Yeah, well, we're gonna be closing out the Ten Commandments today. So I'm looking forward to this and let's open up our time in a word of prayer, shall we? Father, we thank you for this festive day of rest that we can come and worship you. Father, we thank you for the beauty that we see outside. We thank you for the light that you've shown in our hearts through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, as we look at the commandments, we just see our tendency, our deadly tendency towards sin. Lord, we pray that we would continue to trust in Christ. for the solution for our sin, and look to him always as a remedy for what really plagues us so badly. Father, as we finish the Ten Commandments, we know that this is a great guide for life, and that it really does show your character. So, Father, we pray that we would obey your commandments in life, and that we would do that ever more and more as we follow Jesus. In his name we pray, amen. All right, well, I'm on the 10th commandment today. You all know what that is, I think. Thou shalt not covet. So my title is Covetous or Contented. But I would like to alter a little bit the order of the questions. I'd like to go to the last questions that kind of close out the Ten Commandments just as a way of kind of reviewing where we've been. And so before I get into coveting, I'd like to go to question 132, which is kind of a summary of the Ten Commandments. and what it means for us. So question 132 asks, can those, can they who are converted to God observe and keep these commandments perfectly? Well, I think the answer to this one is pretty obvious. The answer is no. It says converted to God. Of course, our Lord Jesus Christ did obey all the commandments, but he didn't have to be converted to God. He always obeyed God perfectly. But the answer says, even the holiest people, as long as they live, have only small beginnings in obedience. Yet they begin with an unfeigned and earnest desire and endeavor to live, not according to some, but all the commandments of God. So, this says that the people who are getting the closest to the likeness of Christ in this life, they know that they have a long, long way to go, that they're only making small beginnings. If you meet a holy person, they will tell this to you, that they're making very small steps. And, of course, this is not false humility, and we are thankful for the steps that we are making, but this is a summary that has to really keep us grounded, is that even the holiest people, those who are most like the Lord Jesus Christ, are just beginning, as long as we're in this life. yet they begin with an unfeigned and earnest desire to keep going, not living according to some as if it were a smorgasbord that you could choose from, but all the commandments of God. We all have tendencies. There are some commandments that maybe we feel like we're doing really well on, but then there's another type that we would rather leave on the shelf. So this says that we need to live according to all of the commandments of God. But then the question remains, if we can't do this in life, this is the final question of our part on the Ten Commandments, why does God require his law to be preached exactly and severely? That means to be preached very clearly and announced to people with some urging and encouragement to keep his law and what his law entails. Why does he, require this to be preached knowing that there is no person in this life able to keep it. This is what Christ showed in his Ten Commandments, for example. I'm sorry, in his Sermon on the Mount. He preached the law very clearly. He announced what it really meant to murder, what it means to commit adultery. Even in our session here, we've talked even last week about bearing false witness. Do you remember that giant list of verbal sins that we can commit, I think that was from the larger catechism, that all the ways that we can bear false witness, stealing is another one. So many ways of doing that. So what we've seen in this series is that we've heard the law taught very accurately and in its full extent, but there's no person in this life able to keep it. Well, the answer here is twofold. The purpose of this is that, two things. First of all, there's kind of an inward and an outward view here that we increasingly acknowledge the great proneness of our nature to sin and heartily desire forgiveness and righteousness in Christ. So we look inward when we hear the law preached severely and accurately. We look inward and we see our tendency and it's a, it's a, really a complete human nature problem, the proneness of our sin. As you know in that song, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the Lord, I love. We see that when we see the law. And what we follow that with as believers is that we heartily desire forgiveness and righteousness in Christ. That's one reason we get to go to Christ every day. This is part of our, it's really part of the Heidelberg Catechism when it talks about the Lord's Supper. These are people who are displeased, who can come to the Lord's Supper, those who are displeased with their sin, but nevertheless believe and know that their sins are covered by the Lord Jesus Christ and all of his work, and who desire to live a better life. So that's one thing that we can do every day as we hear the law preached. And there's a second one, and this is something that we