I Shall Not Want

Psalm 23

What does the voice of God sound like?

In the first part of the Bible, when God speaks, God’s voice sounds like a parent talking to a child.

God speaks in short, clear sentences from a position of power and authority.

Last week we heard from Genesis 1. God speaks and say let there be light and there is light. Let there be sky and oceans and land… Let us make humankind in our image, and humans, you are responsible for what I made.

We hear the voice of God lead the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of slavery in Egypt and toward freedom.

On that journey, God gives them a code to live by–the 10 Commandments.

The 10 commandments have a different sound to them than Jesus teaching.

When Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment he says it is to love:  love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and the second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.

But compare Jesus invitation to love to the tone of the thou shalt and thou shalt nots of the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20:

And God spoke all these words:

² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

³ “You shall have no other gods before^[a] me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

⁷ “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy…

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

¹³ “You shall not murder.

¹⁴ “You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵ “You shall not steal.

¹⁶ “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

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.”

These commandments sound to me like a parent caring for and protecting a child and making declaratory statements: look both ways when you cross the road, don’t touch the stove, don’t break your sisters leg (that’s another story)

Our parents give us these rules to protect us so we won’t get hurt.

God gives us these rules to protect us so we won’t get hurt.

But it is interesting to look back on these 10 commandments that were given thousands of years and how they apply today.

Many of the ten are timeless, but some we have kind of lost.

I don’t think any of us are bowing down and worshiping idols. There is not much temptation there.

In our 24/7 world we have largely lost the discipline of Sabbath rest. The concept of a day of rest goes back to the seventh day of creation. It is God’s intent for us to rest. Maybe this one is even more important now in the hectic, always-connected world we live in today, but as a whole we are not good at taking a day of rest each week.

Of any of the commandments perhaps the one we ignore the most is the last one. Thou shalt not covet. You shall not covet anything your neighbor has.

To covet means to desire, to want something someone else has.

Our economy is based on coveting.

Our culture is based on coveting.

Have you ever looked at something someone else has and you say, I want that. That is coveting.

My Instagram feed is filled with an algorithm of Temu outfits that they know I want.

When I have a desire for something, amazon prime can have it to me by tomorrow.

Every morning we have a line at the door of people waiting to get in to the free store, a race to see who can be first to get what we think is the best stuff.

Every time we say, I want that car, I want that phone, I want those shoes, we are breaking one of the big 10.

Often I will have people come in to my office who have come here in shopping mode and asking if they can have my stapler or items off my desk. I recently had someone ask me if they could have the hat I was wearing, I said “im using it”.

We are all guilty of this, we have been conditioned to covet. It doesn’t matter if you have no money in your pocket or more money than you know what to do with. We all want more stuff.

Spiritually speaking, getting enough stuff to make us happy is an empty promise. We will never have enough. Someone will always have something newer, shinier, and better than us.

So if we all do it, what is the harm?

It keeps the economy going, it makes us feel good, why not covet?

And even if we have the newest and the best, how long does that feeling of satisfaction last? About 15 minutes.

Today’s designer Nordstrum purchase is tomorrow’s free store donation.

We can try to fill the God-shaped whole with us with all the stuff in the world, but it will never satisfy.

There is a powerful feeling when you put on an outfit for the first time that just fits you perfectly. I am not denying that. But that doesn’t satisfy, it doesn’t fill our souls, it doesn’t give us contentment. Only God can do that.

Not only is coveting a false promise, it is killing our planet.

For us who live in the city, it is easy to have a broken relationship with the earth.

We don’t see our food as coming from plants, but from cans and boxes. The meat we eat isn’t from animals we have watched grow, but is wrapped in cellophane and styrofoam.

Everything we buy, everything we get, everything we use has come from the earth. 8 billion people consuming at the levels we consume is not sustainable.

As one example, we have become a chicken eating people. The world population eats about 80 billion chickens a year. That’s a whole lot of chickens, a whole lot of chicken farms, a whole lot of waste.

As Americans, we covet food. We eat more than we should leading to obesity and diabetes and heart disease. Not only are we literally choking on the abundance, but we waste 40 percent of the food we produce.

Think about that, we strip the earth of what God created and then we throw 40 percent of it in the trash that fills the landfills.

Our over-consumption of meat alone is one of the leading contributors to global warming and if we would simply learn the balance of having enough and not over-consuming, we could change the world.

In the opening sentence of the 23d Psalm David offers that kind of world changing vision: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

The 23d Psalm is one of the best known parts of the Bible. Many of can recite by heart, especially this opening sentence. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

This is a theological statement that God will provide for all that we need, so we don’t want for anything.

Jesus said, look at the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air, God clothes and feeds them so God will certainly take care of you.

But like coveting, when we recite the words “I shall not want” do we really mean that?

David was the king who had everything including many wives and many concubines and despite all of that he looked at Bathsheba and said, I want her.

I don’t know that David always meant it.

But despite David’s human nature, what he offers us here is a powerful vision.

I shall not want

To take control of his own person and his own desires. God says, thou shalt and thou shalt not, but David takes ownership of himself and says I shall not.

I don’t believe this phrase, I Shall Not, is used anywhere else in the Bible 

What if we were to take David’s statement and apply it to our lives.

I shall not want.

I shall not want more than I need.

I shall not eat more than my body requires.

I shall not buy more than I can afford.

I shall not hoard.

I shall not try to fill the emptiness in my life with stuff.

If we practiced this we would replace our greed with contentment, our struggling with peace, coveting with gratitude.

If we practiced this we would not only save ourselves, we would save all that God has made.

Let us all testify that God has given us everything we need, we are set free from our adiction to more, we shall not want.