Dennis Tuuri

# Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: The 10th Word
## Deuteronomy 5:21

Okay, we’re preaching through the Ten Words and today we move to the 10th word. We just sang about the Ten Commandments that God wrote on tablets. In Deuteronomy 5, we have the second giving of the Ten Commandments and these are preached by Moses and there are a few differences and this relationship is what happens in history. God speaks through his people to the end that we may be effective communicators in all that we think, say, and do.

Please stand and attend to the reading of God’s word. Deuteronomy 5:21. “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.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we bless your holy name. We thank you for the beauty of the created order and we mourn over the twistedness that sin has brought into it. Bless us, Lord God, to have less twisted hearts as we leave this place today, being more whole by you and by your word and spirit. Thank you for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in freeing us to serve you, freeing us from our sin and from fear of death. Now, Lord God, give us this gift today of an understanding of this particular commandment that we may delight in it, be transformed by it, and be fit vessels of you to bring that same word to others. In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

Please be seated.

We come to a text very timely. God’s word is always a sure word, a relevant word. And today this text is very relevant. The Occupy Wall Street movement is expanding. Of course, I heard that 200 people were arrested in Chicago yesterday. And so to teach, to bring a text on covetousness is very germane to this topic. And of course, we just spoke a couple of weeks ago on the dangers of following a mob to violence. And so while freedom of assembly is one thing, lawlessness is quite another. And so when that gathering is held to demand free this and free that, as many of these people have said, then we have the necessity to understand the meaning of God’s word that warns us severely against covetousness, at least a particular form of covetousness.

So in the providence of God, here we are.

## Setting the Table

What I want to do is sort of set the table for the next few weeks. This will take longer than our last word, the 9th word. I don’t know how long yet, but a number of sermons will be on this word. It’s a wrap-up of everything else and kind of points back to the internal motivation for the other sins that are referred to. So it will take some time. But we’re going to begin today by setting the table and I want to talk about the applicability of the 10th word to all of us.

### The Applicability of the Tenth Word to All of Us

So, you know, “neighbor’s wife,” but it’s also about our neighbors’ possessions. And so I’m going to talk a little more in the last half of the sermon today about wives, but even there, you know, your neighbor has a wife maybe that hasn’t been wed to yet. So most women in this congregation, even though they’re single, are wives of someone in the decree of God. And you know, most men are husbands of someone.

And so I think that it’s important to understand that and to acknowledge and to think through and meditate about some of the things that are incumbent upon you in relationship to that. I think one of the most important things—if I was a young person today looking at getting tattooed—I would think about the fact that my body really belongs to another ultimately. I’ll be married more than likely and do I want to make some permanent alteration like that without the permission of the other.

So you know this text is worded in a way to speak about a specific situation, a husband coveting a wife and then his property, but it’s applicable to us all. And the husband of course represents the whole household. And so I think that it’s appropriate that the application of this 10th word means that wives shouldn’t covet their neighbors’ husbands. Children shouldn’t covet other neighbors’ parents. Parents shouldn’t covet their neighbors’ children all around. You see, I think that those things are all wrapped up together.

So I think that this is a very applicable commandment to all of us and it certainly sort of—as I said—provides kind of an internal motivation which we’ll talk about in a few minutes that drives the other commandments. If you’ll remember the story of Naboth’s vineyard you’ll know that Ahab, the wicked king Ahab, was moved to desire to covet Naboth’s vineyard. So that coveting led way to what? Well, it led way to lying in court, which the 9th commandment forbids. It led way to stealing, which the 8th commandment forbids. It certainly led way to murder of Naboth as well, which the 6th commandment forbids. And of course, all of this is spearheaded by Ahab’s wife, who was an idolater. And adultery and spiritual adultery is idolatry. And so even we could say a reference to the 7th commandment.

All driven by Ahab’s wicked desire or covetousness of Naboth’s vineyard. So it’s an applicable word looking at motivation to most of our sins in life, maybe perhaps all of them.

### The Difficulty of Our Times and God’s Commands

Second point I want to make in setting the table is the difficulty of our times and this particular command. This is a hard time to apply this command, distinctively hard. There are times in history when this command was easier to apply.

Now, what’s so difficult about it? Well, it’s always difficult to obey God’s commands, right? This is from *Moby Dick*. You know, there’s that wonderful portion of the book where the preacher of the whaling church goes into the prow of a boat in the sanctuary. There’s a prow of a boat. He goes up there and he pulls the ladder. He has to go up a ladder to get into it. Pulls the ladder up afterwards. You guys can’t stop me. I’m preaching—is the picture there. And he then preaches a sermon on, of course, Jonah. And he says this: “Shipmates, the sin of Jonah was in his disobedience of the command of God. He found it a hard command. And it is all of the things that God would have us do are hard. If we would obey God, we must disobey ourselves.”

Now, God’s word is hard to us because we’re fallen creatures. We have sin. We have this *homo incurvatus*—we’re homo or men turned in upon themselves. And so whatever God commands us to do because of our sin is difficult for us because it means the subjugation of our will and in today’s command particular our very thoughts to the command of God.