obviously and clearly cannot do in our own selves, in our own human nature, our own flesh. We look outward to God and we implore and crave from the Father the grace of His Holy Spirit. These are kind of some older style words. Basically, we beg of God and we need his grace and the grace of the Holy Spirit. As we see that we are prone to sin and God is commanding us to live in his good law. By his grace, we may be renewed day by day. That's a wonderful promise of walking with God in the Holy Spirit. As it says in 2 Corinthians, though our outward selves are decaying all the time, yet inwardly we can be renewed day by day to the image and likeness of God, transformed into His image. And then finally, once we depart this life, we will attain that joyful perfection promised us. So that's the goal. That's why God commands us to obey the Ten Commandments fully, is that is why we are saved. That's our goal. to be like Him and therefore to glorify Him, so that we will attain that joyful perfection. Again, as that chapter of Paul says, we are going through afflictions. Paul calls them light and momentary afflictions, but they're working in us an eternal weight of glory that will be beyond compare. So think about the joyful perfection promised us. We can go to God every day with our sins. I know we often don't do that. We are plagued by our sins. We are guilty. But we can go to Jesus Christ every day for forgiveness and righteousness in Christ, for all the ways that we fall short in keeping his law in these Ten Commandments. So this was a summary of the Ten Commandments, but now I'd like to get into the tenth one, which is coveting. Well, this is the first question we have. What is the Tenth Commandment? You shall not covet your neighbor's house, nor his wife, nor his servant, nor his maid, and get that last part, nor anything that is his. Can you think of some examples of this? I can think of probably a thousand. I can't mention them right now. We can covet our neighbor's wife. That means we can look at our own wife. This is not me personally. But feel dissatisfied. She's not the way she used to be. She's not the woman I married, maybe. Men say. I don't say that. And we can look at our neighbor's wife and just say, oh, look how healthy she is, how young and strong. Same thing for the neighbor's husband. That's worse. If you're a woman, you can say, oh, he's not funny anymore. He never talks to me. All he does is go off and does his own stuff. We can covet anything that is his. In the workplace, you can covet your cubicle neighbor and his promotion that he was chosen over you. You can covet his good looks, his height even. how tall and commanding of a voice he has, his gifts, his attributes, his wealth. There's so many things to covet in life. We covet things in so many ways. If you're children, you can covet your neighbors. their parents. You might say, my parents aren't cool. I like their parents better. They give them a lot of things and let them do anything they want. You can covet your neighbor's children. You can covet anything. And this is just such a fundamental part of what drives people in life. It's something that we must not do. But let's look a little bit more deeply then at the definition of what does it really mean to covet? So the word covet is really interesting because the way it's used both in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, it's the same word as desire. So yeah, you have your neighbor's car. You like it. But it's this idea of wanting to have it. So really, what changes from desiring something to coveting? So in the Old Testament, the word for covet, again, it's translated also as desire. It talks about in Genesis 2 how the trees were pleasing to the eye. The idea in the Old Testament is that Something to be coveted is something pleasant and beautiful. Psalm 19 says, the laws of the Lord are beautiful, they are more precious than gold, than much fine gold. So coveting, well, that word in the Old Testament means desire, it also means to covet. And that's really given to you by the context. You all know the story of Joshua 7, Achid. Remember how he was one of the Israelites and Jericho was destroyed and they had to give all the wealth up to God and just burn it all? Well, what did he do? He saw that nice Babylonian garment, silver and gold, and he coveted it. Same term. In the New Testament, it's the same way. We have words like epithumeo, which really means to have passion about. And the Lord Jesus Christ said at the last supper, I greatly desire to have this meal with you. So he desired that. First Timothy, if anyone desires the office of overseer, He desires a noble task or a good thing, a good work. So there are good senses for desiring, of course, but also coveting. And again, same word, Matthew chapter five, if a man looks on a woman with desire or lust in his heart as it's usually translated. He commits adultery with her in his heart. Romans chapter seven, this is where Paul brings in do not covet from the Bible or from the Old Testament and he uses the same term. And even other words, this last one, you can see the word zeal in that, zalao. That's, again, kind of passion. We're supposed to eagerly desire spiritual gifts, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians. Be zealous and repent, the Lord says in Revelation 3. These are good things. But we also see, even in 1 