Here we are in the 10 of God's 10 Rules for Living.
In other words, we are in this series of messages of the Ten Commandments, and this is the tenth
commandment, thou shalt not covet.
Know that you who have been following me in these heart-to-heart talks regarding God's
10 Rules for Living, know that we have come through nine of the rules.
And of these nine, the first four deal with man's relationship with God, and the last
six deal with man's relationship with man.
I left you discussing the ninth commandment when we saw that one's reputation is something
that's so precious.
It has such great value that God literally made a rule, he gave a commandment to safeguard,
to protect your reputation, my reputation.
Now we come to this tenth of God's 10 Rules for Man.
This tenth is something that is vitally important.
Let me read if you will please this tenth commandment.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,
nor his man's servant, nor his maid's servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that
is thy neighbor's.
And this final word, the word that I have just read to you from God's precious word,
utters its solemn warning against sin that is in the inner and the hidden life.
And this commandment, this the last of God's 10 Rules for Living, may be broken without
the knowledge of any human being.
And it's just like that.
Let me pause and discuss something with you for just one minute before we go in to this
tenth commandment.
There are three persons in each of us.
There's the person that the man on the street knows.
There's the person your neighbor knows, the outward you.
I walk down the street and somebody says, there goes Catherine Kuhlman.
That's one person.
The person the public knows.
The one who sits in the audience, I'm on the platform.
That is Catherine Kuhlman.
And yet, not one of those folk who have said, there goes Catherine Kuhlman, knows the person
that that one who has been intimately associated with me knows.
I still contend that Eve knew a different person than anyone else in the whole world
knows.
It's like that.
Because she was with me constantly.
She saw me in my bad moments.
She knew all the bad about me.
Love me just the same.
She saw me when we say, you know, we have our hair down.
Be perfectly natural.
Oh, sure.
When well, there were times when you wouldn't think of having anyone else see that side
of you.
You just became absolutely human.
Sure.
Eve knew a far different person than probably someone else who says, there goes Catherine
Kuhlman, knows.
Then my friend, there is a person that I know that Eve lived and went home to glory.
Never really knew.
I had an older sister who swears she knows me.
Oh, sure.
Kuhl worked with me every day in the office and we have such close contact and yet I know
something.
I know that I know a different person than they know.
And there have been many a time when I wish that I could, I wish it was in my power to
actually take the lid off of my heart and sometimes let those that you think so much
of really see on the inside of you, let them really know you as you really are because
you cannot express it in audible words.
Now, there is a me that I do not even know, a person in me that only God knows.
And that's the person that's going to be judged one of these days.
God knows me better than I know myself.
I'm sure that he does.
Because more than once in my lifetime I have stood before a mirror, looked at myself, and
I've almost found myself to be a stranger to myself.
There is a person that I do not know even though I am that person.
And that's the person that God knows and that's the person that when we stand in his
wonderful presence, when we stand at the great judgment seat of Almighty God, that's the
person that's going to be judged.
We do things and we do not know why we do them.
Yet God who has perfect knowledge knows why.
Because he knows a different side of us.
He knows us as a different person than we know ourselves.
Do you see what I'm trying to say?
It looks kind of complicated but it's so simple and it's just like that.
Therefore, when he comes to this very last of his rules for living, he comes to the last
of the Ten Commandments, he is talking about that person that only I know, the person that
he knows, and the sin that he's talking about is a sin that can be committed without the
knowledge of any human being.
This commandment may literally be broken without the knowledge of any human being, without
the knowledge of your husband, without the knowledge of your neighbor.
Sometimes I think that it's possible for you and for me to break this commandment and we're
not conscious of the fact that we're breaking it ourselves.
This thing of covetousness.
Here it is.
Let's pause a minute and let us consider the command.
Thou shalt not covet.
Now in examining the commandment, it is well to notice carefully the word which is made
use of to mark the sin itself.
The actual word, covet, in its original meaning, implies delight in some object.
And because delight in anything necessarily means a sense of desire to possess, the word
was used to mark that desire to possess more than the delight which prompted the desire.
Let me pause and make something very clear to you right now.
It is no sin to desire.
I want to get to the full depth of meaning of this last of the Ten Commandments because
I believe that we have a wrong conception of what God really meant when he gave this
commandment.
