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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 20:17
Well, it's motorcycle week, apparently. It's nice to be back here this morning as we look to finish the Tenth Commandment and with it time in Exodus up to this point, at least, as we prepare, Lord willing, at the end of this week to go to Manadnok and we'll consider Psalm 128 there on Sunday.
And then when we get back, we'll continue on with this larger theme of God's commandments as we consider the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7. So that's sort of the roadmap of where we are and where we'll be.
This morning we want to consider the Tenth Commandment. Exodus 20, beginning in verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.
So we notice this commandment, the Tenth Commandment begins with coveting your neighbor's house. And we've recognized the difference in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, at least Thomas Watson pointed this out, where the order is flipped.
We see here, of course, the logic of the house really being the household. In other words, the house and all that comes with a house. I think Watson said something along the lines of, you must build a nest before you'd have a family within that nest.
And so despite constant props from Zillow, notwithstanding, the view of the house here is really the household. And as we consider Psalm 128 on the Lord's Day next week, we'll see the beauty of what this commandment is actually holding together, the household and all of the blessedness that comes with the household.
And that's a blessing from God. And if it's a blessing that's been given to your neighbor in whatever form or shape that takes, you are not to covet that blessing. You are not to covet the house, the household, all that comes with the house of the neighbor.
And of course, within that house, you find the wife, and by extension, of course, that long table with the olive plants growing all around. You find the staff, as it were, the male and female servants, even the cattle.
You find all that comes with the household. And that's what's forbidden with coveting in the Tenth Commandment. We see that our neighbor's house and spouse, along with servants and cattle, are summarized by the final clause, anything that is your neighbor's.
If your neighbor has it, you're not to covet it. It could be a piece of gum. You're not to covet it. If it's your neighbor's, anything that is your neighbor's, you're not to covet, lest you break the Tenth Commandment.
Notice that throughout the Tenth Commandment, we have a triple mention of your neighbor, right? Your neighbor, your neighbor, your neighbor. That's emphatic. It's all redundant. We don't need it to understand the context, but it's given for the sake of emphasis.
And so we have this tripled mention of your neighbor. It helps remind us that we're looking at the capstone of God's law, and especially the very heart of the second table of God's law. The second table of God's law concerns our love for neighbor.
Remember how Paul summarizes that in Romans 13. Whatever he says in the second table, it's about loving one's neighbor. Question 86 from Archonochism asks the question, what's required in the Tenth Commandment?
And here in part is the answer. The Tenth Commandment requires a right and charitable frame of spirit towards our neighbor and all that is his. We have a right and charitable frame toward our neighbor and all that is his.
We're to recognize, in other words, that whatever God has given to our neighbor, God has given to our neighbor. And if God has, in his wisdom, deprived us of those very things, we are nevertheless to have a charitable esteem of our neighbor.
We're not to look with an evil eye. We're in Pompeii a few weeks ago, and though this wasn't quite pointed out, just about every street corner and every home you enter, there were rather graphic carvings or statues.
The gift shop seemed to make a big deal out of this to appease the sort of perverted imagination of the tourist. But these decorations weren't just symbolic of their depravity, they're what scholars call an apotropaic device.
In other words, something that's meant to avert the evil eye, the evil gaze. The idea is through that evil gaze, perhaps a curse or an evil spirit could be conveyed upon one's good or one's dwelling place or one's business.
Do you see that concern here? We're to have a charitable esteem, a charitable regard, a happiness for the sake of our neighbor, even when God has blessed him in a way that we have not been blessed. We're to smile rather than be sour about it.
We're to be happy for him, for the sake of God, and also for the sake of our neighbor. We're to seek, in other words, his welfare as if it were our own. That's what the second table of the law requires, to seek the good of our neighbor as if it were our own.
But even as the capstone of the second table, we find that this tenth commandment, as J. Packer writes, moves from actions to attitudes, from motions to motives, from forbidden deeds to forbidden desire.
And that's really where I want to focus our time this morning. We see in commandments 5 through 9 the sort of actions that are forbidden, but we come to the tenth and we move from action to attitude. We move from action to motive.
We see that the spotlight of God's law exposing our sinfulness isn't just about the external act but the inward desire, the inward nature. The tenth commandment is very clearly the root of all the preceding commandments.
In other words, the desire, the lust leads to the fruit of adultery, or the desire, the lust for goods leads to stealing and so forth. The tenth commandment is the root and all of the other commandments come out as fruit.
So the tenth commandment cuts at the very nerve of who we are, what we're like, what we're seeking, what we desire. Now I want to consider the tenth commandment in three points this morning. First I want to talk about discontentment, secondly desire, and then lastly deliverance.
So discontentment, desire, and deliverance. Well first, discontentment. Question 87, what is forbidden in the tenth commandment? The answer, in part. The tenth commandment forbids all discontentment. The tenth commandment forbids all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor.
Envying or grieving. You see this so easily in toddlers, right? A birthday party with a bunch of five-year-olds. Are they all happy and giggly when the birthday boy opens up the present? Oh, a lot of evil eyes darting around, right, and a lot of clutching hands go after that present.
We learn how to constrain that as we get older, right? If your neighbor gets a new snow blower, you don't burst out into tears. But inwardly, you may be, you know, oh boy, that would be nice, must be nice to have that kind of expendable cash.
I have to go out with a shovel and throw it at my back like Dan Hume. My neighbor over here, Mr. Moneybags, look what he brings home, right? We're to have a charitable frame which is not envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor.
