Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Exodus Series, Part 15 | Coveting | Randy Garcete
Ever wondered how ancient wisdom can illuminate our modern lives? Join us as we explore the profound implications of the Tenth Commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," and how it remains as relevant today as it was for the Israelites. We contrast the spirit of gratitude during Thanksgiving with the consumerist frenzy of Black Friday, examining societal behaviors that reveal our deepest desires. Through the lens of the Hebrew word "hamed," we uncover how covetousness is subtly woven into our everyday lives.
Despite living in an age of comfort, why do so many of us feel discontented? We examine this paradox by highlighting how modern conveniences fail to satisfy our deeper needs and how the marketing industry exploits these insecurities. Through a lighthearted personal anecdote about being led astray on a childhood "snipe hunt," we draw parallels to how advertisements manipulate our desires, leading to overconsumption. Reflecting on figures like John D. Rockefeller and Donald Trump, we find that the pursuit of wealth often leads to endless dissatisfaction.
Our journey doesn't end with identifying the problem; we offer strategies to combat discontentment in our consumer-driven culture. Learn how a 72-hour spending detox can reveal impulsive buying habits and how the transformative power of generosity can lead to true fulfillment. As we wrap up, we seek guidance through prayer, aligning our lives with the teachings of Jesus to foster contentment and gratitude. This episode is a call to find joy and satisfaction beyond material possessions, embracing a life aligned with spiritual richness.
At this time. We ask for the anointing of your Holy Spirit to be continued upon Randy. We firmly believe that he's already experienced that as he was studying in preparation for this sermon. And, lord, I also pray for the anointing on us as hearers that we could take what you have for us this morning and put it to you. So, lord, we commit this part of the service into your hand. I pray this in your name, amen, amen, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning everyone. It's good to see you all here this morning, and I think dad was getting payback from a couple weeks ago when I let out happy birthday for him, so I appreciate it. Please open your Bibles with me to Exodus, chapter 20. I'm going to be finishing a sermon series on the Ten Commandments. Today we're going to be looking at the Tenth Commandment, which is thou shalt not covet.
Speaker 2:We've been going through the book of Exodus. We started I don't know, it's been probably a year ago now and just watched how God rescued a people out of Egypt, brought them to himself at Mount Sinai, and it's on Mount Sinai that he comes down and he meets with his people and gives them the law. And the Ten Commandments are probably the most well-known portion of that law, the one that we grow up learning in Sunday school from the time we're young, and it's the one that we think of when we think about the law, the Ten Commandments. There's so much in here that I've just thoroughly enjoyed studying. There's so much wisdom and insight into how we as humans behave, our impulses, our desires and our tendencies, and they point to, they reveal our sinful brokenness in a way that almost no other moral code does. So we've been looking at these Ten Commandments and I'd like to, just for review, I'd like to read all ten of them and then focus specifically on the last one. So what we're going to do is we're going to stand up and take out your Bibles. We're going to start reading in verse 3, which is the first commandment. So stand up, and I'm not going to read these, we're going to take turns reading them. So this is like popcorn reading, where, if you feel led to just read it out nice and loud and clear, just take one commandment, read it and then let somebody else read it, and then I'll read verse 17, which is the one we're focusing on today. So if someone wants to take verse 3, go ahead and do that. Amen, all right, go down to verse 12. Someone else? You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant. Amen, you can be seated. Thank you all for doing that.
Speaker 2:I think it's good for us to sort of refresh ourselves on what we've covered over the past several months, the past several months. I love this time of year. I love probably my favorite time of the year out of the whole year is from September until January. Part of it is we have all the holidays. There's deer hunting week. I love fall, but if there's anything that characterizes our time, if there's anything that characterizes our time, the season that we're in right now, from Thanksgiving until the end of December, it's the holidays and we have Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Speaker 2:But what I find so interesting is we have a Thanksgiving day which is on a Thursday. Is we have a Thanksgiving day which is on a Thursday? It is a day that is set apart across America, a day sort of dedicated to giving thanks and being grateful for what we have, and we all have good memories associated with that. But it was back in the I think it was in the 80s or 90s when Black Friday became a thing right after Thanksgiving Day. So we go from this day set apart for giving thanks and being grateful for what we have to Black Friday being a day that is where more money is spent on things that most people probably don't need, and it's a day that is characterized by covetousness.
