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God’s
Constitution for Living 9
Grace
Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam
Chess
(Coveting
Defined)
I. Coveting Defined:
Do you covet? Do you know what coveting is?
Webster- To want strongly… something another person has.
Is that right? __________________. Probably, most of you…if you have
any Bible background at all will agree with that definition. Problem
is…as far as this commandment is concerned it only gives you a tiny
piece of the real picture.
Hebrew OT- “chamad”….. to delight in, desire, lust
“avah”… to wish for, be desirous, lust after
Greek NT- “philargurous” love of silver…… (opposite “philanthropia”)
You probably already picked up that none of the Biblical words seem
to focus, specifically on wanting what someone else already owns.
I remember dealing with that morsel of theology as a kid……
If somebody else had a car I really liked, I was careful not to
want their car… I just wanted one exactly like it…thus freeing
myself from the sin of covetousness.
If coveting really is… just not wanting what somebody else
already owns…it’s not hard for any of us to do a few mental
gymnastics around that one.
I need you to know that the words for covet, in the Bible are not
specific to simply wanting what someone else has.
What they all, do, speak of… is stepping over a line from legitimate
wants to illegitimate wants. From wanting things that you should be
wanting…. to wanting things that you shouldn’t be wanting!
Walking beyond normal desires… to what God sees as abnormal desires.
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Now, that said….Exodus 20 gets very specific about the kinds of
things God considers abnormal desires and, lo and behold, they all have
to do with what belongs to someone else.
Exodus 20: 17 "Do not covet your neighbor's house. Do not covet
your neighbor's wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or
anything else your neighbor owns."
If covet means: to delight in, desire strongly, set one’s heart on…
Then not coveting must mean never having any strong desires about
anything….right?
You’ve met people like that. Do you want chocolate ice cream or
vanilla? Well… both are good, the vanilla bean is like a “carnival
on the taste buds” but the cocoa bean is full of antioxidants.
(keep telling yourself that one)
Everything you ever do…everything you have ever done from the
time you were a squalling baby has been motivated by desires.
Are we, in an effort not to covet, supposed to eliminate all
desire…is desire wrong? Should each of us set our minds to never wants
anything.. to always be satisfied with whatever is right in front of us
at any given time? Of course not.
We are all wired differently than that….and God, our Creator is the
one who did the wiring. All of life involves desiring.. then moving in
the direction of our desires until we achieve some new level.
In several places in Scripture God actually commands us to follow
our desires:
Psalm 19:9-10 9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring
forever;
The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous
altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the
honeycomb.
1 Corinthians 14:1Follow the way of
love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift
of prophecy.
1 Timothy 3:1 This is a
faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he
desires a good work. 2 A bishop
then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate,
sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach;
3 not given to wine, not violent, not
greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous;
Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the
desires of your heart.
Desire can’t be wrong when God commands it. Can it?
Could it be that desire is right and normal and God-given, but
covetousness is normal desire gone too far?
Our desire to acquire comes from God…
He gives squirrels the desire to hoard nuts…good thing when
winter comes.
He gives birds the desire to gather straw, and mud, and
feathers for their nest…
Part of the survival mechanism God puts within us is the
innate desire to accumulate.
Illustration: Anthony….matchbox cars….( one will zoom, two
will crash, so why do you need 60?)… Gathering cups at the Mets
stadium.
Our desire to produce comes from God…
When God created man he made it clear that man was to take
earth’s raw materials and explore… discover…. produce.
Our Desire to succeed comes from God
All of us are hardwired by God to want to achieve something in
this life. When we find somebody who seems to have no motivation to
contribute to their world, we scratch our heads in wonder…
II.Coveting Denounced
So where do normal God-given desires go wrong? When I looked up the
word for covet in preparation for this message I found very few
references. When I looked up the word desire my printer almost
ran out of ink…. God has an intense interest in what is going on in our
desires. Let me show you just a sampling:
Proverbs 11:6 The righteousness of the upright delivers them,
but the unfaithful are trapped by evil desires.
Romans 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body
so that you obey its evil desires.
Ephesians 4:22 You were taught, with regard to your former way
of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by
its deceitful desires;
2 Timothy 2:22 Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue
righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on
the Lord out of a pure heart.
Just so you know….. If you have on one side…. And on the other
side…
Righteous Desires vs. Sinful Desires
The missing link that moves each of us from “righteous desires”
to “sinful desires” is this mysterious action God calls
coveting.
It’s not accidental that this is the last one on the list. I’ve
heard people say that coveting is just a way of restating the eighth
commandment not to steal.
No way! Why would God go to so much trouble to line all these
commandments up with such precision…and then sloppily add one in at
the end that is just another way of saying. Don’t take what doesn’t
belongs to you. That’s not the whole story of what coveting really
is.
III.Coveting Dissected
You remember the order I gave you earlier?
Commandment #1 Attitude toward God
(NO OTHER GODS)
Commandments #2-4 Specific Actions toward God
that demonstrate attitude #1
( NO IDOLS, DAY, NAME)
Commandments #5-9 Actions toward others
(MURDER,STEAL,ADULTERY,LIE)
Commandment #10 Attitude toward others..(not an action)
(COVETING,COVETOUSNESS)
Coveting is not something you do on the outside that shows
up as sin. Coveting is an attitude on the inside that
causes you to sin on the outside.
This, clear back at this early stage, in the Old Testament, gets us
away from the idea that if you can just follow the rules you will be
right with God. As long as you don’t actually commit adultery, you can
run through practice plays in your mind, you can seduce, and
flirt and fondle…as long as you don’t outright commit the sin…
God is saying clear back here as he writes the original 10
Commandments…that’s not good enough!....
I don’t want you to just seem clean on the outside…I want
you to be clean on the inside
1 Samuel 16:7 ….. The LORD does not look at the things man looks
at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the
heart."
How do I go about being clean on the inside? You deal with the
attitude that moves you in the direction of committing sin….It’s called
the “attitude of covetousness”.
Covetousness is the inner attitude that makes you look at
someone’s else’s wife and say in your heart; I want his wife.
All of the other commandments from #2 on down wrap around this
attitude:
I’m not happy with what I have, I want what he has!
I’m not happy with him…I’ll murder him and remove my unhappiness
I’m not happy with how the truth affects my life…I’ll
rearrange the truth to fit my desires.
Coveting is at it’s very root; selfishness,
self-centeredness. It’s the age old root of sin starting with
Adam and Eve.
This self-centeredness is something God is determined to remove from
each of us. It is the very root around which all other sins grow.
1 John 2: 15 Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers
you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the
love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only the lust
for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in
our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this
evil world. 17 And this world is fading away, along with everything
it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever.
The person who allows an attitude of covetousness to foster and grow
inside…. An attitude that is not content with what God is producing and
supplying…..an attitude that says: I must have more, and I am willing
to cross what ever lines are necessary to satisfy the illicit craving
inside of me.
A person with that inner heart attitude tend to work their way back
up the list breaking all the other commandments. A “coveter” tend to
also be a liar, and a thief, and an adulterer
(outside or in) and even a murderer (outside or in)
Even more important…the “coveter” tends to work his way from the
bottom of the list all the way back up to the top of the list and put
himself and his selfish desires in front of God himself thus breaking
the first commandment on which all the others are based.
Exodus 20: 3"Do not worship any other gods besides me.
The god the “coveter” puts ahead of the only, true God…is himself!
Desire for other things……, or position, or recognition, or
excitement, tends to outweigh our desire for God himself.
Romans 8:5 Those who live according to the sinful nature have
their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who
live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what
the Spirit desires.
Galatians 5:16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not
gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
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