Whose desire rules?

I took our youngest daughter Naomi to Smyth’s Toys the other day to get a squishmallow for Tess as a mother’s day present. And if ever there was a shop designed to make children covet, that’s it. Piled high with everything from squishmallows to Encanto merchandise, Lego to X-Box, it’s designed to arouse desire. And as Naomi and I waited to pay for Kirk the Koala, we overheard the following conversation:

Young child with passion: ‘Look at those!’
Parent with caution: ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Can I have one?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not buying you one.’
At which point the child pulled out the big guns, and came out with that line which always seems to them to say ‘QED, discussion over.’
‘BUT I WANT ONE!’

And one of the many great things about young children is that they remind us what we’re all really like, don’t they? Only they haven’t learned to mask it. So ‘I want one’ becomes the knock-down argument, because after all if I want something, I should have it, shouldn’t I? That’s certainly how our culture is now encouraging us to behave – at least in the area of sexuality. It’s saying we need to be authentic, we need to be ourselves – and that means expressing whatever desires we have, not questioning or saying ‘No’ to any of them. And that certainly appeals to us because, as fallen human beings the way we naturally think is that desires should be acted on because that will be good for us, that will be freedom. Thinking like that was the driving force behind the sexual revolution of the 1960s. And yet one disillusioned campaigner of that revolution later said:

We took what we wanted – but then we found we no longer wanted what we took. [quoted in Christ Has Set Us Free, ed Carson & Robinson, Crossway]

So it wasn’t good after all. And it wasn’t freedom, because real freedom isn’t the ability to say ‘Yes’ to any desire. It’s the ability to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ – just ask the addict. Which brings us to the last commandment in our series on the ten. And my title for it is: Whose desire rules? So would you turn in the Bibles to page 150. Deuteronomy 5.21. And let me read it out:

And you shall not covet your neighbour's wife. And you shall not desire your neighbour's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's.

And before we look at that, I thought we’d say together one of the prayer book prayers which is right on-message. It’s onscreen. So let’s say together:

Almighty God, who alone can bring order to the unruly wills and affections of sinful people, grant us to love what you command and desire what you promise, so that among all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joys are to be found. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[Collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter]

So first heading:

1. Commandment ten says that God, and not our desires, should rule us

Look down to Deuteronomy 5.21 again:

And you shall not covet your neighbour's wife. And you shall not desire your neighbour's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's.

Now that’s not saying all desire is wrong and that the ideal is having no desires. That’s Buddhism. Whereas the Bible uses that same desire word for things that are good and right. For example, speaking about his bride, Psalm 45.11 says:

…the king will desire your beauty.

And speaking about wanting godly things, Proverbs 11.23 says:

The desire of the righteous ends only in good

By contrast, commandment ten is about the desire for what is morally off limits for me, out of bounds for me. And it’s about the kind of desire that could lead to some of the other things we’ve seen in the commandments – like murder, adultery, theft, lying. It’s on about strong, life-controlling desire. So you don’t go against God’s will here by saying, ‘I’d really like a cup of tea.’ But you do go against it by saying, ‘I’d really like my neighbour’s wife (or husband).’ Because she (or he) is off limits precisely because of being your neighbour’s, and because she (or he) has been given to your neighbour by God. Remember how the Lord Jesus summed up the foundational teaching of Genesis about marriage (Mark 10.6-8):

But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

So I need to accept that there are good, God-given boundaries – for the good and protection of marriages, because marriages have enough pressures to deal with internally, without the external pressure of someone trying to entice one of the partners away. And as well as his boundaries, I need to accept God’s good sovereignty over circumstances – that God has given that woman or that man to someone else and not me. Look what else is in commandment ten, Deuteronomy 5.21:

And you shall not covet your neighbour's wife. And you shall not desire your neighbour's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's.

