Matthew 22, and we'll read verses 34-40. Matthew 22, 34-40. Let us hear God's Word. When the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Thus ends the reading of God's holy and inspired Word. Now, it's Lord's Day morning. I hope, Lord willing, to complete a lengthy series of messages on the Ten Commandments. And I hope for us to look again at the Tenth Commandment in particular today, but also to review a little bit of the commandments themselves. So, I desire to summarize and apply all that's been said thus far. And I am seeking to make a plea that we examine ourselves regarding the commandments and that we mortify those sins, we put to death those sins that we see ourselves committing by God's grace and seek to put on habits of holiness and basically working out our salvation as Paul would tell us to in Philippians 2, 12 and 13. This morning, I want to do a little bit of what I'm going to call corporate counseling because we're going to look into Kind of the psychology of lust or of sin. Of desiring things that we ought not to desire. But first, I thought it would be good to review as we consider the two great commandments found here in Matthew 22, 34-40. When Jesus is asked, what is the great commandment? He gives the answer in verse 37 and 38. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Quoting Deuteronomy 6, 5. In Luke 10-27, we have a parallel of this and we also find the word strength added. So, we're not only to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, but also our strength. In other words, with all of our humanity. All of our redeemed humanity is to be given over to the love of God. And then he also adds something to it. Though he's only asked about one great commandment, he actually gives a second commandment. And the second commandment is found in verse 39. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, quoting Leviticus 19.18. And then in verse 40, Jesus says, when these two commandments hang all the law, In other words, every duty that can be found in the Scriptures can be placed under one of these two commandments. The first great commandment or the second commandment that's attached to it. So therefore, if all the duties of the Christian or all the sins that one can commit can be summarized under these two, then obviously, the Ten Commandments can be summarized under these two. And so, we've been looking at the two tables of the law, considering the first four commandments as being an expansion of this first commandment, to love the Lord with all of our redeemed humanity. And then six or five, excuse me, commandments five through ten, then being an expansion of this second commandment. So, I want us to realize, when I've been talking about the two tables, and I've mentioned this before, that's not to say that the first four commandments were on the first table of stone that the Lord wrote on with His finger, as it says. But, it's likely that all ten commandments were on both tables, because that's the way a contract would have been worked out, or a covenant. The two parties that entered into it would have had all the stipulations before them in both. So the tables are really talking about dividing the commandments into these two commandments that Jesus speaks of. The great commandment and then the second commandment like unto it. We need to remember the teaching of the Scripture, particularly found in 1 John 3.4, sin is the transgression of the law. So when we understand the law, then we are able to understand sin. We really cannot understand transgressing law if we don't understand law. And so that's what we've been seeking to do is to understand sin so that we might be driven to Christ first and foremost, and then that we might also be called to obedience and desire out of love for the salvation that God has given us in Christ to work out our salvation in seeking obedience to these commandments. So we've considered the sum, the two great commandments. Turn now to Exodus 20. And I think in summary it would be behoove us to read this passage again. Exodus 20. And I'll read verses 1-17. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Remember the Sabbath day to keep it. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." Now here we have the Ten Commandments written on two tables of stone. We've already seen the first table deals with the object, the matter, the manner, and the time of worship. It tells us who we're to worship. We're to worship God. The triune God. It tells us how we're to do so. We're to worship Him in the manner that He has set down, but we're also to worship Him with our hearts, not just with our lips, not just with external compliance to the law of God, but we're also to be interested in regulating our hearts and having the dispositions that God has told us to have in worship. We also have the time of special worship or corporate worship. dictated to us in the fourth commandment, and that that whole day is to be set aside unto God. Then in the second table, the fifth commandment and following, we have the sanctity of authority, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of property, and then the sanctity of a good name. We've been considering for the last few weeks the heart of the second table, and that is this tenth commandment. But all the other commandments of the second table, fifth through ninth, can really not be violated until one's violated the tenth. You see, we'll desire someone's property, someone's good name. We'll desire their wife, their house, their Maserati, whatever it might be before we go and take it or before we lust on it and think on it in a sinful way. So, I want us to talk briefly about the heart of the second table again. considering Exodus 20, verse 17. We looked at the word covet in this command. We saw that it means