You Shall Not Steal

Well, good morning. It's good to have you all with us. It's good to see everyone here. We are going to continue in our series that I'm preaching through on the Ten Commandments. If you have not been keeping track, I'll remind you that we are all the way up to the Eighth Commandment. As we've discussed previously, with all of the commandments that God gives us, most of the Ten Commandments are stated negatively. But by inference, if we are to not steal or if we are to not murder, the opposite would also be true. So the positive side of you shall not murder might be you should support life, right? And so though these commandments are very brief, they're just a few words, there is much that we can glean from these passages and throughout the scriptures.

on the ideas. There are 10 commandments. As we teach and train our children, you have 10 fingers. So assign a commandment to each of their fingers and have them memorize God's law so that it's in their hearts and minds. So as they think about the decisions that they make, they can have a framework for understanding what they should do. My hope is this morning, that we will come to realize that none of us are above the temptation to steal. You shall not steal is our commandment for this morning. My hope is so that we would come to realize that none of us are above the temptation to steal, and that when we steal, our thievery shows a fundamental lack of faith in God and in God's provision and care for us.

If you're able, please stand and let us read God's word. And let God's word search our hearts and our minds and expose our sins and weaknesses so that we can confess them and repent and return to our God. So our word for this morning is Exodus chapter 20, verse 15. You shall not steal. You shall not steal. You may be seated. Have you ever had the experience with your kids where you're talking to them and you use a word that you know, and then your kids are like, what does that mean? And then you begin stuttering. You're like, I know what that word means. But when put on the spot to give a definition of it to your kids to help them understand what that word means, the connotation that it has.

it can be a struggle sometimes to answer that question. And stealing is a word that's probably like that for most of us, where it's like, we all know what stealing is, but perhaps putting a precise definition on it might be more challenging for us. Webster defines stealing as the action or offense of taking another person's property Without permission or legal right and without intending to return it. And, you know, that definition is fine as far as a definition of stealing goes. And it is the narrow meaning of the text. You shall not steal. It's like, don't take things that don't belong to you. It's a fairly simple concept to grasp.

However, stealing is more than just taking something that doesn't belong to you. Stealing can also be withholding things that don't belong to you. It could be deceiving others about something that you're selling or that they're buying. It can also be being stingy, being lazy. We're not tithing. So we're going to look at these things and try and open up this idea of stealing so that we don't have just this minimalist view that all that is entailed here is just picking up something that doesn't belong to you and maybe slipping it in your pocket. Perhaps a better definition of stealing would be something along the lines of taking or withholding something, whether that object is physical or immaterial.

that does not belong to you. Stealing is trying to get something without working for it, with giving as little of yourself as possible, trying to grab and hoard and keep. Stealing is selfish, and it shows a fundamental lack of trust in God. Now, as we think about stealing and thievery, There are three groups which we can steal from. One is God. We actually can steal things which belong to God. We can also steal from others, whether that's the community, the government, our family, our children, our posterity. We can steal from all of these. And the third category, so we can steal from God. We can steal from people. We can also steal from ourselves.

We can steal from our future. We'll talk more about this as we go along. But as we look into what the Bible teaches about stealing, I want us to not be narrow in how we're thinking about stealing. But that while we may be doing better with not stealing from a store, a business, perhaps we're more inclined to cheat our families. and steal from them. Or maybe we're more inclined to steal from the government. So let's not be narrow and just thinking that the only kind of stealing is if we just slip something in our pocket while we're at the store. And let's consider whether we are violating this commandment in our relationship to God, in our relationship to others, or in relationship to ourselves. Well, Why is stealing a serious thing? After all, what is the big deal when it comes to stealing? I'm glad you're hypothetically asking me that. If we were to turn to Proverbs 30, verses 8 and 9, it says, Keep deception and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is my portion, that I not be full.