So remember, this was said to God’s Old Testmaent people Israel as they were about to go into the promised land of Canaan after a generation in the wilderness after the Exodus. So the people Moses was re-preaching the law to here had never had houses or fields before. They’d all been in the same boat of this nomadic life. Some would have had bigger, better tents than others and bigger, better flocks than others. But under God’s sovereignty, they were all basically in the same boat. But in the Promised Land God knew they’d be in very different boats. Different parts of the land. Different houses. Different fields – which means different incomes and different standards of living. Which sets the scene for looking across at my neighbour’s house and field and human and animal workforce and coveting. Constantly wishing I was him or her, or that I had what he or she has. Constantly dissatisfied, discontented, with who I am and where I am and what I have. When, again, I need to accept God’s good sovereignty over all those things to accept that he gives differently to different people, and that all his gifts are gracious and undeserved, and that none can be claimed as a right.

And only if I accept the good, God-given boundaries for life, and accept God’s good sovereignty over my circumstances will it ‘bring order to my unruly will and affections’, as we prayed earlier. And that will only happen if I trust that God is good and will rule my life best. The trouble is our fallen human natures don’t trust God. Which is what that New Testament reading from Romans 7 was about, because it says that, quite the opposite to bringing our unruly wills and affections under God’s rule, commandment ten (and in fact the whole law) arouses our desire to rule ourselves even more. So heading 2:

2. Commandment ten shows us the fallenness of our desires

Would you turn on in the Bible to page 943, and Romans 7. So this was written by the apostle Paul. And at the start of Romans 7, Paul contrasts where he and his fellow-Jews stood with God before they trusted in Jesus, with where they stood after. So look at Romans 7.5 for the ‘before’:

For while we [that’s Paul and his fellow-Jewish Christian brothers and sisters… while we] were living in the flesh, [ie, in our fallen human nature, without Jesus] our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

In other words, God’s law actually aroused their sinful desires to bear the fruit of sinful actions. It actually provoked their fallen human nature to break it. So now look at Romans 7.6 for the ‘after’:

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, [so just like death ends relationships, Paul was saying: his previous relationship to the Old Testament law was ended by coming to know Jesus] so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code [ie, of living under the whole Old Testament law].

So Paul was saying, before knowing Jesus, Paul and his fellow-Jews had related to God through the whole structure of Old Testament law but now they knew Jesus, they no longer related to God through that structure. Instead, they related to God through Jesus and his Spirit. Now the Old Testament law is still God’s Word to us. It still speaks to how we’re to relate to him through Jesus and his Spirit – which is why we’ve had this series. It still tells us of his character, which he wants us to reflect. It still tells us what he loves and hates. It still tells us of the creation-order he’s built into this world and into us. But the Old Testament law is no longer the structure through which we conduct our relationship with him. So, having said that the law actually provokes fallen human nature to break it, Paul says, Romans 7.7:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? [In other words, if the law actually provokes our fallen nature to break it, is the law basically responsible for our sin? Is it somehow to blame?] By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

So Paul here starts speaking in the first person. Which is something preachers sometimes do. So a bit earlier I said: ‘So I need to accept that there are good God-given boundaries – for the good and protection of marriages.’ And I said ‘I’ to make it personal, and to make sure you know I’m speaking to myself first and foremost. But I’m expecting you to include yourself in what I’m saying, because when I talk about ‘I’ and ‘me’ I’m speaking for all of us. And that’s what Paul’s doing here. Paul is speaking about his experience of engaging with God’s Old Testament law, but also speaking for all people. He’s saying, ‘This is actually what happens when any of us engage with God’s law – whether we’re Christians or not yet Christians. Because this is what happens when God’s law meets fallen human nature.’ And what happens is it shows you your sin. Romans 7.7 again, half way through:

…Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said [and here he quotes commandment ten], “You shall not covet.”

Now some people say Paul is just using commandment ten as one specific example of many that he could have chosen from God’s Old Testament law, but I agree with those who say Paul uses commandment ten because it sums up the fundamental demand of the law which is that God, and not our desires, should rule us. And he knows it shows up the fallenness of our desires as they react to it. Look on to Romans 7.8:

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness…

So we usually use the word sin to talk about an action that is wrong in God’s sight, but the Bible also uses the word sin to talk about our fallen human nature (the sinful tendency behind those actions). And here Paul talks about sin almost personally, as if our fallen human natures were evil tacticians bent on making us resent and reject God. And Paul says his experience is typical of everyone’s. And it’s that when commandment ten comes along, summing up the fundamental demand that God, and not my desires, should rule over me, sin sees an opportunity to make me want God ruling over me even less. And it does it by painting God as the villain, the monster. It does it by whispering to me, ‘Are you seriously going to let God veto your desires? Your desires? Isn’t he limiting you by doing that? Belittling you? Patronising you? Robbing you? Even denying who you really are? After all, what’s more fundamental to your identity than your desires?’

