For our scripture reading tonight, we turn together to Matthew 15. Matthew 15, reading together the first 20 verses. We read that in connection with the 10th commandment. And as it reads from Deuteronomy 5, verse 21, You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, His ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. If you would also turn in the back of the Psalter hymnal to page 56, Lord's Day 44. Page 56, question and answer 113. There's the question and answer dealing with the Tenth Commandment. We will look at just that one. together, reciting that answer together. Question 113 asks, What is God's will for us in the Tenth Commandment? That not even the slightest thought or desire, contrary to any one of God's commandments, should ever arise in my heart. Rather, with all my heart, I should always hate sin and take pleasure in whatever is right. Once again, we turn our attention to the Word of God. Matthew 15, beginning at verse 1. Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat. Jesus replied, And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, Honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, whatever help you may have otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, he is not to honor his father with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. Jesus called the crowd to him and said, Listen and understand, what goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean. Then the disciples came to him and asked, Why do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this? He replied, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them. They are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit. Peter said, explain the parable to us. Are you still so dull? Jesus asked them. Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean. But eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, as we come now to the Tenth Commandment and our consideration of them throughout the Catechism, we are to be reminded that this is not just the last of a list of ten. It's not as if God said to Moses, Oh, by the way, I have one more before I forget. It may be the last, you see, but it certainly is not the least. Now, in many ways, as we know, the law of God addresses actions and words that are expressed. And the Catechism, summarizing the teaching of Scripture as we have considered it, has continually pointed us to the heart of the matter. To the heart of the matter as the source of those actions and words. And that's what Jesus teaches here in Matthew chapter 15. As one commentator says, Our actions and words do not fall out of the blue sky. They come up out of the depths of our hearts. He says, the heart motivates, the mouth formulates, and the hands participate. Now the danger here is that it is possible to look at the first nine commandments, at least on the surface of them, and maybe we're a little more comfortable with them in a sense because they're a little bit more hands-on as it were. And it might be a little easier to find an application for them, but this one digs a little deeper. It is possible for someone to look at those first nine, at least again on the surface of them, according to the simple words of them, and to examine one's life against those and to justify oneself. To actually think, well, I'm okay. I don't worship other gods or images. I don't swear. I don't break the Lord's day. I don't dishonor my parents. I don't murder. I don't commit adultery. I don't steal. I don't bear false witness. I'm really doing pretty good. I don't have a problem. And you see, that was the problem of the Pharisees. Really, the Pharisees were pretty good guys in a sense. They would have made desirable neighbors. They were meticulous with keeping the law. Sadly, their own law was much more important to them than the law of God. But they confidently claimed no sin, at least outwardly. Yet here comes the Tenth Commandment. It's as if it says, ah, but do you even desire to sin? Do you even think about it? Do you even want to? See, the Tenth Commandment, as the position of the Catechism makes clear, in a sense addresses, has to do with all the others. Yet, the Tenth Commandment, we must understand, also stands alone. It condemns not only evil deeds, but also evil desires. It condemns not only what you and I do or leave undone, but also what we want. It is clearly a warning against hypocrisy. Now, new life in Christ, we know, is from the inside out. It begins in the heart, with a transformed heart. And for the believer whose heart has been transformed by the Holy Spirit, who has been given that gift of new life, for the believer, then, God's law has also, in a sense, been transformed. It is now a law of love. It is now a rule of gratitude that directs our lives in praise to God before His face and also in fellowship with our neighbor. And the Tenth Commandment, again, then goes a little bit deeper. A lot deeper. And calls not only for outward gratitude, but it calls for gratitude from the heart. Gratitude from the heart, first of all, opposed to sinful desires. Sinful desires, beloved, that are prone to covet. Now, what is coveting? Very simply, we can say that coveting is an intense desire for something. It is a passionate longing or desire for something. But we need to also understand that the word that is used, for example, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 and the number of related words that fit with them, they are not always used in the sense of sinful desires or in the sense of desires that lead to sin. For example, in Psalm 19, verse 10, we read, God's law is to be desired, coveted, as it were, more