The Tenth Commandment — The Secret of Not Coveting

The Command That Goes Deepest

The Torah portion of Yitro contains so many interesting and practical instructions for leadership management, and of course, the Ten Commandments. But I want to focus on the last commandment — the one that is easy to overlook:

Eight of the Ten Commandments have to do mainly with what you are doing. This last commandment has to do with what you are thinking — coveting. Coveting is deeply desiring something that is not yours to the point that it makes you obsessive about it and might drive you to change your behavior and sin not only by thinking (coveting), but also by other grievous sins like theft or adultery.

From the letter of Jacob (James), we learn this principle:

Why Is It the Tenth? — The Punchline at the End

The question is asked, why did God make this commandment the 10th commandment? One of the possible answers is that it is the most important commandment, and probably one of the hardest to keep. Usually the punchline comes at the end of the book, letter, or joke.

I remember Jack Exum, one of my teachers in G.C.S., down in South Georgia. Jack had written a small book called "The Glory of the Ordinary." In this he had some poems. The poem by the same name of the book, spoke of a person coveting someone's beauty and wishing to be just like that very beautiful lady that was sitting in the bus, until she stood up and she had only one leg.

The secret of not coveting is accepting with joy what God gave you, and believing that God rewards justly all those who diligently serve Him (see Hebrews 11:6). The way and the key to not coveting is faith that God knows what He is doing and in fact that God is in charge of every aspect of nature, life now and life eternal, and that God loves us and knows what is best for us.

This principle is true even when God gives us a lemon and we might have wished that he gave us a watermelon. In the parable of Yeshua of the talents, the one in which the master had given 10 talents to one of his servants, and five talents to another, and one talent to the third servant, God expected and still expects for us to do the best we can with what He has given us, and not to be bitter or covet what God has given to our neighbor. Who knows if God did not give us a lemon because he was worried that we might get a hernia transporting that big watermelon with us all the daylong?

Faith Without Works — and Grace That Demands Obedience

Yes, of course we are saved by God's grace, and that is true for all humans that are saved in the future or in the past. It is always by Grace! But, for a person who does his best to keep God's commandments, even if he failed in keeping God's commandments, God's grace is the only way for anyone to have the privilege of spending eternity in God's presence.

The Ten Commandments that God gave Israel on Mount Sinai are the recommendations of Yeshua to the young lawyer who wanted to know what he ought to do to inherit eternal life. I say recommendations, but in reality Yeshua commanded them as essential for the inheritance of eternal life. We must protect the place of God's 10 "words" — commandments — with great passion. If we don't first protect the place of these commandments in our nations and communities, for sure paganism will take over our lives, and the lives of our future generations.

Breaking the commandments of God, especially these 10 commandments, will always bring a divine reaction and retribution for the evil that is sure to come. We can start right here with the last one — and it begins not with what we do, but with what we desire.