Commt #10
So I’m guessing most of us have never heard of this woman Henrietta Garrett.
#1
• She died almost 100 years ago.
• And even when she was alive she was a bit of a hermit.
o She was a regular working class woman by background.
o Her husband died young so she spent the last 35 years of her life on her own.
o She had no kids.
o Not many friends in fact.
• No wonder she’s not exactly a household name!
And yet here’s the thing about Henrietta Garrett. When she died, it turned out she had 26,000 living relatives in 30 countries around the world. 26,000 relatives!
How could that be? Well…
• It turns out she was a tobacco heiress, and she had a fortune to her name!
• In today’s money, her bank balance would be around £250 million.
• And here’s the thing: they couldn’t find a will. So a quarter of a billion was going begging.
And so – amazingly enough – 26,000 people around the world suddenly found themselves grieving their long-lost cousin, ‘er, what’s her name? Oh yes – Henrietta’.
They went to huge lengths to claim a link to her. Many changed their names, faked family records, committed fraud and perjury.
All these claims had to be checked, of course - just in case. In fact, as a result of the checking 22 people were locked up in prison, 2 committed suicide, and 3 were murdered in all the quarrelling.
The rest I guess were just left disappointed.
It took 23 years to resolve the will. In the end I think they did manage to identify 3 genuine cousins, although none of them had even met her. Those 3 got most of what was left. But in truth, by that time the bulk of the money had gone – gobbled up in legal fees.
It’s hard to think of a more dramatic illustration of the covetousness of the human heart than the case of Henrietta Garrett and her so-called heirs.
#2
Exodus 20:17 –
17 ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.’
This is the final instalment of a series we’ve been running over the course of this term, looking at this very ancient blueprint for living known as The Ten Commandments.
But we’re going out with a bang today. Because this last one is different from all the others that have come before. Did you notice that?
All the others have been about specific actions. Measurable actions. Quantifiable actions. Observable and therefore punishable actions. They’ve all been about things you do or don’t do. Yes, Jesus and others would apply them to things going on inside us. But this is the one and only place in the list of 10 that our attention is drawn explicitly towards an attitude of the heart.
So presumably it’s an important one.
Coveting.
Let’s have a think about that today. We’re going reflect
• first on where you see it – this coveting business – what it looks like;
• then on why we should care about it – why it matters;
• and finally how to guard against it in our own hearts.
First, then, where do you see covetting?
#3
It’s probably not a word we use every day. ‘Covet’. And the times we do use it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a kind of mock-use, if that makes sense.
• Hi Sam. How’s it going?
• Great. Jo what are you doing right now?
• Well, if you must know, I’m down at West Quay, looking in the window, coveting this beautiful Armani jacket.
Do you know what I mean? Coveting is just a bit of a joke, isn’t it? Not something we really take seriously.
But clearly God takes it seriously. So what actually is it?
Well, try this for a definition.
#4
Covetousness is a discontented desire for what God has not given. How’s that? It’s not perfect, actually. Because coveting can be used of something that’s a good thing. When David says in Psalm 19v10 that the decrees of the Lord are to be more desired than gold, even much fine gold – that word ‘desired’ is the same word as ‘covetted’. So you can covet something good, like God’s holy law.
But generally speaking, this what coveting in this sense refers to: a discontented desire for what God has not given.
In reality, it is the heart attitude that goes with stealing.
#5
You remember how Jesus applied the 10 commandments:
• Anger is really murder – in the heart
• Lust is really adultery – in the heart.
• Well what anger is to murder and lust is to adultery, that is what covetousness is to stealing.
And it takes all sorts of forms. One of the things you notice straight away about the commandment is how broadly it applies.
I mean: look at that list there in verse 17. It starts with a married man’s greatest prize – his wife. But as you go down the list, you see it includes
• Other people – male and female servants.
• Animals – ox and donkey.
• And by the time you get to the end, it’s anything at all that belongs to your neighbour!
And that means there’s a whole range of other heart attitudes where coveting comes into play.
