A Sermon based Upon Exodus
20: 17; Mark 7: 14-23; James 1: 13-16
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin,
D.Min.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist
Partnership
Year C: Proper 11, 9th
Sunday After Pentecost, July 17th, 2016
Cleve Wilkie, the late staffer of the
Baptist Children=s Home of North Carolina was known for his humor. Once he told how POOR MOSES got to feeling
extremely low and blue, so he decided to have a talk with God about his
troubles.
AYou know my life has not been easy,@ he said to God.
AFirst, my mother put me in a basket and floated me down a
river.
Then I left Egypt for 40 years. You remember the burning bush, the plagues,
and the Passover. Life has been a riot.@
God sympathetically nodded.
AAnd there=s a
lot more,@ added the disconsolate Moses.
ABut you know and remember everything, so I don=t have to tell you all the rest. But I really can=t handle much more and I have this terrible splitting
headache!@ God looked kindly at
Moses and said,
Seriously, do these ‘two tablets’ still
have something to offer to relieve the struggles of our world? Several years ago T.V. mogul TED TURNER
PROCLAIMED himself Aking of news@ and
then declared the Ten Commandments obsolete, saying AThe Ten Commandments don=t relate to current global problems. When Moses went up the
mountain there were no nuclear weapons, no poverty, and there was no
overpopulation. Besides, nobody likes to
be commanded to do anything. Commandments
are out.@[ii]
Along with Ted Turner, most of today’s culture
does not know what to do with commandments.
We are a people who RESIST REGULATIONS, restrict governments, and make
our own personal lists for what to do with our lives. WE would rather Independence day, rather than Dependence
day. Even in the Church, we too would
rather sing Amazing Grace than Trust and Obey. ANo
rules, just right@ catches is the popular spirit. ANOBODY
LIKES TO BE COMMANDED.” Commandments are out.@
Perhaps, the most dramatic proof of the
CULTURAL DEATH of the Ten Commandments was the controversy which arose a few
years ago when Alabama JUDGE ROY MOORE was hounded for displaying a little
plaque of the Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall. Several public schools subsequently fought to
publically display them too, while local courts said that any
kind of public display of them violates the separation of church and
state. Interestingly, Roy Moore and
other well-meaning folks, may have rightly understood our moral need, but I’m still
don’t think that public displays will actually get them into people’s hearts.
So, for most the remaining weeks of
summer, we are going to CONSIDER THE VALUE of the Ten Commandments. I’m not going to argue about whether our
nation should hang these ten words in public places, but we are going think
about how we can HANG THESE TEN WORDS where God first put them, into the HEARTS
and lives of God’s people. I want us to consider
these commands in reverse order, because it begins with our hearts. We will start where most people are and end
up where God wants to be, in the heart of his people.
DESIRES DETERMINE US
In Exodus 20:17 the TENTH COMMANDMENT (or
Word) says, “You shall not covet your
neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female
slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Exod. 20:17
NRS). While the issue of coveting, wanting or desiring what another
has MAY NOT SEEM SO SERIOUS, (have you coveted your neighbor=s slave or donkey lately?), this word is CONNECTED TO THE VERY
HEART of all that matters, and is the MOST COMPREHENSIVE of commandment of all. This commandment goes straight for the heart to
ask would you like to have. It’s something
we ask ourselves frequently in this materialistic-oriented world that offers so
much.
But this commandment raises a more
fundamental issue. It raises the issue
of Awhat should we have or want?@ In other words: What
kind of life should we be living together and ‘under’ God? And even more poignantly, this word reminds
us that AWE CAN BECOME WHAT
WE WANT.@
In Mark 7, during one of his struggles
with the legalistic Pharisees, Jesus told his disciples that ITS NOT WHAT GOES
INTO A PERSON that determines who they become but its WHAT COMES OUT. AIt is
the thought-life that defiles you. For
from within, out of a person=s
heart comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed,
wickedness, and deceit, eagerness for lustful pleasure, envy, slander, pride,
and foolishness. All these vile things
come from within; they are what defile you and make you unacceptable to God.@ (Mark
7: 20-23).
