Serve Your Neighbor

Ninth and Tenth Commandments

Serve Your Neighbor

This summer we have been walking through all Ten Commandments, mining the depths of what they are saying and how they serve us. This evening we wrap them up with the Ninth and Tenth Commandment.

Exodus 20:17 ESV

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.”

Let us pray: These are Thy words, O Lord. Help us, and sanctify us in the truth; Thy word is truth. Amen.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, desire is not evil, but God-given.

Coveting is desiring something to which you have no right, something that belongs to someone else. Covetousness is at the heart of sins against all the Commandments. It is the last commandment because it deals with the inner attitude, which leads to violations of all the others. As Jesus clearly said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Mt 15:19).

Covetousness is rooted in selfishness. We want what we want, and we don’t care who gets hurt or left out in the process. Happiness is our right, and we will get it.

I read that in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that each person had inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of possessions. In subsequent reviews, the wording was changed to the pursuit of happiness.

Yet our society has indeed come to identify the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of possessions. We think we will be happy if we have one more thing.

I ran across a story not long ago about three couples in one community who struggled to earn enough to build nice homes in a nice part of town. Within months, all three marriages fell apart. Their pursuit of a nice home had cost them their marriages. Perhaps they were unhappy in their original home and thought a new home would make them happy.

We recognize this pursuit in children. Buy them a new toy, and they are bored with it after a few hours. We see it in drug addicts. The first high is easy, but then they need more and more until it kills them. The recognition of pursuit for possessions or for pleasure is not peculiar to Christianity. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus put it this way: “If you want to make a man happy, add not to his possessions but take away from his desires.”

Some religions try to shut off all human desires. It’s the solution offered by ancient Stoicism, by Buddhism, by asceticism. But God built desires into our very being. Ambition is not evil. Scripture urges us to “earnestly desire the higher gifts” (1 Cor 12:31). St. Paul urges the Corinthians to “earnestly desire to prophesy” (1 Cor 14:39). He urges the Romans to “not be slothful in zeal, [but] be fervent in spirit” (Rom 12:11).

You should have ambition, no matter how young or old you are—it gives you energy and purpose. There’s nothing wrong with desiring to be rich, but work for it. Don’t desire to get what you have not earned, what you have not worked for, what you have gotten in an unworthy way.

When desire is focused inward instead of outward, we break the Ninth and Tenth Commandments.

In our Lord’s parable of the rich fool (Lk 12:16–21), the farmer was not wrong to produce a huge harvest. He was not wrong to build big barns to store the crops. But HE WAS WRONG to call them “my crops” (v 17), “my grain and my goods” (v 18). As Jesus said in the parable, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully” (v 16). God blessed him. God entrusted the crops, the grain, and the goods to him. God was trusting that he would use these blessings properly. They were not given for his selfish enjoyment but were gifts to use with responsibility and accountability.

Instead, the rich man thought only of himself. He did not think of the needs of others, nor of God’s kingdom. Instead, he said to himself, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry” (Lk 12:19). He was not wrong to retire. He was not wrong to “be merry.” God wants us to enjoy life. He wants to give you heaven. He offers it to you. Jesus said, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn 6:40).

Even now you have “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil 4:7). Even now you have “all things” (Rom 8:32). You have no right to them. You have rebelled and failed and disobeyed. All the Commandments have reflected this. Yet the guilt for your sin has been nailed to Jesus’ cross. He rose in victory, and he takes you to be his own now and for all eternity.

Heaven is where we will have the life for which our heavenly Father created us, in all its fullness and joy. We eagerly desire it, though we have no right to it. He eagerly desires to have us there at his side for all eternity. It is his joyful gift to us by grace.

Because Christ Fulfills the Law for Us, We Gain All Things through Him.

The foolish rich man in the parable desired the wrong thing. He coveted what was foolish and temporary and selfish. “God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ” (Lk 12:20). He foolishly forgot that he would one day have to give an account of his life and his possessions to God. Jesus concludes the parable by saying, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (v 21).

Christ fulfills the Law for us, we can serve him and our neighbors.

The man was not wrong to desire wealth. He was wrong to covet. He was wrong to think that he had a right to it, that it was his to do with as he pleased. His life was oriented around the wrong center, focused on the wrong goal. When our lives have the wrong center, when we are focused on the wrong goal, we are tempted to covet what belongs to our neighbor—what the Ninth and Tenth Commandments warn against.

As Luther explains the Ninth Commandment, “We should fear and love God so that we do not scheme to get our neighbor’s inheritance or house, or get it in a way which only appears right” (Luther’s Small Catechism, p. 15). And the Tenth Commandment, “We should fear and love God so that we do not entice or force away our neighbor’s wife, workers, or animals, or turn them against him” (Luther’s Small Catechism, pp. 15). As in the other Commandments, the accent is on the positive attitude of serving one’s neighbor, “help and be of service to him,” and again, “urge them to stay and do their duty.”

The foolish rich man in the parable had gained the whole world but lost his own soul (Mt 16:26). He was trying to serve God and money (Mt 6:24). St. John wrote, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn 2:15).

What do you eagerly desire in life?

Where is your focus?

What proceeds from your heart?

Where are you looking for happiness?

Whom or what are you trying to serve?

Do you live for others?

What is your ambition and passion in life?

Are your energies directed toward helping and serving others?

There is no contentment or meaning or eternity in relationships with things. It is only in relationships with others, and primarily with God, that the real purpose of life is found.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.