LAW HOMILY: A Stewing Pot Of Discontentment

Grace Through Faith, Not Works

Every week we go through the law of God because we want to understand God's heart for his people. We want to understand how we can learn to obey this great God who has saved us. We know that he didn't save us so that we could live licentiously.

We know that he didn't save us so that we could just do whatever we want. We know that he didn't save us so that we could just live a life like everyone else. He saved us for a purpose and for a reason.

For it is by grace that you've been saved through faith, not of your works, so that no one shall boast. Why? Because he has works that he has predestined for you to do before the foundations of the world.

The Tenth Commandment Against Coveting

So we want to know his law. Today we're on the 10th commandment. So I will read it to you and then we will examine it. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Now, if God judged only what we did, he said most of us could walk away feeling somewhat safe. We could inventory our sins and note their modest size and compare ourselves favorably to the brazen lawbreakers and assume that we've done more good than bad and then congratulate ourselves on surviving another moral inspection.

But God is not impressed by clean hands when the heart is filthy. He has never been interested in a religion that behaves like a whitewashed tomb while rotting from within. And this is why the 10th commandment is so important among the 10 because every other commandment can be obeyed externally and in public while being violated in private.

You can avoid petting arsony and grand theft auto while still hungering for what your neighbor owns. You can avoid committing physical acts of adultery and yet still rehearse all manner of perversion in your imagination.

You can avoid speaking the actual words that bear false witness and yet still be riddled with hatred and slander for your brother. The 10th commandment in that way exists to expose all of the bitterness and the irritation and the nitpicking and the spoiled, self-righteous, pugnacious, grumbling that bubbles under the surface of every one of our hearts.

Whether it be a lack of patience with other people, jealousy, greed, or petty annoyances, judgmentalism, pride, persnicketiness, because underneath every single sin we have ever committed, there is a stewing cauldron of discontentment that fuels our rebellion.

Coveting as Discontentment in Everyday Sin

Covenant is not primarily about wanting what someone else has. That's only the most obvious expression of it, the only the tip of the iceberg of it. Covenant or covenant is actually about wanting something that God has not given you.

And being unwilling to trust him without it. That is why covenant sits underneath every sin like a cracked foundation and caving for a vacuum for you to fall within it. When you lie, you're not merely avoiding trouble, you're coveting credibility.

You wanna be believed, you wanna be respected, you wanna be protected more than you wanna be truthful before your God. You want a version of reality that makes you look safer and wiser or cleaner than the truth actually would allow you to be.

And so you bend the facts, you omit the details, you shade the story, because honesty might cost you something and you're coveting something else. Here's another example, when you snap at someone, you're not just tired or stressed, you're coveting being understood.

You wanted empathy instead of what they gave you. You wanted someone to read your mind or anticipate your needs or validate your frustration. And when they failed to do so, anger stepped in as a form of punishment to let them know it's not okay.

Your sharp words in that sense were not an accident, they were the outward violence of unmet expectations. When you try to manage your outcomes, sense of control, conversations, people, schedules, you're not just being responsible, you're coveting control.

You want certainty, you want guarantees, you wanna know how this is gonna end. And because God doesn't hand out omniscience to you, you attempt to manufacture it by manipulating circumstances in order to get the sense of control that you want.

You over explain, you hover, you micromanage, you rehearse conversations in your head. And when things don't go according to plan, anxiety pops up because you have a contentment issue. When you cannot sleep after a fight with your spouse, it's not because you're being thoughtful and staying awake and saying, how could I better serve them?

It's because you're coveting security. You want the relationship to feel safe again. You want reassurance that you're loved and desired and not gonna be abandoned. Instead of humbling yourself, confessing sin, or entrusting the relationship to God, you pace, you stew, you replay the conversation, you build arguments that you're gonna use in the morning when she or he wakes up.

The restlessness is not rooted in love, it's rooted in discontent. When you worry about money, you're not simply being prudent. You're coveting stability. You want a buffer between you and your circumstances.

You want insulation from vulnerability. You want to feel untouchable by loss. You want freedom. But mammon promises peace and it fails to deliver. When you withhold forgiveness, you're coveting justice.

When you gossip, you're coveting influence. When you grow cold in your worship, distracted in prayer, or bored with scripture, it's not because God is dull, it's because you're coveting stimulation. This is why the 10th commandment is so terrifying, because under every sin, and we could keep going, and going, and going, under every sin is a heart that says, I do not have enough, I want more, therefore I will do this.

Instead of resting and trusting in the God who provides, in the God who gives, in the God who cares. So, if none of those examples hit you, praise the Lord, but you have one. You have an area of your life right now where you're not trusting the Lord and you're not content.

So confess it, get rid of it. Get rid of it like a cancer that you want a doctor with a scalpel to cut out of you. Give it to Jesus, let's repent together, and let's turn to the throne of grace, amen?

Prayer for Contentment and Trust in God

Let's pray.

Lord, at the heart of discontentment is a first commandment violation that we have had other gods before you. Every commandment, actually, is broken through the 10th commandment. Because we're saying what you have provided and given for us is not enough.

That you are not God enough, that our situation is not good enough, that we don't have enough, and in the middle of all of that, we become putrefied and toxified in our own sinful thinking. And Lord, I pray that all of us, from the tallest to the smallest, would recognize by the Spirit's power at work in this moment to see the areas where we've been discontented, to see the areas where we have grabbed sinfully for things that don't belong to us or have sat and wished for things that you have not given us.

Lord, I pray that we would be able to see that what we right now have is what you wanted us to have. And because you are all good and all-knowing and perfect in every way, what we have right now is exactly what we need.

There's nothing needed that you haven't provided. Even the hard things that you've given us are for our sanctification and growth. Lord, help us to see what we have as gift and to not reach, to try to take the things you haven't given.

Protect us, Lord, heal our hearts. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.