IDEA: Coveting is the desire and scheming to obtain "anything" that is your neighbor’s.
TEXT: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s" (Exodus 20:17).
"You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s" (Deuteronomy 5:21).
PURPOSE: To help listeners see what covetousness is.
When we think of coveting, then, what are some of the things that belong to our neighbor that can cause us to covet?
I. We can covet what our neighbor possesses.
The commandment itself spells out a number of the possessions we are not to covet. Although the list may be different in the 21st century, it clearly focuses on what my neighbor owns.
When you really covet what belongs to your neighbor, it puts distance between you and that person. What becomes important is what your neighbor owns that you’d like to have, and not the person per se.
One of the reasons we have so many lawsuits in our culture is that when something bad happens to us, we determine that we are going to get what our neighbor has or what our neighbor’s insurance has. There is a whole industry designed to get from the people we think are well off something of what they have.
II. But the commandment adds a catch-all phrase: "anything of your neighbor’s." What might that involve?
We can covet another person’s position–in a church or in an organization.
We can actually plot to bring the other person down with the mistaken notion that if we can bring that person down, we will be able to put ourselves in that person’s place.
We see it in politics where the person wanting the office will commend nothing that the current office holder has done and will criticize everything.
We can see it in religious work. In Philippians 1:12-18, there were those who were jealous of Paul’s position as an apostle who actually preached the gospel knowing that it would stir up opposition that would be focused on Paul. It’s hard to imagine people preaching the good news out of bad motives