8th December 2025

8th December 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 20:17)


Message (Alan Burke) 


I hope you’re excited, 17 days until Christmas Day! Maybe you’re reading this and thinking the last thing you need is another dose of Christmas cheer but don’t get too excited because today we come to a commandment that deals with Christmas, well it deals with what Christmas has become. The reason why I say that is that advertisers are doing all that they can do, to woo you in order that you would spend your hard earned cash on things that you likely don’t need. They use emotions, humour, nostalgia and at this time of year it works, typically the average spend increases approximately 29% in the month of December on stuff. Advertisers are wanting you to have a ‘Coveting Christmas’. That was going to be my sermon title when I was planning the Tenth Commandment earlier in the year and I’m actually not going to get to preach it because I’ve Hiram coming this Lord’s day and I’m off. Nonetheless you’re going to get some of my musings on this the Tenth Commandment and if Hiram doesn’t show up I’m sure I can wing something. 


Think to the Ten Commandments. The first four of the commandments teach us the necessity of having the Lord God in his rightful place in our lives. The reminder of the commandments from the fifth to the tenth teach us how to love our neighbour, but we can only know what it is to love our neighbour as we love the Lord and that will be seen in how we treat our our neighbour. It should be tangible in our lives, it should be clear for others to see as we love, like people who say that we love God. 


As we come to the tenth commandment it is slightly different to the previous commandments and while we have failed to keep any of them many people believe they have. This one though reveals that the foolishness of believing that we have kept them. In this command it not only deals with the external actions but the internal motivation, the condition of our hearts. Even if we fool ourselves into thinking that we have kept the commandments up to this point, this is a command that none of us can claim that we are innocent in. The tenth commandment thou shall not covet, v17; “You shall not covet your neighbours house; you shall not covet your neighbours wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s.”


This commandment deals not only with our outward actions, it deals with our hearts. People may think that they are good, that they have kept the commandments because they have never murdered, committed adultery, stolen, lied, but how many of us have been unhappy because we didn’t get what we wanted, how many of us at different times in our lives have been discontent with what we have and we have wanted what someone else has. Behind the meaning of this word covet is to desire, in the Hebrew the word is literally desire, to covet is to desire. We have all failed to keep this commandment and as we are remind in James “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (2:10). That is why we need a saviour, that is why we need Jesus, for he kept all the of the righteous demands of the law on our behalf, he obeyed it perfectly for us so that as we repent and believe there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). This is the good news of the gospel that we have.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q39 What is the duty which God requireth of man?
A. The duty which God requireth of man, is obedience to his revealed will.
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