What does it mean to covet?

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 44 What is God's will for you in the 10th commandment?
2. 0:15That not even the slightest desire or thought contrary to any one of God's commandments should ever arise in our hearts.
3. 0:22Rather, with all our hearts we should always hate sin and delight in all righteousness.
4. 0:29But can those converted to God keep these commandments perfectly?
5. 0:33No.
6. 0:34In this life, even the holiest have only a small beginning of disobedience.
7. 0:40Nevertheless, with all seriousness of purpose, they do begin to live according to all, not only some, of God's commandments.
8. 0:48Since no one in this life can keep the Ten Commandments perfectly, why does God want them preached so pointedly? First, so that all our life long we may more and more
9. 1:00come to know our sinful nature, and thus more eagerly seek the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ.
10. 1:08Second, so that we may never stop striving and never stop praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that we may be renewed more and more after God's image on the
11. 1:20until after this life we reach our goal, perfection.
12. 1:24- True or false, your desire is fine as long as you don't act on it.
13. 1:31It's oftentimes a proposition that's mentioned in our world today.
14. 1:37And to be sure, there's a sense in which It's true that we're happy people don't act on every whim and desire that they have.
15. 1:46The world would be a much more miserable place.
16. 1:49But it is also false that your desire is fine as long as you don't act on it.
17. 1:56Before you say a sinful word or have a sinful thought or act out a sinful behavior. The Word of God teaches us that our desire itself is corrupted and perverse and in need of change from God. The Bible calls
18. 2:14this in an older translation concupiscence. Concupiscence is just a fancy word that means perverted or corrupted desire. You can think of this in terms of a plant. If you're
19. 2:26growing tomatoes in the summer, you don't just want to check the stem and the leaves or maybe even the root systems to make sure that they're fine. You also want to give attention to the soil, the dirt.
20. 2:39from which everything proceeds and everything grows out of.
21. 2:43And that's the same thing with our heart, our desire, which is the focus of the 10th commandment.
22. 2:49God says that yes, sinful behaviors and thoughts and words and actions and deeds are all wrong, but they're wrong because they proceed out of a heart that is, corrupted and inclined away from God and towards sin.
23. 3:04The antidote to wrong desire is right desire, which is given to us by the Spirit of God applying the work of salvation that was wrought in Christ on the cross to our lives.
24. 3:17We have been given a new life, a new desire, to now desire, as Asaph says in Psalm 73, "Who do I have in heaven or on earth but you?
25. 3:28There is nothing I desire on earth besides you.
26. 3:31My heart and my strength may fail me, but God is my strength and my portion and my inheritance forever."
27. 3:39Now, the catechism reminds us that although we are to strive for God's holiness, in this life even the holiest men can never achieve perfection.
28. 3:53And so anyone who tells you, you can be perfect in this life, well, God says of them that their lying and the truth is not in them. In 1 John 1:8-10 we find God say, "If we say we have no sin,
29. 4:09we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us." And so, although
30. 4:19perfection in this life is an impossibility, the catechism reminds us of what God teaches us that we are to seek and to strive and to progress onward and upward in Christ, in our
31. 4:35faith, growing to not just obey some of God's commandments, but the whole lot of them.
32. 4:41And that can seem a very daunting task.
33. 4:44What does that look like?
34. 4:46If you're learning how to field a grounder in baseball, and your coach says, "Hey, your footwork is off.
35. 4:53"Put your feet this way.
36. 4:54"You need to do it this way."
37. 4:56You do it, why?
38. 4:57Because you love baseball.
39. 4:59And so it is in the Christian life, because we love God, when we learn his commandments and begin to see the comprehensive nature of all that God demands, we say, "Lord, it's new to me, but I want to do it."
40. 5:15Why?
41. 5:16Because we've been given a new heart that loves God and we're inclined to do his commandments.
42. 5:23This is not something we can do on our own, and that's why the catechism concludes with the necessity of pointed preaching.
43. 5:30The pointed preaching of the Ten Commandments is something that needs to be heard all throughout our lives.
44. 5:38Why?
45. 5:39Because the Ten Commandments commandments confront us with our sinfulness.
46. 5:42We need to know the depth of our sin.
47. 5:45And so when we begin the Christian life, we know a little bit about our sin and we know a little bit about the holiness of God and thus a little bit about the forgiveness that is found in Christ.
48. 5:55But as we're confronted more and more with the holiness of God, codified for us in the Decalogue, we realize also the depth of our sin, and as a result, we begin to realize just how amazing the grace and forgiveness
49. 6:11of Christ is for us.
50. 6:13And this, of course, the catechism tells us is where prayer comes in.
51. 6:17In this last question of this Lord’s Day, The catechism is setting up for the final section, which is dealing with prayer Why do we pray?
52. 6:27Because in prayer we're striving after God. We're seeking. We're knocking. We're looking for God we're asking that he would have mercy upon us that he would give us his Holy Spirit and
53. 6:39And in prayer, God closes that gap for us, who we are and who he wants us to be in Jesus Christ.
54. 6:59Thank you.

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