Speaker 2:There's a website called blackfridaydeathcountcom and they've recorded from 2006 up until 2021. They keep track of injuries and deaths that have happened on Black Friday shopping day. There have been 17 deaths and this was up until 2021. There have been 125 injuries and these are a couple of my favorite headlines that they've recorded. Maybe I shouldn't say they're my favorite, but they're just interesting to me. So one Black Friday altercation in Kmart leaves man with a shattered hip. Shirtless man uses belt as a whip outside Vancouver Black Friday sale. I know there's some of you here who have been tempted to exhibit that type of behavior in public. Shopper pepper sprayed, arrested in argument over TV at New Jersey Walmart and, tragically, worker dies at Long Island Walmart after being trampled in Black Friday Stampede. Shocking that people are driven to that type of violence and those types of behaviors to gain something or to buy something that they don't think they can do without something, or to buy something that they don't think they can do without.
Speaker 2:We're swimming in a covetous culture. In a little bit I'd like to define. What does it mean to covet? Most of us have, I think, a brief understanding, or at least a basic understanding, of what it means to covet. The Hebrew word here used in the Old Testament is hamed, and it means essentially. It means to literally just means to desire, to desire or to take pleasure in something. It can be used in a positive sense or in a negative sense, but when it comes to coveting it's usually in a negative sense.
Speaker 2:One definition that I found is an intense desire to possess something or someone that belongs to someone else, or an inordinate desire to possess what belongs to another, usually tangible things I think of. Probably the most simple illustration of this is in children. When you have one child playing with a toy is in children. When you have one child playing with a toy and his brother or sister in our household it's normally the brother sees what the sister's playing with and wants it, just wants to take it, sees it and wants it and usually a fight ensues. Often a fight ensues. But that dynamic is something that starts off so young and so many of us never grow out of that. The object that is desired changes. As children it might be crayons or a ball, but as adults it's things like houses or cars or property. That impulse often in so many of us and so many of humans never changes. It's the object of the desiring that does.
Speaker 2:David Bersow has a sermon on this that I listen to and he calls covetousness. It's a hard word to say. By the way he calls it the deadly sin that doesn't exist. It's a deadly sin that doesn't exist and he calls it that way because we I've, at least personally, I have never, maybe you know, of someone who has, maybe a church who has disciplined or even maybe rebuked or called out the sin of covetousness in someone. We have clear pictures of people who've broken the other Ten Commandments or the other nine, but when it comes to covetousness, it's one that we it doesn't exist or we don't. We act like it doesn't exist. Part of it is that it's a condition of the heart, as opposed to an event or an action. Often it's a condition of the heart or an action. Often it's a condition of the heart. It's often synonymous with envy or greed or discontentment. It can include all of those. Often it's wanting something that does not belong to me, and the Bible uses strong, strong language to warn us, as believers, against covetousness.
Speaker 2:Listen to some of these verses Paul is writing to I think it's the Corinthians, I forgot the Reference there. But he says but now I'm writing to you to not associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, which the King James Version calls covetousness. Not even associate with somebody who claims to be a Christian but is covetous or an idolater. And he lists this behavior with all of these other sinful, what we think of as sinful behaviors a reviler, a drunkard or a swindler. Not even to eat with someone like this. Purge the evil person from among you.
Speaker 2:Ephesians. He writes to the Ephesians. He says but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. Luke 12, jesus is talking here. He says take care, watch out. He says be on your guard against all covetousness. So it's something that he's anticipating is going to be a problem for his disciples and he said just watch out, this could be a problem for you. Be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. So strong language from Jesus and from Paul and from other New Testament writers. But it's something that we tend to shrug off or minimize or ignore.
Speaker 2:And what I find interesting is that in this, coming back to the 10th commandment, it is very, it's comprehensive. He, when, when God gives I love how when God gave this law, he covers everything, he covers everything. There's no loopholes that we can get out of. So he starts off. He says or this commandment says you shall not covet your neighbor's house, your neighbor's wife, your male servant, female servant, or his ox or his donkey, and then just to close off all exits, he says or anything that is your neighbor's, because I think God knows us so well that we're sitting here. Well, if he would have just given us that first six or however many it is, most humans, myself included, are sitting there thinking, okay, how can I get around this? Like, what's an exit ramp here? And he says just everything. That's your neighbors and these, these in in this list.