Corinthians 13, that love does not envy, it does not boast. That says we, love does not covet. And then finally in James 4.2, that's that really atrocious church in the earliest days where James is just saying, you don't have what you want, you lust, you kill and covet, You don't have because you do not ask. So that's the word to covet. So how do we get from desiring to coveting? It all has to do with the human heart. In the Garden of Eden, before the fall, there was no inordinate desire. The heart of Adam and Eve was pure. What happens is desires go into the human heart, and what comes out, covetousness. These are two passages from the Lord Jesus. The eye is the lamp of the body. The eye is where we see everything, we. We see things that are desirable. We see things that are good. But then he says, if the eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if the eye is bad, really showing the nature of human beings, that our eye is bad, and those things that we see are corrupted really by the human heart, and they issue forth with covetousness. Christ said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, comes all of these evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, and right in the middle of this list of sins is coveting. we want inordinately what we ought not to have. So this is how we go from desiring to coveting. This is the term that's used mostly in the Bible. There's another term in the New Testament that's used. You see, even the ancient Greeks and philosophers, they were pagan, but there was something in their, in just the moral structure in their hearts that told them, there's something really wrong with somebody who just wants more and more and more. So they called this pleonexia. Interesting word. It means simply, literally, to have more. And this is really condemned constantly in the New Testament. Just an example of it is given in 1 Timothy from the Apostle Paul. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and into a snare, into senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. So finally, coveting is also against the neighbor. It's certainly a sin against God and mostly, I mean, 100% against God, against, as it says in Psalm 51, against you and you only have I sinned and done what's evil in your sight. But it's also a sin against one's neighbor, someone who's close to you. I don't know about you, I'm not often tempted to Let's say, ride on Air Force One through all the nations of the world. That's too far from me, and I'm not coveting that. Maybe some people do covet that. But if it comes down to maybe one of my fellow elders has a really nice classic MG that he got for just $2,000, I might be coveted for something like that. So that's coveting. It's a sin against the neighbor. So I have a simple working definition here. It's not very grammatically correct. I made it up myself. To wish for earnestly, to desire inordinately, and to crave sinfully. And it's usually something that belongs to another. Coveting. All right, a few things on the uniqueness of the 10th commandment. Now, you know that all the commandments, I would say, well, most of the second table commandments, second table of the law, the commandments, such as even remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, obey your parents. These are all things that are externally, they come obviously from the heart, from the internal, but they are all externally visible. You can see if someone is disobedient to parents, not honoring them. You can see murder. You can be charged with murder, adultery, stealing, theft, all those things. They rise to the surface. Covetousness is unique. It's uniquely internal. Now, in a court of law, people always want to find out, if there's a crime, what's the motive? That's important to find out, but in the end, it's the crime that you're charged for, not simply the motive behind it. The author of the Heidelberg Catechism, Ercinus, he had a commentary on that, which I looked at. He wrote something against the Pelagians. And the Pelagians, if you've heard of them, or if you haven't heard of them, they were a group that followed Pelagius, who had this idea that Christians were saved by simply obeying the law perfectly. And they didn't like this command to not covet because they would say things like, how can you not covet? That's just simply wanting things that are natural, that are clearly natural. How can we not do that? Also, they would say, these things aren't even sinful. We need to eat, we need to drink, we need money to buy those things. The thing is that that's a wrong view. Yeah, these things are all needed, but God gives them. He distributes them to us in the way that He wants to. And if we can't have them in His way, we should not be coveting them. So they really didn't like this commandment because of the internality of it. Also the apostle Paul mentioned this in Romans chapter seven. He said, I would not have known what the law is if the law did not say, do not covet. Remember when the rich young ruler came to Christ and he said, teacher, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus started listing the commandments. He actually didn't list coveting in that part. This man went away saying, look, Lord, I've done all these things. Of course, Christ said, you effectively, you do not put God before all things. So you're breaking the first commandment, you're