Okay, now let's open our Bible to Exodus chapter 20. Tonight, as we've come to a highly anticipated point in our study of Exodus, our study in chapter 20, looking at the law of God given from the very mouth of God as it were in the form of what we call the Ten Commandments has been given to the Israeli people in the establishing of God's covenant with them. Covenant that he declared he would establish with them in chapter 19 and he moves into chapter 20 and gives them what we tend to call the moral law I think it is it is certainly that but it is what he is communicating to these people that has been recorded for us therefore it is communicating to the world what God is actually like what his character truly is. It is the communicable law of God. It tells us about him. This is what he expects. This is what he will accept because of who he is. And then he moves into the the The civil law and the ceremonial laws we move through, Exodus, we'll see some of those as well. But these 10 would be the top 10. We tend to set these 10 apart and for good reason. I don't know if you've ever thought about why we call it the 10 Commandments, because as you read through this, some of these seem to be negotiable as to whether whether one is a commandment, or if one is two commandments, or if there are multiple ways to divide this, why do we call it the Ten Commandments? Or the expression that is often used, the Decalogue, the Ten Words, Deca being ten, Logos being word, Decalogue is the ten words, where does that come from? Well, as Moses is writing in Decalogue, One time in chapter 34, verse 28 in Exodus, but two times in Deuteronomy. He refers back to this time at Mount Sinai as Moses is getting ready to move off of the scene. He is going to, God is going to take him up onto the mountain to look over the river and to look at the promised land and then Moses is going to die there and God is going to take Moses' spirit to heaven and Joshua is going to take over. And Moses knows that he is about to depart and he is leaving these people that have been consumed the majority of and the best years of his life and his service to God, serving these people, these people that he loves, he has poured his life out for. In Deuteronomy chapter 4, He's recounting to these people their history and what God has done, how he began to move, not what God and they have done, but what God has done for them and done to them. He moved in and called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. Abraham was just living his best life then and God called him out of out of that life into the life that God had for him and and moved him out of Haran into the promised land and told him that he would give all of his descendants that land and God's faithfulness to Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and his wives and concubines and his sons that turned into the 12 tribes of Israel and Joseph, him bringing them into Egypt through Joseph and really really protecting them even in the midst of their slavery he was protecting them for the future movement that he had for them in that and he brings them out of Egypt and he brings them into the through the Red Sea and brings them into the wilderness and in Deuteronomy 4 he comes to verse 13 and he's recounting this passage in Exodus chapter 20 what we've seen them coming to Exodus chapter 20 he speaks to them from the mountain And in verse 13, Moses says, so he, speaking of God, speaking of Yahweh, he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to do. That is the Ten Commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And Yahweh commanded me at that time to teach you the statutes and the judgments that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess." Moses is referencing in these two verses the giving of the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law that we're going to look at through Exodus as we continue to move through Exodus. But he refers to it as the Ten Commandments. Does anyone have a translation that doesn't say Ten Commandments? I don't know that there are any, I just wanted to ask, I don't have any that do. But the word here in Hebrew is literally words, the ten words. We know that he's speaking of the Ten Commandments. That is where we get the number ten. There's no discussion, there's no way to debate whether there are eight or nine or ten or twelve there are ten God calls in the Ten Commandments he says so in and here in Deuteronomy 413 he says it again in Deuteronomy 10 for and he's already said it the same way the ten words what is the Ten Commandments is what he's referring to in Exodus 34 28 now you and I live in a very unique part of the country we are on the the the last the last hole in the belt of the Bible belt. We have a heavily populated Roman Catholic society here. Most of the people that you know would if they're going to claim the most of it not all of them obviously but most of them would would claim to have been born a catholic and i'll die catholic they'd make sure that they go on the eastern sometimes and and it's it's it's fine that we do you have the same issue in in bible churches baptist churches it's just a religious thing people pick certain times to go but Because there is such a heavy Roman Catholic contingent in this state, we are one of the first states to mandate, our legislature and our governor have mandated, the installation of the Ten Commandments back into the schools. They've given the size, it needs to be 11 by 14, it has to be in an easily readable font, is how the law reads, and they want the Ten Commandments put back on