How to Be a Human Being - Wanting Everything
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Exodus 20:17
To covet is to delight in. To desire. To want. What do you delight in? What do you spend your time looking at, admiring, desiring? What is desirable, beautiful? What do you love? What do you want? What do you covet?
Here’s a recipe for being miserable—it’s easy: Spend some time looking at your neighbor’s house, their yard, their car, their pool. Notice how much nicer it is than yours. Notice how pretty their wife is, how fit their husband is, how well behaved and smart and beautiful their kids are. Dream about how great it would be to have their job, their income, take their vacations. I mean, it must be nice, right? Look at their grades, their natural ability in sports or music. Compare everything you have with what your friends on Facebook have. Compare your photos and followers on Instagram with your friends. Watch those remodeling shows and fantasize about new tile and a new kitchen and a landscaped manicured lawn with an infinity pool and hot tub. Then look at your pile of laundry, the dent in the car in your driveway, think about that argument you had with your spouse, notice the chores your kid “forgot” to do, remember the pile of paperwork at the office—basically just tell yourself over and over that your life isn’t as good as all the lucky, beautiful people. That’ll pretty much do it. They used to call it “keeping up with the Jones’” and it’s a recipe for staying miserable.
To covet is to stay in a perpetual state of discontentment. To constantly compare ourselves and our life and what we have with everyone else. When we compare ourselves with other people and what they have, we rob ourselves of joy. We’re never satisfied. We’re never content. We make ourselves miserable. The other commandments mostly dealt with our actions, this one mostly deals with our heart.
But it’s not just on a personal level, it’s much bigger than that. There’s a cultural war happening in our society between the capitalists and the socialists. The socialists say Capitalism is founded on greed. The capitalists say Socialism stems from envy.
You want to know what God has to say about all that? He says in 1 Timothy 6:6-10 that He wants us to be content with what we have. Not to be greedy. Not to look with coveting eyes on what other people have and try to take it away from them. Probably shouldn’t create laws that institutionalize stealing from the wealthy and distributing it to the people who don’t have as much but wish they had more. None of us brought anything into this world, and none of us are going to carry anything out. We all need to learn to be content with what we have. Wealth is a trap that has its own deadly problems. Poverty is not inherently noble. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Greed, hoarding, envy, coveting—no matter which side of the fence you’re on, rich or poor—obsessing over what you don’t have and what someone else has got is a danger to our soul.
“People who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:9–10
That’s most of what I see in all these political arguments. Greed, envy, the love of money. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” — Alexander Fraser Tytler
So, if we want to establish a society of human beings that’s going to function the way God intended it to be, He said this is the only way it’s going to work: You shall not covet.
So what does that look like? What does it mean?
Luther says it means we should fear and love God so much that we don’t try to come up with schemes to get our neighbor’s inheritance or house for ourselves. We’re not supposed to sit around thinking of ways to take things away from people but instead, we’re supposed to do everything we can to help them protect and keep what they have. Imagine that.
It also means we should fear and love God so much that we do everything we can to help protect people’s relationships with their husband and wife. With their children. With their employers and employees.
We’re not supposed to allow our heart to get set on wanting what other people have.
In Philippians 2:3-11 we’re given some very clear instructions about how we as Christians are supposed to live out this commandment to not covet. It says,
“Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others.”
Isn’t that the bottom line for most of this? Selfishly wanting more and more and nicer things. And then also wanting to look impressive to those people in our mind that we’re always comparing ourselves to. Who are they? People at work? People you went to school with? Family members? For me, it’s probably other pastors, other songwriters and artists—other authors. Man, don’t compare yourself to other people. It’s a trap. It goes on to say this, “Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.” And not like “they’re better than me, I wish I was better than them” more like “I’m going to do whatever I can to encourage them to succeed in what they’re doing.” I promise you, that will bring you more joy. God says it boils down to this: “Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.”
I think we get very confused about what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian means that we represent Christ to the world. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, and we are the image of Jesus to everyone we come in contact with.
But what about us? Don’t we have certain rights? Of course. Don’t we know the truth because God has revealed it to us in Jesus? Absolutely. Didn’t Jesus give all the authority and power that was given to Him to us? The Great Commission? Yes! All authority and power. It’s amazing.
So what are we supposed to do with all that power? All that freedom and wisdom and blessing? Do we lord it over people? Show it off and rub it in their face? Walk around with signs that basically say “I’m better than you”?
No. He says we’re supposed to do this:
“You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”
We’re supposed to take up our cross and follow Jesus. Lay down our life for our neighbors just like He laid down His life for us. We’re supposed to be like the Good Samaritan and help people who need help—with our time and our money. Take the worst seat at the table. The smallest piece of cake. This is all the opposite of coveting. We’re supposed to love and serve each other. (Galatians 5:13)
Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there you will find your heart.” Whatever you covet, whatever you desire, whatever you look at with longing eyes, whatever you treasure—that’s where your heart is going to be. If you spend your life longing after the stuff other people have, you’re going to turn your heart black. You’ll be like Golem with My Precious. You’ll be like King Midas who asked that everything he touched would turn into gold, then he starved to death because all his food turned into precious metal.
What you delight in matters.
God says you are to
“Delight yourself in the (Him) Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)
If you treasure Jesus more than anything else in the world, if your heart is set on Him, then your heart will be filled with light. Delighting in the Lord, praising God, that’s the way we get our heart properly aligned so that we start to want, to covet, the right things instead of the wrong ones.
