Ten Words That Matter: Don’t Covet
Dr. Tom Pace
August 13, 2017
Exodus 20:1-2, 17; Matthew 6:19-24
It’s about our desires. I have two daughters who are in the advertising business and they recognize that their job is to reach down inside us, identify what are our desires, what are those hidden desires are, bring them right to the surface and then hook them to some product or surface. So I want you to think as you listen to the Scripture read today, what are your desires? What’s driving you?
Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Exodus 20:1-2, 17 (NRSV)
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal;but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light;but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
Matthew 6:19-24 (NRSV)
I have a friend who is a psychotherapist. We used to see each other much more often than we do now, but when we do go to lunch I’d be whining to him about something, which I’m prone to do. He would say, “What is it you want anyway? What do you want?” He’d be challenging me to look at my life and celebrate the goodness that’s there. He’d say, “What is it that you want?”
I want you to think about that question. What is it you want?
So as we jump into this sermon let’s do a little review. There are Ten Commandments; these are words that were intended to set apart the Children of Israel from the rest of the world. In Exodus 19 it says, “The whole world is mine but you shall be a holy nation. You’re going to be different. And this is what’s going to make you different.” And there are four commands, four words as they say about our relationship with God. “There will be no gods before me, don’t make anything with your hands, don’t have anything that’s human-made that you try and contain me in it. Remember the Sabbath and don’t use my name for your agenda. Remember the Sabbath, keep the first things first and don’t use my name for your agenda.”
Then there are six about our relationship with others. There are three about specific relationships. Our parents, our enemies, and our spouse. There are two about possessions: don’t steal, don’t covet, and then there’s one about truth. Don’t bear false witness – it’s about integrity.
That is sort of the overview, but what I want you to note is that the first and last commandments in some ways are the same commandment with one just being a more specific application of the first.
The first one is “You shall have no other gods before me.” It’s about what is going to be ultimate in your life. What’s going to drive you forward? Both of them are about what we desire most.
The last commandment being “Don’t covet.” Why is that so important? To think about what we desire?
Well, what Jesus is teaching us is that our desires matter a lot. It uses the word “They are our eye.” It’s a neat picture. In English there’s a colloquialism – we say, “What are you eyeing?” We say, “I’m eyeing a new car.” Or “I’m eyeing the corner office.”
What we’re saying is that that’s what has taken hold of our vision, that’s what we’re looking at all the time. I have recently become enamored with getting a motorcycle. Yes, I have. Now so you know, my wife has already forbidden it and it’s not going to happen. Because indeed she is the spiritual leader of my family without any question. She says “Jump!” I say, “How far?” So it is not going to happen. But I still find myself longing for it.
I was at a stoplight the other day and a motorcycle pulled up next to me. It’s the new Indian. Indian motorcycles have had a resurgence and it was a great motorcycle many years ago. But now it’s come back again, it was purchased by the Victory Company and they’ve got a new rebuild of the Scout motorcycle. It is awesome, it’s beautiful.
I look at it and I long for it. See, I used to have a motorcycle when I was in seminary and I rode it all the time. I loved it. You know, the acceleration… you’d go down the road and it’s like freedom! I have sort of repressed what it’s like to sit in traffic breathing all the exhaust fumes of all the cars around me, and how hot it was all the time.
It was my only form of transportation so I’d drive in the rain to work. And you get that “helmet hair” after you take off the helmet. Then once I dropped it. I wasn’t moving, I was stopped at a stoplight and I dropped it and I was too weak to pick it up again. So these guys had to get out of a car next to me and help me pick it up. And it was so humiliating that I couldn’t lift up my own motorcycle right there.
I forgot about all that and all I can think about is the freedom. So recently I got on my computer I looked up “Indian motorcycles” and there they are. I see what the specifications are – how big it is, how much it will cost. I see how much it weighs so I’ll know if I’m able to pick it up. That’s important. All of those things.
And now what’s happened is the Google people have kicked in. You know what that means. So every time I got to any website anywhere this little motorcycle pops up over in the corner. “Hey, look at me! Don’t you want me? Don’t you think this is what you want? I think you want a motorcycle, don’t you, Tom? We’ve been watching you and we know what you want!” It’ll eat your lunch.
I have to tell you that we laugh at it but it sort of begins to take us over when you have something like that. Those kind of shallow desires. There are other kinds like, “I’ve been eying the corner office. I want success.” Or, “I’ve been eyeing a bigger bank account so I’ll be secure.” As if a bank account can make us secure. Or, “I’ve been eyeing a good reputation so people will think of me as a Christian person.” All of these things that become our motivation.
