Howdy!
Well, here is the last of the ten. The LORD in His wisdom has saved the heart of obedience (no pun intended) for the end. Out of all the laws we’ve covered this one is the only commandment to not have a civil or penal judgment attached to it. You cannot go to jail for coveting. No one is coming to place a ticket on your car’s windshield for desiring to keep up with the Jones’s. While the first four have to do primarily with our relationship with God and the next five are about how we treat our neighbor, in an important way the 10th command is about ourselves. There is something very personal about the law.
Here are the Catechism questions for the week to expand on that:
Q. 79. Which is the tenth commandment?
A. The tenth commandment is, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.
Q. 80. What is required in the tenth commandment?
A. The tenth commandment requires full contentment with our own condition, with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor, and all that is his.
Q. 81. What is forbidden in the tenth commandment?
A. The tenth commandment forbids all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to any thing that is his.
Coveting is a concept that at first glace (or really no matter how many times you look at it) is not that hard to understand. Like many of the laws of God we make them seem more complicated than they need to be for reasons of giving us excuses for not listening. It’s that little Pharisee in us that tries to act wiser than the Divine Being whose very character the law is reflecting. Simply put the 10th Commandment is about being thankful. It’s the life verse of the Apostle Paul:
“Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
In some ways no other statute of God is going to make you more spiritually and mentally miserable than breaking this one. In fact, it could be argued that violating the 10th is what leads men and women to get in a bad way with all the other ones. The reason why the Lord was (and is) so insistent that Israel stay away from the other nations and not want what they want is that our natural inclination is similar to the scorpion and a turtle. We know the scorpion is going to sting us. He does it every time, yet when given the choice to let him ride on our back across the wide river what do we do? Convince ourselves this is the one time out of a hundred he will just want to get to the other side no questions asked, and then we sink because the scorpion is a scorpion. So why do we do it? Why do we give in to sin’s demands if we know the result? It all goes back to the law that closes out the second table. We take our eyes off the goodness of what we have been given in Christ and look at what the Canaanite is doing and want some of that. Consider again the story of Lot and Lot’s wife. How would you like to be known as someone’s wife for all eternity? No name, just a pillar of salt. Well, she ended up in that position because she did not have contentment in what God’s providence had wrought in her life. Though the question might come, what does her looking back have to do with contentment? You see that word is not really about just being okay with where things are at. I mean I doubt Lot’s wife wanted to go back to a burning, destroyed mess of a city. It’s all about where we are in Christ. It’s about understanding that we walk by faith and not by sight. That we trust in the sufficiency of His grace and His purpose. Contentment has nothing to do with anyone else but you and Jesus. That’s why coveting is so destructive. It says that the work that God is doing in the life of the other around you is what you want for yourself, rather than recognizing that the Heavenly Father who made the heavens and the earth has not forgotten or forsaken His work in your life. He has your hairs numbered, your steps marked, and your eternal destiny His hands. Who are we to doubt His provisions for us personally? To desire what is not ours to have is to call God a liar and a cheat. We must cultivate in our times of devotion and prayer a heart which is at peace, but not just that, a heart which is joyful, not in a fuzzy fake way, but is understanding of the big picture of who King Jesus is for us as His Bride.
Another life verse of Paul is apropos here:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
You see every jot and tittle of the law was given by God for our benefit. We who humble ourselves before the LORD must remember that. The call not to covet means recognizing the love of Jehovah for us, reminding ourselves that all other things are sinking sand, but the blessings of Christ is our rock, never to be moved by the waves and winds of temporal life.
Here is another word on the matter:
https://www.reformation21.org/blog/the-key-to-contentment
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church