yet? Like, coveting's a big deal and God cares about your heart. It's not good enough to just look a certain way and act a certain way, but God cares about the very thoughts that cross your mind and defile you. Coveting is deadly. Do not think that these thoughts and desires, no matter how fleeting they are, may not be that serious. James says that when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is accomplished, brings forth death. All of the violations of the other commandments start with a particular desire. It's conceived. And very quickly, the wicked thought that we have, that we conceive, can be borne out into action, which leads to destruction and death. It's a slippery slope that can just suck you in. The other thing is, that coveting is something that can never be satiated. Part of its deadliness is that it tells us that if I could just have that thing, then I would be happy. There's a story, I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but, you know, Ford made his first million dollars and the interviewer says to him, Mr. Ford, you made your first million dollars.

What would it take? Like, are you happy now? What do you need now? And he says, one more dollar. That's covetousness. If I just had that woman, I would be happy. If I just looked this way, I would be happy. If I just could play this sport as good as that person, then I'd be happy. But the lie is that you would be happy. Coveting relentlessly craves more of this world. It takes over a person's thoughts, their affections. Their heart is occupied with the world and the more you give yourself over to it, the less you will seek after heaven. A covetous person forsakes love for God and it disposes one towards hating their neighbor. Coveting is deadly. It will steal all of your joy and your satisfaction. And that is how, that is probably one of the best keys we have.

to seeing someone's covetousness. Because covetousness is hidden deep in our hearts. You can't just see it, but it's something that's borne out in actions, right? It's something that maybe you begin to realize someone's covetousness by their drive to become wealthy, their drive to become the best, to the exclusion of all other things in their life. Or maybe they are so miserable, you begin to think, the reason this person has no joy in their life, or they're always sad and grumpy, is because they have unsatisfied desires. Because they just want what other people have. And they will not be happy with what God has given them. It's a deeply hidden sin. At first, no one can see it. You can indulge in it secretly. But it does work its way out.

It is so easy for intrusive thoughts to just pop into our heads, for our joy and our contentment to be marred and trashed, even though sometimes we're appalled by those thoughts and we wish we didn't have them. We have to realize that it's sin. And so one of the reasons God gives us the 10th commandment is to show us how deep our sin is, how much we need him. and how much that he requires all of you. God wants all of you. This commandment should drive home the fact that God wants all of you. God's not just satisfied with part of you. God wants your entire life to be devoted to him, to be conformed to him. Every thought you have must be taken captive. Whether you are premeditatively coveting something, whether you are consciously coveting something, or whether it's a random thought that you desire something that's not yours, you must fight it and you must confess it and you must give all of you to God. See, the thing is,

It may appear that like the thought just sort of comes out of nowhere. But the reality is our sin doesn't just come out of nowhere. Sin comes from somewhere and it comes from within us. Our natures are corrupt. And our sinful thoughts come from our corrupted nature. The 10th commandment teaches us how deep our problem is and how badly we need God. Because this problem runs. to the very core of us. Our sinful, covetous thoughts are not separate from us. It's not like there's this separate thing. But the reason I started in verses 1 and 2 is because this chapter reminds us of something. It says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. See, in Christ, we have freedom.

Because of the work of Christ in dying on the cross and rising from the dead, we are no longer slaves. When you read through Exodus, all of God's people are in bondage and slavery. This is a picture of everyone who's not a Christian. They're in bondage. They're in slavery. And then Moses comes. He's like the Holy Spirit. like the word of God that comes to you. And then God draws his people out from the land of slavery and death. They cross over the River Jordan. It's a picture of baptism. Then you wander for 40 years until you come to death, the River Jordan. You cross over into heaven, right? And throughout the Israel's years of wandering in the desert, they're always hearkening back to Egypt. I just want those dead things, those wicked things.

God says, I set you free. Why do you want to go back to your slavery? So when Jesus died and he rose from the dead, his death broke the power of sin. And he begins to sanctify us. He begins to give us new desires. He begins to make us holy. And this is beautiful and it's necessary. Because this is our hope. for overcoming covetous thoughts and desires, is that as God begins to sanctify us and he begins to purify our hearts and to give us new desires, then we're less bound by the sinful desires. We can brush them aside and then we can begin to realize that actually now we're having new desires, a desire for God's word, a desire to love others, a desire to be helpful, a desire to worship God. All these righteous desires that are not natural to our flesh begin to come in and they can begin to supersede all of these wicked, sinful, covetous desires. But we have to be changed.

And that's what the work of Christ does. He sets us free. God brings us out of the bondage of slavery to sin and sets us free to follow him. Now, how do we know if we're being covetous? Because this is a really sneaky sin. It's one that's easily hidden. And we know in Jeremiah that our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? We have a hard time knowing our own hearts. Well, the first and most obvious thing, is if what you desire is a direct violation of any of God's commands, it's a wrong, covetous desire that needs to be put to death. It's easy. It's not complicated. If you desire something illicit, something illegal, you're breaking the 10th commandment. You want a wife or a husband that is not yours. You broke it. You're sinning. Any pornographic anything.

It's a wicked desire that is breaking God's law. If you are wanting the house that God gave someone else, the car that God gave someone else, the family God gave someone else, the life God gave someone else, the skills God gave someone else, and cooking or sports or game, whatever, like all those things that God gave to someone else, and you're like, man, I wish those things were mine. Well, that's a violation. That's stealing. It's like God didn't give that to you. But as we said at the beginning, not all desires are bad. In fact, many of our desires are good. They're given to us by God, and they're in accord with our nature as a man. So the question is, how do we know if we're violating the 10th commandment when it's a good desire? One thing I will say is, be very, very leery of believing your own press, right? Because we are so accomplished in deceiving ourselves. So if you think, I might be coveting, maybe what you should do is go talk to a wise and godly older man or woman and say, help me work through this. Don't believe your press. But here's some questions. One of the probably the biggest things that we cover is that we covet is money.

Do you want to know if you're a covetous when it comes to money? Are you generous? If you're not generous, yeah, you covet money probably. Generous people give. So here's a question. Do you use your money on yourself or do you use it on your family? Do you use it to bless other people? See, I think sometimes we can work hard and we can make money. And then we can just kind of use it to get our, particularly as husbands, I think, often we can get ourselves nice things and sort of not spend it on our family. And that might be a sign that you're coveting. Are you tempted to cheat or steal or lie to get what you want, to not be upright and to accomplish the means to get the things that you desire? That's coveting. You have a corrupt desire.

if you are willing to lie your way to get what you want. You have a misordered desire if you're pursuing it to make you happy. Where does our joy come from? Where should our happiness come from? It comes from being a child of God. Our joy in life is in God and in the salvation which he wrought for us. So if what you're pursuing is, I will be happy as soon as I get that car, as soon as I get an acre of land, as soon as I get that coat, that dress, that skill, whatever. If your happiness is waiting upon getting this thing, it's covetousness. You have moved that thing into the place of God.

You have an inordinate desire. That's so much of our world that we're taught is to just be happy. Follow your heart. Well, when we have covetous hearts, we better not follow them. Here's the thing. What do you spend your time on? When you wake up in the morning, what is the first thought that you have? When you lay down to bed, what is the last thought that you have? Is your mind consumed with thoughts of this world? I'm going to save money here. I'm going to take this side job so I can get more money over here. Then I'm going to put this money here and invest it here. And then I'm going to do this thing with my money. And it's like this big game, and you're just like getting here, here, and here to get to this end, this thing that you really want. And all of a sudden, what you realize is that your focus is glued to this world, and it never looks upward to God. You're simply trying to get ahead, and your eyes are focused on the earth. And for what? Well, what we'll tell ourselves is,

It's so that I can provide. Really? Really? What would your wife say to that? Is she happy with all your planning and scheming and the lack of time and attention that you spend at home with your children? Oh, it's so I can provide. But are you providing what they actually need? Are you providing for this drive, this covetous desire in your heart? See, a covetous man's time and thoughts are consumed by the things of this world. And this preoccupation with the world can manifest itself in different ways. Some of us are so, so fearful. We're afraid of sickness. We're afraid of the markets. We're afraid of wars. We're afraid of who has political power. And though we often won't cop to the truth of it, our fear is found out in the shrillness of our voices.

in the heat of our arguments, and in the time that we spend arguing about politics and about all these things in the world. And any outsider would be forgiven if he assumed that our desires did not go beyond the bounds of this world because our conversation and fears all revolve around this world. This is covetousness. Covetousness is when all our thinking and time and concerns are wrapped around the world. Covetousness is materialistic. We can never desire God or the things of God too much. You cannot think about God too much or too often. You cannot devote too much of your life to the service of God. A covetous person will never be a martyr because the martyrs had hopes beyond this world. If they love the things of this world too much, They would never have been a martyr. They would reject Christ. Or they would just sort of bow the knee to Caesar so that they could live, even though they were crossing their fingers while they did it. Covetousness is materialistic. And we're betrayed often by the way that we talk and by the fears that we have. It betrays what's really in our hearts. Scripture says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

So how can we fight covetousness? I have a few thoughts. Grow in faith. Covetousness is a fundamental lack of faith. It's a lack of a trust in God. It says that you do not trust where God has placed you and what God has given you. It's not enough. You need more. It's interesting how much Sunday school pies into this. I mean, so much of the past few weeks in the confession, we've been talking about God's sovereignty and God's knowledge and his planning and his orchestrating and his bringing all things together for his purposes, but also, amazingly, for our own good. And so when we covet things, when we strive after the things of this world, forgetting to look upward towards the things of God, it shows that we have a lack of faith in God and in his provision for our lives. So another way to fight covetousness is to look to Christ and to the things above. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. As Christians, if you seek God's kingdom and you make pursuing his kingdom your first priority, you'll begin to learn who God is. If you remember the song, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,

My favorite lines, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. How will you see God's glory and grace that will teach you to desire his things rather than the things of this world if your eyes are constantly focused down on the muddle of this life? God promises that if we seek first his kingdom, he will provide all the things that we need. Seeking God's kingdom first forces us to lift our eyes from the earthy things and pursue heavenly things. You should covet God's kingdom. And we should work harder to bring about his kingdom than we do to bring about our own prosperity. And this simply means that we put the things of God as priorities in our life and how we spend our time and how we spend our money. The third aspect of fighting covetousness is that we must learn to be content.

But whatever things were gained to me, Paul says, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. And then after that, Paul says, I've learned the secret of contentedness, which is what? To put your value in Christ. and be willing to lose everything you have for the sake of Christ. And when you can say that, then you can be content in any circumstance because you know you have the pearl of great price. And so of what value really is the things of this world? Pray, fight covetousness by prayer, seek heavenly wisdom and a changed heart. And the fifth thing I'll say, I'll repeat them for you. We need to grow in faith, pursue a greater faith, We need to look to Christ and the things above. Pursue his kingdom first. Grow in contentedness. Learn, study what contentedness means. Pray for a change of heart. And the final thing is be thankful. Covetous men and women are not thankful. They do not stop and really give thanks to either God or man. After all, for the covetous person, the things that they have,

came about by their own right arm. They either got them illicitly or they just worked really hard for it because that's all they set their heart on. So who should they give thanks to? It's all done by them. That's not how we are as Christians. As Christians, we should make it a practice to be thankful. Write thank you cards. Teach your children to write thank you cards to people. Have a notebook and every day write down five different things that you're thankful for. Go around the table with your kids at dinner and have everyone say two things that they're thankful for. Start with the youngest and don't let anyone repeat what has already been said. Thankful people are joyful people. Covetous people are not thankful people. They have nothing to be thankful for in their view, right? And so this is our challenge for us today is that we would turn our hearts towards God.

that we would find contentment and joy in God, that we would not get our hearts and minds bound up in the things of this world, which will cause us to be stressed out and afraid, but that we would turn our hearts and minds towards our heavenly father who orchestrates all things. And the promise is that if we're a Christian, he'll work it all out for our good. So we don't have to be stressed out and scared, but we can trust in him. Let's pray.