JESUS WOULD NOT SAY ‘WE ARE WHAT WE EAT’
but Jesus says that WE BECOME WHAT WE DESIRE within our own heart. Healthy humans have the freedom to desire,
to decide and to become what we want. WE
CHOOSE. We have the power to DETERMINE
our own life based on desire.
A largely unknown tale entitled AThe Great Stone Face@,
written by the Nathaniel Hawthorne who who gave us AThe Scarlet Letter” centers upon A MAN NAME ERNEST who grew up
in a village with a natural wonder.
Nature had majestically carved in the side of the mountain the features
of a human countenance so realistic that from a distance, a Great Stone Face
seemed to be alive. Children were told
that someday someone in the vicinity would be born who was DESTINED FOR
GREATNESS and would bear a resemblance to that great stone face.
As Ernest grew into manhood, he never
forgot the prophecy he=d heard from his mother=s
knee. He allowed the Great Stone Face to
BECOME HIS TEACHERC mediating upon the face, looking to it for guidance, reading
stories about it, speaking about it to others who would listen. Years passed, but NO ONE EVER CAME who
resembled the grander of that face. Of
course, impostors came, but Ernest had studied the details of the face so well,
that he was an expert on the face and could not be fooled. He was saddened that as he got older, the man
with the face had not come.
One day a poet who had written about the
Great Stone Face came to visit Ernest.
They enjoyed each other’s company and longed together to see the
appearance of the face. As they walked
and talked together for several days THE POET LISTENED TO ERNEST=S ELOQUENT SPEECHES about the face. In one moment, with the Great Stone Face
looming in the background, the poet listened to Ernest=s moving speech about the Face and suddenly realized what
should have been obvious all along. He
looked and made the comparison, A
ERNEST IS HIMSELF had the LIKENESS of the Great Stone Face!@ Ernest had BECOME LIKE
HIS IDEAL. Hawthorne=s story reverberates to us that,AWhat get=s our attention gets us.@ We become what we want
as our desires determine who we become.
DESIRES CAN BE DANGEROUS
Since desires are determinative, they CAN
ALSO BE DANGEROUS. In another text from Luke, A YOUNGER BROTHER CAME asking
Jesus to become a judge over dividing an inheritance between he and his
brother. In the ancient world the elder
brother had complete control over how an inheritance was decided. Evidently this elder brother didn=t pass much to his younger sibling, so the younger comes to
Jesus with a complaint.
ATeacher, please tell by brother to divide our father=s estate with me.@ It seems like an understandable, fair
request.
But JESUS REFUSES to allow himself to get involved in this dispute. AFriend,
who made me a judge over you to decide things like that?@
Isn=t this
an amazing response? Jesus did not
decide for him, but he gave the young man A STIFF WARNING. ABeware! Don=t be
greedy for what you don=t
have. Real life is not measured by how
much we own.@ (Luke 12:13-15).
It is important to understand that
NEITHER Jesus, nor this commandment are AGAINST HUMAN DESIRES for having the
right kind of things in our lives. Buddhist
philosophy says that all suffering in life is due to human desires. It suggests that IF WE GET RID of all our
DESIRING, we can then rid ourselves of our SUFFERING. While there can be some truth to this, Christianity
takes a very different view.
Christianity says that GOD HAS CREATED a world of many GOOD THINGS. God has given us the ability to desire and create
even more good things which may ASSIST US relieving much human suffering. THINGS ARE BASICALLY GOOD, but at the same
time we need to be reminded that having is NOT THE ULTIMATE source of human
happiness. AReal life is not measured by how much we own,@ Jesus said.
Do your REMEMBER THAT ELVIS HAD three
jets, two Cadillacs, a Rolls, a Lincoln Continental, two station wagons, a
Jeep, a custom touring bus, and three motorcycles. His favorite car was his 1960 Caddy
Limo. The top was covered with
pearl-white Naugahyde and the body was sprayed with 40 coats of special paint
that included crushed diamonds. Nearly
all the metal trim was plated in 18-karat gold.
