Ten(der) Command #10: No Coveting: Curb Your Appetite

Thank you, Scott, and uh thank you, orchestra.

Appreciate that very much.

Today, Sunday, October eleventh, two thousand and fifteen, and the sun is shining and God is on the throne.

February, whatever, twenty sixteen, when it's thirty degrees below zero, God will still be on the throne.

It's far easier when our circumstances are good, when we're on the mountaintop enjoying the sunshine, to really declare with a full heart, God is good, God is on the throne, God knows what he's doing, what he's doing is good.

It's far more difficult at 30 below, when it's 30 below in your soul, to be able to say, it is well, it is well with my soul, because we know who God is.

We declare it today, we'll declare it in February.

God is ever the same.

I'd like to ask you to turn to the tenth and last of the tender commandments.

You may or may not have been here 11 weeks ago when we began this series.

Wait a minute, 11 weeks on a series of 10 commandments?

Actually, there are 12 weeks to this series.

There was an introductory message in which we ask ourselves, why do what God says?

And there's many answers we could give to that, but the answer that the scriptures give time after time after time, especially as you read in the book of Deuteronomy, after the Ten Commandments were given the second time, the refrain, the refrain is that it may go well with you.

That it may go well with you.

This is the way to live.

I'm the Lord, I'm the creator, I'm the designer, this is the design.

You can go against this if you will, but you will, you will only break yourself against the rules of the universe, the way life was intended to work.

And now we've been working our way week by week through each of the tender commandments.

Tender because they tell us the way of life.

They tell us how life was meant to work.

The author of life gives us instructions on how to really live.

This is the way we were meant to live and be fulfilled and glorify Him.

Tender, tender commandments.

Next week we will have a final message, and the question we'll be wrestling with is okay, why?

We understand why.

What, we understand what they are, but how, how, how to do what God wants us to do and what we really most truly ourselves want to do and be.

But for this morning, we're going to look at Exodus chapter 20, verse 17, and I'd encourage you to open your Bible and read it yourself.

Exodus 20:17

Follow along as I read it in the ESV.

Some of these commandments have been just two words, some of them have been longer than that, but the tenth says, You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

Coveting, that's an old-fashioned word.

Uh it's a concept that we probably in our terminology only talk about in church, but I want to unchurchify it this morning.

What I want to suggest to you, and I will try to show this out of the scriptures itself, that the core issue of coveting is our desires.

We desire for something, we we we deeply desire for something, we insatiably desire for something, and so we grab it and we take it and we try to put it into our lives because there are deep needs within us, and we almost always get it wrong.

We grab other things to fill the void within.

The deep desires, the desires are not wrong.

It's we look in the wrong places for the fulfillment and the satisfaction of our souls.

Uh the thought that I'd like to have you walk away with as we think together about this matter of coveting is to think of it in terms of we have appetites, we have desires, we want things.

That in and of itself is not wrong.

But we are to curb our appetites.

We are to take in not our neighbor's house and our neighbor's wife and our neighbor's donkey.

We are to take in the things that God meant to bring satisfaction and contentment to our soul.

Uh 1965, I was uh just graduating from high school.

Many of you were not even born at that point.

Mick Jagger, Rolling Stones, I can't get no satisfaction, and I'm tempted to do the poorest interpretation of uh the Rolling Stones.

I can't get no satisfaction.

But I try and I try and I try.

No, can't get no.

And he was expressing the cry, the anguished cry of our generation.

He was expressing actually the anguished cry of the human heart, looking for something, hungrily desiring, and we don't find what we're really looking for.

And what we have in the scriptures is an answer for what it is that really satisfies our soul.

So you can get your neighbor's house and you will not be satisfied.

You could get your neighbor's wife and you will not be satisfied.

You could get your neighbor's car, you could get all the attention in the world if that's what you want.

You can get all of these things and they don't satisfy.

And what God says, curb your appetite and learn contentment.

Curb your appetite and learn contentment.

Well, in this passage, um we're introduced in a very real sense to this concept of our desires, our hungers.

And what's very interesting is that in the parallel passage of Deuteronomy chapter 5, you might want to turn to that.

Deuteronomy 5 · chapter mention

That's the second time that this particular commandment is given, 40 years after the first time, to the second generation of the Jewish people after they had been released from bondage.

And because of their stubborn sin, because of following their own way instead of God's way, they got in trouble.

And we always get in trouble when we try to do it our way.

And that's why God lovingly says to us, do it this way.

Here are the ways of life.

So a generation later, uh, when Moses was repeating the tenth commandments, he said the same thing, but he said it in slightly different words.

He embroidered under the inspiration of God the concept of coveting.