to delight in or to desire. Paul uses this word in its Greek form in Romans 7, 8, but then he uses the synonym of lust. He says, I didn't know about lusting until I learned thou shalt not covet. So, he tells us that lust is a synonym for coveting. Then again in Romans 7, 8, as well as in Colossians 3, 5, Paul uses the word concupiscence, which is a big English word, but again it just means a desire. In the Colossians passage, it's actually called evil concupiscence because it's understood that the desire is not godly. It's not a godly desire that's being had there in the context of Colossians 3, 5. Paul also calls it in Colossians 3, 5, inordinate Affection. So, it's having an affection, a desire for something that is either unlawful in itself to have, or we desire it beyond its bounds. In other words, where we're told that someone could love their children more than God, see, that's desire and it's having a love for your children that's inordinate, that's beyond bounds and is not understood under us loving God. And so we can love our children in a bad way, really not loving them when we love them in distinction from loving God, rather than we love our children because we love God. Now, I want to briefly talk about four things at least that happen when we covet. When we covet first, we're drawn into other sins, as I mentioned before. Consider Achan's sin in Joshua 7.21. As he's confessing, he says, when I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and then he goes on with other things that he saw, then I coveted them and took them. He coveted before he took. As I said, this is the start of all the other violations of the second table. We're drawn into other sins when we lust. We're also troubled in our souls when we covet, or lust, or have inordinate affections. Remember, we've looked at Proverbs 14.30. A sound heart is the life of the flesh, but envy the rottenness of the bones. Envy is a form of covetousness. And envy is destructive internally. It troubles our very souls. Consider just two examples. Haman. and his lust for power. He had everyone but the king and Mordecai bowing down to him. But that wasn't enough for him. He wasn't satisfied with the power that he had, but yet was discontent. Think of Ahab who had, you would think, everything a man could want, but he didn't have Naboth's vineyard. So he was troubled in his soul because of what he didn't have. And making what he didn't have to be so important in his thinking. Thirdly, we not only are drawn into other sins when we lust or covet, we're not only troubled in our own souls, but we also injure others. James 4, 1 and 2, from whence come wars and fighting among you? James says, where do you think the troubles are coming from you, these squabbles that go on within your own Christian fellowships. He says, come they not hence, even from your lusts which warn your members? Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain. He says, where does it all start? It all starts from these lusts in your own breasts. So not only are we drawn into other sins, not only do we trouble our soul and injure others, lastly, we become addicted to the things that we lust after. Consider Solomon's words in Ecclesiastes 5.10, He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This is also vanity. We think we'll be happy if we just had that, but then when we have it, it's not enough. Then we want something more, something more, and you can consider, if you consider each one of these commandments, just what that more leads to. That's the danger of pornography. It's so rampant in our culture. It's a downward spiral. And so many of our sins are just downward in that sense. We become addicted. So that's what happens when we covet. Now I want us to spend a few minutes to consider the process by which we covet and sin. Turn with me to James 1. James 1, and I'll read verses 13 through 15. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." Here clearly, in James, we see a progression. We see temptation, which is described as being drawn away and enticed, which leads to conception, which leads to sin. Now, there are some commentators of James that would suggest that we're drawn away first and then enticed, that there's actually a process here that James is speaking of. That being drawn away comes first, then we're enticed, then we buy into it, we conceive the sin, and then we actually make attempts to go put it into practice. Whether that's true or not, I think that we can conclude that when James says that the sin is conceived, it means that we like the sin, We've thought about the sin and we want to go do the sin. So, it's affected our affections, our understanding, our wills. Because now we're prepared to go put the sin into practice. Ezekiel Hopkins, and I looked at his work that Tom lent me on the Ten Commandments, and he has a very interesting section in his description of the Ten Commandments where he describes what he calls the four stages of covetousness. And I want to talk about them briefly and explain them in light of what I'm calling three courts, three decisions that we make in the inner man when a temptation comes our way. Whether that temptation is a fiery dart from Satan placed in our mind, whether it wells up from our own indwelling sin. First, there's the temptation itself. But then the question is, we talked about this last week, Do we entertain the thought? In other words, is our affection drawn to it? Are we repulsed by it? Or do we delight in it? It comes in our mind. Are we immediately repulsed by it and turn it away? Or do we have some inclination to delight in that thought? This is dealing with our affections. We ask ourselves, do we love it? And we make a choice. Either be repulsed by it or to delight in it. And that's the first court of our conscience. But