breaking the great commandment. That's what he told that man. But this is an internal commandment. So Paul said, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, do not covet. You think the apostle Paul was a covetous man, even as a Pharisee? In Philippians, he said, as to the law, I was a Pharisee. And he said, as to righteousness under the law, I was blameless. He could look at his life and said, again, the whole checkmark, checking the boxes kind of thing. I didn't do this. I didn't do that. I didn't do this thing. But then you come to this law like, do not covet. And that's where we're all convicted. deeply and probably every day, if not every hour, there's a tendency toward coveting. The Apostle Paul definitely coveted. He coveted the believers. He coveted perhaps not their justification and their glorying in Jesus Christ, but they had something that he didn't have and he didn't want them to have it either. So he was a covetous man and he was arrested by the Lord Jesus Christ and turned away from that. So these are unique things about the 10th Commandment. Well, dangers of covetousness are many. In the Lord's teaching, a man came to him He came to the eternal Son of God and said, teacher, tell my brother to divide my inheritance with him. In other words, I want my money right in front of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus said, take care, take heed, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. So covetousness will drive your life. There's a Russian story from a while, a long time ago, about a farmer, a peasant, a Russian farmer, who overheard his young wife and her sister interacting. And he worked out on the fields. And the sister was a city girl. She told her sister, why do you come here? You're living out there with the pigs and the cows. And his wife said, well, we have everything we need. Well, then the man just thought, yes, we have everything we need, but I work hard from sun up to sun down, and I need more land. And he spent his entire life working at getting more land. He went from five acres to renting 40 acres. He was able to purchase 130 acres, even about 1,000 acres. Well, the story goes that later on in life, he heard that in the distant east of Russia, out in the steppes of Kazakhstan or someplace like that, he heard that land was being made available out there. 13,000 acres, that's many square miles. So he went out there to these tribes people out there and he met the chieftain and he said, how much can I get with 1,000 rubles? I've got this much money. He went with a hired man out there to meet these people and said, I've got this. At that point, the chieftain said, well, out here, we don't sell land by area. We sell it by time. OK. So this is the deal. You'll put your 1,000 rubles on this blanket. And then in one day, from sunup to sundown, you can walk and run and compass all the land you will get. So this man took off the next day. He took his lunch with him. He saw great lands for planting wheat. He saw a great place to keep his horses, a stream running through it. He had to go around that. Well, as the day continued, he just saw more vistas of what he wanted. So he took off a couple of miles that way and a few miles that way. He had lunch. It was getting very hot. I think you can tell where this story is going. He kind of lost track of where he was. He was grabbing so much land by walking around it. So finally, as the afternoon was closing, he saw some hills. They were getting shaded on the other side. So he thought, I just have to go around that hill and find where I left my money. He went around that hill, and he saw three more hills. And he knew he wasn't really that close. Well, he began to run. And he ran and ran. He wasn't accustomed to running. So he ran around those mountains, made it around the last mountain just as the sun was setting. And he saw off in the distance that chieftain sitting there with his hired man in the blanket with his rubles on it. So he just began to run as hard as he could. And his heart was bursting. And his lungs were burning. And just as the sun was setting and that blanket being covered with a shadow, he just leapt onto the blanket and exhausted, he just fell down there. Well, his hired man went and came up to him, and he saw blood running out of his mouth because he died. And at that point, The story goes that he basically got the land. He spent his life getting that land. And what did he receive? He received land all right. It was about six feet by two feet. And that's the land that we all get. It's a grave. So one can spend and spend one's life and receive nothing more than what we all receive, which is that final resting place. So take heed about the covetous life. It will drive you. A few things on the covetous family. What a place that would be. We've talked about spouses who are coveting other people and the dissension that brings. Imagine if a father covets his neighbor's sons or children, they're accomplishing so much. The father might drive his own children to do all these things that they are not really equipped to do. He might harshly drive them. It causes so much bitterness. The covetous church, covetousness exists in churches. We saw in that passage in James chapter four, you kill and covet. you do not have because you do not ask. So it's something that we really have to look at in our churches. We can look at