The Uniqueness of the 10th Commandment

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Today, we'll be in Luke 18, if you want to go ahead and turn there.

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And we'll be looking specifically at verses 18 through 27.

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Now, we've been in Isaiah, but given that— yeah,

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I didn't preach last week on Isaiah. It seemed like a good time to take another topical detour. This week, I really had been thinking a lot about the uniqueness of the

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Ten Commandments, of covetousness, and it just seemed like a good time to talk about this.

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So please stand for the reading of God's Word. We'll begin in verse 18. And a ruler asked him,

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Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him,

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Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments.

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Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother.

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And he said, All these things I have kept for my youth. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, One thing you still lack.

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Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven. And come, follow me.

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But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said,

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How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

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Those who heard it said, Then who can be saved? But he said, What is impossible with man is possible with God.

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Please be seated. Dear Holy Father, we thank you for your wonderful word.

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We thank you for Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God. He became flesh, dwelt among us, spoke, taught—these very words that we've just read.

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What an important matter, the matter of our salvation. I ask that you would enlighten our eyes, that we might understand what you have here for us, and most especially that you would help us to be a contented people, happy with what you have given, and not covetous, not desiring more than you would have us to have.

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In Jesus' name, Amen. So, as I've already stated,

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I'd like to speak to you about the uniqueness of the Tenth Commandment. The Tenth Commandment says,

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Thou shalt not covet. To covet is to desire something that is not yours. The specific examples given in Deuteronomy and Exodus include your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's field, other things that are your neighbor's.

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And so I was thinking about this just because several passages, including this one, came to mind, but also because this is a problem

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I myself deal with, is covetousness, a lack of contentedness. And I think that a right understanding of contentment, a right understanding of covetousness, could change my life, and I think it could change yours as well.

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So, let's look at this passage, and let's look at some related passages to talk about covetousness and contentedness, and see how special the

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Tenth Commandment is among the commandments. Because I really am, I really am positing that it is special among the commandments.

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So, in verse 18, And a ruler asked him, Good teacher, what must

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I do to inherit eternal life? This is a matter of salvation. People in the

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Old Testament knew, as we do now, that there is an eternal life.

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This is not—I say that because some people posit that, oh, you know, the

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Jewish people of old did not believe in something like eternal life. It's right here. They believed it at the time of Jesus, and they believed it before that.

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So this man is asking, What does he have to do to be saved? Jesus says, Why do you call me good?

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No one is good except God alone. Lord willing, I'll come back to that to explain what that means in this context.

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You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal.

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Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. If you are familiar with the

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Ten Commandments, you'll know that, at least in the Protestant tradition, they're broken up into four and six.

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Different groups say different things. Roman Catholics have their reasons of making it three and seven, but ignore that for a moment.

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The commandments are four and six. You have four commandments that deal with man's relationship to God and six commandments that deal with man's relationship to his neighbor, and they're all intertwined.

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Jesus said the second greatest commandment is like the first. The first being to love

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God, and the second being to love your neighbor as yourself. Paul said in Galatians 5 14, the whole law is summed up in this one word.

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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So you have this first table of the law about man's relationship with God.

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You have the second table which is about man's relationship to his neighbor. And if you're familiar with that distinction, you'll notice that Jesus is listing off commandments from the second table.

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And so I'll give you a little quiz here. He first starts off with, do not commit adultery.

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Which commandment is that? Anyone know? What number? Seven. Seventh commandment.

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Do not murder. Six, I heard. Do not steal. Eight, there we go.

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Do not bear false witness. Nine, I assume that means nine. I don't know what this means.

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Okay, nine. Okay. Honor your father and mother. Fifth, right, the fifth commandment.

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So you have here from the second table of law, commandments not in order, but you have commandments five through nine.

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Which commandment are you missing? The tenth commandment. And so the man says,

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I've kept all these things from my youth. I've done all these things. But Jesus says to him, one thing you lack.

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What do you think he lacks if we've gone through all the commandments except for one? He lacks the tenth commandment.

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Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

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But when he heard these things, he became very sad for he was extremely rich. Jesus is calling the man to be satisfied with anything that God gives him, even if it is nothing.

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To be satisfied, to not be content for more with—to be content and not covetousness of more than what

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God would give him. He continues on.

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Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, How difficult is it for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God?

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For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

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And perhaps you've heard that this isn't actually talking about a literal camel and a literal eye of a needle, but there was some gate that was called the eye of a needle and the camel had to duck down and squeeze through it.

