We were created for God. To know him, to love him, to worship him. And to proclaim his glory, to make him known to others. But based on the billboards we see on the highways, and the ads we see on TV and on the internet, it seems we were really created for the newest, the shiniest, the coolest, the most exciting. One pastor called it, “The Cult of the Next Thing.” He said, “The cult’s central message proclaims, “Crave and spend, for the Kingdom of Stuff is here.” I remember a former NFL player and his wife who came and spoke at Antioch years ago. He was joking about her love for shopping and said, “Yeah, we walked into a store the other day, and the spirit of purchase fell on her!” It can happen.

 God created us for himself, not for stuff. But he also created us with normal and natural human desires. Our desire for food gets us out of bed and into the kitchen in the morning. Our desire for doing something that matters every day drives us to get a job. Our desire for fellowship gets us into community, especially the spiritual family of a church. Our desire for intimacy, including sexual intimacy, leads us to get married. These are all good desires and the greatest desire that God gave every image bearer is a desire to know our Creator. Because of the fall, those desires, like everything else, have been corrupted. Our desire for food can kill us, can’t it? Our desire for intimacy can drive us to break the 7th commandment in all the ways it can be broken. Our desire to know something greater than ourselves can drive us into all kinds of idolatry and self-deception. This is why God gave us the 10th commandment.

This commandment may be last because it sums up all of the 6 commandments that have to do with loving our neighbor. Paul said as much: “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments…are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” This commandment is also a companion to the first one: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Fill in the blank: “If I only had ____________, I would be happy.” Whatever we put in that blank has taken the place of God, who is the source of all our joy and who has met our deepest need and of whom Jesus said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.” So, what is the tenth commandment? 

We are told not to covet our neighbor’s house, our neighbor’s wife, and our neighbor’s possessions. Our neighbor may have people who serve him. He may have animals that serve him, like donkeys. I don’t think most of us struggle with coveting our neighbor’s donkey, though I do drive past a cute one near our house. Maybe that’s why God made this commandment apply to everyone when he included the last phrase, “or anything that is your neighbor’s.” We are not to covet anything our neighbor has, from his stuff to his health to his status to his job to his relationships.

This commandment is hidden often because it is in the heart. Covetousness is birthed in the heart as a desire and it grows and matures and leads to sin and death. Exactly as James describes it: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

What is the antidote to covetousness? I would argue that it is contentment, which sadly, many people never experience.

A 14 year-old young man named Jason Lehman wrote this poem in 1989 entitled, “Present Tense.”

“It was spring, but it was summer I wanted, the warm days, and the great outdoors.

It was summer, but it was fall I wanted, the colorful leaves, and the cool, dry air.

It was autumn, but it was winter I wanted, the beautiful snow, and the joy of the holiday season.

I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted, the freedom, and the respect.

I was twenty, but it was thirty I wanted, to be mature, and sophisticated.

I was middle-aged, but it was thirty I wanted, the youth, and the free spirit.

I was retired, but it was middle age that I wanted, the presence of mind, without limitations. 

My life was over, but I never got what I wanted.”

The good news is contentment can be learned and is worth whatever it costs. Paul wrote from a prison cell, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”

May Christ grow our contentment and help us to put away coveting in all its forms.

The ninth commandment says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The first application is in the courtroom, where truthful witnesses are essential to the cause of justice. But the second application is in the culture, in our everyday lives. What are some ways we break this commandment and therefore do not love our neighbors as we love ourselves?

The first is slander. Avoiding it is a minimum requirement for those who want to walk in close fellowship with the Lord, as David wrote in Psalm 15: “(he) does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend.” Alan Redpath wrote, “Slander… is a lie invented and spread with intent to do harm. That is the worst form of injury a person can do to another. Compared to one who does this, a gangster is a gentleman, and a murderer is kind, because he ends life in a moment with a stroke and with little pain. But the man guilty of slander ruins a reputation, which may never be regained, and causes lifelong suffering.” Strong words that do not commend becoming a gangster, of course, but you get the point. Who loves slander more than anyone? Satan loves slander, and teaches all who will learn from him how they can master it as he has. He will teach you how to imagine the worst in people, how to see their flaws or make some up, and then how to make sure others see it, too. But loving our neighbor means we believe the best and speak the best. 

The second is gossip. Some have said gossip is “confessing someone else’s sins.” But it is a deadly pastime. Solomon wrote, “…a whisperer separates close friends.” Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and he loves to teach people how to perfect this sin and feed others lies they will eat up like candy. “The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body. Alan Redpath wrote, “How many people, especially Christian people, revel in this, and delight in working havoc by telling tales about others.” Maybe there’s a time for us to say, “Hold on, I think we are entering into gossip, now. I am not trying to be a judge or anything, but can we change the subject?”