other people's, all kinds of things, their popularity, their looks, their belongings, their family, their wonderful children. We can look at The gifts they have, this is a place where covetousness can thrive in the church, and we really have to be on our guard. The Holy Spirit distributes gifts according to His will. God gives gifts according to His good pleasure. We can't covet those things. And then a covetous society. Well, yes, we live in one. That's under capitalism. You know, there's a famous phrase by Warren Buffett, be greedy when others are fearful, and be fearful when others are greedy. Yeah, capitalism, I'm not going to talk about economics today, but there is certainly a covetousness aspect to the system that we, I would say, that we actually enjoy here in a lot of ways. But I did want to mention socialism, which is another system which has this promise of, boy, if we could just get some unselfish people to be in charge and distribute to everyone as they had need, and everyone would give what they could, things would just be wonderful. Well, as you know, socialism, that very thought right there has caused millions of deaths in the world. There is no society free of covetousness. Coveting from our neighbors. Well, we can covet from our brothers and sisters in Christ, but what a horrible thing that is when we see what God has blessed them with, and we would want to have what they have, and it hurts our relationships with them. It causes us to dislike them or despise them. people who God loves and He distributes blessings to? And what about coveting from unbelievers? Do we ever do that? That's what Psalm 73 is all about. That's the psalm where the psalmist says, As for me, my feet had almost slipped, I nearly lost my foothold. He's not talking about slipping on a path. He's talking about falling off a cliff. He said, my life was almost ruined because I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. So in that Psalm, he goes on to say all the things that he saw that the wicked had, which were great things, but just how evil they were. And then finally he says, surely I have kept my heart pure in vain. In vain have I washed my hands in innocence. Well, he goes on to say, I was senseless when I thought like that. It was really oppressive to me until I went to the sanctuary of God, and there I saw their final resting point. So coveting from unbelievers is a horrible thing for us to do. When we think of what we've received in Christ, how could we covet stuff that people have when they don't have Jesus Christ? So let us think about all these dangers of covetousness. They are great for us. The end of greed. Again, the New Testament makes it very clear. These are some of the big lists of Paul that covetousness is completely incompatible with Christian character and it will keep us out of the kingdom of God if we should practice it. So do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? This is 1 Corinthians. He goes through these lists of very outward and very degraded sins, sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, and then he says, nor the greedy. It's right in the middle of that list. The same thing in the book of Ephesians, that covetousness is one of these things that should not be named among you. It shouldn't be seen. Sexual immorality and impurity and covetousness, they're all in the same pod. And this sense of greed is something that is incompatible, as he says, with a Christian life. Who is covetous? Anyone who is covetous, and that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Well, that's why in our second question in the catechism here, it says, what is the 10th commandment forbid? We've talked about all of the things that can be coveted. The answer is interesting, that our hearts be moved by the least desire or thought against any commandment of God, because covetousness issues into all of those things, murder and adultery and stealing and bearing false witness. that we continually from all our heart, we must detest all sin and delight in all righteousness. So that's what the 10th commandment is telling us, that we stay away from any of the least desires of sinning against any commandment of God. Well, positive expression of this one. Remember how all the commandments have kind of a positive expression? We say do not steal, but what does that say? Well, we were taught that a couple weeks ago. I remember it, but I can't get it all out right now. We should be generous, we should work hard, we should respect others' property, et cetera. In this one, for covetousness, the positive exposition is that we need to receive with joy our lot in life. Well, what's your lot in life? Well, a lot in ancient times is something like dice. It's something that you throw. what your luck might provide. Of course, in the Bible, there's no concept of luck. There's no luck under the sovereign God. He gives to all people everything that they have. So there's no lot in life, or at least what the lot is, is not that kind of luck. We even get our word lottery from lot. But that's not the biblical point of view. It's what God provides for us. So we need to receive what he gives us, and he gives us so many different things. He gives a lot of us very sad things where we don't have things that we, health issues, there's all kinds of things, but we have to receive them from him because he is a good God and