than gold. That's not talking about a sinful desire. And in Psalm 68, verse 16, it speaks of the mountain that God desires, that God Himself covets to dwell in. Again, not a sinful coveting or desire. And we also sometimes use the word coveting, not in a sinful way, but we might say in a righteous way when we say to somebody else, I covet your prayers. I really desire, I long for your prayers on my behalf. The tenth commandment on the surface is not condemning desires. It's not condemning desiring, for example, the blessings of God. For example, desiring a godly spouse or desiring a decent job or desiring children. Those are godly desires. And that commandment is not prohibiting us from seeking those things in a God-glorifying, in a God-honoring manner. But the force of coveting as we find it in the 10th commandment here and in most of the places where these words are used is talking about a desiring, desiring that which is not ours to have. Desiring what belongs to others. Again, as Moses says it in Deuteronomy 5.21, you shall not covet, what? Your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. And notice there how Moses clearly points out that coveting has to do with wrongful desires. You shall not set your desire on. And the sin of coveting, those covetous desires, is that that desire becomes so intense that it leads one to become discontented with God. To become discontented with God's provision that He gives. It moves that one with that covetous desire to the point where they simply cannot live without the object of desire. It's all they think about, whatever it is, the power or the position or the possessions. And it moves them even a little bit further to justify whatever they have to do to get it. Go ahead. It's fine. And therefore, if that covetous desire is acted upon, it results in the outward breaking of the law of God. Idolatry, murder, adultery. We remember a man in the Old Testament, boys and girls, his name is Achan. That name may be familiar to you. You remember when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, God had said that everything in there belongs to me. You do not take any of it. And Achan broke the Word of God. In Joshua 7, verse 21, he says, When I saw all that stuff, when I saw it, I coveted them. He desired them. And His desire became so strong that He also says, And took them. His desire, His covetous desires moved Him on to steal. Beloved, the Tenth Commandment is talking about an intense desire of the sinful heart for that which is not lawful. For that which God has not intended for us to have. For that which God has not given to us. And it is a sinful desire that is ours by nature. It's a part of that sinful heart. Indeed, coveting, we know, is promoted from the outside. There's all kinds of pressures around us for coveting. We see something. We want it. We create a need for it. Gotta have it. We conspire to get it. and if possible, take it. It's promoted all around us. Our consumer-driven society promotes a lack of contentment. Why settle for this when you can have that? Why be satisfied with what you have when there's so much more out there that you can get your hands on? Our consumer-driven society promotes a lack of contentment and instead promotes covetousness through advertising, through the lottery, and even through a lot of the things that we see on TV or in the movies. You see, sometimes these things give us the idea of an unrealistic life that somehow influences our tastes and desires. I want to be like. Boys and girls, you know what that's all about, don't you? I want to be like. Because there's a lack of contentment. The pressures are out there. But you see, we cannot blame those things. We cannot say, the devil made me do it. Because all of that only waters the seed of sinful desires which are founded on the inside, in the heart. That's again what Jesus teaches in Matthew 15. In verse 10, He says, Listen and understand, what goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean. Then down in verse 15, Peter said, Explain the parable to us. Are you still so dull? Jesus asked them. Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean. but eating with unwashed hands does not make Him unclean. It's an interesting passage. Interesting things that Jesus says there. The context there is of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. They were challenging Jesus because His disciples were not washing their hands before they sat down to eat a meal. Now, boys and girls, it's a good habit to wash our hands before we eat a meal. It's good hygiene. Your moms probably remind you to do that before every meal. But the problem here is that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were not upset because the disciples' hands were dirty with dirt. They weren't talking about hygiene. Even if their hands were sparkly clean hygienically, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were trying to say that they had to clean their hands ceremonially. For ceremonial purposes. Now we know that with regard to the Mosaic Law, The Mosaic Law indeed called for purification. The priests had to be purified before they could go into the temple to offer sacrifices. And if someone was made unclean by contact with the dead or some sort of illness, whatever the case might be, it called for purification. Ceremonial purification. Yet the tradition of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law expanded what God had given, expanded what Moses had rightly taught. They had expanded it way beyond what God had intended to include ordinary daily meals. That before an ordinary daily meal, they needed ceremonial