LAW HOMILY: Coveting Leads to Death

The Law of God and the Call to Holy Living

We go into the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to his people. We want to understand how these commandments come to bear on our lives and we want to understand what it means now that Christ has forgiven us of our sins and given us the Holy Spirit how to live holy lives.

We do not believe that we go on sinning so that grace may abound. Paul says absolutely not. So we learn how to obey Christ in all of life by looking at the law. Today we're in the 10th commandment and we will read Exodus 27, 20 verse 17, excuse me, in order to examine that.

It says, Now what I find fascinating about this commandment is in the book of Numbers, God buried and buried an entire generation and he named the cemetery after the ones that he just executed. After the ones that he placed under the punishment.

He calls it Kibroth Ha-Tah-Avah, which means the grave of craving or the grave of coveting. They didn't die because they were thirsting and they didn't die by the sword and they didn't die because of their wandering in the wilderness.

Coveting and the Grave of Craving

They died because of their coveting. Bread had fallen out of the sky every single morning, sweet as honey, lying on the ground and they wept in the sand for cucumbers. It's a bad day when you weep for cucumbers.

I mean, they're okay, but like kind of bland. Heaven had just given them a full-fledged breakfast and they sent back their preferred menu. And that's sort of the point of the 10th commandment, isn't it?

Nine of them actually arrest your hands. This is what you do. You murder, you commit adultery, you make graven images. You don't lie. But this one is a crime of the heart. You shall not covet is the only law in the list that you can break without moving a single muscle.

And some of us have broken it even today, even right now, while we're sitting perfectly still. And here's the point that almost no one notices about the 10th commandment. The 10th commandment forbids the exact same thing that the Sabbath commandment tells you to do.

The Sabbath tells you to cease, to stop, to sit down. Covetousness is the part of your soul that doesn't know how to cease and to stop and to rest. The Sabbath rest is something that you can see. Covetousness is restlessness in your body that no one can see that's driving you towards something, preoccupied with someone else's something or the something you wish you had.

One is about your body lying down. The other is about your heart refusing to stop. The whole law has been asking us one question. Can you stop? Can you rest? Can you dwell upon the things of God? Can you give him your mind, your heart, your body, and all of you?

And we can't. So what is covetousness actually? Covetousness is that you think the problem is that you want too much, but it isn't. The Hebrew word under this is avah, which means to crave, to ache, to desire with everything in you.

Desire Aimed at God Versus Coveting

It's the word that the 10th commandment uses because it will change how you read the Bible if you understand this. If you open Psalm 132, it says the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it. That's the word right there for covet.

The Lord has desired something, and it says this is my resting place forever. Here I dwell for I have desired it. God says it twice. God's desire is not covetousness. It's desire with a better aim. If your desire is aimed at the wrong thing in the wrong way, then it's sin.

If your desire is aimed at the right thing in the right way, it's righteous. So what is a desire aimed at the right thing in the right way? It's a desire aimed at God for the sake of God, for the glory of God, and for the good of you.

Anything that falls short of that is coveting. You know, I just want this house because I don't like how small my kitchen is. Or I just want this job because I want a little bit more comfort. Or I just want this.

Or I just want that. Or I just want X thing. All of us have these things. I was thinking about this week. Back in the church in Pergamum, I'm in the Pergamum church right now in my Revelation series on the broadcast.

Faithfulness Under Pressure in Pergamum

It was astounding to me that none of them were employable because they would not pinch the incense to the Caesar. They wouldn't offer worship to a man who was claiming to be God because they already knew the only man who claimed to be God, and he was.

So because of that, they couldn't work. Because of that, they couldn't really eat. They couldn't provide for their family. And you can imagine some of them saying, well, God says in the word, if I don't provide for my family, I'm worse than an unbeliever.

So maybe I should just pinch off some of the incense. Maybe I should just go along to get along. That's the kind of heart of coveting because it's not just that I'm not getting what I want. It's desires aiming in the wrong direction.

It's desires for something that God has not given us. And all of us do this every single day, especially in a culture like America where we're constantly marketed to have this thing or that thing. $9 .99, five easy payments.

Prayer for God to Heal Our Desires

Let us pray that God would heal our desires, that the thing that we would want would be Him in His glory, and that everything we do, whether we eat or whether we drink or whether we work or whether we play or whether we do anything, would be for the glory of God.

It's okay to have things. It's not okay for things to have you. That's the heart of coveting. So let's pray and ask the Lord to heal us of those things and to redirect our hearts to Him. You can pray where you're at and then I'll pray for us together.