The Tenth Commandment — Zac Poonen

It's a real joy for me to be here. And as I've shared with Brother Denny in the afternoon, as he just said, I saw a lot of similarity in the way God's led him through the years and led us in India. 24 years ago there were a few of us, just three or four families, that sought reality.

About a year before that, I was born again about 40 years ago and for about 16 years after that, I found, as I went on in the Christian life, that gradually the Christian life became a routine. And though I went through the external form, there was a lack of reality and gradually I began to talk about things that were not true in my inner life.

Externally, my testimony was okay. And I prayed a prayer that time. I was in full-time Christian work. And I said, Lord, I want you to do something in my life so that everything I say is going to be true in my inner life, my private life, my home life, that I'll never say anything that I don't practice.

And I'll never give an impression to people of being holier than I really am. That was the prayer of my heart and I felt if this could not be accomplished in my life, I'd quit the ministry and do something else.

And that's when God met with me. And that's when a few of us began to meet together in my home that from there has grown into many people and many churches. But more than the numbers, I'm excited that there are people in our land whom God has brought together who want reality in their lives.

Truth in the Innermost Being

There's a verse that I want to read to you in Psalm 51. Psalm 51, it says, this is a prayer of David. David was a man after God's own heart, but he lived under the old covenant. There were heights that he could not reach, however much he longed for it.

You remember Jesus once said that the greatest man under the Old Testament was the greatest man born of women. Up until that time was John the Baptist. And when we look at the life of these men, like Elijah and Moses and John the Baptist, they were tremendously godly men.

They were not people running after money. They were not people seeking the honor of men. They were not people who were running after the opposite sex. They lived before God's face. They didn't care for kings or anyone.

And yet Jesus said in Matthew 11 that even though John the Baptist was the greatest prophet ever born and the greatest man born of women until then, the least person in the kingdom of God would be greater than him.

And he was drawing a contrast between that life under the Old Covenant and life in the New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant you could come to a tremendously good life, as good as John the Baptist. And he said if you really enter into the New Covenant life, every single person who really enters into the New Covenant can rise to a higher life than John the Baptist.

It's quite something. And here's where we've got to be honest. It's very difficult to be honest. We are a people who fool ourselves very easily. When I began to examine my life and compared myself with John the Baptist, I couldn't say that my life was better than his.

I couldn't say that my life was better than Elijah's. And yet that was the promise under the New Testament. Here was another man, David. It says in Psalm 51. This is the verse I want to read. Psalm 51 verse 6.

Behold, thou dost desire truth in the innermost being. David is not saying he had it. He's saying, God, I know that's what you desire. I don't have it. I've got a good life externally. He had it till he fell, and one mark of his uprightness was that when the Prophet confronted him with his sin, he acknowledged it immediately.

But he knew that there was more that God had. Truth in the innermost being. Reality in the innermost being. That's what God wants. David knew that, and he knew that he couldn't come to that height. All of that Old Testament life was external.

The entire law, the Ten Commandments, dealt with that external life. And if you honored your father and mother, and you didn't worship idols, and you didn't take the Lord's name in vain, and you worshiped God, and you kept the Sabbath, and you didn't kill, didn't commit adultery, didn't steal, didn't bear false witness, you had a good testimony.

The law couldn't punish you. You were okay. God kept one commandment there, right at the end, to test how many would be honest. That was the Tenth Commandment. It was the only commandment in that list of ten that dealt with something inside.

And that was, you shall not covet. You shall not desire your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's house, your neighbor's daughter, anything that's your neighbor's job, his ministry, his Bible knowledge, anything.

You shall not desire it. Now, the law could never punish that, because how do you know whether a man's desired something? The law could only punish a man who disobeyed the first nine commandments. The Tenth Commandment didn't speak about grabbing your neighbor's something or the other.

It was desiring. And we can wonder, why did God place a commandment that the law could never punish, because you'd never be able to find out whether a man obeyed it or not. He placed it there to find out how many people would be honest.

Paul's Honesty About Coveting

Paul said, in one place, in the Acts of the Apostles, he said, from my childhood, I've lived with a good conscience right up until this day. In Philippians 3, he said, according to the righteousness of the law, I was blameless.