It’s interesting what the preacher in *Moby Dick* goes on to say. But Jonah sinned further because he flaunts God by seeking to flee from him. Jonah thinks that a ship made by man will carry him into countries where God does not reign. And I would say that all too often our temptation is the same—a little different. But covetousness addresses our minds among other things. And we think that our minds is someplace where we can go and hide from God, hide from others, hide from men easily. And I think we have the illusion that we hide from God as well.

So God’s commands are always hard. This command is particularly hard because of our sin nature and because of our desire to flee God’s presence and we think that in our minds somehow that will happen.

Now the command is particularly difficult because it specifically addresses coveting wives and in our particular day and age adultery is no longer punished. Polygamy is outlawed but by all practical purposes a guy and a woman can live with as many people as they want. They can go down to Occupy Wall Street and you know do whatever they want to do in there too.

So we live in particular times and we live in a corporate culture that has advertising that continually tempts us to covetousness. Now, I’m not sure all those ads are necessarily bad. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but it’s particularly difficult for us.

And this coveting, I’ll make the case in a few minutes, it actually involves defrauding someone to get stuff. And we live, as I said, in an era that I mentioned earlier with Occupy Wall Street where people think they’ve got too much. I should have some too. I covet what they have and I’m trying to get the state to expropriate that wealth so that I can have some of it. Now, that’s pure raw covetousness. That’s what it is at heart.

Now I’m not saying that Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have people in it with certainly grievances that are proper and good, but you know, parading around entering into violence breaking city laws, increasing lawlessness in the country. This is not the way to address grievances. But in any event, you know, covetousness is just abroad in our land. And you know, I I know I’ve heard of people, very direct relationship with people who go to these things and all they know is the rich aren’t paying their fair share. And where do they get that? They get it from our president. Our president is urging people to covetousness—to want what the rich have and to expropriate what they have.

So we have a particularly difficult command for us because we live in times like this where covetousness is all around us. Selfishness is all around us. Everything is “I”—you know, “I, me, mine.” It’s all about me all the time. George Harrison wrote, “all through the night I, me, mine. I mine, I mine.” Well, that’s the way the culture is today. So it’s all about us. And this commandment gets us to think about our neighbor and to acknowledge his rights or ownership, covenantal ownership of the things that are listed there.

Now, before you get all offended about what we just sang, by the way, about all that he owns, his property, remember that the Bible asserts that the husband and wife each belong to one another. And it makes that case by talking about their bodies specifically in the New Testament, you know, that you belong to your mate. And so this is covenantal language. The husband no more owns the wife than she owns him in one sense, but they both own each other in the other sense.

So but we live in times you know where all of this is denied by selfishness and by a radical individualism even in the context of those relationships. So we live in particularly difficult times. It’s always hard this command. All God’s commands are always difficult, but we live in a particularly difficult one. And we live in a time as well where Christianity is going away. I heard a statistic at a presbyter meeting two weeks ago and I heard it from Rob Raburn, so he’s a good source. I think he knows what he’s talking about. He said that apparently the statistics are that every day in North America 7,000 people depart from confessing the faith of Jesus Christ, apostatize, or maybe that there’s 7,000 fewer. The point is Christianity is in serious decline in our country. And of course, the result of that is that Christian ideas are no longer the societal bulwark. They’re not propping us up. You’re going to have to do most of the heavy lifting on this command by yourself. By yourself. We don’t have societal buttresses anymore to that.

And we have had it other times. On the other hand, by the way, unless you get too depressed, 14,000 new professors of faith in Jesus Christ every day are happening in Africa. So it’s not as if God’s hand is shortened. You know, there is a revival going on and a new church being built in Africa even as the church in America declines.

So we also live in a world that’s filled with images—not just in advertising but in the social media—that is you know prompts people to covet to take not through legal means. What this text really from one perspective you could say it’s summed up as urging people to be in the words of the qualifications for the elders in 1 Timothy 3—that we’re to be a one-woman sort of man, right? We’re not to covet other women and certainly not our neighbor’s wife.

But what the opposite side of that—to say it positively—we’re to be a one-woman sort of man. And women are called to be a one-man sort of woman. So fidelity, faithfulness to a spouse is certainly center stage, at least the first phrase of this particular commandment.

### High Fidelity—Which Came First?

And we have a culture today that is against high-fidelity—we could say. There was a movie by that name. It was about John Cusack played a character who had a record shop and so he was into hi-fi, high fidelity, but in his personal life he didn’t, he couldn’t be faithful to one woman. He had no high fidelity going on. So that’s the metaphor throughout the movie. And I love this voice over. He talks to the camera at one point in time and he says this:

“What came first the music or the misery? Talking about his relationship with women. People worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery, and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listen to pop music?”

Well, that’s good. That’s very good. Psalm 1 warns us against walking in the counsel of the ungodly. And you know, much of our media today is ungodly and it tempts you to covetousness. It tempts you not to have high fidelity. It tempts you to be anything other than a one-woman sort of man. Although even that movie of course—which is a pop culture movie—actually was asserting high fidelity. So it’s sort of we’re in that transition period I suppose in our culture.

So it’s a difficult command.

## Good and Bad Coveting, Good and Bad Desiring

Third, there is good and bad coveting, good and bad desiring. And I use the two words because here in the text before us in the Deuteronomy 5 text, there are two separate Hebrew words used in the phrasing. So, “don’t covet your neighbor’s wife” and “don’t desire your neighbor’s house.” Two separate Hebrew words.