then, Hopkins talks about what he calls the approbation of the thought. Not just the entertaining of the thought, but now approving of the thought in one's understanding. In other words, now we ask ourselves, okay, I do delight in it. Now will I contemplate it? Will I think about it? And then if we choose to think about it, then it reaches the decision of our will. Will we contemplate the means to get it? And will we choose to implement those means to obtain that thing that we have been lusting over? Whether it's a car, whether it's power, whether it's someone's good name, It's sinful flesh. So, we entertain the thought, or at least we consider entertaining it. Then we do and we contemplate it. Then we contemplate the means by which we would actually attempt to carry out the sin in the flesh. And then we either make the decision to act or not to act. Consider Genesis 3.6, And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Eve took something that God had told her not to take and eat. But in this one verse, we learn a little bit of the psychology of her temptation and sin. It says she saw that the tree was good for food. Had she never seen the tree before? This seeing that the tree was good for food is something different than she had ever experienced before. Now she sees it in a different light. She understood what it signified in a different way and now wanted it. It was pleasant to the eye. She had an affection towards it now. So, her affection's drawn off. And then it says she took. She made a conscious, willful decision now to act on what she desired to have. Consider Jesus' words in Matthew 5.28. This is referring, I think, to the Tenth Commandment as it relates to the Seventh. Jesus says, "...whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Jesus says that a man looketh on a woman to lust. So, what He's saying is a man will look on a woman to lust prior to Lusting. I think we can also understand that Jesus is assuming that you have to see the woman first before you look on her to lust. In other words, two men could be walking down a city street. And a very beautiful woman can be walking the other way. Both men can see the woman. One can choose to move his eyes off the woman. The other one can consciously decide to continue to gaze at the woman, so as to lust after the woman. You see, two men can drive down 77 heading for Columbia and see the lottery number that could be won if they bought the winning ticket at the next exit. One man could say, wow, that's a lot of money to himself. And that's all he thinks about. The other can say, wow, that's a lot of money. What could I do with that money? and spend his whole trip driving to Columbia lusting over things that he could have with the money he could win. And I could go on and on and on. I think it's clearly what I've been speaking of, I think, is descriptions of the principle that Paul speaks of in Titus 1.15. He says there, unto the pure all things are pure, But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. But even their mind and conscience is defiled." In other words, to the pure, we could have something, we could use something, we could see something, and not be drawn away by it. And yet, we can take something that's very, very small, like Ahab did of Naboth's vineyard, in relation to all His possessions, and we can want it in a sinful way. Under the pure, all things are pure. You see, two men can go look at a beautiful vehicle, a beautiful car, a well-engineered car, and one can lust after it and the other one can say, that's a wonderful piece of engineering and machining. I want to make just a couple observations. about this process in which we find ourselves in our own inner man sinning before we go and sin in our behavior. First is that this daydreaming that we do is much more common and frequent than we realize. We spend a lot more time daydreaming about having this or about being this person or that person. We live in a society of hero and superstar worship We live in a have-it-now society and we're all prone to do it and it's a very deceitful sin. So, it's not real obvious to ourselves how much time we spend in it. We really have to think about how much time we think about things we ought not to be thinking about to really gauge just how much time we spend sinning in this way. Ordinarily, the more times you allow a thought to get through the first court of your affection, the more it's likely to get through the second court of your understanding, and the more likely it will get through the third court of you willfully deciding to sin. The more dangerous behaviors you engage in, the more likely you are to have an accident. And the more you lust, the more you are likely to be given into that lust and actually go and take that which you are lusting after. And I say ordinarily. It's not always the case, but ordinarily that's the case. We ought to nip the sin in the bud. One of the Puritans said we need to kill the viper in the egg. Kill it before it's hatched and it can do any damage. Conception's taken place, but it hasn't hatched. Get it? Early. Obadiah Sedgwick, one of the Westminster assemblymen said this, men usually have been wading in lesser sins who are now swimming in great transgressions. Men usually have been wading in lesser sins who are now swimming in great transgressions. It starts by wading in. before we fall in." Again, Hopkins said this, unless we do most solicitly observe this last commandment, all our care in observing the former, he's referring to the five through nine commandments, will be utterly in vain. All other endeavors will be as successless as to attempt the cure of an ulcerous body without purging it, where the corruption will quickly break forth again. or to attempt the emptying of a pond that hath many springs