Commandment #10

Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn one last time to Deuteronomy chapter 5, as we look at the 10th and The final commandment concerning the contentment of God. This is the commandment that we shall not covet and it is something that We fail to grasp about this commandment that makes it Perhaps the most significant of them all For unlike the other commandments This is a commandment that works from the inside out my friend Phil Reichen He's written the wonderful book called written in stone on the 10 commandments and he mentions that all the other nine commandments, it seems work from the outside in that the Law giver Moses begins with our actions that Eventually affect our spirit our heart our minds, but here in Commandment number 10 he does the opposite He starts with what is on the inside a Commandment that governs our internal desires and our hopes and aspirations and he works from the inside out In fact, if you look at the 10 commandments, they're actually sandwiched between two similar commandments I would suggest you that the first one is like the last one That we have no other gods, but God is an internal commandment and And that the eight in between them concerning worshiping idols taking God's name in vain Keeping his name holy of breaking the Sabbath dishonor and authority violence immorality Stealing and cheating and bearing false witness or lying these are all external conduct that comes from Either a going astray from the first or last are both commandments And that they are connected That they fit like the bookends or the sandwich ends of a diet of healthy God-centered living that once we have a proper view of God And we see God for who he really is and we are contented in God's providence, but once Our attitudes about God become defective Or demeaning or blasphemous Then we begin to doubt the goodness of God and his providence and we begin to covet We begin to covet our neighbor's wife Our neighbor's house his field his male and female servants his oxen and his his livestock and anything else that belongs to our neighbor In fact, once we stray away from the true God in commandment number one We inevitably head towards the false God at the end of commandment number 10 A God Jesus calls Maman He says that we cannot serve two masters For we will love the one and hate the other We will cling to the one and despise the other we cannot serve God and Maman And the subtly of all of this The reality that this is so likely to happen to us Is all around us In a philosophical world view that is the American world view called materialism And and the religious practice that is become known as consumerism And a false God called Maman who lies behind them both Materialism is the philosophy that says that the only thing that is real Are the things that our senses can discern It's born out of the scientific materialism of the Enlightenment back in the 17 and 1800s It said that the only reality was that reality that could be verified By scientific exploration or scientific method and everything else a belief in an unseen God and infallible scripture Heaven and hell miracles Salvation and all of these things that have to do with the inner man are simply a myth Scientific materialism led to spiritual materialism which then led to consumerism Consumerism is the view according to the encyclopedia of a social and economic order That is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods or services in an ever-increasing amount In economics consumerism refers to economic policies placing emphasis on consumption In an abstract sense, it is believed that the free choice of consumers should dictate the economic structures And the religious practices of any people and any society It is the belief that the customer is king And consumerism Seems to capture the nations there are three basic brands out there There is our consumeristic capitalism In America and in the west in Europe that always longs for more and more and more and more this consumption without limits There's also socialism The idea that the state through taxes and programs will create both welfare and well for its people And the taxes lead to the good life And then there is Marxist Communism That the state owns everything Will accumulate all wealth and will distribute wealth evenly and equally Among all the members of a classless society All three share a common spirit of godlessness They ignore God into the pursuit of things or worse yet They use God in the pursuit of material possessions and benefits Pastor Mark Buchanan of the New Life Community Church in Duncan, British Columbia, Canada Wrote back in 1999 in article about faith and consumerism By the title trapped in the cult of the next thing Listen to what Pastor Buchanan said I belong to the cult of the next thing It's dangerously easy to get enlisted It happens by default not by choosing the cult but by failing to resist it The cult of the next thing is consumerism cast in religious terms And as its own litany of sacred words More you deserve it new faster cleaner brighter And as its own deep rooted liturgy charge it instant credit no down payment deferred payments no interest for six months It has its own breaches and evangelist prophets and apostles the admin the pitchman the celebrity sponsors It has of course its own shrines its chapels its temples and mech those called malls or superstores or club warehouses It has its own sacraments credit and debit cards It has its own ecstatic experience the spending spree And the cult of the next thing central message proclaims crave and spend For the kingdom of stuff is here to stay sanctification is measured by never saving enough For the cult teaches that our lives are measured by the abundance of our possessions Those caught up in this cult of next things Live endlessly relentlessly for the next thing The next weekend the next vacation the next purchase the next experience the next high tech gadget For us the impulse to seek the next thing is an instinct bread and us so young that it seems almost genetic As if it is part of being an American or at least a North American It's our paradigm A way of seeing life Of measuring reality