Commandments 9-10 (& Conclusion)

Watch, Listen, & Read the Full Transcript

00:00:00:23 – 00:00:36:11
Clint Loveall
Tonight we turn our attention in the the Protestant in our version of the Ten Commandments to number nine and number ten. Thou shall not bear false witness or lie as it’s sometimes translated. And thou shall not covet. Which then opens up to all of the things that one is not to covet. These are, I think, interesting commandments, because arguably they’re the most common, and probably they are the two things that we experience.

00:00:36:16 – 00:01:05:35
Clint Loveall
The earliest one does not have to teach a child to covet. They just have to see a kid who has something they want. And one does not have to teach a toddler to lie. Just ask him how something got broken and and they’ll come up with an answer. And it’s not it’s not a template. It’s simply these things are a little bit more inherent in our experience.

00:01:05:40 – 00:01:32:20
Clint Loveall
I think, you know, when it comes to Thou shalt not murder and adultery and some of those big things, we think, yeah, these are these are natural to us in some ways. These are kind of the gateway sins or the gateway commandments. Would they show up early in the human story? And we will make the case in both of these that they’re bigger than the words.

00:01:32:22 – 00:02:00:24
Clint Loveall
That’s kind of the approach we’ve taken through this study. Essentially, the pattern we will use is that, yes, truth is honesty, but it’s it’s far bigger than that. I think you might be surprised at some of the things our ancestors put under this commandment. And then, of course, covet is to want what is yours. But there’s a little more to that as well.

00:02:00:25 – 00:02:36:36
Clint Loveall
So we’re going to get started here. We go into the ninth commandment, Do not bear false witness the word. Therefore witness is essentially a wrong answer or and the word for false is to deceit or to deceive or to injure. So, again, this is more than just tell the truth. This is saying things that detract from another that harm another, that do damage.

00:02:36:41 – 00:02:47:53
Clint Loveall
And so, again, as we go through this, you might be surprised that this is one of those it’s this going to sting a little bit, probably for most of us.

00:02:47:58 – 00:03:09:25
Michael Gewecke
So the form on this is pretty simple. You can all hear me, right? The form on this is pretty simple. We’re going to be looking out through both these commandments. What Westminster law does with them, because it really flushes both of them out pretty well. So we’ll start with the things that we know when you here do not bear false witness.

00:03:09:25 – 00:03:34:45
Michael Gewecke
I assume that we’re all largely on this page at Westminster says speaking, untruth, lying, slandering, back, biting, detracting, tale bearing and whispering. And my favorite in there is tale bearing, because that happens about once a week in the wacky house. I get a tale of what the other sister did, and then it’s all a detective story to figure out what actually happened.

00:03:34:46 – 00:04:03:29
Michael Gewecke
Right. Which is some amalgamation of both. We know that we would assume that, but we here do not bear false witness. We know we are supposed to say things that corroborate with the truth, with what actually happened, with fact. But then Westminster is going to keep going. So I grouped these into two categories. The first is false witness as it relates to neighbor on that horizontal plane and then false witness as it applies to God on the vertical plane.

00:04:03:30 – 00:04:37:39
Michael Gewecke
So we’ll start with neighbor because we had to pick a place to start. So first is prejudicing the truth and the good name of our neighbors as well as our own, especially in public judicature. So in other words, basically all of the conversation that happens in every House of Representatives meeting that happens in D.C.. Well, basically, any time that you use words that discredit or that speak negative to the name of another person, that you’re bearing false witness against them.

00:04:37:39 – 00:05:21:57
Michael Gewecke
And so the idea is, especially in public, we should be careful about what we say passing unjust sentence, calling evil good and good evil, rewarding the wicked according to the work of the righteous and the righteous, according to the wick, to the work of the wicked. So the idea would be that if you have a person charged of a crime and that they didn’t commit it and they are found guilty of it, you’re breaking the commandment of false witness that actually, even though it’s done in a court of law and it may be followed the order of that, it still violates the spirit of the commandment, because it’s not for the it’s not based in

00:05:21:57 – 00:05:44:43
Michael Gewecke
truth, it’s not based on the interest of the person. And to treat a person who is righteous or to correlate a righteous person with wicked things is also a form of bearing false witness, which is interesting. We might think of the commandment going the other way that we know that wicked people shouldn’t be treated as if the righteous that that bears false witness to their character.

00:05:44:54 – 00:05:46:39
Michael Gewecke
But so the same the other way.

00:05:46:39 – 00:06:22:10
Clint Loveall
Westminster says that we move on evil suspicion, speaking, grieving or envying the deserved credit of another speaking to impair it. So when we see someone get an award, win a basketball game, when a football game and we begin to say they didn’t deserve it, they this they that they shouldn’t do it. They shouldn’t. That wasn’t fair. This didn’t count.