Speaker 2:He basically covers four major categories that, uh, that are potentials for for humans to covet or to desire what does not belong to them. Number one is is houses or properties? He says your neighbor's house, and I think most of us have been to houses or homes or properties that are nicer, bigger, better, newer than the house or the property that we own. He talks about his neighbor's wife and that has to do with relationships. We tend to covet relationships, whether it's somebody else's spouse or somebody else's marriage or somebody else's relationship with their children, because we observe them and we're like, ah, they have it so nice. This person his wife or her husband has all these character traits that mine doesn't. We tend to covet those things or desire that. The third category, then, is that we humans tend to covet is occupations You're, in this context, a male servant or female servant, or even an ox would have been part of, would have been a part of somebody's occupation.
Speaker 2:An ox would have been used to till up farmland or to work up the land. It has to do with our occupation. How many times have you compared your occupation with somebody else's, or maybe the income that they get from their occupation, and thought of wow, they have it so nice, I have to do all of these terrible things and they get to sit there and twiddle their thumbs and make a much bigger living than me. We tend to especially as men, I think we have that tendency to compare our occupations to other people's occupations. Don't covet your neighbor's occupation. And lastly, a donkey, which I don't understand. This I can understand the ox thing. I could covet somebody's ox Donkey. I have nothing for them. That has to do with transportation. I think Donkeys were used to carry people around. Mary and Joseph, they rode on a donkey. Jesus rode on a donkey. How many times have you driven into the church parking lot with your potentially dirty and scratched up Toyota RAV4 and seen somebody else's vehicle and be like man? If I could only have that, I would be happy. We tend to covet transportation and that's just a short sort of four categories. But then he adds or anything that is your neighbor. So basically, don't covet anything.
Speaker 2:Coveting is not an event, but rather it is a condition of the heart, and it's this condition that tends to lead to sinful behaviors. This is the 10th commandment, I think by design. This is the 10th commandment, I think by design, because so many of the previous commands, whether it's committing adultery or whether it's murder or whether it's stealing, are behaviors that start with coveting, that start with desiring something that does not belong to you, and the extreme outcome of that are things like stealing or murder or adultery. Are things like stealing or murder or adultery. And it's coveting is a dynamic that gets us to want more and more and more, and yet it's never enough. The more we get. It's something that is never enough.
Speaker 2:Think of. I want you guys to consider the standard of living that we have today compares to, say someone, a thousand years ago. So I'm borrowing this illustration from David Bersow I want to give credit where credit is due and he uses the example of a king or a queen living in a medieval castle back 600 to 1,000 years ago. And they had this beautiful castle. They have everything that they could want at that time, and yet the greatest kings and queens of a thousand years ago did not have what you and I have today.
Speaker 2:So think of just the basic things that we take for granted. We have air-conditioned homes and cars and offices, to where we get to control the environment around us to suit our desires. If it's hot outside, we turn the AC on. If it's cold like it is today, we turn up the air, just so. It's constantly hovering right around 72, in my house, 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's something that the most powerful kings and queens would have never dreamt of. Even it would have been a fantasy for them.
Speaker 2:We have phones today where back then they would have to send a messenger on horseback to communicate between long distances. Today I can, I could. Right now I could pull out my phone and FaceTime my brother in law, who's living in Laos, which is halfway around the world and have a conversation with him. We have access instant access to information via our phones. We have fridges with fresh food that can stay fresh for a long time. We have freezers that can preserve meat for a long time. We have filtered water Excuse me we have dishwashers, microwaves, ovens.
Speaker 2:We have so much and yet we're some of the most ungrateful and discontented people in the world. Americans are the most, I should say Westerners are often some of the most unhappy and ungrateful people and, despite all of the things that we have, we're actually in greater danger today of dying from issues related to comfort than we are from overexertion. There's books I actually just I'm just reading a book called the Comfort Crisis, talking about our lives are so comfortable, we're so well, we have so much that we're actually in greater danger of dying from overconsumption, overeating, diseases related to overconsumption, than from starvation. The more we get, the more we want, and part of that, part of how I think our modern advertising and even marketing industry has played into and made it more difficult for us to combat the problem of coveting, is that they have figured out how to prey on our deepest fears and our deepest insecurities, our longings, to cause us to become discontent with what we have? How many times have you been watching, say, youtube, or seeing a commercial come across the screen where they're trying to sell a product that you all of a sudden realized that you need, when before you were fine without it and it's not really the product that you actually want? It's the happiness or the fulfillment or the satisfaction that they're promising to fulfill a longing or an ache or a desire that you have deep in your heart. Online advertisements are constantly feeding us ads targeted to what we want or what we think we want, and the more we buy. I'd be really curious to see how many things in this building we've bought because of online ads on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Things like I don't know, new hunting boots or some razor subscription or AG1 plus or like there. There's so many things that were fed via modern advertising that causes us to be discontent. Us to be discontent.