Which means, as far as he could remember, in his whole life, he had never disobeyed the law. What he meant was nine commandments. Because, I want to show you these two verses. First of all, in Philippians 3, where he says, as to the righteousness of the law, Philippians 3, 6, I was found blameless.

Now, we think that he's referring to the whole Ten Commandments, but he isn't. He says, there was absolutely nothing from my childhood in which I violated the law. He says that in Acts 23, verse 1. Looking at the Sanhedrin, the council, before whom he stood for judgment, he says in Acts 23, verse 1, Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.

There was a man, just like that rich young ruler, who came to Jesus. I believe Paul was also a rich man. He belonged to a family that lived in Tarsus, where the business people from among the Jews went.

His father was obviously a very rich man. There was another rich young man, Paul of Tarsus, who made the right decision. Unlike the other rich young ruler, who also was very upright, who missed what the Lord had for him, who had kept all the commandments, he paused and said, I too have lived with a perfectly good conscience.

Now, there are very few human beings who can say that. There was a man who from childhood had lived with a perfectly good conscience, and he was a million miles away from God, in spite of all that, going completely on the wrong track, despite being so upright on the outside.

And when you turn to Romans 7, you see what he says. Here is where you see Paul's honesty. And it's that honesty that led him into the new covenant. Otherwise, he would have missed it altogether, just like that other rich young ruler.

In Romans 7, Paul says, what shall we say then? Verse 7. Is the law sin? May it never be. Now, notice his honesty here. On the contrary, I would never have known sin, except through the law. I would not have known about coveting, if the law, now he is talking about the 10th commandment, had not said, you shall not covet, you shall not lust.

It's the same word, lust, covet, desire. Verse 8. But sin, and this is the verse where he reveals his inner life, taking opportunity through this commandment, produced inside me coveting of every kind, lusting of every kind.

Here is Paul's honesty. He is saying, even though I kept all these commandments on the outside, and I had such a good testimony before people, people thought I was such a saint from childhood, because I lived with a good conscience.

My parents thought I was a saint, the Jewish leaders thought I was a saint, but little did they know what all was going on inside my heart. Lusting of all types, not just one type, many types. That's where we see that Paul was constantly disobeying the 10th commandment.

He admits it. I couldn't keep it. Inside me, lusting, lusting, lusting. And because he was honest, and he was struggling with this, this is what he was struggling with. He says, I want to be pure inside.

Verse 19. The good that I wish, I don't do. He is not talking about honoring his father and mother. That he could do. He is not talking about not committing adultery. He didn't do that. Never committed adultery in his whole life.

Not talking about not bearing false witness. He never bore false witness in his whole life. He is talking about something else when he says, the good that I wish, I do not do. He is talking about, I want to be pure in my heart, but I don't seem to be able to.

I am defeated inside. That's what he is talking about in verse 19. I am doing the very thing I don't wish. Verse 20. He is not talking about external sin. He is talking about inward, in his thought life, in his attitudes.

And then he says, O wretched man that I am, verse 24, Romans 7, 24. How can I be free? Here is a man who is crying out to God and he is revealing to us his inner heart in absolute, total honesty. He is getting up and saying in scripture, I found every type of lust in my heart.

The New Covenant and the Law of the Spirit

And then he says in Romans 8, this wonderful word, but finally something happened. The law of the spirit, Romans 8, 2. Now this is different from the law of Moses. Here he is talking about the law of the Holy Spirit.

There is a law of the Holy Spirit. Just like there is a law of Moses. But the law of the Holy Spirit is not found in commandments. Jesus didn't come with many more commandments. It says here in Romans 8, 2, the law of the spirit is life in Christ Jesus.

It's a life. It's not law. It's a life. He says that life has finally set me free from this other law of sin and death. Then he says in verse 3, for what the law could not do. Now we need to stop there a moment.

What was it that the law could not do? He is talking about the ten commandments. Could the law help him to worship only one God? Sure. Never worship idols? Sure. All his life the law helped him. Never commit adultery?

The law helped him. Never steal? Never tell lies? Never murder? The law helped him in all these areas. There was only one thing the law could not do. It could not deliver him from lusting inside. And he says what the law could not do, God did.

