Sermon of 12 September 2010 The Lord's Supper 1 Corinthians 11.17-34

1 Corinthians 11.17-34

What was the very first meal eaten on the moon? The Lord’s Supper!
When the lunar module touched down
Buzz Aldrin asked Houston control for a few moments of silence
and invited each person listening in to think about what was happening
and to give thanks in their own individual way.
Aldrin gave thanks by taking bread and wine.
He opened some little plastic packages
and poured the wine into a chalice his home church had given him.
He noticed how in the one sixth gravity
the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the cup.
He has told how as he read a short passage of scripture
‘I sensed especially strongly my unity with our church back home
and with the church everywhere.‘
It is good to think that this astronaut, amid the technological triumph
was aware of his need of Christ and of his bond with the church.
But what about the other man just a few feet away in the space craft?
Did he share with him?.
It is sad that it took years for Buzz to get over his disappointment
that Neil Armstrong claimed the privilege
of being the first man to step on the surface.
It was good to have the Lord’s Supper on the moon
but even at holy moments like that we are still imperfect people.
Isn’t it always most difficult to relate to the person nearest you,
be it on the moon or Cork or in Corinth?

Here in Cork, the problem may be even greater
because we live in a culture which has placed a lot on the sacraments.
In the major religious tradition, the mass is celebrated at almost every service
including funerals and weddings.
The problem with such frequent communion services
is that it may lead to unreflecting, unprepared communion
without full awareness of the person next to you,
nor, most of all, of the giver of the feast

In Corinth, things had got so bad in casual, unthinking communion
that Paul had had to say
(20) ‘when you come together it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.’.
In those days, a real meal was combined with the Lord’s Supper.
It was called a ‘love feast’
but there was not much love in the Corinthians’ love feast.
The rich people came in early, laden with food and drink, and a great party.
The slaves and the poor came in later, hungry, tired, empty handed.

Have you ever come late to a party, and all the food has gone
and the people stand around in little groups, ignoring you
and you feel really out of it as a latecomer,
and especially if you couldn’t help being late.
Things like that happen at parties, but should they happen in the church?

Paul says this is a travesty, an abuse, a farce.
People who get greedy and drunk and behave as if in an exclusive club
cannot be said to be ‘recognising the body of the Lord’ (29)

So Paul says, harshly but rightly, that God will judge such behaviour:
he may even afflict some with illness and death
as a severe discipline to bring the church to its senses.

Now we are not to conclude that if we are ill
it is because God is judging us for an irreverent or uncaring deed or attitude.
Sometimes our suffering is a direct judgement on our ill disciplined behaviour:
the leader of our country knows full well now
that it was not a good idea to stay up to 330 in the morning
and then try to do an important interview on breakfast radio.
If you are sick and are wondering
if you have done something for which God is disciplining you
God will show you what the problem is
and you can confess the wrong you did and he will restore you.

But this is a solemn warning about what may happen
when we are irreverent at the Lord’s table
and show our indifference to God and to others.

We all know of parties which have been spoiled by a ‘party plonker’
someone who dominates things with a loud voice, often oiled by alchohol
and there’s a bad taste left for everyone else
and you can imagine how the host feels, with hospitality abused.

What Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 11 is that
there is a wonderful welcome to us to come to Christ’s party
and a solemn warning not to despise or abuse his hospitality.

Jesus told a story in Matthew 22.1-14 which shows what happens to people
who abuse the invitation of a king to his son’s wedding banquet.
There are those who reject the invitation outright
and treat the bearers of the invitation with contempt and even worse.
Well, those people get what they deserve from the king.
Then he sends out more invitations to all sorts of people, good and bad.

You can see who is who in the story:
the first group who rejected are the Jews, rejecting Jesus;
the next group are the non Jews, which includes us,
that’s the wonder of the gospel invitation,
it’s offered to everyone, wherever you’ve come from
whatever you have done, whatever you’ve been like.
But that doesn’t mean you can treat the host in any old sort of way.