purification. Why? Well, just in case, for example, they rubbed up against a Gentile who was unclean with their shoulders in the marketplace. Ooh, I touched him. That made them unclean, they said. They needed ceremonial cleansing from that. And if they didn't do that, just in case whatever it was would have made them unclean, you see, any food that touched their hands and then entered their body through the mouth would defile them and make the person ceremonially unclean. Now the problem, as Jesus says, the disciples indeed were breaking man's tradition. but they were not breaking God's law. In a kind way, he was saying, God never said that. That's not one of God's commands. And he uses an example of their day to show how the Pharisees themselves were breaking God's law, specifically the fifth commandment, with regard to honoring father and mother by making their man-made traditions more important. Oh, if we say that our wealth, our money is devoted to God. And you see, it didn't mean they necessarily put it in the offering plate. They still probably used it for themselves. But just by saying, I dedicate it to God, therefore if mom or dad needs help, I don't need to help them with it. They're on their own. And Jesus, you break the law of God. You set your own traditions over the law of God. Now, the Pharisees, we know, boasted. They boasted that their outward keeping of the law made them clean, made them justified before God. They said it made them internally clean, we might say. They were justified before God, but Jesus teaches no way. No way. It's from the inside out. And their outward actions, he is showing, was proof that their hearts were unclean. The heart, the command center of one's life, the heart in sin produces sinful thoughts that come out in sinful words and actions as Jesus highlights here commandments, especially commandments 5-9. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. Those are the things that come out of a sinful heart. Beloved, the breaking or the keeping of the law of God begins in the heart. In that way, the Tenth Commandment is the foundation of number 1-9. And that's also, as Jesus points out, why it is possible for one to look good on the outside, but to be rotten on the inside, to be a hypocrite. In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus blasts the Pharisees and the teachers of the law for a variety of reasons. He blasts them because they desired to be seen by men. They wanted all of their good works to be visible and publicly acknowledged by men. He blasted them for their double standards, saying one thing, doing another. He blasted them because they did everything to appear righteous while doing nothing, really, to actually be righteous. He blasted them because they gave a good show of the Bible as if the Word of God was important to them, but they did almost nothing to obey it. And the diagnosis is that they are hypocrites. He says, beginning in verse 25, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Oh, they looked good on the outside, at least to themselves and maybe to some others. But they were wretched and rotten on the inside. They were covetous on the inside. They were covetous of position and power and prestige and popularity. Their covetousness made them unclean from inside out. And that uncleanness was seen then as they trampled the law of God and as they trampled the spiritual welfare of the people in order to get what they wanted. Paul understood what Jesus, he came to understand what Jesus is teaching. In Romans 7, verse 7, he says he did not know sin except through the law. And then he says he would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, you shall not covet. He thought he was okay outwardly, but then he came to realize that the covetousness in his heart was the foundation of breaking all of the commands he thought he had been keeping. Beloved, coveting reveals how deep sin is to the very core of one's being. That's ours by nature. Yet our hope, beloved, is because our simple desires have been transformed by Christ. What is God's will for us in the Tenth Commandment? That not even the slightest thought or desire contrary to any one of God's commandments should ever arise in my heart. Rather, with all my heart, I should always hate sin and take pleasure in whatever is right. Do you notice that that answer is a wonderful description of our Lord Jesus Christ? It describes His perfect righteousness and sinlessness because not even the slightest thought or desire contrary to any one of God's commandments ever arose in His heart. With all His heart, He always hated sin and He took pleasure in whatever is right. And that's why with confidence we can say that our only hope is in Jesus Christ. It's hard for us to imagine, boys and girls, that Jesus never sinned. He never did anything wrong. Not even one little thing. But even more than that, He never had one simple thought. He never had one simple desire. He never sinfully coveted anything for Himself, but He desired intensely for you and me. For our salvation. And because of the wicked desires of men, He gave His life as a ransom for you and me. Our sins are paid for every one. Every, again, we've got to think on the inside now, huh? Every sinful thought. Every sinful desire. Things that others don't even know about you and me. Every sinful want. He paid for it all. And He has made us right with God and He has given us a new life with that new heart that includes a new direction with new motives, new desires, and new wants so that we are able to say with Paul the good that I want to do. I want to do good. We still struggle like Paul and