The Tenth Commandment
Are you content with what you
have? Or do you think about getting a
little more money each month? Maybe if I
could just win the lottery? If I could
buy a new car or have that new TV. If
that person would just fall in love with me.
If I lived in a house like that or my boss would treat me differently. Do you have those thoughts? Probably, because most of us do.
The Tenth Commandment says, “You
shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant,
his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” This commandment is being satisfied with what
you have.
First, let’s discuss who is your
neighbor. Yes, it is the people who live
next door and on your street, but it is so much more than that. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan. A man was robbed, beaten, and left bloody on
the side of the road. Two very
respectable men walked by and did not want to be involved, but a Samaritan, a
hated enemy of the Jews, walked by and took care of the man. For those of you who do not understand what a
Samaritan would be in today’s world, think Muslim, illegal immigrant, Democrat
(or Republican, depending on how you vote), or that dirty individual you want
your kids to have nothing to do with. So
we can say our neighbors include even those people we don’t like.
Jesus was trying to get us to see
that everybody is our neighbor. Even the
rich millionaires of New York and Beverly Hills are our neighbors. The guys in the nice homes of Highland Park
are our neighbors. The people who travel
to Monaco, Dubai, and Paris for the weekend are our neighbors.
It is not wrong to want
something, but it crosses the line if it belongs to another. If we desire what someone else has it shows
the selfishness in our hearts. Here is
how Paul described what life would be like in the last days. I wonder, are you in there?
“There will be terrible times in
the last days. People will be lovers of
themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their
parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without
self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers
of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying
its power.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
These are a people who are
covetous. They are more concerned with
what they deserve and how they are treated, rather than what they can give or
how they can treat others. It speaks of
a world of selfies and people who are easily offended, people whose needs are
more important than the needs of others.
Let me give an example. How many of my fellow Americans and Canadians
who call themselves Christians are concerned about the church that was burned
in Nigeria or Egypt this last weekend, or the Christian school girls taken
captive in Nigeria? Do any of us weep
over the fact that close a million Christians in the Middle East have either
died or been forced from their homes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, and other
parts of the Middle East?
We are more concerned about how
many likes our selfie gets or the person that hurt our daughter’s feelings,
that we don’t realize these things don’t matter in the long run, or for that
matter, they don’t matter at all. Why
should you care that you got 5 likes or 500?
You know what real friends are, don’t you? If your daughter got her feelings hurt, why
not teach her about forgiveness? Instead
of us being so concerned with things that probably won’t really make us happy
for more than a few moments, why not pray for those in real need, like our
brothers in Christ in the Middle East?
Contentment. It all boils down to that. God has truly blessed you, if like me, you
were born in America or Canada or Western Europe. You can show your thanks to God by spreading
His love to others in need. You don’t
need more things. Be content with what
you have.
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