FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 28, 2004
You shall not commit adultery (#7)
You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor’s (#10)
Scripture: Exodus 20:14, 17; Matthew 5:27-30; Ephesians 5:1-13
Throughout the Lenten Season, we are focusing our attention on The Ten Commandments. Thus far we have talked together about commandments
#1 – You shall have no other gods before me.
#2 – You shall not make any graven images.
#3 – You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
#4 – Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
#5 – Honor your father and your mother.
#8 – You shall not steal.
Today, prayerfully and carefully, we come to commandment #7 – You shall not commit adultery and #10 – You shall not covet…anything that is your neighbor’s.
To be honest, I wondered during the past week whether our attendance this morning would be up because of intrigue and expectation, or go down due to a certain amount of awkward hesitation about our subject. Seeing that we have a relatively full congregation, I suspect that at least one or perhaps both of these ancient rules has caught your attention… as was the case with a young boy in Sunday school who was trying to memorize all of the commandments. Reciting them one by one, as he came down to the end, he inadvertently combined #7 and #10, saying “You shall not take the covers off your neighbor’s wife.”
The truth is, these two commandments – You shall not commit adultery and You shall not covet…anything that is your neighbor’s, are deeply and profoundly connected, one to the other.
I.
Back in December of 1987, Barbara and I went to see the movie “Fatal Attraction.” Time Magazine had run a cover story on the film in mid-November, and I was intrigued by the sub-title of the lead article, which read “Fatal Attraction strikes gold as a parable of sexual guilt.”
And that was surely true. The film grossed more than $200 million and on the night of the People’s Choice Awards program, the American movie-going audience honored “Fatal Attraction” with “Best Picture,” “Favorite Leading Actor” – Michael Douglas – and “Favorite Leading Actress” – Glen Close.
Why? Why all the kudos and commotion for this particular Hollywood production? According to the author of the magazine article, “Fatal Attraction tapped the current national mood of sexual malaise with a cautionary, indeed reactionary story about an errant husband, a faithful wife, a happy family and a career woman unlucky in love who became obsessed with her lover.”
If you didn’t see the movie back then, there’s an updated version today, a more recent film entitled “Unfaithful” which reverses the roles and depicts Dianne Lane as the wife who loses control and Richard Gere as the loyal husband. But at the conclusion, the end result is sadly, painfully, deadly similar to “Fatal Attraction” - a husband and wife, victims of a destructive game, are trying to pick up the pieces of their broken relationship, which for good or for ill, will never be the same again.
Now we may never know or be able to show for sure if our culture creates the moral standards for the motion picture industry or vice versa, if our films have the influence to shape and create the moral standards of our society. But of this we can be absolutely certain: movies like “Fatal Attraction” and “Unfaithful” hit close to home for far too many people.
Some years ago, a Harris poll for Psychology Today found that more than a third of the couples over 40 years old in this country have been involved in extra-marital affairs at some point during their married lives…which could be why one woman wrote this note to Dear Abby, seeking her advice:
“Dear Abby:
My husband has taken up jogging and drives three miles every morning to run with a young woman who works at the same office. Do I have anything to be concerned about?”
“Dear Concerned:
Not as long as they keep jogging.”
Well, we can laugh a little about that, but infidelity in a marriage or in any loving relationship is like poison in the bloodstream. And unless, until we are able to identify where it came from, to understand how it happened and then to decide what can be done about it – how to purge that poison from our emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual systems – infidelity can become and will be a fatal attraction to spouses, to families, to every relationship built upon love and loyalty, and to our Christian way of life.
II.
At the heart of it all is the 10th commandment which declares: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house…your neighbor’s spouse, your neighbor’s servants, your neighbor’s animals or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Exodus 20:17).
In both the old and the newer version of Webster’s Dictionary, the combined definition of “covet” reads something like this:
“To long for something which is unlawful to obtain or possess; to crave; to desire enviously for that which belongs to another.”
That’s what the 10th commandment meant and was designed to prevent in Moses’ time, going back to the 14th century B.C. And so it was in the first century A.D. as the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, saying:
But immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among the saints (that is, among Christian people)…For once you were in darkness, but now you are in the light of the Lord…Therefore, walk as children in the light…in all that is good and right and true (Ephesians 5:3, 8-9).
