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December 2015 • SR
Covet the Gifter, not the Gift
Surefire Way to Ruin Christmas
Imagine it is Christmas morning. You have your coffee in hand.
You are surrounded by family. The presents are all under the
tree. Maybe you take out the gifts one a time. Everyone takes
turns, maybe...all at once, it’s a frenzy of wrapping paper.
This Christmas I want you to do a little experiment.
While everyone is opening gifts, take out your smartphone. For
every gift that is opened, I want you to do a price lookup. You
can scan the barcode or search on Amazon. Loudly announce
the price, and then keep a running tally for each person for the
value of his gifts. Rank everyone in order of how much he
ended up with. Then each person on the list gets to make
aggressively bitter comments about the person immediately
above him. The person at the top just gets to feel super guilty.
For bonus points, they can envy the “guilt-free” Christmas of
the person at the bottom of the list.
Congratulations, you have absolutely ruined Christmas!
We intuitively know that this is a horrible idea. We know it.
And yet…there is within all of us, and maybe just a whisper, and
maybe only rears its ugly head at certain moments…but we are
playing the comparison game.
The Comparison Game
This comes up especially when you see someone else with
something you really want. Your neighbor just had his house
painted. It looks really good. You might see the car they are
driving: mini-van envy. You see the best face they put to the
outside world, but probably not the internal conflicts, the argu-
ments, the disappointments and mistakes. So for starters, you
are comparing the sum of all your failures and successes
against just their successes. Even if you had the whole story,
there are people you would still envy, coveting their circum-
stances, their gifts, and their possessions. Here is the truth:
Life is radically unfair.
As far as I can tell it is not a zero sum game where everyone
has more of this and less of this and it all balances out. In our
creative and diverse world, there are people who struggle to
make it to first base, and there are people who are born on
third base. Life is radically unfair. People get different amounts
of everything, bad and good. So, we play the comparison game.
We see what others have and we want it. What’s the problem?
God says “no.”
Exodus 20:17
17
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not
covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox
or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
What is Cove ng?
What is coveting? This is alternately translated as “selfishly
want” or “lust.” I like this one: it is to
set one’s heart upon a
thing.
It is to look across the room at someone opening his
Christmas gift and say “I want that.” “I wish that one were
mine.” His ox looks stronger, her house looks better, his wife
seems nicer...all of those.
Not Just Cove ng
Now, this command does not say, generically, “do not covet.”
This is another example of where our mental shorthand for
these commands causes problems. There are lots of things you
could “covet.” We even say things like, “I covet your prayers.” “I
earnestly desire good things.” “I set my heart upon the things
and the person of God.” I covet them.
It creates, via examples, a category of things that are off limits.
But you shall not covet…things that are his or hers:
things that
Top Ten Words
Gimme: Exodus 20:17
Sermon Series by Pastor Dusty Mackintosh, Next Step Christian Church, Thornton, CO
