There’s a new religious cult in our community, and most of us haven’t even noticed it. This cult is far larger than the ones you’ve heard about on the radio or read about in most books about cults. I’m talking about the cult of consumerism, the false religion of more (Buchanan 63-64).
This cult of consumerism has its own litany of sacred words: words like "more," "new," "faster," and "the latest." Consumerism’s worship rituals include charging it, instant credit, shopping sprees, and no interest for three months. It’s preachers are ad men, pitchmen, and celebrity sponsors. Consumerism’s temples are the malls and superstores that dot the landscape. The message of the cult of consumerism is, "Crave and spend for the Kingdom of stuff is at hand." Those caught up in the cult of consumerism live endlessly for the next thing, the next weekend, the next vacation, the next computer upgrade, the next purchase. This is the false religion Jesus called "Mammon."
Back in 1955 retailing analyst Victor Lebow told his fellow advertising professionals, "Our...economy demands that we make consumption a way of life, that we convert the buying and selling of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction...in consumption." (Clapp 27). Well Victor Lebow’s dream has come true. We see it in bumper stickers proclaiming, "I shop, therefore I am." When the Berlin Wall came in the 1980s and East Germans were permitted to pass freely into West Germany, someone spray painted these words on the Berlin Wall: "They came, they saw, they did a little shopping." Back in 1976 the average American supermarket carried 9,000 different products; today it stocks over 30,000.
Advertising has moved from the communication of information, to the cultivation of unmet human desires. Instead of telling us how much a product costs, today’s advertising seeks to show us how incomplete and meaningless our lives are until we purchase certain products. Instead of selling us beverages, in Pepsi’s new ad campaign they’re selling us the joy of cola. Advertising links our deepest and most profound longings in life to products we can consume. The average American is exposed to 3,500 different advertisements each day (Clapp 20).
In today’s climate the American dream has become life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness (Moriarity 207). Although most of us are offended by obvious materialism, inwardly we wonder if the character from the recent movie Boiler Room is right when he says, "Anybody who says money isn’t everything doesn’t have any." Even though we condemn crass consumerism, we find ourselves drawn to watch shows like Fox’s recent gameshow Greed, where the contestants all turn on each other as they worship at the shrine of consumerism.Our world says it’s no big deal, so long as nobody gets hurt and no laws are broken. Our culture sees no connection between what we crave in our hearts and what we do with our hands and speak with our lips. In fact, in last April’s Business Week the cover story asked the question "Is greed good?" To even need to ask the question reveals something fundamentally wrong within our culture.
Today we finish our series through the Ten Commandments called LANDMARKS FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM. We started the new year back in January with this series to give us a series of unchanging focal points so we can get our bearings in a new millennium. Today we’re going to look at the last of the Ten Commandments, God’s command against coveting. In the tenth commandment we’re going to try to answer three questions: What is coveting? Why is coveting bad? And how can we live free from covetousness.
1. What is Coveting?
We begin by asking, "What is coveting?" We don’t use that word very often these days, so it’s important that we determine what we’re talking about. Let’s look at the text of the commandment together.
Deuteronomy 5:21—"You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (NIV).
Now it’s important to mention here that the Roman Catholic church and the Lutheran church both divide this verse into two different commandments (Douma 337). Because Roman Catholics and Lutherans combine what we’ve treated as the first commandment ("no other gods") and second commandment ("no images") into one commandment, this is how they end up with a total of Ten Commandments, by distinguishing coveting your neighbor’s spouse from coveting your neighbor’s stuff. But I’m inclined to follow the view that this is one commandment.
The actual Hebrew word "covet" means "to desire, wish for, crave, or long for" something (NIDOTTE 2:167). The object of this desire isn’t necessarily bad, but it describes a powerful inward disposition. Usually this particular Hebrew word describes desires that are sparked from things we’ve seen with our eyes, that as we see a shiny new Harley Davidson in our neighbor’s driveway that sparks a powerful inward disposition to want one ourselves.
