Don't Steal - Promote Wealth

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. You may be seated.

Well, we continue our series through the Ten Commandments. I think I'm going to be done before we finish up the shorter catechism. Questions on there, but we're at Exodus chapter 20, and we're on the eighth commandment. Exodus chapter 20, verse 15, at the eighth commandment this morning. Exodus chapter 20, verse 15, if you're using your Pew Bibles, you can find that on page 68. two words in the Hebrew, four words in the English, a short verse, Exodus chapter 20 verse 15.

Prayer for Illumination

You shall not steal. Let's pray. Well, Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come to your word. We thank you that your word sets this absolute commandment in its place and then fills it out in the rest of scripture. We pray that you would, by your spirit, teach us now and that you would mold and change our hearts in such a way that we would receive this word, but also live it in Jesus's name. Amen.

Sermon

I was reading online, I try to limit how much I read the news, but I've stumbled across an article this week that a man named Richard, who's 43, and his wife Marietta, 37, they cut off their electronic monitoring bracelets as they were awaiting their time to figure out how long they were going to go to jail for.

And what were they going to go to jail for? They had defrauded the government of $17 million of COVID relief funds. $17 million, worse than that. They cut off their ankle bracelets, slipped away. They've been gone for five months. Nobody knows where they are. And they left three teenage children at home with a note saying, this is not goodbye, but just for a little while.

What drives someone to steal? Why would God give this commandment? We'll find out today as we look through this commandment. This is something that dwells in each one of our hearts in different ways and something that each of us fight in different ways, but also is foundational for any functioning society.

Jerry Bridges, in his book on holiness, talks about three different types of people, the thief, the selfish person, and the generous person. The thief says, what's yours is mine, and I'm gonna take it. The thief says, what's yours is mine, I'm going to take it. The selfish person says, what's mine is mine, and I'm going to keep it. And the generous person says, what's mine is God's, and I'm gonna share it.

I'm going to suggest to you that that's what biblical stewardship looks like. It looks like being generous. So why do we steal? Why do we steal? I was thinking about this. I was really helped by a few, what a few people said. Calvin in his Institutes, as he's writing on this, says, what every man possesses has not come to him by mere chance. but by the distribution of the Supreme Lord of all. For this reason, we cannot, by evil devices, deprive anyone of his possessions without fraudulently setting aside God's providence. What's Calvin saying there? He's saying, we want to act like what we get is by chance, but in all reality, what anybody has is because God has graciously given it to them.

So when we steal against someone, what we're really saying is, God gave you something and I want it, and I'm not happy that you have what the Lord's given you, so I'm going to take it. Philip Riken and Arkyn Hughes commenting on this passage say, stealing is a sin against God in at least two ways. Every theft is a failure to trust in God's provision. Whenever we take something that doesn't belong to us, we deny that God has given us or is able to give us everything we truly need. And secondly, when we steal, we sin against God himself. It robs what he has provided for someone else. So why do we steal? Well, the reality is that we want more stuff. We want what somebody else has.

Interestingly, that this commandment is almost split up between the interior part, which is dealt with in the 10th commandment, and the exterior part, which is dealt in the 8th commandment. So we're gonna get a double dosing of this about contentment and things like that when we get to the 10th commandment with do not covet.

But this is what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 16, sorry, Matthew chapter six, verses 19 through 24. What does Jesus instruct us? do not lay up for yourself treasures on heaven where moths and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also when our eyes are on Here, when our eyes are on now, when our eyes are on what I want and what I desire, not what God has done and what God has given and the mercy that God has poured out upon me, when our eyes look downward on me and my stuff and what I want, is when we start having that desire in our heart, because we want to lay up, store up things here on earth, rather than storing up things in heaven. This is what Jesus is getting at. He pushes this even further in verse 24 when he says, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.

Maybe you've struggled with this in your heart before. I know I found myself struggling in my heart before. When we were running our photography business out in Beaver Falls, I found myself consistently thinking about money and about needing to provide income. And if you've ever been an entrepreneur before, you know you've got to do the marketing, you've got to get people in the door, you've got to make that income. And this was something that was really like mind-consuming to me in a way I had never thought about it before.

And then I read Jesus' words in the Gospel of Luke when he talks about the parable of the soils. He talks about the parable where the seed is sown in the soil that has weeds in it, that chokes out the seed. And when his disciples ask him, explain this parable to us, what does this mean? When he describes that weedy soil, he says, the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life choke it out.

And I remember being scared to the bones. Lord, don't let this choke out my faith. And I literally took a dry erase mark and wrote it on the mirror in our bathroom. My poor wife, she had to put up with me writing on the mirrors in our bathroom, but I needed that reminder every morning when I woke up and I brushed my teeth that my heart cannot be choked out by the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life. There had to be something more. Brothers and sisters, your call this morning is to look for something more. Just put your eyes on Christ.

But we need to ask a question here, what is stealing? Is it just taking someone else's stuff? Well, the Hebrew word for stealing is ganaf, which literally means to carry something away as if by stealth. A more technical definition would be to appropriate someone else's property unlawfully. Just to put it out here, there's an assumption then, if you can steal someone else's stuff, that means someone else has a right to their stuff.

Let me just say that. There is a biblical assumption that what God gives you is yours. Personal property rights are real. You really do own your things. This is one of the things that breaks down in a communist society that when you read Marx, he wants to completely get rid of private property and put it in the hands of a centralized government. And I'm not saying that to be political here. I promise I won't try to be too political here. But this is the reality of one of the tenets of communism is the common ownership of all things. But here God is saying, hold on. One of the foundational realities of the Israelite people and of how society functions is you have a right to your own things and you should be able to hold onto them.

But what is stealing and where does it come from? Well, it starts in the heart. When we desire to cheat or in some other manner harm our neighbor and to have their goods, it starts in the heart. It starts, the book of James tells us that temptation doesn't come from outside of us.

Somebody might have a really great combine, but it's not because that combine is so great that you go steal it. Somebody might have a really great item in their house. I don't know what people steal. Maybe they got a great china hutch or something. It's nothing inherent in that china hutch that makes you steal it.

It's your own heart that motivates you to go take that other person's thing. It's something that starts in the heart. This is why the Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. When you have that desire in your heart that you want more things, when you want someone else's stuff, you're in a tight spot there that you're gonna find yourself following down a path that you never thought you would go. In reality, you end up showing hatred towards your neighbor. rather than loving your neighbor. Calvin breaks up theft into four general categories. Violence, stealing something by force. Malicious deceit, carrying things off by fraud.

By the way, this is something specifically that 1 Thessalonians 4 tells us, a command in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses three and six. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. And he has a list of godly things that we should be following. And this is what verse six says is that, that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this manner because the Lord is avenger of all such.

And we also forewarned you and testified. What was one of the things that the apostles found absolutely urgent to go and tell people in the first early church, stop frauding one another. Stop trying to take advantage of one another. Stop trying to get one up on the other people in society, but love one another.

You could deceive people by, this is, you know, I was reading about a guy out west somewhere. I know none of the farmers here would do this with your row cropping, you know, because everybody likes their fence, their hedge rows, and everything's great. But moving the fence post just a little bit further, And a little bit further, and a little bit further, who's going to check the fence row? Who's going to remember where that ancient boundary mark was and just stealing a little bit of property at a time, just frauding them out of that?

Another way of malicious deceiving is injustice or unfaithfulness in contracts. I can't tell you how many landlords I've met who come into contracts with tenants only for their tenants to not honor their end of the contract and steal from their landlords and not pay back their rent. And then the landlord ends up holding all this liability that they still have the bills, but then they have to go and pay the court costs. They have to do all these things and the person just is gone. Unfaithfulness in contracts is a type of malicious deceit where you tell someone, I'm going to do this, but then you don't actually do it. Concealed craftiness, this is when goods are snatched seemingly by legal means. Or flatteries, the fourth is flatteries. Cheated of goods under the pretense of a gift.

I'm just going to let you know what I'm doing here. I'm going to pull back the curtain and let you know. We're just going to look at some of these things and we're going to spend the next few minutes looking at different ways in which people steal from one another. I want you to be honest with your heart if you've been tempted or if this has been you before.

Stealing looks like burglary, breaking in to steal something. In a digital age, this is something that we find ourselves all the time when people put ransomware on computers and will steal people's files and hold them for ransom until somebody pays them off. It has shut down entire parts of our country and it's wrong, it's evil. God hates this. Robbery, using violence to steal.

Psalm chapter 62 verse 10 says, do not trust in oppression or vainly hope in robbery. If riches increase, do not set your heart on them. You see someone getting rich, don't set your heart on their riches, because what's going to happen? You're going to be tempted to steal, to use violence to take. Larceny, taking without permission and not returning. Hijacking. using force to take something while it's in transit.

I remember when we were, when I was in the Navy, we always, you'd go through different straits and pinch points in waterways. And there were always certain pinch points that you needed to be careful of. You know, when we were going through the Red Sea, as you come through the Suez Canal, going through the Red Sea and you go around the Horn of Africa, you have to be careful going around Somalia because people will steal ships. You have to be careful going through the streets by Malaysia because there are cargo ships that are stolen by the dozens and they're hidden off in the forest and held for ransom.