Now, in the Exodus version, it uses the same word for both sides of that. It actually starts with house. “Don’t covet your neighbor’s house. Then, don’t covet your neighbor’s wife” and then his various property. And so these things are reversed here. And we go from one word that’s used twice in Exodus 20 to two different words here. But both of these words I think have a witness to us in the scriptures that they are determined by the kind of coveting going on.

So if you see little summary statements about this verse that say “do not covet,” that’s really not right. I mean you can sort of summarize it that way but only if you know the rest of the story.

What do I mean? Okay. Habakkuk 2 says this: “Woe to him that covets an evil covetousness to his house that he may set his nest on high that he may be delivered from the power of evil.” The Berkeley version says, “Woe to him who acquires an evil gain for his house.” Okay, so woe to him who covets with an evil covetousness. What the implication of that verse is that we can have a positive covetousness—that this word for desire or a longing can be positive or negative depending upon what it’s what the object of it is. That’s the case here. Or what you do to go about achieving that thing. Okay? So those are the two things we want to qualify it with. It’s evil. It’s bad coveting depending upon its object. Here it’s your neighbor’s goods, actual goods you’re coveting. And two, by the way you go about accomplishing what you might properly desire. But desire itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:31 used the word covet in a good sense: “covet earnestly the best gifts.” Again, to quote from the Berkeley version, it translates covet as “aim hard for, work earnestly and zealously for the best gifts.” So there’s a positive desire that’s spoken of in the scriptures and and actually there’s quite a few positive things and I want to give a brief summary now and this will take a few minutes but many of the points will be quick so don’t get too worried about it. But I want to do a brief summary of these two specific Hebrew words and how they’re both used positively and negatively.

So the first word—by the way, it’s easy to remember because it’s kind of the base of Muhammad. Muhammad, Mohammed—Hammed is the Arabic word that’s very closely related to the particular Hebrew word that’s used here. And so this word is *chamad*. We have a reminder of coveting whenever we hear the name Muhammad. But this particular word is used in a variety of senses. It means to have a desire or a craving for wanting something.

It’s used first in Genesis 2:9 of God’s desirable trees in the Garden of Eden. So God creates trees that are supposed to be desirable to us. Okay? So it’s used in a positive sense in Genesis chapter 2. But it’s then used in a negative sense. It becomes sinful when desired in violation of God’s command in chapter 3:6. Eve sees that the fruit is desirable to make one wise. So desire then—which is a good thing—is now spoken of in that she’s got a bad desiring because she’s going to go about getting the thing she wants in an improper way.

So James identifies both pleasant fields—for instance, they’re desirable fields, they’re desirable trees—these are things that God created. But at the same time the same word can connote or is referred to in reference to Assyrian pagans that are desirable to the Israelites as well. And so it’s negative. Psalm 39:13 speaks of man’s beauty, man’s desirability in and of itself. The word can be used in terms of things that are dear to us. So something that’s dear, you know, the name Timothy is something that’s dear to God. It’s desirable. And so it can refer in a positive sense that way to pleasant things. For instance, in Lamentations 2:7 I think it’s Isaiah. Oh, he Haggai. Haggai chapter 2:7 speaks of “the desire of all nations shall come.” Now Jesus is referred to as the desire of all nations in Isaiah. Okay, so that’s a positive sense, right? Here in Haggai, what we desire, the things we accumulate, I think is being referenced in Haggai, that the desire that Jesus is the desire of all nations. That the desire of nations shall come to Zion will bring whatever else we desire to the one who is ultimately the desire of all nations. So both Jesus is to be desired, of course, and our things that are desirable to us are perfect, fine when used in proper relationship and consecration to Jesus.

Ezekiel’s wife was desired—was the desire of his eyes. So husbands are supposed to have a proper desire for their wives. And so that’s the same word that’s used here translated here “covet.” So don’t think of covet as always bad. There are perfectly good things. Again to continue with the marriage stuff, in Song of Solomon chapter 2:3, the Shulamite sits by her beloved with great delight or great desire. The same basic word. So she has great desire for the one who will be her husband. So there are many references to this desire. We’re supposed to desire the Lord’s ordinances more than gold in Psalm 19:10. So over and over again there are these references to positive senses of desire.

Daniel is a man greatly beloved by God and that word is desire. God himself desires particular things and we’ll talk more about that in a minute. Now, of course, there’s bad things as well. Here clearly there’s a certain kind of desire that’s being prohibited. Israel was not to desire the gold adorning idols and to be brought into idolatry through a desire for those things. Achan desired the spoils of Jericho and so broke God’s law—the law that he couldn’t take those things—and took them anyway. So we have an evil desire or coveting going on there.

So that first Hebrew word is what I’ve been referencing and there are positive things that it can be in reference to or negative things.

The second word translated “desire” as opposed to “covet” in Deuteronomy 5 is also used in both a positive sense and a negative sense. Here it’s clearly a negative sense, but there are other places where it’s a good sense. It’s interesting that in Numbers 11, the people have an intense craving. They desire—a desire is what it says—for meat. Okay? And so that’s coveting in an improper, a bad sense. It’s like an intensification, a craving for meat. And God then actually names a place in the wilderness after them. There’s a place named Kibroth Hattaavah and the second Hebrew word is *avah*. And so this is the burial place for the greedy, the graves of greed, because their coveting meat was greediness. It was a sinful coveting and so it’s looked upon negatively.

