The Eighth Commandment

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 20:15

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Well, this morning as we press on in the Eighth Commandment, I wonder if anyone felt a certain sense of relief as we've been looking through the second table, maybe honoring our parents and not having any contention or hatred in our hearts, being pure in the way that we possess our vessels.
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I wonder if these things really hit some pretty sore spots in our own lives and conscience. But then we come to do not steal and, oh, this will be a fluff week.
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This is pretty easy. I don't steal. I wasn't raised that way. I can't think of anything I've stolen, so this is pretty good.
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Well, I want to assure you that no one should be feeling unscathed if we rightly understand the
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Eighth Commandment. I hope that will be the case this morning. Of course, we tend to focus on the big ways that something can be stolen.
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You shall not steal in terms of, you know, petty theft perhaps, maybe even great theft.
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I think the greatest heist that I'm aware of is actually in our backyard, the museum heist at the
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Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum, 1990. Still unsolved, 13 masterworks of art that were stolen from that museum.
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I think they say it's estimated around $600 million worth, yet to be recovered. What's the point of having it, right, if it's rolled up in some closet somewhere in East Boston?
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So we tend to think as long as we haven't done something on that scale, as long as we don't walk out of the Walmart self -checkout with a few things unscanned, we've pretty much aced the
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Eighth Commandment. You shall not steal. We don't steal, right? Well, we consider the dynamics of theft.
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We will actually recognize that the Tenth Commandment is really born out here in the Eighth Commandment, that what begins as the sort of seedbed in covetousness bears fruit in terms of theft.
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We find often that theft has this language of strong desire or covetousness bound within it.
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A classic example of this is Joshua chapter 7, another famous theft, the theft of Achan.
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So you have the Israelites at Ai. Israel, of course, is making conquests in the land, and as they go forth and all of these peoples are falling before them, they've just seen the walls of Jericho topple down, and Joshua, a good commander, recognizes we really don't need that many troops to go take the city of Ai.
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It's very small, it's not well defended, it's nothing like Jericho, so we'll just take a few troops and we'll make quick work of that, and they're defeated.
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And so as they inquire of the Lord why they were defeated, the Lord prosecutes them. And this is what the
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Lord says, Israel has sinned. They have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them.
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They have even taken some of the accursed things. They've both stolen and deceived.
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So here you have theft. They've stolen. Now the accursed things were things put under the ban.
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That is, there was to be a wholesale destruction of those that had wrongly possessed the land that God was giving to His people.
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They were now illegitimate in this land, and they were to be wholesale destroyed. This is the nature of the kingdom intruding upon the promised land.
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And so anything that was preserved from them is accursed by God. And this is what happened.
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Achan ended up smuggling out some desirable things and hiding them in his tent.
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He was a thief among the people of Israel. So Joshua, narrowing it down to Achan, corners him and says, tell me now what you have done.
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And Achan answered Joshua and said, I've sinned against the Lord God of Israel. This is what
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I've done. When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, shekels of silver, a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels,
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I coveted them, and so I took them. And here they are, hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent with all the silver under it.
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Now, if we're reading Joshua 7 carefully, we might notice some allusions to Genesis 3.
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We have God, as it were, cornering the offender. What is it that you've done?
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We have the offender owning up. This is what I've done. I saw, and it was beautiful to my sight, and I strongly desired it, so I took it.
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In other words, this is the fall of Achan mirroring the fall of Adam. This is the strong desire, the strong covetousness, reacting to something desirable and taking it and bringing forth this offense from God.
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So when we consider the eighth commandment, it brings us all the way back to the fall of Genesis 3. The single act of theft that brought ruin into God's paradise.
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And ever since then, mankind is born as thieves. Ever since Genesis 3, every human being is born a thief.
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Born as those who strongly desire and take what is not theirs to take, strongly use or utilize in a way that they ought not to utilize, things that they amass, things that are given to them.
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We're all born as thieves. You parents know this. You've never taught your children to steal. You have to correct your children not to steal.
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Children are born in a way that they naturally take the things that don't belong to them. When they see some toy that their sibling has, that's now their toy.
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Some new gift somehow becomes their gift. And so you don't teach children to steal. Children are born thieves.
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To steal, in other words, is already in the heart of fallen man. It needs only to be borne out in action by opportunity.
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The fall, and we considered this last week, the fall has disrupted and disordered our relationship to God, and therefore our relationship to our neighbor, and with that, our relationship to the world around us and all material goods.