It's our unifying myth how could the world be otherwise And for Christians this is a problem The problem is ethical spiritual theological and of course practical But it is against the ethics of Christ It was Jesus who said Beware And be on your guard against every form of greed For not even when a man has an abundance Does his life consist of his possessions We know these things We hear these things But I wonder how much we really stuff these things in the background of our lives and move on towards the cult of the next thing Into our consumeristic religion where Jesus becomes the means to our earthly personal police peace and affluence You know sometimes it takes the members of a new generation the young people to see things and say things That we who are now the caretakers of the status quo are unwilling to admit in public Once such young lady as a girl who simply identifies herself as summer She's a journalist student at Westchester University in Pennsylvania This past spring she wrote an essay Called America a materialistic nation We'll take me a few minutes to read it. It'll be painful to hear But ask you to bear with me America is seen as a very materialistic nation from within and from other countries as well People criticize us being wasteful with our dollars People complain about how much money is being spent on the war in Iraq And they wonder how we can even afford it with a national debt of over eight trillion dollars Is our behavior really so selfish So self-indulgent as all the others say In 2004 the president of Apple computers a man named Steve jobes Announced that the top customer of the company's iTunes Its music store online Spent 29,500 dollars on iTunes According to the John Locke foundation America spends more on Nike shoes lipstick and personal fitness trainers than on all the local state and federal elections combined In the last decade According to the book the overspent American 27% of all households making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year say that they can out of Ford everything they really need Sports utility vehicles laptop computers digital cameras electronic personal organizers and sailor phones have all become necessities According to Robert Wuthdough The chairman of the sociology department at Princeton and director of Princeton's university center for religion These are just a few examples of the American people's materialism according to the American mythos a national survey that showed that 82% of Americans Thought they were materialistic and 77% said that they were self-indulgent What about spending in the government? More than one in 10 families or about 70% of all children live in poverty in America however Less than 1% of the total federal budget An amount that is 17.5 million Is spent each year on the temporary assistance to needy families While the war in Iraq is already cost American taxpayers 380 billion dollars According to one national database The amount of money spent on the war in Iraq so far Could have purchased and built 2,940,426 affordable housing units Could have awarded 62,398 244 scholarships to a university Or provided for 6,435 412 elementary school teachers in our public schools The average income of America is about 70,000 dollars according to USA today While a doctor in Iraq makes around $1,800 a year In Liverpool, England the average salary is $21,958 American dollars But in Niger, a country in West Africa The average person makes less than a dollar a day amounting to about $350 a year And in Ethiopia that average salary is $108 per year If one American decided to feed the world's children instead of buying a $90,000 Ferrari He could feed 100 children for 4.9 years And if an American decided to provide AIDS medication to developing countries instead of spending $50,000 on a diamond necklace They could provide 100 people with lifesaving medication for 200 days Food and medicine are necessities where sports cars and diamond necklaces are not It seems that the world is correct America is the richest nation as well as the most wasteful with all their dollars And it seems that some Americans are beginning to see the error of their ways For Buddhism is increasing in America in its appeal It is appealing to 26% of Americans because they say it teaches us to focus on simplicity The book that I mentioned earlier Also mentioned that in 1999, 69% of the public thought materialism had become a serious problem At the same time, the U.S. Department of Labor figures show that the average American spent in that same year $2,235 on eating out And a book called Afluenza says we spent more angly on shoes, jewelry, and watches than we do on higher education In short, Robert Ruth knows says We seem to place high values on material goods and at the same time we worry about being overly materialistic

You will say, we'll pastor If you don't like it, go live in Ethiopia And I would say no, that's the wrong answer The answer is commandment number 10 And you shall not covet your neighbor's wife And you shall not desire your neighbor's house His field or his male servant Or his female servant or his ox Or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's This spirit of covetousness is a big deal to God It finds its way into almost every passage of Scripture And according to God in the Old Testament and Christ in the New with His Apostles covetousness and the goddess Mammon Is the great competitor to Jesus Christ and his kingdom in this world The prophet Ezekiel talked about what he called the idols of the heart Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me and the word of the Lord came to be and said son of man These men have taken their idols into their hearts And set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them Therefore speak to them and say to them thus says the Lord God Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart And sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face And yet comes to the prophet I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols Then I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel who are estranged from me through the idols of their heart We know that Jesus Christ and the servant