and deny you and say, who is the Lord? Or that I not be in want and steal and profane the name of my God. Deuteronomy 10.14 says, behold, to the Lord your God belong, what? Heaven and the highest heavens. But his ownership doesn't just extend upward, the earth and all that is in it. Do you realize that God owns all things? And God did not get his possession of all things by thievery. He created it and thus owns it. And so we are to be generous like God, who created all things, owns all things, and has given things. into our hands to be stewards over. Stealing would be a contradiction to the character of God. And so if we steal, we are blaspheming God. Stealing is blasphemy of God. God is not a thief and we are created in his image. And so when we act out against the image of God in us, It is a blasphemy of God because as image bearers, we are to reflect who God is. And when we reflect sinful things about God, we blaspheme because we preach a lie about who God is. This is especially true of us as Christians. That when we who claim the name of Christ, who say we are Christians, Christ followers, then act in ways that are not in accord with God's character.

then people can look at us and say, well, I thought you followed this God. So is this God a deceiver and a thief as well? And so when we violate God's law, we blaspheme him. We besmirch his name. That goes back to the third commandment, right? Stealing is also serious because God has created us to work. He has created us to earn the things that we have, to work hard for them, not to just take them from other people. Stealing is also serious because it shows that we do not trust in God's provision for us. When we think that we have a lack in some area and we try to meet that lack through a sinful means by taking something that is not ours, it shows that we have a fundamental distrust in God.

and in his provision for us, and in his knowledge of our needs and what we need. And we think that the only way we can get what we need is by violating his command. That God is somehow failing us. It's a serious thing. You shall not steal is also serious simply by the fact that it's what God commands us. And if God commands something, then it's a big deal. One day, we'll all die, right? The ultimate statistic, 10 out of 10 people die. Everyone will die. And when we die, we will face the judgment throne of God. And the 10 commandments is a rubric, if you will. It teaches us the character of God. These aren't just random morals that God plucked out of somewhere, but they're actually teaching us of his character and of his goodness. And so, We know what the judge will judge us upon. So it's a serious deal whether we follow the rules and the commands that he's given. Now, if we're Christians, we'll be judged based on Christ's righteousness in us. But the commandments are the moral God's character. They teach us God's character. And we ought to take seriously God's character. So as I bring up examples of what it means to steal, and we think about this, do not.

Be dismissive. Do not be dismissive of what thieving looks like because God takes it seriously, which means you ought to take it seriously. It's also serious because being a thief is destructive to society. For our culture to work, we must have trust. Stealing is deception. It destroys trust. It breaks down our ability to do any business, to have any relationships, and to live together. It is an attack on society. So let's begin with the negative side of the commandment. The simplest is just the five-finger discount, right? I remember I did this once or twice as a kid. You're in the checkout line at the grocery store. You want the candy bar. Slip it in your coat pocket. You walk out. That's wicked. It's stealing.

I also stole once accidentally, but I didn't see something that was in my cart and walked out. The next day I walked back in and paid for it. That's stealing. It's sin. God hates it. Don't do it. Kids, do you know that when you're playing with your friends or your siblings and you take their toy, God sees it, that that's stealing and he hates it? When you're at your friend's house, and you see a little change on top of the dresser or in your parents' room, if you put that in your pocket, that is stealing. You have no right to that. If you go to the restaurant and you order water and you go up to the fountain machine and you get pop instead, that's stealing, right? So, like, none of these seem like huge deals on the surface of it, right? You took, like, Three cents from the store. And yet it's serious because you have lied about the nature of God and you have broken his command. You have not taken what you paid for. It's all stealing. Overcharging on things when you put them on Facebook marketplace. And then you hide the defects. So hopefully they'll pay more than it's worth and they don't see what's the problems with it. Not disclosing the issues that you know exist. That's stealing.

Our time, think about this. Think about time and how we use our time. When you are working for someone, they are buying your time. You say, especially true of hourly employees, where they're buying your time. You work X amount of hours, and I will give you X amount of dollars for the X amount of hours of your life that you've given me. When you show up late and you leave early, but your time card doesn't reflect that, you have stolen from your employer. If you take 45 minutes for lunch and your time card says you took half an hour for lunch, you've stolen from your employer. And often we do that. Why? Because we feel like we're owed something. We think, well, the man, whoever the man is, is taking advantage of us. And so we're just going to write the scales a little bit in our favor. And here's the thing.