00:06:22:15 – 00:07:03:16
Clint Loveall
That is according to Westminster to give false witness. And then we have scoffing reviling rash harsh remarks censuring with words and actions. So this is negativity scoffing and reviling. So and so is jerk and idiot fool. Fill in the blank. Right. I, I don’t know if you all pay attention. There’s this thing called social media.

00:07:03:21 – 00:07:39:37
Clint Loveall
It lives here. I, I am both astounded and hurts my soul. The character of humans. When you see some post and someone put up their new puppy and someone else says that puppy looks stupid, I or you, I hate your shoes. There is this movement in our culture that just revels in vomiting negative stuff into the world. And it.

00:07:39:37 – 00:08:14:43
Clint Loveall
Yes, it happens everywhere. But it it is so observable in our social media to scoff and revile. And interestingly enough, our our people, our our creed writers, our Presbyterian mothers and fathers said that is commandment breaking that that that is a false witness. Now, may it be true that you hate their shoes or that their dog is ugly?

00:08:14:48 – 00:08:39:25
Clint Loveall
I may be, but it is a false witness to God. It is to falsely live as people who are called to be better. And I think I don’t want to get on the soapbox because I’m going to climb back on it here in a little bit. But I think we’re struggling with that in the moment. That we’re in.

00:08:39:30 – 00:09:01:27
Michael Gewecke
I won’t take it much further than that, but I will. I do want to add, you do realize that in the online space, we actually had to create a word for that negativity. It’s called trolling. I don’t know if you know that. So trolling are people who actually will put up their hand and say, I like chasing after people to say mean things about them.

00:09:01:31 – 00:09:25:16
Michael Gewecke
They would probably use four letter words, but I’m not going to do that. But the people who say, no, this is the thing that I do. And I think to the point here, we we struggle as Christians, because if you come to these commandments and these commandments for for you as a Christian, are kind of best practices that you try to do a little bit.

00:09:25:21 – 00:09:45:40
Michael Gewecke
But then generally you’ll feel bad when you’re on whatever and you say a thing and you think later, maybe that wasn’t the nicest thing to say. It’s an entirely nother thing if you come to these commandments and say, No, I believe that this is God’s best plan for the world, that I’m called to live in such a way that this becomes part of my character.

00:09:45:45 – 00:10:22:30
Michael Gewecke
I do think that this has significant implications for what Christians think about how we engage in virtual nomad spaces. I realize this is kind of the wrong room to engage with some of that at the cultural level, but I just want to put as far as you have kids or grandkids or you’re having those conversations like my our daughters are living up in are growing up in a world where they will always as long as they consider themselves Christian, they will always also be living in the world in which they take for granted these virtual encounters with other people.

00:10:22:35 – 00:10:49:57
Michael Gewecke
So helping them to understand what a Christian character and ethic in that world looks like is essential. We have to take that seriously as we’re as we’re seeking to live in to the truth. These commandments moving forward. The Westminster goes on whenever we rejoice in others disgrace and infamy when we have scornful contempt or fond admiration, breach of lawful promises, forgery and concealing the truth.

00:10:50:02 – 00:11:24:09
Michael Gewecke
The idea that whenever we celebrate someone else’s misfortune, whenever we celebrate someone else’s lack of character, that that is a kind of false witness. We should avoid giving false evidence or false or giving false witnesses willingly appearing and pleading for an evil cause outpacing and overbearing. The truth, which is, I think, also speaking to a really important sort of movement in our modern society.

00:11:24:14 – 00:11:52:32
Michael Gewecke
There’s a real substantial conversation about who should I trust, who can I trust that what they’re saying is accurate and not simply self-seeking or self-serving? And this commandment speaks directly to that. And I do think specifically within the church, not pointing this at culture, pointing at this within the church, I do think that we continue to strive to hit that bar to to tell the truth.

00:11:52:37 – 00:12:14:26
Michael Gewecke
But often times we’ve gotten waylaid by things that seemed like the most important thing to to say as truth, when later we realized, we should have been focusing on these other things, I’ll give you an example for for some traditions, the idea of moral ethics. You know, a do not dance, don’t roll dice, Right. Whatever that thing is.

00:12:14:31 – 00:12:41:54
Michael Gewecke
And then over here, their kid grows up and they’ve never read the Bible. They focus so much on the don’ts that they never gave their child an opportunity to learn the who is Jesus and Joseph and Moses and, you know, Presbyterians. This is a little bit of a soapbox for me. But ultimately, we being people of the book, that we have room to grow there as well, knowing what’s in it and knowing that constructive, positive of what God calls us to do.