The word "set your desire on" later in the verse is a slightly different word. This Hebrew word describes a deep "desire that springs from the depths of one’s very being" (NIDOTTE 1:304). So while "coveting" is usually sparked from things we see, our "setting our desire" on things is sparked internally, from our hearts. So these two words cover the whole spectrum of possibilities of how we come to covet something. We might covet someone else’s spouse or their home, or their RV, or their appearance, but whatever it is, we’re forbidden from lusting after people or things that don’t belong to us.
Now this is a major change from the previous nine commandments, because up to this point we’ve been dealing mostly with behavior. We’ve talked about worshipping other gods, which is a behavior. We’ve discussed adultery, lying, murder and stealing, which are all behaviors. But here we find a commandment that focuses on the condition of our hearts, not merely on our outward behavior. I’m inclined to think that the tenth commandment sums up the previous nine commandments, because coveting what’s not ours is usually what leads us to break the previous nine commandments (Merrill 157).
Our inner desires exercise enormous influence over our behavior because what lives in the human heart never stays hidden for long (Moriarity 203; Douma 342). Will Willimon and Stan Hauerwas say when we read the tenth commandment, "it is as if we have moved away from the externals of life and into the dark regions of the human heart, that territory where Jesus claimed that most of the really bad things in this world are hatched" (129).
So what exactly is coveting? WE COVET WHEN WE SET OUR HEARTS ON SOMETHING GOD HAS NOT GIVEN TO US.
Whether it’s because we see someone else have it or simply because our hearts hatched the desire, coveting is setting our hearts on things that don’t belong to us. Now based on this definition, it seems rather amazing to me that in a survey performed by the Barna Research Group ten years ago, 53 % of evangelical Christians claim they obey this commandment completely (Horton 242). That seems ridiculous, since we break this commandment all the time, every time we lust for someone or something not belonging to us. This commandment is broken on elementary school playgrounds as kids trade Pokemon cards; it’s broken on high school campuses as teenagers compare their physical attractiveness with each other; it’s broken at the gym, in the workplace, at the mall, and virtually everywhere else we see other people. We break it when we’re suddenly discontented with our computer because the newer ones are faster.
Parents break this commandment when they wish their kids were like other kids. Pastors break this commandment when they inwardly yearn to pastor the megachurch down the street instead of the place God has placed them. We break the tenth commandment whenever we set our hearts on something God hasn’t given us.
2. Why is Coveting Bad?
That brings us to our second question: What’s the big deal? Why is coveting bad? Our culture tells us that it doesn’t matter what happens in your heart so long as you don’t act on it. In fact, proponents of pornography actually claim that the pornography industry stops people from acting out their desires because it gives them an alternative to acting them out. Our culture tells us to stop being so sensitive, to not worry about a little daydreaming. What’s the big deal with fantasizing about having our neighbor’s house, or his stock portfolio, or his wife? It’s just innocent fantasy, nothing serious...right?
Well Jesus took a very different approach:
Mark 7:20-23—Jesus went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’"
The context of this teaching of Jesus is a controversy with the religious leaders of his day. Like most religious leaders, the leaders of Jesus’ day tended to emphasize the externals, things like how you look, who you hang out with, what you eat, and so forth. They had an elaborate set of rituals to determine who was "defiled" and who wasn’t. Jesus is telling us that the primary way people become corrupt isn’t from what they eat or who they hang out with. People are defiled by evil thoughts that are hatched in the human heart. Jesus lists lots of these evil thoughts: sexual immorality, theft, murder, and so forth. In fact, all the evil thoughts listed by Jesus correspond to at least one of the 10 commandments.
People don’t break the Ten Commandments because of who they hang out with, the TV shows they watch, or the injustice of society. People break the Ten Commandments because the human heart hatches the thoughts that lead us to break the commandments. Every evil action is first hatched within the human heart, so it’s the thought and intention to carry out the act that corrupts a person. This is why in Romans 7 the apostle Paul describes his first awareness of sin as coming from understanding the tenth commandment.