the wall in the schools like it used to be. And ACLU and all of these are moral and even some group of Baptists in Louisiana have a lady named Holly something or other is the chairman of their executive director of the board or whatever. And she said, oh, this is a loss of religious freedom. It's not a loss of religious freedom. The government's not telling you you have to be a Methodist. You have to be a Presbyterian. You have to belong to a Bible Church. It doesn't say any of that. It says that if we are going to acknowledge the existence of God, we want to acknowledge the existence of this God, the biblical God. But then a debate comes in. We're going to put the Ten Commandments up. Most people don't want to know, they don't want the condemnation of it, they don't want to hear about God. I want God around. When I need something outside of that, He can wait outside. They treat God like a spare tire. They need Him there when they need Him and when not, just hang out under the car. I'll let you know when it's your turn again. That's just, in reality, how man treats the idea of God. But the question is, which version of the Ten Commandments is going to make it into the schools? that's been debated. If you go to any of the Roman Catholic catechisms, catechism is, for people that don't know, they think that it's just something Catholic. It's not. It's a way of learning. To catechize is to teach someone something by question and answer. Westminster Shorter Catechism, first question. What is the chief end of man? What is the most important reason for man's existence? What is the chief end of man? What is man's most necessary goal? What's his most valuable goal? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And if you sit down with your children and you teach them that in this question and answer form, it's really what we do in our kids' club. There's a question that's answered by a verse. When it's time for the children to say their verses in our kids' club, they're asked a question. And the question is answered by a passage of Scripture. They know the reference, the verse, and the reference. That's how they answer it. It's catechizing, but it's using the Scripture as the answer. In Roman Catholic catechisms, it's teaching children the Roman Catholic religion so that they know what they're supposed to believe, what they're supposed to hold to. I've only been to a Roman Catholic wedding. I've not been to a Roman Catholic church service. I've been to a couple of funerals and some very traditional weddings, and I kind of stand out. because i don't have any idea what the guys saying when they kneel down when they sit back down and i don't know what all of it i don't know what all the the trappings are and i was at one wedding we were sitting there and and it was a traditional catholic wedding they had the the full master of the full communion everything and i was serving in the wedding now sitting there wouldn't with one of my other family members it was a family members wedding uh... and i'm i'm sitting there with with another with another guy, one of my family members, and we're the only ones that aren't doing all of that. And there were some girls behind us that were part of the, I guess they weren't part of the wedding, part of the ladies were on the other side of the aisle. But when it was time to kneel down and pray, those girls would get their elbows on the back of the pew that I was sitting on and make sure that they said everything they were supposed to say in the back of my head so that it was as abrasive to me as possible. i think that is a compliment so he's you're gonna try that with me don't do figure out something else i just if if i'm not irritating to you that i want it was interested i i really don't i wouldn't have done it anyway but i have no clue how to do that well that is what going through these catechisms does but they're teaching them there in in catechism they're teaching them The Bible, they're teaching them how to pursue the lifestyle of Roman Catholicism. Well, in traditional Roman Catholic catechisms, they have 10 commandments. But in the catechism, if you're still in Exodus chapter 20, what are for you and I verses four through six are not there. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water beneath the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God." Not having a graven image is not in the Ten Commandments in the Roman Catholic catechisms. But they've got a problem. Mm-hmm, right Yeah, it's and and it's I'm just I'm actually making a point here. I'm not trying to throw dirt at all, but That's missing and I think those of us that are familiar with the inside of a Roman Catholic Church. You understand why that would be Be kind of hard to chew on if it was there But they've got a problem. You can take that one out you can if that's what you want to do Just take those verses out that that's That's achievable. Problem is, I just read to you from Deuteronomy 4, that he gave them 10 commandments. If you take one out, how many do you have? Oops. Whatever will we do? Well, they come down to the end, what is verse 17 for us, and they split it in two. Number nine is you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. And number 10 is you shall not covet your neighbor's goods. That is verbatim in English how the ninth and 10th commandment are listed in the Roman Catholic count of the 10 commandments. Not covet the wife, not covet the goods. Let's read verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male slave, or his female slave, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. That