I always thought there was more to the definition of covet than just wanting something.  I decided to look it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary on line and this is what it says about the word covet: 

 

1.  To wish for earnestly.

2.  To desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably.

 

Since I was an Accounting major in college and not an English major, I decided to look up the words inordinate and culpable. 

 

The definition for inordinate is:

 

1.  Archaic:  Disorderly, unregulated

2.  Exceeding reasonable limits:  Immoderate

 

The definition for culpable is:

 

1.  Archaic:  Guilty, criminal

2:  Meriting condemnation or blame especially as wrong or harmful.

 

So if we take all these words and add them together we come up with the fact that to covet is to wish for it in earnest.  In other words you WANT IT and don’t care that it belongs to someone else.  That thought is on our mind all the time.  Not only do we wish for it, but we turn that wish into a desire, a hunger for that object.  We become obsessed with the desire to have what is not ours.  That desire is running wild through us like a forest fire in August in California. 

 

Now that we have this burning desire for something that is not ours it only gets worse.  We are willing to do whatever it takes to get it and if that includes committing criminal acts then so be it.  This unjustified burning desire will lead us to sin and we will hurt ourselves and others in the act. 

So how should we deal with this burning desire?  Don’t light the match.  As Smokey the Bear would say, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  If you don’t strike the match, you won’t start the fire that burns down the forest.

 

I always felt that coveting was the root of most sin.  It is the black seed that grows in our heart’s desire and turns those desires into sinful acts.  It is only natural that we desire things, but should we let that desire turn into sin, by nurturing an unhealthy desire for that object?  If we let it grow unchecked then it will slowly take over our entire body, mind and emotions and lead us down the path of destruction.  God knows where our desires will take us and he tells us to be careful.  God is telling us to hold our desires in check, and stop them from growing and taking over our lives.

 

An umbrella package in regards to an insurance policy is there to protect you from any other things that your individual insurance policy may have missed.  It is just that, a big umbrella put there to catch anything that you may have forgotten to put in the original policy to protect you from any unforeseen tragedies, which you did not take into account in the main policy. 

 

Coveting is like an umbrella that covers all our sinful desires, it is that umbrella package, but its purpose is the complete opposite of the insurance policy umbrella package.  Instead of protecting you from harm it is there to make sure you cause harm.  It is working in the opposite direction to make sure that you do sin, and often!  Coveting is there to make sure we think up new sins to commit on top of the usual ones we commit on a daily basis and if we are slow to sin it will help us speed up the process.

 

It seems this raging desire is the motive for a lot of crime we see today.  Should a person die because someone wants her life insurance policy money?  I don’t think so, but you see these stories on TV all the time.   Should a family be broken up because one of the parents desires to be with someone other than his wife?  I don’t think so, but that raging desire leads many people into adultery and then divorce.  Should a person die for the money in the cash register at the place where he works?  I don’t think so, but armed robbery happens all the time.  Should a person’s career be ruined because someone wants his job?  I don’t think so, but people are slandered all the time in order that someone else can take their job. 

 

You look at almost any crime today and the person who committed that crime coveted something that he thought he should have.  If you look at what is defined as a crime today, you can trace many of them back to the Ten Commandments.  A lot of our laws and crimes are based on the laws in the Bible.  So a lot of crimes people commit are preempted by coveting.  

 

If we are content with what we have in life, and accept the fact that is what God has given us then we will not covet other peoples’ things. We will look at our car, our house, our wife or husband and thank God for them.  If your car works fine, the roof doesn’t leak, and your spouse is the only one you want to be with on Saturday night then you should be thankful.

When we start to covet things we don’t have we are slapping God in the face.  We are saying to God, thank you for the Chevy, but I wanted a Porsche.  We become ungrateful children who don’t like the gifts that are given to them.  God knows what we need and that is what he has provided for us.  We should be delighted with what the Lord has given us, not ungrateful and looking for more.

 

When I was a young man in college I wanted four things.  One, I wanted to live in Orange County, California.  I grew up in Huntington Beach and went to school in San Diego and wanted to come back to the “OC”.  Second, I wanted to work in Orange County.  To me, commuting to work is a waste of time.  Those are just dead hours you spend doing nothing, but picking up bad habits, like smoking, to pass the time.  Though I did not entertain any plans of marriage at that time, I knew I would get married some day and I wanted two sons.  Being a guy, I figured I would have an easier time being a parent if I had little people just like me.  The fourth thing I wanted was a Porsche.  A 911 Porsche as a gift to myself for all the hard work I put in getting through college.

 

I majored in Accounting and got out of college in eight semesters.  I had no social life to speak of; I just went to class and did my home work at night.  Please keep in mind, that from 1970 thru 1974 we did not have any calculators to help us with the homework as you do today.  My mom bought me my first calculator in 1973.  It could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and do square roots.  It was 6 inches long, 3 inches wide, and about 2 inches thick and it cost $129.00 at Target.  What that calculator did then you can get at a trade show for free and it is about a tenth that size.  My point is I spent a lot of time doing your accounting home work and that Porsche was going to be my present to myself for all that hard work.

