Sunday, February 18, 2024 PM

Let's open up our Bible and let's turn to Exodus chapter 20 and verse 17. Exodus chapter 20 and verse 17, return to our consideration of the tenth word about Christ here in these famous Ten Commandments.

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this night, we thank you for your word, for its timeless truth, for its authority, for its clarity, for the glory that we see here, the glory of your Son Jesus Christ, and I pray that you would help us to trust him and to rejoice in him.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. We have been working our way through the Ten Commandments, trusting that Jesus knew what he was saying when he said that, you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these that testify of me.

So when we think of the Ten Commandments, we really are thinking about ten words that are about Christ. And we've thought about the ways in which God has made covenants with a variety of folks like Noah and Abraham, Israel, and David, and every time he makes a covenant, it's in the shape of the image of God.

And so what we find here in the Ten Commandments is an expression of how God designed us to live, to love him supremely, to love each other rightly, and to steward the creation responsibly. And when we come to the Tenth Commandment, we find one that brings light onto all three of those most important relationships.

The Meaning of Coveting and the Boundaries God Sets

So let's read the text again, Exodus 20 and 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.

Now we've talked about the term covet, that the term simply means desire. And that desire, in and of itself, is not wrong. The verb itself speaks about taking pleasure in something. Taking pleasure in something is not, in and of itself, wrong.

However, we see that God is pointing out that if something does not belong to you, and let's put that another way, if there's something that God has not given to you, that he has not entrusted to you, then you ought not desire it, and crave it, and set your affections upon it, and find pleasure in that which does not belong to you, that which has not been granted to you.

Now there's a couple of examples that we can look at to clarify the meaning of this desire. So if you flip over just a few pages and go to Numbers chapter 11 and verse 4, Numbers chapter 11 and verse 4, and it's about this time that the children of Israel are sick and tired of manna.

They just, they're tired of boiling it, they're tired of baking it, they're, you know, someone's saying manna burgers out there, the, they're tired of the manna, they want some variety, they want something else.

And so in verse 4, we read, now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving so the children of Israel also wept again and said, who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, but now our whole being is dried up.

There is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes. What are they reflecting on? They're recalling things that do not belong to them. God has not given these things to them, they're not available to them, they're not there with them, and they're setting their affection and craving upon things that aren't theirs.

And the result is that there is great disruption within the people of Israel. And of course, judgment and so on continues. Now in contrast to that, let's just flip over a few pages and go to Deuteronomy chapter 14, Deuteronomy 14 and verse 26.

On the one hand, there are the things that don't belong to the people of Israel, that they are craving and desiring and putting their attention on. So ultimately, they're stirring one another up to wrong desires, not loving each other rightly, and they're not trusting God to provide for them, and they're somehow complaining against God because all He's given them is this miraculous food to sustain them.

So they're complaining against God in this. But there is a kind of desire, the same word, that is just fine. So in Deuteronomy 14 and verse 26, it says,. And you shall spend that money, the money you earn from selling your livestock, and you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires.

There it is, there's the same word. You shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires, for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires, you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.

Now why is it that they can do that, and they can take this money and they can buy the things that their heart desires and rejoice in that, but in another context, they're not allowed.

To do that?

Well, it has to do with ownership of property. This was the livestock that God had entrusted to them, that they were stewards of, and they saw the need to sell the livestock, to go on a journey, to go offer sacrifices to the.

Lord.

And so they changed their livestock into gold and silver, took that gold and silver, went on a journey, and bought the things they needed to buy so they could feast and rejoice before the Lord when they arrived at their destination.

And in this case, their desire was just fine. What makes it different? Well, there's the craving on things that do not belong to you, the desiring of things that God has said that doesn't belong to you, and then there's the craving and the desiring of that which God has entrusted to you that you may rejoice in that which the Lord has accorded you.

And that's the difference. The difference is the boundaries that God sets. Now, we live in a world today where people want to get rid of boundaries, and they want to make desire into God. If I desire it, then I desire it, and I should be able to desire it no matter what it is.

And God says, do not covet. He tells His people at Mount Sinai, do not covet. And why does He say do not covet? Because this goes against what it means to be made in His image. It is not godly. God makes us in His own likeness, in His own image.

Adam and Eve made thus were godly. And putting their attention, affection, passion, and desire on that which God had not entrusted to them is an offense before God. It is a stirring up of one another unto wickedness.

It is not properly stewarding that which He has entrusted to them. Now, let's turn in our Bibles over to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2, before the law was ever given, this principle still applied.

Law was just simply giving expression to Israel in that covenant what the image of God looks like, but this was still the case before the law was ever given. Now, notice in verse 9 of Genesis chapter 2, we'll begin in verse 8.

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had.