is what it says. Names a house, then names a wife, then names his possessions, or anything that belongs to your neighbor, his goods. So not only have they split number 10 into two, they've rearranged number 10, putting not covet the wife first, and then the house and the possessions and anything that belongs to him being put into one idea of his goods, which is fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but they've not only split what isn't necessary to split in order to make the count of 10, they've even rearranged the wording of it to put it in a different order. Now we look at this and say this is number 10. It comes at the end of the list. And if we're gonna make a list of things, very often we wanna list them in order of priority. So we would look at these and we would say number one must be the most important and number 10 must be the least important. That would make sense. i was going to give them that this is this is the only time that god speaks directly to these people from here on out just what moses said in deuteronomy four then he commanded me to teach you the statutes and regulations and commandments moses is going to move back into that mode is going to speak to moses from moses to the people but here he is speaking directly to the people If you wanted to make the case that number one was the most important and number ten was the least important, you could make that case and it still would be a distinction without a difference because these are the only ten that God spoke himself. There are countless other commands and expectations and rules and laws that he's going to give them through Moses, but these are the ten that came directly from him. So although we may want to minimize 10 in its reference to number one, that is a distinction without a difference. And I'm going to make the point tonight that you cannot distinguish them that way. Number 10 is not the least important. We tend to look at the first nine. You will have no other gods before me. You will not make for yourself any idol or the likeness of anything which is in heaven above and the earth beneath or the water under the earth. You will not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain. You will remember the Sabbath to keep it holy because God has made it holy. You will honor your father and your mother. You will not murder. You will be sexually pure. You will not steal, and you will not bear false witness. You will tell the truth. Those nine on the surface, if you try to boil them down to their most obvious meaning, and hyper-literalize them, you bring it down to a single external action. And if you take number 10 and understand that it's talking about not something that you do, but something that you feel, something that you think, you see the first nine as external acts and number 10 as an internal act of sin. Now, if you take that minimalist view of it, you still have to wrestle with the reality that God is not only concerned with what you do, He is concerned with what you think and feel. He is concerned not only with the external, He is concerned with the internal. That is why in the Sermon on the Mount, when the Savior begins to say, you've heard it said, you shall not commit murder, but I'm telling you that if you have hateful feelings in your heart for your brother, you're guilty of breaking the commandment? When the Apostle Paul is giving his testimony in Romans chapter 7, the Apostle Paul says, I once was alive apart from the law. The first nine I kept to perfection. We looked at Matthew chapter 19 in Sunday school this morning when the rich young ruler comes to Jesus. Let's turn there. I want to catch the edge of this. This is not in my notes, but it's been on my heart all week and it happened to be in our Sunday school lesson this morning. The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? You remember what Jesus says to him? Why do you call me good? The true good one is God. But if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments. And Dr. Sproul made the point in that lesson that on the surface that may sound like Jesus is telling you you can work your way to heaven, but you have to stay with it. Then the rich young ruler said to him, which ones? Now Jesus gives this list. You do not murder, shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not bear false witness. That is six, seven, eight, and nine. Honor your father and mother, that is number six. Those are the five, the first five in the second table of the law. And then he moves to what Moses later said in Deuteronomy, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but that is referring to the tenth one. If you love your neighbor as yourself, are you going to covet his stuff? The young man said, all these I have kept. What am I still lacking? Jesus gives those five. He doesn't refer to the 10th one, you shall not covet, but he refers to those five. Honor your father and mother. Do not commit murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not bear false witness. And he says, I've kept all of those. Then Jesus goes for the jugular. You think you've kept all of those. But to point out to you the depravity of your own heart, he says, if you wish to be complete, What am I still lacking? He says, if you wish to be complete, sell your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. Jesus is pointing out to this young man that you may have kept the minimalist approach to the first nine, but this tenth one leaves you dead. And Paul says that when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. And Paul