• There’s lust again – desiring to have that person as a sexual partner
• There’s greed – desiring to have that material thing
• There’s envy – desiring to have that thing instead of him or her having it
• There’s obsession and yearning and craving and so on.
There’s lots that comes under that general heading of ‘coveting’.
Actually, I wonder if might apply even more broadly today than it was in the original setting of Moses. What’s the repeated word in this verse? It’s the word ‘neighbour’, isn’t it? In other words someone you have enough contact with to be able to observe them, or interact with in some way, see what they’ve got. Now with TV, and phones and social media, we’ve got neighbours all over the place. Do you see?
• Yes, I can physically peer over the fence and wish I could have a beautiful Farrow and Ball garden room like the family next door have. I’m coveting their property.
• But equally I can scroll through my social media feed and see the picture of my friend’s holiday in the Caribbean and find myself wishing: ‘Oh I’d give anything to be there’. And I realise I’m coveting my online neighbour’s holiday.
There will be different trigger points for each of us, I’m sure.
• You might daydream about what it must be like to go to work for your friend’s employer – you’re coveting your neighbour’s job
• She finds myself wishing people thought of her as highly as they think of that other person –she’s coveting her neighbour’s reputation
• He’s frustrated he doesn’t have the same magnetic personality that his mate has – he’s coveting his neighbour’s charisma
Do you see?
The problem is: for whatever reason, God has not seen fit to give you that job or her that reputation or him that personality – or that property or that holiday. But we just want it anyway.
Because we know what’s best for us better than God. Or so we think.
Discontented desire for what God has not given. That’s what coveting is.
And we’re knee deep in it, aren’t we?
Charles Saatchi, the advertising guy, once famously described this 10th commandment as
#7
‘obviously a no-hoper of a commandment. Coveting’, he said, ‘is all anybody does, all the time, every day. It’s what drives the world’s economy, what pushes people to make a go of their lives.
He’s not wrong, is he?
Just think about what happens as you watch an ad.
#8
• There you are sitting on your sofa or at your desk, and you see this product displayed in front of you. Whatever it is: the new iPhone 17 Pro or the new range of body lotions from Boots, or whatever.
• And you see how pleased that person is with it.
• And it has this strange effect on you.
• Ten seconds ago, you didn’t even know this thing existed. But now, you feel your life is not complete without it.
Why do you think Ikea has been such a success story? Because it has been, hasn’t it? It’s huge! Why has it succeeded?
Presumably because we’re so busy acting on that impulse to acquire more stuff, we need somewhere to put it all. Enter the king of storage solutions – Ikea.
It’s in all of us, isn’t it? This 24/7 habit of making unnecessary luxuries feel like necessities for us.
This discontented desire for what God has not given.
Well, let’s move on, second, to why we should care about it.
#9
It’s a fair enough question, I suppose. I mean surely if there was ever a victimless sin, this was it.
There you are, whiling away your lunchbreak in front of Pinterest. You’re putting together a whole pile of images from all these online neighbours for your perfect garden or wedding or kitchen or whatever it is. You want all the images in one place so that you can covet them with greater ease and efficiency.
That’s basically what Pinterest is, isn’t it? A highly efficient coveting assistance resource.
But actually, so what? What’s the problem with it? Why not spend half an hour a day indulging your little fantasy world? What harm is it doing? There’s so much in the world that does need caring about. Why care about this?!
Well, let me suggest we might care about it, because despite appearances it is not a victimless sin. It’s actually doing all sorts of harm.
• It’s doing damage to our relationship with God, for one thing. It damages the way we even think about him.
#10
Right at the start of the Bible, do you remember that first sin? There in Genesis 3? The serpent tempts Eve, gets into Eve’s head with its distortions and deceptions. And Eve finds herself looking around this garden full of available things.
• You want this? It’s yours
• Fancy a bit of that? Take it?
• Hungry for a spot of the other thing? Go for it.
So much available in this garden. But she becomes fixated on this one thing that comes with an ‘unavailable’ sticker on it. The one restriction. And it feels like God is mean and ungenerous in denying it to her. So what does she do? Genesis 3:6.