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The fall, the effect of sin on a person's mind and heart, this sinful nature that we're born with, distorts and disorders this relationship so that we cannot love
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God nor our neighbor aright. And therefore we misuse the material world, we misuse possessions granted by God against God's purposes and against our neighbor.
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Van Til in his treatment on the Eighth Commandment says so well, "'Sin made man deny that he was a creature "'subject to God's law.'"
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Right, man became a God in his own sight. Man became subject to his own will, his own desire, rather than the will of God.
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Sin made man deny that he was a creature of God. Accordingly, he looked upon this world as just being there.
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Here it is. Dog eat dog, my disposal. I'll go and wrap my hands around this world and squeeze what
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I can out of it. There's those who gain and there's those who lose. It's just the law of the jungle.
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And that's the way that people in defiance of God think about the world. It's just there somehow.
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And Van Til says in this way, it's up for every man, up to every man to grasp what he can. Get what you can out of life.
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You got one shot. Get all you can out of it. Squeeze all you can out of it. Moreover, when one finally succeeded in grasping some portion of it, he felt as though he could do whatever he wanted with it without any responsibility to neighbor or to God.
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This is the effect of sin. If I go out and I earn or I carve out some way in life, then that's mine.
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I do with it as I see fit. There's no obligation toward God or toward neighbor. This is a distortion from the fall.
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Paul corrects the church at Corinth by asking that great question, what do you have that you didn't receive?
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What do you have that you didn't receive? Whatever relationships, whatever goods, whatever current position you have in your life, whatever skills, whatever strengths, whatever it is that you possess was something that you have received.
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You are not self -made men and women. No one is a self -made man or woman.
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We all stand in the things that we receive, and that means we have a responsibility with who we are and what we have, a responsibility toward God and toward fellow man.
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That's what the eighth commandment requires us to acknowledge. The eighth commandment requires us to view ourselves not as possessors with pure rights of possession and an absolute will to do therewith, but to recognize we are stewards.
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Stewards are those who recognize they are entrusted with possessions, positions, skills, relationships, and opportunities.
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We are not possessors, we are stewards. That is, we manage what God has entrusted to us.
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We manage our time, our skills, our strengths, our relationships. We manage those things as stewards, knowing that as stewards, we must give an account.
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Jesus says every idle word is accounted for. We are those who must give an account to God, and that kind of recognition is the recognition of a steward.
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These things aren't mine to do with as I please. My master has given them to me, and I'm gonna have to speak to him. I'll have to show him where I bore interest or where there was a loss, where I was faithful or where I stumbled.
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I depend upon my master's goodwill, my master's mercy. He's entrusted me with these things.
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The Scriptures tell us this is not only with goods, but even with our time or with our talents, whatever the talent may be in the logic of the parable.
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Wayne Grudem, so helpful in a Themelios article that he wrote on this point, he said, the eighth commandment contributes to human flourishing in three pivotal ways, okay?
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So the eighth commandment contributes to God's purpose for humanity, right?
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Even in the sort of pre -fallen paradise when the eighth commandment was written on the flesh of Adam's heart, and he inherently instinctively followed it, he would have flourished as a result of that.
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How so? How so? How does the eighth commandment help humanity to flourish in three ways?
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Well, this is Grudem's insight. First, it presents the opportunity for human achievement by entrusting property to us.
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That's the first point, right? As Watson says, if the commandment forbids theft, then logically there must be something that you have a right to, something that is, in a sense, yours if it can be stolen from you.
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So the commandment establishes the idea of private property. And with that, it presents an opportunity, again, this is the first point, for human achievement by giving private property.
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Now you can do something with these things that you're possessing. Now there's a place for opportunity, for achievement, for provision.
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Secondly, it expects human achievement by making us accountable stewards.
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Again, the idea that because we have possessions that are given to us, we are accountable for them.
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We recognize that we have obligations toward God and toward fellow man. Third, this command expects human beings to enjoy the products made from the earth and respond with thankfulness to God.
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These all, all of these three points, Grudem's rightly arguing, would have been how
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Adam and Eve and their progeny, short of the fall, would have kept the eighth commandment.
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They would have recognized there's things that I'm entrusted with. It's mine in a provisional sense, but it's mine as a steward.
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And I have obligations, therefore, to God and to fellow man with it. And as I share those things,
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I glorify God. And as I receive from others those things entrusted to them, I also am thankful.
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I enjoy them. I thank them. And I thank God from whom all things come. So the logic of this commandment, contra -Marxism implies personal property, right?
