Coveting and Finding Contentment

Kind and merciful God, we come before you this evening, lifting our hearts to you again, praying, O Lord, that by your mercy and the work of your Spirit, you would speak to us the truth of your Word, that we might see it, behold it, love it, that it might be appropriated into our hearts and our lives as it should be. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Friends, we come again in our Heidelberg series to the tenth commandment and the final one in this portion of the catechism. We’ll be looking at the Scripture text from Exodus chapter 20 and verse 17. Just going to read this one verse. Hear the word of the Lord.

“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.”

I took a trip with a few friends last weekend. Kevin mentioned this morning that he goes on a trip with his seminary buddies every year, and they’re at 25 years running. They’re going next weekend. Well, I went with my buddies this past weekend, and we are at 25 years as well, taking a yearly trip together. And we all go up to the Boone and Blowing Rock area each year, and there’s always a highlight every year as we go. And this year was highlighted by the fact that one of our friends had recently leased a Tesla. Not the flying kind of Tesla that you all have seen on X, much to your amazement, but the self-driving kind of Tesla nonetheless. And I’m a little late to the Tesla party, so it’s my first time actually riding in a Tesla. Now, there’s this long and winding road that connects Blowing Rock and Boone and it’s called Shulls Mill Road. And some of you are familiar with this road, Shulls Mill Road. If you’ve ever been on that road, you know what slim margin of error there is for just plunging off the side. I mean, it is razor thin. I took Michelle on Shulls Mill Road one time, and she said, “Never, ever take me on that road again.” So, I doubt I’ll be able to get her back up there. But we were driving this car on Shulls Mill Road, or more precisely the car was driving itself on Shulls Mill Road along those winding mountains. It was quite an exercise of faith and a bit of a thrill. Also was a thrill that apparently acceleration of a Tesla is something like 0 to 60 in about 2.5 exhilarating seconds. And not that we hit 60 miles hour on that road or came anywhere close to that speed, but the whole thing was quite an event. And all of this fun was punctuated by the fact that we needed to drop the Tesla off at a charging station, and when we did, we immediately piled into my 2013 Honda Pilot with 160,000 miles on it and squeaky tie rod ends and 0 to 60 in a whopping 10.5, 11.5 exhilarating seconds. Something interesting happened to me internally when we got in my Pilot. Suddenly, on the heels of my Tesla experience, my contentment with my Honda Pilot took a nose dive, which I’m sure is the exact experience that Elon Musk wants everyone to have when they’ve been in a Tesla. But we’ve all had that experience, haven’t we, of becoming discontent with what we have in comparison to what others might have.

If you’ve kept toddlers in the nursery, you see it on display. One kid is just playing with a toy, perfectly happy with himself and the world around him, and then another kid sits down with another toy, and all of a sudden, I want that one. Now, I should note in passing as we’re thinking about this topic of coveting, that there’s nothing wrong with desiring things. Nothing wrong with desiring a car, a toy, a vacation, those types of things. All of that is natural. But that is different than looking at what others have and thinking, “If only I could have that. If only I could have what they have, then my life would be complete. And of course, friends, we are surrounded with marketing and ads where that’s the message to us, just stoking that desire to look at others and to covet. It’s something innate in all of us. And yet, it’s not always obvious either, as we look into our own hearts.

Well, the goal of this sermon is to help us with that and to look at the solution for coveting, as we look at what the Bible has to say and also what the Heidelberg Catechism has to say about the tenth commandment. You know, it’s interesting that the Heidelberg treats the tenth commandment as almost like a summary of all the other commandments. And you might wonder why that is. It’s because this commandment in particular goes directly to the root of our internal desires. To the root of our internal desires. You know, you could look at each of the commandments beforehand. You could look at the command about murder or adultery or bearing false witness, and you can see that they all originate with our desires within us. And that’s where the tenth commandment places a spotlight, a spotlight on the hidden desires of our hearts and the kind of internal obedience that God requires of us.