That is the new covenant. And a man who has not experienced that has not entered into the new covenant. It's only his external life that's holy. And he says no. And then he talks about God sending his own son, that's Jesus, in the likeness of sinful flesh.

There's an offering for sin on Calvary's cross. God condemns sin in the flesh of Jesus. Why? So that, what did we know? We need to go back once again to Romans 7 verse 8. Where he said, this tenth commandment, it produced in me or revealed to me, probably it's a better way to say that.

There was all types of lusting. He goes on to say, I never knew about it. It was always going on there. But the law was like a searchlight, you know, like you can have a whole lot of snakes in a room and you don't know they're there till somebody shines a light in.

And here were all these snakes in Paul's heart and he never knew about it till the law shone a light in and said, you shall not lust. And he suddenly discovered all types of snakes there, which he never knew was there.

See, people walk in darkness, they don't even know about this. But people who open up their lives to the law of God, to God's word, begin to discover these snakes as the light shines in. And that's why when Jesus came and saw these Pharisees who didn't seem to have a consciousness of all these snakes crawling around in their heart, he said, well, you fellows are healthy, aren't you?

Jesus could be sarcastic sometimes. He said, I didn't come for you people, I came for the sick, I came for the prostitutes, I came for the thieves, I came for the tax collectors, because it's the sick who need a physician.

And he was trying to point out to them, they still couldn't see it, that their biggest problem was they thought they were healthy and they were not. But Paul acknowledged it with the law shone in. Did those Pharisees have the tenth commandment?

Sure. What was the difference between those Pharisees and Saul of Tarsus? One major difference. And that's the big difference between God's people today. And that difference was the Pharisees would not acknowledge that they were disobeying the tenth commandment inside, that they were lusting.

Desiring. They would come to the synagogues on Saturday and pretend to be holy people and sit there and talk about scripture and pray and praise and perhaps clap their hands in the temple. They never cried out like, Paul, oh God, I'm a wretched man, the things inside these other folks around don't know.

That's what made God select Paul. That's why out of all that bunch of Pharisees, God picked out one. He just left the others. Why? Why does God pick out one person from here and one person from there?

In the midst of a whole lot of bunch of holy people, people who look holy anyway, because they are honest. Paul said, I discovered all types of coveting. Lord, I want to do what's right, but I don't do it.

And I want to acknowledge it. This is what David said way back a thousand years earlier. You desire truth in the innermost being. You desire reality in the innermost being, not just on the outside. That was the crisis I had with God 24 years ago.

Reality. I saw that my problem was not Bible knowledge. I knew the Bible. I could preach, but I didn't have reality. And when I sought that, I entered into the new covenant. Just like this, what the law could not do.

It wasn't through a technique. It wasn't through an experience. It was through the law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus. That's what the Holy Spirit has come to produce in us. Life in Christ Jesus.

The very life that there was in Jesus, to be produced in me, in my thought life, in my attitudes to other people. It was not me struggling and manufacturing a good life. It was the Holy Spirit imparting to me another life.

That's this new covenant. That's why God picked Paul, because he was honest. He admitted his need. And I believe God's looking all over the world for those who are honest. Those who will acknowledge honestly before him their need.

Walking in the Light and Honest Fellowship

This is the meaning of walking in the light. If we walk in the light, what does that mean? It's not a big complicated thing. It just means I just expose myself and I say if there's a stain on my shirt, well, I acknowledge it.

I don't pretend it's not there. To walk in darkness is to pretend it's not there. To pretend I'm okay inside. To put up a front, then of course God can't do anything. I think of the two thieves who hung on the cross of Calvary, on Calvary, on either side of Jesus.

For many years I thought that that one thief who got into God's kingdom, got in there because he said, Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom. But as I studied that passage carefully, I discovered that was not the reason why he got into paradise.

A lot of people who say, Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom, will never get into God's kingdom. Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom Jesus said. But there was something else about that man.

You see, crucifixion was the type of punishment that the Roman government reserved for the worst criminals. It's like the electric chair or hanging. You send the worst criminals to the electric chair.

The others may get 15 years or 20 years, but the worst, in those days, the worst were crucified. And here were these two thieves hanging on the cross alongside Jesus. And one of them said to Jesus in Luke 23 .39, Luke's gospel 23 .39, one of the criminals there said, aren't you the Christ?