At the banquet is a man not wearing a wedding garment.
The custom was that a special gown was handed out at the door
but for whatever reason, this man just turns up in his own clothes.
It’s like turning up to meet the President at her home in Phoenix Park,
in your gardening clothes, shabby and soiled.

So this man meets the bouncers. He is excluded. He has no answer to give.
He had a free invitation
but he could not be bothered to make use of the new clothes, freely available.

Is not that story saying something very serious
both to those who reject the invitation totally
and to those who want to enjoy the favour of the king
but are not prepared to change in any way?

Can you not see Jesus with wide open arms, welcoming us, --
he whose arms were stretched out on the cross for us
and some people only superficially respond to that invitation
but actually they join those who stream past the cross
and its invitation to share in the light of God’s loving presence
and both groups move into the darkness of being without God
and excluded from the heavenly feast forever.

How should we respond then?
It is the same as with any invitation:
REPLY, GET READY, MIND YOUR MANNERS, SAY THANKS

REPLY,
As it says on some invitations RSVP,
from the French Respondez, S’il Vous Plait
Reply to Jesus. Thank him for the invitation.
Tell him indeed that you feel most undeserving
and then let him remind you that he died for you
not because you were worth saving, (why then would he have to die for you?)
but he died in order to deal with your sin and make you worthy

GET READY

Then you must put the the white wedding garment that our host offers
It is so well described in the communion hymn:
‘Mine is the sin, but yours the righteousness:
mine is the guilt, but yours the cleansing blood
here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace;
your blood, your righteousness, O Lord my God!’
.
Imagine having some special clothes in the wardrobe which were a gift.
Somebody chose them carefully for you, made sure that they fitted,
a gift that cost a lot, but suppose you never wear them?
What would the giver think? And do you get the benefit?
Respond, clothe yourself in the robe of righteousness:
let your eating of the bread and drinking of the cup at the table
be an expression of that repentant faith, that personal commitment to Jesus.
Say to him,
‘Lord I thank you for the invitation, and I come though I am not worthy,
for I also thank you for the robe of righteousness freely held out to me
so that I may sit at your feast, and no-one will throw me out.’
MIND YOUR MANNERS

Although we are unworthy of Jesus’ death for us
Christ calls us into fellowship, to live in his presence, to have him live in us
calls us to a life that will be worthy of him
and, as Paul writes here to the Corinthian Christians
to examine ourselves, lest we eat and drink unworthily.
The free and undeserved invitation to feast with Christ
calls us to ask if there anything in my life
which contradicts me being at the Lord’s table:
things you think or do or say, or don’t do but should have done
anything that you would be ashamed to bring into the light of Christ?

Tell him about those things, don’t hang back because of them,
Say Lord, these things are wrong, forgive me.
May I know I am forgiven
and may I also know that your spirit is in me
to help me to live in a different way.

Make sure this examination you do is of yourself and not of anyone else.
It’s so easy, isn’t it to look around and think:
‘What’s he doing here?’ ‘Do those people really believe?’
‘How could God invite her?‘
but that is not what we are asked to do.
We are asked to examine ourselves, not other people.
Have I responded? Am I wearing the clothes provided for me?
And in regard to the other people round about,
not what have they done, not even what have they done to me
but am I right in regard to them?
Do I offer them forgiveness,
even if they won’t ask for forgiveness
or even feel they don’t need to be forgiven?
If we can’t help feeling there is something wrong in their lives
the first question we should then ask is how can I help them?
Will I at least pray for them, and pray humbly, aware that I’m just as sinful?
Could I offer help in some way? Can I encourage? Show sympathy?
Doesn’t John write in his first letter
that if we are serious about loving God whom we have not seen
then we are to be serious about loving our brother whom we have seen?
For if we don’t love the people near us, whom we do see
can we really say we love God whom we don’t see?
To be indifferent to other people, not to care for them,
is as bad as irreverence for God;
the two aspects always go together, a restored relationship
with God in Christ and with each other in Christ.

Finally, the last thing we should do when we leave a party:
SAY THANKS
The Lord’s Supper is of course
permeated with thanksgiving through and through,
which is why some churches call it ‘eucharist’
from the Greek word for thanksgiving.