 

Well, it has been 34 years since I stood at the top of the stairs and looked back across the campus of San Diego State University and said to myself, “I did it.”  I can look back at my desires as a young man and to my great joy can see that God has granted me my wishes.  I have lived in Orange County almost the entire time after graduating college.  Other than for a year and half working in LA for Hughes Aircraft Company, and six months working in Saudi Arabia, I have always worked in Orange County. 

 

When my oldest son was nine and the little one was six my wife called me after a trip to the doctor’s office and said, “Guess what?”  My response was, “well since I am going to lose my job in two months, I would say you are pregnant.”  So you can see I got a bonus, a third son. 

 

Having our third son was just as great as having the first two, even though we were both a bit older.  Since there was such a spread between the two older boys he was like having an only child all over again.  He was easy to care for since the other two could take care themselves for the most part.  When my middle son stopped playing little league baseball and went to play in high school it was not over for me.  I got to go down and start up with machine pitch with the youngest son.

 

I look at my life and realize I have been very blessed by God, but I also asked him, why didn’t you give me the Porsche?  You gave me the first two things I hoped for, threw in an extra son, but where’s the car?  When I asked God this you know what came to mind.  God gives us what we need and I don’t need a Porsche for a few reasons.  First I could never afford one.  I never went on and got an MBA or became a CPA, so I was never an accountant at the top of my field.  I was just a guy who had an accounting degree and worked in small companies as a controller.  There is no way I could afford the up keep, never mind the payments for a car like that.  My career accomplishments are such that a Porsche is out of my league. 

 

God also knew I needed a Chevy S10 pick up truck instead.  When was the last time you saw your kid’s coach pull up in a Porsche and start taking all the baseball gear out of it?  God knew I needed that truck for all the sports gear it would carry around.  He also knew that I could afford to pay it off in five years and be able to pay all the insurance, gas, and maintenance fees that went with an S10 versus a 911 Porsche. 

 

Whenever I see a 911 Porsche it brings me back to my college days and I think of the ad Porsche ran in the late 1960s.  It was a picture of a 911 racing down the road and the only thing they wrote at the bottom of the picture was, “this car can go 144 mph longer than you can.”  When people would ask my why I was majoring in accounting I would tell them it was so I could get a Porsche.  I think it is ok to desire nice things and there is nothing wrong with working to get them.  I studied in college so I could graduate, get a job, and get all the things I wanted in life.  If having nice things is one of your desires what is wrong with that as long as you don’t cheat or steal from someone else to get them.

 

When it came to buying a house in Orange County I cannot say I was as wise as I was with the car.  We had two little boys, five and two, and lived in a nice two bedroom condo.  Since it had two master bedrooms it worked out well for a young family.  You could put the two little guys in the tub, then carry them right into the bed room and get them to sleep.  Since they were so small they did not notice or care that they shared a bed room.  They were living with a mom and dad who loved them and mom stayed home and raised them.

 

Well, we decided we needed to get a bigger house.  This was the late 80s and home prices were rising every month.  We felt it was now or never and needed to take that leap and buy a bigger place.  So we did.  My house payment went from $1000.00 / month to $1800.00 / month.  Our property taxes went from $2000.00 / year to $5700.00 / year. 

 

We only saw the three bedrooms and I overlooked the fact that this was an extra $13,300.00 / year before we got things like the adjusted tax bill.  That is where the builder tells the state the house costs them $11,000.00 in materials to build and they sold it to you for $260,000.00 and the new owner is liable for the difference in property taxes for all the time the development was in process.  Then you get the letter from the Home Owner’s Association telling you, you have 30 days to finish your landscaping. 

 

It took me less than a year to figure out we had made a mistake!  The big raise I thought I would get (since I was now selling between $50,000.00 and $100,000 per month in equipment on top of doing my assigned job) never came through.  The house did not come with window coverings so there was another ten or fifteen thousand that had to go to that.  We could have gotten a used house, but oh no, we wanted one of the new ones in the new tract in Irvine.  Well we got a new house and every new bill that came with it. 

 

Yes I am guilty of coveting when it came to buying our house.  I am guilty of “desiring inordinately” and the description of inordinate being exceeding reasonable limits.  Well this house was beyond our financial limits and I threw all caution to the wind to get into a new three bedroom house.  The justification for over extending yourself on a house was, I could always sell it, take my profits and move somewhere else.  That theory is fine, if you sell a highly inflated house in California and take your profits and move to another state which is not having a housing boom.  If you stay in California, then the replacement house is going to be just as inflated as the one you just sold.   That parachute is not as golden as it appears.