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I don't know if you've ever heard that story, but it misses the point because Jesus goes on to say what is impossible with man is possible with God.

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Jesus is really describing something that is not difficult, but something that is impossible. It is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

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Not merely difficult, even though he says it is difficult. How difficult is it?

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He explains later. It is impossible. Those who heard it said, then who can be saved?

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What is impossible with man is possible with God. Because God is capable of changing a heart to be satisfied.

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People have followed Jesus. They followed him in the New Testament because they saw in him the great treasure that he is and were willing to leave everything else behind.

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They were willing to leave everything else behind because they saw how good he is and how good the eternal life he gave was.

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That he is the bread of life, that streams of living water he offers, and they were willing to leave everything behind because of him and because that he is capable of taking, of changing hearts.

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Jesus Christ died on the cross for covetous men, that they might be forgiven and that they might be transformed.

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That is how it is impossible for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. And everyone is wealthy.

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Every single person has much, much blessing. It doesn't matter who you are.

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You can always think of someone who has less than you, and perhaps there is that one person who has the least amount.

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He could have less. God could have given him less. And so we all have much, much more than we deserve.

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We are all the wealthy man. But what

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I'd like to point out for you here is what is special about the Tenth Commandment. If you're familiar with the Sermon on the

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Mount, you know that Jesus gets to the heart of the law when he talks about murder and adultery.

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And he says that, you know, if you have been angry at someone, you've committed murder in your heart. If you have lusted, you have committed adultery in your heart.

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But those commandments, those commandments do not immediately, off the top of your mind, suggest such things.

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You have to have a rich understanding of God's Word, a rich understanding of his law to be one who recognizes this.

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That's why his teaching was so surprising. Us, in our sinfulness, we are inclined to suppress that truth that those laws address such things.

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Think for a moment how the Tenth Commandment is not unique. Okay, the Tenth Commandment is not unique in that it addresses some of the things the other commandments address.

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When it says, do not covet your neighbor's wife, that was already covered in the Seventh Commandment.

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Jesus explains that lust— lust is adultery. Jesus says, do not covet your neighbor's field, your neighbor's things.

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If you understand what Jesus is teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, that's already covered in the Eighth Commandment.

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What need have we for the Tenth Commandment? The Tenth Commandment is unique in that it is an interpretive tool by which we understand the other commandments, by which we understand that they are all heart issues.

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They are not merely external. This man, he thought he had completed five through nine, but he had not because he was not looking at the heart.

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James 2 .10 says that if you break one law, you're guilty of all of it. This man had broken all these laws, but had suppressed the truth because he did not have this interpretive key recognizing that the

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Tenth Commandment shows that he has failed before God. I think a good analogy for this is the

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U .S. Constitution. You know, at the very beginning we have the Bill of Rights. Does anybody off the top of their head know what what the

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Tenth Amendment says? I'm going to pull it up and read it for you, but just it's a internal quiz, you know, think of it in your head if you can remember what the

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Tenth Amendment says. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.

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So what this saying is, if you didn't see something addressed in the first several amendments or if you didn't see something addressed in the rest of the

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Constitution, that doesn't mean that it's not a right and that Congress has the power to do whatever they want in this area.

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Okay, so it is an— when you look at the Ten Amendments, the tenth one is an interpretive tool to understand the others.

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When you have the Ten Commandments, the Tenth Commandment does the same thing. It is an interpretive tool by which you understand the others.

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These things, they're not just talking about externals, they are talking about the heart.

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And there is a special way that the Tenth Commandment pierces to the heart of who we are and our desires.

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And that is why Jesus says earlier, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.

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Now a lot of people very eager to prove the deity of Christ say, oh, well, you know,

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Jesus says, hey, you know, if you call me good and only God is good, so hey,

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I'm good. I'm God. You know, I think there's—I think there's value in that, so don't take me as saying that that has no apologetic value.

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But think about the context here. What is Jesus doing in context when he is telling this man he lacks one commandment?

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What he's saying is, you, you are worried about the externals. You are measuring yourself by other men.

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You need to measure yourself by the one who is truly good. You need to measure yourself by God and discover that your heart falls so, so short of what is required.

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You need to give everything that you have and follow me. You need to find me to be enough. But you do not.

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How difficult is it for a wealthy man to enter the kingdom of God? I think it's worthwhile to also look at a another relevant passage that shows how unique the

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Tenth Commandment is as an interpretive tool to get at the heart. If you would please turn to Romans 7.