So again, the tenth commandment forbids all discontentment. Rather than having a right regard for the Lord that leads to a right regard for one's neighbor, discontentment makes us look at other people like competitors.
Who's going to get ahead? They have that. I need that. I want that. I must have that. I need that too. And all of a sudden, our neighbor's no longer a neighbor. He's a competitor. We have limited time, limited resources, limited means.
We all compete after these very things. Perhaps now, instead of loving your neighbor, your neighbor's become a tool for your own quest for self-fulfillment, a way that you can get a step ahead. How can your neighbor serve you?
How can he be useful to you? How can his means or his goods be useful to you? Rather than being thankful for what God has given you, blessings that are even intangible, blessings like time or relative health next to provisions, even looking at relationships or at least potential opportunities that you have because of where you are and how you are and what you're like.
Instead of being content and thankful in these things, discontentment refuses to be thankful. Discontentment says, I need more. In fact, I deserve more. I want more. What's the song they used to play in the 80s?
More, more, more. I'll never be happy without more. And the more you get, the less happy you are. You need more, more, more. Well, somehow, the sort of tyrannical dystopian projection of our future, if we follow the World Economic Forum, and you think of, I think it was Klaus Schwab who, whenever I see him, I'm convinced somewhere he has a secret compound and James Bond is tied up and he's giving a speech and he's going to go back to, you know, put a laser on him.
It seems evil. And one of the quotes that was attributed to him was, you will own nothing and you will be happy. I don't think that's going to stick very easily in our culture, in our society, in our way here in the West.
You will own nothing and you will be happy. Is that our future? But the opposite, of course, is equally false. Where we are right now is not you'll own nothing and be happy. Where we're living and what we're living like right now is you'll own more and more and more and you'll be happy.
You just need a little more than you have right now. Then you'll be happy. A curse on both your houses, right? These are both false alternatives. Neither one is content and thankful toward God. So covetousness leads to discontentment, just as discontentment leads to covetousness.
The 10th commandment forbids all discontentment. We live in a society that wants us to be discontent. Discontentment is so much of the engine of our economy, isn't it? You go home and you say, it's so hot.
We need another AC. And the next time you open up your phone, what's popping up on the margins of the website? Advertisements for ACs. People that are cool and refreshed and drinking lime spritzers in the cool breeze.
Our society, all of these bombarding ad campaigns are driven by our own discontentment. And so covetousness becomes normalized as a healthy economic drive. Greed is seen as the heart of capitalism. We live in a capitalist society.
We're materialistic. We're consumeristic. And covetousness appeals to those innate needs where needs become drives, desires that are more than what we actually need. They're just wants. Wish fulfillment.
All after this insatiable quest to be happy, to be content. But it's a fool's errand to think that by chasing down your discontentment, you'll become content. Well, perhaps you're not complicit with all the advertising bombardment.
But I could ask this question. Is your Google search history a track record of your discontentment? What kind of things do you look up? Do you keep before your eyes? Say, it would be nice to have this.
I'm going to keep my eye on this. One day, we'll have enough for this. Is your Google search history a track record of your discontentment? Are they generally things that you need? Are they things that you want, and you're becoming increasingly unhappy until you get them?
And increasingly, you're looking at others who have the things that you don't have, and you can't help but feel a little grieved, a little down on yourself, maybe a little envious if you're being honest.
The 10th Commandment forbids all discontentment. Discontentment, as Thomas Boston says, sucks the sap out of all of our joy. All right? A discontented child can be that in the middle of that birthday party and another 80s song, I'll cry if I want to.
It's my birthday. They're sitting there, and they're the only one discontent. The whole party is surrounding them, but they're upset about something. Maybe someone got a bigger slice of pizza, a bigger slice of cake.
And though everything is theirs and for them, they're the only one that's discontent. It makes us unthankful, bitter toward the providence of God. As we see in the fall, you can place man in a paradise and surround him with everything that is pleasing to his sight, everything that is pleasing to his taste, with an untold manifold variety of things that are wonderful and delightful and innovative, just new fruits and things that he could discover, beautiful scenes everywhere he turns.
But you point to one tree out of the midst of that garden of paradise, to one tree you say, this is the tree you shall not eat from. Now it's the only thing that he must have. Everything else loses its joy, loses its splendor, loses its delight.
Now it's that tree and that tree alone that can make me content and happy. Nothing will avail until he eats what God has forbidden. That's the very heart of discontentment. No thankfulness, but bitterness toward God.
He's holding out on me. I deserve more. Why would he refuse me? No wonder that Paul in Ephesians 5 .3 commands that covetousness not even be named among you, as is fitting for the saints, he says. It's not fitting for saints to be covetous.
It's not fitting for saints to come together in fellowship and look at their longed for desires on each other's phones. Someday, someday I'll have this. It's not fitting for saints. I catch myself doing this often.
We'll drive around and anytime you come across a nice house, you point, look at that house. Wow, what a nice house. This isn't fitting for saints. It prevents us from being thankful, from being patient.
There's a season for seeking the right things in the right way, when it's time to move. Now you're looking at options, you're comparing things. But if you're not in that season, if you haven't purposed before God to make those kinds of maneuvers financially, then you ought to be content with where you are, with what you have.
The 10th commandment requires this. Why? The 10th commandment forbids all discontentment. What more do you need to be content? Having patience, having thankfulness in your hearts, what more do you need than you have right now to truly be content?