And by painting God as the monster, the denier of my desires, the denier of who I am, sin produces in me all kinds of covetousness. It makes my desires stronger for things that are outside the boundaries and creation-order God has set. Because thanks to sin’s propaganda, I can no longer see the good of his boundaries and ordering of things. I can only see a desire-denying, me-denying monster who wants to rob me of life. Skip onto Romans 7.11-13:

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. [It’s not responsible or to blame for how we break it]. Did that which is good, then bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that [and here’s a key purpose of God’s law in our lives today – it’s that…] sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

So what would you say sin is? Breaking God’s rules? No, it’s far more serious than that because we have to ask why we break God’s rules. Why do I think my desires should trump God’s? And it’s because I have such a monstrous, fallen ego that I want to be God of my own life, I want to define reality, I want to define right and wrong, I want to be the most important person in the world, and I don’t want the God who actually made me to be God over me. And if you recognise that attitude in yourself, and you realise that it’s that attitude (to yourself, and to other people, and to God), which is actually the monstrous thing here, then you’ve come to know what sin is.

And commandment ten which sums up the fundamental demand of the law that God, and not our desires, should rule us brings that home like nothing else. So, it says that God, and not our desires, should rule us. It shows us the fallenness of our desires. And thirdly:

3. Commandment 10 shows us we need our desires changed

Because simply being told you shall not covet doesn’t change our desires. Whereas knowing Jesus does. And another key purpose of the Old Testament law in God’s plan was to point people forward to him. It’s as if the law was saying, ‘I can’t deliver the life I’m describing and promising.
But Jesus can. So go to him.’ So just look back to Romans 7.4 – the verse just before where we picked it up. Paul says:

Likewise, my brothers [and sisters], you also have died to the law [in other words, the time of relating to God through that whole Old Testament structure is ended… how?] through the body of Christ [which is a reference to his body given for us on the cross], so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

So Paul says what changes our desires and makes us want to belong to another is knowing that he loved us enough to give his Son to die and rise again for our forgiveness, and that his Son loved us enough to do it. I preached on the cross a while back from Romans 5, and I said that because it paid for the forgiveness of all our sins (past and future) God’s acceptance of us, if we trust in Jesus, is secure. And to bring that home I said:

We’re no less accepted by God on the worst day of our Christian lives, and no more accepted on the best. Because his acceptance depends 100% on what Jesus did on the cross, and 0% on what we do in response.

And someone came steaming up afterwards, very angry. And he said, ‘I can’t believe you’ve just preached that.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘Because you’ve just told us it doesn’t matter how we live.’ So I said, ‘No I didn’t. I told you God’s acceptance of us doesn’t depend on how we live.’ And he said, ‘But if you say that, people will just go out and sin.’ So I said, ‘Why would they do that?’ And he said, ‘Well, won’t they just go out and do what they want?’ And I said, ‘Yes they will. But what I don’t think you appreciate is that when you believe Jesus died for you, it changes what you want.’

Isn’t that your experience if you’re trusting in Jesus? I know it’s only a partial change now – a new desire to please him, while we still live as fallen human beings, with fallen desires knocking around inside us – like unwelcome squatters we can’t evict. But they will be evicted one day – on resurrection day, at the end of this life. And until then, Jesus by his Spirit can bring more order to our unruly wills and affections. And where we fail to let him do that, he can forgive us every time. We’re going to pray twice in response to all that. First, we’re going to pray together again that prayer we began with. And then we’re going to stand to pray that ‘Love divine’ would keep changing us. So onscreen, let’s say together:

Almighty God, who alone can bring order to the unruly wills and affections of sinful people, grant us to love what you command and desire what you promise, so that among all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joys are to be found. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[Collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter]