Exodus: The Empty Path of Coveting

Well, if you haven't been with us, we have been going through the book of Exodus, and what we've been seeing is we've been seeing uh these Hebrew people, uh, this group of people that's been rescued out of Egypt, and we've seen uh really this string of events, if nothing else, uh play out, and now they're in the desert, and while in the desert uh they receive the Ten Commandments.

We've all heard of the Ten Commandments, uh, and what we've been doing the last 10 weeks is we've been going commandment by commandment, looking at each commandment.

What we have seen with each commandment, this uh what's called the law of God, uh moral law.

We have seen how each commandment it guides us, it guides our behavior, it guides the behavior of our society, it builds a healthy society, but at the same time it crushes us because we don't live up to this.

And last week we talked about lying, and we see how much, oh my gosh, I lie so much more than I thought I did.

I lie to myself, I lie to others, all sorts of different lying.

Um, this week we'll be talking about coveting.

Uh, but we can't just use the law uh as a means for justifying ourselves.

Meaning we can't use the law as a means for feeling good about ourselves, for justifying our value, our existence, uh, or our righteousness and our standing before God.

And not just this moral law, like the 10 checklist thing, but even a law in the world, like some standard of what is right in our society, maybe some secular law of the standard of what would be good for you, or maybe your own law that you have formed of like, if only I get there, then I'll be valued, then I'll be okay.

And in all this way, we see how law fails us.

Law might guide us, but it crushes us if we live under it.

So it must send us on to God's grace, an outside source of justification for ourselves.

And that's what we've been talking about.

So uh coveting.

Covenant is this week.

Yesterday we went hiking.

Our family, Christy, myself, and our three girls, we were hiking over at Kennesaw Park, and people are out there and they're running, it's beautiful, and they're running, and people are trying to get serenity, and then here we come uh with three little girls, and we're ruining the serenity part, and then we're walking, and uh our girls are jumping and climbing logs and having fun.

I think we we really covered a lot of ground.

We hiked about a mile, and it took about an hour to hike the mile.

I mean, we're really getting after it.

Um so it's 3,000 acres, by the way, if you're wondering, Kinesaw.

Um and here's the interesting thing about it, right?

Like we're walking through beautiful, it's maintained, right?

It's free pretty much.

I guess some of my taxes go toward it, but pretty much it's free.

I don't have to maintain it.

I don't worry about it.

I don't worry about Kennesaw Park.

There's never a point in my life where I'm worried about some issue with Kinesaw Park or how the trails are doing.

I it's free for me.

I can just go and enjoy it.

And yet, and yet I find myself at some point on that height going, man, I would love to own this.

Like there's just something in me that's like it's just not quite good enough to enjoy it.

Like, I also want to own it.

Like I like I would love to own land like this.

And I don't know if you ever have that sort of thing.

It is free for me, right?

Like it's free.

Uh, but yet it's so easy and just human nature just to want the next thing.

Like the always quotable Mark Twain in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, and we can add in woman and girl here, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

So this week I watched a special on Birkin bags.

Okay, so what clear, just raise your hand.

If you know about Birkin bags, just go ahead and confess.

You know can't will anybody just say I own one?

I mean it turns out they're not a bad investment.

I was researching.

They in the last 30, you don't know about them yet, but in the last 35 years, they have rose in value, risen in value more than the stock market.

They go up 14% a year.

All right, these are handbags, by the way, if you don't know, Birkin handbags.

They're handbags, they cost between$60,000 and one recently sold for like$240,000.

Before you get too judgmental, remember if you invest in the stock market, you would have done better investing in a Birkin handbag, right?

And they've done so well because they're produced on unpredictable schedules.

Obviously, they are a complete status symbol of wealth.

And and the quantities are unpredictable, and they're always very low quantities.

Uh and uh, right?

I mean, six-year waiting list to get a new one.

Six-year waiting list to get a new one.

Right?

And that's what Mark Twain was saying.

If you want people to covet something and want something, just make it hard to get it.

I mean, that's it, right?

Just make it so we can't have it and we will want it.

It's the lure of any country club you can't get in, it's the lure of any hedge fund you can't get in.

I mean, it just make it so we can't have it, and then we want it.