We say this every week at prayer time, from 1st John,
“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.” 1 John 5:14–15
That’s what this is talking about: we seek the Lord above everything else. We delight in Him. We covet Him. Set our heart on Him. When we want Him—when we love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. When we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Then our hearts are pointed in the right direction. Then He will give us the desires of our heart because our hearts are wanting the right things.
Does that make sense? If our heart is pointed in the wrong direction, desiring things that are bad for us and bad for our neighbor, then He’s not going to give them to us, He’s not going to give us something that’s bad for us.
And to come full circle—when we make anything other than God a god in our life, our life is not going to work out. All the Commandments come down to the first one: You shall have no other gods. Every Commandment we break points back to that one.
The whole Bible is one story after another of God’s people deciding they want something other than what God wants for them. It’s just story after story of people coveting things that are bad for them. Comparing themselves to other people, and trying to grab stuff out of other people’s hands. Like a bunch of spoiled brats.
The covetous heart is always comparing what we have with what other people have. Always comparing ourselves with other people. It doesn’t work. It’s self destructive.
I only know three things that can help us get out of this dangerous spiral of coveting. The first is to seek the Lord, like I said before, to turn our hearts toward Him and delight ourselves in the Lord. His Word, His promises, His law, His mercy. That’s the most important thing.
The other two are to be thankful and to compare our present selves with our past selves—instead of other people.
Pretty much every other page of the Bible has a verse about being thankful.
“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.” (1 Chronicles 16:34)
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” (Colossians 3:15) and
“Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” (Colossians 3:17) and
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” (Colossians 4:2)
In Philippians 4:6 it says,
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
The Psalms are filled with reminders to be thankful,
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.” (Psalm 100:4)
“Praise the LORD. Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good.”
There’s no end to Scriptures reminding us to be thankful.
There’s a good reason for that. It’s the only path to sanity. The only path to joy. It’s the only possible cure for discontentment. The only remedy for the poison of covetousness. Instead of dwelling on what you don’t have, be thankful for what you do have. Be thankful for what God has given you. And realize that He gave it to you so you could share it with others. Blessed to be a blessing and all that. You’ll be like the Grinch when he stopped trying to ruin Christmas. Like Scrooge when he became the happiest man in town by discovering the true secret of joy—being generous and kind and thankful.
The only reason you should ever compare yourself to others is to make sure they have enough.
Then, the other thing that can help is this: instead of always comparing yourself to other people, compare yourself today with yourself yesterday. Are you doing better at whatever you’re working on than you were yesterday? Just try to improve a little bit. If your desk is a mess, like mine is sometimes, then put away one little pile today—make it a little better. If there’s a mound of paperwork, you might not be able to deal with all of it but maybe you can do something with the one that’s on top. Then maybe tomorrow you’ll get to the next one. Don’t compare your desk with anyone else’s desk, just compare it to your desk from yesterday. All those little improvements will add up.
That’s kind of how sanctification works, except Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will take every little attempt and make it really matter, make it truly good. Sanctification means to “make holy” and it’s the process of God making us holy through Jesus by the power of the Spirit.
It’s like the guy who built a dartboard with a motor and a sensor so that he could never miss. If he throws the dart anywhere near that board, it moves and he gets a perfect bullseye every time. That’s sanctification.
It’s like my electric bicycle. In one sense, it’s like any other bike, it has pedals and a chain and gears — but when I pedal, a motor kicks in and multiplies my effort. Without the motor I would feel every little hill and go about 8 MPH but with the pedal assist, the same effort has me cruising down the road at 20 MPH whether there's a hill or not. It’s pretty awesome. That’s sanctification.
[Bible Lake Sunrise] Which means when we get out of bed in the morning and turn our hearts to the Lord—say a little prayer, incline our hearts to God. Jesus makes that prayer pure, the Spirit carries that prayer all the way to heaven. That’s sanctification. We open our Bible or our Bible app, notice that we’ve skipped our daily reading for our “Bible in A Year” plan for three days—but instead of feeling guilty and condemned, we just do today’s reading with thankfulness in our hearts for the mercy that Jesus has promised us. A little more of the Word of God is hidden in our heart. We grow a little in our faith. We grow a little in our faithfulness. That’s sanctification.
And then we finish our prayers and our Bible reading and go about our day. We open the Facebook app, or Instagram, or whatever—and we notice that someone has a nicer, cleaner house than we do, a newer car, a cuter dog, better hair, whiter teeth, flatter belly, bigger church, better grades, more friends, they’re going on another cruise, got another promotion—and instead of letting our eyes go wide in greed, instead of letting our hearts go green with envy, instead of coveting like we did yesterday; we stop. We thank God for what He’s given us. We think of ways to share what we have with someone. And our world gets a little brighter.
When we humble ourselves, when we put our mind in the direction of Jesus and the cross and what He did to rescue and save us. When we are thankful by faith. Then God saves us, even from ourselves. Jesus humbled Himself and gave Himself for you, so you could be forgiven and be able to stand in the presence of God along with Him. And because Jesus did that for you,
“Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11)
Jesus showed us how to be a human being. You humble yourself and instead of coveting what other people have, you lay down your life for them. You’re probably not great at doing that, I know I’m not. That’s why He did it for us. Here’s one thing that it’s okay to covet: and you can covet this with all your heart—covet Jesus’ righteousness. Covet how good He is. Covet how much the Father loves Him. Because He has freely offered all those things to you already. Thanks be to God.
AMEN