What more do you need? Maybe I would be preaching differently if we were a church in Haiti. But here we are in Barrie, Massachusetts in 2024. What more do you need than what you have to be content? Let me, I don't do this all the time, as you know.
Maybe we could get a show of hands. How many of you leaving this place will go home and have something in your cupboard, a loaf of bread, a quick mix of jello, ramen noodles? What have you? Jeez, it's industrial size.
Show of hands, how many of you will return to have food in your cupboard today? Some of you are lying or you're just lazy. How many of you, again, hands down, how many of you going home today will have a different outfit to wear tomorrow?
Even if it's the outfit that you have to wear the rest of the week, you have at least one more set of clothes to wear tomorrow. Show of hands. So then, according to Paul, you have everything you need to be content.
Having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. No one in this room has any excuse or justification before God for discontentment. If we have food to eat, if we have clothes to wear, he doesn't even mention shelter.
He doesn't even mention the kind of blessings of relationships. He doesn't mention vocation and the way that God has gifted us with the ability to provide and loved ones to provide for and means to provide.
He doesn't list any of that. He says, if I have something to eat today and something to wear, I can be content. So, no one's off the hook of discontentment in this room we have established. I remember seeing this post online.
Someone was trying to give a little proverb to those who came across it and they said, they said, money won't fix all your problems. And some wise aleck underneath commented, bro, money would literally fix all of my problems right now.
And that's how we think. No, you don't understand. There's just, there's things that I actually do really need and if I just had a little bit more and then everything really would be good, then I could be devoted to God spiritually.
Then I'd be more happy, more at peace, more faith. I wouldn't be envious. I wouldn't struggle in any way. I'd just automatically be thankful toward God. And you forget to look back and see how God has provided all those things you desired year after year after year, but you're the one that hasn't changed.
So, there's a lot of wisdom in understanding that money doesn't fix our deepest problems. It doesn't fulfill our deepest needs. It doesn't satisfy. Riches never satisfy. We saw that from Ecclesiastes 5 yesterday morning.
For the man who loves silver, he'll never be satisfied with silver. You can never have enough of the thing that you love. Riches are like a mirage in the desert in this very way. You become weary, thirsty, you're desiring.
You see something kind of far off. It seems to offer everything that you need. Shade, coolness, water for life. It's going to cost a lot to get there. You're on limited resources, limited moisture. You might die along the way, but if you can just get there and lap up that cold, refreshing stream and bask in the shade in the middle of that desert, and then as you get closer and closer and closer, it vanishes.
And many are deceived by riches in this way. And they die along the way, never reaching the mirage that they could never retain or stay in, even if they did. For the love of money, Paul says in the same place, some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, pierce themselves through with many sorrows.
And so Paul says to Timothy, there is great gain in godliness with contentment. Great gain. Great gain. And I think if you understand Paul's larger teaching on this matter, he's not saying you can have godliness without contentment either.
So much of godliness is contentment. The most godly men and women I have ever known in my entire life could be summarized as men and women who were content. They weren't restless. They weren't always looking to the next thing.
They were just content. And that contentment gave them a certain peace that was almost otherworldly. They didn't have the consuming worry and anxiety that so many are gripped by in our day. They had a certain peace.
My God is faithful. It freed them up from all that worry and anxiety that they were actually able to love those around them. There is great gain in godliness with contentment. There is no godliness without it.
So let me ask you a question. Do you really believe, having food in the cupboard, having an outfit for tomorrow, do you really believe that in your current circumstance, in your current situation, whatever that may be, you are in the best possible circumstance according to God's wise providence?
Do you really believe that? Is everything going well for everyone else according to God's providence? He just, it was a typo with you, right? A data entry went wrong. Somehow a misaligned keystroke. So God just somewhat botched His providence towards you.
Everyone else's situation, of course, is part of His wise providence. But you, you're this anomaly. You actually do need a different change, a different blessing, a new direction in order to be happy.
Somehow His providence has not been wise towards you. Or has it been? Do you have a grasping, restless, clutching hand when it comes to what you have? When it comes to what you want? Or is your hand open?
These are the questions we ask ourselves in understanding are we, men and women, bound to the Tenth Commandment by the Spirit of God? Is He helping us to walk in ever greater ways according to this commandment?
You ask the question, is my hand restless? Is it clutching and grasping? Or is it open? An open hand is used as a metaphor for generosity. Open wide your hand. So the opposite of someone who's discontent is a generous person.
They're so content that they're generous. They're thoughtful about it. Is your hand open in that way? Someone who's open-handed is someone who recognizes the Lord is the one who gives. So He doesn't go grasping for things that don't belong to Him.
He simply puts an open hand up in prayer. Lord, I know You'll give in due time. You told me not to worry about the troubles for tomorrow. Troubles for today are sufficient. So Lord, I open my hand to You again.
Give me my daily bread. With that, with the robe on my back, I'll be content. So an open hand is a faithful hand. It's a generous hand. An open hand is faithful in this way. It recognizes not only does the Lord give, but the Lord can take away.
And when the Lord takes away, that same faith, that same contentment doesn't clutch and grasp after what He's taking away. It stays open. Lord, You've provided. Lord, You've withdrawn. Lord, You've provided.
Lord, You've deprived. Lord, You've given. Lord, You've taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Are you thankful even in the midst of great pain or loss? Because your hand has been opened with contentment, with faith, with peace.
