The Tenth Commandment, Part 2

Aaron Feil | Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Copyright © 2018, Aaron Feil

Review

Tonight we come to the second and final week of our teaching on the tenth commandment and to the conclusion of this series on the Decalogue.

As we’ve been considering God’s law, we’ve found that the first great purpose of God in giving it to us is to show us our utter sinfulness in light of God’s holiness, to lead us to say, as we just sang, “Not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law’s demands; could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone” (from Rock of Ages).

It is through the law that we are cut to the heart and cry out, “What must I do to be saved?” and hear the glorious answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”  The first work of the Law is to lead us to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It was God the Father who sent Jesus Christ to redeem us and the Holy Spirit to apply this redemption to each elect believer so that we may now live a new life, a life of holiness and obedience to him.  And, therefore, for the believer, the Law, which previously declared our condemnation, has now become for us the sum and expression of God’s holy commands for his people to obey in order to please him in every aspect of life.

Last week, we began our consideration of the tenth commandment: “Thou shalt not covet.”  We first said that the foundation of this commandment is God’s abiding interest in the heart: that God demands holiness in all our thoughts and affections, and in all our imaginations and motives.  We considered what this commandment prohibits, specifically coveting, discontentment, and envy, and how we can test for these.  And, lastly, we concluded that there is only one cure for coveting: God must save us, for apart from God saving us, our hearts are a factory of evil desires.

Thus, God must take the guilt of every one of those sinful, evil thoughts and place it on Jesus Christ. And in place of our wicked, depraved heart, he must give us a new heart and a new spirit—one that now loves what God loves and hate what God hates.

Formerly we were dead in our sins and thus unable to truly obey God in the tenth commandment. But now, having been made alive in Christ, we have been given a new desire and a new capacity to obey and glorify him in this commandment.

The question now before us is this:  How do we as Christians keep these new hearts and new minds ordered and oriented toward holy affections and desires while sin still remains in us and as we live in a sinful fallen world?  How do we, as a new creation, now honor God through a sincere and whole-hearted obedience to all that is represented by the tenth commandment?

Tonight we want to summarize some of the vital means that God has provided that we might no longer dishonor him by violating the tenth commandment but, rather, that we may now honor him with all of the motions of our heart.

It is our Lord Jesus Christ who comes to us saying, “My grace is sufficient.” This is a very sweet promise, but it is also, in another sense, a command for us to make use of the various means of grace.  Therefore, let us now consider eight vital means which God gives us that we may honor him with this commandment.

1. We must fear God

First, we can say that if we would forsake coveting and honor God with all our heart, we must fear God.  He is the living God who see all things. He is not just an idle spectator; he sees and acts. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who is described in Revelation as one with eyes like blazing fire, piercing through all pretense as he walks among the churches and says over and over again, “I know your deeds.” To this can be added that not only does he know our deeds, but he also knows our hearts, our desires, our imaginations, and our thoughts.  David acknowledged this in Psalm 139:2: “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.”

Therefore, if we would resist coveting and fight against any evil desires which look to take root and grow in our hearts, then we must fear the Lord from the heart.

It was the fear of the Lord that kept Joseph from violating the tenth commandment. He said [to Pothiphar’s wife], “How can I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9).

The Puritan Richard Sibbes said, “God counts it an honor when we regard his all-seeing eye so much that we do not take liberty in what is offensive to him, not even in our hearts.”

If we would have things go well with us, the fear of the Lord, not the love of the things of this world, must reside in our hearts. In Deuteronomy 5:29, God joins together the fear of God, obedience, and blessing when he says: “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!”

The good man has a high and true view of the living God residing in his heart. And, therefore, from this heart comes a fear and reverence for this God that protects him from embracing evil desires.  On the other hand, the heart of the covetous man is not oriented toward God but toward the world. Therefore, as Jesus said in Matthew 15, out of the overflow of such a heart comes evil thoughts. But Christians have new hearts, hearts which we must guard with the fear of the Lord, for it is the fear of the Lord that keeps us from sinning.

May we pray according to Psalm 86:11, “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”

2. We must live by faith

The fear of the Lord leads us into our second point. For if we would fear God, this means we must live by faith.  The man who has set his heart to honor God in the tenth commandment is a man of faith.  We must live Coram Deo, before the face of God, and this can only be accomplished by faith. We must bring God into the picture, saying with Job:  “Does he not see my ways and count my every step?”