So why is coveting bad? OUR SINFUL ACTIONS FLOW FROM WHAT IS IN OUR HEARTS.
According to the Bible people eventually act out what’s in their hearts. So while our culture tells us that fantasizing about having other people’s stuff is harmless, Jesus warns us that coveting will build and build until it explodes in sinful action. The human heart is like a geyser, and the more we covet the more the pressure builds, until finally it blows in some sort of sinful action. This is why the tenth commandment is more fundamental than any of the other nine, because it deals with what’s happening in our hearts.
I remember shortly before his execution, convicted serial killer Ted Bundy granted a one-on-one interview. In that interview Bundy described how his growing addiction to pornography led him deeper and deeper into violent actions. That’s is not to say pornography caused Bundy to kill and to rape, but it is to say pornography provided a way for Bundy to feed the covetousness in his heart, and the more he fed it, the more his heart demanded.Jesus knows that what we do flows from who we are, so if we don’t tend to our hearts, we’ll end up slipping into sinful actions.
3. How Can We Avoid Covetousness?
So how can we uphold the tenth commandment in our lives?
Proverbs 4:23--Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (NIV).
Tp "guard" is to keep watch over, to watch over something as if it’s your most prized possession (NIDOTTE 3:147; Keil and Delitzch 6.1.115).
And in the Bible the heart is the control center of a person’s inner person (NIDOTTE 2:749). In our English language "heart" usually refers to a person’s emotions, like, "She broke my heart." But in Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament the heart is much closer to our idea of the "personality" or the "self." Our heart is our mind, our will, our emotions, and our ideas all wrapped up together.
The "wellspring of life" refers to the joy and exuberance that comes from living the good life, life as it was intended by God to be lived. This is what Pepsi promises with the ad line "The joy of cola," but of course that trivializes the genuine wellspring of life. The source of fullness of life is the human heart, and by implication the source of brokenness and emptiness in life is also the human heart. Our satisfaction and enjoyment of life is directly tied to how well we guard our heart, our inner self.
So how do we uphold the tenth commandment? AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS CHRIST WE KEEP THE TENTH COMMANDMENT BY TENDING TO OUR HEARTS.
To tend to our hearts means to guard our inner self, to pay attention to what’s going on inside of ourselves. A person who guards his heart knows when the pressure’s building.
But of course our question is how do we tend to our hearts? It’s one thing to know that’s what God wants us to do, but how can we actually go about doing it? Let me give you some very practical ways to tend to your heart so you can uphold the tenth commandment.
We can tend to our hearts BY ASKING GOD TO CHANGE OUR HEARTS.
Ezekiel 36:26--I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
This passage from Ezekiel is a prediction of how people could relate to God once God would send his son Jesus to inaugurate what the Bible calls the new covenant. God promises to be a heart surgeon for us, to take out our sin diseased, stone hard hearts, and to replace them with new hearts, hearts that are softened and responsive.
You see, a person with a sin hardened heart is simply incapable of responding to God. Responding to God isn’t a matter of simply trying harder or pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but it’s a matter of having our hearts made anew. Only God can change a human heart, only God can replace sin hardened, deceitful hearts with open, responsive hearts.
This is why God saved Israel before he gave them the Ten Commandments. God brought them out of their slavery in Egypt first, and only after he saved them did he give them his law. God’s grace transforms our hearts, and only then with a transformed heart can we respond to God. Have you asked God to change your heart by placing your trust in God’s son Jesus Christ? Have stopped your impossible project of trying to impress God, and admitted that your heart is stone cold? Have you asked God to perform heart surgery on you? That’s where keeping the tenth commandment starts.
We can also tend to our hearts BY EXALTING JESUS AS LORD IN OUR HEARTS.