I remember seeing this viral video. Maybe some of you saw it. This is about a decade ago. There was a tornado that ripped through a suburb of Kansas City. And the newscasters were going out to survey the damage the next day.
And I mean, this whole neighborhood was, it looked like it had been, you know, bombarded with cruise missiles. It was all just shards of wood and plaster and pieces of people's lives just strewn all about.
Nothing was standing. Everything was completely leveled. And there was this dear old saint, this dear old woman named Barbara Garcia. And she was in front of her house, which is now just a pile of rubble.
And the newscaster's asking her questions. And so she said, well, tell me exactly what happened. She says, well, I got my dog and I held on to her and I sat in the bathroom and everything began to collapse.
And I never lost consciousness. And when finally the rumbling stopped, I was able to crawl out by that presto cooker over there. The camera goes over and it's just complete shrapnel. And she's a little bruised and weary.
And the interviewer's just astounded because she seems so just matter-of-fact about it. So the interviewer's more aghast and disturbed than good old Barbara Garcia is. And so the interviewer interjects, are you able to comprehend this?
I mean, this was your neighborhood. This was your house. And Barbara says, well, that's just life in the big city. And then she's going on with her answer. And all of a sudden, the interviewer goes, the dog, the dog, the dog.
And the cameraman kind of goes over and you see this schnauzer sort of peeking through the shrapnel. And Barbara sort of muddles over and she says, oh, bless your little heart. And they begin to pull her out.
And Barbara looks right up at the interviewer. And she says, well, I thought God was going to only answer one of my prayers. That I made it through OK, but he answered both of them. Now I have everything.
She's saying that in the middle of her home and all the memories within her home being utterly destroyed. And she said, now I have everything. God has been good to me. To the world, they would look at that scene and they'd say, how can you still believe in God?
I wouldn't want to serve your God if this is how your God treats his servants. But to someone who actually knows the Lord, they can only confess, God, you have been good to me. Why? That hand has been opened with years of faithful contentment.
The Lord gave. The Lord takes away. Without covetousness, brothers and sisters, be content. Without covetousness, be content. Hebrews 13 .5, let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with the things that you have.
I've been in ancient homes. They didn't have as much as we have. But even 2 ,000 years ago, the command that's given to believers is be content with what you have. That innate drive of human greed has been restless.
It's not something new. It wasn't invented 300 years ago. It's been there from the very beginning. It was there in the moment Eve ripped the fruit from the forbidden tree and gave it to Adam who was with her.
So the 10th commandment to the first point checks our discontentment. Secondly, our desire. This is question 87 again. I'll read the whole thing. What is forbidden in the 10th commandment? And here's the answer.
The 10th commandment forbids all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is His. I'm keying in on this little phrase, inordinate affections.
Another way of saying that, disordered desire. Disordered desire. That's what the 10th commandment is really getting at. It's not the motions, not the actions that are comprised in the 7th, 8th, and 9th commandments, but it's the desire.
In James 1 we read of the sort of anti-birth cycle, the death cycle of sin. He uses this natal language, this language of conceiving and bearing, and yet it doesn't produce life. It produces death. He says, each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
This is a man who's crawling into a trap of his own making. This is a man who's looking for a snare to jump into. Each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed, and then when desire has conceived, so desire meets opportunity, and there's this conception, and what's the result of the conception?
It's a birth. What happens when evil desire meets with opportunity? Desire conceives, and it gives birth to what? It gives birth to sin. And what does sin look like when it's born and comes to full form?
Sin looks like death. When it is full grown, it brings forth death. So here's this death cycle. And notice what it all begins. It begins with this temptation and the opportunity that comes with it, and then the action.
So we see a sort of beholding, a looking, and then a desiring, and then an acting. Look, desire, act. Behold, lust after, act. Eve, looking at the tree, lusting after its fruit, taking, acting upon it.
Achan, looking at the gold, desiring after that gold, and then acting upon that. David, with Bathsheba. Ahab, with Naboth's vineyard, and so on. What does this look like in a church fellowship? Here's the individual side that James is addressing in James 1.
Here's our own personal death cycle when it comes to corrupted desire, disordered desire. What does that look like when you get a bunch of people with disordered desires together in a church fellowship?
Well, James talks about that in chapter 4. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires? You see, a grievance, a frustration, a fight in the church is never as simple or as much on the surface as we'd like it to be.
James says, where do these kinds of fights, these kinds of grievances, these kinds of frictions come in a church fellowship? Does it not come from your evil desire? Does it not come from your desire for pleasure that there's war in your members?
You lust, you don't have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You ask amiss to spend it on your own pleasure, he says later on. So this is all part of this death cycle. A double-minded man, unstable, is a man who's desiring what he can't obtain.
And so there's warfare, there's envy, there's backbiting and slander, there's war among the members. Why? What's the root of that? It's the 10th commandment. And this is where our foot almost slips. We don't rightly order our relationship with God, therefore we cannot rightly order our relationship with our neighbor.
And there our foot almost slips. We presume upon God. We neglect His providential wisdom. We begin to be embittered toward Him without ever even addressing Him. We've become distant. We're bitter in our own sort of solitude and now we can only be envious and have grievances against everyone else that we see.
That's how our foot almost slips. We see it in Psalm 73. Asaph recognizes this in his own life and he confesses it. You see all of these dynamics at play. Psalm 73, he says, truly God is good to Israel.
He begins with this almost confession. You read the rest of the psalm and you understand he didn't begin with this. This is a conclusion that he's now confessing at the start of his psalm. He's putting this forward to say here's what I have learned after all that I'm about to tell.