 

So you probably want to know what we did.  About a year and a half after moving in we put the house on the market.  We had it sold, but the buyer got nervous, because there were signs that home prices were going to drop.  He wanted out, but we would not let him.  When his appraiser came to check on the house he looked over the wall at the neighbor’s yard.  He noticed that their pool plumbing and pumps were on our property.  We have zero lot lines which means one wall of your house is your neighbor’s fence, but you own three feet of land in your neighbor’s yard.  Since the pumps were on our land, it was in violation of city code and guess what?  That sale fell through.

 

It took us over a year and few trips to the court house to get the neighbor to move his equipment off our land so we could sell the house.  By then the market had dropped and the next offer we got for our house was what we paid for it.  So now we had been there for three years and would lose money, since we had to pay a commission and all the improvements would go with the house.  So in one year I spent about $2500.00 in legal fees and watched our house fall in value from $315,000.00 to $260,000.00.

 

My house is a monster that controls my life.  If I sell it, where are we going to live?  If we live in Orange County we are just swapping house payments.  It is not like we can take the equity and buy down on the next house.  I went to three different high schools and I know it is no fun being the new kid.  Add on top of that you have to wonder what the kids are like your child will meet at the new school.  Irvine has great public schools so if we moved to towns with lower housing costs and weaker schools we have done our third son a grave disservice.  The two older boys are out of high school, but the youngest is only a freshman.

 

We could sell the house and pay off the first mortgage, the second mortgage and rent.  The only thing there is the rent payment for a house in Irvine is the same as our first mortgage payment.  So I am still paying out the same as the first, but am not building any equity for retirement.  Granted I would save on not having to pay the second mortgage, or the property taxes, but I would have to pay taxes on all my profit, which is the difference between the $800,000.00 it is worth today and the original price of $260,000.00, which we bought it for, ouch!  So here I am, a victim of my own coveting, and instead of being a master of my domain, I have become a master of refinancing.

 

Am I a person who coveted something?  Yes I am.  Am I victim of my coveting?  Yes I am.  Has it brought me any happiness?  Not really.  Sure it is a nice house in a nice town, but it has crushed me financially.  I have a house, but I probably would have one anyway and maybe if I had not coveted the “brand new house, in the brand new development” I would be a lot better off today financially.

 

To show you what a nightmare it has become, in 1988 the only debt I had was a car loan, and a $206,000.00 first mortgage on our new house.  Today, after about 3 or 4 refinances and numerous home equity loans, I owe over $400,000.00 in the mortgages, I have two car payments and some miscellaneous credit card debt.  Yes in twenty one years I have gone backwards financially, because I coveted a house I could not afford.  This house owns me and I will wind up paying for it at least twice.

 

My tale of woe shows how coveting can be a very subtle thing where you have all the best intentions for wanting something -- in our case, getting a bigger home -- but it is still out of your reach.  We looked at the bigger house as something we needed.  It was an investment in the future and we needed the third bedroom, because the boys would get bigger and could not share the same room forever. 

 

It was an investment, home prices in Southern California always go up, so how could we lose there.  As any good accountant would, I did a cash flow.  It was based on the fact I would get raises, and there would be no additional expenses in our budget other than the house payment, property tax payment, and car payment.  Well wake up Michael, since when does a personal budget play out like that? 

 

I knew better, but I was blinded by the fact we wanted that house in the new development.  Houses were in such demand back then; you would wait in line to get a lottery number to see if you could even buy the house.  When our number was called there were two houses left in the tract.  We celebrated for a month about how lucky we were to win the lottery and get a new house.  We were rejoicing over our future financial dome and we were too blind to see it, because our coveting nature only saw the object of our desire.

 

My story is just one example of why God gave us this commandment.  I had a nice job, which paid enough for us to own a nice condo, which was the perfect size for our little family.  My job paid the mortgage, the car payment, all of the bills and allowed my wife to stay at home and raise the boys instead of having to go to work.  We were not going into debt and financially were doing fine.  We were very happy until we started coveting that three bedroom house.

 

I think it is our nature to always want more.  If you don’t want more then advertising companies throughout the county will convince you that you want more and deserve more.  Having more is our divine right.  It is our right to have more and it is OK to use whatever means are available to us to get what we want regardless of the havoc we wreak on ourselves or other people.

 

Coveting will make us unhappy due to our discontent.  Once we get that object of our desire, it will not take long before we set our sights on something else.  If we covet things they will drive us into the poor house, into jail, into despair and loneliness depending on what method we use to obtain the things we covet.

 

God said he will take care of us and he will. Psalm 37:4 (1a) says; “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  If we trust in God, we will not covet things, because we know that he has provided us with what we need, so we don’t need to look for anything else.  If we trust in God and acknowledge that everything we have is a gift from him we will have peace and happiness knowing God is providing for us.