Today we finish up the Ten Commandments and we look today at the World in Front of the Text of the Tenth Commandment as found in Exodus 20:17:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Yesterday we looked at the world of the text of this commandment, this commandment is about the intention of the heart, the heart is where so many sinful “acts” come from.  Ours is an inside out religion, change starts on the inside and goes for the outward transformation.  In many ways, sin does the exact same, it starts internal and moves external, the action begins with the heart.

In talking about coveting, I want to paint the picture in an odd way, so stay with me for a minute.  Let’s talk about love versus lust.  Love looks at a person and asks the question of how can I serve this person, what can I give to this person, what can I do for this person?  Lust asks the question, how can this person gratify me?  How can I use this person for my own desires or my own wants?  Love is giving, lust is taking.  Love looks to the other, lust looks to the self.

In many ways, that is what coveting is.  It is a form of lust.  It looks at what another person has any desires it.  Wants it.  Craves it.  To covet is find your worth not in who you are in Jesus, but to find your worth in the stuff of this earth, and not even the stuff that you have, but the stuff that others have.  It is about pride.  What happens with pride and lust is that it consumes you.  You want more and more and more.  And it’s never enough.  It never satisfies.  It turns you into something you don’t want to be.

The surest way to make yourself miserable and alone in this life is to live only for yourself, your wants, your desires, your stuff.  When you live only for yourself, you push others away and harden your heart.  This starts with the heart.  It starts with coveting. It starts when we turn our hearts to our desires above all else.

Today, what do you desire?  Is it Jesus?  Is it faith?  Is it the Spirit?  Or is it the stuff of this world?  That will never, ever satisfy.  Never.

Only Jesus will.  Today, where is your heart?  Where is your desire?  May it be only on faith.  For only that will be life.

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