The Providing God
March 13, 2022
Preached by Noah Gwinn
Scripture Reading
Exodus 20:1-2,17
1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery….
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
Good morning, everyone! So happy to be here with you this morning, and I’m so excited about everything that’s going on here today with our first Student Service Sunday. If you hadn’t noticed, there were youth group students greeting, singing on the worship team, reading Scripture, and later today, they will be downstairs preparing a lunch for anyone who wants to come to help support our youth group summer trip to Kansas City this July! I’d encourage you to come and support our students after the third service.
Before we dive in, I would love to pray together that God would be our teacher this morning.
Heavenly Father…
Well, this past June, an article on Forbes Online outlined a study that had taken place over the course of 2020, revealing that the average American spends more than 1,300 hours per year on social media.[1]That’s a really big number that might not hit too close to home, so to break it down for us, that’s over 3.5 hours per day, or about 25 hours per week on social media. A similar study reported that the more that people use social media, the more they are dissatisfied with their life.[2]
Why is this surprising? At every turn and every swipe, we are bombarded by someone else’s highlight reel. We see their vacation, we see their family, we see their home, and this can eat away at our satisfaction with the life that we have.
Now I don’t know if you spend over a day’s worth of your week scrolling social media, but what I do know is that we as people live in a society that fans the flames of our desire into fire daily. Examples? You want to watch any movie ever made? You don’t need to leave your couch. You want to listen to any song ever written? Just a few taps on a screen and you can. You want a cheeseburger at 3:45 in the morning? Five minutes down the road to the nearest McDonalds, and you got it. Whatever itch you have, it can be scratched any number of ways. And while some of these things are wonderful gifts, a life of desires met on demand teaches us that whatever we want is good and right. And the more we want, the more we want more. If we’re honest, all of this desiring, and scrolling, and desiring, and consuming, and desiring, and desiring, and desiring… It gets exhausting. And then our restless hearts read,
1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
On Coveting
Into the white noise of a million little things clamoring for our attention, the Lord speaks. But the word “covet” is not a common one for us to use, so all of this could be very confusing if we don’t have a working knowledge of that it means to covet. So we will start out this morning talking about what this command prohibits, and then what it commands, and finally why it is good news.
Based on what the Scriptures say, let’s define coveting as “a sinful desire for the gifts that God has given others.” I’ll say that again. Coveting is “a sinful desire for the gifts that God has given others.” And specifically, God tells the Israelites in this passage that they are not to covet their “neighbor's house… [their] neighbor's wife, or [their] male servant, or [their] female servant, or [their] ox, or [their] donkey, or anything that is [their] neighbor's” (v. 17). It could be helpful to us to think about these things in 3 buckets. Don’t covet someone else’s stuff, their relationships, or their station in life.
So, we begin to have an understanding here that this isn’t just God telling his people they can’t desire anything. Rather, this is him telling his people that they can’t desire things that belong to someone else. I think inherently we know that this is wrong, we just don’t see it as a problem for ourselves.
Let me illustrate this. How many times have you been to a family Christmas gathering where you see the young kids opening their presents, and they absolutely love their blue toy Star Wars lightsaber until they see the green toy lightsaber that another one of the kids got? What happens next? The kid who was so happy about the blue lightsaber will do whatever he can to get the green lightsaber and he won’t touch his own toy at all. It isn’t necessarily that the green one is better, it’s just that someone else was playing with it.
How often do we do this as adults, though? Whether it be someone’s car, or home, or spouse, or job, it always seems like other people have some kind of “good” that’s just out of our reach. Without realizing it, we have begun to covet someone else’s stuff, their relationships, or their station in life. And this is precisely where I think that social media can be a poison for us. We have at our fingertips a gallery of everything that other people have that we think we should have. This isn’t just “I want a house, or I want aspouse, or I want a job.” It’s “I want their house, or I want his spouse, or her kids, or her job. Then I would be happy.”[3] You see the difference. It is looking everywhere but God for the things that we desire.
Christian author and Bible teacher Jen Wilkin helpfully put it this way:
“Coveting what someone else has is always a function of a wrong expectation. It is predicated on the idea that we deserve what others have. It feeds on comparison, that old thief of joy, which explains why the covetous person leads a joyless existence of dissatisfaction and contempt.”[4]
What Wilkin is saying here is essentially that coveting is rooted in a mistrust of God as provider and father. It comes from a heart that sees the things that God has given and says, “that isn’t enough.” It isn’t that what someone else has is always better than what we have, it’s just that it’s someone else’s and somehow that makes it look better than what we have. And the scary thing is, as we see with kids who want to steal each other’s lightsabers, coveting isn’t learned. It comes naturally.
Where are areas in your life that implicitly you are saying to God, “You think you know what I need, but I know better, and I need ‘that’?” Are there desires that you have that actually have you?
