Read:
The Ninth Commandment
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
What is this? or What does this mean?
We are to fear and love God, so that we do not try to trick our neighbors out of their inheritance or property or try to get it for ourselves by claiming to have a legal right to it and the like, but instead be of help and service to them in keeping what is theirs.
The Tenth Commandment
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
What is this? or What does this mean?
We are to fear and love God, so that we do not entice, force, or steal away from our neighbors their spouses, household workers, or livestock, but instead urge them to stay and fulfill their responsibilities to our neighbors.
At this point, a definition is probably helpful:
cov·et (kəvət/ ) verb:
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yearn to possess or have (something).“the president-elect covets time for exercise and fishing”
synonyms: desire, yearn for, crave, have one’s heart set on, want, wish for, long for, hanker after/for, hunger after/for, thirst for “even with all they have, they covet the wealth of others”
Now read Matthew 6:19-34
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rustconsume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
24 “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and hisrighteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
The clips below is from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Two of the characters in this clip become obsessed with retrieving the treasure. What could possibly go wrong?
Read this, from Martin Luther’s Large Catechism:
Such is nature that no one wants someone else to have as much as he or she does. Everyone tries to accumulate as much as he or she can, and lets others look out for themselves. Yet we all consider ourselves to be upright people, and put up a fine front to conceal our villainy. We hunt for and think up clever tricks and shrewd tactics–better and better ones are being devised daily–under the guise of justice. We brazenly dare to boast of it and defiantly insist that it should not be called rascality but shrewdness and foresight. In this lawyers and jurists assist, who twist and stretch the law to suit it to their their purpose, straining words and using them for pretexts, without regard for equity or our neighbor’s plight. In short, whoever is the most sharpest and shrewdest in such matters gets most advantage out of the law, for as the saying has it: “The laws favor the vigilant”
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