Here's the Exodus 20, verse 17.

Exodus 20:17

Here's the the verse.

You shall not covet.

So that means to crave or yearn for that which is not yours.

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.

Obviously, this is culturally context at the time in terms of the things that they're coveting.

But it's about wanting the next thing.

And that we are so hungry for that, right?

We see that in the beginning of Genesis, we see that in the garden, and in the great poetry there at the beginning of creation, and Eve is told, you can eat of any of the trees.

Go after it.

Like eat as much as you want, but there's one, don't eat of that one.

And what does she want?

That one.

That's the one she wants.

You see, coveting leads us down a path where we actually create more dissatisfaction in our life, and yet, and yet, we're not sure if we went off the path, right?

Like that's how seductive it is.

Richard Rohr, this is in your handout you got there.

Richard Rohr, who's a Franciscan priest, uh, he says this the affluent West has made happiness impossible.

We've created a pseudo-happiness, a pseudo-success, a pseudo-security that will never satisfy the human heart.

Most of God's people are forced to learn to find happiness and freedom at a much more simple level.

The gospel says that's where happiness is always to be found.

That is about as traditional, old-fashioned, conservative a gospel as there is, and it will never change.

We have to keep saying it.

There is a tenth commandment.

Alright, so three points to sort of guide our thinking about coveting, and I have some research to share.

I got into some research about gratitude and contentment because you can't talk about it.

As soon as you start studying coveting, you end up in gratitude and contentment automatically because that's where it leads you.

So I have I've kind of turned into quote man the last few uh sermons or realize that, but I've I've enjoyed it, so I hope you're okay with it.

Uh, a few points I got us, three points to guide us.

Um, the first is this coveting is a mistake of loyal love.

Now, here's what I mean by that.

Uh coveting is a concentration of the whole being on something other than God.

Something, I don't know, Birken handbag, 3,000 acres, uh, your neighbor's servant, I don't know, what whatever, whatever it is in our culture, a car, a job, a relationship, just the next thing.

The greener grass, right?

It creates a false value system.

Uh, it creates illusions that we stare at, like basically little gods.

There's what they are, that can never deliver to us.

And this is why Colossians 3.5, it calls coveting idolatry.

And this is how we see it circling all the way back to the first commandment, that we should have no other gods except the true God.

Which we talked about 10 weeks ago.

And it's talking about how we should give our supreme loyalty to God.

Because these other idols, they can't deliver us, they can't deliver us.

And you know that, right?

As we play the game, we know they can't deliver us, and yet the seductive nature of it is just so easy, but as we bow to those other things, they actually exhaust us more.

And it's a mistake of loyal love.

Our loyal love should be to God, receiving it from Him and responding back to Him.

And yet, coveting is when we take that love that should be going back to Him and we turn it toward something that will never and has never loved us.

That's point number one.

Number two, coveting blinds us to the greatness of gratitude.

So, like I said, as I was studying this week, as soon as you get into coveting, you're headed toward gratitude and contentment.

1 Thessalonians 5.18, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

So, gratitude is an inner position of appreciation for what you have received.

Right?

I mean, basically the opposite of coveting.

All the research shows us, the science research shows us what God has been saying a long time ago that's in the scriptures before scientists were interested in studying gratitude, and that is that thankfulness and gratitude is huge payoffs, huge payoffs.

So in 2015, the University of California, they were finding, so many research scientists were finding all these great benefits of gratitude that they started this project called expanding the science and practice of gratitude.

But here's what they were finding with all these scientists.

They were finding that people who were grateful and practicing gratitude, that they had stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure, they had higher levels of positive emotions, they had more joy, they had more optimism, they were happier, they acted more generously, they were more compassionate, they felt less lonely and they felt less isolated.

So in one particular study, they took three groups.

The first group, they took the group and they said, Okay, we want you to journal, we want you to practice this, and we want you to practice gratitude for a period of time and write down things you're grateful for that have occurred.

Things you've received, circumstances going on, and just write it down.

And the second group they said, okay, now you write down your daily irritations.

Write down everything that's bothering you, the way you're getting shorted, you know, just the way you're getting ripped off.

Write down all those things that upset you, write those down, and you do that.