said, when the law said, you shall not covet, it produced in me covetousness of all kinds. So when I tell you that these are not necessarily given in their order of importance, I mean it. We need not look at it and say, oh, well, this is just number 10. We've had those other nine, and preacher, we've been at this for months. Why don't we just breeze through this one? Because we can't. I told Brother Herman this morning, I don't know if I'm going to get this out in two sermons. I think this will be three. I think I can squeeze it into three. Because it has such massive implication in your life and mine, we can't just glide past this. We tend to have this idea that in this list, maybe they're listed in order of importance. And we like to use this expression when we're, especially if we're acknowledging people that have helped us with something. We have a list of people that we want to acknowledge. You know, you have all these award shows and first I want to thank my mom and whoever and go down the list and I know I'm going to forget somebody. Oh, last but not least. Do you want your name mentioned first or do you want your name mentioned last but not least? Nobody wants to be last but not least. We cannot, Look at this commandment in that way. Last but not least, because it's not the least. Told you when we began that the first commandment, you will have no other gods before me, is this overarching command that covers the rest. I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. I am your God who rescued you because I wanted to. You will have no other gods before me. The next nine fall under that umbrella. But number 10 comes in and undergirds all of the rest of them. Why would you steal something? as you coveted it. We're going to get into defining this word in a minute, and you're going to see there's a positive and negative use of it, and give a little better understanding of what this is saying, but... Why would you be unfaithful to a spouse? Because you want something that you don't have that someone else does? I've told you that jealousy and envy are not the same. You can be jealous in a good way, there is no good way to be envious. Envy is a first cousin to covetousness. One leads to the other. Why would you not ever submit to an authority figure? Honor your father and mother means more than just obey your parents. It does mean that, but it means more than that. It is that first step, that first stage in the authority submission principle that God has ordained to rule the universe. It is an extension of the parents that moves out into into the world and into the church. There is to be the authority submission principle in the church. There are those that lead and those that follow. And when it moves out into the world, there are authority figures in the world. Why do we have people that cannot submit to authority? They won't listen to a teacher. They won't listen to a coach. They won't listen to what the laws are. They won't obey the laws. They won't comply when the police officer tells them what to do. Why are people like that? Because they want to be in charge. I don't want you to tell me what to do, I want to tell me what to do. That stems from this internal covetousness. I asked somebody this morning, I said, because NFL preseason has started, I really don't care. I can take it or leave it. My boys eat it up. And it's good, it's fine. They talk more about players on teams that I don't know how they keep them all straight. I can't keep my eight kids' names straight after time. If you doubt me, think of a player whose name you've heard recently and ask one of my sons where they played college football. But I asked the question this morning, why? Why do we get to watch football? Why do we get to watch NFL football or college football? Why do we get to watch that? We'll just use NFL football. And I asked this to a gentleman that we all know this morning. So why do we have football? He said, what does this have to do with covetousness? I'm glad you asked because we're going there. So why do we have football? I said, if you go to a movie, anybody been to a movie theater lately? How much does it cost to see a movie? Let's say it costs you $15 a head to get in. I don't know if it is that much anymore. I haven't been in a while. To get into the place, to be able to get into the theater costs you $15. The popcorn alone is going to cost you that again. The drink. the snowcaps or the goobers. Raisinets, that's what I'm thinking about. And you get these weird people that take the M&Ms and pour them on top of the popcorn and eat the popcorn with the chocolate in it. You got your giant thing of Coke and your giant bushel of popcorn and you go sit down in the chair and get about a half of the popcorn in your mouth and the rest on you. By the time you left there, you spent $30 or $40 a head, and then you've got to go and get a meal, typically. The movie theater does that so that they can make money. It costs you to watch a movie. What does it cost you to watch a football game at your house? On broadcast television, not NFL Network and any of this other stuff that pulls your eyeballs out, the streaming services. What does it cost you to watch your hometown team play on Sunday? What does it cost you? cost you nothing. These men are making a small fortune by going out and attempting to behead one another every 17 seconds. Where does all of that money come from? Somebody is having to pay them that money. There's a giant stadium. I mean, they have games. It costs you $30, $40, $50 to go watch a game. You're going to get a little cup