You Shall Not Covet (Part 1)

Introduction

English Standard Version Chapter 20

17 “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 is your neighbor’s.”

English Standard Version Chapter 3

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

This week we’re starting our look at the 10th commandment, “You shall not covet,” but we’re also nearing the end of our series on the 10 commandments. Now, as we wrap up in the coming weeks, my hope has been for you to have a greater appreciation for the 10 commandments, to see their purposes and their function, their use, and how they they touch every area of our lives, to see how they are the very basis for reality, and that every sin is rooted in one or more of them. The law is like a sharp object, like a knife or scalpel, which lays our souls bare, or a needle that penetrates the toughest surface and needles around in our souls.

Therefore, the more we examine and study the law of God the more our sin is exposed. And, as we’ll see, none of the commandments do this better than the 10th commandment. So, as we’ve done with each commandment we’re going to spend our time, this week, focusing specifically on the nature and scope of the 10th commandment, and then in our next time examine the positive and negative applications of it. I want to spend our time answering two fundamental questions, first, “What is coveting?” and, second, “Why is coveting sin?” And as we answer that first question we’ll inevitably answer that second question, “What is coveting?” and “Why is coveting sin?”

Desire ≠ Covet

First, we need to recognize that coveting is not the same as merely having desires. The 10th commandment isn’t intended to forbid every kind of desire or intended to command us to rid ourselves of all desire, which would be more akin to Buddhism than Christianity. Instead, we’ve been created with many good and natural desires, many of which are commended by Scripture.

For example, we’ve been created with a desire for food, Psalm 145:16 says, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.” We’ve also been created with a desire for marriage, Proverbs 18:22 says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.” We’ve been created with a desire for a family and children, especially women, which is exemplified repeatedly in Scripture by women like Hannah, who was barren and, as a result, pleaded with the Lord for a son, a plea that the Lord graciously granted. This is why Psalm 127:3 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.” We’ve been created with a desire for sexual intimacy, in fact, an entire book of the OT, the Song of Solomon, celebrates the gift of sexual intimacy within the covenant of marriage. Proverbs 5:18-19 puts it like this, “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.” And examples like these just scratch the surface, there are many other examples, such as a desire for prosperity or success, or a desire for a return on your investment or for your hard work, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:3 that “it is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.” So, again, my point here is that coveting is not the same as merely having desires, because desires aren’t necessarily covetous by nature.

Desiring wrong things

Instead, to covet is to desire what’s forbidden or illicit. Which we can think about in a couple of ways, either 1) to desire the wrong things, or 2) to desire good things in a wrong way. Now, these two categories are related, but my purpose in using them is to point out that coveting is a disordered desire, or a disordered affection. That coveting is a perversion or a misuse of our desires.

Desiring what doesn’t belong to you

So, let’s start by looking at the first category together, when you desire the wrong things. This happens when you desire something good that does not belong to you, which is made particularly clear by the 10th commandment when it doesn’t just say, “You shall not covet,” but goes on to say,

English Standard Version Chapter 20

17 “You shall not covet

Notice how coveting is defined by the 10th commandment, as a desire for something that does not belong to you, as a desire for something that belongs to your neighbor. This type of desire is forbidden by the 10th commandment. While it may not be sinful to desire a bigger home, it is sinful to desire your neighbor’s home, while it’s not wrong to desire your wife, it is wrong to desire your neighbor’s wife. To see a biblical example of this turn with me to Joshua chapter 6. I want to highlight, as briefly as we can, an incident that took place at the city of Jericho with a man named Achan when the Israelites were beginning their conquest in the land of Canaan.

Jericho was the first city that they destroyed, and, if you recall, they did so famously by marching around the city seven times until the walls of the city fell. Let’s begin in Joshua 6:15,

English Standard Version Chapter 6

15 On the seventh day they rose early, at the dawn of day, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. 16 And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for the LORD has given you the city. 17 And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. 18 But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. 19

So, notice how the Israelites were commanded to keep themselves from the things devoted to destruction, and more specifically, that all silver and gold, and every vessel of bronze and iron, were to be holy to the Lord, and were to be brought into the treasury of the Lord. In other words, everything was to be devoted to destruction, don’t take any of it, except the precious metals that you find, and those belong to the Lord, therefore they shall go into his treasury.

Then jump down to Joshua 7:1,

English Standard Version Chapter 7

7 But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the LORD burned against the people of Israel.

So, after the destruction of Jericho we’re told that a man named Achan broke faith with the Lord and took some of the devoted things, however, Joshua was unaware of this, so Israel continued their conquest at the city of Ai. We pick up there in verse 2,

English Standard Version Chapter 7

2 Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-aven, east of Bethel, and said to them, “Go up and spy out the land.” And the men went up and spied out Ai. 3 And they returned to Joshua and said to him, “Do not have all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not make the whole people toil up there, for they are few.” 4 So about three thousand men went up there from the people. And they fled before the men of Ai, 5 and the men of Ai killed about thirty-six of their men and chased them before the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them at the descent. And the hearts of the people melted and became as water.

