Honesty and Contentment

If you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it. We’re actually doing something a little bit different than we have the last few weeks and instead of us going through just one of the commandments, we are actually going to finish up the last three commandments tonight. The reason that I wanted to do this is because I actually wanted to spend a little bit of time leading up to Christmas to go through the Christmas story. So next week we will be in Luke 1 and then on the 13th we will look at the birth of Christ in Luke 2. So, what are the last three commandments that we will be looking at? Exodus 20:15–17 says, “You shall not steal. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. “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 as we look at these three commandments, there are words that you are probably familiar with and there are some words that you may be a little less familiar with. I don’t think any of us don’t know what stealing is. We’ve all heard about stealing before. You might not know exactly it means to bear false witness or to covet but you’ll know by the end of the night. We’ve got a lot to get through so let’s open up in prayer and then we will dive into each one of these commandments.

The 8th Commandment

We see in Exodus 20:15 that the 8th commandment is “you shall not steal.” When we think of this commandment, we need to think as we have the past few weeks. This commandment extends beyond just the stealing of one’s property but it involves the steps that lead up to the physical stealing of one’s property. Not only does this commandment forbid stealing, it says that if we are discontent with what we have, it is sin. If we are hording at the expense of others, it is sin. If we are stealing someone else’s ideas and crediting it to ourselves, that is plagiarism and that is sin. One commentator says that stealing can take many different forms, everything from robbery, kidnapping, human trafficking, receiving stolen goods, fraudulent business deals, using false weights and measurements, trespassing, injustice in contracts, extortion, unethical business deals, borrowing without returning, and unjust lawsuits. All of these things can be found throughout Scripture and they are addressed as sin. Stealing is a serious offense and it is one of the first sins that we have recorded in Scripture. If you go back to Genesis 3 you can see that Adam and Eve steal the fruit of the tree that God commanded them not to take from. They desired that which was not there, they desired to be like God and wanted to steal His reputation and His glory and it all leads to the predicament that we find ourselves in now. Something else that you need to think about is that stealing was considered even more vile then than it was now due to the fact that people did not have the resources that we have today. The people in the time of Moses, who wrote the first five books of the Bible, and later in the time of Christ did not have the Walmart's and the Food Lion’s that we have today so they did not have the over abundance that we find ourselves with. Many people often had one cloak or if you were lucky two of them and this cloak was what you would wear every day and it would often even be the blanket that you would use to keep yourself warm at night. Now let’s say that someone comes along and decides to rob you for your cloak. What could this lead to? Financial burdens, nakedness, one could potentially even freeze during the night because he had nothing to cover himself with to keep warm. We have been spoiled by the amount of goods that we have. If someone takes your sweatshirt, you might be upset but you’ve got another at home right? You might even have one that looks just like it so why bother trying to get it back? Or you could probably just go and buy another one just like it. But if you were to put yourself in the shoes of a poor farmer that is striving to have enough crop to feed his family and you have one cloak to keep you all warm at night and suddenly it is gone, what are you going to do? There is a weightiness that comes with this commandment because their is a great hurt that is felt from stealing. Going back to the farmer, let’s say that someone comes and steals your crops. That’s your livelihood! That’s where you make your money, that’s how you feed your family, that’s how you contribute to society and if someone comes and steals that, how do you plan on doing those things? You can’t! What we see is God cares about us and He knows that there are things that we do need to survive. This is why Jesus prays in Matthew 6:11 “Give us this day our daily bread.” He does not pray that we would have more than we need but that we would be able to have and be content with what we truly need in order to survive. Physical possessions are not an issue. You don’t need to be a hermit in a cave somewhere that possesses nothing in order to follow Christ. You are allowed to have things, God graciously gives to us good things so that we might find satisfaction in our work. But just because we don’t understand the heights and depths of the pain that comes from stealing does not mean that we should not take this seriously. Your perception of theft may be different from someone else. You may not think that cheating on a paper by submitting someone else’s work is a problem but the sin of stealing does not come down to what you think constitutes stealing. Quite frankly, you don’t get to define what sin is by any means. Sin is what God says it is. It is what God says in His Word! All I know is this: I put a lot of work into my sermons. I spend probably 2 days every week writing a sermon and if someone was to come around, steal my sermon, preach it exactly as I would, and give me no credit for it, I would feel hurt. You don’t respect me enough to give me credit and you are too lazy to do the work yourself. We constantly see things that we might want and Satan has no issue with tempting you to try and take it. Again, this is what we see in Genesis 3! You could even argue that the Devil tempted Jesus to steal in Matthew 4 when the devil tries to tempt Jesus into taking the kingdoms for Himself outside of the will of God. Stealing is a crime that will always be felt by others before you feel the weight of it. I’m not sure if you ever read the book, The Kite Runner but stealing is one of the most important teachings that the main character’s father passes on to him. In the book, the father warns Amir, the son, about what stealing takes from others and he says, “There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life... you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more wretched than stealing.” I agree and I disagree with that but it is a good perspective to live by. I agree that stealing can be connected to many other sins but I would not say that there is not an act that is more wretched than stealing. I think that it would be good for us to look at stealing of any kind and ask, “If I were to take this or do this, what will this do to the other person?” Our lives as Christians should not be lives of taking, it should be lives of giving because Christianity is a religion that gives! Christ gave His life for us, Christ gives us eternal life, Christ gives us the Kingdom of God. With Christ, the only thing that He takes is our sin and we get everything from Him! We are to be a people that give, not a people that take.