And then the third group they said, okay, you just write down events that are neutral.

They're not positive, they're not negative, just very neutral.

And here's what they found, and this is in a paper highlights from the research project on gratitude and thankfulness, and this is here in your bulletin, I'll read it to you.

Um, so those practicing gratitude reported fewer physical issues, they exercised more, and generally felt better about their lives, they're more optimistic than the other two groups.

Those practicing gratitude more likely to make progress toward some sort of goal.

Uh, those practicing gratitude more likely to be empathetic and help another person with a personal issue, like they loved people because they were grateful.

All right, and so here's the quote within that paper that I thought was so great, and it ties it back to coveting for us.

Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods.

They are less likely to judge their own and others' success in terms of possessions accumulated.

They are less envious of others and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.

Right?

I mean, you hear the freedom in that?

I mean, there's so much freedom in that.

Like the fact that we don't judge ourselves and others based on the material goods, that that we're that we place less importance on material goods.

So we should make a practice of of being grateful.

Not unto it being a law in and of itself, but like to just to kind of fight the current of coveting, which is so just natural.

Like to remember the things you're grateful for and to jot them down every once in a while, and it doesn't have to be like twice a day or even once a day, just whatever is within your practice.

I mean, that's a good thing.

Okay, so now um I've I have driven some uh some relatively sad cars in my life, and I have driven some nice cars in my life.

Uh I had a Ford probe in college.

Anybody driven a Ford probe with me?

Anybody in the Ford probe seat?

That's exactly have you driven the Ford probe?

I rode in.

You rode in it, that's right.

That's right.

All right, so do you remember the Ford probe?

They don't make it anymore.

That's always a sign, right?

It's always a sign.

All right, the the greatest thing about the Ford probe was is uh in college it could fit underneath the security guardrail and I could park in like parking lots I wasn't supposed to.

It was fantastic up at the business school.

I mean, I just parked right behind the buildings.

It was unbelievable.

All right, so uh when I graduated college, and the window leaked, and you know, but it was it was a fine, it was a fine car.

What a great car.

What a great car.

I would never say it was a great car.

Fine car.

Now, when I graduated college, I got a fully loaded Toyota Forerunner, like my dream vehicle, leather seats, the window, you know, the wind back window rolls down.

Not sure if you know about that.

It's pretty gray, sunroof.

I mean, unbelievable, right?

Unbelievable.

Now, I will tell you, I had been coveting that vehicle for a long time, and I'll also tell you, I'm shallow enough to say, it made me really happy.

And I will even say, I'm shallow enough to say, it made me really happy, not just like one day, like it kept making me happy.

All right, so I'm realistic about this stuff.

I'm gonna be very realistic about this.

So I I'm I am that shallow.

Some of you aren't that shallow.

Even now you're judging me about that.

That's fine.

Up to you.

But I am that, right?

It's not breaking news that a forerunner is nicer than Ford Probe.

You know that.

If you're driven Ford Pro, you know that, right?

Like we're aware of that, we know, we know this stuff, okay?

That's fine.

I'm realistic about that.

So that's not the issue.

Because it can give you a little hit of happiness.

Like some nice thing that you have wanted, it can give you a hit of happiness.

It can even give you that hit many times.

Like, it's like a sugar rush.

But it can't give you long-term happiness.

It can't make you a new man when you feel ashamed.

It doesn't have that power.

Like, it can't speak to the core of the inner self, like to your soul.

That place where you really need God's love to you.

See, with with coveting, um, you just you need that thing to always be that good, or you're gonna need the next thing.

And that's how coveting works.

And that's what that's why it's a path.

That's it's a pathway that is never delivers.

Never delivers.

It's a great sugar rush, but it is not long-term health.

It turns out to be poor man's happiness, is what it is.

It's exhausting because you gotta keep it up.

Point number three: coveting leads us away from the blessing of contentment.

Philippians 4, 10 through 13, I rejoiced, I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me.

You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

I know how to be brought low.

And I know how to abound.

In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, uh, abundance and need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

So, this word content, this is this Greek word, it means to be self-sufficient, to be sufficient apart from the circumstance or apart from that thing you think you need.

