Sermon Tone Analysis

BE CONTENT       EXODUS 20:17

 

            If you would please turn in your Bibles to the twentieth chapter of the book of Exodus and I want us to look at the last of the Ten Commandments.

I hope you have enjoyed this study and feel like you better understand the Ten Commandments.

I know that I have learned a great deal in my study for this series.

I want to read this last word or pronouncement that the Lord gave the children of Israel in the wilderness before they entered the Promised Land.

Follow along as I read verse 17.

As you look at the Ten Commandments, I have mentioned several times that they can be divided into two tables: one dealing with our relationship with God (Commandment 1 to 4) and one dealing with our relationship with others (Commandment 5 to 10).

Also, I noticed that in these commandments and with the help of commentators and sermons that these commandments have three dimensions to them.

First, there is a Godward (upward) dimension to them.

The first four commands deal with our relationship with God.

In other words, we are to respond to God the way He demands to be worshipped.

Also, the fifth through the tenth command is Godward (upward) because our Heavenly Father tells us how we ought to relate to one another and in so doing shows our love for God.

Another dimension is what you might call an outward focus.

This is something that is tangible and practical.

In other words, you not only love God but you love others the way God instructs us to love others.

The Apostle John in his first letter said how we can say we love God if we are not willing to love others.

So your walk and talk line up, you practice what you preach.

So there is an upward and an outward focus.

Yet, there is a third dimension, which is covered in the tenth commandment and that is an inward focus.

God is not only concerned with our outward actions; He is also concerned with our heart, as well.

Even a pagan understood this.

A tribal chief among the Indonesian people known as the Torajas declared, "I would rather have the 7777 commandments and prohibitions of the Toraja /Adat/ than the Ten Commandments of the Christians, for the Ten Commandments demand my whole heart, whereas the 7777 ancestral commands and prohibitions leave room for a lot of freedom!" [Douma, 352]

            With all this being said, let us look into the tenth commandment.

*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.*

*            *To begin with, the word *"covet" *is used both positively and negatively.

It is a "neutral word" ...that "only when misdirected to that which belongs to another that such 'desire' becomes wrong" [Derek Kidner, /TOTC/, 161].

The Hebrew word /hāmad/ originally meant "be pleasant," expressing "desire, delight in."

But the word further carries the idea of "covet, lust after" [Harris, Archer, Waltke, eds.

/TWOT/, I, 294-295].

In the positive sense, desire or delight is a good translation for this word.

Not all desires are forbidden.

Things like sleep and hunger and thirst can be good because everyone does desire rest and food and drink.

The Bible says in Psalm 68:11 God desires Jerusalem for His abode.

Also, the Psalmists says the Lord’s commands are more to be desired than gold, even fine gold (Psalm 39:10).

But in this context, it refers to “inordinate, ungoverned, selfish desire.”

For example, God commanded the Israelites not to covet the gold adorning idols (Deut, 7:25), to lust after prostitutes (Prov.

6:25), or to covet fields (Micah 2:2, Ex. 34:24).

In verse 17, the command is clearly stated what is meant by coveting.

Again, as with the previous commandment, the use of the term *"neighbor"* reminds us that we are not an island; that we are related to others both in the immediate community of relations and beyond.

God was not forbidding one having a house or a wife or, in that ancient context, a servant or farm animals or other things.

Rather the prohibition involved desiring or longing for what belonged to one's neighbor.

At the heart of this sin is the unwillingness to be content with what God in His kind providence has provided for you.

Brian Edwards has identified a number of common areas of coveting that we find in this commandment [256].

To covet a man's house is to desire his /security/; to want what he has that causes him to feel secure in life.

It might be his literal house or it might be his position in the company or it might even be his family and their standing.

To covet a man's wife is to desire his /marriage/.

That breaks the 7th commandment, and as Jesus warned, even if it is only in the realm of desires we've already committed adultery in our hearts (Matt.

5:27-28).

How many homes have been destroyed that began with what some considered "innocent" daydreaming?