That is such a lack of trust in God. Because the Bible is replete with warnings against those who would withhold wages from the poor and who would mistreat the poor. And if you really are being treated unjustly, trust God to write the scales. Don't take matters into your own hand. Cheating is a form of stealing. Do you illegally share your subscriptions with others? But the company charges so much. Yeah? And they also wrote the rules. And you agreed to them. They're ripping people off. Okay? So is other people's sin a justification for our sin? Do we just get to ignore what God commands because we don't like how other people are doing their business? If we break things that don't belong to us, and then we hide it, and we don't tell them, Maybe you broke your friend's toy and you hide it under the couch. No one knows. That's a form of stealing. You took something that wasn't yours, you destroyed it, and you did not make restitution. Stealing. Here's another one. When we hire someone, do we pay a fair price for the work that they're doing? Or do we haggle them down and beat them up? Remember how many...

Read through the Old Testament and see how many warnings God gives to the wealthy and their treatment of the poor. God takes it very seriously. And if we cheat or rip people off and we are unwilling to pay a fair price for the work that people do, we're stealing from them. Our culture does not have a healthy view of stealing and what to do about it, right? In the Bible, what we see is that When someone steals, what are they supposed to do? When they're caught, there's no indication that they should go rot in jail. Rather, they are to work off that which they've stolen. They're to restore it. And depending on the value of what it was, they may have to restore three times or seven or eight or ten. There's all sorts of different amounts of restoration depending on the value and whether it can be recovered or not recovered. There's all sorts of things.

And what we see in the New Testament is that remember when Jesus is going through and everyone's trying to see and Zacchaeus climbs up in the tree. The Lord calls him out, goes to his house. And then Zacchaeus does what? When he gets saved, we see the fruit of repentance in his life, which is immediately, I'm going to restore fourfold of all that I've stolen from people. And then he does it. So this is a good thing for us. There's many, many other ideas, but... I've thrown out a smorgasbord of ways that we can easily fall into violating this commandment. And if you have, the biblical thing to do is to confess your sin and make restitution for what you've done. Think about it. If you realize that you've been stealing from someone, then you need to go and make it right. Restore and repay as best that you can. And do not think that since...

you may have less than the person that you stole from, that somehow it justifies your actions. As I said earlier, God takes stealing seriously, which means we ought to take as inconsequential a thing as it seems to us seriously, because God takes sin seriously. So that's more of the negative side of the command, right? This is the... Don't take these things that don't belong to you aspect of the command. Let's think about it positively. God says you shall not steal. What could we say positively then as a logical conclusion or implication of the fact that we shouldn't steal? Well, one is the important biblical principle of private property. The idea that you actually own things because If you don't own something, then it can't be stolen from you. If we all owe things in common, then it's not stealing, it's taking what's yours. So this whole idea of communism is very unbiblical. It's not there. You can't steal something if everything's held in common. It presupposes that you are given something to take care of. Now, there are...

Bad forms of maybe a capitalistic view. The idea in this command is not that we should hoard and oppress others so that we can amass property. I mean, if you think through all the Old Testament commands about land and property, land, state, and families, there is no way to just accumulate vast amounts of land and property. The idea of private property is not that we just accumulate everything so that we can grow great and wealthy and powerful. It's actually far different than that. And I want us to consider generosity. As I said earlier, God owns all things. He owns everything. It says that he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Everything that you have has been given to you.

by God. Think about the garden. In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve. And when he created them, he said what? You are to have dominion over the world. And he's given him things to eat. And the idea is that man is to go out and order the world. He's supposed to start at the top in the Garden of Eden on that mountain. And he has to go forth from there and turn the whole world into a garden. It's to be fruitful and multiply because it's too much work for him and Eve. Now, what is that? That's stewardship. God owns the world. He owns Adam. And now he's given what he owns to Adam to make it more fruitful, to make it better, to improve upon it, to do well with it. It's stewardship.