As Jewish people at the Passover thank God for gifts of bread and wine
and for the whole story of their deliverance from slavery
and as Jesus did the same at the last supper
so in our communion service we should not only give thanks
for the wonderful giving up of Christ to save us
but also afterwards we should go on being thankful:
thankful that it was good to draw near to God
and have this special communion with him
thankful for spiritual nourishment
thankful for fellowship with each other
thankful for the privilege of being invited at all.

Lord,
remind us of this high privilege of touching holy things in the Lord’s Supper.
Forgive us for when we handled carelessly.
May the ears which have heard your word of forgiveness and reconciliation
be deaf to dispute, gossip, back biting.
May the tongues which have sung your praise
be free from deceit and accusation.
May the eyes which see the tokens of your love
take in only whatever is pure and good and lovely
and may the bodies which you nourish in every way
be refreshed with the fulness of your life
that lasts for ever and ever and gets better and better.

Sermon of 12 September 2010 No 9 False Witness or Faithful Witness? James 3.1-12

James 3.1-12

Lord, as we look at your Commandments
take from us any thought about how bad other people are, breaking your laws
and we congratulate ourselves that we are not as bad as them.
Rather may our prayer be that you will have mercy on me a sinner.
Teach us where we are going wrong and how to get back to you.

She must have thought she would never be caught.
There she was stroking this cat sitting on top of a wheelie bin
and the street was empty.
So on an impulse she popped the poor animal inside.
Fortunately for the cat, the bin had been emptied
and its owners heard its cries hours later.
Unfortunately for the woman involved they had a tv camera installed
and with the help of Facebook or Youtube her crime went round the world
and she was soon caught.

Much as I love cats
there is something about the reaction to this story that disturbs me.
Yes, the evidence was conclusive, there was nothing false about it
but isn’t there something false in the reaction?
Something vindictive, something out of proportion to the wrong?
Did you notice how the clip was played and replayed on the news
while the real news should have been about the floods in Pakistan or billions of bank debt?

If the point of ‘You shall not bear false witness’
was only that we should tell the truth and not lie
this would be a short though worthwhile sermon
but what this command highlights
is the danger of what we say about other people
and the danger of how we say what we say
even if the what should happen to be true.
There’s something disturbing in the reaction the cat in the bin story
in how it has been reported and how it has been received.

The 10th commandment which we looked at last week
deals with our inner desire to have more and more and how we lose our peace
but the 9th commandment targets what we say
and we may extend its scope beyond the very important area of giving true evidence in a court
and not doing someone down by lying about him and falsely accusing him.

Something very serious has gone wrong in a society
where the legal process is undermined by lying
but something is also deeply wrong where there is a culture in general
of loose talk and gossip and character assassination.

People sometimes say words don’t matter but they do, deeply.
On 9/11 those poor people on the doomed planes
used their mobile phones to talk to their loved ones to tell them ‘I love you’.
Don’t those words matter?
Or the promises made in a marriage, or any promise,
or the verdict pronounced in a law case ‘Guilty or Not guilty’?
Those words matter so much.

Even Christian people can cause great damage with our words
as James makes clear in 3.1-12
He warns to be careful if you want to be a teacher in church
‘because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly‘.
He says that Christians all stumble in many ways.
‘If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man,
able to keep his whole body in check.’
Then he says that the tongue is a small part of the body
but it can do great good or great harm.
It’s like the small bit in a horse’s mouth
where a huge animal can be turned in any direction
or a big ship can be steered by a small rudder.
The he uses the picture of a big forest fire caused by one small spark
and goes on to state that on-one can tame the tongue.
‘It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.’

Here James is describing that struggle which we all have in this life
that even though we are forgiven and accepted by God
there are bits of us which still need to be converted
bits of us deep down which cause us to think and say stupid things -
things which often we bitterly regret for the harm they do.
So we are people who can use our tongues at one moment to sing God’s praise
and in the next moment actually to curse other people.

James is clear that this should not happen.
It is a contradiction of who we are in Christ.
Every time we see this contradiction in ourselves we must never be happy about it
We may seek and find forgiveness for it
but we must learn to regret deeply and renounce those parts of us
that still react in disobedience and produce such bitter fruit.