To desire a man's male or female servants is to desire his /leisure,/ since the existence of such servants enabled an ancient to spend time at the city gates in leisure activity.

Is this not an area where we easily succumb to coveting?

We see someone's recreational activities or hear of his travels or see pictures of his trip to some exotic place, and then covet in our own hearts, wishing that it had been us rather than the other.

To covet his ox or donkey is to desire his /wealth, work, and status./

A man in the ancient world was known by the amount of his livestock.

When the prophet Nathan sought to convey a particular image to King David as a rebuke, he compared Uriah to the poor man who had only one little ewe lamb.

Here the longings of the heart to have more things, to have someone else's job, and to achieve a certain standing in society move from sanctified desires to coveting.

Just in case anything might be left out, the Lord added, *"or anything that belongs to your neighbor."*

In other words, coveting or uncontrolled, ungoverned desires can touch any area of life, so we must guard against it.

The Bible is filled with examples of various individuals who have coveted what others had in possessions or experience.

Let me name a few of them.

In 1 Kings 21, there is the story of Ahab and Naboth.

Ahab approached Naboth about his vineyard because it was near the palace.

He offered him money for it or promised to give him another vineyard if he would give him his vineyard for a vegetable garden.

Naboth refused to give Ahab his vineyard because it was the inheritance of his fathers.

Ahab went home and sulked about it, but his wicked wife, Jezebel, devised a plan to help Ahab get the vineyard by lying about Naboth and having him stoned to death.

The story of David and Bathsheba illustrate covetousness.

2 Samuel 11 and 12 tell this story.

David decided to stay home instead of going out to war like the rest of the kings.

One afternoon while on his back deck, he hears a beautiful young lady splashing in her tub and David desires her.

As a result of David’s sin he broke the seventh commandment.

Yet, this night of pleasure backfired because Bathsheba became pregnant and David had to come up with a plan to cover up his sin.

He brought Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, home from war but Uriah remained faithful to David and the men in the army by not going home to be with his wife.

So David had to have Uriah killed which violated the sixth commandment, then he broke the ninth commandment by lying about what he had done.

The prophet Amos proclaims that the merchants of his day were coveting material things.

In chapter 8:4-6, these merchants took advantage of the needy and the poor.

They couldn’t wait until the Sabbath was over to make a profit.

They were deceitful in their deals by having unfair balances.

They had broken the 4th and the 8th commandment.

Jeremiah 17:1-15, tells of the citizens of Judah, who had sinned against the Lord by worshipping idols on high places.

God promised that He would take their material goods and give them to another and they would serve their enemies because they were trusting in themselves.

And their wealth was coming because of injustice.

The people of Judah broke the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 9th commandment.

Today, covetousness is rampant in our society.

Covetousness is never having enough and being discontent with what we have in life.

John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company of Ohio, was once asked by a reporter, “How much money does it take to be happy?”

He replied, “Just a little bit more.”

Let me give you a couple of examples of men who did not have enough.

In 1989, Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, looked across the sand to the small, defenseless nation of Kuwait.

He was fascinated by what he saw: billions of barrels of easily accessible oil, a portfolio of overseas investments valued in hundreds of billions of dollars, and people wallowing in the lap of luxury.

He had a powerful army, while Kuwait virtually had none.

In a matter of hours this treasure was his for a time being.

In the 1930s another dictator named Adolf Hitler began to covet what belonged to his neighbors.

He wanted the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

He wanted the Rhineland.

He wanted the port of Danzig in Poland.

Ultimately, he coveted all of Europe and Russia.

His excuse was not coveting but needing more living space for Germany.

He destroyed cities and villages, homes and factories to get what he wanted and in the end fifty million people were slaughtered by this ruthless dictator.

This was true of Alexander the great, the Romans, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, the Turks, the Spanish empire, Napoleon, etc.

They simply were not satisfied with what they had and wanted what their neighbors had.

In the New Testament, Paul said that it was this sin that led him to see that he was a sinner.