Save yourself and us. What he was saying was, well, I need to be saved from this crucifixion. I know I'm a criminal, but I'm not so bad that I deserve to be crucified. Perhaps a few years in prison, but not crucifixion.

I deserve to be saved from this. But the other man, on the other side, the other thief, he said, don't you fear God, verse 40, verse 41. He said exactly the opposite. He said, we are being punished justly because, verse 41, we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds.

He was honest. He said, Lord, I don't pretend to be a saint. I don't even pretend that what I needed was 20 years. I'm such a wicked man. I deserve to be crucified. I deserve the worst punishment. I deserve the electric chair.

And he was free. The Lord, that's why, because he was honest. Just like Paul in Romans 7. And he said, then he said, Jesus, remember me. When you come in your kingdom, that's 2 ,000 years later. And Jesus said, no, not 2 ,000 years later, today.

You're going to be with me in paradise. Paradise is made for people like you who are honest. That man make restitution? Never had a chance. Did that man even go and ask for forgiveness from those he had wronged?

No. Did he ever do one good thing? He never had a chance. He repented and he died right there. And that evening, the angels in heaven saw this amazing sight of one who had walked for 33 and a half years without sinning, walking in paradise with one who had walked for 33 years in sin.

Amazing. What did he do? He never did one good thing in his life. But he was honest. He said, Lord, this is what I really am. I deserve this. Paradise is made for honest people. Made for those who are willing to be known as they really are.

In whom there's no pretense. And this is the secret of fellowship. If we walk in the light, John says, 1 John 1 .7, we have fellowship one with another. Not only vertically with God, but with one another.

The great need among husbands and wives to walk in the light. To be transparent without pretense. To be honest. Sometimes we can give young people who come into our churches an impression through our preaching, through our singing, through our whole church service and our presenting of ourselves to them.

An impression that we don't face the struggles they face. And those young people can come into our meetings and think, well, this holy bunch of people will never know what I'm going through. And they turn away.

And they don't turn away from Jesus Christ. They turn away from the false Christ presented by Christians. I believe this is true in India. I don't believe that India has rejected Jesus Christ. I believe India has rejected the Christ they've seen in so many Christians in India.

And that's not the true Christ. The Christ they've seen in Christians in India is a Christ who loves money and who is interested in seeking his own gain and many things like that. That's not the true Christ.

That's the Christ they've rejected. And that's the Christ America has rejected. The Christ they've seen in the television evangelists. And the Christ they've seen in so many hypocrites. That's the Christ they've rejected.

Reflecting the Humility and Holiness of Jesus

And I know this has brought me on my face before God and said, Lord, am I reflecting your Son correctly? Jesus said to his disciples at the end of three and a half years with them, he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

You don't need to see God at all. You've seen him. You've seen the way I live. You've seen everything I did. You've seen the Father. And Jesus said, as the Father sent me, so send I you. That means, as we walk through the world, we should be able to say to others, if you've seen me, you've seen a little bit of what Jesus is like.

I thought, you know, if I were living in Nazareth around two thousand years ago and I didn't know that Jesus was the Messiah, I just thought of him as the son of Joseph, another carpenter there, and supposing I thought of him as just another Jew, and I encountered this twenty-eight year old young man sometime in the streets of Nazareth.

What would be the first thing that struck me about him? I thought of that. Supposing I had encountered Jesus in the streets of Nazareth, what would be the first thing that would impress me about him? Have you ever thought of that?

I think I would have come away with the impression, not of a holy man. The Pharisees gave that impression. A holy man who's always talking about the Bible and many, many holy things. I think I would have come away with the impression, if I met Jesus, of a very humble man.

A man who put me at ease, not overawed me with his sense of holiness. He was the holiest man that walked on earth, but that's not what he would overawed me with. He would make me feel as if I were his equal, even though I would be a million miles beneath him.

He'd make me feel at ease and not uncomfortable with his holiness. If I'm not like that to other sinners around me, I'm not reflecting Jesus correctly. This is the wrong Christ that many sinners are rejecting.

Logically speaking, a sinner should feel more comfortable with another sinner, not with a holy man. It's like a person who's filthy will feel comfortable with another filthy man. He'll feel very uncomfortable and awkward if he sits next to a very clean, cleanly dressed person.