On the other hand, in Deuteronomy, you know, the verses where we talk about family camp, where in Deuteronomy 14, when you go to the annual festival of Jerusalem you are to buy with your tithe whatever your heart desired and then God actually lists things to eat. So in those two instances, this desire word is shown both negatively—the craving for meat in the wilderness which God had not yet provided and as a result of that craving wanting to overthrow God’s rule over them—and in a positive sense, it’s perfectly proper to like good wine and to like good food and to have a desire to eat good meat.

So I could go on, but there are many verses that are both used negatively and positively in terms of desire.

God is said to desire Zion as his dwelling place and it’s the same word. So God has desires for Zion. He has a desire for us. We’re in Zion, right? Zion was the mountain at which David’s tabernacle of worship was set up, the tabernacle of David. And in the book of Acts, we’re told specifically that the tabernacle of David is being restored. The tabernacle of David is what we are—music as the center of worship and our praise of God at the center. But how worship is performed instead of sacrifices—Jew and Gentile together—and the direct presence of the ark of the covenant. That was the tabernacle of David and God desires to dwell in that worship atmosphere and he desires—he has this craving covetousness—to be in the context of the assembled host and he actually has a desire for you, a desire for you as well—the scriptures tell us.

So as we begin to look at this commandment, it’s quite important at the base of our understanding of it—before we talk about anything else—to recognize that all coveting is not bad. All coveting is not bad. And in fact, there are many ways of coveting that are actually proper and good.

## Coveting as Action: The Tenth Word and Pietism

Another moving on to point four and sort of setting the table here. Coveting is not just—I don’t think it’s just—I’m sure it’s not just some kind of hard attitude. Coveting has been said by various commentators, theologians, academics to have references not just to desiring a thing but to actually taking a thing illegally. So while the emphasis is sort of the heart attitude toward a thing, it doesn’t stop there in the 10th word. It doesn’t stop there.

For instance, a 17th century great Anglican scholar, Dr. Isaac Barrow said this: “This law is comprehensive and recapitulatory, as it were, of the rest concerning our neighbor, prescribing universal justice toward him. It seems to me rather that it should be rendered by one word, to deprive not or bereave not your neighbor of anything. And this not only in an outward deed and dealing, but an inward thought as well.”

So another way to properly translate this word that great scholar thought was to “deprive not.” And so that has a broader sense than what we think of as coveting. It means to desire and then to move to attain it.

Adam Clark wrote this about the verse: “Thou shalt not covet. Verse 17. The word *kamad* signifies an earnest and strong desire after a matter on which all the affections are concentrated and fixed—whether the thing be good or bad. This is what I’ve just said. This is what we commonly term covetousness, which word is taken both in a good and bad sense. So when the scriptures say that covetousness is idolatry, yet it also says covet earnestly the best gifts. So we find that this disposition is sinful or holy according to the object on which it is fixed.

In this command, the covetousness which is placed on forbidden objects is that which is prohibited and condemned. To covet in this sense is intensely to long after in order to enjoy as property the person or thing coveted. He breaks this commandment who by any means endeavors to deprive a man of his house or farm by some underhand and clandestine bargain with the original landlord—which is called in some countries taking a man’s house and farm over his head. He breaks it also who lusts after his neighbor’s wife, endeavors to ingratiate himself into her affections by striving to lessen her husband in her esteem and he breaks it who endeavors to possess himself of the servants, cattle, etc. of another in any clandestine or unjustifiable way. This is a most excellent moral precept, the observance of which will prevent all public crimes. For he who feels the force of the law here will also then repair…”

Was a German scholar of the last century. He said this: “The commandment is formulated with a verb which is rendered covet, but it describes not merely the emotion of coveting but also includes the attempt to attach something to oneself illegally, illegally. To attach it illegally. The commandment therefore deals with all possible undertakings which involve gaining power over the goods and possessions of a neighbor—whether through theft or through all kinds of dishonest machinations. The first object to be mentioned is the neighbor’s house. And he then says that this is a comprehensive term of all other what’s inside the house. It refers to a household concept rather than his physical dwelling. So in other words, scholars are pretty well agreed, at least many of them, that this is what’s being referred to here—is not simply a hard attitude but rather the actual defrauding of a neighbor, not just coveting of a neighbor.

One last German scholar of the last century, von Rad, said it this way: “Short, if in the last commandment, the translation of the verb as covet were correct, it would be the only case in which the decalogue deals not with an action but with an inner impulse—hence with a sin of intention. But the corresponding Hebrew word *hammad* has two meanings, both to covet and to take. It includes outward malpractices—meaning seizing for oneself.”

Now, so we have various good evidences from the church. The witness of the church is this is a verb that’s used not just in terms of internal actions but also of takings that are underhanded. But ultimately I could have spared you all those by just quoting from Mark 10:19. Our savior is talking about the ten commandments and it says this: “You know the commandments: do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and your mother.”

So our savior uses a word there—defraud—which is broader than just an internal desire. It means an internal desire that has manifested itself in some attempt on the thing that’s being desired. So there is this combination in this term of intent and action and it can refer really to either or usually both together.