See, it's the opposite of coveting, because coveting is dependence on everything you want in order to think that you'll become adequate and sufficient.

And contentment is the opposite, that you are independent and you are okay without it.

So if you're like me, at a certain point in all this, you go, it's all great.

That's great.

Actually, maybe you even believe that.

But you would say, you know what?

I'm just not good at that.

What I am good at is I'm good at buying a lottery ticket on a really long drive and entertaining myself for seven hours of coveting thoughts, right?

Like I'm really good at that.

Maybe you're with me in that.

You're going, okay, I understand what you're saying, I believe all that, but actually, I still have a very hard time with that.

Well, this is what Paul is talking about.

Paul is talking about this.

He's talking about that, yeah, it that it is difficult.

Okay, so be grateful, right?

Like give thanks in all circumstances.

That's hard.

How do you make yourself be grateful?

Well, you can practice it, but at some point it's got to come from a hard position.

Paul is saying that he can be free from constantly desiring the next circumstance because, and here it is, he rejoices in the Lord.

Like, there's the solution.

And I know maybe you've heard it a million times, but it's still the solution.

He has a source of joy and freedom and love that is outside of him needing the next thing.

And it's not from something that's gonna rust and fade.

So several years ago, I bought my first, um, I'm very materialistic.

I'll just go ahead and confess it.

Uh, first Patagonia vest.

It's a big purchase for me.

I'm not kidding.

When I make a purchase, I'm a researcher.

Any re any researchers out there, right?

Researchers, okay?

I'm a researcher.

I'm really evaluating all possible vests.

I will narrow them down into the best vests, and then I will eventually make my purchase and my decision.

Big purchase, first vest.

I wore this.

Oh, I loved it.

A little hit of happiness every time I put it on, a little sugar rush.

Uh, and then one, I was and then I was I was camping uh with some friends, and man, of course, a little spark comes out of the fire, hits me right here, right where this awkward patch is now.

Right?

Now this vest is not quite the same because obviously this this patch, if I put it on, it's kind of like right here, like that's not normal.

Alright, so I had alright, so the great thing that I had wanted to, oh I I wanna, oh, oh, I got it, oh, I'm wearing it, I love it, I love it, I love it.

But it it can't hold up, right?

So I have to go buy another one, right?

Like I said, I have to go, let's research again.

Oh, and they had come, what they had cut, you wouldn't believe it, right?

I had seen my friend Stuart wear this like this micro vest, and that you wouldn't bel, I mean, you're not gonna believe it when you see it, what they've done is amazing.

They made the stitching smaller, right?

And when I saw Stuart wearing it, I mean it was like a year before I bought, but I saw him wearing it, and I was like, oh man, I want that one with the smaller stitching.

Like that was that is amazing stitching.

I feel like I will walk around feeling so different about myself.

And so this this is now the vest I wear, is this one, but you won't, but I've had it for two years, you won't believe what is out now.

Forge gray.

They make it now in Forge Gray.

See, when I bought this, you can only get uh blue, like red, and I think maybe they still made the green.

They didn't make the forge gray.

They do now.

And I want it.

I want it so bad.

I've been thinking about it.

Every once in a while I'll go online and look at it.

Oh, it's coming, I know, and it's gonna make me feel so great.

It's gonna be amazing, it's gonna change, it's gonna change my life, right?

It's what we do.

This is what we do.

You know what I'm talking about, you do the same thing.

Maybe we do it with a car or a house or a relationship, and we think, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then I'll be okay.

Then I'll be okay.

This is actually what verse 13 is about in that passage uh of Paul's.

That's not about like um, you know, Christ is gonna help me score 20 points in this basketball game.

That's that's not what I remember seeing like a poster when I was in high school, like a guy Dunking and it's like, I can do all things through Christ through strength.

It's like it's not really.

It's about contentment.

If you read read the context there, it's about contempt.

Don't let your kids use it for scoring or running fast or something.

It's about contentment of like even if you don't score.

It's actually the opposite.

They should have the guy like not dunking, like hitting the rim and falling backwards.

That's actually what it's more about.

So the hardest thing, I feel like one of the hardest things to believe and trust the Lord is that you're okay.

That you're just okay right now.