Some of these things have been so misconstrued, so misunderstood.
It's so hard sometimes for the natural mind to comprehend the true meaning of some of
these things that God has given us and that are so important.
Know remember something.
To desire is not wrong.
Without desires, no one would have any ambition, would not work, we would not make progress.
My goodness of life, I can't remember the time in my life when I didn't desire to obtain,
desire to be something.
It's been a force that has actually pushed me out into larger fields.
I can't, I mean that with all my heart.
Even as a kid on the streets of Concordia, Missouri, even as a child before I went to
school, I still remember having desires of ambition, desire to work, to do things.
Remember, to desire is not wrong.
There must be desire if one is to have ambition.
Therefore, I know that this word covet means something more than just desiring.
It depends my friend on how you desire to possess and for what purpose you desire to
possess.
And it's just like that.
Therefore I repeat, the actual word covet in its original meaning implies delight in
some object and because delight in anything, regardless of what it is, necessarily means
a sense of desire to possess.
The word was used to mark that desire to possess more than the delight which prompted the desire.
In the repetition of the commandment, in the book of Deuteronomy, read it, it's verse 21,
two words are used.
The first word translated, covet, in revised, is the same as that already referred to in
Exodus.
The second word translated, desire, is a word meaning simply to wish for.
The apostle Paul in quoting the commandment uses a Greek word which in its different forms
in the New Testament is most frequently translated lust.
It is often rendered desire, sometimes covet.
Now I'm giving you this explanation because these translations will help to throw light
upon the word.
The sensual meaning is to set the heart on, very literally to pant after, to pant after,
to set the heart upon.
The sin therefore suggested by the word is very evidently that of desire to possess something
which belongs to someone else.
Notice the sequence suggested by the very word itself.
The eyes rest upon some object which commands the admiration of the beholder, something
which is to that person delightful and to be desired.
To desire to possess that object is to covet.
There is of course an unnamed quanta te in the circumstance addressed, something which
is not wrong but out of which wrong may spring.
Now let me just give you by way of illustration something very homely.
Say for instance your neighbor has a beautiful oil painting.
It's a masterpiece.
You are a visitor in your neighbor's home and as you gaze upon that oil painting you
desire it because you love it in the sense that it brings you happiness.
You see the beauty in it.
How often I have gazed upon a painting and I have said audibly, it speaks to my soul.
I have a painting of a baby in my office.
It gives atmosphere.
It gives peace.
It does something to my nerves.
Just that relaxed baby.
I love it.
You behold a painting.
You desire it because you appreciate it.
To desire it because of your appreciation and because of what it does to you is not to
covet that thing in the light that Jesus is talking about.
You may go out, work, purchase a picture identical with that same picture, put it in your own
home, not because you had done it out of malice because you had been jealous of the picture
that your neighbor had on the wall, but you put the picture that you have purchased on
the wall of your own home.
It continues to bring happiness to you because of its beauty.
It is there not because you were jealous that your neighbor next door had one like
it and you were going to get it if it killed you, if you had to pay the last dime you
owned.
By hook or by cook, you were not going to let your neighbor get ahead of you.
You were determined that if she could have one, you could have one.
One is sin.
Both are desire, but in one case the desire is sin because of the jealousy that was in
your heart.
The other was desire because of the beauty that was in it.
Don't you understand?
In exactly the same way, to have money, my friend, you can search the Bible.
You cannot find in the Word of God where it is a sin for a man to be rich.
Sometimes we get the idea, you know, and I've even heard small preachers preach on it, that
it's a sin to be rich.
That you couldn't possibly be a wealthy person and be a Christian, my friend.
The very person who is preaching against riches.
God knows he could not trust that one with riches.
His soul would be damned because he would make that money his God.
It's the love of money that is the root of all evil.
That's right, the love of the faith.
There is, my friend, a place where no matter how much some people get, they are always
discontented.
It's like that.
This word covet here in the Word of God means grasping for more.
No matter how much one gets, he's always discontented and eventually, after covetousness drives
him unmercifully through life, it kills him and leaves him with nothing.
There are folk that it would make no difference whether they made $10 a week, $50 a week,
$1,000 a month.
They would never be happy.
The greed in their heart for more and more and still more, the covetousness in their
heart would keep them continually discontented and eventually kill their body and their spirituality.
Amen.