And notice what it says.

Deuteronomy 5.21, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, using the same word that we find in Exodus, but then he adds a descriptive phrase.

And you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, his mail servant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey or anything else that is your neighbor's.

You see, coveting at its core is simply desiring.

It's an old-fashioned term for wanting something, desiring something.

And it's not inappropriate to consider this a hungry, a hungry desire.

In fact, uh in uh Romans chapter 7, verses 7 and 8, when Paul in the New Testament cites the Tenth Commandment, he talks about it in this term, Romans 7, 7 and 8.

Romans 7:7

The context is a bit different.

He's talking in a sense about the problem we have with these conflicting desires within.

And he says, the law is not sin.

No, if it had not been for the law, I wouldn't have known sin, for I would not have known what is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet.

But notice what he says then in verse 8.

But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me, and this is translated now all kinds of covetousness, all kinds of covetousness.

And what Paul is doing is taking the Hebrew word from the Tenth Commandment, translated coveting, and he's using it in, and he translates it into his language, which was Koine Greek, and he chooses, it's very interesting, the Greek word that he chooses to translate coveting.

It's a very strong, very emotional word that talks about lust and desire and coveting and panting after and craving.

That's getting to the core of what the Tenth Commandment is all about.

It is this desire we have, and he uses the strong word of lust, or panting after, or craving something.

What is it that we crave?

What is our hungry desire?

And one of the New Testament scholars, in translating this, Romans chapter 7, verse 8, translates it, a hungry desire.

Romans 7:8

Sin brings forth within us all kinds of hungry, lustful desires, passions, cravings, longing for things, and we reach out and we try to get things into our life in the futile hope that these things will satisfy.

And it doesn't work unless we choose to be content with that which God, in his goodness and his grace, gives to us.

Now, not everything that we desire or hungrily desire, even, are wrong.

You see, the problem is not desiring.

The emotions that God has hardwired into us are not the problem.

It's not desiring that is the problem.

It's that we grab for the wrong thing.

We desire the wrong things, the inappropriate things.

There are many things that the scriptures talk about that we should desire.

Job, for example, said he deeply desired to speak with God and to know his ways.

You have a deep desire to speak with God and a deep desire to know his ways.

We ought to, that's right.

That desiring is not bad, it's good.

The psalmist said, I desire to do your will.

There's nothing, nothing on earth I desire besides you.

Desiring is not the problem.

It's attaching our desires to the wrong object.

So don't be afraid of your desires.

Just understand what it is that we are to desire and to limit ourselves to that which God in his grace and his goodness gives to us.

He gives us what we need.

God has desires.

God has desires.

I just want to make the point that coveting is not, it's just desiring, it's a hungry desire, and it's not inherently wrong.

We actually use the word coveting sometimes, or at least we used to in our evangelical jargon.

We're developing a new evangelical jargon.

But we used to, we used to say, I would covet your prayers.

Anybody ever said that?

Heard that?

I would.

As pastors, as Ray has wonderfully put it, we covet your prayers.

I don't know if you said we lust after your prayers, but it's the same thing.

We deeply desire.

And you deeply desire our prayers.

There's all kinds of good things that we deeply desire.

Paul passionately desired the salvation of Israel.

Passionately longed at it, panted after it, worked towards it.

That was motivating to him.

The writer to the Hebrews speaks of a deep desire to live honorally, honorably before God.

And it's in this context that the tenth commandment is given.

It's really saying don't give yourself to wrong desires.

Give yourself and find fulfillment and satisfaction in God Himself, ultimately.

But we'll get there.

What I just want to emphasize is it's a hungry desire, and hungry desires are not automatically wrong.

It's not as though, as believers, we just kind of mute our desires and it's all kind of a low, boring monotone.

Sometimes that's the way we act, sometimes that's the way we sing, sometimes that's the way we think.

No, there are passionate and joyous and powerful desires, Godward, that need to be stimulated within us.

We are to covet people's prayers, we are to covet closeness with God, a knowledge of God, knowing God and his ways.

But there are some things, and that is clearly what this passage or this verse in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5 and in Romans 7 and many others, there's things that are inappropriate hungry desires.

So I'm wanting to take this thought of hungry desires and take it a couple of steps further.

The problem is not desiring, the problem is a hungry desire for something that's inappropriate.

And there's all kinds of things in my heart and yours that if we're not careful, left on our own, without the control and the power and the transforming reality of Christ within, we begin to desire all kinds of other things.

We have hungry desires for things that are inappropriate.

When it comes to coveting, we usually think of it in terms of material possessions.

Exodus verse 20, chapter 20, verse 17.

