Discover The Word

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17).

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Deuteronomy 5:21).

IDEA: Covetousness is a strong desire that plans and then acts to get what we don’t have.

PURPOSE: To help listeners discern between legitimate and illegitimate desires.

Do you think that definitions can serve good purposes or bad purposes?

For example, if someone says, “What do you mean exactly by ‘stealing’?” what comes to your mind?

We’re dealing with the tenth commandment which says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Do you think that someone could ask “what is coveting” for self-serving reasons?

I. We can define “you shall not covet” too narrowly or too broadly.

What is the danger of defining it too narrowly?

What is the danger of defining it too broadly?

II. John Calvin and others point out that there are four stages of desire:

We can be caught off-guard by immoral desire.

For example, you’re in a difficult situation and you’re tempted to tell a lie. Have you thus sinned?

We can continue to nurse that immoral desire.

You’re thinking about lying and how it would get you out of a jam even though you know you ought not do it. Is this necessarily sin?

We can set our will on that desire and develop a plan to satisfy that desire.

We can work up a story that isn’t true in order to shift responsibility to someone else. Is this necessarily sin?

We translate that desire into a deed.

We tell a lie. Is this necessarily sin?

III. Let’s apply these four stages of desire to the tenth commandment and see where we would determine that we had actually turned the corner into sin.

Look again at the four stages:

We are caught off-guard by a desire for someone else’s automobile.

We keep thinking about getting that automobile.

We could begin to think about how we might steal that automobile and get away with it.

We steal the automobile that we desire.

At what stage do you think the tenth commandment is broken?