Are we aware of how one little word can be like a spark in a dry forest
and start something that gets out of control?
We need to be aware of a downward spiral
where innocent chat can suddenly change into something poisonous or devastating.

Lets think about the different levels of our conversations.

At level 1 it is simply everyday chat about everyday things
the weather, people’s health, the economy, sport.
No problem.

In level 2 we dip with talk that is true but unhelpful.
How positive and constructive are these remarks?
"He never comes to church." "Her father is a drunk."
"Those people never change.”
Do you see how we can say something true
and yet become negative and destructive, condemnatory?

Level 3 is when truth is abandoned as we exaggerate
or hear someone else say something that gets it wrong and we don’t correct.
One distortion leads to another. "I saw her at the doctor's."
"Perhaps she’s pregnant." "Maybe it's twins'" "She's going to have twins."
And then (months later) "I wonder what happened ... "

A film company advertised with this quote from a review
saying that the lead actor was ‘fierce, magnetic, irresistible even…”
What the advert. did not say was that the review went on
‘But even this actor can only do so much.’

Do you see how it is so easy to twist and distort and quote out of context
and uncritically repeat what others have said without checking it out
or asking: ‘Is this what a follower of Jesus should say?’

And then it’s not a long drop to Level 4
where we deliberately lie for our own advantage.
I hope you see that this 9th commandment refers also to
Level 2 - talk which is negative and unhelpful
and to Level 3 - talk which selects and distorts.

How then may we bear faithful witness instead of false witness?

J John in his book ‘Ten’ about the Commandments
recommends this THINK test.

T is it True?
H is it Helpful?
I is it Inspiring?
N is it Necessary?
K is it Kind?

Obviously, if something is not true, we should not say it.
But we need to think also that some things could be true but unhelpful.
It may be true that someone’s father is a drunk
but it could be so cruel and unnecessary to say that.
We need instead to think of things to say
that are inspiring and positive, constructive and encouraging.
We need to ‘talk in the light'.

That’s not say we can never tell somebody off for doing something wrong.
While we need to encourage
we should not lock into some kind of sickly sweet mutual admiration group
where we live in la la land and never get real about things that need sorting.
Paul in Colossians 3 says
we should 'teach and admonish each other with all wisdom'
that is, we should have a relationship with each other
where we can tell someone off and they can correct us too
when it is done in a wise and controlled and humble way
when we prayerfully discern when it is the time to say something
and when it is not the time.

So, do we ‘talk in the light’?

Is what we say about people when they are not there
the same as we would say when they are there?
Is it both true and helpful and inspiring and necessary and kind?

And do we also talk of the light?

Are we willing to replace gossip with gospel?

Are we ready not simply to have speech
that is true and helpful and inspiring and necessary and kind
but also that speaks of Jesus?

Please don’t panic when I mention this.
I am not saying that we all have to preach in the open air
or give out leaflets or talk to complete strangers about our faith
though God does call and equip some people to that gift of evangelism
but it is clear that every Christian is called to be a faithful witness.
We are not to deny Jesus.
If we are asked we should say something.
It’s not that we have to give knock down answers to Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins
but that we can simply share what we believe in our deepest heart.
Even if our testimony goes not much further than saying
something like: ‘I can’t answer your difficulties about suffering or science
but I do know this, that I love Jesus and more important Jesus loves me.’

As Peter wrote in his first letter c 3.
‘Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you
to give the reason for the hope that you have.
But do this with gentleness and respect.’

Do people near us know not only
that that we are truthful and reliable and kind and positive people -
we ‘talk in the light’
but also that the reason for this is that we follow Jesus -
we ‘talk of the light’

False witness or faithful witness?
Pastor Jones in Florida is in danger of being a false witness.
Where is any gentleness and respect and wisdom
in his proposal to have a public burning of Korans?
That’s easy to see
but if we keep quiet about our faith all the time, isn’t that false too?
Or if our everyday talk is not in the light?