on the Mount warned us That we are not to lay up treasures on earth where they can be destroyed for where our treasure is There will our heart be also Paul tells Timothy that it is the love of money That is the root of all sorts of evil and men yearning for it and pursuing after it have pierced themselves with many a painful thing So let's look at this final commandment This commandment that deals with the attitudes and the motives and the desires of the heart That is what J.I. Packer calls the first cousin to envy Would Paul calls idolatry His whole subject of coveting each of the commandments we said Tells us three things it tells us something about the attributes the nature of the character of God Something about the person and work of Jesus Christ and something that will protect us and deliver us from evil What does this 10th commandment say about God will it tells us That God possesses perfect contentment within himself This is perhaps of all the attributes of God the most difficult for us to understand It's called by theologians assayate A-S-E-I-T-Y-A-S-A-T It comes from two Latin words A from and say himself from himself Assayate tells us that God is completely self-sufficient Completely self-satisfied and completely happy within himself That he exists as father, son, and spirit from eternity through time and into the future and that he needs nothing From outside of himself to give himself satisfaction and joy in contentment God does not need us He needs nothing but himself And that is evidenced by the scriptures both in the old and new testament Paul when he spoke to the men and women at Athens said This God who made the world and everything in it being the Lord of heaven earth does not live in temples made by hands Nor is he served by human beings as though he needed anything Since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and every good thing God would say to Job who was first given to me That I should pay him back Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine Moses would acknowledge in Psalm 90 Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth And the world from everlasting to everlasting your God Before anything was you were God For every beast of the forest is mine say of the Lord the cattle of thousand hills I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the fields if I were hungry I would not tell you for the world and all of its fullness of mine Paul would make this marvelous statement in Romans All the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God How unsearchable are his judgments Oh unfathomable his ways For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor who has given a gift to God that God Must repay him For from him and through him and to him are all things and to him be the glory forever and ever Amen God Does not need us the Jesus When he prayed his great-high priestly prayer he began with this wonderful statement father Now glorify me in your presence With the glory that I once had with you before the worlds began He acknowledges that before the worlds were created before there any angels or any men or any creatures Long before Christ took on human flesh and became one of us He had a glory with God that was from the very beginning What is this glory Wayne grew to a systematic theologian says it is the perfect love and fellowship That dwells within the Trinity. How can it be that God needs nothing Because all the Father needs he gets from the Son and all the Son needs he gets from the Holy Spirit And all the Holy Spirit needs he gets from the Father and so in this triangle of life and light and love these three persons exist in one complete impenetrable Fellowship of immutable eternal contentment Nothing can be added to God without ruining his perfection And God Lives within what one hymnbrider says the worlds of light Kayleigh Scott and his wonderful hymn joy to the heart Says Good Jesus Christ our brother died and darkness heard upon the tree to offer us the world of light That lives inside the Trinity Theologian say that God is Is essentially different from us. He's not just a bigger version of us Or a longer lasting version of us or some invincible version of us We are version of him and a finite limited and dependent way But God is qualitatively and fundamentally different He needs absolutely nothing. He is completely happy in himself And he makes the world Fills it with angels and men and creatures not because he's lonely without us I would remind you with all due respect That God would have had a lot easier life had he not made the world and filled it with angels and men amen But he made it to share his glory his contentment and his joy Not to add to it It is God out of this world of light who pumps into the world Through primarily the first born of creation as son Jesus Christ Paul says These worlds of light that live inside the Trinity to give us the joy and the contentment and satisfaction That a finite creature can know Here enters the person of Jesus Christ And his work in the world is to satisfy the human soul Jesus Christ the Son of God shares in this joy and contentment of God And he offers it to us When he prayed in his high priestly prayer he prayed for us this father I desire that they also whom you have given to me May be with me where I am To see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world All right, just father Even though the world does not know you I know you and these know that you have sent me and that you have loved me And I give to them the love you give to me Jesus Christ came to satisfy our innate Our inborn craving for contentment God when he made angels and when he made men Both finite creatures in his own Image he created in them not an immutable and eternal and infinite desire and ability to be satisfied But an immense capacity to be happy And it is what Peter talks about that points to that that when we know Christ Peter says we have this joy and expressible and full of glory Which is the salvation of our souls It is no mistake and no coincidence that if we had to Diagnose Eve's first sin it was the sin of what covetousness All of the fruit of all of the trees and all of the garden you may but