And what Jesus says about that; I want you to hear just that verse: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy then your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is unhealthy then your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.” They are our desires, our master.
So what we get in our mind is that we can’t control those. We can’t control our desires. But that’s not the Biblical witness. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” That doesn’t mean that he’s going to give me a motorcycle. What that means is that if I “delight myself in the Lord” my desires will change. He will give me Kingdom desires. Desires for God’s dream for the world and those will be the things that own me. Those will be the things that are my master.
We were at the Global Leadership Summit this week. A number of our staff went and it’s a great opportunity. If you ever get the chance to go I want to encourage you to do so. It’s this time every year and it’s a webinar based on a leadership development program. Especially if you’re in business, or a coach, or if you’re a teacher, or if you lead people in any shape of form, it’s among the best. Cheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, Angela Duckworth teaches about what grit is and how you can develop grit, Marcus Buckingham talks about how to evaluate employees and be invested in developing them. It’s as good as it gets.
But one of the most inspiring parts were these videos they do throughout. It’s all sponsored by Willow Creek Community Church and they’re called Grander Vision Videos. A 22-year-old girl named Liz graduates from college, can’t get a job in journalism, which is her degree, so she goes on a whim to Uganda on a mission experience. Then she comes across this school where the girls are graduating from high school, and then they don’t have any money to go to college. So their education just stops and they end up getting married and staying in their village. So she decides they all need scholarships. Somehow she decides that what they need to do is to make sandals. So they make sandals and the money from making the sandals helps to send those kids to college. She’s 22 years old and for four months a year she leaves her family and goes to Uganda. She has kids now and she goes to help this happen. That’s a Kingdom vision.
Or, a prosecutor in Brazil decides he’s going to take on the corruption of police and the government in Brazil. Despite the danger of losing his own life he stays at it to try and root out corruption in Brazil.
Or a guy who runs a pump company in Oklahoma and a customer invites him on a mission trip. So he goes on the trip and sees that there are all these villages that don’t have water, so he and a friend invent a $20 hand pump. It’s able to pump water out of deep holes in these villages. And now that’s all he does. All he does is go and take these pumps and put wells in villages all throughout Africa. A million people now have water because he took hold of that vision some eight years ago.
You think to yourself, “Okay, those are the kind of Kingdom desires.” The dream that takes hold of me is of a community of committed Christians that is fueled by prayer, and real honest Bible study, not formulaic stuff. But stuff that really studies context, and looks at what the Scripture is trying to say and allows it to really transform us to change our minds, to open our minds to new ways of thinking. That fuel propels us to put our faith to work in love in the world outside of this place.
To have a community where that’s just driving us all the time is what gets me up and gets me here in the morning. So what happens is we get a Kingdom picture that we want to take hold of, and what happens is that you have to allow that to begin to push out the motorcycle. You have to redirect your dreams so that something else owns you.
Now, look, you might say to yourself, “That’s big stuff.” It’s not about how big it is. A Kingdom dream doesn’t have to be super-big. It might be that I’m going to have a family. I’m going to be the catalyst that my family will be so rooted in love that the people around us that we know will experience that witness and they’ll be changed. Or that my workplace will be a place where people can take hold of their dreams and become what God intended them to be.
You might have been watching the violence on television yesterday. And something inside you said, “I want to eliminate this kind of hatred from the world around us and I want to bring people together.” So you think to yourself, “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to save the world from hatred and bigotry.”
If you think that for very long then you think “Naw… I can’t do that.” But if you think to yourself, “Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to find someone with whom I disagree vehemently. And I’m going to have a cup of coffee and I’m going to listen to them and hear about what is the root of their anger and their pain. Then I’m going to listen and I’m going to respond in love. I might not be able to change the whole world but I can change one relationship. And maybe that will change another one, and maybe that will change another one.”
Mother Teresa is famous for saying, “We’re not called to do great things; we’re called to do small things with great love.” It’s about allowing a Kingdom dream to be what owns you. To be your master.
The first thing is that our desires matter a lot – they own us, and so we choose them carefully. We seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. We eye the Kingdom.
Second thing this commandment teaches us is that we’re not in the business of comparing ourselves to others. We play our own cards; we don’t play somebody else’s hand of cards. We play our own cards, run our own race.
It is a sin as old as time, this comparing ourselves to one another. Cain and Abel. Cain is jealous that his brother’s offering was accepted by God so he kills his brother. Hagar and Sarah. Sarah casts Hagar and Ismael out because she’s jealous of Hagar. Jacob and Esau. Jacob steals his brother’s blessing. Joseph and his brothers. They throw him in the pit because they’re jealous of him. He was an arrogant fellow, wasn’t he? It just keeps going on, all the way through. David and Saul. What got Saul all worked up was that he heard the crowds shouting, “Saul is awesome! Saul killed his thousands! But David killed his tens of thousands!” Oh-oh! A switch flips inside Saul and he decides he’s going to kill David. The disciples argue about who gets to sit on the right hand of God when they come into their kingdom.
