Description
Understanding the Tenth Commandment: The Danger of Coveting
In this final meditation on the Ten Commandments, we explor… (visit YouTube for more)
Transcript
Our final meditation in the miniseries on the Ten Commandments is the tenth commandment, and it’s all about coveting. Let’s take a look at it. Exodus 20, verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox or his donkey; anything that is your neighbour’s.
And by coveting we mean longing for something that’s not ours or planning even to get it. This is really something that’s going on inside our hearts and God clearly shows by this tenth commandment that he’s interested in the state of our hearts.
He wants us to be content with the things that he’s allowed us to have, because he’s the God who’s providing all these things for us. And if we are coveting other things, we’re actually saying to God, you haven’t given me enough. You’ve done your job badly. I want more.
So it starts with an offense against God, but then it’s also an offense towards other people. And God tells us clearly through his moral law and through the Commandments, to love him and to love people. We should not be wanting things from other people that are theirs and not ours, whether that be property or relationships or position or entitlement.
There’s room here to talk about jealousy too, isn’t there: this sense that we really don’t want somebody to have that thing, that position, that possession. We would rather have it. We want it to be ours. We can’t settle for somebody else having something that we don’t have.
God wants our hearts first and foremost to be seeking him. Like if we seek God first, then everything else falls into place. We don’t start longing for things that it’s not right for us to have.
God, we do want to be people who please you. We want to please our Father, and we ask that as we’ve accepted Jesus into our hearts and His Holy Spirit is working within us, that you transform us, that you make us pure, that you help us to be content with the things that you have provided to us, knowing that you are a good Father who gives good things to his children. Thank you Lord. Amen.