with some liquid in it that's going to cost you $20, a $20 hamburger, whatever it is. They're going to make several million dollars, but they don't make enough to pay their best player on what they collect through admissions and concession sales in a year. So where does that come from? Well, most of it comes from the networks that buy the rights to air the NFL's games. Now you've got several networks. You've got a couple of your old broadcast companies. You've got some of the cable companies and these internet companies. The NFL has their own network now. And they're paying money into the NFL for the rights to air the games. Well, why would they do that? Because the networks are buying the rights to air the games and then they go out and they peddle the rights to play the games to advertisers. The advertisers pay them to advertise their products that pays for the game. Why does advertisement work? You shall not covet what your neighbor has. Let's be honest. There are things advertised on television like toilet paper. You want to make sure that you get the best product for your use at your house. So some of those commercials are just telling you this is what separates our product from that product. I have to have this product. So I'd like to get the one that I like the best and the advertisement kind of can tell you that. But for the most part, they're trying to get you to want more of what you don't have by appealing to The covetousness in your heart. So why do we get to watch football in the NFL? For free? Covetousness. We tend to look at this and say, well, this is the one that I have the least problem with. Friends, if you have a problem with any commandment, it's this one. This one is important. This one is not to be pushed aside. It is not to be relegated to obscurity. This one is to be front and center. I referred to the first and tenth commandment as the bookends that hold the rest of them together. You will have no other gods before me here, and you will be satisfied with me here. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, and sweeter are your words to me than honey. I'm satisfied in you. Therefore, I will not attempt to make anything that is a physical expression of you because you are indescribable. I will not abuse your name or blaspheme or detract from your name. I will not defame your day. I will honor the father and the mother that you have given me in this establishing of the authority submission principle. I will honor life. I will not murder. I will pursue sexual purity. I will not steal from others. I will honor their possessions and I will tell the truth because it is what honors you. I will be satisfied in you. You can look at it like Tupperware. I try not to have too many of these redneck illustrations, but sometimes it has to come out. The Ten Commandments are contained in one. You shall not covet what is not yours. And they are covered and held together by the other that comes on top. So that they are one unit that begins with Yahweh being God alone to you and ends with him being your satisfaction and what he has provided is what you will be satisfied in. Now with that as an introduction, 33 minutes isn't bad. I've got about 140 minutes worth in my head, so breaking it into three is going to be profitable. Let's look at command 10. Commandment 10. It has a negative air to it. It is telling you what not to do. So the positive implication of what to do is equally as true as the negative prohibition in not coveting. The opposite of coveting is another word that starts with C. It is contentment. Because content people do not covet. And covetous people are never content. I've never told you this before but very often I pick the titles for the sermons with the idea that we have to be able to fit it on the first and second line when we post them on Sermon Audio. Because I don't like to look at a sermon and I can only read half of the title because I don't know what I'm getting into. So I try to keep the titles short very often and sometimes they get a little silly. But this, this was easy. Be content. We're going to look at the definition of the command, the design of the command, and the duty of the command. Tonight we want to look at the definition of the command. We need to begin with this word, covet. We're going to define Covetousness, do not covet your neighbor's house, his wife, his servants, his animals, any of his belongings, all of it go into one. All of that would be his house. You don't covet anything of your neighbor. We could really put that into one word. It's the word desire. Now, desire is multifaceted because there are good desires, there are bad desires. There are small desires, big desires. There are strong desires and weak desires, good and bad, right and wrong. And this word for covet, the Hebrew word, means to take pleasure in something. That seems innocuous enough. It's something of a neutral word. So the context determines the application of the meaning of the word. It could mean to desire, just to have a desire. I mean, that literally is what every lexicon says. But it has a perspective to it. It has a prism through which it views the idea of desire. It focuses on the internal mental activity behind the act. It's speaking of an act of covetousness. Speaking of an internal action. Do not covet your neighbor's house. It doesn't say don't steal it. It doesn't say Don't murder it. It doesn't say don't abuse it. It says don't covet it. Don't have this internal desire. There's a mental activity behind an act. And this is focusing on that. That is why some look at this as the