00:12:42:05 – 00:13:10:05
Michael Gewecke
So the commandment it tells us, stay away from these places where we are going to be giving in to or standing behind things for self-seeking purposes as opposed to seeking the truth unto itself. I guess I’ll close this out. This is maybe the hardest hitting in this section. Speaking the truth unseasonably or maliciously, to a wrong end, which think about what that means.

00:13:10:10 – 00:13:30:36
Michael Gewecke
What you say might be true, but if it’s intended or lands for the purpose of horror, they are destroying another person. You saying the thing that was truthful still bears false witness against the other person because it does harm to them, which that’s a pretty that’s a pretty powerful standard. That’s a pretty high standard to hit.

00:13:30:41 – 00:13:58:46
Clint Loveall
Yeah. When you use when you swing truth as if it’s a club, you may be accurate, but Westminster would question whether you’re right. You may be right about a thing. But if you use truth to attack a person again, you’re using it falsely. It’s not the thing that you’re saying that’s false. It’s the motivation. It’s what’s behind it.

00:13:58:51 – 00:14:32:37
Clint Loveall
And again, I think it’s interesting that our people in this commandment have this this duality, this two fold idea that our speaking and our witness is both outward facing and inward facing. So we are to be people of internal truth, but we are to be people of a not false or a true witness to the outsider who we are to be committed to know and live by truth.

00:14:32:42 – 00:14:59:57
Clint Loveall
And yet we are to treat truth properly in its context with other people. And this is one that I again, I think we struggle with. I think Christians struggle with this. I think there is a segment of the church that doesn’t know exactly what to do with truth. Just finished listening to a podcast about a very large church that kind of came apart.

00:15:00:01 – 00:15:28:06
Clint Loveall
And if you go back, there were several things that got covered up pastors doing things that clearly are out of bounds and people in the church saying, Well, but if if we expose that, if we talk about that, then it’ll hurt the church. And so this idea of covering the truth, on the other hand, there are pastors who have gotten hold of truth.

00:15:28:06 – 00:16:04:24
Clint Loveall
Mike Jane’s older sister, lives in Texas. My sister in law, Sue, we they were up for vacation one time. They had I don’t know, they’d moved to Texas. It had been a while, but at some point they were looking for churches and she said, Can I ask you a question? Sure. So we visited this church and during church the pastor pointed out a couple that was getting a divorce because the husband was unrepentant and and wouldn’t go to therapy, wouldn’t do what he was supposed to do and had an affair.

00:16:04:39 – 00:16:36:10
Clint Loveall
And the pastor is just telling everybody this during church. Is that normal? Like, no, Sue, there’s nothing nothing normal about that. And so, again, is the pastor saying what’s true? I probably is that the way in the place to say it that definitely not so that this is more than about being right this is how we handle truth.

00:16:36:10 – 00:16:45:52
Clint Loveall
And I think I wish you know, I’ll say that. Go ahead. I’m about I’m going to start off.

00:16:45:57 – 00:17:11:07
Michael Gewecke
Okay. So then I’ll dig a different one. Moving on. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about the vertical sense of this. And I did kind of save what for me hit me pretty hard or maybe hardest here on this. So this this we’ll talk about false witness before God. Westminster says undue silence in a just cause is false witness.

00:17:11:15 – 00:17:37:12
Michael Gewecke
So that holding our piece when inequity calls for either reproof from ourselves or complaint to others, think about what that means in more modern speak. In other words, if you fail to speak in a situation in which truth should be brought to bear, either against yourself or against another, you’ve committed false witness, which is a very, very high bar.

00:17:37:12 – 00:18:05:16
Michael Gewecke
The idea it’s not just what said, but that thing which is withheld from being said. And certainly I know I’ve been in a situation before where I’ve made the wrong call in that. Then the idea of flattering or boasting in an excessive way, thinking too highly, or also thinking too lowly of ourselves. Ultimately, the idea is are you assessing things as they actually are?

00:18:05:16 – 00:18:23:38
Michael Gewecke
And it’s the thing that over the years I’ve tried to get better at. But, you know, when someone has come up to you, you’re a midwesterner, you’re a Presbyterian, they come up to you. They said you did that thing really well. They’re just trying to offer you a compliment. There’s that thing within you that says, No, no, no, I’m actually horrible.

00:18:23:38 – 00:18:53:33
Michael Gewecke
You don’t even know, right? You’re trying to deflect back a compliment to be humble. Right? But the the reformers are going to make the case there’s no need for you to have false humility, except that with gratitude, accept it with humility and move on. Don’t say something that’s not true. If if you’ve worked hard at woodworking and you made a beautiful piece of art out of wood, it doesn’t help to say I’m not a woodworker right now.

00:18:53:38 – 00:19:13:46
Michael Gewecke
It does help to say thanks be to God. I really appreciate that comment. And I think that Westminster would point us in that direction and that what’s included in that is recognizing the gift that God has given you. So why the sins they they name is when we deny the gifts of God that’s bearing false witness to what God has done in our life.