Adam owns it in the name of God. God owns the whole world, but it was given to Adam and to his descendants to approve upon it, to make it better, to bring order, to turn the world into a garden. We are to be like God. We work hard. We create. We bring structure to the world. And we have ownership over these things. But we don't just have ownership over them in order to be selfish with the things that we... have ownership over. We are to create and bless other people with that which we create. It's not there for us to be selfish or to just simply use for our own ends, but it's there to bless, to be like our heavenly father, to bless other people. The opposite of stealing is what? Giving. The opposite of stealing is giving. The opposite of taking something that doesn't belong to you is giving away things that belong to you. There's this podcast that I listen to, and it's kind of funny. He's got these sponsors, right? And so when he has a call that's applicable to some of the things that are sponsored, he gives away this product. And the person's like, you know, they're thanking him. Thank you for it. And he's like, I'm giving away other people's stuff. That's easy, you know.

There's a truth, though. For us, though, if all that we have is owned by God, when we're giving, in one sense, we're being generous with stuff that's not our own, but God's. Now, Paul says in Ephesians 4.28, he who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands that which is good, so that he can become stinking rich and live an easy life. No. so that he will have something to share with the one who is in need. One of the positive ways that we can fulfill the eighth commandment is by working hard so that we are able to give to others, so that we can help them so they're not tempted to steal and we're not tempted to steal because we've worked hard and we are blessed and now we bless others with the things that God has given us with the fruit of our hard work.

And in doing so, we're just like God who created the world, who gave it to us to then work and do well with. Why don't we want to be generous? Why don't we like to give? Well, often we think we don't have enough. We worked hard and we deserve everything that we have. After all, there's always someone who's wealthier than us and giving should be their responsibility. They have more than us. Not only is that thinking unbiblical, but it's very similar to the justifications that people use for stealing. I don't really hurt real people when I steal. It's only a big business that has a lot more than me. That business is taking advantage of me. They won't even notice that I'm taking advantage of them. We so easily begin to justify the Two wrongs were to make a right. A lack of generosity demonstrates a lack of trust in God. God promises to care for his people and to bless us when we give and are generous. There are many commands in the Bible to give and to be generous. In Luke, not only does God encourage us to be generous, but he also says that we will be measured by our own measure. Luke 6.38, give and it will be given to you.

They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure, so it will be measured to you in return. God is not stingy, and he's no man's debtor. So be generous, give to others, and see what God does. Acts 20, 35. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner, you must help the weak. And remember the words that the Lord Jesus Christ said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Do we believe that? Do our lives reflect that? The apostle Paul worked hard to help the weak. And in doing so, he gave us a great example and proved to those around him the blessing that comes from giving rather than just being a receiver. But guess what? If you feel uncomfortable, The Bible doesn't stop there. We can keep going. 1 John 3, 17 through 18 says, but whoever has the world's goods, whoever has the world's goods, this verse is crazy. Whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but indeed in truth. Does that verse?

hit you. Do you hear what John is saying? If we see brothers in need and we do not help them, but we would rather keep our worldly goods to ourselves, John questions whether God's love is even in you. You won't love and be generous and care for those around you. John says, I don't know if you love God. Think of Jesus's parable of the king who forgave his servant a vast debt. And then that same servant goes and refuses to forgive his fellow servant a mere pittance, pennies. Our generosity should not flow from how we feel, but it should flow from the generosity which God has shown us. Our generosity flows from God's love for you. And that love should, God's love should pour into you and it should just be coming out of every pore in your body.

That every person you interact with should feel the love of God because you are so filled with God's goodness and kindness to you that you can't contain it. And you must show his kindness and love and generosity to every person you meet because it's been so great. What has he not forgiven you? What sin has he not been willing to forgive in your own life? And so we want to hold all our worldly possessions. and hold ourselves and keep ourselves to ourselves and not be lights shining in a dark world after Christ has done what he's done for us? No wonder, John says, does the love of God exist in our hearts if we will not spend our earthly, worldly goods to gain an imperishable reward with God in heaven? Galatians says, So then while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who are the household of faith. Let us do good to all people. Brothers and sisters, if you are always grasping for things, working for stuff, but you're tight-fisted and miserly, you have the heart of a thief. Miserliness and a lack of generosity is akin to the thief who wants stuff. Their care is about stuff.