So, I’ll read this Q&A in the back of your bulletin just for the sake of time, maybe paraphrase a bit with it. If you look at question 113 where the Heidelberg takes us with this command, it says, “What is God’s will for you in the tenth commandment? It says that not even the least inclination or thought contrary to any of God’s commandments should ever arise in our hearts, but that with our whole heart we should hate the sin and take delight in all righteousness. As you read that, you realize that’s revealing because none of us actually do that. And question 114 acknowledges that. But can the converted to God keep these commandments perfectly? It says no. In this life, even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience. Nevertheless, with all seriousness of purpose, they begin to live according to all, not only some, of God’s commandments. And question 115 drives this home. Since no one in this life can keep the commandments perfectly, why does God want them preached so pointedly? It says, “So that all our life long, we may more and more come to know our sinful nature and thus more eagerly seek the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ. And second, so that we may never stop striving, never stop praying for the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that we may be renewed more and more after God’s image until after this life, we reach our goal: perfection.

And so, we learn that this commandment, perhaps more than any other, has a way of revealing our sin and driving us to Christ. And we see that in the life of Paul, as Dave read his reflection in Romans 7. It’s interesting that Paul cites this commandment as that which drove him to see his sin and drove him to see his need for Christ. It’s that which broke him, we could say. And so, we’re going to look at the revealing nature of this commandment in showing us our sin and showing us our need for Christ, but also God helping us, I want us to look at the small beginnings, as the catechism says, of obedience that can happen as we pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit to be renewed more and more after God’s image, as it says. And so, we come to our outline for this evening, and I promise we’ll move along through these points efficiently. The tenth commandment presses us to personally consider three questions. So, I want you to personally consider three questions for you this evening. Number one, what captivates us? What captivates us? What has our attention in life? What has our attention in life? We’ll see how coveting reveals a wrong focus and preoccupation in our lives. Number two, we consider what controls us. What controls us? We’ll further define coveting and how it manifests and exposes hidden desires within us. And number three, where do we find contentment? Where do we find contentment? And we’ll look at the gospel solution for coveting. What captivates us? What controls us? And where do we find contentment? Those are the questions we’ll consider this evening.

Well, question one, what captivates us? The command deals with what captivates us. Now, we might think simply this is about not looking and lusting after something that belongs to someone else, but it actually goes much deeper than that. And we need to see in context that the tenth commandment is all about the worship of God. The tenth command is all about the worship of God. As the final and last commandment, it forms a book end to the entire table of the Ten Commandments. We see the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, and then the final commandment, you shall not covet. And so, the context tells us that we are dealing with the covenantal identity of God’s people in their worship and devotion to God. God says, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me.” And the tenth commandment closes by dealing with the practical reality of that in our lives. Do you see that? They’re connected. We might even say the tenth commandment is something of a window into our adherence to the first commandment. And so, as it pertains to worship, it deals with what is captivating us – what has our attention, where our preoccupations and our devotions ultimately lie. Are we captivated by God, who has delivered us from bondage, or have our eyes begun to wander to earthly things? That’s the question it presses upon us.

We see this connection also in the New Testament in Colossians 3, where Paul once again addresses coveting. And this is his famous “put off and put on” passage, and it’s interesting how he characterizes coveting in Colossians 3. I’ll start in verse 1. Here’s what he says: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. Why? For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul lays forth these wonderful realities, these captivating realities for the Christian. He says, “We’ve been raised with Christ. We’ve been seated with him. Our citizenship is in heaven. It is above.” And Paul says to set your mind on those realities, on heavenly realities, to look above. And he goes on to say to put to death what is earthly within us. And he cites a number of things including covetousness, which he says is idolatry.

Covetousness is idolatry. Now, it’s interesting that idolatry is the word he uses to describe coveting. We may say idolatry of what? And in context, I think we could say it’s idolatry of earthly things. Idolatry of earthly things. And that means that the sin of coveting reveals how much value we are placing on earthly things. And that is the starting point for coveting. How much value are we placing on earthly things? You may have heard of this vice called avarice. And a vice is something that has hold of us. Avarice is being attached to money or possessions, caring too much about them. They begin to have a grip on our soul. And in our consumeristic culture, it’s so easy for that to happen to us, brothers and sisters. It’s easy to look to possessions for comfort and for ease. They’re just ubiquitous. They’re there. And in one sense, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with the desire for comfort. We all naturally desire to be comfortable. We all want comfortable beds, for example. Michelle and I used to do this thing, and we don’t quite so much do it anymore, but when we’d be on the road, we were looking for hotels and different things like that, and there’s a thing called the heavenly bed. Have y’all heard of the heavenly bed? And we would always be looking, does this hotel have a heavenly bed? They need a heavenly bed, you know? And I don’t know exactly what separated, but apparently it really helped you get a good night’s sleep. So, we all naturally desire things like that. We all naturally desire comfort. But the problem comes when we begin to look to these things for ultimate comfort. Or even more so, and probably more prevalent, when we look to our possessions for status and for security and for value and for meaning and for purpose. We become preoccupied with what we possess, with our stuff. The neighborhood we live in, the house that we live in, the car that we drive, and we read in 1 Timothy 6, that’s part of the folly of the love of money. It’s a snare. It’s a snare.