Speaker 2:When I was in fifth grade, I went on a boys camping trip. The fifth and sixth grade boys went camping. We went to a pond. There was a little cabin that had no electricity, had no running water, but it was late at night, after we had eaten supper. I don't know, it was probably 11 o'clock and it was right around the time when 5th and 6th grade boys get a little bit rowdy and start getting up to no good.
Speaker 2:And my friends started to talk about snipe hunting and they were like we should go snipe hunting. How many of you guys don't know what snipe hunting is? Raise your hand, okay, all right. Well, I didn't either, and I somehow, they somehow convinced me to go snipe hunting and they said okay, randy, this is all you have to do to catch a snipe, which is a bird apparently. They said we want you to. They gave me a trash bag. They said take this trash bag and hold it over your head and run as fast as you can around the pond, and if you do that, a snipe will go into your bag and you'll catch a snipe. So I took them at their word and I got my trash bag out and I started to run around the pond and they would tell me faster. You have to go faster. You'll never catch anything if you don't run faster. I was tripping over weeds, stumbling and falling and huffing and puffing around the pond and not catching anything. And after my second or third lap I heard howling laughter coming from the bank, from all of my buddies that had pranked me, and I realized, okay, there's nothing like a snipe.
Speaker 2:We do that uh with, with possessions and with things. Uh, with things that we buy, satan takes our desires and our and our and our desires for, for, for good things, and twists it and tells us run after the run, after the next, if you buy this, you will be happy. And we run and we run and we run, but we never catch what Satan promises. We buy the new gun, we buy the new pair of shoes, we buy the latest outfit, we upgrade our home, we do the new remodel, we do the. All these things are not wrong in and of itself. We do the new remodel. All these things are not wrong in and of itself. But for many of us we're chasing what Satan promises is behind that. He says you will be happy and satisfied if you buy this, if you get this, and that can look like so many different things a different relationship, the latest iPhone, another piece of hunting property. Relationship, the latest iPhone, another piece of hunting property. If I just have this, I will be satisfied and I will be happy and fulfilled. But no matter how much we try, it's never enough.
Speaker 2:There was a study done on 2,000 millionaires and on happiness and it was done by a researcher named Michael Norton and he asked them how happy they were on a scale from 1 to 10. And he asked them how much more money they would need to get for that level to hit 10. How much money would you need for your happiness level to reach 10, which is just like all-out happiness? There was not a single one that said they had enough. They all named a net worth that was two to three times what they actually had. Someone had asked John D Rockefeller, which is one of the world's wealthiest people back in I don't know what era 1800s maybe how much money would it take for you to be happy, and he said just a little bit more. Donald Trump was asked that same question and he said just 10% more. More will actually never be enough. More is never enough. We keep chasing and chasing, but our longings and our desires are never fully satisfied through those things.
Speaker 2:I want to briefly look at the origins of this sin in the Bible. So this was actually the original sin in heaven, in Lucifer. Turn your Bibles to Ezekiel, chapter 28. Ezekiel 28, verses 11 through 14. This is a prophecy that is directed towards the king. We're talking about the king of Tyre, who was an extremely wicked king. Tyre was known as a land of wealth and prosperity, but it's also most interpreters would interpret this to be talking not only about the king of Tyre, but about Satan himself, when he was still in heaven.
Speaker 2:Listen to what it says, describing Satan before he was cast down to the earth out of God's presence. You are the signet of perfection. You're full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You're in Eden, the garden of God. Listen to everything that he had. You had every precious stone. It was your covering sardius, topaz and diamond, beryl, onyx and jasper. Sapphire, emerald, carbuncle and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On that day that you were created, they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian, cherub or angel. I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God, in the midst of the stones of fire. You walked. He had all of this stuff. He was the most beautiful, the most perfect in beauty, but it wasn't enough. All of this was not enough.
Speaker 2:Turn to Isaiah, chapter 14. Isaiah 14, verses 12 through 14. This is talking about the day that Satan was cast out of heaven. It says you are fallen from heaven. O day, star, son of dawn, how you were cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low, and this is the sin of covetousness. Right here, I will make myself the mountain on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high, desiring something that did not belong to him, desiring a position that did not belong to him, that belongs solely to God. So Satan and his angels are cast out of heaven and the opening chapters of the Bible we see this same sin come up again. It was the original sin in Eden, genesis 3, verse 6.