Now the problem we have in Christendom today is that pietism has said that what is internal—the heart attitude—is what’s important and what is external is not important. Pietism is rooted in gnostic thought that says that matter is bad and you know spiritual is good and those things are separate, right. And so pietism says on the basis of this that to desire something—to desire a physical object—is in and of itself bad. The goal of pietistic Christianity is to become passionless. “Do not covet. Don’t desire anything. Okay? If your house burns down, you’re to be unmoved as a result of that. That is stoic. If your wife dies or your husband dies, be unmoved because those things are not important ultimately. The only thing that’s important is your heart relationship with Jesus.”

And so pietism has given us a big problem in obeying this verse properly as well because it says that we’re to get rid of all coveting instead of you know the improper coveting. And as a result it locates the sin of coveting in a desire for what’s actually proper as opposed to the action of defrauding. What may you may properly desire. In other words, to steal a thing is to covet it and to take it by another means as well. And here the particular aspect is your neighbor’s house, but it isn’t limited to that.

So when we covet and seek to expropriate through unbiblical means, then we’re violating this word. But to the pietist, you see, what’s only important is the heart attitude. And so it misses the location of the sin in an improper desire and specifically in the violation of going about getting property in the proper way—getting things in the proper way.

So pietism has given us a tremendous difficulty. You know, you’re not supposed to feel grief. As I said, here’s a quote from William Shakespeare’s *Henry VIII*. And Cardinal Wolsey says this: “Mark but my fall and that ruined me. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels. How can man then the image of his maker hope to win by it? Love thyself last. Cherish those hearts that hate thee.”

So this is—it sounds good, but really—it’s a reflection of the kind of pietistic worldview that is being portrayed by Cardinal Wolsey in the play. And that worldview says, “Oh, no, don’t desire a better job. Don’t desire a better house. Don’t desire, you know, this or that thing, this or that improvement in your life.” No, no, it’s all bad. That’ll just get you into trouble. When you want things, that’s when you’re going to sin. And so it locates sin in the desire.

But, but clearly, as the verses I’ve read have indicated, you know, desire is a good thing. And as I said, the improper thing is desiring the wrong thing or going about acquiring the right thing in an improper way—through defrauding or stealing or theft of any kind.

Ambition has been kicked out of the Christian legacy in our day and age. And that’s another reason why it’s hard to apply these things correctly. That’s why I mentioned that the commandment against stealing means that we should want property. We should want it. Now, you have to be careful with good things, right? But nonetheless, the 10th word as we just studied the words that are being used helps us to see that there are actually things we should be desiring. And we’ve already talked about some of them here.

## Mimetic Desire and the Escalation of Violence

So number five on setting the table and kind of getting at the basics of all of this—mimetic desire and the escalation of violence. So I’ll be talking more about this, but there’s a guy named René Girard and the coloring sheet today for the kids is the best way to explain this. You know that if you’ve had kids or watched them in the nursery—that a child’s playing with the toy, he likes that toy. Another child starts playing with the toy, he likes that toy. But one of them looks at the other one playing with that toy which he had just rejected and all of a sudden he wants it. Right? You’ve seen this.

And so Girard has noticed this in cultures and he says that much of our improper desires stem from imitating the desires of others. So we may not like our neighbor’s wife all that much, but the fact that he likes her—desires her—we’re like big kids. Oh, we want that thing, too. We want that person, too. And so then we want it.

Now, when he sees us desiring his wife or his house, whatever it might be, or when the wife sees the other wife desiring her husband, her desire for her own husband intensifies. Now, you know, you’ve seen this, right? You make people jealous and that increases desire. But it’s this escalation of coveting that’s going on. And Girard has noted this sociologically. We’re creatures of imitation. I’m going to preach a sermon on this in the next few weeks. We’re creatures of imitation and we imitate other people’s desires.

And so part of the solution to not coveting is to be careful who you’re around and who you imitate. If you’re self-conscious about it, you won’t do it as much. So Girard has talked about this escalation of violence between two people or between countries. We can look at what’s happened over a little piece of land in Israel and you know maybe they both have strategic reasons for wanting the land. Or maybe much of what’s happening is this mimetic desire that keeps escalating up and up and up and up and up, that leads to the next point in Girard’s thinking.

By the way, this is how Girard became a Christian. He saw this in cultures. He wasn’t a Christian. He read the Bible and realize the same things going on there, but there’s a solution to it in the scriptures that is definitive and final. And that’s the coming of Jesus Christ. Because the other thing that he saw in cultures that you’ll see in those in the nursery is that sometimes if kids are fighting over a toy and another kid comes into the room who may be a little different, right—short, chubby, real skinny, I don’t know, he’s got some difference—it’s easy then for the two of them to gang up on him. He becomes the scapegoat.

As a marriage counselor, I’m well aware of this reality. A couple comes in, they’re arguing with each other, but there I am. Why not take it out on him? And it does—this happens. It really does. Well, that’s what cultures do. They come up with a scapegoat. They kill the scapegoat and the violence is released. The escalating escalation of desire that creates violence is satisfied in cultures among people in toy rooms and in marriage counseling sessions through a scapegoat.