On Contentment
Well, I think rightly understood, many of these commandments have a positive aspect and a negative aspect. What do I mean by that? A negative command would be a “you shall not,” such as “you shall not commit adultery.” But at the same time, you could say that God is also commanding positively, “love your spouse.” Another example of a negative command would be “you shall not murder.” In this command, stated positively, God is saying “you shall value human life.” So, if we apply this thought to the command we’re studying today, we see God command, “you shall not covet” but we could also say, positively, “you shall be content.” But this begs the question, what does contentment look like? To help us understand this, turn with me to Philippians 4:10-13,19-20. If you’re using a pew Bible, that’ll be found on Page 923.
10 I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me…. 19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.
We’ll be camping out here for most of the rest of our time together this morning, so feel free to keep that passage open.
Look down at verse 12. What does Paul, the author, say? “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”
I think for so many of us, the way we think about contentment is something along the lines of, “well if I only had ______ then I would be happy and content.” We can probably agree with Paul when he says that he knows how to abound and that he has learned the secret of facing plenty and abundance. That doesn’t sound too hard, right? We can be content in the good times. But Paul here is talking about a kind of contentment that transcends circumstances. He says, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound.” He’s had good times, and he’s had bad times. When he says, “brought low” or “facing hunger” or “need,” remember that this is the Apostle Paul who was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, kicked out of towns, thrown in prison, and eventually killed for the cause of the gospel. He understands what it means to be brought low and to face need.
What kind of contentment is that? How do we get that? I think about many of the Christians in the early church in the Roman Empire who were put to death for their faith, and they stood fast in the face of scrutiny. Over the summer, Ben referenced the story of the early church father named Polycarp. While on the stake to be burned alive, Polycarp was given one final chance to denounce his faith, but instead, he said, “Eighty and six years I have served [God], and he never did me any injury, how can I blaspheme my king and my savior?” And then he preaches the gospel to his accusers, finishing by saying, “The fire you threaten burns but an hour and is quenched after a little… You do not know the fire of the coming judgment… but why do you delay? Come, do what you will.”[5] How do we get that kind of contentment in time of need? We struggle to find contentment as 21st century Americans, who rarely have to suffer for our faith.
Look back at Philippians 4. What does Paul say? Verse 12 – “I have learned the secret.” Contentment is a secret. Why do we feel like contentment alludes us? Because it is a secret that needs to be uncovered. But not only that. There is a word that shows up in both verse 11 and in verse 12. See if you can catch it.
11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
It says that he has learned contentment. Contentment is a secret that must be learned. Note the difference here between coveting and contentment. Coveting is natural to us in our sinfulness. Remember the kids who want each other’s lightsabers? Or how easy it is to look at someone else’s things, or the friends they have, or their picture-perfect marriage and home? Those thoughts are so, so natural to us. So natural to us, in fact, that God has to command us to not think that way. Coveting is natural, but contentment is learned. Contentment is a process of reforming your mind around something bigger, something true. Particularly, contentment reframes our thinking from thinking that God is not to be trusted because he hasn’t given us what we need to realizing that we do not actually know what is best for us, so we must turn to God who does know. As the verse that was read earlier in the service says, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matt. 7:11) He knows what you need, and he isn’t stingy with you. This is precisely what Paul says in verse 19 of Philippians 4 when he writes, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
But learning contentment is hard. You have to work to learn it. Every day, your mind must be retuned to the heart of God. Contentment can even be a struggle with things we are already naturally inclined toward. Have you noticed that the things we love most are often the things that make us the most angry? Think about some of your closest relationships. Sometimes it’s your family that gets under your skin the most. Have you ever stopped and wondered why? These things, relationships, and people arouse our desire for a contentment that can only be found in God without ever delivering. They can’t possibly deliver – they weren’t made to. Because real contentment is a secret that must be learned.[6] And it isn’t received from the things we covet. The problem is that we don’t understand that contentment is a secret. We chase the things that we think will bring us contentment. But contentment isn’t received from our possessions, it isn’t received from our relationships, and it certainly isn’t received from our status.
C.S. Lewis says it this way:
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”[7]
So what is the real thing? What is it that our desires are aroused for? What is there to truly give us the refreshing contentment our souls are thirsty for so that coveting, by God’s grace, will be no more?
On the Gospel
Let’s look again at Philippians 4 verses 12-13 and verse 19.
12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me…. 19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
When facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need, the Apostle Paul says that he can do all things through Christ. Christ is the one giving strength. Not things, or people, or reputation. Christ holds the secret to contentment. God is the one supplying the need.
Remember where we said our covetousness comes from? It comes from a mistrust of God as provider and father. So we begin to look everywhere but God for happiness and contentment, and naturally, we become discontented and we covet what we see that others have been given. Think about if you were thirsty, and there was a stream of clean, fresh, water, but you started walking the other direction, away into the heat of a summer afternoon. Walking past people with tall, cold, glasses of water. The more you walk, the more you get thirsty. And the more you walk, the further you get from the stream. The more you’ll want someone else’s water. It is when we do this sort of thing that we blame God for not giving us what we want and continue the cycle of searching anywhere but him. It is exhausting.