first nine are outward acts because you can define outwardly what it is to have another God before me. You're not to have another God in my presence in your activity. You can define an activity of making an idol. It is to carve something out. It's an activity of speaking Yahweh's name in some blasphemous way or acting in some blasphemous way as they claim it to represent Yahweh in this world. To break the Sabbath day is to work to pursue your industrial work of advancement. To dishonor your father or mother is to do something against them. To murder is an outward expression of hatred. Sexual impurity is an action. Stealing is an action. Lying is an action. But this one immediately focuses inward. Now, I told you that this word is somewhat neutral, so it has a negative use and a positive use, and I want us to grasp both from the Scripture, so that we understand that this is not saying that you're to have no desire for anything. And how we come to the strong conclusion of covetousness being a negative thing to be avoided. It does have a negative use, and in the negative use of the word, it speaks of an inordinate ungoverned, selfish desire. It is a self-centered desire that has no reins, no control over it. It is an inordinate desire. It goes beyond what is normal and expected. The first time we see this word used is in Genesis chapter 3. And you might be able to process in your mind what is Genesis chapter 3 and guess where it is used. You know what happened in Genesis chapter 3? Genesis chapter 3 is the fall of man. It was the temptation in the garden that brought Adam and Eve to spiritual death and made them the father and mother of all sinful people. We only have the capacity as human beings, we only have the capacity to create sinners. We can only procreate sinners. That is why circumcision is aimed at that idea. It is the point that you are so destitute of anything good that all you can produce is sin and other sinners. That started in Genesis chapter three. This word, Kamad is used in this verse. I'm going to read it. Genesis chapter 3 and verse 6. Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise. So she took from its fruit and ate and she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings." There are a couple of words there that you might put together. It was a delight to the eyes. It was good for food. And if you're familiar with the New Testament, you hear the echoes of 1 John 2. He speaks of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Those are the three things that Eve was tempted with here. They're the three, ultimately the three temptations that the Savior recounted to the disciples that made it into the scriptural record in the Gospels. But here, the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise. That is the word komod. That is the word that is translated covet in Exodus chapter 20. It is something that she took pleasure in, a desire to have, this internal mental activity that caused her to act. It's desirable to make one wise. An inordinate, ungoverned, selfish desire. It was a selfish desire because God had told them not to eat of that fruit. The devil came with a temptation and said, God knows that you will be like him, loathing good from evil when you eat of it. Well, it's good for food. I mean, it looks like it's got good caloric content. It's, it's pretty. It's a delight to the eyes. It looks fresh, but it's when it comes to this desirable to make one wise, she wanted to be like God. That was the temptation. I want what he has You look at Joshua chapter 7 as the Israelis have moved into Canaan they moved into the promised land Moses has moved off the scene and Joshua has taken the helm we Familiar with that They go to Jericho you remember This is the gateway to Canaan. It was the first city. It was the most well-fortified city. It had an impenetrable wall around it and it had foodstuffs and food stores in there that they could withstand a siege for as long as they needed to. This group of stonemasons and shepherds and farmers comes across the Jordan River and God says, you take the men and you march around that city one time every day and don't say a word. On the seventh day, you march around it seven times. And when you're done with the seventh march, everyone yell at one time. And when they did, the walls fell out. They went in and plundered the city. They didn't even really have to break a sweat. Then they come to Ai, which was a little town, unfortified. They sent a few spies down there. And the spies said, man, we got this thing. You don't even need to bring everybody. Just bring a couple of y'all. Come on. We're going to do this. They went down there. And they were decimated by the people in Ai. And they said, something is wrong. What is wrong? They go to the Lord. They bring, they want to find out what the problem is. In verse 16, they bring out, Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near, tribe by tribe, tribe of Judah was taken. They're casting lots. Brought the family of Judah near and they took the family of the Zerahites Brought the family of the Zerahites near and a man named Zabdi was taken. So now they have Zabdi's family from the Zerahite Family from the tribe of Judah. He brought his household near and man-by-man brought all of his his sons there all of the the leaders in the family moved down from the the highest patriarchal leader in Judah to the next to the the Zerahites down to Zabdi and then they bring out all of Zabdi's sons and their families he brought them out near brought their household near man-by-man and Achan the son of Carmi the