00:19:13:51 – 00:19:36:15
Michael Gewecke
And then, you know, I think this is pretty simple for most of us. Also bearing false witness is when we hide or we make excuses for our sins, when we’re called to confess what’s true about ourselves and we fail to do so, or we decide to not do so, and that ultimately we either do that for our self or we do for another.

00:19:36:19 – 00:20:00:29
Michael Gewecke
When you see someone in a position of leadership, do something that is clearly not reflective of the character of a person who’s following God, it it would be therefore a sin to say, Well, they’re doing that for this reason. I mean, ultimately, if that action is not in truth, then it should be named as such. And I think that’s what I’ve got.

00:20:00:34 – 00:20:45:51
Clint Loveall
So I think again, I think we live that we’re not unique. People have always struggled, society, culture, we’ve always had stuff, right. But I do think we live in a very interesting time to ask the question what is truth? Is truth what people believe is truth? What people pass on on the Internet is truth. Some shadowy thing that only we know about it is it is a fascinating moment to think about what it means to be people who not only can be trusted to seek what’s true, but can be trusted to handle it well, gracefully, graciously.

00:20:45:55 – 00:21:14:06
Clint Loveall
Who can be called to speak up when necessary, but also who can be trusted to bite back words that don’t need to be said that, as you all know, that is brutally difficult to say the right thing at the right time, in the right way for the right reason is monstrously hard. It’s easy to vent. It’s easy to criticize.

00:21:14:06 – 00:21:38:06
Clint Loveall
It’s easy to gossip. It’s easy to do those things. It’s easy to stay silent, not get engaged. When something is wrong. It’s easy to be jealous and speak down of others. Those things are simple and they’re examples for us constantly. And so what does it mean to be people who bear true witness it, which is the opposite of the commandment, right?

00:21:38:06 – 00:22:26:48
Clint Loveall
If we’re called not to bear false witness, what does it mean to bear true witness? What does it mean to tell the truth, which is so much bigger than, you know, not lying. Not lying is that’s a yeah, that’s a great place to start. We should all start there. But we have to go far beyond that. And I think I think I think the church is in a moment of of question in terms of how do we engage a conversation about truth in the broader context.

00:22:26:52 – 00:23:02:25
Clint Loveall
I think the church has either been silent in that debate or has been sidelined in that debate. And I and I hope for the church’s sake that we will find a reasonable and faithful way into the conversation because I think moving forward, certainly as a church and also as a people, a commitment to truthfulness and a commitment to true witness is significantly important.

00:23:02:38 – 00:23:10:36
Clint Loveall
I think that it’s something we’re going to have to continue to work on and strive toward.

00:23:10:40 – 00:23:32:23
Michael Gewecke
I’ll be completely frank with you. Some of that is keeping our own house in order, and I think I’ll just quick tell you a story that has been pretty heavy on me. I was going to look up a thing, so I had to log on to Facebook and you know how Facebook light targets your brain with the top thing that you do?

00:23:32:24 – 00:24:00:22
Michael Gewecke
I know you’re going to click on this when you load in to Facebook. Right. And so there it was. It was a post from this pastor’s group. I’ll be clear, it’s like under for the Presbyterian pastors on Facebook in the Presbyterian Church USA. Okay. And it was this post and I was like, hey, look, I can’t you and I clicked on the thing and it was I didn’t make it to the bottom because I kind of I felt soul sick.

00:24:00:27 – 00:24:23:33
Michael Gewecke
But it was there was a post of a person who had said a thing that this group of pastors found reprehensible, and it was just verbal dog piling for miles. And I just thought, as I kept going and I was waiting for by the way, I didn’t say anything in that conversation, which means that I probably committed a sin.

00:24:23:38 – 00:24:55:12
Michael Gewecke
So this is complicated. I’m not there’s no knight in shining armor here. I won’t make that clear. But as you go down, I what struck me is all of these people who had done the education, all of these people are clearly committed to the task of doing work in the name of Jesus. And all of these people sound exactly like the world in which we live, which is that kind of attack, attack, attack and and not just doing so on the head, not only the smack of ideology.

00:24:55:12 – 00:25:18:36
Michael Gewecke
I think that I’m right. You had the smack of glorying in another person being dumb or another person, you know, And I think so that that’s that’s sort of a higher level view that I should have. I spoke it into that context. Maybe would that be a context in which that word could be heard? I don’t know. And once again, you didn’t.

00:25:18:41 – 00:25:43:00
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know. But maybe that’s the problem. Is that it? With the courage to tell the truth in that or what you see to be truth. I honestly wrestled with this, so I don’t want to pretend like there’s a simple answer. But I will say as it goes down the ladder, as it as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all people is not an important command.

