Sermon Central
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Coveting
Contributed by Paul Steen on Dec 11, 2017 (message contributor)
When I was in sixth grade, I went to Corona Elementary School in Bell. Our school had a cafeteria, but my mom couldn’t afford to have me buy lunch. So I brought a lunch from home and ate it every day. Every day I carried the same meal in my brown paper bag.
Baloney sandwich on white bread
Small bag of potato chips
Thermos bottle of soup
Randy Shull sat to my right. He never brought a lunch box to school. At noon each day, he got to go to the school cafeteria and eat the best food a little boy could imagine. I never got to eat at a restaurant or cafeteria. Randy ate there every day.
Each lunch period I looked at his meal. I watched in agony as Randy opened his mouth wide and spooned in the fresh, hot food. I listened to him smack each bite while I forced a baloney sandwich down my throat.
Paul said, “I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” I would not have known about coveting if it weren’t for Randy’s cafeteria meal.
I memorized the Ten Commandments in grade school. I could say the tenth by heart: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).
With my head I learned not to covet. But with my heart I learned how to covet. I know that cafeterias weren’t mentioned in the off-limits list in the tenth commandment. I didn’t covet my neighbor’s house, wife, servants, ox, or donkey. But that last phrase did me in: “or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Yep, that includes cafeteria food.
I coveted. And, I was jealous. And, I had to repent.
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