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It was Karl Marx who said communism is, if nothing else, communism is the abolishing of private property.
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Well, the eighth commandment establishes private property. And as we see, we're given things as stewards to, in that sense, own, to make and utilize, and to enjoy.
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To enjoy. Along these lines, the eighth commandment forbids all manner of stealing and theft and any derivative harm we may cause our neighbor in terms of our economic relationships.
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That's what the eighth commandment is about. That in no way do we impede or obstruct or deprive our neighbor.
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These are our possessions for the sake of God and the neighbor, alongside provision for ourselves.
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In this way, the law prevents the rich from taking advantage of the poor. A major concern for the prophets.
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And as modern affluent Westerns, we just read right past it. In most settings, for some reason, we think we're the poor.
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We're like, oh yeah, Jeff Bezos, you know, doom on him. Compared to the global population, we are the affluent ones.
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We need to look in the mirror. The law prevents the rich from taking advantage of the poor.
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But by the logic that we understand the eighth commandment, it also prevents the poor from robbing the rich.
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Which is the world, our society's answer to inequity. Let's have the poor basically rob the rich.
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That will bring about justice. Not in God's sight, that's not justice. When we survey the various Mosaic laws, like gleaning the edges of a field, or giving tithes and alms, which was a part of the worship of God and a relieving of the needs of the community, which also sort of flowered into releases from debt.
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You have the seventh Sabbath year, the Jubilee year, when everything reverts to original ownership.
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And so the biblical view on material possessions does not leave anyone comfortable, right?
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There's a pinch on everyone, why? Because no one can say, absolutely, this is mine.
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Rather they can say, as a steward, this has been entrusted to me. And there's obligations toward God and toward my neighbor.
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And therefore, I seek to serve God according to His will and bless my neighbor.
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Craig Blomberg has written a lot on material possessions in the Gospels. And he argues that, especially in Old Testament law concerning the land, every contemporary economic model is challenged.
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There's really no economic model that can quite get its arms all the way around how
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God uses materiality in the Commonwealth of Israel. So on the one hand, you have a sharp critique of sort of statism, overwhelming personal roots, right?
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Uprooting private interest, uprooting sort of personal property or lineage or roots in the land.
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You know, the state doesn't have this absolute determinism that's heavily criticized in the way that God commands
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His people. But on the other hand, you don't have this sort of triumph of libertarian individualism over the community or at the expense of the community.
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There is this perfect balance. On the one hand, the individual is protected in terms of what they can achieve and how they are to provide, and the state doesn't loom over that.
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But that doesn't mean the individual is absolute. The individual must recognize their obligations to the community and have regard for the neighbor and the needs of the poor among them.
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This is how God has designed the Eighth Commandment to function. A surprisingly large amount of Jesus' teaching concerns wealth, labor, and commerce.
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If you have eyes to see it and you read through the Gospels and you just have a neon orange highlighter and make a point to highlight any teaching of Jesus or any issue in the
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Gospels that would have something to do with wealth, poverty, commerce, labor, injustice, the
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Gospels would be glowing orange. Jesus comes and preaches good news to the poor.
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The Song of Mary, the Magnificat. She says, you've made the rich empty and the poor full.
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Jesus has come not as some sort of agrarian Marxist revolutionary, as some would have it, but Jesus has come to rectify the injustice of material possession in ways that distort
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God's original purpose. So again, the Eighth Commandment rectifies obligations to God, first table, and then obligations to neighbor.
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This is in part how we love our neighbor. Peter Brown, by the way, a very important book called
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Through the Eye of the Needle. He was a man who not only studied but basically coined the study of late antiquity.
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And he wrote this book Through the Eye of the Needle to show how, at least for the prevening centuries of the early church, they constantly wrestled with materiality, use of wealth.
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What is a righteous and just way for the church to administer wealth in the
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Roman Empire? And so they wrestled with these things. You didn't have many who were wealthy, as Paul says, but you do have the occasional
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Joseph of Arimathea. How was wealth to be used? What's a proper place? How do you prevent Sapphires and Ananiases from sprouting in the church?
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How can there be a right understanding of the privilege and therefore responsibility of wealth?
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In the affluent West today, perhaps we desperately need to return to actually wrestling with this as a challenge.
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We just read right past it. We don't even wrestle with it. Jesus has many, many stark warnings about the danger of wealth.
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We read right past them. We think this is poetic. This is abstract. This is something that belongs in the first century.
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We read right past it. We open up the prophets. We read right past the prophets when they decry the unintentional oppression of those who are better off and their calloused ignorance to those in need.