00:25:43:04 – 00:26:00:54
Michael Gewecke
Right? So as far as it depends on you, when you get head targeted by page book because you load up the app and it puts in the top thing for you, what are you going to do with that? And when you go into your household within the four walls of where you live, how are you going to treat whatever people you find there?

00:26:00:54 – 00:26:23:58
Michael Gewecke
And then when you come to worship on Sunday and we inevitably brush up against each other and realize, wow, you think substantially different on that thing, how will you respond to that person? I, I don’t have an answer. I won’t be clear about that. But I do think that we have to, as Christians, take these commands seriously enough to try to pursue them ourselves, because I don’t know.

00:26:24:03 – 00:26:41:03
Michael Gewecke
I’ll be honest with you, I the world’s problems seem so big. I don’t know how you show up and to try to address that, I just think if you can address the greenhouse in which you live, that seems to be the spirit of the command. As I see it.

00:26:41:07 – 00:27:06:27
Clint Loveall
Yeah. I mean, I join you there, Jane. I think many of us do. The idea that it’s hard to even have a reasonable conversation because one person says things are better and the other person says, no, they’re not, they’re worse. And you say, Well, but crime did this. No, it did this. And we can’t even agree on the parameters of of a real discussion, which makes it nearly impossible to have an honest kind of debate.

00:27:06:32 – 00:27:39:09
Clint Loveall
I, I think from a personal standpoint that our motivation is to not participate, you know, possibly to model a better way if if we can do that, I’m not sure you move that needle much on a Facebook discussion, but when you’re talking to people to try and be more positive, certainly and it’s I do think it’s work. I think right now our current I think our cultural currents sweeps us toward negativity.

00:27:39:14 – 00:28:13:57
Clint Loveall
And I think to throw against that or swim against that, it does take consistent and conscious effort. I really do. I mean, there are probably some people who are just naturally positive and it it, you know, doesn’t it feeds them? I don’t know. I don’t think that’s many of us. I think most of us feel that poll and think, I wish it wasn’t this way, which is, you know, so so then I think mostly it becomes a matter of if we all can make a small difference, maybe we can move the needle a little bit as a whole.

00:28:13:57 – 00:28:47:13
Clint Loveall
I don’t I’m not sure. Hopefully, hopefully. And, you know, let’s be honest, news stations, media outlets, they do that because it works. Because if they get you mad. Yeah. You know, so if they can offend you or get you upset, they keep your attention. No, no. I mean, things are going great is not a very it’s just not a very marketable message.

00:28:47:18 – 00:29:21:43
Clint Loveall
So anything else? What else in regards to false witness? Okay, then we move on to the last commandment again in our take on the commandments. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, neighbors, house neighbors, donkey or servant. You know, you get into it just means don’t covet. It’d be nice. Maybe we should shorten it, but interestingly, the word covet means desire.

00:29:21:48 – 00:29:51:32
Clint Loveall
And it’s a word you might know in the early chapters of Genesis when Eve sees the tree and finds it appealing, desirable, that’s this word. So when later on, when Exodus says Don’t covet, it means don’t desire what you’re not to have or what isn’t yours or what is wrong. And again, I find if you’ve watched young children, this one, this is so natural to us.

00:29:51:32 – 00:30:14:56
Clint Loveall
You don’t have to be taught to covet. Now, having said that, I do think we live in a culture that thrives on coveting. We coveting is great business practice. If we can convince people they need what they don’t have and they need what their neighbors have, and they need to get ahead of what their neighbors have, we can sell a lot of stuff and our culture is not above those tricks.

00:30:14:56 – 00:30:44:07
Clint Loveall
Advertising is great at that stuff. From the time from the time that you start listening to radios, watching television, or reading magazines, people who spend a lot of time thinking about how to do it have tried to sell you things right, that there’s a whole industry based on how can we get people to buy our stuff. It’s very hard to come along in that culture and say, don’t covet, don’t want things you don’t need right?

00:30:44:22 – 00:31:16:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah, sure. But again, I think this is one that is pretty natural to us to want what we don’t have to want, what others have, and at our very worst, to not want others to have what we don’t. So not only to want to take, but to want to keep from them, to want to remove from them. I think coveting gets for a commandment that seems pretty innocuous.

00:31:16:21 – 00:31:27:42
Clint Loveall
I think this one gets close to our worst pretty quickly. I think there’s some ugliness in there that this commandment can uncover.

00:31:27:46 – 00:31:51:39
Michael Gewecke
Growing up, I used to watch the TV channel TLC all the time, but that was before all the reality TV stuff. They actually just showed documentaries and stuff back then, you know, the real nerd stuff. And there was a whole series of shows that I loved. There was like all of these crazy, wealthy whatevers. I remember one of them was, is the store de Barron’s in London?