Strictly speaking, the sinner should feel uncomfortable with a holy man and that's how they did feel with the Pharisees. If a sinner came near a Pharisee, a prostitute came near a Pharisee, she'd feel so terribly unworthy.

But they felt so comfortable with Jesus. How is that? Even though he had real holiness, his holiness is a blazing holiness of God. And these filthy sinners felt comfortable with him. That is the holiness of God.

And if you haven't seen it, we have really missed something. The holiness of God is perfect love. It's a love which never makes another person feel awkward, or inferior, or small, or overawes them with the sense of what a pure holy person I am.

I may be, but I don't overawe him with that. I make him feel at ease. The real holiness of God is something that gets underneath someone and lifts them up, right up into the presence of God. That's how Jesus came.

That's the Jesus we need to reflect, the society around us. And we may not be reflecting that. We may be closer to the Pharisees than to Jesus. And then we say, all these people, they don't have any love for righteousness.

Well, they may be turning away from the Christ they see in us. Now that's what the Pharisees said. Those people who don't know the law, they are condemned. But Jesus went underneath them and saved them, lifted them up.

Victory Over Sin Without Spiritual Pride

The only thing you require from people is honesty. If we are honest, if we are honest, we will acknowledge like Paul, there's all types of lusting in us. And if we are saved from it, I'm not saying we've got to live like that.

The Spirit has come to save us from it. But it doesn't make us superior to that other person. Paul says, what have you got that you didn't receive? Is there a single thing in your life that you didn't receive?

You know, we can never be proud of what we didn't manufacture. If your holiness is something you manufactured yourself with gritting your teeth and denying yourself and reading the Bible every day for one hour, etc., etc., etc., well, you'll be proud of it.

But if it was something imparted by the Holy Spirit as a free gift, you can never be proud of it. I feel that, I believe in victory over sin. I preached it for twenty years and been rejected by Christians in India because I preached it and I continue to preach it.

Because God's word says, sin shall not have dominion over you. No sin need ever have dominion over us. I need not be a slave to anger. I need not be a slave to the lust of my eyes or the jealousy or bitterness.

Not even a single day of my life. I need never raise my voice at my wife 365 days of the year. That's the Christian life. That's God's will for me. But, I don't have to make other people feel uncomfortable when they're defeated.

God divides, we think God divides people according to holy and unholy. I think God divides people according to honest and dishonest. When Jesus said about Nathanael, there's a man in whom there's no dishonesty.

There's a man in whom there's no pretence. There's a man in whom there's no guile. For many years I've said, Lord, if you can say that about me, I'll be happy. There's a man in whom there's no pretence.

He's genuine. He's real. You know, we can't be holy overnight. We can't be perfect in love. It takes many years. And people who've been defeated by anger for many years, it may take many years for them to get out of it.

People who've indulged in dirty thoughts, it may take a long time for them to be totally free from it. But there's one thing all of us can be honest from day one. That all of us can be. That's honest.

We can be honest right from day one. Because that's easy. Anyone can be honest. A prostitute can be honest. A thief can be honest. That's what Paul was in Romans 7. And that's one of the most difficult things to be.

And that's what makes us not spiritual, but religious. And I see that Jesus in his earthly life, he was in a constant battle with religious people. You know, he was never battling sinners and thieves and murderers and condemning them.

I never see him taking a campaign against adulterers and murderers. And everything I see in the Gospels is his conflict with these so-called holy people. Religious people who were always in the synagogues, praying, fasting, tithing, doing so many things, and the biggest hypocrites in the land.

He was in constant conflict with them. And I believe that if Jesus were, he's the same yesterday, today and forever. And if he were to come into our churches, his conflict would not be with those people we dub as sinners, who are externally sinful and acknowledge it, don't pretend to be holy.

Not with them. His conflict would be with people who pretend to be holy and are not. People who claim to be following him, who are not free from the love of money, but pretend to be free from it. The first sin that we read of as judged in the early church was not murder, not adultery, not theft.

It wasn't bearing false witness. The first sin that we read of as judged in the early church was the sin of pretense, hypocrisy, Ananias and Sapphira. And when we read that in Acts chapter 5, we see that they sinned without even opening their mouth.