Don't covet your neighbor's house or his donkey.

And in the context, it's clearly we're desiring the things that my neighbor has.

What are the things that you and I have have deep hunger pangs for?

What are the things that we rush after?

What are the things that we work for?

What are the things that make us get up in the morning and go to work and put up with our boss or maybe cause other people to put up with us?

If we're not careful, we're working for the ability to have a nicer house or a faster car or a fancier car, or a pair of designer jeans, or whatever it might happen to be.

What is it that, what kind of material things are you hungry for?

Now, even hunger for material things, as we will see, is not inappropriate unless we're hungering for material things that God hasn't chosen to give us, and we go about it in a way that is destructive for us and destructive for other people.

What do you desire materially?

Do you desire a summer home, a new boat, a dream vacation in Europe?

None of these things are necessarily wrong.

And the problem is a hungry desire for something that in God's design he has not chosen to give you.

It's not the desiring, even the desiring of material things that are wrong.

It becomes wrong the desires when we persist in hungrily desiring something which in God's design is not for us.

That's what makes it inappropriate.

If God doesn't want you to have a new house and you move heaven and earth as it were, well, you won't move heaven to get a new house, I can guarantee you, unless God wants that.

But if you do everything under the sun to acquire something, and if it's not what God is wanting for you, that's an inappropriate desire.

But it's not the thing itself necessarily.

But not only material things, we can desire all kinds of other things.

And even in the Tenth Commandment, you shall not eagerly, hungrily desire your neighbor's wife.

Well, that's pretty clear.

That's off limits.

You're wanting something, and you're probably trying to fill a need within, a void within, and so you go seeking after something that hopefully will fill that void, and we start grabbing things that are wrong.

David got himself in trouble with this.

No less than David, the man after God's own heart.

This is not for people out there, this is for people in here as well.

We, like David, can become beginning desiring, passionately, hungrily, desiring things that are off limits.

Some people have a problem with desiring their neighbor's wife.

That's off limits.

Some people have an incredible need for attention.

To be the center of attention.

That too is a hungry need that we try to fill something within and we grab the wrong thing.

We think if everybody looks at us, we think if everybody thinks we're impressive, thinks that we're cute or attractive, or nobody's ever thought I was cute or attractive, but you know, that's just the human nature.

We we look to the wrong things.

We eagerly desire a good reputation, in and of itself not wrong.

But if we go about just constantly seeking that people would think well of us, and when people abuse us or mistreat us or sully our good name, then we get incredibly uncomfortable because we want to have a good name.

It's not fair that people treat me this way.

I understand all of that, but there are limits.

And we can go beyond the limits of what God in His wisdom is choosing to give us.

Can we not limit our desires and our demands for that which a God who is on the throne, who loves us and knows what he is doing and cares for us most deeply, for what he gives us?

Do we have to urgently demand and organize our lives around getting things, not just material things, that God says, they may not even be wrong things, but that God says, you know, that's not for you, Walt, not right now.

Just be content with what I give you.

Um people want uh and hungrily desire acceptance by others.

Have you ever looked back at your pictures of photographs from if you're old enough, uh 15, 20 years ago?

If you're not old enough, just look in the in the mirror.

The things that we wore, the the way we did our hair, the clothes, I mean, it's just absolutely bizarre.

I mean, just as bizarre as uh a piercing our bodies and our lips and our nose and our navels and all other things.

Or things.

I mean, why do we do it?

I don't know.

But could it be that we're we're looking for acceptance or we're making some kind of a statement or whatever?

But just look back at the way you looked a few years back.

Isn't it humorous?

Well, why?

Why do we follow the crowd?

Oh, it may be as simple as the fact that we want to be, we we just want to be accepted.

We want somebody to notice us.

And in our circle, that's what it that maybe is what it helps us.

But that hungry desire to be noticed, that's the problem.

It's not the piercings or the funny hairstyles.

I'm talking about the funny hairstyles we had when we were younger.

Okay?

Maybe you hungrily desire a different lot in life.

Maybe you're single.

And the Lord has not chosen at this point to bring a life partner into your life.

Wanting a partner is not wrong.

Demanding it when God doesn't give it to us is wrong.

That's the hungry desire that is misplaced.

Or maybe you have a spouse and you really would rather not have that particular spouse.

You see, our desires get us into all kinds of problems.

Maybe you're widowed, and I am not taking this lightly, but God wants to meet the heart and soul needs of the widows.

And we have to find peace and joy with what God has chosen to give us, and even find peace and joy with that which God has taken from us.

Can we not just say, God, you really are on the throne, you really do know what you're doing, what you're doing, I don't necessarily like, it hurts, I miss, I long, I'm lonely, whatever the case may be.