00:31:51:45 – 00:32:13:45
Michael Gewecke
Is that the name of a highbrow store? I think there was a really uppity, swanky store in downtown London either way. And I remember the whole purpose of this show was to show they had a monopoly board where all the pieces were diamonds, real diamonds, and they had a video game console that was made out of gold and you could buy this.

00:32:13:46 – 00:32:39:22
Michael Gewecke
It was all this extravagant stuff. It was like, Hey, today you see Michael Jordan’s 10,000 square foot house. Here’s pictures of it. And, you know, people do this all the time. The temptation is not just to want that for yourself, to think that that’s what this commandment is speaking towards. It’s also to say that you don’t want that other person not to have it.

00:32:39:27 – 00:33:08:42
Michael Gewecke
That’s a tough transition to make, right? To say, okay, I’m fine. I get that I don’t have Monopoly with diamond pieces, but you shouldn’t get to have Monopoly with diamond pieces, right? You put on your pants the same way that I do every day. Why do you get a monopoly, right? I think the crazy thing is that when you frame the commandments from a theological view, meaning when you put them in relationship to God, then it becomes.

00:33:08:42 – 00:33:31:36
Michael Gewecke
The other thing about is something slightly equivalent. Well, is your monopoly for the Bible is that I don’t know how I got locked onto that. This is not about is yours a little bit better than mine and my okay with that it’s God has given you these things and you are a steward of them. God has given these that person, these things and made them a steward of that.

00:33:31:40 – 00:34:05:33
Michael Gewecke
It’s none of your business what God is given that that’s the that’s the frame. It’s to say when you put this in relationship with God, that this is outside of your pay grade, literally, that the creator of the universe has bestowed this good gift on them, Who are you to wish evil on them for that fact? And simultaneously, who are you to despise the gift that God has given you, though you consider it last, that is to despise what God has given you and made you steward of.

00:34:05:38 – 00:34:31:26
Michael Gewecke
And that’s where the theological note, I think is actually different. This isn’t some kind of like just try to be happy and positive when you don’t have the stuff that you want to have. That’s a very cultural conversation. When you say, the creator of the universe, bestows good gifts on those that God loves, then who are we to wish evil on those who would give it but give it good gifts and to miss the good gifts that God has given in our lives, which makes the covet command.

00:34:31:37 – 00:34:34:57
Michael Gewecke
I think it gives a lot.

00:34:35:02 – 00:34:41:24
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Though let’s be clear. Nobody should have a diamond monopoly set. It’s not a thing. It’s not a thing that should exist.

00:34:41:31 – 00:34:49:23
Michael Gewecke
May the record reflect? I tried to move away from that illustration.

00:34:49:28 – 00:35:17:30
Clint Loveall
So when we. When we desire. Right. This is the idea that there’s a temptation there when we see someone else happy. And it makes us less happy when we see someone else who has something that we don’t. And it makes us less appreciative of what we have. It steals our gratitude when we believe that if we had the next thing, we would be happier.

00:35:17:34 – 00:35:44:45
Clint Loveall
We would be more fulfilled. Now, I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong. I mean, we are so blessed to live beyond a culture in which you were born into a niche and you had no choice but to stay there. We live in an incredible place. We’re literally in one generation. A person can change their entire social status. They can grow up poor and end up doing well right.

00:35:44:45 – 00:36:22:59
Clint Loveall
And that’s an incredible blessing. And there is something to be said for the kind of discontent and restlessness that moves us forward in life and motivates us and makes us better. But when we begin to live life outside of ourselves and through the eyes of what others have we become dangerously tempted to to minimize the blessings we have had and to begin to covet, to want to take from or lessen other people.

00:36:23:04 – 00:36:57:33
Clint Loveall
And that’s the danger. And again, that sounds that sounds. sure. Like kids on the playground. Jealousy stuff, right? I like your shoes. Why did Cain kill Abel? Because he was jealous, right? The first thing jealous coveted Abel got a good word from God that Cain didn’t get it. It did something. It broke him. So then he lied.

00:36:57:37 – 00:37:23:15
Clint Loveall
Go out in the field, and then he murders. But it starts with this seed of coveting. And coveting takes us to most of the sins on up the ladder. Adultery starts with coveting. I wish I was happier. I wish I was this. I wish he did that or she did that murder. I wish I had that stealing. I want that right.

00:37:23:25 – 00:37:48:00
Clint Loveall
Coveting. It seems so small. It seems so innocent, but it is a minefield. And I think we don’t we don’t always know what to do with it, because, again, we live in a kind of forward looking and upward looking culture and there’s tremendous blessing in that. I want to be clear. I don’t think that in and of itself is sinful.