There were two gold-flakes phones, as well as a gold vanity case with
gold electric razor and gold hair clippers, and an electric shoe buffer. The limo also had a gold-plated TV, a record
player (kids, ask your parents what that was), an amplifier, an air
conditioner, its own electrical system, and a refrigerator that could make ice
in precisely two minutes. We could say
that Elvis had it all, but as you also know, Elvis died a lonely and deeply
unhappy man.[iii]
Having things, even having the best
things in life, will NOT ASSURE THAT YOU WILL BE HAPPY or have a full
life. Jesus suggested in the Beatitudes
that being poor in spirit, being mournful, even being persecuted could bring
more genuine happiness than having what you want. Having material things might be fun,
interesting, sometimes even advantageous, but having what we want doesn’t
assure us of getting what we really need. But of course, this is NOT WHAT THE ADVERTISERS
TELL US. In our wealthy culture, it is
the ADVERTISERS JOB TO MAKE US WANT MORE STUFFB make you desire, covet and hopefully buy, even if it means
that you will ‘be in debt up to your eyeballs’.
Last week I spoke about Woolworth=s department store. Mr.
Woolworth revolutionized merchandising in this country and in Europe as
well. The large contribution which
Woolworth made was to invent Ashopping@. Woolworth had the
bright idea to put the merchandise out on the tables and in showcases for everyone
to see. Before that, people would enter
a store and tell a clerk what they wanted.
The clerk would go and obtain for them the merchandise in the storage
area and present it to the customer for purchase.
Since the invention of ‘shopping’ a great
change has taken place in our attitude toward having ‘stuff’. We have become a people who no longer know
how to name what we want, but if you let us shop a while, we’ll think of
something. It doesn’t take long for us
to CREATE A DESIRE FOR IT, buy it, and believe that we are made happier. And if you notice HOW THE ADVERTISEMENTS ARE
PRESENTED these days, it’s also a QUALITY OF LIFE, the freedom, the adventure,
or even the spiritual resource that is being offered. Through ‘things’, we are promised what all we
‘want’ in life. But this is, according
to Holy Scripture, is exactly what having things cannot do. Both desiring and acquiring can be very dangerous,
it is a promise they don’t deliver. ABeware!
Jesus said. Don=t be greedy for what you don=t have.
Real life is not measured by how much you own.@
CONTROLLING DESIRES
Since desires don=t always lead us to what we really need, the 10th
commandment reminds us that we need God’s help us CONTROL OUR DESIRES, to
discipline them, to limit them, to channel them and then to aim them in the
right direction. That is why the
commandment does NOT SIMPLY SAY, ADON=T COVETB period,@ but it more explicitly
says ADon=t
covet what your NEIGHBOR HAS.@ The key to how God helps
us control our desires has something to do with your ‘neighbor’. Let me explain.
WE ALL HAVE DESIRES and we all have
desires for things we may see in the worldBeven things
that our neighbor has. The Bible itself
reminds us that there are GOOD THINGS THAT WE SHOULD COVET-- good gifts that
others have developed-- like loving spirits, generosity, responsibility and
hard workC all of which do enable people to become good mangers of ‘many things’. Jesus nor the Law forbids wanting what can help,
encourage and motivate us, but we are warned that wanting THINGS CAN BECOME BAD
when we lose making ‘having’ the top priority—when only God should have that
place.
It is this kind of wayward, UNRESTRAINED
DESIRE THAT LOSSES CONTROL, results in wrecks marriages, destroys homes, damages
relationships, and makes for unhappy lives and impaired communities. This kind of ‘coveting’ TURNS NEIGHBORS INTO OUR COMPETITORS and the DISTORTS
our perspective about what really matters.
It is the kind of wayward desire Jesus saw as defiling and the Book of James
also warned us about, when he wrote that our selfish desires ‘cause us to fight and war with each other’
(James 4:1-3). With all these biblical warnings
about coveting desires, how can we tell whether we have normal desire or an
inordinate form of it? How do we know if we’re entertaining desires that can
become destructive to both ourselves or our neighbor? Let me SUGGEST A SIMPLE TEST.
