Stealing from God?

You can open your Bibles to Deuteronomy 22. I'm just going to read one of the passages that we're going to go through today. Today's sermon is going to be... Thank you. A little bit different than maybe a normal verse-by-verse exposition. As I've explained throughout the commandments, it's hard to go verse-by-verse through a forward verse.

Thou shall not steal, which is where we are in Exodus 20.15. So, this is one of the sections we will review today. Effectively, what I'm going to do today is I'm going to remind you not to steal, try to explain to you what it is and then give you I didn't count them, about seven or eight bullet points that tell you some specific applications of the thou shall not steal, some of which may seem obvious and some may be inspiring to you in some way.

That's the goal and there's a lot here and so if you're a note taker, get your pen out if you'd like the notes though, I actually have written notes this time so I can share them with you if you're that kind of person. I normally don't, and so today's your providentially fortunate day. All right, Deuteronomy 22. You shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them.

You shall take them back to your brother. And if he does not live near you and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him and you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment or with any lost thing of your brothers, which he loses and you find you may not ignore it.

You shall not see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift it again to lift them up again. We'll get to that verse in a little bit. The first thing I want to do is give you a bit of a working definition of what stealing is. There's certainly more definitions out there, and the Baptist catechism goes a little broader than this because it goes into our need to acquire our own wealth and work, which we talked about last week. but just for the purpose of today stealing is the taking of something that is not yours or the using of something that is not yours without the owner's consent and approval so I think most of us understand if it's not yours and then you take possession of it thus making it yours you've stolen it if you receive something that somebody else stole that's also theft In fact, even in our amazingly unjust society, we still have laws against receiving stolen property.

And a lot of people think, well, that exonerates them or excuses them. Well, I didn't know it was stolen. It's actually your responsibility to ensure that something you purchase is not stolen. And so if you buy a cell phone off the Internet, you meet the person at the cell phone store, and you let the cell phone store tell you that it's not stolen. And then if the person won't meet you, you kind of know why, right? and then if you take something that's not yours just to use it though in a way that that owner didn't give consent that would be also a form of violating the eighth commandment so one first example of it that may seem obvious to you is vandalism so vandalism generally is just when you go and you do something to somebody else's property that's not yours i would not consider tossing toilet paper in a tree true vandalism although they did make me work a little more on Sunday than I wanted but I'm talking about when you destroy something for the most part is what vandalism is when people spray paint on your garage door you know something that would take a lot more time and effort and maybe your own money to fix that's vandalism when they break something of yours.

If you break something of somebody's accidentally, but then you don't tell them, and you don't offer to make the reparation for them, that's also vandalism. It just doesn't have the intent that maybe some vandalism certainly has. And so caring about other people's property is the overarching theme of the eighth commandment. Okay, realizing that if you're driving down the road, you're in a little bit of a hurry, and you end up hitting somebody's car, and maybe you don't even think you did a lot of damage, the right thing is to do is to stop what you're doing and to go and make sure that person knows that you will take care of fixing whatever the problem is.

I realize in our overly litigious society that it may be a little scary to have to encounter people at times but I think a lot of people would appreciate your honesty and this is one of these ones where I have loads of stories that I could tell I'm not a story preacher guy but I'm sure we all have stories of times somebody did something and they were honest with us and we were actually so tickled by it we didn't even make them pay for it You know, it's a joyful thing. But if I was going to tell you stories, my stories, I try to practice the rule of never be the hero of all your own stories And so if I wanted to tell you stories about theft and stealing I could count for hours all the times that I stole. I was a horrible thief, and as bad of a person as I was in breaking every other commandment, in fact, my thievery may actually have been my worst sin. and I don't even hardly remember it sometimes because it was something that I quit before I even got saved but I was a horrible thief and God saved me from that so a couple other ideas here, things that are breaking of the 8th commandment at least in some proportion so some of these things I'm going to tell you it's not 100% breaking the 8th commandment every single time, but it can get that way So the next one is one of those ones, taxation and like socialist programs, for example.

So obviously there is a biblical element to authorities have a right to collect taxes. So I'm not going to say hashtag taxation is theft. But I am going to say that there are forms of taxation that are absolutely theft, where some portion of people in a society have decided that through government coercion, they're going to force other people to fund things that those people wouldn't otherwise want to fund.