I remember a time or two being in a wealthy home, and we lived in a bit of a neighborhood where there would be a wealthy street and a middle-class street, wealthy street, middle-class street, and sometimes you go over to the really wealthy street and go into the home, and it seemed like in some of those homes, the primary message was – it was like a museum – just don’t touch anything, right? Don’t touch anything at all. And as an adult, I’ve got a lot more sympathy for that now. But as a kid, and even as I got older, part of you wondered, do they own their house or does their house own them? Which is it? And that’s what happens when we begin to make an idol of our possessions. Our possessions, they come to own us and control us, and that takes us back to the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Now, take that first commandment and couple it with Paul’s instructions to us as believers in Colossians chapter 3, and what we get is this: rather than setting our minds on the things of earth, he says, set your minds on the things above, on heavenly things. And it strikes me, as I said, in our culture especially, that involves the exertion of our will to fix our minds on the things of God through the habits and practices that we have each day. The habit of worship, the habit of reading Scripture as well, to direct our minds, to exert our wills, to focus our eyes and our minds upward on the things of God. It involves the exertion of our will, but also, I think it involves a kind of prayerfulness of spirit – as the catechism says, to seek the Spirit’s help.

Look back in your bulletin at Psalm 119, because it captures this so well, this prayerfulness of spirit. Just look at this, what we just read: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law. Lead me in the path of your commandments. Incline my heart to your testimonies. Turn my eyes away from worthless things.” Confirm to your servant your promises. And elsewhere, “Open my eyes, that I might behold wonderful things from your law.” Just look at the petitions there. Teach me, O Lord. Guide me. Lead me. Incline my heart toward you. I’m prone to just be dwelling and looking at earthly things. Lord, would you incline my heart to you? Just look at the petitions there. What is he asking the Lord to do? What should we be asking the Lord to do? Even as we exert our will, but with a prayerful Spirit, “Lord, would you captivate my heart, O God?” Captivate my heart. This is where this commandment begins.

The tenth commandment is all about what captivates us, but it also presses the question of what controls us. Now think about this, what controls your heart? This is what it addresses. We’ve already said that covetous desires begin with the idolatry of earthly things and how our habits of consumption can be reflective of that, but so can our habits of comparison as well. So, you think of consumption in the first point, comparison in the next point. What is the famous quote? Comparison is the thief of joy. So, coveting – just to further define it – coveting is not just how we see and guard our things, but it’s how we see and desire other people’s things. I think it’s helpful, then, to distinguish coveting from jealousy. Jealousy is guarding what is yours. It’s guarding what is yours. It’s not wanting anyone else to touch it or to take it. But coveting is seeing something that belongs to someone else and wanting to have it for ourselves.

We see in Scripture the most obvious way that we covet is when we covet another person’s possessions. We see that in Exodus. You should not covet your neighbor’s house, your neighbor’s wife, his male servant, female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that’s your neighbor’s. Exodus 5:21 echoes this list. Includes your neighbor’s field, or servants or other belongings. We might be tempted to dismiss this list as archaic, but you can see the modern parallels pretty evidently. You know, house and spouse, that’s obvious. Male servant, female servant, a little less obvious. Ox and donkey. Might wonder how relevant that is. What’s the modern parallel? We might wonder. A lot of you know that I really enjoy cutting the grass in a weird kind of way. Kind of like Forrest Gump, you know. It just does something for me to be out there with my Honda, you know, push mower, and I’ve got a podcast usually or a sermon or theology or sports, something going. And I like doing that. And I’ve noticed in the past few years that my two neighbors on either side, they’ve both purchased zero-turn radius riding lawnmowers, right? And so, even though I like cutting the grass, every now and then they’ll get out there while I’m cutting the grass, and it takes me about two hours, and I’ll notice them zipping in and out of their yards and doing it in 30 minutes. I’ll just kind of look out at them. Sometimes I look out the window at dusk. There’s Justin out there again on his zero-turn radius with about 20 minutes of daylight left because he can cut it in 20 minutes, and I start to compare their experience to mine, what they have versus what I have. He says you shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s field either. You think about that in context. A field was a place of business, a place of productivity back in the day. You might walk out and look at what your neighbor’s – look at what his field produces. What’s going on with that? Why can’t my field produce the way his crop is coming in? And the point is that it’s easy to covet someone else’s prosperity and blessing, is it not? Do you feel that in your heart? It’s easy to covet someone else’s prosperity and blessing, to feel that somehow God has shortchanged us by blessing them. We all feel that. And at that point, we begin to measure God’s love and favor for us or our value and worth by whether we have more than the next guy. And that’s the folly. It’s a folly born of comparison and rivalry.