C.S. Lewis, who I referenced just a few minutes ago, also wrote a very popular series that you’ve probably heard of called The Chronicles of Narnia. In one of the books in the series, one of the main characters, Shasta, becomes jealous of the circumstances in his friend’s life. He confronts Aslan, the Christ figure, and instead of becoming defensive, or even explaining why different people receive different gifts, Aslan gently reorients Shasta’s thinking and says, “Child… I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”[8]
If you look, you will find someone who has more things and a more picturesque marriage and a fuller vacation schedule and an easier, more fulfilling job. You don’t have to look hard for these things. To make another Star Wars reference, “there’s always a bigger fish.”
Have you wondered why this commandment is last in the ten commandments? It almost seems like this is an “anticlimactic afterthought. ‘Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. And try to be happy with what you have.’”[9] But I would argue that this commandment gets to the heart of all of the other commandments, and as one Bible scholar said, the ten commandments “[end] where every sin begins”[10] – with the desires of your inner life.
We see this even from the story of the first sin. Genesis 1 and 2 tell the story of how God created the world very good, and put the first man and first woman in a garden to work it and to take care of it, and gives them one command. This man and woman could eat of any tree in the garden except for one. Genesis 3 tells the story of how this man and this woman were deceived by a serpent to eat of the one tree that God had told them not to eat from. The serpent says many things in this exchange, but at its most basic level, the serpent got the man and woman to mistrust God as provider and father. Instead of showing them the whole garden that they had been given, he showed them the one thing that was not given to them and aroused their desire for that.
Covetousness is not just a pesky emotion. Coveting is idolatry (Colossians 3:5), because it is placing our desires in the place of God, and it is putting the way those desires are fulfilled in the place of God. Coveting is no small beans. It is named multiple times in lists of sins we might wince at such as malice, murder, and sexual immorality (Romans 1:28-31; Ephesians 5:3). Coveting was idolatry for the people of Israel when they had been freed from slavery and wandering in the wilderness longing for the food that the Egyptians had (Exodus 16:3). They were discontented with what God had given them and wanted what someone else had. Coveting was idolatry for the people of Israel just as it is for us as we scroll social media reinforcing our own longings for things God does not want for us.
So let me ask you, what are the things you think about when your mind is wandering? What has captured your heart? What are the things you think you need in order to be happy? God knows what we need. He knows that we have real, true desires. Your life matters, the people in your life matter, but they cannot be the source of your happiness and contentment. God wants us to find our rest in him. Probably the most familiar verse from the passage in Philippians was verse 13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” This isn’t just something to iron on an athletic tee shirt to inspire you. This is the secret to contentment. God has given us a way to be content in all things. He has given us himself. In the tenth commandment, God doesn’t beat us over the head for wanting things. No, he offers to give us something so much better than the things we want. Something so much more lasting than the fading pleasures of this world. Church, God has given us his very Son.
I mentioned C.S. Lewis earlier, who said that when we experience desires that this world fails to satisfy, it would make sense, then, to say that we are made for another world. A better world. Our desire for the perfect home is met in the heavenly home that God is preparing for us even now. Our desire for the perfect spouse is met as we as the bride of Christ will be swept up by our perfect husband to be with him forever. Our desire for a reputation and status is because we as Christians have been made to rule and reign with Christ. Christ is the answer to all of the deepest longings of your heart.
If you feel weak and tired from all of the running around that your heart has been doing, looking everywhere for the secret to contentment, look no further today. Embrace Christ. Turn to Christ. He will gladly receive you and fulfill his promise to meet the desires you were created to have. He is the way, he is the answer.
Next week, Pastor Benjamin will be preaching from what we could call the Epilogue to the Ten Commandments. Your question to think about before his sermon is, “What is your response when you are met with the law of God?”
[1]Peter Suciu, “Americans Spent on Average More than 1,300 Hours On Social Media Last Year.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/06/24/americans-spent-more-than-1300-hours-on-social-media/?sh=1c12c7ab2547
[2] https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/the-dilemma/
[3] Kevin DeYoung, The 10 Commandments, 159.
[4] Wilkin, Ten Words to Live By, 143.
[5] The Martyrdom of Polycarp, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01/anf01.iv.iii.html
[6] Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Contentment (Sermon), 1994.
[7] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 136-137.
[8] C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy, 165.
[9] Kevin DeYoung, The 10 Commandments, 161.
[10] Christopher J.H. Wright, The Story of God Bible Commentary: Exodus, 379.
Family Discussion Questions
Talk together as a family about things that you desire. Why do you desire these things?
Are all desires sinful? How do we know which ones are and which ones aren’t?
If we aren’t supposed to desire other people’s things, relationships, or status, does that mean that God doesn’t want us to have nice things? Why or why not?
What are practical ways we can be intentional with “retuning” our minds to the heart of God so that we can gain contentment?
