Covetousness - Desiring Something More Than God

How would you define the sin of coveting?  I've typically understood it to mean desiring things that you don't have.  The dictionary definition says to covet is to "desire something eagerly, especially something belonging to another person."  Exploring the origins of this sin of coveting brings us to the issue of contentment.  Back when I was reading through the study book on the Westminster Shorter Catechism it spent some time talking through the implications of coveting, saying that coveting begins with a dissatisfied heart.  The biblical requirement they say is to have full contentment with what God has given us.  The passage used to support that statement (which I agree with) is in Philippians 4 where Paul says, "I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am... In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need..."

The study book continues to elaborate on how coveting can lead to all other sins.  If you want some material thing bad enough, but can't buy your own, you steal it.  If you want your neighbors wife more than your own, it can lead to adultery.  If you really want your country to be governed in a radically different way, you start a revolution and harm and kill everyone who gets in the way of that to get things how you want them to be.  

This morning while reading Future Grace, John Piper went even farther on the issue of coveting and how it relates to unbelief in everything that God is for us in Christ.  Piper says that "Covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God."  I think putting it that way carries even more weight than simply being discontent with our circumstances as we usually think of them.  And if you think about it, Adam and Eve's original sin caused them to forsake the contentment that they had in God as they experienced it in the Garden of Eden.

In America, contentment means that we have everything we want (which is never enough).  We think that our wants and often times our lusts are things that we are entitled to.  Our concept or picture of what it looks like to be taken care of and have everything we need to be content is totally flawed.  This problem in our perspective taints how we interpret God's promises.  Take a passage like 1 Corinthians 10:13 for example.  "My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."  If we're looking through American lens, contentment to most people probably means having at least a decent paying job with an average benefits package, a dwelling with enough room for everyone to have their own space, we get to eat pretty much whatever we're hungry for, and if we're Christians we also have a freedom to worship how and where we choose and our faith doesn't conflict with our desires.  Piper does a great job of clarifying what "all your needs" really means in that context in Philippians.  It means "all that you need for God-glorifying contentment."  

I wonder what "God-glorifying contentment" looks like, and how we can pursue and maintain that (which would include letting God help us with that) in our lives?  Certainly it starts with a change of heart and perspective (contentment in God could look very different than my list in the last paragraph).  If we take Jesus and Paul's warnings seriously we will be sure to flee coveting or anything that leads to it and stay content in God, or we could find ourselves wandering away from the faith and impaling ourselves with many pains (1 Tim 6:10).  I'll try to think and study a bit more on what we need to do to keep from coveting and more importantly what it looks like in a practical way to be content in God.  Feel free to share what you think this might look like.

Looking Back for the Sake of the Future

Last year I spent some time writing about the book Ancient-Future Worship by Robert Webber and made the case for why our worship needs to intentionally remember God's story and help us find our place in it.  It has been interesting that since I started down that path of thinking, God has continued to bring different books and articles, passages in scripture and real life examples to me in a way that solidifies this conviction of needing to bring God's story to the center of worship, and also grows me in what that can look like.

The latest example of this is in John Piper's book Future Grace.  Early in the the book he states that "you will search the bible in vain for explicit connections between gratitude and obedience."  In other words, the bible doesn't call us to me motivated to live in obedience to Christ because of the good things God has done for you.  Piper suggests that, "... gratitude was never designed as the primary motivation for radical Christian obedience, perhaps that is one reason so many efforts at holiness abort."  Notice he doesn't say gratitude for what God has done doesn't play any part, but that it can't be the primary driving force for continued surrender to Christ.  You might think that so far what I'm quoting seems to work against the idea of how critical it is to remember God's story, but several chapters later a connection is made.

In the chapter entitled "Looking Back for the Sake of the Future," Piper makes a case for the significance of looking at the history of God's faithfulness in order to trust in His future reliability.  Jesus is the Yes and Amen to all of God's promises.  Everything that He promised He would do was fulfilled in Jesus' work here on earth, or will be fulfilled in Him since God's grace is now poured out through Jesus to the world, forever.  To bank on God's grace though, you've got to know what the promises were, or are, so that you can see that God's grace has always been faithful, and thus live in faith that He will continue to be.  If we never knew about God's past grace, or forget about it, then we will not have a foundation of what God has to rest our future on.

The issue of forgetting God's past grace is what often plagued Israel and led them into a  life of disobedience and no faith in the one true God.  Here's an example in Judges 8:33-34.  "The sons of Israel again played harlot with the baals."  They turned to follow after idols instead of the living God.  Why did this happen?  Simple,  "... the sons of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side."  As Piper puts it, "They forsook their faith in God's future grace because they stopped remembering his past grace."  

I like how he says they stopped remembering (instead of forgot).  I may have mentioned this before, but the hebrews and the ancient church understood their act of remembering in worship to be more than just bringing something to mind, but it was to make it real, to remember in a way that would solidify it in as reality (which it is, but this world tries to give us a different reality).  So if we, like Israel, stop remembering God's saving deeds and His fulfilled promises, and especially how that is all culminated in Christ, it will eventually cease to be the reality we live in.  We might still have the head knowledge, but that will not guide our lives into holiness and enable us to overcome unbelief when the arrows of evil are shooting at us, trying to shake us from relying on God's future grace.

The need to remember what God has done historically as well as recalling His personal work in our lives (all through Christ) is critical in worship.  The point I think God is making to me right now through Future Grace is that it is also critical that worship proclaims His promises for the future that He has made to those who love Him.  It is the hope of the future promises that justifies through faith and causes God's people to stay the course.  May this passage be true of us.  

"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised."  

Romans 4:2o-21