Hijacking people's things while they're in transit. Shoplifting, taking something during business hours without an intent to pay for. Embezzlement, fraudulently taking something entrusted to your care. Have you noticed that there's different types of stealing? There's the thief who walks into a store and runs out with it, and there's also the CEO of Enron. This isn't class dependent. This isn't wealth dependent. Wealthy people are tempted to steal, to embezzle, to defraud people, as well as poor people. Extortion and oppression are specifically used by those in authority who mistreat and threaten people.

Ezekiel talks about this as one of the charges God has against his own people. Ezekiel 22, verses 12 and 19. In you they take bribes to shed blood. You take usury and increase. You have made profit from your neighbors by extortion and have forgotten me, says the Lord God. The people of the land have used oppression, committed robbery, and mistreat the poor and needy, and they wrongly oppress the stranger.

Hold on here. These are the people of God who are extorting and robbing and stealing from the oppressed. But that's the Old Testament, right? I mean, there's no way a Christian would ever do that. There's no way a Christian would ever steal or oppress or embezzle funds.

This is one of the things that, it's a sad reality why in our denomination we have audits for church budgets. I know people don't like that because it's kind of like outside people poking their nose and stuff, but the reality is keep the books clean.

Because even Christians can be tempted. But this doesn't just deal with that type of stuff, but it can also happen in the workplace. You can have employees who steal time. Employee, I know that this is something that as people went to work, there's all these memes going on now where I can either work or I can turn on Netflix. And people are tempted all the time. Do I just watch YouTube or do I actually put in the time that my employer is paying for? Do you play games? Are you on the phone? Are you actually giving your employer Your time.

I remember when I was working at a mental health facility ran by Roman Catholics, and it was literally nuns who ran this place, and the chief nun, I have no clue what her official title was, but they had an all-employee meeting, and I was just a temp worker.

I was there for like six months, and everybody else was union, and the chief nun gets in front of everybody, and she says, please, please don't misuse your sick days. Our funds are very low. This is a nonprofit. And when you use your sick days, we have to pay someone else time and a half. And it was amazing how many people called off sick on Monday or on Friday. Very few people ever called off sick on Wednesday. And you found out in the break room what was really going on.

But the employer was the one left holding the bag. Fraudulent workers make unemployment claims and workers' compensation claims that drain companies and corporations of their finances. And just because something's a corporation, this is one of the things where we live in a society with big, huge companies and people want to think that, oh, this is a victimless crime. No, someone's left holding the bag. someone is being stolen from. Employees just outright steal, helping themselves to office supplies for their own personal use or padding their expense accounts so that way they can live a little bit more comfortably on the side. I watch these weird documentaries and I was watching this documentary of a diamond mine in South Africa that has gone 100% digital. There's not a single person who works in the mine.

And the biggest reason? Because employees would pocket the diamonds. And so what was their answer? Get rid of all the employees and just have it all machinery, all remote. So even the mining equipment is done by a robot down in the mine because they can't trust the people.

There's even in the corporate world something called a theft surcharge where you just know The employees are going to steal a certain amount and so you just have to put that into the profit margin when you price things out to pay for it. But it's not just employees, but employers can do this also. Employers can demand longer hours than their salaried contracted workers ever agreed to. Employers can downsize their workforce in order to boost up profits, but still demand, like Pharaoh, that they still commit the same amount of work even though they have less resources, less people, and less time. Employers just do outright things that are evil, changing time cards, underplaying, withholding employee pay, or even changing an employee's salary on the computer with just a couple cents here and there to try to make ends meet and can justify it in their brains. But in all reality, they're not paying their agreed wage, and the Lord sees it. Employers can cook the books we talked about in Raw Honor, those who just outrightly keep two separate books. There's price gouging, there's false advertising.

Have you ever, this is one of the things I love. Have you ever gone to, it drives me nuts, but I also love it. Have you ever gone to the grocery store before and you see a big old bag of potato chips? I mean, it's like, it's a huge bag of potato chips. But then you get home and you open it up and there's like that much in it.

One of my favorite things to do is to go to stores and look at the weight on the bottom of the packaging and see how much they have inflated the size of something to look like it's more valuable than it really is. It's a way of deceptively packaging something. This is why we actually had to have laws that say you must say how much is actually in that bag. They can exaggerate the value of a product.

The government does this. The government can steal from its own people by wasting taxpayer money. We know of those politicians who will live frivolous lifestyles throwing out money like they're millionaires or something when they're supposed to be servants of the people. with huge wages and benefit packages that are out of line. We know that governments can steal from the employees of the government themselves by underfunding pension plans, making promises to people that when you retire, we're going to pay for you, but then don't actually follow through with those promises. This is a way of stealing. A way of stealing that disproportionately, and this is where, again, this is not political, this is just saying it.

We live in a day and age right now where inflation is disproportionately hurting poor people and the retired. Where monetary policy that the government is making is hurting people like my grandmother who have no opportunity to take a second job or to take any job. But her retirement account every day is worth less and less than her and my grandfather put into it. Poor people who are already working two, three jobs desperate to try to make ends meet and they go to the grocery store and they can't afford this Thanksgiving meal because it's 14% more expensive than last year.

Government contractors consent against this too, purposely going over budget, purposely bloating their administration to increase the cost, purposely lobbying up, getting shoulder to shoulder with politicians so that way their pockets can be lined at our expenses. We can steal with credit with exorbitant amount of usury. This is one of the things that God rails against in the Old Testament is people charging in exorbitant amount of interest. Again, this is specifically targeted typically towards the poor.

Go drive through the Quad City sometime and see where there are title loan companies. Sure, they might be legal. But you're going to give someone a loan for $500, if they don't repay it, you'll take their car, you take their car, they can't get to work, they can't get to work, what's the results of that? Might be legal, but does that make it righteous, does that make it loving? But it's also the people who borrow on credit, who have no intent of paying it back, are also stealing from the bank.

Do you see how complicated this is? It's like everywhere we turn in our society, if there's money involved, there's an opportunity for corruption. Every time there's a contract entered, there's an opportunity for us to steal. Every time we get together and we just are people who are prone to thieving, to trying to get our own, to using unjust weights and measures. This is an awkward one for a pastor to say, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it. In Malachi chapter 3, verses 8 and 10, the question is, will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me. But you say, in what way have we robbed you?

In tithes and offerings. in neglecting the work of the church, 75% of people who tithe, and this is, you know, this is, I'm very thankful for you, this is not trying to beat you down by any means. 75% of people who tithe in the church tithe 10% or more. But on average, amongst evangelicals, only 5% actually tithe. This is a commandment of not stealing from the Lord.

Martin Luther writing on this says, if we looked at mankind and all its conditions, it is nothing but a vast, wide, stable, full of thieves. Every one of us is guilty. Every one of us sits there guilty. So what do we do about it? But my mind is immediately taken to the book of Luke, where Jesus is numbered amongst the transgressors. When Jesus is there and he's hanging on the cross, as he's there, is he there alone? As he's being put to death for our sins, being numbered with the transgressors for our sins, who is he between?

On his right, there's a thief. And on his left, there is a thief. And even though one of these thieves begins this moment on that hill of Calvary as he's mocking Jesus with the other thief, as he's making fun of Jesus with the other thief, God takes his heart and he turns it from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. And somehow this man realizes, hold on, we're both here guilty. We deserve to die, but this man does not deserve to die.

And he looks at Jesus and he says, remember me in your kingdom. And how does God demonstrate his love towards sinners like us? Today you'll be with me in paradise. Because it was Jesus Christ who hung on that cross between these men and it's a picture of the gospel. One man who will trust in Jesus Christ and the other who has an obstinate heart. Who for all we know dies disbelieving. And the other who dies has only one hope, that the man on the middle cross is letting him in. That somehow this man is really the king of the nations.

So when we talk about keeping this command, which is the duties required, we're gonna talk about that in Chalk and Talk mainly. Why do we keep this commandment? Why do we strive to keep this commandment? We deserve to be those who are put to death for our thievery. But we try to keep this commandment. We strive for sanctification in this because of the grace Christ showed us on that cross.

Closing Prayer

The world might be a vast stable of nothing but thieves, but we have a Savior who saved sinners like you and like me. I pray that that's the only hope you cling to. I pray that as you try to keep this commandment not to steal, you do so out of a heart of love that Jesus Christ lived that perfect life and died. He was numbered with you and he hasn't left you as orphans. If you love him, to keep his commandments. Let's pray.

Well, Father, we thank you for a convicting word that you've given us. And we confess how easy it is for us to break your law. God, I pray that your Holy Spirit might take your word and, like a surgeon's scalpel, cut out sin, that we might bleed with love for you. Lord, assure us of your forgiveness and strengthen us to walk in your grace. In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's go ahead and stand and we'll sing in response, Psalm 72, selection C. Let's stand and we'll sing in response, Psalm 72. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.