The 9th Commandment

Let’s look now at the 9th commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” What do you guys think that means? What does it mean to not bear false witness against your neighbor? Just a quick reminder that where the Bible says neighbor, it does not mean the person that is living next door from you but it covers every person made in the image of God. This command involves telling the truth. We are not to lie to our neighbors. Like the other commandments, that which is mentioned is not all that is associated with the command. In Exodus 20:16 where we see this commandment, it is being connected to not lying in court against your neighbor. If you have watched court shows or crime shows before you know that when the witness or whoever comes into the court and takes the stand, the judge swears them in and asks, “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” I had jury duty two weeks ago and this is what happened whenever a witness came in, the judge would ask them that and they are being held to a high standard. Tell me, if you were on trial for something and you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you did not do what you were accused of and you had witnesses that could confirm that you did not do these things, why would you want them to tell the truth? What is the danger if they don’t tell the truth? Let’s say that you are on trial for murder and you didn’t do it but your best friend who was with you that night comes and lies at the trial and says, “Nope I wasn’t with him.” Suddenly you are looking at quite a bit of time away right? Again we need to reemphasize that as the Lord gave this commandment, there wasn’t cell phone data or cameras that could easily verify where someone was at any given time so you needed the reliability and truthfulness of witnesses if you were accused of something. This is why the Lord says in Deuteronomy 19:15, “A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.” There is a lot that rides on the truth and yet how little emphasis do we put on the truth? I think of Pilate’s question to Jesus in John 18:38 “Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” Now we know that Pilate was not a stupid person, he obviously had a concept of truth but to him, truth really didn’t matter. Truth doesn’t matter to the person that has no desire to know it. We tend to internalize truth instead of basing truth on where it is actually to be found. James Montgomery Boice said, “Most people speak today of what is true or false purely on a subjective basis. That is, they determine whether a thing is true or not on the basis of how it makes them feel.” Now we should hopefully know that feelings cannot drive facts. If facts depended on how man felt, I don’t think there would be any facts out there because everyone feels differently about everything. What we also know about truth is that it needs to be based on something that is never changing. That is why all truth can only find it’s source in the Lord. The Bible is full of references to how the Lord is truth itself and how He never lies. Titus 1:2 says of the Lord “in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago.” Jesus Himself says in John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Truth is more than just an idea or a concept, it’s a person! Jesus is truth incarnate! Hebrews 6:18 says, “so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.” Our salvation is based on the truth of the Lord. If God were to say that our future hope and salvation is one way when it is actually another, God would be a liar! But truth is the very nature of God! Here we see that when we don’t tell the truth, it is an insult to our neighbor but it is an even greater insult to the Lord! If we fail to uphold the truth we are insulting the God that is truth itself! So, if we claim to be Christians but we spend all this time telling lies, what does that say about our God? Paul writes in Ephesians 4:15 “but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,” and then in Ephesians 4:25 “Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” If we are going to claim the name of Christ, it is so important that we are people of the truth. John Calvin wrote about these passages in Ephesians and said, “Lying is here put for every kind of fraud, deceit, or cunning; and truth for simplicity. Paul demands sincere communication between them in all their affairs. He adds also this confirmation: for we are members of one another. For it is a monstrosity that members should not agree among themselves, even that they should act deceitfully towards each other.” If we are not people that will stand for truth, we are standing not just in the wrong place but for the wrong person. Christ says in John 8:44 of the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” For us to be liars is for us to be in league with Satan himself. How can we claim to be Christians if this is who we are standing in league with? The world needs the truth regardless of how it may feel about the truth and if you and I are Christians we need to stand at the front line for truth. How will you stand for the truth? Let’s go ahead and start wrapping up by looking at the tenth commandment.