As Christians, if we would guard against falling into coveting and honor God with all our desires, we must be constantly exercising faith.  It was this truth that prompted the Apostle Paul, when writing to the Corinthians to say in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “Walk by faith, not by sight.” You see, while we may be saved and therefore are journeying through this fallen world to the presence of our God, we must acknowledge how easy it is to turn aside, to set aside our eyes of faith and once again take up, in some measure, the eyes of the world, eyes which 1 John 2 are described as full of cravings and lusts.

Thus, the fight to honor God in the tenth commandment is a fight of faith. Here God puts forward Moses as our example to follow.  As the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he was surrounded by the temptation to covet and obtain the pleasures of this world.  And yet we read in Hebrews 11 that it was Moses’ great faith in God that caused him to forsake the pleasures of sin and the treasures of Egypt because by faith he was looking ahead to his reward.  So we need to arm ourselves with the same shield of faith that Moses used. We need to heed Peter’s exhortation in 1 Peter 2:11 to consider ourselves as aliens and strangers in this world and therefore abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against our souls.

3. We must sanctify our heart and affections, love the heavenly, not the worldly, and avoid wrong values

The third way we honor God in the tenth commandment is to sanctify our heart and affections, so that we would love things that are heavenly, not worldly.  Our fundamental problem when we fall into coveting is that we are putting the wrong value on things. We are seeing the things of God as worth little and seeing the dust and even garbage of the world as highly valuable.

Satan certainly works hard toward causing us to do this.  Richard Sibbes said, “By the spirit of illusion, Satan makes worldly things appear bigger to us, and the spiritual things lesser than indeed they are, and our affections are misled.”

I am sure the children here have heard the story of Esau trading away his valuable birthright for a bowl of soup. I am sure they rightly thought how stupid Esau was for doing that. But when we break the tenth commandment by setting our hearts on some sinful thing, we have already started to follow Esau’s example by valuing little our spiritual inheritance and placing great value on what the world offers. Then, having had our heart corrupted and led astray, it only remains for an opportunity to come about where we actually make the terrible exchange, selling the valuable to obtain the worthless, trading away heavenly treasure for the passing pleasures of this world.

The exhortation is that we must sanctify our heart and affections, that we would place the right value on things, and that we would love the God who has saved us and hate everything that would draw us away from him.  As Paul said in Colossians 3, we need to set our hearts on things above where Christ is seated and set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.

The world is obsessed with its pursuits and pleasures. But Jesus Christ warns us in Luke 21:34, “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation.” James warns us in James 1:27 to be careful to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world.

As the children of God, we are now new creations, and therefore we are to be putting to death our old man. We are to be characterized by thinking God’s thoughts after him.  Ephesians 4:22–23 says, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds.”

As a way of protecting us against the dangers of evil desires, God commands us in Philippians 4:8, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Thus, we need to consider what is it we value—what we are holding on to. For the covetous man, he clings to the world. It is as if he is in his little boat on the open sea which he has loaded with worldly goods and pleasures while taking no thought of the dark storm clouds on the horizon that are about to bear down on him and bring disaster.

Therefore, the command to sanctify our hearts can be likened to taking any heavy weight of sin or burdensome cargo of worldliness and dumping it into the sea as Paul’s sailing companions did on their way to Rome (Acts 27).  In this regard, the Puritan Thomas Lye said, “A believer’s enjoyments are never so great or precious that they cannot be thrown overboard rather than hazard the wreck of faith or a good conscience.”

This word is particularly important for fathers and husbands, for in your vessel you bear more than just yourself. May our chief concern not be to load our vessel with the things of this world, but rather to ensure that Jesus Christ is in our boat and the Lord of it. If Jesus Christ is with us, we have all that we need to have a happy and safe voyage.

4. Consider the outcome of the covetous man, the wealthy man

The fourth means God will provide to protect us from coveting is to consider the life of the covetous man. There are many examples recorded in Scripture for our warning.  The covetous man’s life is a life of misery and destruction.

Achan coveted the devoted things in Jericho, and both he and his family were destroyed.  Korah and his followers coveted the priesthood, and they and their families were destroyed.  Saul broke the tenth commandment and let envy take him over, leaving him miserable and demon-stricken, and, ultimately, he and his family were destroyed.

David coveted Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, which led to adultery, murder, and God’s great judgment coming on David and his family.  David’s son Absalom coveted the kingship of his father, launching a takeover before he was ultimately cut down.  And as our Pastor recently spoke of, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, coveted Naaman’s riches. As a result, he and his family were cursed forever.