Listen to this from the Gospel of Mark – this is a description of Pontius Pilate in Mark 15. Pilate is trying to decide what to do about Jesus. It says, “For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over.” Even Jesus’ crucifixion is driven by this jealousy, this comparing.
Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” We do it all the time. For example, you get an A on a test and you’re excited that you got an A on the test till you find out that everyone got an A on the test. They just gave everyone A’s. You think, “That’s no good. I want to be better than people. I don’t just want to be good; I want to be better than others.”
You go see your child’s teacher and they tell you, “Your child is just average.” You get mad and think, “My child is not average. My child is better than other children!” We’ve got that within us. That comparison will eat our lunch. So what do we do?
It even kind of kicks in when it comes to Kingdom dreams. I have to tell you that I was sitting in that Global Leadership Summit listening to those teachers teach, those leaders lead, watching those Grander Vision Videos. And I thought to myself, “My dream isn’t so great. Not compared to theirs. I’m not saving lives. I get a good paycheck for mine, my family isn’t in danger. Come on, Tom! I’m not called on to lead their lives. I’m called on to lead my life. I’m called on to lead Tom’s life. To play Tom’s hand of cards. To take hold of Tom’s dream.”
God has a dream for each one of us and it’s an individual dream. It can be part of a greater dream. I hope your dream is part of St. Luke’s dream. But it is our individual dream and we can’t decide we’re going to live somebody else’s life. So we have to take hold and just do the best that we can.
Another image that’s used throughout Scripture is that of a race. Probably they’re talking a marathon because that was the type of race that was run then. Who’s run a marathon? Raise your hand if you’ve run a marathon. Okay, right here, you ran a marathon? Did you win? You didn’t win? Why did you do it then? Did you think you were going to win when you started? No, you didn’t. You didn’t think you were going to win. It’s a stupid question. Did you win?
Of course you didn’t win! You don’t run a marathon to win. First of all, you run a marathon to finish, that’s it. You know what is the enemy when you’re running a marathon? Giving up the dream. You know what is the enemy in your life, your Kingdom dream? The enemy is giving up the dream. Just giving it up.
If you run multiple marathons, what you’re looking at is trying to do your very best and looking to post these little words beside your time: “P.B. Personal Best.” Sometimes it’s “P.R.” – “personal record.” You’re doing your very best.
Listen to these words from Galatians 6:4: “Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”
What we do is we reach for that Kingdom dream. We don’t say, “Well, my dream isn’t as good as so-and-so’s.” It’s okay to get inspired by others. But it’s your life you’re going to lead and you strive to do your creative best with the life you’ve been given.
One more thing that goes with this. How do we begin to make that move toward Kingdom dreams? How do we give up on this business of constantly comparing ourselves to others?
I think it’s really rooted in gratitude. It’s rooted in practicing giving thanks to God for the hand we’ve got, for the things God is doing in our lives, and through our lives and are all around us.
That’s what we do every week. It’s why I hope you come here every single week. For what we do when we come here is we thank God. We practice praising, we practice giving thanks.
Go back to that image of the eye – of eyeing something. What do you look at? On the one hand our eye is our desires. We focus on this Kingdom vision, this dream this seeking first God’s kingdom. Another thing we do is focus on what God is already doing. The good that God is already doing in the world around us in our lives, in our families, in our church, in our city, in our community, in our nation, in our world. We keep looking at the places where God is doing amazing things.
If all we look at is the bad, yes we see sin, we acknowledge it, we call it out, we say it is what it is. But if our focus is always on the darkness, then how can we be filled with the light. So we look at what God is doing in our lives and around us and we give thanks for it. We look at the possibility, the vision of what can be. We take hold of that Kingdom dream. We get good at gratitude. We practice praise as a discipline so we’ll get good at it.
If we do those things, I don’t think we’re going to have any trouble. Not coveting our neighbor’s house or wife or male or female slave, or donkey or ox or anything else that belongs to our neighbor. It’s because our eyes will be too filled with the light of what God’s doing and what God’s dreaming.
Gracious and loving God, we confess that sometimes our eyes lead us in the wrong places. We let the wrong things master us. Forgive us, God. Remind us that you have Kingdom dreams for us. Help us to open those up within our hearts and to reach for them with our hands and our lives. Let them own us. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.