They don't trust God for his provision. They just want shortcuts to stuff. Those who steal just don't realize that the things of this world are passing away, that we're sojourners here, that we ought to be working for a heavenly kingdom that will last beyond the grave, that the things we have in this life are a means to an end. They're not an end of themselves. Our lives should be filled with generosity and gratitude for what God has done for us. And that should spill out in generosity and in love for others. If God loved us while we were yet sinners, is it so much for him to ask us to love sinners? So don't be grasping. Don't develop a reputation of having a tight fist, of having to have the best deal on everything. But be generous. Love others.

Be generous and see what God does. One of the other positive ways that we keep the law of God is by tithing. Malachi 3, 9, and 10 says, you are accursed with a curse for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house and test me now in this, says the Lord of hosts. Test me now. If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. People often argue about whether there's a required percentage of tithing in the New Testament, and I'm not going to get into any of that. What I want to say and simply point out to you is that you are a steward of the things that God has given you. And that if you view everything you own as yours, you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps, then it will be hard to be generous.

But if you view everything you have as being given to you by God to be a steward over, then you take care of the things that you have. You work hard and you will be generous and you'll give to God's people and you'll give to the church and you'll tithe and you won't be robbing God. Perhaps the best antidote to being a thief is to work hard. Work hard. That's what Paul says, right? He who steals, steal no more, but labor so that you would have stuff to give. Part of the wickedness of stealing is it's so destructive. Thieving does not create new things. It's a leech sucking out of our society. Stealing. There was, I think they said, $29 billion worth of fraud last year. That's fraud. That doesn't include all the...

Stealing that happens that is not able to be tracked. That doesn't count all of, that's just fraud. $29 billion. It's such a leech on society. It's so destructive. So if we don't want to be thieves, we ought to work hard so that we're not even tempted to steal. Work hard so that your family is not left destitute. Work hard so that you can provide an inheritance for your children and care for their children. In fact, remember we said that we can steal from all sorts. If you gamble away your money, if you do not save, you're not only stealing from you and from your future and when you're unable to work hard and provide, you're also stealing from your children and your grandchildren by not using the money and the stuff that God has given you wisely.

You're unable to provide and keep for your family. We could also apply these principles to how we're using our time. Time is a limited resource that we have. We were born, and at the moment of our birth, the clock started ticking. And there will be a day that you die. And your children will be in your house for a small window of that time that God's given you. And if you waste your time in front of a screen, when you should be loving on your children, you're stealing that time that you should be giving to them, that you should be devoting to them. You can't gain it back if you don't use your time well and you give it to vain and idle things rather than the worship of God. You're stealing from God. Well, what do we do with all this? Stealing is fundamentally, I believe that stealing is fundamentally a lack of trust in God.

and his provision for you. It's laziness. It's all these different things. But fundamentally, it's a lack of trust in God and that believing that God will provide for you. And so the first thing is that we must trust God. We must work hard and trust God that he will give us the things that we need. It says in Matthew that he's a good father. who does not withhold that which we need. That no good father, when his son asks for bread, gives him rocks, or fish gives him a snake. And if a wicked earthly father wouldn't play tricks on his children like that, then how much more so will our heavenly father give us the good things that we need? And so we ought to be generous and trust God rather than turning to stealing. We ought to be mindful of how we use our time.

that we don't offend God and our wasting of it in the limited time that we've been given here. We ought to tithe. We ought to work hard and be generous. And if we work on these things, if we work hard and are generous, then the temptation to steal is going to be so, will be so inoculated against it. And if we trust God, then we won't feel the need to get ahead by pulling others down. Because we know that God, will bless our hard work. And if we're generous with one another, then we also can help others fight against the need or the urge to steal because they know that they have brothers and sisters in Christ who will meet their needs without having to steal what they need. But they can go and they can talk to the deacons or they can talk to others and say, hey, I have a need. Could you help me? Let's pray.