In the New Testament, we recall the parable of the rich man in Luke 16. This covetous man loved the world but neglected the things of God. So we see him in hell, in agony, begging for a moment’s relief.  Ananias and Sapphira sold their land but they coveted part of the proceeds, so they lied to the Holy Spirt and were both killed by God on the same day.  Then there was Demas. He was a companion of the apostle Paul. Yet, in time, because he loved this present world, he departed from Paul, shipwrecked his faith, and was eternally destroyed.

There are also many stories that convey the double misery of coveting and envy—the coveting and envy causes misery—and acting upon these evil desires greatly adds to the misery. We see this first with Cain. He was miserable in his envy—his face was downcast. Then he greatly added to his misery when he experienced God’s great judgement for the murder of his brother, which grew out of his envy.  Amnon, David’s son, sinfully coveted his sister Tamar. In fact, he was thoroughly miserable in his desire. But, ultimately, he was destroyed when he acted upon that sinful desire.  King Ahab had all of the worldly benefits of being a king. Yet he remained miserable because he coveted Naboth’s vineyard. Though he ultimately obtained it through murder, Ahab ended in misery with God striking him down in the battle of Ramoth Gilead and condemning him to hell. So we see with such people the double misery of coveting. They are miserable in their desiring and miserable in their obtaining what they desired.

All of these stories are recorded by God in Scripture for our sober warning. God is graciously saying to us, “Look!  Look at the great danger of evil desires left to grow. Look at the life of the covetous man. It is a miserable life, a miserable end, and a miserable eternity.”

God makes it clear in Scripture that God is determined to turn the covetous man’s feasting into weeping and his wealth to ashes.  In the book of Proverbs, God says that he thwarts the cravings of the wicked, that envy rots the bones, and that the hopes of the wicked come to nothing.  In the New Testament, God warns repeatedly of the corrupting influence of evil desires.

May we be sobered and take warning from the tragic lives and outcomes of the covetous as recorded in Scripture.  While we can certainly say that a true child of God who falls into coveting will never be eternally condemned, we cannot think that we can drink of the cup of coveting and avoid partaking of its bitter miseries as an expression of God’s fatherly displeasure.

May these gracious warnings from our God spur us on to zealously guard against the corrupting and deceiving influences of evil desires. They bring such great harm and destruction, not only on those who take the lead in such sin, but, as we see in history, they can have terrible effects on those who are closely related to them.

5. Look to Jesus Christ who died to deliver us from sin

Our fifth means to fight against the corrupting influence of coveting is to look to Jesus Christ.  The person who falls into coveting in not looking to Jesus Christ but to the world and therefore our safety lies is fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12).  May we be caught up with considering the greatness of Christ’s redeeming love. He came to die in our place to deliver us from our sin; thus, may our hearts be full of the love for Christ that would allow no room for love of the world.

God commands us in Romans 13:14 is, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

Our minds are to be set on Jesus Christ—on his person and his work, and on the commands he has given and the grace he provides. When we do so, it will protect us against gratifying the desires of the sinful nature.

The Puritan Thomas Case said, “If we fill ourselves with the world, the less we will delight in Christ.”  The reverse can also be said, that the more we delight in Christ, the less we will hunger for the world.  While we can rightly say of the world, “Vanity, vanity,” this can never be said of Jesus Christ. In fact, the opposite was said of Christ: “Out of his fullness we have received grace upon grace” (see John 1:16).  We need Jesus Christ.

But here a warning is needed.  We find in John 6 people who were seeking Jesus Christ earnestly. In fact, when he traveled to the other side of the lake during the night, in their determination, the people sought him there the next day.  But they were not seeking him as their Savior and Lord and they were not seeking him to receive grace upon grace as we just spoke of. They were seeking him for stuff. Jesus himself said that they were seeking him for food that spoils, not for food that endures to eternal life (John 6:26–27).  James warns us of this: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (Jas. 4:3).

May we be delivered from seeking Jesus to get stuff, as a means of having our covetous desires met.  Rather, may Jesus Christ himself, he of whom it was said to be the Desire of Nations, be our heart’s desire. He who loved us so much that he gave his life for us—may he now be the object of all of our love, so that, when the world comes along looking to draw us, as the bride of Christ, away from our heavenly bridegroom, we will refuse, saying, “I have found the one my heart loves” (Song of Songs 3:4).

6. Walk by the Word and Spirit

The sixth means by which we fight against coveting is walking by the word and the Spirit.  These two great means of grace, the word and the Spirit, are essential if we are to wage a successful war against coveting and sinful desires.