What this means is that people will pass bills or laws or whatever all the words are for the legal things that are escaping me now, where they force you to give a portion of your taxes to a government entity to pay for something, maybe even that you hate. and if you decide I don't want to pay it that sounds a bit noble until they threaten to throw you in prison and take away your entire livelihood because you won't pay your taxes or you're seen as a tax evader and now even Christians will look at you and think well why aren't you doing what we're supposed to do and so it can be a tricky mire to lurk in trying to figure out how to pay taxes or how to have an impact. But my encouragement to you would be, this is my political statement for you, when you go to vote and don't do what I've done 95% of the time, which is I first am reading what I'm voting on when I get there, that's wrong. I'm wrong.

I'll admit it. I should do better. We all should. But when you go to vote and you're reading the bills they want to pass, and it's going to cost money. You have to ask yourself, is it really the government's responsibility to exact money from all of my neighbors to pay for this? Even if it's something that you want.

There's some things that it's just entirely inappropriate for the government to take money from people in order to fund. And then there's also some gray area here because governments obviously exist, They're given by God and they do need money and have a right to collect some taxes. And so this is one of the reasons why you should be looking for Christians that you know who have good heads to run for government office.

In fact, we met one at Ohio State yesterday and we had a nice conversation with him. And I hope we'll follow up because he seemed like he would be teachable about some good things and also on the right track in some good ways as well. we are encountering a time in our society now, though, where our government is becoming an increasingly big machine, where our government no longer can exist without taking more and more. And this is something that we've mentioned it before, but we're moving into being more socialist, which eventually moves into being communist. and it doesn't end well for really 99.999% of the people in that situation and the other 0.001% they're probably going to hell.

So it won't end well for them either. But this is not a good situation to be in where the government has decided that they are going to take care of everybody because the only way they can take care of everybody is by taking money from somebody else. The government doesn't produce its own things. so think about that when you're voting think about it when you're talking about social issues the next time someone says hey we should build a rec center in our city we need a levy to pay for it you should think about well why can't the people who want one just pay for it if they can't then maybe they don't need one and if they could they could build one without me having to pay for it or without me telling my other neighbors many of whom are on a fixed income at this point in their life, hey, your taxes just went up so we could have a place that kids can go on a water pad.

Another way that you can steal is through usury or interest. Okay, usury is the King James word. If you turn to Exodus 22, 25, you don't have to turn there. I'll read the verse. If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a money lender to him and you shall not exact interest from him. I don't think the Bible completely forbids interest from ever being a factor in any kind of equation.

I don't think if, you know, if a mortgage broker walked in here, I wouldn't tell him, hey man, you got to repent and get a new job. But this is about loving those around you, loving your neighbors, especially the poor. If somebody in your life needs to borrow money, you're not to charge them interest. In fact, we can do a whole sermon on this, but you're not even supposed to take something of his in a pledge so that he has to be able to still work.

And so one of the ways that we keep people in slavery is by charging them so much interest they can never pay us back. And then when they have trouble paying us back we make them give us something that we can hold on to as collateral And then they don even have the means they need to work and or maybe eat in the first place And you're effectively stealing from someone. And this is not a CRT thing from me.

If you look at the history of the United States of America, there's a thing, I forget exactly what it's called, but it's something like the slavery after the slavery. and it's when they freed black people from slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14th Amendment and all the things that happened back in the 1860s the very next thing the southerners did was they started loaning these black people money who didn't have anything and then they charged them exorbitant interest rates that they couldn't pay and then they said well hey you can just come work on my plantation and they got right back into slavery Except this time, there was some cycle of funding that supposedly was happening. But it was no different for them. It was stealing.

It was hating their neighbor. And it perpetuated for a long time. So every once in a while, if you wonder why people are still angry, though, about civil rights stuff, if you make the statement, well, slavery ended 160 years ago, you're a little bit wrong. There is a little more to it. It was wicked what they did. the whole purpose of your shrewdness the ultimate end of any of your God given gifts that he's given you for work and business is that you may support gospel missions and help the poor I'll say without reservation if we were to rebuild this society the first thing we ought to destroy after we demolish the baby murder clinics would be the payday loan places and all the houses of lottery and gambling this is how we keep people poor turn to Proverbs 23 you steal through vandalism wrongful taxation interest you also steal through your gluttony and your drunkenness you do a whole study through gluttony and overeating so there's a distinction between gluttony and overeating and there's distinctions people can make But generally speaking, verse 20 of Proverbs 23.

Listen to these two verses. Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat. I like the King James. It says riotous eaters of meat. Kind of makes me think of me and Mike, though, after we fast all day and go to Cain's. But maybe it applies to us.

I don't know. It says, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty. and slumber will clothe them with rags. Remember, your job is not to steal but to work. So if you sit around all day eating or getting drunk, you're going to be tired, you're going to sleep too much, you won't work. It's just that simple. Part of the problem with gluttony is not just, hey, that guy has an extra piece of pie once in a while and he's overweight.

The problem with gluttony is that gluttons, biblically speaking, were eating so much they were stealing food that was for others. It's almost hard to be a technical glutton in the United States because we have such an abundance. But if you can imagine a household that has a limited amount of food available to all the people and one person eating all of it, even if it wasn't overeating.

The Bible instructed the parents to kick them out, They haven't publicly stoned that persisted. So you don't even hang around gluttons. You don't hang around drunkards. They will influence you. You are stealing. In Proverbs 21, 17, whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man.

He who loves wine and oil will not be rich. You know, it's possible to take good gifts that God's given you, good gifts that God has given you, and overuse them. even good pleasures. Again, you're supposed to help others. And I dare say that in some of our cases, if we would cut back on some pleasures that we're actually technically entitled to, that were gifts from God, we may be able to help others a little bit more at times.

Interesting verse that just crossed my path today. We read a biography about Ann Judson, just a short little chapel library biography of Ann Judson and of course most people know who Adoniram Judson is and the biography mentions like hey most people know who he is but do you know his wife and part of what drew Ann Judson to the Lord was this verse in 1 Timothy 5 5 that apparently I didn't need to turn to because I I typed that one out, but it's she who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God, and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. So this has been Paul's instructing Timothy how to deal with the widows.

But listen to the next verse. But she who is self-indulgent is dead, even while she lives. That verse gripped Ann Judson, whose whole life was about being popular and having friends and indulging and going to parties and things of that sort. And I don't want to spoil the story for you, but the Lord saved her and then at about half point in her life, and then she spent the rest of her life absolutely suffering and serving Him.

And now she has eternal rewards for that. She gave up that which she couldn't keep for that which she could not lose. So that's a Jim Elliot quote, another missionary we should look up to. So you can steal from your neighbor through vandalism or not taking care of his stuff, taxation interest self you know gluttony drunkenness and even other areas But also you obligated by God to show hospitality 1 Peter 4 reminds us to show hospitality to one another without grumbling It's implied already that you're supposed to show hospitality.

Peter wants you to do it without grumbling as well. Romans 12.13 says, Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. and I think most people know the Malachi 3.8 verse will a man rob God you rob God when you're not bringing your tithes to him when you're not helping others with what he's given you now I get it you can't walk out of here and just take your entire savings account and just send it to some foreign nation where people are starving and then two weeks from now you need a car to get to work. I understand that there's a balance somewhere that we all have to strike between persisting in the world where we're expected to exist.

You have to spend some money to take care of your lawn if you're in certain neighborhoods just so you're not the house that looks bad. I get it. At the same time, I think we all can consider how we show hospitality to others. You steal from other Christians when you don't invite them in your home. When you don't welcome them in and feed them, expecting nothing in return.

And in particular, I think men of God, preachers, okay, Mike stays with us because we've known Mike a while. But you know, if any of you guys ever said, hey, we'd like Mike to come here, we'd like to feed him. That's an opportunity, you know. I love calling our potential pastor candidates and saying, hey, we actually have a house for you to stay in. You know, we have a family with an extra house.

Here you go. We'll take care of you. You will have no expense if you just visit us for a weekend, you know, for a couple days, whatever. Show hospitality, though, and part of this will a man rob God is you need to give. You need to give abundantly to your church. You need to give to missions, and you have to be somewhat discerning as well.

The easiest thing to tell people is, well, I only give through my local church. So if you're like me and you've got hundreds of these guys in Africa that send you pictures of orphans and tell you the Western Union of Money. I don't know how to filter all these things out. So I try to give to the church and to people I've actually met or organizations who are run by people I know I can trust.

And then at some point, I hope that that's going to a good cause. Back to Deuteronomy 22 now. So you show hospitality. Don't be overly self-indulgent, taking things that are beyond what you need so that there's enough for others. This includes not using all the hot water when you take a shower, kids. Think about how you vote.

Think about how you take care of other people's things. But in Deuteronomy 22 we read, You shall not see your brother's ox or sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. I don't even think I can imagine how difficult it would be to be sitting outside just enjoying the day maybe. Maybe I've got my own work to do. I've got my kid crying.

My wife's angry about something. Who knows what's going on? Not my wife. Some example of somebody else, of course. And I see an ox walking by loose. And I'm expected to go and help.

This isn't like your neighbor's cat got out. Okay? This is big. This is his livelihood. and you're to take care of it as if it were your own. Do you possibly think you're loving your neighbor as yourself if you watch his livelihood walk by and you do nothing? Remember, the Eighth Commandment is simply, in some ways, a specific application of love your neighbor as yourself.

Where the moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments. That means it's summarized there. if he doesn't live near you and you don't even know who he is, so you see an ox, you see something you know is not yours, you know it's of value to somebody else, it's important to them, it may even be what puts food on their table. It says, you shall bring it into your own house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it.

What do you think you do with an ox or a sheep that you bring in your house? You've got to feed it. like this is all implied here that you are investing your own resources to take care of your neighbor's stuff and I would say that that's what's contained in the 8th commandment you're obligated and I would also add you should do this without grumbling but I hope even if you grumble you do it and some of us have to grow into the not grumbling part I understand that in modern day there may be some other things that happen I don't see a lot of oxen walking around in fact I'd probably be scared personally but there's other ways you can help your neighbor if a guy's broke down on the side of the road somebody's dog gets out there's things you can do that show people you care about them and their property somebody's business you know somebody is swindling somebody else's business there's ways that you can try to be helpful I understand it can be scary I was in the line the other day at Aldi and this lady started asking for change and she's like asking for change again and I thought this is a trick that people do where they ask for change for a 20 and then they confuse the person enough and they make like a hundred bucks it's a trick people do that it works. And I thought, I wonder if I should say something.

But then I thought, well, maybe she's not stealing. So then I felt bad. But I guess if it's obvious, pretend. business for sure. Alright, moving right along. Another way that you are a thief and that I have been a thief and am a thief, turn to Ephesians 5, a verse that some of you may have well known about redeeming the time. You can steal time. so some of what I'm trying to do is explain some details that I think maybe we don't think about and some of it is I'm trying to maybe give you some of the non-obvious because a lot of us think oh well I don't steal stuff well maybe you don't but maybe you break the 8th commandment in another way and I want to help you be able to have no dominion no sin get dominion over you in Ephesians 5.15 Paul says Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise.

So he says, this is wisdom. He says, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. In the King James it says, to redeem the time. So a couple of ways that you don't redeem the time or I don't redeem the time. One is just general frivolousness or wastefulness. I think we all have known that feeling and in 2022 this is an easy one of looking up from your phone and wondering where has the time gone and realizing you just did nothing useful for anybody in the whole world I get it, sometimes we do things that are I don't want to say frivolous sometimes we do recreations I understand that Sometimes we just need to relax and rest from our work, too.

And we have to, you know, there's something fun to do and that's okay. I think that we need to be mindful, though, just like with eating or drinking, that there's an overindulgence of these things that ultimately is a violation of God telling you to redeem the time. This doesn't start when you're 18 either, kids. You're supposed to redeem the time now. you have, what, 24 hours a day?

Like 18,640 seconds or something. There's some email that used to go around. And you've got all these seconds every day that you can use for God's glory, that you can use to serve your parents. Certainly, about a third of them, you sleep already maybe more Redeem the time How many minutes or hours have you spent and just realized I wish I could have that back now right And don steal others time Listen to this Charles Spurgeon wrote this.

I believe he probably was something he was saying to his students at his seminary. As it is, listen, this is about tardiness. This is about being late. For some people, being late is just a matter of life. They make the joke, well, I was born late and I've never been on time since. Like, it's funny.

Well, listen to what Spurgeon said about it. As it is, we in this world cannot get away from the unpunctual. That means tardy. Nor get them away from us. And therefore, we are obliged to put up with them. He says, but we should like them to know that they are a gross nuisance and a frequent cause of sin through irritating the tempers of those who cannot afford to squander time as they do.

Punctuality is one of the minor moralities. So he's making the point, this isn't like adultery, okay? But it is one which every young man should carefully cultivate. The very smallness of the virtue makes its opposite vice the less excusable. So he says the fact that it's such a small thing is what makes it less excusable. He says it is as easy to be on time as it is to be five minutes late once you acquire the habit.

So the point is it's so easy the fact that you don't do it makes you even more inconsiderate. he says let it be acquired by all means and never lost again upon that five minutes Spurgeon's still quoting I'm still quoting him will depend a world of comfort to others and every Christian should consider this to be a very weighty argument we have no right to cause worry and aggravation to others when a little thoughtfulness on our part would prevent it if the engagement be for 12 o'clock we have no authority to make it 12.05 and by doing so we shall promote nobody's happiness. When you are late, I'm not talking about if you're late one time, you show up, you say I'm sorry, something happened, I get that. When you're a habitual person that's late, you are stealing other people time The people that got there on time and were ready to go and do the thing that you were expected to be there for you just stole 15 minutes of their life Maybe multiply that by 14 people you kept waiting who knows If lateness seems like no big deal to you, then just be that many minutes early all the time if those minutes mean nothing.

But of course they do. I had an older child. She's not here right now. Just so you guys don't look at the one that is. She came home late from being out somewhere one time. Said be home at 9.

She came home at 9.05. And she let me know, well, it's just not a big deal. I said, okay, well, I'm going to be home at 8.55 the next time. Well, all of a sudden it was a big deal, right? You all understand what I mean there. One other thing. this can get into some hairiness for people but don't be anxious Philippians 4 tells you let your reasonableness be known to all men be anxious for nothing when you're anxious even if it feels sudden and like it came upon you and it's not from you you cause unnecessary angst in others and it often wastes a lot of time.

We should work on resolving our anxieties. Stealing is ultimately the taking of something that isn't yours or the using of something that isn't yours without the owner's consent and approval. A couple more examples of things that maybe we haven't thought of. Using software that can be used without paying, but it requires payment is another form of theft.

So if somebody has software and maybe they're not sophisticated enough or they don't want to spend the money to put all sorts of license keys on it, so you can download it and use it all you want, but they ask you, hey, I ask you to pay for this if you use it. God sees that you're using it without paying for it. Taking candy from one of those honor boxes, I don't think we have them anymore, but...

There used to be a day when, especially at workplaces, there'd be a box with candy and chips and things, and you were supposed to take what you wanted and put a quarter in or a dollar, whatever the stuff cost. And people steal from those kinds of things. And they justify it because it's not enforced. There nobody standing there making sure that you not stealing so somehow they justify it and they think it okay And then another one this is a confession time I been a little bit convicted as I studied this Parking somewhere where you're not supposed to park unless you pay, but then not paying.

And we've taken advantage of that at Ohio State, right? And I was convicted, even reading through this and thinking through this, that if there's a place that says you don't park here, you don't park there unless you have a pass. So there's a number of ways for you to think through how you may be breaking the Eighth Commandment that you might ask the Lord to strengthen you to not break it.

So thus, if stealing is the taking of or the use of that which is not yours without the proper consent of the owner or not using it in the way the owner authorized you to use it. If 1 Corinthians 6.20 is true, and that you were bought with a price, thus you're owned by the Lord Jesus Christ who purchased you with His blood, then failure to offer yourself as that living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, is a violation of the Eighth Commandment as well. You're not your own.

Your body is not your own. Jesus purchased your body with his blood. He gets to tell you what to do with it. When we break any of God's commands, we break the whole law. Stealing included. This is one of the commandments where you almost can't help but break it no matter what you're doing.

Listen, murder is the purloining of life. Sabbath breaking is the unlawful appropriation of the Lord's Day for your own purposes. All lust and adultery are the lootings of someone else's wife or virginity. Lying is stealing someone's trust. Blasphemy is the theft of God's glory. Idolatry is pilfering the worship of God. and failure to worship and glorify the true God as God and the giving of that worship and glory to any other which is due unto him alone is a robbery of the affection and love that is due to our kind and gracious God and Father in heaven.

May he by his sovereign mercy grant us repentance from our thievery and enable us to walk in newness of life. I'd like to ask the men to