Now, what Girard said was, of course, that in Christianity, we have the perfect answer to all of this. The solution is the scapegoat came. And he was the perfect victim. The chubby kid or the marriage counselor doesn’t really fit the bill because they’re not perfect. They’re not innocent. You know, they won’t take upon themselves your sins, etc. But Jesus comes and accomplishes the end of violence and culture will be about the elimination of violence through the application of the atonement and people then not entering into scapegoat relationships, not and correcting covetousness and peace will be what grows into the future.

## Coveting and Envy

And he’s right. Of course, *Bonfire of the Vanities*—the movie wasn’t that good. The book was great. Tom Wolfe, who was interviewed, by the way, in the latest edition of *Credenda Agenda*. Tom Wolfe’s book *Bonfire of the Vanities* is a story about another thing to be distinguished from coveting, and that’s envy.

Coveting says, “You have what I want. I’m going to try to come up with nefarious ways to get it.”

Envy says, “You have what I want. I can never get it. And I don’t want you to have it either.”

And so envy is that *Bonfire of the Vanities* was about envy. Tom Wolfe said resentment in the French—envy—as opposed to covetousness. It was about people that could never have things of others. They were trying to destroy them. And there is a probably in Occupy Wall Street there are elements of envy as well as coveting going on. We’ll talk about that more in the future as well.

So we have coveting, envy, scapegoating, as part of setting the table.

## Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Now, now let’s talk about looking for love in all the wrong places.

### Family Members, the House, and History

Number one—family members, the house, and history. So I’ve mentioned this already, but the picture on the front cover is about children coveting other children or their possessions or their well-being, who knows what. And the point of this picture is to remind us that’s kind of what it’s about—their neighbors. It doesn’t just mean the husband and the wife. It means any family members because the husband stands for the household as well. And so you know, what’s going on here is a broad-reaching command, but certainly it has relationship to the marriage relationship. That’s what it’s phrased in the context of our commandment.

Now, and as I mentioned earlier, what’s going on? Why this flipping? Why in Exodus is the wife after the house? In Deuteronomy, the wife is before the house. Several comments.

One, some have noted that what we have is an advance in the situation of the people that God is addressing his command to. So God commands us where we’re at, right? And where they were at coming out of Egypt in unbelief in slavery was women weren’t necessarily recognized as having the full status as they would after spending 38 years in the wilderness and listening to God’s word. And so and there may, you know, I don’t know if that’s right or not, but that’s one explanation. And it’s interesting because in Deuteronomy, of course, we actually have laws that affirm property rights of women. They were needed. Apparently, they didn’t know about that. And so it does seem that there’s some justification to thinking that part of this is to show that God’s law always speaks to our current situation. In their current situation, they came out of Egypt. That was true.

Second explanation is that household comprehends everything, right? The wife and all the possessions. And that is so you know she—a household is not property. It’s a designation of individuals and things that are owned and employees comprise the household. And then third, my other point I’ve made before and I made it earlier today is that we all belong to each other. So by implication, the husband is actually the property in that sense of the wife just as the wife is the property of the husband. We don’t own ourselves. There’s not a radical individualism in the marriage relationship. We become one flesh and we belong to each other. And so it’s stated with the husband first because he has more direct responsibility for what’s happening. He models things to the rest of the family.

But that’s what that is about. So whether it’s the history of the covenant people—whether it’s this idea of God wanting to show us that our view of household should include everything and everybody in it—or whether it’s the idea that he’s speaking to both men and women covenantally to the man, and then finally, and I’ve made this point before in other sermons at RCC, it rather than denigrating the position of women, or if this is covenantal, men and women as property, the other way to look at it is it raises up what we think about the rest of the things that comprise our household. It raises up the value of property. And so that’s another aspect of this that we’ll talk about in the weeks to come.

So this flip from Exodus to Deuteronomy is what I’ve just been talking about.

### Coveting and Lusting

Secondly, coveting and lusting. Now, this commandment says “don’t covet your neighbor’s wife.” It doesn’t say “don’t covet your neighbor’s daughter.” I mean, if you’re married, that’d clearly be wrong. But there’s a distinction. And as I’ve meditated upon this, I don’t think, you know, I don’t think the primary thing here is adultery. That’s been addressed already. I think this kind of coveting is more comprehensive.

You want that woman as is your wife. I think that’s it. You don’t want a one-night fling, a one-night stand. You want that. So it’s not the same as lusting after in the sense of desiring sexually as an object. Rather, it’s a strong desire for a better wife or a complimentary wife or another wife.

Interesting, by the way, to see that polygamy in the Bible is always tied to violence.

But in any event, so it’s that kind of thing. It’s not, you know, sexual lusting, I don’t think, in the first instance here. That’s too easy, you know. But this commandment goes underneath all of that and says, “Now look, I—you’re not imagining a sexual relationship, but you are imagining that spouse as your spouse, and you want that spouse. Stop that. Stop it right now.”

### Coveting and Admiration

Third, coveting and admiration. There’s nothing wrong with admiring other people’s husbands or wives or kids. Admiration’s good. Wow, look at that barn. He really did a good job on that. Admiration of a thing is not being prohibited here. Even admiration of other people’s talents and gifts, physical beauty, whatever it might be. So admiration isn’t being outlawed by this. It is this coveting—wanting for yourself and then moving into these actions to gain this thing as your possession.