First, we must constantly wield the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, to fight against evil desires and temptations that assail us.  David said in Psalm 119:11, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” If we would fight against sin in our hearts, we must store up and meditate on God’s word in our hearts. We need to remember the example of our Lord Jesus Christ as he resisted Satan’s temptation; he met each attack with, “It is written.”

C. H. Spurgeon, when speaking of his own conversion, said that the newly regenerated believer is like a man who takes out his sword and throws away the sheath. It is the picture is of a man in perpetual combat. He has the sword of the Spirit in hand and is constantly on guard to parry a blow from an enemy and send him fleeing. This is a particularly effective illustration when we consider the sins that the tenth commandment speaks to—evil desires, lusts, sinful imaginations and thoughts—as these often seem to spring up and attack us without warning.

May our minds be prepared for action with the word of God, the sword of the Spirit. May we not in our laziness or arrogance return our sword to its sheath but may we constantly wield it by God’s grace to protect ourselves from the attack of evil desires.

If we are to successfully use the Word of God to fight against coveting, we need the Holy Spirit.  When it comes to evil desires, Scripture makes it clear that we are at war.  Peter tells us to “abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). And in 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul tells us to take every thought captive.

To wage a successful war against evil desires, we need the Holy Spirit.  Paul writes, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want” (Gal. 5:16–17).  We are not to get drunk on the wine of worldliness, but, instead, as we are commanded in Ephesians 5, we are to be filled with the Spirit. It is God the Holy Spirit who dispenses divine power into the life of the believer to make all of these means of grace effectual.

Finally, I would point out the critical importance of fighting evil desires with the word and the Spirit at the earliest moment.  Using the warfare analogy again, our enemy the devil uses evil desires to establish a beach-head on the shores of our heart. He seeks to create this sinful foothold from which he launches further attacks in our thinking, affections, and, ultimately, our words, actions and decisions.  But for those who are familiar with military history, you are aware that the key to defeating an amphibious assault on your shores is to attack it with maximum violence at its initial onset. When the invader is just coming onshore, he is at his weakest and most vulnerable. At this point, he must be met, attacked, and cast back into the sea.

This is what we must do when sinful desires seek a foothold on the shores of our heart. Here we must say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions. Having hidden God’s word in our hearts, it is in our hearts we must say, “It is written.” Here we must be filled with the Spirit so that we can fight with all the strength he provides.  Oh, how vital it is to kill these sinful desires at their earliest moment and not let their strength grow and their influence spread!  So may we fight these sinful desires with word and Spirit, saying, “In the name of the Lord, I cut them off” (Ps. 118:10).

7. Trust in who God is—in his sovereignty, wisdom, and goodness. Doing so results in contentment.

The seventh means of honoring God in the tenth commandment is to trust in God—trust in his sovereignty, wisdom, and goodness.  As we said last time, coveting and discontentment are two sides of the same coin. We sinfully grasp for what God has prohibited because we sinfully find fault with what he has provided. Therefore, our defense against grumbling and restless discontentment is to ground ourselves in the nature and character of God

Martin Luther said to Philip Melanchthon, “Let infinite wisdom, power and love alone.” This is what we need to do. We need to rest in the infinite wisdom, power, and love of God instead of foolishly and arrogantly thinking we know better and then grumbling and complaining against God and the ways he has chosen. We need to exalt God’s power and wisdom while taking a very low view of our own. And we need to recognize that as his children, he loves us far better than we love ourselves.

We need to learn from the apostle Paul’s example, where, in Philippians 4:11 he says, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” Paul was able to say this because he knew his God and that his grace was sufficient for all his needs.

Paul gives us one of the great truths that he used to rest in God’s grace and be content when he said in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”  So when we are suffering and tempted to be discontent, we need to go back to this glorious argument from the greater to the lesser. We need to anchor our self to it, that God has given us his Son, his indescribable gift, and therefore we can be assured that every lesser need will be provided according to his wisdom and goodness and love. Therefore we have every reason to rest and be content in God’s provision.

The author to the Hebrews speaks to this topic of contentment in Hebrews 13:5, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Here God gives us a direct command to flee from the love of the world and be content. Then he gives this mighty, glorious reason, saying, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” Matthew Henry described this as the sum and substance of every promise in the Bible.  God is saying, “Don’t love the world. Be content with what I give you because above all, I have given you myself, I am your shield and your very great reward.”