son of Zabdi the son of Zerah from the tribe of Judah was taken We know who this guy is. His name is Achan. And we know who his dad, Carmi, his grandfather, Zabdi, and his great-grandfather, Zerah. And Joshua said to Achan, My son, I implore you, give glory to Yahweh, the God of Israel, and give praise to him, and declare to me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me. You remember what he did? He took some of the spoils, some clothes and some gold, and he hid it under his tent in the ground. Nobody's going to know. You can teach your kids this. You may not know, but God knows. So Achan answered Joshua, and he said, truly, I have sinned against Yahweh, the God of Israel, and this is what I did. So now we're getting down to what he did. I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 50 shekels in weight. Then I covered them and took them. Behold they are concealed in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath it. I saw it and I had to have it. Achan, coveted, had an inordinate, ungoverned, selfish desire for what God had said was not his. He told them to take the spoil, but take the spoil and bring it back to the tabernacle. It was Yahweh's spoils, not theirs. But he saw it and he said, I just have to have it. Eve saw that it was desirable to make wise. He saw that this was desirable to give him some satisfaction outside of God's will, outside of God's declared expectation. When you put it in those terms, you begin to realize that we transgress this command with far more frequency than we would like to admit in public. There is a positive use of it in the scripture. I'll just give you one. It's from Psalm 19. I'm going to read some of Psalm 19 and allow you to guess which word that is as well. Psalm 19 takes what Psalm 119 does and condenses it down to a handful of verses. David writes, the law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of Yahweh is pure, making wise the simple. The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of Yahweh are true. They are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your slave is warned, and keeping them there is great reward." Where did you hear the word covet? In verse 10, they are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold. He takes this strong, covetous desire and a negative connotation for gold and much, much fine gold and says that my desire for the Word of God should supersede even that. to tell us that this word is neutral depending upon the context in which it is used. Achan saw much fine gold and silver and a garment from Shinar, a fine silk garment most likely. He said, that is desirable. The psalmist says that the word of God is more desirable than gold. Just to sort of tie this into a bow and pull it tight, if you're familiar with the Septuagint, what that is, the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was written during the intertestamental period. It was around in Jesus' day but it was not around before the Babylonian captivity that happened that really came to the Babylonian captivity came to an end about four hundred and fifty years before Jesus came on the scene so in that intertestamental period as the Greco-Roman culture had taken over the known world and the Greek Koine Greek language had really taken the front seat in all of commerce and in all of society much like English has done in many parts of the world. They realized that they needed to have the scripture in a language that the people spoke, so they translated the Old Testament Hebrew into Greek. And 70 Hebrew scholars got together to write it, and the word for the 70 is Sept. So the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was translated by these 70 translators. In the Septuagint, because Greek is so precise, Koine Greek is so precise, it's the most precise language that men have ever spoken. By comparison, English is a very ignorant language. It's simple, it's dumb most of the time, there are no real rules in English. I'm glad there aren't any English teachers in here. If Don was here I would really lay it on because Don's an English teacher. english doesn't have rules that has some strong and weak suggestions on how you should apply the use of the english language in greek there are there are precise rules that have to be followed when they translated into the the hebrew into the greek they had the opportunity to to take these these broad ideas and to bring them down to a very specific application and meaning in the translation and in the septuagint in exodus chapter twenty inverse seventeen the word for covet This command were to take pleasure in something, to desire. The Septuagint uses the word epithumia. In your English translation of the New Testament, most often you see epithumia translated by the English word lust. Now we tend to take lust and use it in a strictly sexual manner. That is not the case. That is what this word covet means. It means to lust after, to have an inordinate desire and a longing for. That can be applied to anything. First Timothy chapter six. Paul refers to this. He's warning Timothy about what he saw in Ephesus. This is after his first imprisonment. He goes to Ephesus. He sees what's going on. He writes back to Timothy to tell Timothy how to continue doing what he had done. He had already dispossessed Hymenaeus and Alexander and dismissed them from the church. He had handed them over to Satan to learn not to blaspheme. And he's giving Timothy instruction on how to continue to polish up and purge the church And he tells them what false teachers become and how they begin. He tells them how