What’s being addressed, and I read this earlier, but it used to be illegal in this country—something called alienation of affections. So you know a wife wants another husband, husband wants another wife, they’re married to somebody else. And so what they start to do—through third parties themselves, whatever it is—they try to tell things to the husband so he won’t like his wife as much. They try to alienate his affections from her so that they can have her. Or they’ll try to alienate her affections for her husband so that she’ll be tighter linked to them.

And you know in that process you don’t got to marry person, right? I mean, as soon as you start to engage in that, and maybe that’s all you do for a long, long time, but that’s what this thing is prohibiting. This verse is prohibiting alienation of affections, and it should be in our judicial code.

Again, I don’t know. We just watched the movie *Cyrus*. I don’t know what it was about. It wasn’t as so often as it is these days. It’s not as portrayed. If you’re going to rent it one night to have a nice comedy, it’s not that. Few funny things which they put all in the trailers, you think it’s a comedy. But it is sort of about—it is about alienation of affections and it’s obvious from the trailer. I’m not giving anything away. Cyrus is the son—which is interesting. The name of a thing is important. They’re telling us something about Cyrus. But that’s about movie watching. We’re talking about the Bible now.

So Cyrus tries to alienate his mother’s affection for this new guy in her life, John C. Reilly. And so alienation of affections is one of the themes in that movie. And that’s really more directly what’s going out, I think, in the 10th word.

### Being Desirable

Five, being desirable. How do you combat that? Well, if you’re trying to combat the alienations of affections, try to make yourself the object of somebody’s affection. Try to be more desirable, right? I mean, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. And the one of the best antidotes—in terms of looking for love in all the wrong places, husband, wife relationships—one of the strongest antidotes to this commandment wrecking your life is to be desirable to your spouse.

When you’re not desirable to your spouse, you pre—you essentially give them temptation to sin. Now, if they sin, it’s not your fault. They’ve still sinned. It’s their responsibility. With every sin, God provides the means of escape. But, you know, the Bible says, you know, if you withhold yourselves from one another, you’re going to give the devil an opportunity. You know, so God says, be desirable to one another, and that’ll be a strong fence against a covetous neighbor.

And I would say that we become desirable, you know, through glory, knowledge, and life. Remember, what’s going on here is not, I don’t think, primarily sexual. It’s got to do with affections and relationship more. And relationships are formed as a result of ministering glory, knowledge, and life.

Just what we get here. And so one way to prepare yourself and make your marriage strong is to minister glory—respect, weightiness. I want to hear what you’ve got to say. I want to honor what you’re saying. I really want that from you. And to give glory—you’re—I really appreciate what you’ve got to say. So the ministry of glory, ministry of knowledge—share your lives with each other, right? And that tightens the covenantal bond. And share rejoicing life together, including sexuality. But not just that, all kinds of things to rejoice together at the end of the day. So those gifts minister to one another is the best antidote, I think, to the danger you all have right—you know, you have this danger right? You’ve got neighbors you got people who are going to be tempted to covet your wife or your husband or your possessions or sometimes even your kids. So the best way to combat husband-wife coveting is through being desirable by showing glory, knowledge, and life to spouse.

### Sexuality and the Husband-Wife Covenant

Six, sexuality. As I mentioned, this is part of the gig as well. And let me just mention a few specific things here. And I would say that this is particularly important.

What I’m going to say now is particularly important when your relationship isn’t the best. One of the reasons you covet somebody else, I mean, it’s not the only reason. One reason is because, you know, you’re not really receiving that kind of relationship at home. And so there’s a temptation.

If you know that there’s a degree of alienation of affection going on in your relationship today, well, you need to hear what I got to say for the next few minutes. I think it’s quite important.

And so I want to say these things not as if they’re all bad, but they’re particularly bad and dangerous and could lead you into violations of the 10th word. If you have a situation going on in your life where your relationship to your spouse is not that great, here’s the first thing I want to say: avoid flirting.

And what’s flirting? I can’t define it, but it goes on. It goes on all the time. We’re sort of encouraged to flirt all the time in this culture. We’re encouraged to flirt because of our own growing up looking for a mate. And when that flirting continues into our married life, it’s dangerous. Could be just, you know, completely innocent, but frequently, particularly in cases where there alienation of affections, that will increase as your spouse sees you flirting.

Alienation of affections may increase. I mean, yeah, it may produce some desire to be more desirable to you, but more often than not, it’s going to hurt the relationship and it’s going to put you on a course—if that person’s married—of alienating their affections from their spouse. Do you see?

So flirting is a difficult thing particularly if you’re in a place of vulnerability.

Secondly, comparison. To compare your mate with somebody else is a really bad thing to do. And to start thinking along those paths, “Oh, he’s got a really nice wife. Oh, they got a really nice husband. Great guy. Don’t do that. You just got to grab a hold of those thoughts and say, ‘No, no, no, no.’”

Comparison is a danger here to suck us into this sin.

Three, close friends of the opposite sex. Always a troublesome topic and I’m not making any grand pronouncement about it, but if you particularly—again, if your own relationship is attenuated in any way, less and weakened—then you know be very careful with friendships of the opposite sex. Be very careful with them. Both because they can lead to alienation of affection but also because you can be sucked into an emotional relationship where all of a sudden that person—all of a sudden you realize one day—they’re meeting some of the emotional needs you have for a male-female relationship that should be being met by your spouse. Should be being met by your spouse.