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Or do you not know, brothers? For I am speaking to those who know the law. Excuse me. Let me start at verse 7.

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That's where I'm at the start. Romans 7, verse 7. What then shall we say?

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That the law is sin by no means. Yet if it had not been for the law,

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I would have not known sin. For I would have not known what it is to covet. If the law had said, you shall not covet.

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A lot of people who have walked through the Bible have had to ask themselves, when Paul talks about the law, why does he pick this one commandment above all the others?

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The reason is because this one especially pierces to the heart. You talk to people in any kind of context growing up, you know, there are very few tribes without knowledge of God that would say it is right to murder, right?

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There are a few that would say that. But in general, people know it's wrong to murder. People know it's wrong to steal.

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But do they know that it is wrong to have a heart that desires more than it should desire?

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To want more than it should want. Because we are a fallen people, that is typically not obvious to us.

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But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

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For apart from the law, sin lies dead. It was buried. He didn't recognize his covetousness.

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I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

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On one hand, he is talking about how the prohibition of something makes it all the more attractive.

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But on the other hand, he is talking about how the law is held out as something that can give life.

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And when he, when he actually goes to it and he finds the tenth commandment and he sees where his heart lies, he realizes how far short he falls and how dead he is.

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That which was to give him life did not give him life. It only gave him death. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

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For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

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So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. The commandment is good, but—

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The commandment is good, but we who are not good, when we see this commandment, we realize how not good we are.

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We realize how much the wages of sin, the wages that is death is ours because of our sin.

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And so something else is needed. Something is needed to fix this heart, and that is

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Jesus. But if you look at this and you see what it says about knowledge,

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I'd like you to also consider the very beginnings of sin, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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There are a lot of speculations about what the name, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil mean.

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One that's very common that I want to especially caution you against is that it's talking about sexual knowledge, right?

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That it's by, you know, they ate of the tree. They saw that they were naked. Oh, and they realize sex is a thing.

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There is no reason to think that. First of all, God said be fruitful and multiply. There's no reason to think that they would have had some way of multiplying apart from apart from sex.

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Secondly, God says at the end of Genesis 3, man has become like us, knowing good and evil.

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So if that's what knowing good and evil means, you'd be implying that God is sexual. So if you hear someone uninformed on biblical matters say that, that's two very easy things to point to.

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God says that he knows good and evil in the same context and that man was told to be fruitful and multiply.

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There are a lot of other ideas that this represents some kind of cultural creativity, omniscience.

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Some of these are just honestly very silly, not worth really trying to contend with in this context where I am here.

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But what that knowledge represents is a kind of wisdom that belongs to God. For man to try to get to the secret things that belong to the

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Lord, God gave man a wonderful, beautiful thing, but man was not satisfied with that and wanted something more.

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And then when man tasted that and became aware of himself in his own nakedness, in his own need, it opens up the door for all kinds of more covetousness.

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So you have this initial covetousness that man wants that knowledge, then as he has that knowledge and realizes all sorts of other things, it opens up the door for all kinds of other desires for more than God has given.

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The Tenth Commandment is at the heart of every sin. I'd like to read, well, let me start off by saying there's a poet

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I really like named John Davies. He was a early Reformation -era

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Anglican who was a poet. And he wrote a poem called

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Nosete Ipsum, which means Know Thyself. And it's essentially a systematic theology written in verse.

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I've never actually finished it, but occasionally I go back to it and I read some more, and I read it very slowly because it's so rich.

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He goes into some deep theology. Like, if you know what traducianism is, he has probably about 15 verses on traducianism, which is, you know, that's the question of whether or not human souls are created immediately by God or whether or not they're product of their parents' souls.

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He addresses all these kinds of things, and it's very deep and profound, the way he addresses them.

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And he starts off his poem, this very long poem. You know, it's not like the poems you see today that are, like, page long.

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This is, you know, a book -length poem. He starts it off by addressing the conundrum of why would he try to know himself?

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Why would he try to know things at all if the first sin was grasping for knowledge that was not to be grasped?

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So I'd like to read this to you, and I hesitate a little because I like to read poetry very slowly, think a lot about what's being said.

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I'm not sure how much you will be able to pick up as I read this, but I like to read the first seven stanzas of this poem because I think there's a lot to, a lot to pick up here.

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So I'll just try to read it slowly and try to try to listen. Why did my parents send me to the schools that I with knowledge might enrich my mind?

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Since the desire to know first made men fools and did corrupt the root of all mankind.