from this one tree of the knowledge of good and evil You must not eat for the day you eat of it you shall surely die Everything is yours but that tree belongs to your neighbor God And the Bible says in the very next chapter That Eve looked upon the tree and desired it for its fruit was exceedingly good It was covetousness that caused Eve to sin And so Jesus Christ To destroy the works of the devil John says enters into the human experience into our human flesh And he says the thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy But I come that they might have life and have it abundantly Santa Gustin put it this way Now has made us for thyself And every heart is a restless heart Until it finds its rest in the This is I think what Jesus was trying to tell Martha and Mary These two precious saints Martha always busy Always doing things Finding her satisfaction with Christ and how she served supper and what she did in ministry and and the things she did for other people But Mary had realized that there was something That would fill her troubled soul As nothing else could Jesus said Martha oh Martha You are anxious and troubled about so many things But only one thing is necessary Mary is chosen the good portion Which shall never be taken from her That one thing is the sweet and abiding soul-satisfying contentment in her fellowship with Jesus Christ Christ Is the secret of contentment Paul says To know him and the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his resurrection Is to know Paul says ultimately the secret of contentment And to know Christ in a personal way not just so that he can as a product Some program you'd link into that bails you out of hell and into heaven But some who new becomes the very center of your being Has an ability to shatter all the idols of the heart For where Christ moves in There can be only one God You cannot serve God and man he said You must make a choice These idols of the heart are these false gods these fantasies we have About the very next thing we need you know how you know what they are You hear yourself saying you know if I just had this one thing and then I would never want anything else It's the young man Looking down at this section of the sanctuary this morning Sevening and saying oh if I could only have that blonde if I could only have that brunette Then I'd be the most contended man on the face of the earth No You would not There'd always be something else and probably Another blonde A different brunette It's the fantasies about what you would do That's that don't don't pretend you didn't I do it all of them every time I pass one of these signs that says South Carolina Powerball 128 million I say to myself What would I do? I even do the math after I figured out how much is left after taxes and everything What can I do with 42 million dollars? You know what I could do? I could do a lot of things but make myself content It's the resentment we have of another man's success and possessions The lack of contentment with our home our house so that we always want to redo it Redesign it move up It's a dissatisfaction with our job our salary Always wanting to move up the ladder It's this girly stream about Mr. Right God's not going to give you Mr. Right he's going to give you Mr. Sinful to match yourself Because if you had Mr. Right you'd ruin the poor fella It's jealousy and envy and worry and resentment and spending and accumulating Parading your things before God all these are evidences that within the human heart There are idols of the heart Jesus Christ stands people worse and says you know Am I not enough for you Would you trust me to save your soul but not trust me to satisfy it? There are two remarkable miracles back to back and I always wondered why they were back to back I mean, they're literally in one in Matthew 14 and 15 verses later in Matthew 15 one Jesus feeds 5,000 people And the next time he feeds 4,000 people the stories are almost identical And the punchline comes at the end of each of them and after they had all eight they were all satisfied And then in John 6 Jesus tells us why he worked those miracles I am the breath of life Whoever believes in me shall be satisfied Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died But whoever threw faith eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall have life in himself And shall never Want do we believe that about Jesus Christ? Do we believe what he says? Little children be on guard against every form of greed For not even when a man has an abundance does his life consist of dispositions do not fear little flock Your father has chosen gladly To give you to give you you can't earn it to give you the kingdom of heaven For wherever your treasure is There will your heart be also so this commandment Talking about the The perfect independence enjoying and contentment of God the triune God And how Jesus Christ is the ultimate the immutable the eternal satisfaction of the human soul drives us to protect ourselves from consumerism Our logic Vatican says in summary of this commandment the duties required in the 10th commandment are such A full contentment with all of our own condition And such a charitable frame of the whole soul towards our neighbor Is that all of our inward motions And our affections Touch not him or anything that is his and that we always further the good that God intends for him The sins forbidden in this 10th commandment are discontent with our own estate And being and grieving at the good and fortune of our neighbor And together with all these inordinate motions and affections To own anything that rightfully belongs to him Look if you will at this verse At verse 21 and notice the seven things that God says we must not covet You shall not covet your neighbor's wife his marital bliss You shall not cover your neighbor's house a symbol of his status You shall not covet your neighbor's field his property his business his capital You shall not covet your neighbor's male servant his workforce Or his female servant that you might use her for your own immoral pleasures You shall not covet your neighbor's ox or donkey that is his means of making wealth His tools and machinery the measure of his