The 10th Commandment

Exodus 20:17 says, “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.” What does it mean to covet? To covet means that we are not content with what the Lord has given to us. It means that we desire to have what other people have. I think that there is a very important reason why this commandment is listed as the final commandment and that is because there is really no way for sinful mankind to avoid it. It so easily connects to the commandments that came before it. Charles Spurgeon said of the tenth commandment, “When people break the other commandments, they often break this one first.” One commentator said that while many of us can say that we have never murdered, committed adultery, or stolen, no one can rationally say that they have never coveted. Now what we know from our time together in God’s Word is that we have broken those other commandments but the tenth commandment confronts the heart of every person on the face of the earth. None of us can say that we have never had an unhealthy desire for what someone else has. None of us can say that when we see someone else get recognition for something that we played a part in that we wish we were getting the praise that they were getting. None of us can say that we have never looked at the house, the cars, the gaming systems, or the life of someone else and wish that we had that instead of what we already have. To have an unhealthy desire for someone else or what they have is an incredibly dangerous sin because when we covet, there is never a moment of absolute satisfaction. The more that one covets, the more that they want and the less content they will grow to be. It is one of those things where if we were to covet something that belongs to someone else, chances are that even if we did get that which belonged to them that we would just go on and start coveting something else. Coveting is dangerous because not only does it cause us to hate our neighbors, it really causes us to grow discontent and hate God. How easy is it for us to become jealous of what someone else has and blame God that He did not give it to us. How often do we use the excuse that we deserve something more than someone else and that is why we should have what we want? How then do we combat this sin? How can we fight against coveting? First we need to learn how to better value Christ. Jesus says in Matthew 6:33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” The more we long for Christ, the less we long for the things of this world. The greater contentment we find in Jesus the less appealing the things of this world will become. This leads to another great point, we need to know what it means to be content with what we have. Paul told the church of Philippi in Philippians 4:11 “Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.” God knows the needs that we have. He knows our needs better than we do and if we know that He is in control of all things, we can be happy with the things that He chooses to give us. In order for us to be truly content, we need to recognize that God does not owe anything to us. God does not owe you eternal life, He does not owe you the house you live in or the food that you eat or the clothes on your back but He has graciously allowed you to have those things. Do you know what it means to be satisfied in Christ? I think that one of the best solutions to coveting is to stop looking at yourself. If you want to stop coveting, if you want to stop having sinful desires of other people or other things, stop thinking about your own wants. Find your satisfaction in what Christ has already given you! Find satisfaction in the love that you show to your neighbor! Remember what Paul says in Ephesians 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” God has already blessed us as His people with EVERY spiritual blessing and if He is content to give us everything in regards to that which is most important, may we also be content in regards to everything which is secondary. Charles Kingsley said, “If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself: about what you want, about what you like, what respect people ought to pay you; and then, to you, nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch. You will make misery for yourself out of everything good. You will be as wretched as you choose.” As we wrap up our time in the ten commandments, I challenge you to look at your own life and see where you are falling short. The ten commandments are a great way of seeing what needs improving in our lives and I guarantee you, we could all improve in all ten areas that we have read about over the past few weeks. Praise God that we have a savior that is willing to save us despite how often we fall short. Praise God that He is willing to make us aware of our sin and make us aware of our need for a Savior. As we go now to this time of worship, I want you all to reflect where you are falling short in your life. You may say you need work in all ten commandments and that’s fine or maybe you are saying that there is one specific commandment that you know you need to work on. Identify what that is and ask the Lord first to help you and then maybe tell a friend or a leader what you need help with so that they can walk alongside you. Let’s pray.