Formed.

And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Every tree He made to grow that was pleasant to the sight, desirous. Here is the same term. Now, God made these things beautiful, didn't He? He made them good. He made them good. He made them very good.

And so, God says to Adam, a message to pass along to Eve when He makes Eve. God tells Adam, out of all the trees that I have made in the garden you may freely eat, but you may not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In other words, all these beautiful, desirous trees that I have made, you may freely eat.

From those.

These have been entrusted to you and given to you to enjoy. But that tree over there doesn't belong to you. That tree over there has not been entrusted to you. That is not yours, Adam. That is not yours, Eve.

So now we go to Genesis chapter 3. Satan tempts the woman and denies the word of God, convinces her that she needs to be God and determine good and evil for herself. What's good for me is good for me.

I will play God. Verse 6, so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was ever bit as pleasant to the eyes as every other tree that God made. It was just as nutritious and good for food as every other tree that God made in the garden.

Of Eden.

What was the difference? The difference is God did not give the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to the stewardship of Adam and Eve. He said, not that tree, that one is not yours to eat from. But when Eve sets her affection and her craving and her desire on that which God has put a fence around and says, that's not yours, then she is guilty of covetousness.

She is desiring and craving that which has not been granted to her, given to her. So, as we think about the nature of this sin in connection to the serpent's denial, really, ultimately, of who God is, the rearrangement of her desires and priorities, it makes sense that the way that God expresses the whole matter to the children of Israel at Sinai is that he begins with, you shall have no other gods before me, and you shall not make for yourself a graven image, fashioning God in your own likeness, the way you think he.

Should be.

And then, on the other side, bracketing that is a two-fold command. Do not covet your neighbor's household. And then, repeated, do not covet your neighbor's wife or any of the other people that are part of that household.

And these are, essentially, the swinging saloon doors on the entry to sin. If we think of God wrongly, or if we desire things wrongly, this is the way we enter into a host of other types of sin. And it is very disruptive to the image of God.

Very disruptive to the image of God. It's not fitting. It's not fitting. Sin brings not only disruption of relationship, but that disruption and separation is what the Bible calls death. The day that you eat of it, you will surely die.

There was death in the relationship with God, death in the relationship with one another, death in the relationship with the world, death in the relationship with our own bodies. All of these things come in in the separation of sin.

Coveting and Disorder in Noah, Abraham, and Israel

But consider, as God makes covenants with Noah and Abraham and Israel and David, showcasing what the image of God is to be, what godliness looks like in each stage of revelation, preparing for the arrival of the image of the invisible God, Jesus Christ himself.

Consider how covetousness shows up, how desiring that which does not belong to you, how that shows up throughout the course of this biblical history, and how disruptive it is to the image.

Of God.

When we get to the saga of Noah, how does it all begin? How does it all begin? We hear that there's this genealogy of one man after another. Adam had many sons. He begot Seth, and Seth lived so long, and then he begot Enosh, and Enosh lived so long, and he begot, and he begot, and he begot, and we keep on hearing also all these men, and he died, and he died, and he died, all the way through chapter five.

It seems that there's this orderly progression, and keeping in mind the promise of the seed, who would come through the woman, and that the seed of the woman would be at war with the seed of the serpent, and that the seed of the woman would triumph over evil, would triumph over Satan.

So certainly this promise is kept in view as we go through this genealogy, even down to the point where Lamech named one of his sons Noah, comfort, rest, let this one be the one who will give us rest.

Now why was Lamech so desirous for some peace and quiet, some rest, some deliverance? Because of the nature of the world in which he lived. Maybe you get a little weary hearing about all the wickedness, and violence, and terrible things going on in the world around you, well Lamech was the same way.

What was going on in the world at that time? In Genesis chapter six, verse one we read, Now it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of gods, or the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and they took wise for themselves of all whom they chose.

That is a statement that underscores the things that Lamech from Cain was doing. Ada and Zillah, listen to my voice. I'm just going to take women, wherever I find them, whoever I want, they're going to be my wives in polygamy.

The sexual immorality preceded, came before, great violence all over the face of the earth. Long before we had mass shootings in our culture, we had the sexual revolution. Same thing happened with the French Revolution.

First came the sexual immorality, then came blood through the streets. This is not a new correlation. It happened all the way back here in Genesis chapter six. First there's sexual immorality, and then there's violence everywhere.

So God's answer in this is to make a covenant with Noah and his descendants, and he brings all of the animals together, and what do we hear over and over again? What's the remedy for polygamy? Two by two by two by two by two by two by two.

Over and over again. Even the animals. Two by two. That's not how the animals work. God said, we're still going to do two by two. We're going to press this matter home, right? But why was there the problem in the first place?