#11
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable (that’s the coveting word) for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
And Christians have been following her lead for thousands of years.
#12
What would you say is the highest privilege of the Christian believer? Surely it’s that we can call the God of the universe: ‘My Father’. We can know that he listens to us like a father, he cares for us like a father. And he provides generously for us like a father.
Remember Matthew 6: 26 -"Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?
Now don’t get me wrong. Just pondering some purchase, deciding what you’re going to buy, may be perfectly sensible. Good stewardship of your resources. God normally provides for our needs through sensible purchases. But allowing an attitude to grow in us of obsessing about this or that thing – that’s a very different thing. It’s fostering an attitude that says ‘I want this, regardless of whether I need it or God thinks it’s good for me. I want it.’
And so our prayer changes. Instead of saying to God, ‘Father, you know my needs and my failures – please give me what I lack to live as one of your children’ – instead of that, we’re effectively saying ‘Father, my ungodly heart has decided I want this – now please give it to me.’
I’m deliberately putting it in a blunt way. But Paul is blunter still. Coveting, he says, ‘is idolatry’.
Why? Because coveting harms our perception of God as a generous, providing Father who loves to give us what’s good for us, and effectively looks around for a different sort of god, who’ll simply give us what we want.
But there’s more.
• Coveting does harm too to our relationship with other people.
#13
We saw before that all these commandments in the second half are really about whether we’re going to love our neighbour not. That is, it’s connected with our relationships with each other.
And that includes this one. According to James, coveting can be lethal for the community life of a church. In James 4v2, we find the cause of breakdown of church harmony. How does he diagnose it?
#14
You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. James 4:2
How does that work? Well presumably, as I become fixated on my neighbour’s house or car or lifestyle – or whatever it is – what am I doing? I’m training myself to see their things as booty that I am mentally stealing from them. And I’m therefore – at some probably unacknowledged level – training myself to see them, my neighbour, as a competitor rather than a brother or sister, or even just a human being. He or she is no longer a neighbour I love; they’re now the blockage to my having their stuff.
Do you see?
However smoothly I can carry on the appearance of warm relationship, my attitude towards their possession holds me back from loving them as I should.
But we’re not done.
• Because it even harms my own life
#15
We thought earlier about coveting being the engine for the economy. Remember that Saatchi quote.
But it’s also the engine for my sinful behaviour, isn’t it? It’s the gateway drug to a world of terrible behaviour. It may be that I can keep the lid on my covetous heart for a bit. But it’s going to out itself in some way eventually!
• It’s where stealing starts, certainly. You want something enough? You’re going to find a way to get it.
Achan is the classic example of this in the Bible. After the battle of Jericho, Achan disregards instructions about the loot. Listen to his confession in Joshua 7 –
#16
“I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: when I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them.”
Covetting is where stealing starts.
• And of course, it’s where adultery starts.
#17
• I want him. I want her. Think of David and Bathsheba. I want her becomes I’ll have her.
• It’s generally where apostasy starts – giving up on God. ‘I want that freedom to live a godless lifestyle. Or the finances that will make me more self-sufficient. So I’ll get it, even if it means turning my back on God. ‘Some people, eager for money, have wandered away from the faith’ – says Paul to Timothy.
All the other stuff starts here, doesn’t it? In a heart that has a discontented desire for what God has not given.
Coveting is not a victimless sin. It’s an attitude that tears us apart. It can do extraordinary damage to how we relate to God, how we love our neighbour, even how we live our own lives. It matters.
Of course there is forgiveness to be found in Christ where we’ve got into bad habits here. God doesn’t run out of grace! We won’t lose God’s favour because of our failures any more than we can earn God’s favour by our victories. But if we’re looking to live as children of God, and this is an issue for us, then we’ll be asking God to help us in this area. To free us from the grip of a covetous heart.
So we come to our third question. How might we guard against it?
#18
That’s what we all want to know, isn’t it? How can we win in this battle?
Of course, in one sense, the answer is: we can’t. We can’t simply conquer this covetousness by moral willpower, or something like that. It’s not going to happen. Not without God working in us by his Spirit, to root out the greed, the envy, the lust and so on.