Speaker 2:So when the woman, or Eve, she saw that the tree was good, god had said you can eat of every tree except this one. And she saw, satan came to her and tempted Eve with the same, the same temptation that he had in heaven before he was cast down. She saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired. And the word there used is the same word as covetous or covet, it's hamed. It was to be desired. It was something she desired that did not belong to her. She took it, she ate of it. She gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Adam and Eve had everything in the garden. Their lives were perfect, and yet it was not enough for them. And somehow we think that if we just buy the latest model of vehicle or the newest bow or the latest outfit, that somehow it's going to be enough. It wasn't even enough for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the consequences are devastating of this type of sin. Ultimately, adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden. Sin entered the world. It was the original sin, and since then the consequences have just they've been ongoing.
Speaker 2:It's a problem that has come up to our time, today At least, to broken family relationships. How many of you know of families that have been thrown into conflict over inheritance fights? It's a sin of coveting. Maybe you know of a father who is never around because he's always working, because he needs to just make a little bit more money. Most wars start with this sin.
Speaker 2:James says what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this? That your passions are at war within you. You desire and you do not have. So you murder, you covet and cannot obtain. So you fight and you quarrel. You do not ask.
Speaker 2:In essence, satan promises us that our deepest longings and desires will be fulfilled if we just get what he's offering. It's like the fruit, or like me running around the pond with a bag over my head, running, running, running, tripping and falling, and I think Satan just sits there and laughs at us and I think God weeps. So what do we do with this? This plays out so differently in most of our lives. For you, it might not be coveting somebody's vehicle, you're fine with driving around a beater, that's okay. But for you it might be someone's vacation or somebody else's marriage, someone else's job. Thinking man, if I only had what that guy had or what that lady had, I would be happy. It's never enough. So what do we do about this?
Speaker 2:There's, I think, two things I want to talk about as a solution to this problem of coveting. Ultimately, jesus came, he died in our place. He took the sin of coveting upon himself, bled and died for the consequences of this sin. And if you're here today and you've been born again, you have his life living in you, and it's his power, through the Holy Spirit, that can help us overcome this problem that is so rampant in our society. So, number one, we need to reorient our desires towards God, reorient your desires towards God.
Speaker 2:I think a mistake can be made when we talk about coveting as a sin of desire. The mistake that can be made is to begin to believe that all desire is wrong. That desire is wrong or must be squashed or bottled up, when in fact God is a God of desire. God desires deeply and he has created us as humans to desire deeply. We desire at our core, we desire belonging, acceptance, we desire intimacy. We desire so much and he has designed us to desire that much. But sin has corrupted those desires. To get us to stop believing that God is the only one who can fulfill that, we start looking for the wrong things to fulfill those desires in the wrong order, in the wrong time and place. And these desires are God-given gifts that help us to live a life of flourishing. Think of just the gift of sexual desire. Lust is a distortion of a God-given gift for intimacy within a marriage. That desire is not wrong, but when it is what Satan does, he distorts it and he gets us to chase after the wrong thing.
Speaker 2:Gk Chesterton says everyone who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God. Everyone who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God. I love that. I think it encapsulates this idea that our desires are not wrong if they're oriented in the proper order and if it causes us to go back to God as a giver of those desires. Cs Lewis said chase the sunbeam back to the sun. All of the things that we, the gifts that we have in our lives today, can be ultimately met in God.
Speaker 2:God fully satisfies and fulfills, david says in Psalms. He says my soul will be satisfied, as with fat and with rich food. He says. God satisfies the longing soul. So we have a longing in our hearts that only God can fully satiate. We can feast on him, we can gorge ourselves on God in a way that nothing else in this world will. So, number one reorient your desires towards God and number two, don't roll your eyes or shrug it off. Number two practice contentment. I hear that I'm like oh, come on, that's just like a trite answer. But this is, I believe, the answer to the problem of coveting.
Speaker 2:To the problem of coveting. I remember when we were first married, actually when we bought our first home. It was an older home it was built in 1900, and it had a lot of quirks and still does, and I really struggled with contentment when I saw the things that were broken or needed fixed in my home and when we would host people, whether it was family or friends, I found myself instantly pointing out all the flaws in my home and apologizing for them, just saying, oh, I wish it wasn't like this, I'm sorry about this, and it came to the point where it actually took a lot of the joy out of us hosting people. Finally, I had to learn to be content with what I have and not to apologize for it. Most people probably don't think about the flaws that I do.