Truly God is good to Israel. Truly God is good to those who are pure in heart. So here's the confession that he's come to. Here's the conclusion of Psalm 73 and it's put up front to say you are not believing that God is good if you are discontent and envious.
You don't recognize just how good He is. And your foot is slipping. Truly God is good to Israel to such as are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps nearly slipped. Why? Because I was envious.
Because I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Look, behold, desire, act. Asaph is now heading into the death cycle of James 1. He sees the prosperity of the wicked. No one's suffering the things that I'm suffering.
No one's taking the pains or giving the sacrifices that I'm giving. It's all going well for them. So why am I over here grieving? Why am I over here deprived? Why is it going hard with me? I thought I made amends.
I've been cleansing my hands. My conscience is clean. I keep confessing any sin that He's revealed in me and yet things just stay the same or get worse. And I look around to those that could care less about God and everything's going splendidly well for them.
So he's beholding that and he's desiring that. His foot's about to slip into acting upon it. I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. There was an old show. We're bringing out all the 80s references.
I was just a little boy, but I can still remember the theme song playing every now and then, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, hosted by Robin Leach. And there'd be some great expose of the three or four celebrities that they'd host on and they'd show all the opulent luxury of their dwelling places and their vacations and here's their yacht and they take a helicopter to this place for this second vacation and you're meant to just sit there and drool in your living room and think, if only I could be prosperous like that.
Well, this death cycle, this envy, this woe is me discontentment, he's trying to wrestle with it. He's trying to deal with it, right? Asaph really does have faith in God, but he's just flooded with discontentment because he's so envious.
Things aren't easy for him, but it seems easy for those who hate God. So he goes back to God. At least he thinks he's going back to God. Surely I've cleansed my heart in vain. I've washed my hands innocently.
All day long I've been plagued. Every morning I get chastened. And if I had said I'll speak thus, behold, I would have been untrue to the generation of your trulies. My heart's not where my mouth is. I know what you say in your word.
I know what's right and true, but to be honest, it just doesn't seem like it's adding up. And the way that I'm thinking and the way that I'm seeing and what I'm desiring isn't where your word is, Lord.
So he says, when I thought how to understand it, it was too painful. He's saying, I'm trying to wrestle with this. I'm trying to keep my hands clean. I'm trying to come back to you, God, but I don't know why it has to be so hard for me when it can be so easy.
Why are you blessing those that hate you? That's painful for me to understand. I thought blessedness would attend me, not them. He says it was painful to understand it until I went into the sanctuary of God.
Then I understood their ends. Surely you have put them in slippery places. You cast them down to destruction. You can imagine Robin Leach hosting Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Abraham.
That's what Asaph is coming to see. All of a sudden, I'm not envious anymore when I contemplate their end. When I think of James 5 and the riches that howl against them, all of a sudden, I'm a little more contented with the little that I have if I can be faithful toward you, Lord.
So Asaph has his heart and his desire, his foot's almost slipping, and he's coming, he's washing his hands, he's trying to wrestle with the Lord, but the treasure, his heart, his desire, is not with the Lord.
It's with the wealthy, with the blessed. Horizontally speaking, of course. But then he comes to the sanctuary of God, and God opens his eyes and calms his conscience, answers his fears and his stress.
He recognizes their end. This is, again, setting up the confession, truly God is good. I recognize I'm actually the one blessed in this situation. And this is now his confession. I was so foolish. I was so ignorant.
I was like a beast before you. In other words, thoughtless, unwise, unreflective, undiscerning, not believing in your word. Things that I could confess to the children of Israel, but in my heart I didn't believe it was true.
I would leave the pulpit, and my heart would be thirsting and longing for that mirage in the desert. Now he recognizes just how good God is to him. Nevertheless, I'm continually with you. I might not have what they have, but they don't have you, and I'm continually with you.
You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you receive me into glory. Who do I have in heaven but you? All of their possessions that could be amassed are here below. They have no stake, no promise, no inheritance to come.
Afterward, you're receiving me into glory. And who do I have in heaven but you? A bigger house? A fifth car? A helicopter ride to the Alps? Those things are soil compared to the glory of heaven. There is none on earth I desire besides you.
Now Asaph is seeing things clearly. My treasure and my desire in that black ice slip toward fulfilling and acting upon that desire had my heart and my treasure away from the Lord, but now he comes into the sanctuary of God and his treasure is with the Lord.
His heart, his thirst, his desire is with the Lord. And he says, who do I have in heaven but you? You're my portion. Now he's seeing clearly. He recognizes he's inconsistent. We're all but men of clay.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but you're the strength of my heart. You're my inheritance. Asaph, in other words, had been desiring the wrong object, seeking the wrong satisfaction. So desire in itself is not the problem.
It's the disorder of our desire. Desire is not the issue here. We were made as desiring beings. We were made to desire. We're surrounded with the workmanship of God's world. Our vocations are employed with the goodness of His design.
We're made to desire the goodness of the Lord and every good thing that comes from above. Desire is not the issue. It's the disorder of the desire. We all, J .I. Packer writes, are creatures of desire.
God has made us this way. There's been many philosophies over time, Stoicism, Buddhism, they're all attempts to eradicate desire, right? The plight and misery of man is unfulfilled desire, so let's create a system that eradicates desire.