So, what looked like an easy victory, turned into defeat, and the hearts of the Israelites melted with fear. As a result, Joshua tore his clothes and fell on his face before the Lord, we read there in verse 6,

English Standard Version Chapter 7

6 Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the LORD until the evening, he and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their heads. 7 And Joshua said, “Alas, O Lord GOD, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan! 8 O Lord, what can I say, when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies! 9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your great name?” 10 The LORD said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? 11 Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things;

Notice the kind of sin that was at the heart of Israel’s defeat at the city of Ai, covetousness. In fact, it’s recorded there in verse 21 that Achan himself said that “when I saw the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels ... I coveted them.” And, again, the reason I point this out is because while it isn’t inherently sinful to desire silver or gold, or even nice things, it is sinful to desire what’s not yours. This was the sin of Achan, he desired what had been devoted to the Lord. So, coveting is first a desire for something that does not belong to you, a desire for wrong things.

Similarly, you might desire wealth, which isn’t fundamentally sinful, in fact, as we’ve seen before, wealth is important to fulfilling our obligation to love our neighbor, but it would be sin to seek it through dishonest gain rather than honest work, you might desire success, but to desire it at the expense of others is a sin. Again, coveting is first a desire for something that does not belong to you, a desire for wrong things.

Broader second table violation

Furthermore, Achan not only desired what wasn’t his, but he was also willing to lie and steal to get it. In other words, Achan’s coveting resulted in a broader violation of the second table of the law. Notice what the Lord said back in verse 11, “Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings.”

Similarly, in the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11-12, when David coveted his friend Uriah’s wife, he coveted a wife that was not his own, and, as a result, commited adultery with her, going so far as to put her husband to death in battle to get away with it. His coveting resulted in a broader violation of the second table of the law.

Contrary desires

Now, a desire for wrong things can also be seen in more extreme examples. While all of our wrong desires are fundamentally a misuse or perversion of our natural desires, some of our desires become outright contrary to nature, illicit, and forbidden. For example, in Romans 1:26-27 when the Apostle Paul described certain dishonorable passions he wrote, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men.” And my point here is that our natural desires, if left unchecked, can be perverted to such a degree that they become nearly unrecognizable compared their original form.

Disordered desires

While some of these distinctions might seem obvious or elementary to many of us, it’s vitally important for us to recognize them, because many have attempted to justify their sin purely on the grounds of desire alone. For example, one of the primary lines of argumentation that has propelled the LGBTQ movement in our generation has been an argument from desire. That all sexual desire is natural, and therefore good and valid. That because I was born with certain sexual desires that it would be unloving of you to deny my pursuit of those desires, or to refuse to give your approval of them.

I’ve often heard the reasoning that goes something like this, “God has made me like this, therefore it must be right.” You see, the assumption there is that because I have this certain desire, that God has made me like this, and that therefore my desires must be good. But we don’t determine what’s natural or right solely on the basis of the desires we possess, but on the word of God, because as we’ve already seen, our desires are frequently disordered and perverted by sin. This is why the word of God, and particularly God’s law, is so helpful to the Christian, because it helps us to see clearly, like a compass that orients us, to know right from wrong.

Covetousness and idolatry

Now, let’s consider the second category of covetousness, to desire good things in a wrong way. In our effort to define coveting and to understand why coveting is sin, we need to realize that all covetousness is idolatry, that all violations of the 10th commandment are unavoidably violations of the 1st commandment. Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 3:5, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Now, how is covetousness a violation of the first commandment? How is covetousness idolatry? Well, as pastor and author, Kevin DeYoung, put it, “covetousness makes a god out of our desires.” You see, covetousness elevates our desires to a place they were never intended to occupy, and as a result we begin to serve those desires rather than God himself. This is what I mean by a desire for good things in a wrong way, that is, to make a god out of our desires.

And when our desires becomes our god, as a result, those desires steer our lives. Now, most of you are probably very familiar with Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler, and I know we’ve looked at it a couple time in this series, but I think it would be helpful to look at it again here in light of the 10th commandment. So, turn with me to Matthew 19:16-24,

English Standard Version Chapter 19

16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, 19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 20 The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

23 And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, 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.”

Now, as I’ve pointed out before, when speaking to this man, Jesus lists the commandments contained within the second table of the law, the six commandments concerned specifically with our duty to love our neighbor. Now, what I want you to do is count how many commandments Jesus lists there. How many does he list? He lists five, but how many commandments are contained on the second table of the law? Six. Which commandment is missing? The tenth. Why do you think that is? Well, it’s because Jesus intended to demonstrate to this man that he had failed to keep the 10th commandment. And how does he make this clear to him? Jesus tells him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

No one can serve two masters

But Matthew says that when the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And why would this make him sorrowful? Because he didn’t want to give up his possessions to follow Jesus. You see, his desire for possessions had become his god, and as a result it caused him to walk away from following Jesus. Which is why Jesus said earlier in Matthew 6:24, that “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” You see, because covetousness makes a god out of your desires, those desires will inevitably push Christ out of your life, or keep you from ever following him at all, because your desires are your god, and you’ll be unwilling to give them up to follow Christ.