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We read right past it. And that's why we can come on a Sunday morning and think, Eighth Commandment, easy, easy breezy.
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I don't struggle with this one. We need to remember that the first table is the foundation for the second table.
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And as Van Til said so rightly, not all men have faith. And for this reason, Christians should help remove injustice between men.
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Since the entrance of sin into the world, man has become man's wolf. A beautiful image.
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The result of the fall is not only this sort of, you know, resentment toward God and a fleeing from the presence of God, but it's also you become a wolf to fellow man.
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How can they serve me, meet my needs? I'll maintain or pursue a relationship so far as it serves my interest.
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So we ignore and we break the commandment of God to our own loss, to our own ruin. A society that breaks the
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Eighth Commandment breaks it to their own loss and to their own ruin. A society cannot stand long where the
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Eighth Commandment is not held in honor among all. And we are quickly watching our society decay.
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Go to some of the coastal cities and watch society decay for breaking the
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Eighth Commandment of God. You shall not steal. Empires were hollowed out in decay because of this very thing.
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Corruption that didn't allow the empire to remain. It was lost, it was pulled asunder, all because you shall not steal was flouted and disregarded.
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Let me ask you a question. Do you see an increase in our culture in respect for private property? We live in Hubbardston and every now and then we'll walk around the
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Hubbardston Park. I never fail to take a moment to realize it's astounding to me that there's not graffiti all over that place.
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It's amazing. How many more years do we have of that? Right, as Fitchburg kind of encroaches on Hubbardston.
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No, just kidding. Just kidding. I grew up in Leamington, that's the big rival. It's amazing to me that at every little opportunity and spot there's not carved messages or graffiti or litter, right?
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We're living in a place where private property is no longer respected as it once was.
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Here's a case in point. I grew up, maybe some of you did as well. We never locked the door at night.
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And it wasn't because we lived in some remote setting. We had houses every 20 yards on a very busy street pretty much right close to the heart of downtown
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Leamington. We never locked our doors at night. It was always open doors. You never even thought about it.
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We didn't feel unsafe. Now I live in a condo. We have literally neighbors all around us.
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We lock every window, every door. Even if I'm just going out down the street for 10 minutes, I lock the door.
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How many of us grew up in a way that there was a natural respect for private property and part of that was a natural respect for your neighbor.
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So if you saw something as a threat to their property, you'd look out for them. We grew up sort of roaming around the neighborhood because it was just implied that other neighbors would keep an eye out, make sure the kids were okay.
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So it was a certain trust. Or if you saw something being done, you'd look out for your neighbor in that regard.
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Now it's kind of like, hey, you know, everyone stay in their own lane. Mind your own business.
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That's not my property, not my problem. The Eighth Commandment forbids that kind of isolated way of living.
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Every 15 seconds in San Francisco, a car is broken into. Every 15 seconds.
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There was a proposition that was passed that reduced theft from a felony to a misdemeanor.
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I watched an interview that a local news station put out with a carjacker who had just been released and he was charged 44 times, which meant he was caught, only caught 44 times for carjacking, right?
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For smashing car windows and going through and taking what he could to go sell on the black market.
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And he said this during the interview. The DA doesn't care. Shout out to the
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DA. I love this DA. He's the best DA. He doesn't care that I've been caught 44 times.
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I go in, maybe at most I spend two days and I'm out on the street again. I can just get right back into it.
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Literally leaving the courthouse to go smash car windows. And by the way,
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God's law, if we follow it all the way through, if you look at Exodus 22, God's law requires the thief to make restitution.
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There's ways that this factors out depending on what's stolen, but the basic principle is that there's a twofold restoration.
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So in principle, what you sought to gain, you now lose. And the person that had to go through the trouble of being stolen from actually receives double.
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So they get back not only what was originally theirs, but then even more. A full restoration doubled on top of that.
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And the idea is the thief isn't withdrawn. He's not put in some correctional facility. He's not given a ticket.
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Whatever it was that he took, that amount, that equivalent value gets taken from him. That's a wonderfully wise way to deal with theft.
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That's a wonderfully wise way to deal with theft. There's an immediate repercussion. It's not a fine. It's not just spending a time out for a couple nights.
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It's saying now you're losing and trying to illegitimately gain. With animals under certain conditions, it could be a fourfold or even a fivefold restoration.
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But instead today, the victim receives almost no compensation. Just like, oh, sorry, these things happen.
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I hope you had insurance. So there's no restitution. And then the offender is taken out of society.