Be above desire, then you'll truly have peace and be content. Scripture never teaches that. Scripture doesn't say eradicate desire so you can be made whole. Scripture says realize nothing in this world will make you whole but God Himself.
In other words, all earthly desires bend their knee and give way to the only satisfying desire there is, the desire of the nations, the Lord Christ. So it's desire that is sinfully disordered, broken in smithereens, that needs to be healed and redeemed and redirected so that we start glorifying with thankfulness and patience God who provides according to His perfect wisdom and we stop being envious or sad about the blessings that He sees fit to give others, especially those who don't fear Him and are set in slippery places.
It's an important point. I think Joshua was commenting yesterday over breakfast. There's some ways that we can approach this issue of covetousness or desire and we make desire the problem. That's a big mistake.
Desire itself is not the problem. It's what the fall has done to human desire that is the problem. Sin, this is from Bavink, Herman Bavink, sin did not create desire as a human capacity. Desire didn't begin after the fall.
Sin can't create anything. Sin is a parasite and a corruption of what God has made. Sin doesn't create. So desire is not created. Desire is corrupted. That's the effect of the fall. We're needy as human beings.
We're nothing if we're not needy. And part of that need is we're driven to desire. This is part of God's good design. Adam and Eve in paradise needed food, needed water. God provided for them in a good desire that made them thankful and glorifying to their Creator.
Desire is not the issue. It's the corruption of the fall. Now we direct our desires to things that God has said no to, forbidden desires. Now we desire things in a wrong way, with a wrong value, with a wrong proportion or measure.
We make things to be a lot more than they really are. Or the things that God says are truly blessings, truly good, we esteem them very little. Kierkegaard's saying, and I think I'm using his quote in a different way, but that's okay, the devil going into the jewelry shop and changing all the price tags.
Now the fake gold is worth thousands, but the real gold and diamonds is worth pennies. That's what disordered desire does in the world of God. It is miraculous, miraculous, that every time a child is conceived, you have a microcosm of creation, a microcosm of creation.
I think I was reading somewhere that because of the specialization of camera processes now, the moment of conception, the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg, there's actually a discernible flash of light that researchers right now can't quite explain.
What chemical process is creating this? To me it's just a further testimony of the microcosm creation of the miracle of conception. Here's a human, here's an image bearer, here's a soul being made. Here's light flashing in the darkness.
Here is something worth more than all of the world. For a fool would compare his own soul to anything, even the world entire. And yet we take that infinite price tag, and we say if it's going to hold you back from your career, you should probably just terminate it.
Disordered desire. Grace restores nature. We see the fall, this corrupting effect. Romans 1 .28. Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. What does that debased mind do?
Filled with all unrighteousness, including covetousness. So as a result of the fall, a debased mind is filled with covetousness. Therefore, it cannot rightly regard God or rightly regard neighbor. It cannot keep the law of God.
Some people say I've never really struggled with this or that. You've always struggled with God's law. No man can keep the law of God, but the one sent from God. By the way, just as a little side note, this is not what Roman Catholics believe if they know what they believe.
Unfortunately, and you know this from New England, most Roman Catholics don't know what they're supposed to believe. But if Roman Catholics knew what they're supposed to believe, Roman Catholics don't believe this about desire.
They actually believe that desire is just part of the contrast between spirit and flesh, and at baptism, all that's sinful about desire is eradicated. This is sort of the grace that's given through baptism, and so desire is no longer sinful unless it's yielded to and acted upon.
Now that desire has shown to be sinful, but corrupted desire itself is not sinful according to Roman Catholicism. Essentially, they're denying original sin. And the Reformers all responded to this because they're recognizing what the Tenth Commandment recognizes.
At the deepest level of human personality, God requires righteousness, which means at the very depths of your character, at who you are in the very nature of being human, God doesn't say, oh, well, everyone's like that.
Well, everyone wants what they can't have. Well, everyone kind of daydreams about things that don't belong. As long as you don't act on it, you're okay. Listen, heaven would be hell if we get there and our desires have not been purified by the blood of Christ.
Heaven would be hell. At the very depth of your personality, God desires you to be pure. Pure. That's what the Tenth Commandment requires. Desiring nothing amiss. Being perfectly content, perfectly thankful, perfectly happy for the lot of your neighbor.
That's purity that God requires. Are God's precepts more desirable than gold for you? Asaph wrestled with it. For a season, the gold was more desirable than God's precepts. I keep cleansing my hands, I'm going to the sanctuary, just not adding up.
Brother, sister, are God's precepts more desirable than gold? In Psalm 119, we read, Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, I'll keep your law and deed.
I'll observe it with my whole heart. Make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies, not to covetousness. I love that because it understands the stakes rightly.
Essentially, it's a surrender. He's not saying, you know, pat me on the back while I keep crushing it. What is Psalm 119 saying? Make me, incline my heart. Do the things that are unnatural for me in my life.
Make me, force me, constrain me, incline me to do your testimony. And maybe you're not there. Maybe you're Asaph pre -Psalm 73. You wish you could have the burning heart of Asaph. You wish you could get to that place of perfect thankfulness, perfect faith in God's wise providence, perfect contentment.
You want to get there, but to be honest, you're just not there. You don't have the burning heart that Asaph has when he says, truly, God is good. He's my portion. He's my inheritance. I have all that I need.
Maybe you're not there. Your heart's not burning. Well, let me tell you, the next best thing to a burning heart is a soul thirst. Do you want to get there? Will you keep going to cleanse your hands? Will you keep going to the sanctuary of God?
