THE TEST OF CHARACTER
RENDERING OF EXODUS 20 : 17
Exo 20:17; Romans 13:9
The last and tenth Word of the Decalogue is in one way radically different from those that have preceded it: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, wife, manservant or maidservant or ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbour.” All the preceding Commandments have forbidden overt acts but this one cuts right through to inner attitudes. This is an issue of contentment and thankfulness and it links to the earlier Commandment of developing trust in God for His provision. Breaking any of the other nine Commandments will sooner or later be spotted by others, but the Tenth Commandment may be broken without another person being aware of it. The issue it deals with is that of covetousness. But what is covetousness? The word covet means to strongly desire something that belongs to someone else. This can become a dangerous downward path. When we covet something that God has not provided, it can, in turn lead to resentment of God. Does that mean when I see a friend with a model of car that I myself would like to possess, I am guilty of coveting? No. What about when I see painting on the wall of a neighbour’s house and I want to get one like that? Is that coveting? No.
Covetousness occurs when the object desired is out of reach and it continues to burn in my heart demanding some kind of action. This is greed at its worst. The whole force of the Commandment lies in the words your neighbour’s. It is not wrong to desire a wife, a manservant or maidservant or ox, it becomes wrong if one desires to take it from someone else. So there is a difference between desiring something and coveting it. Without desire, human life would no doubt be impoverished. Our desire for social approval makes us wash our face and comb our hair. Our desire for respect leads us to be careful about the things we do and the way we behave. Buddha taught that desire itself was the source of all evil in the world and he claimed that if we eliminate all desire we would eliminate all evil – Nirvana. But we don’t believe it is desire that is wrong. It is inordinate desire, the desiring of that which is unlawful. It is not wrong to desire a house, wife, a servant, a painting, a car, but it is wrong to continue to be driven by the things our neighbour possess when there is just no way we can legitimately have those things for ourselves. Desire passes into covetousness when it runs rampant over our own reason and the right of others. You see when desire passes into covetousness it then has within it the potential to kill, steal or lie in order to get what it wants. It is the attitude that says: “I want what I want and I don’t care what I have to do to get it.”
One fables tells of a man who killed a goose that laid golden eggs. The story concludes with this moral: “Much wants more and losses all.” That is the consequences of covetousness. It stops at nothing to get what it wants and breaks so many laws of conscience on the way to getting it that it finishes up by not wanting what it gets. When we can learn to trust in God for His provision, we arrive at a place of contentment and contentment overcomes covetousness. This instruction covering covetousness identifies the presence of greed in our hearts in a way that is sharp and powerful. We have already noted that when we covet something that God has not provided, it can in turn lead to resentment of God. Equally when we desire something more than our relationship with God, it can soon become an idol. This is the point Paul is making in Romans 7:7-13 when in his great argument on the relationship of the law to sin. He says:” I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said do not covet.” Paul is highlighting for us that sin is so deeply hidden within the recesses of our being that we would not be able to recognise it if God’s law did not reveal it. Sin is present in every life, revealed by the desire to possess unreachable things. And this is only really unearthed when God says:” You shall not covet.”
People sometimes say about this Commandment: ”But it is impossible to prevent covetousness becoming desire.” This very statement emphasizes the condition of humanity and shows why the law was given. Well will it be when we allow God to search our spirit that we might be drawn to Him who alone is able to deal with the darkest recesses of our nature. Do we sometimes wonder was the command prohibiting covetousness kept to the last because it was the least of all the Commandments? Not so. It is in fact, probably the most far-reaching and comprehensive of them all. Covetousness affects every part of our lives. It makes people greedy and causes them to steal. It drives people to ignore the needs of others and trample on their rights. In some cases covetousness will even kill in order to get what it wants. It gives rises to the unbridled lust that pushes people into adultery and betrayal. And it breaks down trust between individuals, causing people to lie about themselves and each other.
Covetousness destroys the bloom and beauty of those characteristics which Paul calls the fruits of the Spirit. Turning love to hate, joy to sorrow, peace to heartache, longsuffering to impatience, kindness to cruelty, generosity to misery, faithfulness to infidelity, meekness to arrogance and self-control to indiscipline and self-indulgence. A damaged spirit that makes false witness possible is motivated by a covetous aspiration far more often than is perhaps apparent at first. The last of God’s Ten Words, covetousness proves not only that the soul is out of sync with God, but also that it is dissatisfied with Him. His first word and the last word are very closely linked and all those in between are conditioned by them. If a person has no other God but Jehovah Elohim, the God who is there, then they will desire nothing other than that which God supplies. This last Commandment brings every man and woman who honestly faces it to the place of dependency. It may be that as we have examined the nine other Commandments we have a measure of intactness and integrity still left, but in the light of this last Word, who can claim guiltless? There are perhaps many people reading this lines who can look at some of the Ten Commandments like “You shall not murder” and say “I am not guilty.” But is there anyone anywhere in the world who can say they have never coveted what someone else has instead of trusting in God. And covetousness does not just stop at possessions: it can include the gifts or position another has too.
PHIL 4 : 11 - 13
Jesus is the only one who can take us from covetousness to contentment. And He does it by helping us to learn to trust in Him. When the apostle Paul was under house arrest in Rome, chained to a Roman soldier, he shared how he had learned, as the Puritan writer Jeremiah Burroughs put it, the secret of that rare jewel of Christian contentment: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” How did he do this? : “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength (Phil 4:13).