fail and fall. We don't always do the good that we want to do. Yet, we have been blessed as believers with that new heart transformed from sinful wanting what is bad and wrong which is now inspired to holiness, inspired to newness of life, which produces gratitude from the heart, secondly, motivated by godly contentment. You see, the opposite of coveting is contentment. And with the Tenth Commandment now, we are called to demonstrate gratitude through contentment for His gifts. See, our God is the giver of every good and perfect gift as James says, not the least of which is a saving relationship with Him. Understanding that we have been delivered from the curse of the law. The curse is no longer over us. The law no longer condemns us in that way. It still condemns us every Sunday morning as we hear it. It reminds us of our sin and misery, but it does not condemn us to death any longer. We are no longer subject to its punishment. Instead, transformed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, believers now strive to live in thankful obedience in order to praise Him. Being content. That praise being shown in being content with that which He sees fit for me in this life. Being content for my position and my possessions and my purpose in life. Using it all for Him. Praising Him by desiring to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Trusting that He will provide all that is needful for this life. Because He's already done it, hasn't He, for the life to come. Desiring only that which God knows is needful for me. And beloved, as I seek His righteousness. Demonstrating godly contentment with His law. being content with the law of God as a rule of gratitude. It's good to look at this answer again for ourselves now, that not even the slightest thoughts or desire contrary to any one of God's commandments should ever arise in my heart. We need to remember that, to examine ourselves by it each and every day. Rather, with all my heart, I should always hate sin and take pleasure in whatever is right. That is to be our desire, beloved, is those transformed in Christ. And what a contrast that answer gives between the old life of sin and the new life of righteousness. And there we are to see then again that the tenth commandment is a call to keep our desires in check. not to pick and choose the portions of God's Word that I think fit me best, but to really, truly love the law of God because it reflects His holiness. To really, truly find joy in a life of obedience because it pleases Him. To really, truly find purpose and fulfillment in a life of holiness that represents the Savior who kept this very law perfectly for me. And this demonstration of gratitude through godly contentment with the law of God includes not coveting. It includes not desiring what belongs to my neighbor, but instead delighting in the one and only true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and delighting in promoting, as we have considered with the other commandments, delighting in promoting and protecting my neighbor's wife and his life and his possessions and his reputation. In Matthew 15, Jesus described the Pharisees using the words of Isaiah, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. They honor me with their lips. They say all the right things, but they don't believe. Their hearts are far from me. They reject me. But the believer's heart, by the grace of God, through Christ Jesus, belongs to the Lord. And that transformed heart fills our mouths and actions with praise. And therefore, may the words and actions that come from you and me be a true reflection of hearts transformed by the Holy Spirit. Again, unlike the other commandments, especially commandments 5 through 9 that deal with our neighbor, which can give the visible appearance, as we said in the beginning of being kept, unlike those, the truth of the 10th commandment is only really known to God. But that's the point, isn't it? Oh, it's made visible in one's attitude and actions through the rest of the commandments, but it's only really known to God, the only searcher of hearts. And just as Jesus saw right through the scribes and Pharisees, God sees and reads our hearts, beloved. Nothing is hidden from Him. And the Tenth Commandment is a call to those who are redeemed by Jesus. It's a call to gratefully exercise that new heart all in ways that are pleasing to God. Beloved, our hope is in Jesus Christ, the perfect law keeper. Our hope is in the truth that by the Holy Spirit, He will continue to purify our hearts to more and more desire perfect and complete love for God and our neighbor. May we expect that. May we look for that in our lives each and every day. And may we rejoice in His enduring work in you and me as He prepares us for that day when Jesus Christ will truly be our only heart's desire. And until then, let us give thanks to God with our hearts, through our hands, and our voices. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, we pray with thanksgiving for Your Word tonight. A powerful reminder indeed of what You have done for us in giving us new hearts. Taking away our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh to believe. Hearts to love You. Hearts to desire You. Hearts to desire keeping from that which displeases You. And Father, we pray that You would continue by your Spirit to strengthen us and equip us as we go forward. That indeed we would live in obedience to you gratefully for all that you have done, showing forth your glory in all things. And may we truly praise and thank you with our hearts and our hands and our voices. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.