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For when God's hand had written in the hearts of the first parents all the rules of good, so that their skill infused did pass all arts that ever were before or since the flood.

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And when their reason's eye was sharp and clear and as an eagle can behold the sun, could have approached the eternal light as near as the intellectual angels could have done.

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I mean, they were free enough to see God. Even then to them the spirit of lies suggests that they were blind because they saw not ill.

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That means evil. They wanted to see good and evil. And breeze into their uncorrupted breasts a curious wish which did corrupt their will.

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For that same ill they straight desired to know. Which ill being not but a defect of good.

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In all God's works the devil could not show while man their

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Lord in his perfection stood. So that themselves were first to do the ill.

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Ere they thereof their knowledge could attain. Like him that knew not poison's power to kill until by tasting it himself was slain.

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Even so by tasting of that fruit forbid, where they sought knowledge they did error find.

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Ill they desired to know and ill they did. And to give passion eyes made a reason blind.

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For then their minds did first in passion see those wretched shapes of misery and woe.

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Of nakedness, of shame, of poverty. Which then their own experience made them know.

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Like him that knew not poison's power to kill until by tasting it himself was slain.

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They wanted to know what that poison tasted like. I'm just so curious. What does that poison taste like?

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This is the the root of sin and then they began to know every misery, every poverty, everything that leads them to desire more and more beyond what

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God has given. And this is the state of us as we consider, as we consider what is it that God has given us and what more should we want than what he has given.

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Just a couple of other verses I'd like you to consider as far as covetousness goes. Colossians 3, 5.

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Ephesians 5, 5. Paul equates idolatry with covetousness in each of those.

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In each of those you have this idea that idolatry, the second commandment, is equal to the tenth because where does idolatry come from?

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It comes from the heart. And the opposite of covetousness is contentedness.

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In Christ we can have contentedness. He died on behalf of covetous people, bearing the weight of sin for those who had coveted.

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He died at the hands of a covetous man who had, for 30 pieces of silver, exchanged

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Jesus' life. And he died being declared as one who was covetous, one who went to make himself too high than he ought to be.

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But he was not because he was actually that high. He actually was the son of God and he was not covetous as was claimed, but he died as a covetous man, as though he were a covetous man.

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And those who have put their faith in him have all the riches, all the blessings. We have eternal life.

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We have everything that is given in him. If God has given his own son, how much more will he give us all things?

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Those of us who have trusted in his son have all things. Those who do not, it's no wonder that they would covet and want more and more and more and more.

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But those who have Jesus Christ have all things and it is right in our station, in our position as children of God, to be satisfied with what we have in Jesus because we have a sure inheritance of all things and we have every grace, every rich, every piece of wealth that we could ever need.

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So one more quote. If you want to know more, well, let me throw out there that if you want to know more about the uniqueness of the

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Tenth Commandment, the best work I have to recommend is A .W. Pink's The Ten Commandments.

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He talks about this there, the special nature of the Tenth Commandment. There may be some better work. If you know of one, please let me know.

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But another work to talk about just what we as Christians should do, just very practical work, in pursuing contentedness and running from covetousness,

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Jeremiah Burroughs' The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. This quote comes from that book.

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As it is with a vessel that is full of liquor, if you strike it, it will make no great noise, but if it be empty, then it makes a great noise.

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So it is with the heart, a heart that is full of grace and goodness within. Such a one will bear a great many strokes and never make any noise, but an empty heart, if that be struck, will make a noise.

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Those men and women that are so much complaining and always whining, it is a sign that there's an emptiness in their hearts.

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But if their hearts were filled with grace, they would not make such a noise as they now do.

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This is a cure for covetousness, is to have your heart filled with Jesus Christ.

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Go to him via the means of grace. Come to him. He is there in his word.

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He is accessible in prayer. And if our eyes are fixed on him and filled with him, then when we, like a vessel, are struck, we will not ring with whining and complaining as those who are empty do.

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But we will know that we have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in him, and we have eternal life, and we can be with him, the heir of all things.

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Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that you would assist us as we are a covetous people, a people that desire more than we have, people that desire more than you have given, people that would implicitly judge you by such a desire, saying that you have not done right, you have not given us what we deserve, but yet you have given us so much more than we deserve, and you have not given us the great judgment that we deserve.

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I pray that those who do not know you hearing this message, that they would turn from their emptiness and embrace

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Jesus Christ, and that those of us who have him would have more and more of him, so that we would be so full and so content and full of joy, having no misery, whining, complaining.