And yet find peace and wellness of soul when it's not necessarily well in our lives.

The problem with desiring, if we're desiring the wrong thing, is that it's never enough.

It's just never enough.

So not only can we have inappropriate, hungry desires, we we tend when we grab the wrong things to find they don't satisfy their, and so our desire is insatiable.

Let me ask you to uh turn to Luke chapter 12 for a moment.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 12, a parable of Jesus, verses 13 and following, in which he is speaking to the rich fool.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

That's the the way the parable is set up for us.

Luke chapter 12, verses 13 and following.

Luke 12:13

Jesus is speaking to his followers.

There is a large crowd gathered.

But in the context of Luke, this parable is speaking to his followers.

So Luke chapter 12, verse 13.

Luke 12:13

Someone in the crowd said to him to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

Doesn't that sound like us?

Hey, I ought to get my share of the inheritance.

What's wrong?

Jesus, you're this miracle worker, you're the Lord, can't you arrange it so that I get what's do me or what I think is do me?

And Jesus said to him, Man, Who made you, or who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?

And he said to him, Take care, and here's the warning, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness and then all eager, inappropriate desiring.

Second part of verse 15, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

And we may be lusting after other things that God hasn't given us, and I think if we were talking to Jesus, he would say, Life does not consist in being well thought of, life does not consist in having your reputation restored, life does not consist in being married, life does not consist in still having your partner with us.

Life does not, and and he's talking to all of us with the things that we are longing for.

And he told him a parable, verse 16.

The land of a rich man produced plentifully.

And he thought to himself, What shall I do?

For I have nowhere to store all of my crops.

And he said, I'll do this.

I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all of my grain and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.

Relax, eat, drink, be merry.

And God said to him, Fool, do you really think that the full barn is what you need?

This very night your soul will be required of you, and the things you've prepared, whose will they be?

So we lay up store, we lay up treasures, but the wrong kind of treasures in the wrong place.

And he goes on, verse 22, he said to his disciples, I'll tell you, don't be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will put on, for life is more than food.

Life is more than cars, life is more than a good reputation, life is more than getting the satisfaction you want, unless that satisfaction is me, is ultimately what God says to us throughout the scriptures.

Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, or build build build brig big build big barns or talk well.

How much more God feeds them, how much more value are you than the birds?

Which of you, by being anxious, by trying to fill our desires with all these other things, can add a single hour to the span of his life?

If then you are not able to do a small thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

Consider the lilies, how they grow.

Neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

So, if God clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into heaven, how much more will he take care of you, O you of little faith?

You're desiring the wrong things.

God knows what you need.

Don't seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried, for the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.

Trust your Father to give you that which is right.

Don't frantically seek after what you don't have.

Find contentment in what God has given you.

Find contentment of soul in who God is.

Seek first his kingdom.

We usually think of this primarily in terms of worrying.

But what is it behind the worrying?

We're anxious to get these things because we think that's what we're going to need.

You shall not covet because it doesn't work.

When you hungrily, eagerly desire the wrong things.

That's not the way to live, is what God is saying to us through Moses and throughout the rest of the scriptures.

You will always be hungry for more if you eat the wrong things.

There's an old saying among ranchers in Texas, uh, I don't want to own all of the land in Texas, just the land next to mine.

The problem is, if you own the land next to yours, there's always more land.

I was thinking it was Dale Carnegie, but it's actually Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world, when asked how much money was enough, he replied very wisely, just a little more.

You see, no matter what we have, when we're looking for it in the wrong place and we're trying to fill a different void within with grabbing these things, it just doesn't.

There's always more.

I remember 1982.

I bought my first computer, really cutting edge.

1982.

It was an Osborne, the Osborne Company was the big name in those days.

They had a new computer they brought out, and it was called an Osborne Executive.

Does anybody remember that?

Tim, I thought you might.

I saw your eyes light up there.

An Osborne executive.

Now that was the computer that would really satisfy.

I bought it.

It had a large color screen.

If you consider a 4x4 amber and black screen, a large color screen.

It had cutting edge technology, it had a seven-inch floppy drive.

In fact, there were two of them.

Woo! Most of you don't even remember that there were such things as floppy drives.

In terms of memory, it had 64 kilobytes of memory, not gigabytes, kilobytes.

64 um processing speed was 4.2 megahertz, not gigahertz.

And it was portable.

It was, well, it was about the size and weight of an old-fashioned portable um sewing machine.

And if you wanted to lug that around and consider it portable, then uh that was the that was the spiffiest, exciting thing.