Like you're okay with what you have.

You're okay with what he's given you.

And maybe you want the circumstance to change.

Maybe something about you you would like for it to change, and you're asking the Lord to change it.

But even now, that when he sees you, he sees you through his son.

Right?

Like what the work of Jesus was for you on the cross, that your sin was put upon him, and that he deems you righteous and perfect and whole, and that you can live in what he deems you, and that you're okay, that you don't need.

You don't need the boat or the next house or the 3,000 acres or the Birkin handbag, though it may be a good investment, apparently.

Um, but you don't need it.

Like if you have them, great.

Have a blast, invite us over.

Um, we'll have fun.

Like, that's great.

Nothing wrong with that, but none of that can relieve you of your shame or your exhaustion or your feeling of inadequacy or your feeling of failure, or to try to make yourself feel like you have right standing with God or in front of other people.

None of it can do that.

That brings us into Romans 7, 7 through 11, the last passage there in your bulletin.

Because this is where Paul so eloquently writes about the law and its ability.

What then shall we say?

That the law is sin?

By no means.

Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

That's what we've been seeing.

Like each commandment, we read it, and we go, like, oh, we think we're doing okay.

And then like as we get into it, you're like, oh, not as great as I thought I was.

There's some problems going on, and then it sends you on to your need of Jesus.

All right, here's what Paul keeps saying for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet.

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

I was once alive apart from the law.

But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

He's saying, it revealed it all to me.

The very commandment that promised life, right?

The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

This is why we say you can't live under law.

You can't live up to standards in order to feel righteous or valued or justified.

It will kill you, it will crush you.

And for some of you, like that's why you feel so exhausted.

Is that you're living under some law, maybe it's a moral law or religious law or some secular law of what you should be or should do or should look like, and it crushes you.

Here's Paul Zahl, who wrote this great book called Grace and Practice.

He's he sort of breaks out these thoughts of Paul's for us, of St.

Paul.

Paul, the author, commenting on St.

Paul.

What the law requires is exactly what men and women need in order to be wise, happy, and secure.

So we need it.

But the law cannot pull this off.

The problem with the law is not its substance.

The problem with the law is its instrumentality.

The law is not up to the task.

It sets for itself.

If the law says jump, I sit.

If it says run, I walk.

If it says honor your father and mother, I move to Portland.

If it says do not covet, I spend all day on the home shopping channel.

Right?

This is what we've been saying every week.

That the law sets before us the guide of who we should be, but it ends up crushing us.

It has to send us on.

It has to send us on past our performance into what God is for us, into what Christ did for us.

Because while we're created by God and we have this incredible beauty in us because we are created in the image of God, while that is true and that is there, there's something wrong.

There's something wrong with us.

And that is that we're trying to deliver ourselves.

We're constantly trying to deliver ourselves from our condition, from our sinful condition of being our own deliverers, being our own saviors.

And here's the good news we're recipients.

The way out of it is the rescue which is given to us because God said, This is a big problem, and through the law, I'm revealing it to you, and so now my son will come, and he won't just be an example for you, he'll be your substitute, and on the cross, he's gonna take all of it upon himself.

All that coveting that you do and you keep doing and you keep believing, you keep believing it's gonna deliver you.

He'll take all of it, and he puts over us his righteousness.

So it's based on his performance and not ours.

This is that's the greatness, that's the greatness of Jesus for us.

That's the greatness.

It relieves us of needing that birkenbag and 3,000 acres and the boat and the car and the next job and the next relationship.

It relieves us of thinking we need the next thing.

So, my brothers and sisters, may you trust the Lord and rest in his great work and love for you, for who you are today and what you have today.

May you be free from always needing the next thing.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you guide us, but thank you that you rescue us while we feel so crushed by what we should be.

God, we feel crushed by what we should be when it comes to this issue of coveting because we are really good at coveting.

And there is so much of our hearts that believe, really believe, that if we only had the next thing, and it has never delivered us, for we still are needing the next thing.

Would you help us trust in you and your goodness and your love for us in a greater way so that we might gain freedom from that illusion?

We thank you for the gift of your son that deems us perfect, though we are not perfect.

And that you see us through the blood of Jesus and his work and not our work.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.