success or anything else that is your neighbors That is the state of his life and his His success and benevolence under the hand of God Once again, we couldn't cover everything That is under this commandment that not to covet but I want to mention five areas that we often struggle with in our life today And the first one is the one that God mentions first a dissatisfaction with our own spouse Our dissatisfaction with our spouse is always rooted in two things In a romantic silliness of finding prince charming or some godly Megan Fox Or this primeval idea that we deserve better The sovereign God sent you whom he wanted you to marry he allowed you to marry the person you did And in taking your spouse for granted You sin gravely against God In the most brazen sort of ingratitude It all has to do with your view of your spouse When Jane and I got married I contributed one thing to our wedding ceremony I had put on the invitations and on the bulletin Proverbs chapter 18 verse 22 would you turn there If there's a proverb that is the sweetest proverb in all of the book of Proverbs this has got to be it Proverbs chapter 18 verse 22

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord What a precious verse He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor or grace from the Lord I have a good marriage And part of the reason I have a good marriage Is because I am realistic about myself I noticed that the Proverbs never says because I've looked all through it He who finds a husband finds a good thing

I am thankful to God for my wife Jane Because God has given me not what I deserved I deserve Megan Fox He has given me a godly woman You know I'll share this with you Today is my spiritual birthday 34 years ago today I became a Christian August 14th I prayed to receive Christ alone in my apartment But I don't count that as when I became a Christian It was until Sunday morning August 15th That I went forward in an altar call profess Christ and join the church and that's when I consider myself to be a Christian And that is the most important day in my life Second only to the day that God gave me favor And gave me the wife I do not deserve As long as I continue to think that way Our marriage will be good And as long as you don't think that way You're going to have trouble Here was truth number one for a good and happy contented marriage God did not give you the love you deserve He gave you the spouse of his favor And you are foolish and vain to think otherwise If there's two things you should be thankful for It's Jesus Christ and eternal life And the wife of your youth He who finds a good thing finds a wife And in finding her he obtains favor from the Lord Be contented with the wife you had Don't ever say to God, oh Lord Give me the wife I deserve You'll find that the Wizard of Oz and the Witch of the North are a very real thing And she may visit your house Number two Don't believe the advertisements In his book on the Ten Commandments Dr. Dumas says advertising has become a world all of its own It has not been without its critics Advertising is misleading is wasteful and fuels the capitalistic engine Advertising nurtures a mistaken consumptive mentality It is the handiwork of what sociologist Vance Packer called the Hidden Persuaders Who cleverly exploit all kinds of human lusts And base instincts And lead us to think that if we bought what they offered We'd be perfectly happy It's a lie If you buy it The thing will not satisfy you But will create a need for more and for bigger and for better and for newer Why? Because Contentment is a gift of God's grace for the soul And what the soul needs cannot be purchased at a retail outlet And pumped into the inner man I don't care how much you have it will not make you happier You may say we'll pastor if I had a lot of money my life would sure be a lot easier. Oh really? Then how come Hollywood and and and Washington DC And all of the power brokers in the world who have everything that money could buy are always such miserable people Why did Jesus say I tell you the truth It is with great difficulty that a rich man will enter the kingdom of heaven again. I say in truth It is easier for the camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle then for rich man to enter the kingdom of God Why? What is it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul I may be wrong on this but I'm going to conjecture that with each purchase of each thing We give man a little bit more foothold in her life And we'd nudge Jesus Christ a little bit more to the periphery

Thirdly Don't get bitten by the technology bud That is this technology bug is the latest bottomless pit of useless expensive soul troubling gadgets that become addictive Now I'm gonna I'm not looking at anybody because I don't want anybody say you're you're talking I wonder how many of you went out and turned in a perfectly good laptop A perfectly good blackberry or smart phone or iPhone simply because version 2001 verse one came out The old one is working fine, but you had to have a new one why because You really think that by having it People will envy you and think you're cool and you really think That a little bit faster access to the internet is going to make you a little bit appear I really worry someday That the whole church is going to be texting somebody else on the latest iPhone Jesus is going to come back ratchet everybody up and get ready to leave and unless it's on YouTube we're all going to miss it