And this principle applies not only to money, but to any desire or craving you might have that’s become as a god to you. All forms of idolatry are a direct affront to the first commandment, that “you shall have no other gods before me.” Therefore, we must regularly examine our lives and ask ourselves, “What idols am I holding onto?” “What covetous desires am I unwilling to relinquish and submit to Christ?” Because if we don’t those idols will unavoidably put our faith in jeopardy at some point in the future. We’ll be faced with a choice or put at a crossroads that’ll put us to the test.

And Jesus warned his disciples of this particular danger in his parable of the sower when he described the seed that was sown among thorns, that this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. Or how the Apostle Paul described his former companion Demas in 2 Timothy 4:10 by writing, “For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica,” indicating that Demas had fallen in love with this present world, that his desires to chase the fleeting pleasure of this life had become his god.

However, idols will never satisfy, no amount of earthly pleasures or possessions will every satisfy, because idols do not possess the qualities of deity, only God himself does, therefore only He can satisfy. There’s no amount of illicit sex will satisfy, no amount of food, no human relationship, not our children, or our spouse, no amount of money, no amount of earthly security, or medical care, drug or medication will give us relief or peace we seek, nothing. You see, at the heart of idolatry is the belief that God isn’t enough, that what he’s given you isn’t enough, that he’s insufficient, that he cannot satisfy, but that you need something more, which is precisely where coveting steps in.

Mother of all sin

Now, the last observation I want to make this morning before we close is that coveting is the mother of every other sin, that, as one pastor put it, “it’s the sin that carries all the other sins on its back,” that “it’s pregnant with every other sin,” that “all other sins are her offspring.” And what I mean, is that coveting secretly lies behind or underneath every other sin, that behind any violation of the first nine commandments is a violation of the 10th commandment.

We break the first commandment when we covet another god, we break the second commandment when we covet another form of worship, we break the third commandment when take the Lord’s name in vain because we covet gain, we break the fourth commandment when we covet the use of the Lord’s day for our own purposes, we break the fifth commandment when we become dissatisfied with the parents God has given us, we break the sixth commandment when we covet another person’s life, we break the seventh commandment when we covet another person’s spouse, we break the eighth commandment when be covet another person’s stuff, and we break the ninth commandment when we desire to live by lies.

James 4:1-3 rightly says,

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

To some of us, just like the rich young ruler, the ten commandments might appear doable, at least until we reach the 10th commandment which lies at the root of them all. You might think you can easily abstain from worshipping a golden calf or murdering your neighbor, but what about coveting? Can you live free of coveting? You might be able to convince yourself or others that you’re innocent of adultery, murder, or stealing, but when it comes to the 10th commandment it lays the thoughts and intentions of our hearts bare. (Alistair Begg) John Calvin wrote that it “provides God with a sharper lancet for not only sounding the bottom of our heart, but all our thoughts and imaginations. Everything within us becomes exposed and brought to consciousness.”

Which, in turn, teaches us that our obedience to the commandments is intended to be an obedience that comes from the heart. While every other commandment is associated with observable behaviors, the 10th commandment is concerned exclusively with the inward motions of our heart.

Conclusion

Now, as we close, one of my primary aims throughout this series has been to cut you with the law of God, and so I hope I’ve been largely successfully in doing so, because I can certainly attest to the fact that it has cut me throughout my own study of it. If you were here at the beginning of our series you might recall that, as the Apostle Paul put it, the law kills. In fact, it’s supposed to suck all of the air out of your self-righteousness, to make it abundantly clear that you have fallen short, that it’s plain to all that no man will ever be justified by works of the law. Now, this has been my aim for another greater purpose, to drive you to Christ, because while the law has the power to kill it has no power to bring life, it cannot justify you, it cannot forgive you, it cannot save you, but it is intended to drive you to Christ who can forgive you of your sin, who can save you. You see, the law is a schoolmaster that’s intended to drive us to Christ, to cause us to forsake any fantasy or delusion that we can justify ourselves by keeping it, but that on in Christ can we have peace with God.

Therefore, my prayer is that as we wrap up our series on the law that Christ would become all the more precious to us.

Prayer