St. Augustine talks about this as something that’s common to fallen man, what he calls the city of man in his book The City of God. City of man, being in the fallen world, talks about the libido dominandi – Latin term meaning lust for domination. Lust for domination. That’s the condition of the fallen man. As we are turned in on ourselves, love is elbowed out by the lust for power. The lust for power, it’s within all of us. The desire – that is the desire to dominate or to rule over another person. And that’s so often what is behind coveting someone else’s possessions. We need to notice these things about our heart. What is behind coveting their possessions? So many times, it’s a comparison. It’s a sense of rivalry. It’s a desire that we might dominate our neighbors and others.

Similarly, we can also covet someone’s personal qualities. And maybe that’s more of a new thing now. Look no further than social media. We can covet someone else’s looks or their personality or their vibe or whatever it is, their athletic ability or the privileges that they seem to have and showcase in their life. And again, there’s nothing wrong with having a hero. There’s nothing wrong with admiring some personal quality, something that we would aspire to and want to emulate in another person, just admiring their successes and their accomplishments. But the problem comes when, by way of comparison, that becomes a source of discontentment in our own lives, when we are looking at them and coveting their personal qualities. And of course, the folly of this age and the sad reality is what is often presented as someone else’s reality is not in fact reality. Because what is highlighted are strengths, and what is hidden are weaknesses. And friends, that can leave us with a misguided pursuit of the good life, the happy life – the happy life or the good life that might not even exist. And more fundamentally, it can lead us to discontentment with what we have and even to contempt for what we think others have. Do you see how that begins to work itself out in our hearts? When we covet our neighbor’s possessions or personal qualities, we end up envying them rather than doing what God has called us to do, which is to love them. Envy works against love, because it is not just longing for what others have, but it is despising them for having it. It’s where bitterness and hatred of our brother can take root in our hearts, and we see that in Cain and Abel, do we not? It’s not even that we want the blessing. We just don’t want the other person to have the blessing. And so, this commandment, it probes our hearts. It asks us critical questions. What captivates us? What controls us? And that leads us, in keeping with the catechism, to see our need for Christ, to see how we fall short, to see our internal desires and the sin within and to look to Christ for forgiveness and righteousness and to beseech him for the grace to love rather than envy others. That is what God is calling us to.

And that leads us to the gospel solution for coveting. So, what’s the gospel solution for coveting? It is contentment. It is contentment. And so, here’s the question. Where do you and I find contentment? If we can’t find it in the things below, if we can’t find it by looking to our side and comparing ourselves to other people, if we can’t find it by looking at all that we have and trying to accumulate more and more, where do we find contentment? Isn’t that what so many people are asking without even realizing that they’re asking it? Where do you and I find contentment? Just one caveat as we round the corner toward closing: living in contentment does not mean that we are not ambitious. It doesn’t mean that we don’t desire or want things or aspire to accomplish or have things as we’ve said already. But our ambition is to become who God has made us to be, to grow and mature in godliness, to stretch ourselves, to realize our potential, and ultimately to bless others. And friends, when we learn contentment, that is what we are free to do. We no longer treat our possessions as a toy for our amusement, but rather as a tool to bless others. We’re empty-handed as we learn to be content.