In fact, the Osborne company went under because they had a whole stock of the previous line, and this thing sold like hotcakes, and I bought one.

And I thought I will never need another computer again.

Now, thankfully I didn't say that to Jane because I learned my lesson a few years before when we were first married.

We were in seminary, three of us, good friends then, good friends to this day, the three of us were out, and we walked into a camera store.

About a half hour later, all three of us walked out with a camera.

What a salesman that guy was.

So I bought my first single lens reflex camera.

It cost$100,$100, which I didn't have at the time.

I was feeling really pretty good until we walked out, and I started thinking of going home and talking to Jane.

And so what I told Jane was, honey, we will never need another camera.

But you see, that's the problem.

No matter what you get, it's not what really satisfies.

The danger, the danger of what we might call a spiritual eating disorder.

I want it, I want it, I want it.

But it has nothing to do with my actual needs.

Whether it's anorexia or bulimia, where there is a passionate need that drives someone to lose weight, or whether it's a compulsive eating disorder that drives someone to eat and eat and eat.

And the gaining, the eating of food or the losing of weight has nothing to do with the physiological needs.

There's deeper needs behind, and so we grab comfort food, comfort food.

It just makes us feel good, but it doesn't really satisfy.

A misdirected attempt to meet needs.

Trying to find satisfaction in the wrong place.

Things that were never meant to satisfy.

And so God says, curb your appetite.

Curb your appetite.

It's as simple as that.

Well, it's not as simple as that, but we do have to understand what we've just said.

But there is an antidote to coveting.

An antidote is a specific remedy for a specific poison.

And I'd like to suggest to you that the antidote for coveting is contentment.

And I don't have time to work this out the way I would like to.

Actually, the men who were around about a month ago for the Saturday morning men's group, I shared four sets of verses with that group.

And so they've got this, but let me just suggest to you that the antidote for coveting is contentment.

2 Corinthians 12, 10 says that it can be well with us in our soul, in effect, even though it's not well with us.

2 Corinthians 12, 10.

Let me just read that.

Paul's talking about all of his problems.

And if you think you have problems, get to know Paul a little bit better.

He goes on and he gives a wash list of all of his problems.

And he had asked God to take them away.

Of course.

We don't want those.

Paul, just like the rest of us, said, Take this away, Lord.

And God said no.

And Paul said, Take it away, Lord.

And God said no.

And Paul said, Take it away, Lord, and God said no.

And he said to me, Christ said to me, says Paul, my grace is sufficient for you.

My power is made perfect in your weakness.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses.

Paul, what kind of a what are you saying?

Well, listen to what he says.

For the sake of Christ I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then God is strong.

Paul learned to be content.

It was well in Paul's soul when it wasn't well in his life.

Do you see that?

Can it be well in our souls when it is not well in our life?

Paul understood that God knows what he's doing.

Paul understood that God is doing what he wills, not what Paul necessarily wills, and what God wills is always and only right.

So Paul learned to limit his expectations and his desires to that which a good and gracious and kind and sovereign God allowed to come into his life.

Contentment, the contentment, the antidote to coveting.

There's a bunch of other things.

Contentment in Philippians is something we learn.

Contentment in Philippians is something we choose.

He had learned to be content in certain circumstances.

He chose to be content.

Contentment is a choice, and contentment is something that we learn.

Are you learning contentment?

It's the antidote for those hungry, insatiable, inappropriate desires.

We experience contentment when we choose to limit our expectations to what a good and sovereign God in his wisdom and love allows us to have and allows us to experience.

When we contain those desires to what God has for us.

Anything else, we chase after hungrily the wrong things.

Being content with what you have.

Let your way of life be free from the love of money, being content with what you have.

Hebrews chapter 13.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

These four passages, 2 Corinthians 12, 10, Philippians 4, 11 and 12, 1 Timothy 6, 6 and 8, Hebrews 13, 5 and 6, I would encourage you to write those down, meditate on them, focus on them this week, because there we find the key of curbing our appetite.

You see, when we understand who God really is, and when we desire who he is and what he wants, and when we know with a certainty that he gives us what we need, he allows things to come into our lives because he loves us, he loves us enough to give us what we want, not what we need, and we learn to find satisfaction with what a God, the God we serve, gives, then we can say, it is well, it is well, it is well with my soul, instead of I can't get no, can't get no, can't get no.

We're gonna close, I'm gonna have uh Patrick and our organist for this morning come forward at this point.

We're gonna close by singing, it is well, it is well with my soul.

Listen to the words.

Listen to what you're singing.

It is both a statement of faith and a long, eager desire that it would be well, well with our souls.

Let's sing that together.