1 Peter 3:15--But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect (NIV).
Peter’s telling us that before we can expect to speak for Christ we must have set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts. To "set apart" here means "to dedicate to the loyalty and service of Jesus" (Louw and Nida 53.44). The older word is "sanctify," that is, "to sanctify Christ as Lord" in our lives.
Just because we’ve trusted Christ and received a new heart is no guarantee that we’ve dedicated Christ as Lord in our hearts. After all, the people Peter was writing to were already Christians, men and women who had already received the new heart Ezekiel predicted. Yet Peter finds it necessary to tell them to exalt Christ as Lord over their hearts before they try to speak for Christ to the people around them.
Some of you are here today as Christians, but you’re in a wrestling match with who’s going to be Lord over your heart. For you keeping the tenth commandment means settling the Lordship issue in your heart once and for all.
Finally, we can tend to our hearts BY OPENING OUR HEARTS TO PEOPLE.
1 Peter 1:22--Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart (NIV).
In this passage Peter uses two different Greek words for love. First he uses the word philadelphia, which means "friendship love," the kind of love that’s shared between people who have things in common and similar interests. Their faith in Christ had resulted in "friendship love," or perhaps we could call it "affection" or "regard" for each other.But Peter wants it to grow from philadelphia love into agape love, which is unselfish, God-like love. This kind of love will be intense, unceasing, eager, and it will keep loving even when it’s scorned. This is the kind of love that can only flow from a heart that’s been transformed by God’s grace, a heart where Christ has been exalted as Lord, and a heart that makes the choice to open itself to other people.Sometimes we’re eager to love God but not so eager to love each other. We stick to loving our friends, our families, the people who we already like, the people we have things in common with.
But we close our hearts to the unlovable, to those outside our comfort zones. I’m just like you, I tend to do it as well. I believe this is one reason so many Christians today are unchurched. It’s easier and less risky to stay with our friends, to keep with people we know rather than be part of a church family with people we wouldn’t normally hang out with. But Jesus calls us to be part of his church, a place where imperfect people come, people we sometimes wouldn’t normally hang out with. And Jesus delights in taking people who wouldn’t normally hang out and helping them open their hearts to each other.We tend to our hearts by opening our hearts to people.
CONCLUSION
So the bottom line of the tenth commandment is this: Since all our actions flow from our hearts, we must tend to what is in our hearts to live a life pleasing to God.
In the Ron Howard movie Apollo 13 there’s a scene where the astronauts have to burn their jet engines in order to get back on course. Since all their computers are down they have to do it manually, and in order to steer they have to find a fixed reference point, a landmark. Without the landmark they have no way of knowing whether they’re getting back on track or further off track. The character played by Tom Hanks realizes that the earth is a fixed reference point, a landmark, and by keeping the earth in the small window he’s able to steer the rocket back on course.
That’s what God’s Ten Commandments are intended to be for us: Fixed reference potions, landmarks so we can get our bearings. As we finish this series today, I want to challenge each of us to keep these Ten Commandments close to our hearts, to keep them in the window of our lives, to remind ourselves of these truths again and again. This way, as we as a church family face living out our mission in a new century, we can make sure we stay on course and complete what God’s given us to do.
Sources
Buchanan, Mark. "Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing." Christianity Today (September 6, 1999), pp. 63-71.
Clapp, Rodney. "Why the Devil Takes Visa: A Christian Response to the Triumph of Consumerism." Christianity Today (October 7, 1996), pp. 19-33.
Douma, J. 1996. The Ten Commandments: Manual For the Christian Life. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing.
Louw, J. P. and E. Nida (editors). 1989. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. New York: United Bible Societies. CD-Rom edition.
Merrill, Eugene. 1994. Deuteronomy. The New American Commentary Vol. 4. Nashville: Broadman & Holman.
Moriarty, Michael G. 1999. The Perfect 10: The Blessings of Following God’s Commandments in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
NIDOTTE = VanGemeren, Willem A. (editor). 1997. The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