Because the sons of God, so the daughters of men, that they were beautiful and took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. They're not checking in with the creator of the universe about the barriers that he has put into place.

They're just following through on whatever desires they have. And what's the result? Disaster and death. And so we find this same type of disruption coming to the fore again. When we go through this whole series, we come to someone named Abram.

And Abram is called out of Ur. God says, you're going to come to a new land that I'm going to show you. I'm going to make you a great nation, and I'm going to bless all the families of the earth through your seed.

And he brings him into the land of Canaan, and there's a famine in the land. What does Abram do? He goes down to Egypt, and he takes with him his wife, Sarai. And they come down to the land of Egypt, and what is Abram concerned about?

You remember?

What's he concerned about?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, Abram is concerned about this because they're still living in a world in which men will look at that which does not belong to them, crave and desire that which does not belong to them, in order to follow through on those desires, resort to violence.

Now this is what God said when it came to the flood. Before the flood, he said, every intent of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually. And after the great flood was over with, he said, man's heart is evil even from his youth.

The heart of man did not change even in this great external disaster. And Abram knew that. Abram knew that they're going to look upon my wife as desirous, and then what's going to happen to me, what's going to happen to her?

And so Abram realized that he was not among friends. He was not among neighbors. He was among enemies. And so he lied and protected his wife, and God blessed his socks off. He came out of there having protected his wife with all manner of plunder from Egypt.

Same thing happened a little bit later on when Israel was in Egypt again, and the Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh, and God blessed their socks off and brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, plundering Egypt.

But this desirous, this desire, this covetousness disrupts the image of God so that people are denying God's goodness and are at one another because they're desiring that which has not been entrusted to them.

We can see other examples of this, the covetousness of Joseph's brothers. Joseph was the firstborn of Jacob's preferred wife. I'm going to give him the rights of the firstborn. He's going to get the double portion.

He gets the coat of many colors, and Joseph's brothers envied and coveted that which was given to their brother, and we know what happened there. What happened with the Israelites when they looked around at the other nations?

How often did they say, we want to be like the other nations? They have a king. They have these really fancy altars. They have more options for worship, more gods to worship. They have chariots. They have all these types of soldiers and horses and so on, and they looked at the other nations, and they said, we want that, that which had not been accorded to them by God.

We have the example in the days of David, an infamous moment when David was on the rooftop of the palace, and he looks over on another rooftop far below him, and he sees a woman bathing, and behold, she is beautiful.

What's the problem? Is Bathsheba actually ugly, and David's eyes are the problem? No, the problem is, she's another man's wife. The fence is up. That does not belong to you, David, and then when David engages in sexual immorality, what follows the sexual immorality?

Violence and death, doesn't it? And it haunted the rest of David's house following. Well, the disruption to the image of God expressed in the covenants that God made with Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David, in some ways can be summed up in Jeremiah 6.

In Jeremiah 6, verse 13, or Jeremiah 8, verse 10, either one will read the same way. It was an important concept, so it got repeated more than once. Jeremiah 6, verse 13, God is declaring through His servant Jeremiah that He is going to bring judgment against this people.

They have broken covenant with Him, and He explains the heart of the problem. Verse 13, because from the least of them, even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness. All the lines are being ignored.

God, you don't get to say where the lines are. Just given over to all manner of illicit desire, and from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. So the prophet should be saying, thus says the Lord, here are the lines.

And the priest should be ministering before the Lord and calling people to holiness and sacrificing all these different offerings when they transgress those lines. But everyone deals falsely, verse 13.

The reason why everyone can be given to covetousness and all these manner of illicit desire is because the prophets and the priests have turned down the volume on truth. We're no longer going to talk about that.

We're going to turn that down. And instead, we're going to turn the volume up on something else. Verse 14, they have also healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

When there is no peace. As we think about the breaking of God's covenant, everyone being given over to covetousness, the desires all in disarray, and seeking to superficially try to placate and heal the situation by saying, shalom, shalom.

Everything is whole and well and fine. Everything is just dandy. But in fact, no, things aren't well. There is no peace between the people and their maker. There was no peace between the people between themselves.

And they were not at peace and contentment with what God had accorded to them, for they were always desiring something else. And so at every level in the relationships of being made in God's image, whether God or each other or the world around them, they were not at peace.

They were not at peace at all. But what comes into view as we walk through the text is ultimately, there is one who comes who grants peace. There is one who comes who grants peace. And our next and most likely our final study in this series is to consider how this commandment to not covet ultimately turns our attention to Christ, who captures and orders our affections and shows us what real peace is like when he puts his light and his weight upon us.

Christ as the One Who Orders Our Affections and Gives Peace

All right, any questions or thoughts as we close our study tonight? All right, well, let's close by singing the doxology together.