One last thing, which I will repeat each week with each commandment.
The law of God shows us what God wants in our lives
but does not show us how to be reconciled with God.
The commandments are instead a map showing us ways in which
to please and serve the God who has first loved us and rescued us.

We must always remember how the commandments start
with God telling his people who he is and what he has done for them
and therefore this is how they are to live.

The preface to the ten commandments is in these words,
I am the Lord thy God,
who have brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage.
The preface to the ten commandments teaches us
that because God is the Lord, and our God, and redeemer,

therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.

We must never think:
if I can just control my speech, conquer my tendency to exaggerate and gossip
then God will love me and I‘ll be a good Christian.
Rather, we should be thinking
because God loves me and I am secure in him
then I can guard my tongue,
I don’t need to let it run away and cause damage
and I can start being truthful and helpful, inspiring, wise and kind
as my words and my deeds reflect his light in me.

Set a watch O God on my lips
May every word be a reason for people to praise you.
May the Holy Spirit make us in every way faithful witnesses.
Helping us to speak the truth with grace, truth in love
truth to build up and restore not to knock and condemn
Help us to speak graciously, sensitively and wisely
knowing when to speak and when to be silent.

Sermon of 5 September 2010 No 10 Covetous or Content? Colossians 3.1—17

Theme: The Ten Commandments

Title: No 10 Covetous or Content?

Date: 2010-09-05

Colossians 3.1—17

Lord, as we look at your Commandments
take from us any thought about how bad other people are, breaking your laws and we congratulate ourselves that we are not as bad as them.
Rather may our prayer be that you will have mercy on me a sinner.
Teach us where we are going wrong and how to get back to you.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

Have you had that experience
when you finally decided what you’ll have in a restaurant
and then when the meals arrived
you wished you’d ordered what your neighbour was having?

Or a car sweeps past you on the motorway a 10 reg. gleaming fast …

Or think back to how you felt at school prize day or sports day
and what you felt about people going up to get their prizes and medals.
Were you really happy for them
or were you thinking ‘it should have been me’ I wish it was me’.’

I am starting this series on the Ten Commandments
from the end rather than the beginning -
lets not say it’s the wrong way round;
rather we are starting with that which is nearest to our experience
because even if we have never stolen or committed adultery or murdered
we have all coveted.

To covet is to have desire for something
in a way that takes away all peace with God or neighbour

it may be a possession or it may be a position
it could be a car or a sports medal or a job promotion
but if our desire leaves us feeling discontented, angry, jealous
then we’ve crossed the line between desire and coveting.

Lets be clear that not all desire is wrong
We have deep desires for good things:
pleasure and joy, belonging, security comfort and safety excitement adventure
We want to be well respected, looked up to, to be significant and loved
and to have some meaning in our lives.
We desire that those near and dear to us should do well.
Those are not wrong desires
but desire becomes coveting
when we have an illegitimate or wrongful desire for something
that, for whatever reason, is not ours to have.

Lets look at some Bible stories that illustrate the dangers of crossing that line

We start with the earliest story and perhaps the saddest
what happened in the garden of Eden in Genesis 3.
Somebody pointed out to me recently
that so many of the Ten Commandments are prefigured in Genesis 1-3
That there is only one God whom we should worship
that we should honour him as creator and not worship the creation – no idols
that we should respect the one day in seven principle of sabbath rest
the foundations of family life, marriage and children are there
and in c 3 clearly we are to set limits on our desires, do not covet.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
she took of its fruit and ate,
and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. ‘

Good to eat, good to look at, good for the ego
to make you wise and independent of God
These inflamed desires shouted so loudly that the clear command of God
not to eat of that one tree, with everything else freely available
was set aside, ignored.
The result?
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
Shame and guilt. They hide from each other and they hide from God
That wonderful free open relationship with the LORD
where they could walk and talk with him was lost;
the results of that disobedience have marked and shaped
every human being since.
To covet is to have desire for something
in a way that takes away all peace with God or neighbour:

Don’t fondly imagine that a good Christian redeemed by God
is immune from coveting:
John wrote in his first letter (2.15-16), addressing believers:
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For everything in the world
—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes
and the boasting of what he has and does
—comes not from the Father but from the world.
Isn’t it almost as if John is commenting on Genesis 3?
Good to look, at good to eat, desired to make one wise …

Or take the story of King Ahab in 1 Kings 21
a wealthy and powerful man who still wanted more
who coveted Naboth’s vineyard.
The vineyard was close to Ahab’s palace.
Ahab offered to buy the vineyard to use for a vegetable garden,
But Naboth refused to sell the inheritance of his fathers.
He saw that property as something he had inherited
and held in trust to pass on to his descendants
a conviction which was supported by the Old Testament law;
What happens next shows how Ahab had crossed the line
from a reasonable desire to extend his garden to a covetous desire
which destroyed his peace with God and his neighbour
(4) So Ahab went home, sullen and angry
because Naboth had said, I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers.
He lay on his bed sulking and refused to eat.
And then his wife Jezebel proposed a wicked solution
to set up false charges against Naboth and get rid of him.
And Naboth was wrongly convicted and executed
and Ahab got the property he longed for but he got no peace with God.

It’s a very good rule of life
that if something goes wrong, if we don’t get what we want
and we react with anger, sulking, resentment, jealousy …
then we have let our desire which might otherwise be fine and good
cross that line of danger into disobedience.

I could give many more examples from the Bible about these dangers:
the jealousy Saul had for David, his desperate, insecure, driven life,
or Simon in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8.9-23) who so wanted spiritual gifts
that he thought he could pay money for them
but Peter warned him to repent of his bitterness of spirit and captivity to sin.

But the ultimate warning about being greedy
is surely in the story Jesus told about the rich fool
A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops.
He said to himself, “What should I do? I don’t have room for all my crops.”
Then he said, “I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.
Then I’ll have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods.
And I’ll sit back and say to myself, ‘
My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy!
Eat, drink, and be merry!’”
But God said to him, “You fool! You will die this very night.
Then who will get everything you worked for?”
Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth
but not have a rich relationship with God. (Luke 12:16–21 NLT)

Lets be absolutely clear that coveting -
our out of order, out of control desires for whatever -
destroys peace with God and peace with others.

The collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society is a scary revelation
of how even respectable prudent moral Presbyterians
can be guilty of covetousness.

[The PMS is a savings group for members of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland
a bit like a credit union which is currently in administration.]
I speak as a saver who wonders will I get my money back.
Many of us were attracted by the good interest rates year by year.
We were at best naively over confident
that it would be well supervised and regulated.
We went along unthinkingly with the bubble economics of the boom years
that property values and shares would always keep rising.
We can put some of the blame on the British government
for some actions and lack of action
and we need to be aware that some small savers
are in serious financial hardship
but having said all that, anyone involved needs to ask:
were we swept along by an undercurrent of covetousness?

Dr Stafford Carson, last year’s Moderator
has been trying to help in this situation.
Recently he commented that sadly the staff of the Society,
secretaries answering the phone and doing admin.,
have had to endure all sorts of abuse as if it were their fault.
Do you see the difference
between an understandable concern to manage one’s money
which makes you disappointed at this outcome
and a giving way to anger and bitterness like Ahab, like Simon
when things don’t turn out the way we had planned?
Have some savers crossed the line into coveting
threatening their peace with God and with others?
A matter for continued repentant prayer.

What are the answers or antidotes to coveting?

HEART SURGERY

Simon in Acts 8 had been baptised, he was among the followers of Christ
but Peter discerned that his heart was not right,
he needed to repent of his craving for spiritual gifts
and the folly of thinking he could buy them.

It is not just Simon whose heart is not right.

God made a wonderful promise through the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel (36:26):
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;
I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”

This heart transplant is exactly what happens when we come to know Jesus.
He removes from us our old hearts, curved in on themselves,
self-obsessed and selfish.
In their place, he gives us his own heart. It is an extraordinary exchange.
He takes our messy, malfunctioning hearts and replaces them with his.
If your heart feels tired and self-obsessed,
might it not be evidence that you need that heart transplant?
Whoever we are, wherever we are,
we need to ask him to take our old hard heart from us
and give us his heart instead.
We all need a heart transplant.
We need to turn our lives over to Jesus,
to stop running our lives on our terms and accept his terms
to allow his death to cover our sins
and to live in the power of his resurrection.
Have you had that heart transplant?

