Is the first commandment and the last commandment essentially the same commandment? It's a question worth thinking about as John Piper recently explained in a sermon. Here's how he posed the question and explained the implications. Have you ever asked the question whether the first of the Ten Commandments and the last of the Ten Commandments are the same commandment?

I wonder if you can remember what they are. So the first commandment is, "You shall have no other gods before me." Exodus 20 verse 3. And the last one is, "You shall not covet." Paul says, Colossians 3:5, "Put away all covetousness which is idolatry." Oh, so the first and last commandments are the same commandment.

Only the last one bends it out horizontally so you know what's really going on. Let's try to define these commandments. So the first commandment is, "You shall not have any other gods before me." What does that mean? The words surrounding it, verse 5, "I am the Lord your God.

I am a jealous God." So, okay, put jealousy together with, "You shall not have any gods before me." God is like a husband. Israel is like a wife, and he's jealous if she consorts with another man, God, another God. And so what does not have any other gods before you mean?

It means your love, your affection, your delight belong to me, God says. It's belonging to me, only me. You can't mix it up. All throughout the Old Testament, idolatry was called adultery. So you're giving your affections away. You're desiring things more than you're desiring me. I'm jealous. A husband ought to feel that.

Jealousy is only a sin when it's all out of proportion and in the wrong places. A husband who sees his wife fall in love with another man and doesn't feel jealous is sick. He should feel rage of jealous, and he should win her back, and she should repent. God feels rage at his idolatrous people, and wrath comes from God.

The last commandment is "you shall not covet," and Paul quotes it that way. He doesn't just say, "Covet your neighbor's wife, covet your whatever." He just, in Romans 7, he says, "The commandment, you shall not covet." What does "covet" mean? I remember as a kid trying to define "covet," and I never could.

I always thought, "Well, it means want what you have. I want what you have." That's not what "covet" means. "Covet" is much more widely used than just wanting what somebody else has. And what's interesting is that in the Old Testament and the New, the Hebrew and the Greek, the word simply means "desire." And so the question then is, "Well, when does desire become covet?" Because desires aren't bad.

You can desire what's good, and you can desire what's bad. So when does a desire along the way, either in intensity or for something, when does it become bad? When does it become the coveting kind of desire? And my way of answering that is to take the tenth commandment and put it together with what we just said about the first commandment.

Paul says "covet" is idolatry, and we've just seen God as jealous for his wife's affection and attention and glorification and love and devotion and treasuring. And here we have covetous called idolatry, and it's just desire for anything. So here's my attempt at a definition based on that connection. I would say don't desire anything in a way that would express lack of contentment in God.

Covetousness is a desire that is going up because the desire for God is going down. For anything, for Bible reading, preaching, writing books, anything that you desire and the desire is coming stronger because the desire for God is getting weaker, that's covetousness. It's evil. Doesn't matter what you're desiring.

And so I think what we've seen from Romans 1 and now from the Ten Commandments is where our exchange for the glory of God, the value of God, the beauty of God, the all-satisfying worth of God, where that exchange is happening and our desire for Him and our satisfaction in Him is getting weaker, other desires are going to come in to fill the void and they get stronger, all that's called covetousness.

Wow, that is quite a clip and it's a little window into everything we do at Desiring God as well. This message excerpt was taken from a message given last summer in a series titled "Living in the Light with Money, Sex, and Power." A four-part series, three messages and one Q&A, all available at DesiringGod.org right now.

And those messages of course became the new book, "Living in the Light, Money, Sex, and Power." A nice little hardcover available now at Amazon and downloadable free of charge at DesiringGod.org/books. Well, we show caution with our words, especially when those words are about other people. So how should we talk with our spouses about relational conflicts we may be having without gossiping about the people we struggle with?

This is a really important question and it's asked of John Piper tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with author and longtime pastor John Piper. We'll see you tomorrow.