And you see this—these are all leads into the sin that’s particularly commanded here against in the 10th word.

Job said that he made a covenant with his eyes that he wouldn’t look at a maid. And I’ve always thought of that sexually, but I don’t think it’s related to that or limited to that rather. That portrays too much of an animalistic nature to human beings who are made in the image of God, after all. And yes it’s twisted but I think that what it implies is we should make covenants with ourselves to be very careful about not attenuating a relationship by getting emotional satisfaction, friendship from another man or another woman that should be received by our wives or by our husbands.

You see it’s not good for you to find that need someplace else and it’s not good for your spouse to not fulfill that. In other words, you got a negative thing going on and instead of working on it and coming to unity and more relationship, you seek the value of other relationships to fill that slot that your marriage is supposed to be filling. And so it’s very good to make a covenant with our eyes—what we see, right? Doesn’t mean just, you know, physical appearances, but what we see, what we perceive, what we sense about others and desire them and have them fulfill our companionship or whatever it might be instead of our wives.

So this is very bad.

There was a movie called *The Age of Innocence*. It was a Martin Scorsese movie about New York early in the development of New York City and there was a man who was engaged to another woman, became married to her, and he had a crush on the cousin of the woman. And the movie was fascinating because what it showed was he was always in danger of adultery with this other person. And he would arrange meetings with her and stuff and things wouldn’t work out or whatever. And you find out two-thirds of the way into the movie that the rest of the society—the friends, the companions, the relatives—they all knew what was happening. The guy didn’t think they did. Daniel Day-Lewis, he didn’t think they knew what was going on, but they did. And they were moving, they were performing actions to keep them separated. They saw what was happening and as a culture they separated them. You know, not overtly. He didn’t know what was going on even. He just thought things were happening.

The point here is we have a similar obligation as a culture and as a community. Because covetousness destroys not just the two marriages involved for instance, but a culture. It can be almost more than a culture. A church culture can take that kind of blow. And so we all have an obligation both because we love one another and we love their marriages and we want them to be sound. We have that obligation and we have an obligation not to allow sin to eat away at the core of the community by eating away at marriage relationships within the community.

So we all have an obligation to sort of keep an eye out for each other. I mean not in a nosy bad way but in a positive way—you know, to do things and to encourage people to avoid the sin of covetousness.

### A Delighted Contentment

The basic answer is a delighted contentment. You know Paul says that contentment with godliness is great gain and the Proverbs say we are to be satisfied, satiated by our wife and we are to delight in our wife. This is found in Proverbs chapter 5—contrasting the delight of our wives with the seeming delight that the strange woman brings.

And it’s interesting because Proverbs 5 says we’re to be enchanted by our wives. We’re to be ravished by them or whatever it might be. And the word actually means to sin—well it doesn’t mean to sin in terms of our but what it does—it’s a word that means to wander off the path of righteousness or to wander off a path period. And it’s the word that’s used of unintentional sins. And so it has this idea of intoxication. You shouldn’t be intoxicated by your love for your wife and her love for you.

And of course again here it goes both ways. The wife is to be satisfied by her husband and the wife is to be intoxicated by her husband. And there’s such a state that goes on here and then it uses that same word to describe the improper relationship with the strange woman. It actually goes on in Proverbs 5 to talk about don’t be like that with the strange woman. Why would you be intoxicated by the strange woman?

It says—I’m going to go back to this text soon, but that’s the idea is to be content with your spouse, but not just content, but to be delighted in your spouse, to be satisfied with your spouse, and to satisfy one another and to cause each other to be enchanted with your loved ones.

I know it sounds like a high bar. You say hurry, I can’t. But that’s kind of the goal and that’s the thing we all should be shooting for and praying for. That’s what builds a good culture.

## Conclusion: The Directed Mind

Ultimately underlying all of these things—and I know I’ve gone long. I apologize. But ultimately underlying all of these things is the need for a disciplined mind. Because while it addresses actions, it certainly addresses internal attitudes as well.

The tenth commandment and Jesus tells us through his Bible that we’re to take every thought, our minds captive to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the 10th commandment is about that. And again, this makes it hard in our day and age because in our day and age, the mind is just supposed to go wherever it wants to go—flip-flops all around, goes here and there.

God tells you that it’s not enough to obey him with external actions—as proper and good as those are. It’s not enough to control your speech—9th word. The 10th word says you have to make a self-conscious effort to control your thoughts. To say, “No, I’m not going to think that. I’m not going to feel that. I’m going to take control of those things interior to myself because otherwise those thoughts—the unlawful, the lawless thought in the tenth word—that lawless thought gives way to lawless deeds and the destruction of people’s lives and even of a culture.”

Let’s pray. Lord, not give us disciplined minds. Give us the comprehension that they can be disciplined. Help us, Father, to see the implications of that in this word today. I pray particularly you would help us to be disciplined in our minds and in our hearts relative to our spouses and the spouses of others. Bless us, Lord God. We thank you for the many years here where this has been primarily avoided. Give us more such years and drive out any covetousness that might exist in the context of our community. And then may we take this broader message in for the rest of our lives. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.