still rising up in the bottom of it." You see, if we don't get to the heart of the issue, we shouldn't expect to make too much progress on mortifying sins regarding the 5th through the 9th. I've said that this daydreaming that we do, this vain thinking that we do, this lusting, this inordinate affection is more common than we realize. I said secondly, that the more often we allow it into our affections and our understanding, the more likely we will be to commit the sin in the flesh and in our behavior. But thirdly, I want to say that having a fairly reliable backstop does not keep one from heinous sin. In other words, just because you think the third court in your own conscience that keeps you from actually acting on your lust is so strong that you rarely do, it doesn't mean that all the lusts that you're involved in, that you've shown affection towards and engaged in contemplating are not sin. They are very, very serious sins. Jesus says in Mark 4.22 that all things will be revealed at the last day. In Ecclesiastes 12.14, God says that we will be judged, we will be evaluated for the secret things of the heart. So, just because we don't actually go commit the sin that we've been contemplating for the last fifteen minutes or last two hours, does not mean that we've not committed a very heinous sin in the sight of God. So, we need to reckon with the tenth commandment. Now, I want to speak briefly about the difficult process of dying to sin. It's difficult, but by God's grace, it's real. It's a real process by which all those that have been created new in Christ Jesus do participate in. We all are dying to sin. If we've been made new in Christ, we're dying to sin more and more and we're living more and more unto righteousness. Paul speaks of this process in Colossians 3, 5-13. He speaks in verse 5 of mortifying, of killing certain things, and then he goes on to speak of putting on certain godly behaviors after we've taken off. But I want to focus just on verse 5 for just a minute. Paul says, "...mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." Mortify, or put to death, kill, he says, your members, or literally your limbs that are on the earth. Now, he's obviously not talking about the physical body, but he's talking about sins that are so dear to us as our very limbs. But as he makes this list, he speaks of fornication, uncleanness, then he goes to inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, and then he reminds us that covetousness is idolatry. He speaks of, I believe, two sins that are in action, fornication and uncleanness. Two 7th Commandment violations, one less heinous than the other, but both of them sins of the 7th Commandment. Fornication and uncleanness, which could be very, very broad, could be referring to something more heinous than fornication, might be referring to personal fornication, would be included in this term uncleanness. But he's speaking of actions. He's saying those actions need to be put to death, you need to stop doing them. But then he moves to thoughts, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence and covetousness. I believe they're three synonyms. And they are, he says, idolatry. To violate the tenth commandment is in fact idolatrous because it's proving that we're not satisfied with what our God has given us. We think we know better what we should have than God Himself. So here we see that we're to put off not only sinful actions, but sinful thoughts. We're to put them to death. Peter says in 1 Peter 2.11, Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." He says, abstain from them. Choose not to contemplate these lusts that are fleshly because they war against your soul. They're doing damage to your inner man. So, abstain from them. Yes, you will have the seed of it. Will you abstain from it? Peter says you must abstain from it because you need to recognize that if you don't, it's damaging your soul. Why is that the case? Why do we need to put to death these evil thoughts so that we don't carry out these sinful actions? Jesus says in Matthew 15, 19, out of the heart Proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. He says it all starts in the inner man. It starts with evil thoughts which lead to murders, violations of the sixth commandment, adulteries, fornications, violations of the seventh commandment, thefts, violation of the eighth, false witness, violation of the ninth, blasphemies, violations of the third, They all come from evil thoughts, out of the wickedness of the heart. Again, Obadiah Sedgwick said this, Beloved, the main battle of a Christian is not on the open field. His quarrels are mostly within and his enemies are in his own breast. Budyon got a picture of that when he pictures Valiant for truth. And when the entourage that is being led by Mr. Great Heart to heaven comes and meets Valiant for truth, Valiant for truth is all bloody. When they ask him what he's been about, he talks about the fact that he's been valiant for truth in heart work. In that inner battle. The main battle's not on the open field. It's in our own breast. We have to recognize that. And that's why this tenth commandment is so related to our pursuit of holiness, of putting to death sinful thoughts and sinful actions. God said through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 4.14, O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness that thou mayest be saved, or that thou mayest be delivered. God is speaking through His prophet to His people. This is, cleanse your heart from wickedness that you might be delivered. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within me? How much longer are you going to be thinking all these vain things in your inner person? And here he's speaking to the church of God corporately. Viewing them as one. How much longer will we have these vain thoughts? Turn with me briefly to Psalm 19. In Psalm 19, we have David praising God for general revelation. God's revealing His glory in His creation. And then we have him, secondly, praising God for His special revelation of His Holy Word. And then in verses 12-14, I believe we have an application of this praise concerning God's Word. David says, who can understand his errors? In other words, David's come to recognize that his heart's deceitful above all things. And he recognizes without God's help, he's not going to understand where he stands in terms of his obedience to God or lack thereof. So he says to God, cleanse thou me from secrets. Literally. It says there in the authorized version, secret faults, but you see faults there italicized. It means sins that he's unaware of. Sins that are in his own heart. Sins that he is committing in his behavior, but hasn't recognized as such. He wants to be forgiven those. But I think we need to understand this request in light of Psalm 139 where We're told the psalmist asks God to search him, to try him, to know his thoughts. If we want to be cleansed from our secret sins, we have to ask God to reveal them to us. Yes, He will forgive us things we don't recognize, but we also need to be asking Him that we might understand so that we might turn from them. But then he goes on, keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Because David realizes that secret faults, little things in our thinking and like that we don't consciously take on and are aware of and seek to put down, might become large, presumptuous things. He realizes that if he wades in long enough, he might end up in deeper water. Let them not have dominion over me, then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. What he's saying is, I'll demonstrate that I'm the real thing. Because I won't commit the sin that proves that I'm an apostate and never was the real thing. But yet, David uses the means. David knows that if he's the real thing, he won't fall from grace. He realizes that if he's not the real thing, if he's not a new man in Christ, He's not going to make Himself one by seeking His purity, and yet, He uses the means. He asks God, please reveal to me these sins that I'm not conscious of yet, so they don't become presumptuous sins, so they don't become those sins that prove I'm not the real thing. And so must we. And then I think David comes back to the heart again. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. I don't not only want to not do evil things, I don't want to say evil things, and I don't want to be thinking evil thoughts. I want them to be acceptable in your sight. And so that ought to be our desire. That ought to be our prayer. We ought to ask God to help us so that our hearts, our thought life, will be purified. In closing, I would just encourage you to consider reading through the larger catechism, questions and answers on the second table of the commands in particular over the coming weeks. And I would encourage you to consider identifying one sin, one sin of commission where you're sinning in a way routinely, where God has forbidden you to do that, or where you're not carrying out a duty that God has called you to. Identify those and begin to pray through them. Identify a verse of Scripture that's referred to and begin to meditate upon that verse to build up your spiritual strength. Ask God to help you to put to death that sin. But I would also encourage you to just take a few minutes daily to examine your life, your speech, and your thoughts on a daily basis. How long would it take us to ask ourselves three questions before we lay our head on our pillow every night? What have I done? What have I said or what have I thought today that's been sinful? And then confess any of those sins that we recognize we had not confessed previously, confessing them to God and confessing them to those we've sinned against, if they're still awake. and if not, confessing to them the next morning. I think that's what Ephesians 5.26 is referring to when Paul says, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. In other words, if you recognize you've been wrathful and angry, don't ignore getting it right with God and getting it right with the individual you've been such to. Get it right. In closing, I would suspect some of you are probably thinking this is hard work. We've just gotten through another year of the Christian life, and the pastor's now just told you, you've got more hard work the next year, or until you go to glory. I'll just remind you, the yoke of Christ is easy. Christ's yoke is easy. Matthew 11.30 says, My yoke is easy. My burden is light. We're not in this in our own strength. Our Savior's redeemed us. If we've been yoked up with Him, His yoke is easy. For united to Him, it won't be burdensome. And His commandments are not grievous to those that love Him. The commandments in Exodus 20 that we just looked at were given to the people of God, not in Egypt, to keep so they could get out. They were given to them after they were delivered out of bondage. And they were given to them so that they would demonstrate their love to God for their deliverance. Think of 1 John 5.3 in closing. For this is the love of God, John says. He's going to summarize. He's going to give a synonym for the love of God. That we keep His commandments. That's loving God. And, His commandments are not grievous. Praise God that they're not grievous. only because of the work of God's grace in our lives. If they're grievous to you today, I would ask you to search your own heart and see whether you're actually a child of God. If they're grievous to you, you need to allow the law to have its work in drawing you to Christ, in convicting you of sin and drawing you to Christ. Let us pray.