Once the apostle Paul said that Alove
is not envious@ (1 Corinthians 13:4) and he further
exhorted that we Christian should always Arejoice with those who rejoice and weep
with those who weep.@ (Rom. 12:15). All of
us know that it is always EASIER TO WEEP with our neighbor than it is to
rejoice with them. But it is this ability
to be ABLE TO REJOICE AT OUR NEIGHBOR=S GOOD
FORTUNE that may be a true test for our own personal desires. If you truly love someone, care for someone,
and want to be their neighbor, you will rejoice when they Ado well for themselves.@ THE INABILITY TO REJOICE WITH OTHERS,
especially in their gain, may mean that something is not right with you. It could mean your desire is wrong-headed or
becoming destructive.
Most of us will remember the story of the
Texas CHEERLEADER=S MOTHER a few years ago.
This mother deeply desired to see her daughter win a spot on the high
school cheerleading squad. But when it
appeared that another girl was going to get the coveted position, something in
this mother snapped. Instead of rejoicing with those who rejoice, this
mother went out and hired a hit man to take out her daughter=s rival. Coveting that
position for her own daughter lead to a death wish, for the neighbor and also, for
the mother herself. Now from a Texas
prison, she has lost her daughter and her life. By failing to control her
coveting more, she also lost what had. This
story is an extreme, but it does POINT TO the real TRAGEDY OF COVETING. You know how it goes. You are perfectly happy with your computerC until they come out with an upgrade, or you are perfectly
happy with your carC until your neighbor gets the newer model. You are PERFECTLY HAPPY with your lot in lifeC your family, your job, you homeC UNTIL you start thinking like a cow who mistakenly believes “the grass is greener on the other side.” Have you see the CARTOON with four cows in
for different pastures in quadrants next to each other and all the cows are
eating in the other’s pasture? That=s a good picture of what coveting desire and greed can doC it can make you terribly unhappyC not just unhappy about what your neighbor has, but very UNHAPPY
WITH WHAT YOU YOURSELF HAVE. It is a
desire that can ruin our joy.
Have you ever watched CHILDREN AT
PLAY? They are natural at coveting. And you don=t have to be in a rich nation to see this in children. D.T. Niles, who was once a great missionary
to India and living in poverty among the people of India, once told how he gave
his boys bananas, each would naturally compare the length of one to the other
in order to see who got the largest.
Think about WHY CHILDREN DO THAT? To be born that may means that we fall short,
not because we are bad, but because Children don=t have enough experience to appreciate what they have. Someone has said, ACOVETING IS ALMOST ALWAYS NEARSIGHTED.@[iv]
It’s not just that we look and see things
we want, but DON=T SEE FAR ENOUGH into what it means to appreciate what we
have. When we desire something, it
becomes dangerous when we FAIL TO look far enough to ASK WHAT having this WILL
THIS COST? Would I trade all my family,
my wife, my children, my self-respect for a one night stand with my neighbor=s wife? Or if I covet
my neighbor=s house, do I also see it=s
price? That is, do I ponder the
payments my neighbor has to make, the mortgage, the burden of the upkeep? Or even if covet my neighbor=s position or prominence in the neighborhoodC do I see how tiresome it might be to live in a fishbowl or
get constant public attention? COVETING
IS ESSENTIALLY TO LIVE SHORT-SIGHTED.
We look, we see, we want, but we fail to consider the costs of what it
means. That is what a child has not
learned to do, but that is the lesser impulse that an adult must learn to
control. OVER COMING the desire of
covetousness is AA MATTER VISION@, says
Ellsworth Kalas.[v] If we want to keep from destroying our lives
with short-sighted desires, WE MUST LEARN TO WANT and SEE MORE, NOT LESS.
This is exactly what Jesus taught. He showed us that the key to happiness for
the Christian is to LEARN TO SEEK THE HIGHER THINGS and see the bigger picture
and to also learn about what matters most.
Until we fill our lives with the higher values and virtues, and even
with God, we will be constantly trapped and robbed of quality of life by our
short-circuiting desires. Eugene
Peterson translates Jesus familiar words from Matthew 6 this way: The
place where your treasure is, you will want to be and end up being... Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and
belief, your body will fill with
light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed
and distrust, your body is a dank cellar.
If you pull the blinds on this window, what a dark life you will have!@
To covet, to have lesser or destructive
desires, is to settle for living in a way that will short change your
life. If you live with your eyes
squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, what a dark life! But JESUS SAYS C LET THE LIGHT IN, see more, not less! See all, not part! See completely, not partially!
Do you REMEMBER AGNES of Albania? She was born in 1910 and her Father was a
man of means, a wealthy traderC accomplishing much, until he died young. After HER FATHER DIED, the mother had to
raised Agnes and her brother alone. Her
family suddenly FOUND THEMSELVES POOR.
In that poverty her mother told her to see more than her circumstanceB to open her eyes and wonder at the treasures she could have,
though poor. She told Agnes that it was
THE INTANGIBLES of love, compassion, and devotion to God that were the GREATEST
VALUES. This is what mattered most. Cultivate high values and shape other-worldly
virtuesC that was her mother=s
vision.
Agnes trusted her mother’s words and
opened her eyes and made her motto of life, AOnly for Jesus.@ She GAVE HER LIFE TO SERVING OTHERS, even
though she had nothing much herself, and she wanted to see more in life that
what one could own or acquireC she
sought treasure in heaven.
When Agnes died in 1997, SHE OWN ONLY A
FEW COTTON SARIS, a cloth BAG in which to carry them, and a pair of well-worn
SANDALS. But the rich, the powerful and
the regal came from all over the world the PAY THEIR RESPECT to one of the
greatest persons who ever lived. For you
see, this women who LEARNED TO LOOK DEEPER and higher values of life is known
to us, not by her family name, Agnes Bojaxhiu of Albania, but as MOTHER TERESA,
the Saint of Calcutta, Nobel laureate and founder of one of the largest mission
organizations in the world. Though SHE
ESCHEWED THINGS MONEY COULD buy, Mother Teresa VALUED THINGS THAT MATTER MOST,
prayer, love and smiles, and caring. You
don=t have to live exactly like her, but WE ALL CAN LEARN FROM
HER. This is what she wrote in her seventies,
words that teach us all how to see:
LIFE IS AN OPPORTUNITY, benefit from
it.
LIFE IS BEAUTY, admire it.
LIFE IS BLISS, taste it.
LIFE IS A DREAM, realize it.
LIFE IS A CHALLENGE, meet it.
LIFE IS COSTLY, care for it.
LIFE IS WEALTH, keep it.
LIFE IS LOVE, enjoy it.
LIFE IS A PROMISE, fulfill it.
LIFE IS SORROW, overcome it.
LIFE IS A SONG, sing it.
LIFE IS A STRUGGLE, accept it.
LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, dare it.
LIFE IS LUCK, make it.
LIFE TOO PRECIOUS, do not destroy it.
Mother Teresa mastered her desires. But she did covet. She was one of the MOST COVETOUS people I=ve ever known about.
But she did not covet wealth nor what belonged to othersC but SHE COVETED WHAT BELONGED TO JESUS CHRISTC his unconditional love, passion for compassion, his active
care and actual concern for the human race.
She coveted THE ABEST GIFTS@, the
higher valuesC she lived for the vision of the gospel and the negative
powers of the world had no hold on herC
whatsoever.
It seems that evil one has conspired
against many in our generation, when it comes to fueling desires for all the
wrong things. But there are STILL THOSE WHO will OVERCOME, and they win the
greatest prize of allC eternal life. We all
should covet that. Amen.
[i]. In Charity &
Children, June, 2000, p. 4
[ii]. As quoted by Michael
G. Moriarty in The Perfect 10, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2000, p.15.
[iii]. From a Sermon by Rev.
Michael Usey on College Park Baptist Church=s
Web-site, www.collegeparkchurch.com
[iv]. J. Ellsworth Kalas in The
Ten Commandments from the Backside, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1998, p.
102.
[v]. Ibid, p. 103.
[vi].As quoted by Rob Schenk
in The Ten Words that will Change A Nation, Tulsa, Albury Publishing,
2000, p. 206.
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