00:37:48:05 – 00:38:25:10
Clint Loveall
It is something that has to be hemmed in. It is something you have to be very careful with. The sense forbidden. If we can go to Westminster for a minute, discontent with our own estate, envying and grieving at the good of our neighbor and motions and affections to anything that belongs to our neighbor. Right. So it is this pathway that gets paid for us, that’s born of jealousy, that’s born of dissatisfaction.

00:38:25:10 – 00:38:55:21
Clint Loveall
Shawn And the places it leads are dangerous. What does anybody remember what God tells Cain when he when he’s upset? come on, folks. It’s like the third page of the Bible. He tells them sin is lurking at your door, but you must master it, right? Sin is right there. It wants to take you want to show you where to go and you have to tell it.

00:38:55:21 – 00:39:24:57
Clint Loveall
No, that’s the that’s the danger of coveting is that it lurks and that it whispers and then it says, just go a little further down that road. And the places it leads us to are dangerous and, you know, again, I don’t know. It’s not a word we use very often. We probably use jealousy more often, but it is it is dangerous.

00:39:25:04 – 00:40:23:36
Clint Loveall
And so interestingly, Westminster says the least about coveting of any of the other sins. And part of that, I think, is because it’s it’s the most specific. And part of that, I think, is it’s also the most self-explanatory. There’s not as much to flush out in this one, I think, as some of the others. So it may not sound like it has much to offer modern people, but I would argue that it’s pretty important if we rightly understand it, the sort of concluding thoughts, if we want to try and finalize this is and we said this in the opening session, right, The relationship between law and grace and and how do Christians view the idea

00:40:23:36 – 00:40:50:03
Clint Loveall
of something like commandments of laws? You know, Paul is very adamant in the in the book of Romans in other places that we are no longer people of law. We are people of grace. We’re not saved by law. We’re not bound by law. We’re not held under law. We are people of grace. And yet Paul is just as as insistent that the law offers us something.

00:40:50:07 – 00:41:19:39
Clint Loveall
The law offers us a path. If you remember correctly, we said early on in this session the series that John Calvin talked about the law as a picture of the redeemed life. In other words, when we read the Commandments, we see what Christian life looks like, a life trying to turn from idols, a life trying to keep God first alive, avoiding anger and negativity, coveting and false witness.

00:41:19:44 – 00:41:48:36
Clint Loveall
It is a map for us, and we do the commandments a disservice when we think they’re just a yes or no checklist. The commandments are a map to what a Christ like life looks like, and they shouldn’t be distilled into just morals or ethical principles because when they when they do that, we lose something. Now, is it fine that a courthouse wants to put them up?

00:41:48:41 – 00:42:17:58
Clint Loveall
I’m sure it is. Is it okay that some schools say we should put them on the walls? Yeah, fine. The danger in that, though, is we can’t think that when they read them, they know what we know about them. They’re not secular. The commandments belong to us. They are God’s gift to his people. They’re not good advice for schools and grocery stores, banks and courthouses.

00:42:18:03 – 00:42:49:55
Clint Loveall
They are covenant behaviors for covenant people. Is it good that other people see them and live by them? Yeah, sure. That’s great. Is that good for society? Yeah. It has some upsides, but they don’t know what they mean and the church can’t just turn them over as if they are the checklist that everyone has to follow because we are the ones who should properly understand that more than laws.

00:42:50:00 – 00:43:18:25
Clint Loveall
These are the invitation to the life that we are offered in Christ. And so I think when we hear those conversations about what is the place of the law, what are the place of the Ten Commandments, I’m not I’m not offended by those commandments. But I do like to I do think the reminder is appropriate. These are ours.

00:43:18:30 – 00:43:45:02
Clint Loveall
We best know what they mean. We spent a couple of thousands of years thinking them over in the case of the Ten Commandments, several thousand years with the Jews before Christians. And we we should be careful, I believe, not to divorce them from their Christian or their spiritual context. And I think that’s important.

00:43:45:07 – 00:44:09:16
Michael Gewecke
So one way to look at that is that Christ transforms the commandment from one thing into another, and the image that comes to mind. How many of you remember the original Wizard of Oz movie that that movie starts and you remember how literally black and white it is, right? How drab it is. And the movie goes forward and forward.

00:44:09:28 – 00:44:30:15
Michael Gewecke
And you know how your I like any black and white television, you get used to it. It’s just fine. It doesn’t get in the way of your enjoying the thing that you’re watching. But then suddenly that comes that point in the movie where they just flip the switch. And here’s the color. You remember what that feels like, that moment where everything’s transformed.