more stuff To distract the soul why is it that we spend more time with those gadgets than we do in the word of God And what is it about Verizon Or AT&T or some other network That offers us something that communion with God does not There is a limit friends It's not just an all moral thing this technology nothing in life is all moral It is either in its essence good or bad depending upon how it uses itself in our life and how we use it With other people be careful of the technology bug Fortly don't worry about retirement The Bible never talks about it. It's really a 20th century idea Of spending a fourth of your lifetime Worrying about your pension It's gone all gone And I know I have wept I have wept for months at the altar of Maman, but she has been totally unsympathetic She could care less And so I've said Lord I have to console myself with three gate promises and one sincere prayer promise number one from Hebrews Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with whatever you have For he has said I will never leave you or forsake you So we can confidently say the Lord is my helper. I will not fear What can man what can the stock market what can a portfolio do to me Promise number two from Luke 6 Given it will be given to you Good measure press down shaken together running over it will spill into your lap for with the measure you use it will be measured back to you If you're generous God will be generous to you promised number three Delight yourself and the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart For I have been young and now I am old yet I have never seen the righteous man forsaken or his children begging bread He is ever lending generously and his children become a blessing God proves himself from generation to generation To bless the man who blesses him And what is this one prayer turn to Proverbs chapter 30 Because covetous knows two allies extreme poverty and extreme wealth They can cause us to be resentful against God or to think that we don't need him and so A prince whose mother gave him Proverbs Was given this proverb by his mom A prayer to pray about covetousness Proverbs chapter 30 verse 7 Two things I ask of you deny them not to me before I die Remove far from me posted and lying listen Give me neither poverty nor riches Feed me with food that is needful for me lest I be full and deny you and say who was the Lord Or lest I be poor in steel and profane the name of my God Don't ask for wealth And don't romanticize about poverty they are both great evils And they both have the ability to make us think That God is forsakeness or that we can forsake God Ask for what you need and be thankful for the God of all providence fifthly Learn to say enough Enough How do you do that? How do you get to the point where you say you know And Lord, I don't need him or well, I think there are five words. I'm going to give you very quickly one is simplicity Simplify your lifestyle downsize Get rid of stuff liquidate Give away stewardship Practice the discipline of giving it is more blessed more happy Jesus said to give than to receive sacrifice Take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ the only way to get rid of the idols of the heart is to sacrifice them to give them up Which is painful at first but leads to an immense blessing in the long term Fourthly service Do things for others on a regular basis take up some ministry Involved in some mercy mystery visit the shut-ins go to retirement homes the nursing hubs visit the prisons I never come back from mission trip never Where I'm not thankful for my God my salvation my church My wife and family my country and all of its blessings and what God has given to me as an individual And finally thankfulness There's something powerful about saying Thank you To God every day thankfulness In fact the old Puritans used to say It is a terrible sin to be ungrateful covetousness loved ones Maybe the major American sin And the most deadly source of all of the sins Against God in our neighbor. I find it interesting That when Paul talked about his conversion Not the moment on the Damascus road but how God led him to the point where he saw that he was a sinner And he needed something more than he had in Romans chapter 7 he says the following When the law said you shall not covet he picks the 10th commandment When the law says you shall not cover it It produced in me all sorts of coveting And I realized That I was lost Who shall free me from the body of this death Thanks be to God Through our Lord Jesus Christ Who always gives us the victory The victory over Amen It appears that Paul's deeply rooted sin that kept him away from Christ for so many years Was the sin against this 10th commandment Somewhere As a young rabbi The Holy Spirit broke through and said to Paul What will it profit you If you gain the whole world for Judaism But you lose your soul Later on he would say Because of Jesus Christ I have learned the secret of contentment With that God would teach us that This happy Self-sufficient Joyful God Who came to share joy and expressible and full of glory with us Through Jesus Christ Amen Father we admit that the very things that you give us as human beings We turn sometimes into idols And we are a people perhaps of all the people on all the face of the earth and any time of history We Americans are the most Most financially and physically blessed and affluent comfortable and healthy and well fed people of all history And yet these very things that you have given us for which we should be grateful That we should share with others that should drive us to serve and to give and to Help in the name of Jesus Christ. They've caused us to do the opposite And they've led us to the point where we'd love the gifts rather than the giver Who is blessed forever You are all sufficient Are all happy and completely contented God Forgive us of our sins Deliver us from the power of man Teachers how to lead a simple life Of soul satisfaction in Jesus Christ in what he's given us And also who he is to us And help us even to use the things that you are given us our treasures on this earth It's such a way is that we are released from the power of these things And empowered to do good for others And to bring them to Christ to know his contentment a secret that only Jesus Christ can teach We ask this because we need it Because we are all part of the cult of the next thing We're all captured by technology we are all consumers Even using you as a commodity to get what we want We can only be delivered by this from this by the Holy Spirit Working through your word and by the grace that you give us Drawing us ever closer to Jesus Christ Delivering us from the bondage to stuff In order to serve the living and loving and happy God that you are And this we ask you that you would do just this For our good and for your glory and for the pleasure of Jesus Christ And who satisfying name we do pray amen