And just as after heart surgery
people need to learn new ways of exercise and lifestyle
to stop their new heart and arteries getting clogged up
with a new heart
so we need the following disciplines which run counter to coveting.

BE THANKFUL AND CONTENT
It was there chiming away in the final verse in our reading from Colossians 3
Be thankful, (15) gratitude in your hearts towards God, (16)
giving thanks to God the Father through him (17)
And contentment is seen in Philippians 4.11-12
The apostle Paul, wrote from prison:
“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation,
whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want”
in or out of prison, in good times and bad, in boom and recession.
Are we known for being thankful, contented people,
or ungrateful, discontented, complaining.
Whose company would you prefer?

DON’T THINK ‘MINE’ THINK ‘GOD’S’

It is a good exercise to imagine our hands as holding on to all our possessions
and to all we hold most dear in life
it might be our position at work or in the community, what people think of us
our big ambitions.
Do we not often grasp everything tightly? It’s for me. It’s mine.
Like a child with a toy, we don’t want to let go and share with someone else.

We need to come to a place where we see all that we have and all that we are
as gifts from God held in trust for a while
to use and enjoy but to hold lightly not tightly.

To covet is to have desire for something
in a way that takes away all peace with God or neighbour

When we hold on too tightly where is our peace with God and others?
When we learn to hold things lightly, thankfully
as belonging ultimately to God and not us
we shall find peace.

One last thing, which I may repeat each week with each commandment.
The law of God shows us what God wants in our lives
but does not show us how to be reconciled with God.
The commandments are rather a map showing us ways in which
to please and serve the God who has first loved us and rescued us.

We started with the last commandment
But lets remember how the commandments start
with God telling his people who he is and what he has done for them
and therefore this is how they are to live .

The preface to the ten commandments is in these words,
I am the Lord thy God,
who have brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage.
The preface to the ten commandments teaches us
that because God is the Lord, and our God, and redeemer,
therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.

We must never think:
if I can be less covetous, less greedy then God will love me.
Rather we should be thinking
because God loves me and I am secure in him
then I can let go of all this stuff and desire to acquire
and being grumpy when I don’t get it
and I can start being thankful and content and generous
and holding things in trust.

‘If we could just obey this one commandment
it would have such an impact on our lifestyles
that the change would perhaps draw more people to Christ than anything else.’
(Stephen Gaukroger)

And could it be that people are not being drawn to Christ in great numbers
because we don’t obey this commandment?

Riches I heed not nor man’s empty praise
Lord, you are our inheritance, now and always

Let us no longer crave the salty water which just makes us more and more thirsty
Let us know what it is to drink deeply of your love and grace in Jesus
Setting us free, giving us life, enabling us to overflow with blessing to others

The Shorter Catechism on the Ten Commandments

(basic teachings of the Presbyterian Church, drawn up in 1647, in modern English]

Tenth Commandment Exodus 20.17

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife,
or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey,
or anything that belongs to your neighbour.


Q. 43. What is the preface to the ten commandments?
A. The preface to the ten commandments is in these words,

I am the Lord thy God,
who have brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage.

Q. 44. What does the preface to the ten commandments teach us?
A. The preface to the ten commandments teaches us
that because God is the Lord, and our God, and redeemer,
therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.

Q. 80. What is required in the tenth commandment?

A. The tenth commandment requires
full contentment with our own condition,
with a right and loving frame of spirit
toward our neighbour, and all that is his.


Q. 81. What is forbidden in the tenth commandment?
A. The tenth commandment forbids
all discontentment with our own situation,
envying or grieving at the good of our neighbour,
and all out of order, inappropriate thoughts or feelings
about what our neighbour has.

“Coveting is like sea water;
the more we drink the thirstier we become.”
(Schopenhauer 1851)