00:44:30:19 – 00:45:01:57
Michael Gewecke
That’s the difference between the commandments without Christ and then the commandments after Christ that Jesus Christ transforms the commandments, everything is different. It becomes color. All of the motivations, all of the reasonings, all of the life of the commandments is just bursting with energy because of who he is. And yes, in some ways he makes it much, much more difficult to follow the commandments when he says, I tell you it’s not just don’t commit adultery.

00:45:02:00 – 00:45:29:04
Michael Gewecke
It’s don’t look at a woman with lust. Jesus just knocked out the entire American culture because we literally have billboards that are built to sell with lust. So, I mean, at the end of the day, we have to be aware that when we when we falsely make the commandments just good moralism, it’s just good ideas that we hope everybody picks up, that we we’re not giving them the key to it.

00:45:29:16 – 00:45:50:58
Michael Gewecke
We have to give them Jesus. And if we give them Jesus and if we show them Jesus in the way that we live and the way that we speak, then ultimately the commandments will be given a kind of color and life that they would never have without. And I just think there’s nothing wrong with wanting people in our world to be moral.

00:45:50:58 – 00:46:14:15
Michael Gewecke
That’s a good goal. We should shoot for that for a just society. But all the same as Christians, come to the commandment, and this is this is our covenantal understanding of what it means to be people of God. I think that that relationship transforms how we consider what force these commandments have in our life. And maybe just a really quick example of that.

00:46:14:20 – 00:46:42:30
Michael Gewecke
Clinton I were both talking about this ahead of time. We both in college right up against this philosophical question today. One of the commandments was do not bear false witness, Right? Don’t lie. And we both in undergrad had people ask me it was a professor. I don’t know who it was in Klein’s context, but it was if if you have Jews that you’re that you’re hiding in your basement and the Nazis knock on your door, do you have to tell them that there are Jews in your basement?

00:46:42:30 – 00:47:14:09
Michael Gewecke
Do you have to tell them the truth or can you lie? Well, there was debate about that, though I don’t think from a Christian perspective, if it’s debatable, you lie as convincingly as you can. Why would you be allowed to break the commandment? Because the spirit of the commandment is the furtherance of life. The spirit of the commandment is for the sake of the other, to be given a whole and safe life, which, by the way, is also part of the do not murder commandment, right?

00:47:14:09 – 00:47:36:49
Michael Gewecke
So when you have Christ, the one who gave himself for us and we and we see the commandment circle around him, it transforms the law from this legal structure that you have to interpret, rightly or wrongly, on the letter, and it becomes a spirit of your character in life. And that’s what makes these commandments unique. And I’ll be honest, just as like a personal reflection here at the end.

00:47:36:54 – 00:48:10:13
Michael Gewecke
What struck me in this study of the commandments, the arc of it was, number one, how often our conscience does lead us in the right direction, how often we do know the right path, and if we would only be honest, if I would only be honest with myself in those moments, I’d be quicker to confess where I got off, all the more I would feel enriched and comforted by these commandments Instead of feeling like they are standing over and judging, they do their.

00:48:10:28 – 00:48:30:51
Michael Gewecke
Paul says that we stand judged by the moment we stand under them, unable to keep them. But if we are quick to admit where we fail, quick to return to the relationship with Jesus Christ, that’s at the center of it all. I think these commandments have an entirely different life and force, and it struck me in our time together.

00:48:30:55 – 00:48:56:53
Clint Loveall
Yeah. So again, we hope there’s something that’s been helpful in this. I think it comes down to how you understand the commandments. You know, on on a good day. Well, on a general day for me, I’m not going to make a graven image. I’m pretty unlikely to murder someone. I not going to commit I’m not going to commit adultery.

00:48:56:58 – 00:49:27:56
Clint Loveall
And I’m not I’m not a good liar. I’m probably not going to lie. So I’m going to bat 500 just on an average day. If we’re going by the letter of the law, we start adding lost anger, false witness. I’m going to get beaten down by those commandments every day. And that’s not a bad thing, because then they’re pointing me and compelling me and pushing me towards something better.

00:49:28:01 – 00:49:57:05
Clint Loveall
And so, again, I hope that there’s been a surprise for you in a way, to see the commandments as an invitation to discipleship and not as a judge. That’s passing sentence over us. I really appreciate our our hit, our heritage and our perspective that says, yes, the commandments are laws, but for the Christian, they’re also a picture of the life that we are called and invited to live.

00:49:57:05 – 00:50:20:30
Clint Loveall
And I think if there’s one takeaway for you in this series, I hope it’s that I hope that these aren’t just outdated cultural codes. There’s something more these these are a description. These are a picture of what following Jesus looks like. And I understood that way. I think they can be far more helpful than you might assume otherwise.

00:50:20:34 – 00:50:33:52
Clint Loveall
So thank you for participating in this. This always this is always a wonderful thing that we do. Thank you for your generosity in providing food. Thanks for your patience in the study and we were grateful.