false teaching begins. Anyone teaching a different doctrine that does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited, understanding nothing, having a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words. That's where false teachers begin. That's where it starts, and they continue to make arguments. They have this sick... Morbid interest is the idea of having a sickness about controversial questions It is always asking questions that that really have no answer and they're they're intended to confuse they confuse themselves and they confuse others and then they begin to land on Individual words and want to have disputes about words and he says out of these things arise envy strife slander evil suspicions and constant friction between evil men of depraved mind and depraved of the truth and who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. They suppose that godliness is a means of gain. They realize that they can gain things personally from a religious position of power, much like we see in the Pharisees. Remember Jesus told the Pharisees that you devour widows' houses? The Pharisees would come in and they used their influence and their position and people's desire to honor the Lord, to honor this religious leader, and they allowed and suggested that people give them give them anything that they would take possessions from them they would take accolade from them they they would they would cause uh... the all kind of of havoc in in the lives of people and they'd they took advantage of the destitute of widows in that day and age were far more destitute than widows are in our but they saw it as a means of gain and and religious charlatans continue to do that they're very concerned about what they can gain personally. But he says this, but godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. Paul is saying that this epithumia, this lust for gain, this lust for more possessions, more personal advancement, more personal satisfaction, comes out even in the lives of men of depraved mind, even using the goodness of supposed godliness to dupe people in order to secure gain personally for themselves, but he says godliness is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. It is not great financial gain, it is great spiritual gain. It is growing in the grace and knowledge of the Savior, growing in your knowledge and understanding and application of the Word of God, treasuring the Word of God above gold, even much fine gold, when it is accompanied by contentment, which is the opposite of covetousness. So as we end here tonight, we've only looked at the desire portion of the definition of covetousness. Your desires drive you. This epithumia, this strong compulsion of desire. Now, epithumia is a word that is also able to be used negatively and positively. You see it in the Scripture as well. I had this yearning in my heart for my countrymen, Paul says in Romans chapter 9 I would give up my eternity if I could if it would mean that all of the Israelis would be saved I Long to see you I have this this urge to And on the positive, it is commendable, but in the negative of this idea of lust, this inordinate desire for something that does not belong to you, that should not belong to you, that has obviously not been provided for you by God, that is where it becomes sinful. becomes a sinful desire. And we all transgress this one with more frequency than any of the rest. At least in our application of it, it is easier to see how you transgress this commandment than it is to see how you transgress creating an idol for yourself. It's easier to see that you transgress coveting something that you do not have. This idea of envy, not jealousy. Envy is wanting what someone else has that you do not have. Jealousy is wanting to guard what you do have. It's over against contentment in what God has provided because you are content in Him because you know that He knows better than you do. This is not the least of the commands and the easiest to keep. This is the one that causes all of the rest of them to come to your mind and mine and realize that we don't keep any of them the way that we once maybe thought we did. And we bring it back to what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He never had an inordinate desire. He never coveted anything. Young man came to him and said, I want to go with you, but first let me bury my dad. He said, the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. He was satisfied in God. God, I reminded us this morning that God only said of Jesus what he said about Jesus, that he was completely satisfied in Jesus. This is my beloved son in whom I am completely satisfied. And Jesus was the only person to ever walk the planet that was completely satisfied in his father. And that is what is being called for here. More to come, stay tuned. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time we have had tonight. We thank you for your word, the breadth and depth of which is astounding to us. This is not a book that any man could have written. It is not a book that we can ever master. And the deeper we delve into it, the deeper still we find it to be. And I pray that you will take what we have heard tonight, what you have opened up for us, Lord, and apply it in our hearts that we might see the the working of your spirit in our lives to mold and shape us into the image of Christ. We will be transformed in our minds, renewed in our minds, and transformed in our lives as you move. I pray that you will be honored by our time here tonight. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.