 The third is flattery. “A lying tongue hates its victims, and a flattering mouth works ruin,” Solomon wrote. And he said that a man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet. Flattery is false speech that is used to manipulate or control someone, not to bless them or build them up! Again, Satan is a master of this and used it to manipulate Adam and Eve, telling Eve that if she ate the fruit God told her not to, she would be like God and her eyes would be opened. We would do well to avoid flattery and simply speak truth to one another about the good things we see God working in and through them. Being able and adept at praising others, but not ourselves, is a mark of Christian maturity. Jon Bloom wrote, “Flattery is a lie, masquerading as encouragement, from a selfish motive to manipulate the hearer in order to achieve the flatterer’s covert purpose. Love never flatters others, and wisdom never desires to be flattered.” 

The fourth is deceit. The Heidelberg Catechism says this:  What is the aim of the ninth commandment? Rather, in court and everywhere else, I should avoid lying and deceit of every kind; these are the very devices the devil uses, and they would call down on me God’s intense wrath. I should love the truth, speak it candidly, and openly acknowledge it. And I should do what I can to guard and advance my neighbor’s good name. One characteristic that makes God God and not human is this: God never lies. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. But Satan is a liar and the Father of lies. That is his nature, and we do not want to help him in his work. Not even a little bit.

The fifth is silence. If someone is attacking the character of your friend, speaking lies about him or her, should you remain silent? If so, aren’t you also bearing false witness? Sometimes we don’t speak up to defend the truth because of fear of man. But in that situation, fear of God must triumph.

If someone is misrepresenting God in a conversation, and you are in the gathering, should you remain silent? If you are a student in a classroom and the teacher or the professor says, “There is no absolute truth,” should you keep quiet? If someone misrepresents the Word of God, should you not speak up? Peter wrote that some twist the Scriptures to their own destruction. How can we stand by and watch in silence? Yes, there are times we should refrain from speaking, and we have to pick our battles. But James said, “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” We cannot assuage our conscience by telling ourselves we are being wise or we are biding our time when actually we are just afraid. If we tell the truth-speakers to keep quiet and we keep quiet ourselves, we are helping the Father of lies in his goal to distort the truth and keep it hidden at all costs.

Love your neighbor and speak the truth in love. 

A woman walked into a butcher’s shop years ago and told the man she needed a fryer for supper. He was glad because he only had one chicken left to sell and was glad to get rid of it. He pulled it out of the ice and put it on the scale. “Two and a half pounds,” he said. “Hmm, I really need one a little bigger,” she said. So the butcher took the bird off the scale, rummaged it around in the ice behind the counter, and then weighed it again, pushing down just a bit on the back of the scale. “Three pounds!” he said. “Hmmm,” the lady replied. “I guess I’ll take both of them.”

Busted! Just like I was when I was 9 years old or so and I rode my bike down to Old Town Shopping Center where I knew the Ben Franklin store had my favorite candy. I stuffed my pockets full and walked out, heart pounding, and had almost made it to my bike when I heard the manager say, “Stop right there, young man.” It ended badly, with a call to my parents, a tearful confession to the manager, and then a painful lesson administered by Dad back at the house.  

With the 8th commandment, God demands honesty in how we are to love our neighbors. Do not murder and do not commit adultery are minimum standards for loving them, right? But so is not stealing from them or being false in our dealings with them. Seems obvious, yes? If you ask 50 people on the street if they believe stealing is wrong, probably close to 50 would agree. Ask the same 50 if they had ever stolen something, and many would say “no.” According to Barna research, nearly 90 percent of evangelical Christians claim they never break this commandment. I think Martin Luther’s statement is closer to the truth. He said, “If we look at mankind in all its conditions, it is nothing but a vast, wide stable full of great thieves.”

The US Dept. of Commerce reports that 4 million people are caught shoplifting every year and for everyone who is caught, 35 are not caught. That means there are nearly 140 million incidents of shoplifting in the U.S. every year. And what makes that even more shocking is that based on the numbers, 90% of shoplifters who are caught are classified as middle class or wealthy. People also steal from the government by under-reporting taxes. Or from insurance companies with fraudulent claims. People steal intellectual property or violate copyrights or plagiarize in books or papers. People steal from their employer if they don’t put in a full day’s work. 

People even steal from God. What? God said it Himself. “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me.” The people He was speaking to didn’t believe it, and said, “How? How have we robbed you?” God said, “In your tithes and contributions.” Earlier in the book of Malachi, God said the priests had offered their lame or sick animals on the altar as a sacrifice to Him. It reminded me of the story Paul Harvey told about a woman who was cleaning out her freezer and found a Butterball Turkey that had been in there 23 years. She called the Butterball Turkey hotline and asked if the turkey was still edible. They said if it had been in zero degrees for 23 years it was still edible, but it would taste like cardboard and should just be thrown away. She said, “Oh, no that’s ok. I will give it to the church.”

At its root, stealing is a refusal to trust in God’s providence. When we steal, we are saying to God that we do not believe He will give us everything we need. We might think, I have to take care of myself by hook or by crook, with the emphasis on crook. But the Lord said, “Do not steal.” 

Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We don’t say that prayer and then sit on the front porch and wait for someone to drive by the house and sling a loaf of bread in the yard. Nor do we pray that prayer and drive to Food Lion and steal our groceries for the day. We trust in God’s providence by working hard in the strength He gives us, and we earn what we need to live. 

Don’t steal. And check that turkey carefully at the next church potluck!