Those are strong words, written by the apostle to Christians living in a pagan, possessive and promiscuous culture. And I believe that those words still apply equally to each of us and all of us still today. Because as it was then, so it is now – coveting is more than wanting something. Coveting is a craving, an obsession to take for ourselves that which belongs to and might even be sacred to someone else – including their spouse.
It happened to me when I was 18 – not adultery, the 7th commandment, but the 10th – coveting. My roommate at the Stony Brook School in Long Island had a closet full of clothing – Brooks Brothers suits, sports jackets, slacks, shirts, sweaters, ties and shoes that turned me green with envy. As the son of a preacher, my own wardrobe was rather meager. So at the beginning of our senior year, I asked my roommate, Peter Halsey by name, if it would be all right for me to borrow and wear some of his clothes from time to time. He said that would be fine.
Nine months later, just before graduation, the yearbook came out and sure enough, the senior awards section pictured the students who had done well and even excelled in certain categories – best athletes, most intellectual, most popular, and so on. Peter won the Davenport Award for basketball, which was all right I guess – because pictured on the next page were Larry Bowen from Colorado and George Wirth from Pennsylvania, chosen by our classmates as the seniors who were best dressed. And in the photograph, I am wearing Peter Halsey’s suit, shirt, tie and shoes!
That may sound innocent enough, but looking back on those high school days, I must confess that I am still embarrassed by my covetous, envious and duplicitous ways. The 10th commandment says You shall not covet…anything that belongs to your neighbor. And as all of us know, when the stakes are higher than borrowing a roommate’s wardrobe during your senior year, coveting a neighbor’s house, stock portfolio, job or spouse can lead to consequences that are far more severe than we ever thought possible.
III.
Now, I find it interesting and important to note that on the same page of Webster’s Dictionary where the word “covet” appears, there is another word, an ancient biblical word which helps to make both the 7th and the 10th commandments much more clear. The word is “covenant,” and it means “A binding agreement between two or more persons,” and theologically speaking, “A promise between God and His people which joins them together in a faithful relationship.”
Dr. Lewis Smedes, for many years a professor and prolific author at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, wrote this in his book “Mere Morality,” which is focused on The Ten Commandments:
“Covenant-making is a uniquely human way to begin an alliance. Perhaps the greatest mystery of our humanness is the power to make and to keep a vow. For in a vow you freely give yourself over to a permanent identity in the face of an unpredictable future…
The commandments call us to be vow-keepers (covenant-builders), in defiance of our culture. Our culture urges us not to define our life in terms of past commitments but in terms of present needs and future possibilities. The commandments call us to subordinate our needs and to accommodate our possibilities to the special history we began when we vowed to be a partner in marriage” …(or a faithful person in any and in all of our relationships.) (From “Mere Morality” by Dr. Lewis Smedes, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983, pages 161-162).
So that is what the 7th and the 10th commandments are all about – fidelity, loyalty, love and humility in our marriages, families and every relationship which we hold near and dear to us. Those are the high and holy standards which God has given to us, showing us how to be faithful to one another and to Him.
But because the temptations to break those commandments are so alluring and seductive, Jesus Christ, when He came among us, told us to watch out and to be careful, lest we fall into the destructive snares of sin:
You have heard that it was said “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away…If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away…For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell (Matthew 5:27-30).
Now, we don’t have to take those words literally, but as Christians, we had better take them seriously. Because Jesus was telling us that if we play with fire, we are going to get burned.
So these are the lessons I think we can learn from the 7th and the 10th commandments:
· Pay special attention to your families and friends, give them your best and then trust the rest, including all of your relationships, to God.
· Stay away from the places and people who can get you into a lot of trouble, and draw close to the Lord, seeking His will and relying on His word.
· And if you have crossed the line and broken either the 7th or the 10th commandment, then confess your sin, ask God to forgive you and to restore you to a right relationship with those whom you have hurt, with those whom you love and with Him.
And when that happens, you can and you will discover what the Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner wrote about in his book “Listening To Your Life”:
“When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you are spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive someone who has wronged you, you are spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside and to be glad in each other’s presence.”
(“Listening To Your Life,” by Frederick Buechner, page 305)
My friends, that forgiveness is available to you and to me today through the saving love and amazing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so is the power, through His Holy Spirit, to keep both the 7th and the 10th commandments in the first place:
You shall not covet... anything that is your neighbor’s.
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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