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Guard Your Heart: The tenth command of the Ten Commandments is, "You shall not covet...anything that belongs to your neighbor." Coveting means to desire something that is unhealthy, unhelpful, or unlawful. This command reminds us that all our problems are, first, heart problems. Obeying this command is especially difficult in an age of social media and expressive individualism. However, learning to guard your heart in Christ is the only way to find and enjoy true and lasting peace. Recorded on Apr 2, 2023, on Exodus 20:17 by Pastor David Parks. (Apologies, due to a technical issue, we lost the introduction to the sermon. However, it is included in the transcript below.) Ten Commandments: Learning the Law of Love is a sermon series on the most influential legal code in human history. Why should we learn about the Ten Commandments today? Because they reveal God’s will for how human beings ought to live: to love God with all our heart and love our neighbor as ourselves. Ultimately, the law of love points us directly to Jesus. Sermon Transcript All year, the theme of our preaching ministry is Learning the way of Jesus. And today, we’re finishing a sermon series on the Ten Commandments. I hope this series has been helpful to you. Throughout this series, I’ve personally been struck by the beauty of God’s vision for human society in the spirit of these commands. It’s hard to even imagine what life would be like if we all truly lived according to God’s will/way. What a joy it will be to find out in the new heaven and earth. But through this series, we’ve said that the Ten Commandments, as part of God’s moral law, reveal how God wants people to live. And ultimately, this way of life can be summed up as learning to love the Lord your God, heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself — God’s law is a law of love. In this law, we discover that there is only one God, who is worthy of our worship and deserving of our respect, and we must find our rest in him. As a result, we must honor our parents, honor life, honor marriage, honor other people’s property, honor the truth, and today, finally, we must guard our hearts. This is God’s will for our lives. Well, if you have a Bible/app, please open to Exodus 20:12. We’ll read through the second half of the Ten Commandments and then unpack the tenth together today, focusing on the wisdom/goodness of this command, how this command connects to the heart, and how we might learn to guard our hearts in Christ. Exodus 20:12-17 (NIV), “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 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.” As we’ve said, the book of Exodus was written about 4,300 years ago by Moses, the great prophet and leader of ancient Israel. And Exodus describes a key turning point in history when God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and entered into a covenant relationship with them, which included giving them the Law. The first four commands are focused on how we are to love the Lord our God, while the remaining six are about how to love our neighbor as ourselves. Well, today, we’re focusing on the tenth command, which addresses the problem of coveting, which means to desire or lust after things that are unhealthy, unhelpful, or unlawful. So first, let’s consider the wisdom/goodness of this command. Why should we want to obey this command? There are probably many benefits to obeying this command, but the main benefit, in my view, is how it relates to our internal and external peace. The older I get, the more I value peace. Not simply the absence of conflict, although that is, of course, very good.