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. [Exodus 20:17 (ESV)]
Although it sounds like something Satan might say to his demons, it was Alex Dumas, CEO of Hermès, who said “Our business is about creating desire.” It’s not just Hermès (with their $8,500 Della Cavalleria “magical bag”) that is in the business of creating desire; that seems to be the goal of many businesses. The LA Times has a “Coveted” column in their Image magazine featuring a curated list of luxury items (like $950 Gucci sneakers) they claim to be “mandatory” or “must-haves.” The October Vogue featured “coveted street style trends,” (like $1,364 velvet trousers and $600 Levi jeans) while urging its readers to purchase them “before it’s too late.” There’s even an on-line game called “Covet Fashion” in which you build your virtual dream wardrobe and then follow links to purchase the desired items.
With all its sales, catalogs, and advertisements, Christmas easily can become a season of desire and desire is what coveting is all about—a strong desire for something we don’t have or something we think we don’t have enough of. The sin of coveting, however, isn’t just desiring material goods. Coveting is a desire for what we can’t have or what other people do have—everything from that $8,500 Hermès bag to a fashion model’s beauty or someone else’s success to our neighbor’s wife.
The tenth commandment not to covet is unique among the Ten Commandments. The first nine deal with actions such as worshipping idols, keeping the Sabbath, honoring parents, taking the Lord’s name in vain, theft, adultery, or murder, but coveting is not an act. Coveting is a matter of the heart and allows desire for something to replace our desire for God. When we covet, we grow discontented, resentful, and even selfish enough to gain what we want at the expense of others.
By desiring the wrong things—whether other’s people’s lives and possessions or things like beauty, life-style, wealth, or fame—our goals get distorted. We may be willing to sacrifice things of real value—home, integrity, marriage, family, financial security, health, ethics, or faith—to attain what, in the end, has little value in this world and absolutely none in the next. When Eve coveted that forbidden fruit, sin and death entered into the world. When David coveted Bathsheba, he ended up ordering Uriah’s death. As a result, his infant son died, calamity entered his house, murder was a constant threat in his family, and he was publicly humiliated by Absalom. After Achan coveted the spoils of war, his entire family was destroyed. As a result of Ahab coveting his neighbor’s vineyard and Jezebel arranging the man’s death, Ahab and every male in his family died and Jezebel was eaten by dogs. Let’s remember that desiring what God does not mean for us to have will always come with a steep price!
Apparently speechless when Jesus washed their feet, John records no one objecting to His doing so until Jesus came to Peter. After protesting that Jesus never would never wash his feet, the Lord warned the disciple that unless he allowed Jesus to wash him, Peter wouldn’t belong to Him. Eager to show his devotion to Jesus, Peter then enthusiastically offered the rest of his body for cleansing. Jesus explained that, because Peter already bathed, only his feet needed washing, while adding that not all of those present were clean. Since we know the rest of the story, we know He was referring to Judas. The reference to Judas not being clean, however, tells us that this exchange is about more than washing the filth of Judah’s roads off the disciple’s feet. Since Jesus wasn’t giving a hygiene lesson, what did He mean?
Friends recently watched their young grandson while his parents enjoyed a much needed “adults only” vacation. Accustomed to the permissive parenting of today, the youngster wasn’t overly familiar with obedience. One of the first things he learned during his visit was that, “Grandpa doesn’t count.” Apparently, his parents give him a count of three (or more) to decide whether or not to obey them; Grandpa, however, did not!
Every breakfast, lunch and dinner, a recent house guest consumed between five and fifteen supplements like flaxseed and fish oils, magnesium, vitamin D, calcium, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and resveratrol (among others). Annually, people like our guest spend around $35 billion on supplements, vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and other substances to enhance their health. It doesn’t stop there; every year, five million diet books are published, at least 17 million cookbooks are purchased, and $33 billion is spent on weight loss products. Add to that all of the magazines, food channels, websites, blogs, and podcasts dedicated to nutrition, recipes, and weight loss and you have a nation of people who seem obsessed with what goes into their bodies.
When writing about mimicry yesterday, I thought of Esther and her cousin Mordecai. The book of Esther takes place between 483 and 473 BC but the story began about 120 years earlier when Mordecai’s great-grandfather was in the second group of Jews deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. Rather than treating these deportees as captives or slaves, they were more like immigrants. Although they were given new Babylonian names, the were allowed to keep their God as long as they also worshipped the Babylonian ones. After Babylon fell to Persia in 539 BC, the first Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem the following year. Perhaps because they’d become comfortable in their new homeland or feared the challenge of rebuilding Jerusalem, like many others, Mordecai and Esther’s family did not return.
Even though they have their own unique song, northern mockingbirds usually incorporate the songs of other birds into theirs. With their ability to sound like jays, thrashers, hawks, orioles, and robins (along with car alarms and frogs), rather than sounding like themselves, these masters of mimicry can sound like what they’ve heard.
Devotions of the Heart 