And so, how, knowing that we cannot obey this commandment perfectly, do we learn to obey it truly? There’s a number of different places you could go to try and land the plane here, but I love the wisdom and balance of what Paul says in Philippians 4:11-13. Here’s what he says, “For I have learned in whatever situation” – you know this passage – “for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low. I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I’ve learned the secret of facing plenty, hunger, and abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now, think of where you see Philippians 4:13 all the time. Where do you see it? In sporting events, right? In athletic events. And what’s the point as it’s appropriated in that context? So often the point is about accomplishing great things, about winning, about being victorious. But for Paul and for us, Philippians 4:13 is about learning to be content. Do you see that? Notice that Paul is not seeking a condition. He’s not just trying to be in want or to have plenty. He’s experienced both of those conditions. He’s not seeking a condition. Rather, he’s adopting a posture. And the posture is this about his life. The posture is simply this: whatever comes my way in God’s providence, whatever he sends my way, I have learned to be content through Christ who strengthens me.

How do we adopt that posture? As the catechism says, how do we get to a place where we have these small beginnings of obedience? How does that begin to happen in your life, in my life? Well, the first thing I would say is it’s a process. It’s a process. You notice what he says? I have learned to be content. It’s taken time to learn contentment. And so, for you and me, it is a process. Covetous desire is always going to be creeping up in in our hearts, and it’s a process to learn to be content in the face of those desires. How do we learn that through the process? Well, it comes down to a process of repentance, reliance, and rest. Repentance, reliance, and rest. It begins with repentance. Repentance. And again, back to the catechism and what it’s communicating. Recognizing – listen – recognizing honestly where we see covetous desires in our hearts, whether born of rivalry or whether born of looking at our neighbors or someone else and born of envy or just simple restlessness with what we don’t have. It is to let this commandment, this tenth commandment, it’s to allow it to do its work on us, which in part is to show us our sin and show us our need of Christ, to show us the sinful desires of our hearts. Again, taking our cues from the Heidelberg there, to let it bring us to see our need and to lead us to confess our sin and to look to Christ for forgiveness and for righteousness, knowing that none of us can obey this commandment perfectly, though we continually and we turn and look to him who did obey it perfectly. So, we turn to Christ in repentance.

Number two, we learn to rely upon him. We rely upon God. And this begins with the gospel. How do you rely upon God? You begin with the gospel. You rely upon God’s provision of forgiveness and righteousness and strength in Christ. You rely upon God’s provision of forgiveness and righteousness and strength in Christ. And there, friends, out from that we then learn to rest in the rest of our lives with what we have and what we don’t have, to rest in God’s good providence in our lives and to trust his hand of provision. To hearken back to Kevin’s sermon this morning, to learn Paul’s logic, except for this evening to learn the logic of Romans 8:32 and what Dave prayed. Listen to it again. Listen to Paul’s logic here about how we are to think about our lives in light of the gospel. “He who did not spare his own Son but freely gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Do you see the logic there? If God did not spare his own Son, but he freely gave him up for me, how will he not graciously give me all things? What all things? All the things that I need. All the things that I need. And so, resting in God’s provision of Christ enables me to rest in God’s good providence over the rest of my life. Where there is plenty, then, we give him thanks and gratitude. Where there is want, we beseech him, and we trust him. But ultimately, contentment is learned by trusting his fatherly and redemptive purposes, which – listen – hover over our lives. That’s how we learn it. That God’s fatherly and redemptive purposes hover over my life. How do I know that? Because he’s given Christ for me. That’s how I know that. And he watches over me, and he protects me. And so, we learn contentment through repentance, reliance, and rest. Resting in who God is in Christ for me and for you.

And friends, all of this reorients our perspective. It shifts us from the hopelessness of just looking at an earthly horizon to, listen, lifting our eyes to where we see our lives in front of us, but beyond that, before that and above that, we see the eternal horizon that God is calling us to gaze at. And that is what is to captivate our attention and our focus. And so, shifting our focus from seeking meaning and purpose and value by way of consumption or by way of comparison to the things of earth to contemplation of the things of heaven. That is how we learn contentment. Let’s ask the Lord for help in that.

Father in heaven, we do pray that you would lift our eyes, O Lord. Lift our eyes to the things of heaven, the beauty of the gospel, the goodness of the gospel, and your love and care for us in Christ, and your gracious provision for us in our lives. Oh Lord, would you grow us in these things? Would you incline our hearts toward you and lift our eyes toward you? And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.