So the place to start is the same place as for any other kind of spiritual growth. We start by praying that God will do his work of transformation in our hearts.
But God’s word does give some glimpses into how and when he tends to do that transforming work in his children. So let me close by suggesting 4 quick pointers from 1 Timothy 6 (p1194) – do turn to that chapter if you’ve got a Bible there.
4 pointers then.
1. Where there is craving, nurture contentment
#19
Listen to 1 Timothy 6:6
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
It’s the kind of verse that’s worth sticking on your fridge or putting on your screensaver, or something like that: godliness with contentment is great gain.
If we learn to revel in what we have, and stop exposing ourselves to those things which get us fantasizing about what we don’t have, the grip of covetousness might begin to loosen.
So for goodness sake,
• turn the volume down when it’s the ads;
• get the ad blocker plug-in set up on your browser;
• unsubscribe to Pinterest or whatever your favoured coveting support app is;
• unhook yourself up from that covetousness drip that is Grand Designs. I know the vial says ‘entertainment’ or ‘education’, but you know better, don’t you?!
• that Facebook friend, or social media influencer who’s constantly posting content about their perfect holiday or family or lifestyle or whatever – block them, unfollow, whatever.
• if you fancy getting out at the weekend, try a walk in the park rather than a shopping trip to West Quay.
It’s all part of nurturing contentment. And it’s how to break free from coveting.
2. If your pockets are deep, make sure your heart is dependent
#20
Verse 17.
17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.
Most of us have some money in our bank account, or a salary or benefits transfer coming into that account soon, or earnings potential for the future, or capital tied up in something that could be released, or family who care about us who could help us out if needed. When you stop to think about it, one way or another, directly or indirectly, most of us have access to resources. Not all, but most.
And therefore our instincts for survival and prospering are likely to be – what? Self-reliance. ‘I can fix this.’
Relying on God is not something that will come naturally to many of us – however well we talk the talk. ‘Putting our hope in God who richly provides’ is something we need to learn. But we must learn it.
And I think we can help each other in this. If under God a culture emerges here at Christ Church of just… talking about depending on God in the practicalities of daily life, looking to his provision - that will surely help all of us as individuals to grow that instinct.
3. Instead of just getting more, try giving more
#21
Verse 18.
18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
It’s a constant refrain right through the whole Bible, isn’t it? Proverbs is full of it. The gospels are full of it. Paul’s full of it. This theme of being generous, sharing with those who are in need.
And interestingly, again and again, the instruction to be generous comes with the assurance that you’ll find it rebounding to you.
Now that may sometimes be a literal thing. You give £10 away to someone in need, and you find £10 coming back to you from somewhere else. But I suspect more often it’s that the person who gives the £10 away finds such joy helping someone in need, that they no longer need the thing they were going to buy for themselves with that £10 to make them feel good.
Giving therapy has replaced retail therapy!
4. The antidote to greed is gratitude
#22
This one’s not spelt out explicitly in this particular chapter. But Paul is very hot on it elsewhere, so I think it’s worth mentioning.
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Gratitute. Giving thanks on a regular basis. There’s an obvious link to those other three points.
But it’s equally clear in our experience, isn’ it?
If you think for a while about your happy friends, and what they have in common, you probably won’t miss the common thread. It is nearly always the grateful people who are the happiest and most contented people. Thanking God for what you have may take some discipline at first – looking out for things to turn into thank you prayers, keeping a log of answered prayers, holding yourself to a negativity fast.
But gratitude breeds contentment, and contentment – as we’ve seen – is death to covetousness.
Well, it’s time to sign off on our series in these 10 commandments.
#23 [blank]
I wonder how you’ve found it. My hope and prayer, is that it has given us three things at least.
• More conviction about the ways in which we let God down in our hearts and our lives.
• More joy at the wonder of Jesus who lived the perfect life of obedience and credits his record to us.
• More understanding of how – in the power of the Spirit – to live out the reality of being the redeemed people of God.