we need to trust him. Learn contentment. That's what the Apostle Paul wrote about in Philippians, how he's learned to be content in plenty or in want. So in need or if he had a lot, he was able to be content. There's a book written, The Jewel of Christian Contentment. It's in the song we sing, I will be content in all he sent. whatever our God ordains is right. The Westminster Shortercasm Catechism kind of summarizes this. What is required in the Tenth Commandment? It requires full contentment with our own condition, that's with what God gives us, with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor and all that is his. So, contentment with our own condition. That's what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians where he says, this is my rule in all the churches. Now, we can improve our lot. We do that. We are educated, we work hard, we improve what God gives us, but we do that with a right and charitable frame with our neighbor, and we ought not to be coveting and desiring the things that they have. So we're able to improve our lot. Paul says, if you're a slave, I mean, if you came to Christ as a slave, don't worry about it. But if you're able to get your freedom, go ahead and do it. So we're able to improve things, but we have to do that with a lot of contentment through it all. So fighting covetousness in our last few minutes here. Well, trust in God's goodness. He gives us richly. We all have breath and life and a lot of capabilities. But he also disciplines. He takes things away. He does it all out of love for his children. If he's not disciplining us, then it shows that maybe we're not one of his. So he does that. He gives richly. He disciplines. And he preserves and makes our inheritance sure. So Psalm 8 is wonderful for this. It's where the psalmist David says, Lord, you are my portion and my cup. You've made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance. So we have a delightful Lord who is our portion and our cup. He makes our lot in life secure, but look at the eternal inheritance that we have. That's a psalm that Jesus was quoted about him. It was, you know, it's the one where it says in the book of Acts, you have not let your holy ones see decay. It's a psalm of Jesus Christ. And he says, I have a delightful inheritance. We have inheritance with him as joint heirs with Jesus Christ. So that should be something to help us fight covetousness. Oh, enjoy life. Did I put that in there? That sounds like saying we're gonna mortify sin by having fun. No, that's not really what I mean, but the Bible tells us we should enjoy what we have. It says God gives us everything richly for enjoyment. We should enjoy our wife, enjoy our family. That's what the book of Ecclesiastes says. Enjoy life. In other words, that's really, I'm just saying the same thing as count your blessings and enjoy the meager things that God may give you or the great things that God gives you. He really does give us richly and we should enjoy it. That might turn us away from a covetous spirit. Be rich toward God. That's what the Lord said in that parable, which I didn't read about the rich fool. This was a man who said, his fields were producing so much, he said, I'm going to tear down my old barns and put up new barns. And he just stored up all that grain. And he said, I'm going to be able to relax, eat, and drink, and be merry. And that night, God said, tonight, you rich fool, your soul is required of you. Again, he put his life into covetousness. At that point, Jesus said, so it is with the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So this is about generosity. Christ came. He was rich. He was so rich, he was God. He had the cattle of a thousand hills. He owns all creation. But he became poor for our sakes. So we ought to be generous with what God gives us. And finally, ambition is good. We can be ambitious to gain more, but what the apostle says in 2 Corinthians is make it your ambition to please God. So we can definitely have aims in life, but he says make it your ambition to please Him. Everything we do ought to be toward His glory. So as we close, remember the counsel that we got in that first question. Even the holiest people, as long as they live, have only small beginnings in obedience. So I just encourage all of us to understand that The Lord wants us to make beginnings in obedience, in contentedness against covetousness. We ought to have this kind of strong desire to live not according to the flesh, but really according to contentedness with what God has given us. So that's the lesson for today. Let me just close this in prayer as I think we're running out of time. Father in heaven, we love you. We praise you for who you are. You are the God of giving. You've given us your Lord Jesus Christ to be our savior and salvation. And Father, in your generosity, we praise you this morning. We thank you that we are gathered together to worship you. And as we go upstairs, we want to just remember the goodness that you have toward us, that you show to us. Lord, you turn us away from Covetousness, we ask that you do that more and more. Lord, we want to live lives of contentedness, always knowing that whatever you've given us is right for us, right for us at this point. Help us to stay away from all those thoughts and urges that would lead us away from you. We pray all these things in the name of Jesus, amen.