Will you keep saying, Lord, incline my heart. Make me walk in this way. Lord, just show me so I see. Don't let me look on the mirages. Don't let me entrap myself with this death cycle. Lord, keep my eyes on You.
Turn my eyes away, verse 37, from looking at worthless things. The psalmist has come to a place where he's beholding God. His desire, therefore, is toward God. And what is it bearing in his soul? Life.
It's a life cycle. He's beholding the right thing. He's desiring the right thing. It's conceiving and bringing forth life. And for that reason, he looks around and he says, keep my eyes from all this worthless junk.
We covet what we value most. We covet what we value most. That's why Paul says, covetousness, which is idolatry. No man will go and covet his neighbor's trash. I wish I had a trash bag that big. Oh, God, I can only imagine all the trash in that garbage bin, right?
We don't covet what we don't have any value attached to. We covet what we esteem, what we prize. If only I could have that. If only my house looked like that. If only my spouse was that person. If only I had this calling or vocation.
If only I had these capacities or these means. We covet what we value most. So the question when we're looking at the 10th commandment honestly is, what do you value most? Where's your treasure? What are you desiring?
What are you seeking? Is it a life cycle or is it a death cycle? Of course, when we ask, where is your heart? We recognize that the struggle is our hearts are infinitely deceitful. As we learned from Watson and Tony already alluded to, covetousness is a sin that is cloaked.
1 Thessalonians says as much. Covetousness is a cloak. It's subtle. It disguises itself, Watson says, as frugality. It's actually covetousness. I can't let go. I look down on others who let go. Now, that's not being frugal and wise.
It's just being covetous. Or perhaps it's the opposite. It's sort of spendthrift and there's no forethought. It's subtle. You could go wrong in either direction. It has many pleas, many excuses for itself.
And so here's the question that can help you delineate how to navigate and discern the sort of serpentine ways of discontentment and covetousness in your life. Are you looking to things other than the Lord to satisfy you?
Are you looking to things other than the Lord, other situations, other relationships, other things? Are these the things that promise you satisfaction? Is that why you're looking to them? Is that why you're striving after them?
Would you say they're your chief good? You cannot be happy without them? Jesus says the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things choke the word and make it unfruitful.
So another question you can ask is, is my walk fruitful? Is my walk fruitful? There's a lot of reasons your walk may not be fruitful. And within those reasons may be this very thing. Your desire for other things is choking the word of God in your life.
You're looking to the next opportunity, the next relationship, the thing that others have, the thing that you won't be happy unless you have it, and it's choking the word of God in your life. So we ask the question, where's your heart?
Because Jesus says where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Asaph was once putting his treasure along with the wicked that he was envying. That's where his treasure was. That was what his desire was toward.
He was slipping into envy and greed. He wanted to act upon it, but he kept on washing his hands from it. Where is your treasure? That's where your heart will be. So deliverance, our last point, our deliverance.
I hope you recognize that every commandment is a commandment that we must be delivered from the condemnation of. We have broken all of God's law, and we need the deliverance that can only come from God.
These are not laws that we're able to keep in the flesh. These are laws that can only be kept. These are commandments that can only be lived out in any stripe or fashion if we have the Spirit of God dwelling in our lives.
And the Spirit of God will never dwell in our life unless we're one with Christ, united to him by the Spirit. Paul recognizes this in Romans 7. He says, we've been delivered from the law. So here's this great deliverance from the law.
We've been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by. How did you die to what you were held by? You were in Christ. Therefore, you're dead to the law. Now we've been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit.
What does it look like to serve in the newness of the Spirit? It looks like walking in the will of God, walking according to the laws of God. You see how all these things are held together. What shall we say then?
Is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. I would have not known covetousness unless the law said, You shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.
For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but then the commandment came. Sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. You see what's taking place here in Romans 7?
There was a time where Paul, gleefully oblivious to the 10th commandment, didn't recognize that covetousness was sin. So, he says, there was a time where I was alive once without the law. I didn't know that was a law.
Have you ever tried that to a police officer? You know, you're going 70 in a 35. He pulls you over. I didn't know that was the law. I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. Well, they make sure you know that's the law by giving you a driver's license and putting you through.
You cannot get the permit unless you understand the laws, and so they enforce those laws. Well, you would have been blissfully unaware. Someone who's used to driving on the Autobahn in Germany and they come over through a school zone in the U .S., maybe they don't understand the difference.
There was a time that I was alive without the law. Everything was going really well. I'm doing really well with the law. Then the commandment came, you shall not covet. Sin revived and I died. In other words, as soon as the commandment said, thou shalt not covet, Paul recognizes my whole life is filled with covetousness.
Now I'm trying to stop it and it's only getting harder, and I'm dead, I'm condemned. I already blew it from the get-go. And the commandment, which was meant to be a means to life, has now brought condemnation and death.
Again, we're living in a world where covetousness is natural. This is just how people are. It's a good thing. Capitalism thrives because of it. Harness the power of covetousness rather than preach against it, right?
We're living in that kind of world, a world that says if it's natural, if it feels good, it must be good. And Christians were once those who walked in that kind of darkness. A lot of us. We were once alive without the law.
Yeah, if it feels good, it must be good. If it's natural, it must be good. Even if it's unnatural, probably good. But then the commandment comes. And now sin revives, and now you're a dead man. Now you realize there's no hope.
And that's where you recognize that my favorite three words from Hermann Bavink, a master stroke of theology, you can avoid a dozen heresies or imbalances just by remembering these three words, grace restores nature.