Speaker 2:Hebrews 13 says Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Philippians, I'm not speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low, I know how to abound, I know what it is to be dirt poor and I know what it is to have enough and a lot. Paul is saying I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. But godliness, with contentment, is great gain. We brought nothing into this world. We can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evils. Practice contentment.
Speaker 2:I want to close with maybe just some super practical ways of doing this and I'd love to hear from you all, maybe after I'm done, like what are ways that you have learned to be content and push off and fight the tendency to covet, to desire what you don't need or that isn't yours? So, number one this is something that has been very helpful for me. I've been practicing it for a couple months now and I keep a gratitude journal. So I keep a note in my phone open and every day I just write down three things that I'm grateful for that day. Often it's just simple things, but I found the more I see what I have, the more I practice gratitude for what I have. Saying God, thank you for my children, thank you for my wife, thank you for my job. It gets me to be more and more grateful for what I actually have, instead of wishing for things that I didn't have.
Speaker 2:Secondly, this is just for those of you who are online or maybe come across an advertisement. Take note when you see an advertisement, take note of the message behind the ad or behind the product that they're trying to sell you. Good marketers and good advertisers will create an ad that will cause you to be discontent with your state in life. If they can get you to be discontent, they can probably get you and convince you to buy what they're selling. So when you see an ad, just for fun of it, just like, try to identify what's the message behind this. Are they trying to like? Are they trying to prey on my fear or on my sense of ego, or are they trying to prey on my sense of insecurity in the way I look or the things that I have? Recognize the message behind the advertisement, I think. Thirdly, stop comparing your lows with other people's highs, especially if you have social media.
Speaker 2:People don't post pictures and videos or stories of the latest spat they had with their spouse. You've never seen that you just won't. They normally post on a birthday or an anniversary picture of like, which is all fine and good, but you can sit there and see this beautifully curated post picture or video of somebody else's life and you're sitting there comparing their best. They put some time into this post. They didn't just slap it up there. They were like, okay, how can I make this look very good, we've all done it. You're sitting there and you're comparing their best with your worst. You're like the house is a mess. My wife is grumpy at me, I don't know. Yeah, we don't post those things, so keep that in mind when you see a social media post.
Speaker 2:This was another suggestion that I heard from I think it was Cody or Austin or one of you guys said do a, do a 72 hour spending detox. So basically commit between you and your spouse, or just you, to freeze all spending for 72 hours no gas, no, no, nothing. For 72 hours. Practice not spending a single penny. And it's pretty difficult. I have not actually done it, but I can imagine it's difficult. I think that'll expose those impulses within us to just like hey, I find myself really wanting to buy this candy bar at the gas station. It's going to bring up those things in us.
Speaker 2:Recognize hidden costs. I would love to have a motorcycle someday and I've been tempted to covet some of you guys' motorcycles. Nothing wrong with a motorcycle at all. Please don't hear me say this. I'm using this as an example to illustrate this point. When we buy something like a motorcycle, on the front end we don't see all the hidden costs that come with it. If I have a motorcycle now, I have to find the time to ride it, I have to find people to want to ride with me, I have to spend money and time on maintaining it, I have to keep it clean, I have to have storage for it, and that's all fine and good. But so many times we don't. I don't consider, we don't consider those hidden costs behind other people's possessions. I don't consider we don't consider those hidden costs behind other people's possessions.
Speaker 2:And I think, lastly, give to others, which is Jesus. It's almost like a cure-all for discontentment, selfishness and greed. Give what you have to other people. I've never met somebody who's a giver, who's also discontented with their state in life. There's very, very few generous people who are unhappy or discontent. I think it's Jesus' way of getting to the root of that problem in our hearts of coveting. So just to summarize the 10th commandment don't desire what does not belong to you and don't buy into the lie that Satan is selling to fulfill that. You will be fulfilled. If you just have the newest, shiniest thing. It's never going to be enough, and only God can fully satisfy those deepest longings and desires that we have.
Speaker 2:Let's pray Lord. We are so human and so frail in so many ways, and we are people who struggle with some of the most basic sins and impulses that have been around since the Garden of Eden and especially during this Christmas time. There's so much that we see in terms of advertising or marketing that gets us to, that stirs up a general sense of discontentment and gets us to covet what other people have, gets us to desire things that we don't need and are probably bad for us. Help us to be content, to learn godliness with contentment. Help us to be grateful for what we have and to give to others as well. We need your help. We want to follow you and live lives that look more and more like Jesus, but we need your help. So I ask that your Holy Spirit would guide us, give us strength and wisdom, to know how to learn contentment in an age of covetousness. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen, sean.