As we go through this fallen broken world, with all its difficulties and troubles, may we trust in God, in his infinite wisdom, power and love. And may we not grumble at what God has given us as we grasp for what the world offers, but may we be content in every circumstance because he is our God and we are his people. He will never leave us nor forsake us.  May we say with the prophet Habakkuk, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior” (Hab. 3:17–18).

8. Above all else, guard your heart

Our final means of honoring God with the tenth commandment is found in the great command from Proverbs 4: “Above all else, guard your heart.”

Under this concluding header, I want to make six brief points.

First, we are commanded to guard our hearts because of the deceitfulness of sin that looks to take root in the heart.  It is the redeemed heart which now comes under the concerted attack of the world, the flesh and the devil. Satan is determined to deaden our holy affections and inflict maximum damage through fostering evil desires in our hearts.  But he knows that often his best results occur through deceit and subtlety, so he plays on the fact that the sins prohibited by the tenth commandment can grow seemingly unseen and undetected.

Thus, if we would remain safe from heart-sins which look to take root and develop such bitter fruit, we must obey God’s command to guard our hearts. These are not just idle words for us, they are our life.

Second, Jesus Christ specifically warned us to guard our hearts from sinful desires and love of the world.  In Luke 12:15 he said, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  He told us to watch and pray so that we would not fall into temptation.  Added to this, the Scriptures warn us to be self-controlled and alert because the devil prowls around seeking someone to devour. Often he draws people into his grasp through evil desires, which begin in the heart. Thus, we have the command: “Above all else, guard your heart.”

Third, we are commanded to guard our hearts because, without this, all our other efforts to guard ourselves will ultimately be in vain.  Guarding our hearts is essential to guarding our lives.  To not guard our hearts but to attempt to guard ourselves through every other outward means is like sealing up our houses from intruders when the intruders are already in the house.  May we not conclude we are spiritually safe by mere outward performance, external use of the means that do not penetrate to our hearts. But may we insure that first and foremost our hearts are engaged in sincere, humble and wholehearted use of the various means of grace God has given us.

Fourth, if we would guard our hearts, we must not just watch but as Jesus said, we must pray.  “Watch and pray” is his command, for we need divine power to make our watching effectual.  We must pray to God to give us power in the midst of our weakness, and holy affections in exchange for a divided heart.  If we would guard our hearts, we must guard them through prayer to the living God who has the power to guard what we’ve entrusted to him for that day.

Fifth, we need to particularly guard ourselves in prosperity.  The Puritan Richard Baxter said, “There is far more cause to be afraid of prosperity than adversity; of riches, than poverty; of honor, than obscurity and contempt; of men’s praises and applause, than their slanders and reproaches.”  The history of Israel recorded for us in the Old Testament seems to serve as one perpetual warning of the terrible effects of prosperity. Therefore, the exhortation in prosperity is, “Above all else, guard your heart.”

Finally, if we would guard our hearts, we must be prepared for hard work.  Richard Sibbes said, “The greatest and hardest work of a Christian is the well ordering of his heart, which is unseen.”  The Puritan John Flavel affirmed and expanded on this truth when he said, “Heart work . . . is the hardest work. . . . To shuffle over religious duties with a loose and heedless spirit, will cost thee no great pains; but to set thyself before the Lord, and tie up thy loose and vain thoughts to a constant and serious attendance upon him; this will cost thee something.”  So if we would guard our hearts from sin and keep them oriented to please God, we must be prepared for hard work.

The third-grade class at GVCA has a well-known motto, “Hard is good.” This is certainly true for many aspects of life but I can think of no more fitting application than this command to guard our heart. Yes, it is exceedingly hard work, but it is exceedingly good work.

Therefore, as we come a close, let us recall who we were. We were full of sin in our hearts and all that flowed from it. We were by nature objects of wrath. But our God, he who delights to show mercy, came to us through the law to show us the greatness of our sin and the great danger we were in that we might turn and entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ.  And having been made alive in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we’ve been given new hearts and a new capacity to obey God’s commandments, including this tenth commandment, this demand of holiness in the heart.  As we’ve seen tonight, our great God now comes to us with many means to now guard our redeemed hearts, that from them would flow holy and righteous affections that would now please and glorify the God who has saved us.

May we stand amazed at the grace of God in saving such unworthy sinners, and may we out of great love and reverence and thankfulness use the means of grace he has given us to honor him in this tenth commandment and in all his commandments. May we say with the psalmist, “My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end” (Ps. 119:112).