You know that Ananias never said anything? It says there that all the people were coming and laying there, selling their property and taking the money and laying it at the apostles' feet. And all that Ananias did was stand in the queue, and along with all the others, quietly leave his money at the apostles' feet.

Nobody said a word. Different people came, put their money and went on. And the next person came, put his money and went on. And Peter was standing there, they were coming and laying the money there, and Ananias just laid the money there and moved on, and as he moved on, Peter said, come here.

Those apostles had discernment. They could see through these humbugs. They were spirit-filled men. And he said to Ananias, why have you told a lie to God? He hadn't opened his mouth. That's the first sin we read of, judged in the early church, judged with death.

It's a very serious punishment. For what? For telling a lie in the church without opening your mouth. What was that? Pretending. You see, everybody was giving all that they had sold their land for. That was understood.

And all that Ananias did was pretend that he was giving everything. Now God didn't want his money. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He doesn't want anybody's money. And Peter said to him, he said, do you know Ananias, before you sold the land, it was yours.

Nobody asked you to sell it. There's no commandment which says, thou shalt sell all thy land and give thy money to God's work. No such commandment. After you sold it, the money was still yours. You could have kept it.

There's no commandment which says, because everybody is doing something, you also must do something. The same thing, no. After you sold the land, you could have still decided to keep it. And when you came in the queue, all you had to say was, well Peter, the others were giving a hundred percent.

My wife and I didn't feel we could give a hundred percent. We just want to give fifty percent. He could have been alive. He could have gone home peacefully. But it's because he kept his mouth shut that he died.

That's a warning to us. I believe that the problem was that Ananias and Sapphira were in such a powerful church. You know, it depends on which church you're in. If you're a hypocrite in a church full of hypocrites, you're probably safe.

God will leave you alone. I think if Ananias were in a church like the church in Corinth, he'd probably have been an elder there. I mean, after all, how many people give fifty percent of their money to God?

The problem was, he was in the church in Jerusalem, which is a church on fire for God, in the midst of revival, and he was pretending. That's why he was judged, for dishonesty, for pretense. I see that, like we said in the case of the Apostle Paul, it was his honesty, his honest acknowledgement of his need, that enabled God to lead him into the new covenant, where that which David longed for, reality in the innermost being, would be fulfilled.

The Law's Requirement and Hidden Forms of Lust

I want to turn to Romans chapter 8 again, where we read what Paul says, when the law of the Spirit began to operate in his life, in the life in Christ Jesus, what the law could not do, God did. And then he says, in order that, Romans 8 verse 4, this is the whole purpose and the goal, that the requirement of the law, now what is the requirement of the law he was talking about, which the law could not do in verse 3?

That was deliverance from every type of lusting. You know, we can think of dirty lusts, but there are other lusts which are clean lusts. You know, like the good sheep of King Saul, of Amalek, which King Saul never killed.

Amalek, which is a picture of the flesh, has got bad sheep and good sheep. And of course, everybody would kill the bad sheep, but like King Saul, we don't identify these good sheep that need to be sacrificed too.

I'll give you one example. The lust for the honour of men. Does that look like a dirty lust? You know, to perhaps preach in a way that impresses people. I remember in my younger days, I began preaching 35 years ago.

Of course, we are young and we want to make an impression. And the Lord asked me a question, do you want to impress people or do you want to help them? I said, Lord, I want to help them. And he said, stop trying to impress them.

I said, okay. It's a lust. It's one of those all types of lusting. One of those is this lust to impress, to get honour, to please people, to soften that word so that it doesn't hurt that friend of yours sitting there.

I remember about 25 years ago, 26 years ago, when I was in Australia for a deeper life convention. And I was praying in my room before the first meeting. And the Lord spoke to my heart and said, do you want to be invited here again?

I knew what the Lord meant. That means, are you going to speak in such a way, please everybody, so they call you again? And I said, no Lord, I'm not bothered. I want to speak the truth. And it's only then the Lord permitted me to go and speak.

And I've found through the years, I've had many experiences where they've stopped me in the middle of special meetings and said, we don't want to hear you anymore. It's a temptation to seek honour. It's not one of those dirty lusts like sexual dirty thoughts or bitterness or jealousy.