God's grace doesn't come to cancel out desire. God's grace comes to restore what desire was always meant to be toward God, toward neighbor, toward the world that He has made. Grace restores nature. And so the commandment comes, and it becomes a moral reference point.
Now there's something to stick to. Now there's something that we're bound to. Now there's a way that the condemnation has actual weight. It conforms to our own conscience either approving or condemning us.
We recognize all is hopeless unless one comes who fulfills the law and by answering the curse of the law, He delivers His people from the demand of the law. Now we have been delivered from the law having died to what we were held by.
That's the Gospel. That means that the only standard that God gave was the only standard we could never keep. Fallen and fully responsible for our nature, for our character, for all of our deepest desires, whether acted upon, hidden away, and camouflaged or not.
God knows the straying thoughts. He knows when we turn it over, when we keep it as a hidden looking glass from others' sight, all is bare before Him. A God who shows no partiality is a perfect judge. But He gives the law not merely to pin us to that which we cannot keep as fallen men and women.
He gives the law to be a servant, a schoolmaster to Christ. So you come to the Tenth Commandment and I hope you're doing that this morning. It ought to be driving you to Christ. You ought to be like Asaph coming into the sanctuary of God cleansing your hands and saying, Lord, I hate this disordered desire in my life.
Incline my heart. Make me walk in a way that's not covetousness. Give me a greater measure of Your Spirit to bear this kind of fruit in my life. Lord, I hate the disorder. I hate the corruption of my desires.
I hate evil thoughts. I hate envious glances. Lord, I hate being anything less than purely content in You. I hate wanting more of a portion than You are to me. I hate neglecting and slighting and abusing and containing a gospel that is infinitely majestic.
Lord, won't You strike down the corruptions of my flesh? And that's where saints begin to sing, oh, how I love Thy law. Not because the law condemns, but because the law drives me to my Savior and the Savior sends the Spirit who helps me to walk in ever greater measure in these very ways.
So though the command condemns the very first stirring of covetousness, the very kernel, the microscopic seed of evil desire in your life, it also drives you to a righteousness that comes from God alone.
Comes through the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, that promises not doing the best you can with a stony heart and a corrupt nature, but says, I'm going to give you an entirely new heart. And one degree of glory to the next, I'll give you a new nature.
I'll make you unto the perfect image of man, even Jesus Christ the Savior. Amen? So then if you were raised with Christ, seek those things that are above where Christ is. Sitting at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above. Not on the earth. Because you died. Your covetousness was crucified when the man who never knew covetousness was crucified. And your life is now hidden with him in God. Boy, Paul almost seems like Asaph to me here in Colossians 3.
If we ask the question, where is Paul's treasure? So we can discern where his heart is. Well, I think he gives it away just in how he writes. If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is.
Sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above. Not on things on the earth. For you died. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, appears, you'll also appear with him in glory.
That's where Paul's heart is. That's where his treasure is. Paul has a portion that he glories in that's far above this world. That's what he's telling these Colossian believers. That's where to guard our hearts from sinful desire.
Where to live under the control of the Spirit. Keeping in step as he trains our glances. To be charitable to our neighbor rather than envious. To not grieve at their good, but rather be content because we recognize there's all sorts of places my foot can slip.
But not here in the sanctuary of God where I say, Lord, you have been good. And you often don't just answer one of my prayers, but both. If I have my schnauzer, even less. If I have clothes on my back and food in my cupboard.
I have more than I need to glorify God all my days on this earth. And if you're living in that way, brothers and sisters, the last kind of closing point. What will develop in your life is a certain homesickness for heaven.
I mean, our brother preached on this from Psalm 84 last week. If you're truly living in contentment, your hand will be open for what the Lord gives and what he takes. It won't be grasping, it won't be clutching, it won't be seeking.
It'll just be open. And it's open because it's saying, Lord, in this life, you give, you take, but you're my portion. You give me deposits, gift baskets, as it were, from that eternal inheritance. That's all I seek.
Whom do I have in heaven but you? It's an open hand because it wants to be carried up to where he is at the right hand of God. It's an open hand because though it loves this world and wants the redemption of this world, grace restores nature, it also recognizes that the corrupt desires of my own flesh and the corruption of this earth were all groaning for that redemption.
So it's homesick. And that means when you're walking the 10th commandment, your motives really do begin to be sanctified, purified. Because you know that ultimately that sinful desire, that covetousness in your nature won't be made right, fully redeemed, until you're sitting around the throne with the 24 elders, robed in white, singing the glories of the slain lamb in a world where there'll never be an evil desire again.
Where there'll be not a passing fraction of a second of corruption. If you're seeking that, if your mind is above in that way, no wonder you won't be idolatrous in your covetousness here below. And so, as we've seen with every commandment, every commandment doesn't just lead us to our own conviction of sin, point us to Christ our Savior, it also points us to the ultimate purchase of redemption.
It gives us a hope of what's to come. With the 10th commandment, we see that God one day will redeem this world from all of its envy and corruption and greed, and all of his people will be perfectly content in the abode of God with all of the fruitfulness and goodness of paradise in His presence.
Amen? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Let's pray. I'm going to close in prayer just with these words from Watson. Lord, may Your Spirit draw our hearts upward. Lord, dig the earth out of our hearts.
Teach us how to possess the world and not love it. How to hold it in our hands, but not let it into our hearts. These things we ask in Your Son's name.