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And it's not that society actually successfully rehabilitates them. It almost reinforces theft.
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And then the society actually has to pay. So there's a loss all around. Not only is the victim at a loss and there's no restitution, and then there's a loss in terms of how the community to engage because the offender is taken out of the community.
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But now the community has to pay for the offender. The state of California pays $109 ,000 per prisoner per year.
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That's coming out of the taxpayers' pockets. And now the state is stealing in order to pay for stealers.
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You see the problem here when we depart from God's law. A society ignores and breaks this commandment to their own loss and ruin.
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Jeremiah 2 says, a thief is ashamed when he is found out, so the house of Israel will be ashamed.
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Well, maybe in Jeremiah's day, thieves aren't even ashamed anymore. A thief is ashamed when they're found out.
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Now thieves do television interviews. Or they'll be in a podcast talking about how easy it is to shoplift in the days of self -checkout.
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You just have to pretend that you missed it and you just walk right out. If they don't catch you, then you got away. There's absolutely no shame in regard to theft, which
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I hope you recognize is a further symptom of the judgment that has already come upon this nation.
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And when you see symptoms of that, an absolute disregard to God's law in such a way there's not even a hiddenness or a shame.
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It used to be that hypocrisy was the sort of tribute that vice paid to virtue. Well, no longer.
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You don't have to be hypocritical at all. Yeah, I steal, so what? Everybody steals.
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A really tragic point of this is the squatters in New York City. Has anyone heard of these?
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There was this law passed in New York City that if someone is in a property for at least 30 calendar days, they are given basically tenant status.
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And so you have people who they go about life and they look for a home that seems to be unoccupied and they'll break in and make it their own.
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Now let's say it was a death in the family or so on. Someone comes out of state to go check on the property and now there's these strangers living in their home.
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So they call the police or they maybe turn off the utilities or they change the locks.
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And what happens when the police show up in New York City? They get arrested. It's illegal to change the locks or turn off the utilities because the squatters have been given tenant status.
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So again, watching TV interviews where they have a room full of people basically saying,
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I'm going into debt because I'm not allowed to turn off the utilities for these strangers that have squatted in my house.
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And there's absolutely no shame at all. We break this commandment to our own loss and ruin.
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A society cannot exist that disregards the Eighth Commandment. You shall not steal.
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So what is forbidden in the Eighth Commandment? How does this relate to us? And then what's the remedy for it? That's where we're going this morning.
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Well, our catechism, our Baptist catechism, I think rightly says, the Eighth Commandment forbids whatever does or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbor's wealth or outward state.
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Notice that it's not just a physical item that you take. It's anything that you do that may hinder your own or your neighbor's state or status or wealth.
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Whatever you do that obstructs or hinders their advancement or their provision, that breaks the
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Eighth Commandment. I like, by the way, that it says our own or our neighbor's wealth.
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Our own or our neighbor's wealth. I think that's really important. You know, you watch these documentaries about the sort of opioid crisis or the fentanyl crisis in some places.
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In Las Vegas, it's illegal to be out on the streets. So the way they deal with that is they basically force their addicts sort of underground in these large tunnels that run underneath the
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Vegas Strip. I remember watching an interview with a man who has this whole ministry about sort of shining light into these dark places where society doesn't have these people on their radar screens.
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They're just there in need, doing what they can to get by living in these really dark tunnels.
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So they go in there, they give out supplies, first aid kits, food, basically try to get them to come into treatment.
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The thing that amazes him is how you would think that they would be running with the opportunity.
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They say, you don't have to pay a dime. We're gonna give you all your meals. We're gonna get you into a program.
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We're gonna get you job training. Everything will be taken care of. You'd think they would run to that. And he says, we see the same people year after year.
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We've given them all this off for 1 ,000 times. And they don't come. So the interviewer's kind of, well, why is that?
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And he goes, well, what's your biggest stress in life right now? And the interviewer said, well, you know, probably bill pressure to make money to pay off some of the bills that I have.
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And he says, so imagine just letting that go. Saying, you know, I'm done being in a community.
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I'm done having to earn and work in order to meet these. I'm just gonna let it all go. So there's an absolute freedom here.
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It's sort of a, yeah, you're in a tunnel and you're sort of scrapping for survival, but as long as these goods keep coming in from charitable ministries, it's like,
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I've got no overhead concerns. All right, perfect peace. I don't have to deal with stress. I don't have these problems.
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And there's a way that that actually is breaking the eighth commandment. You're preventing your own health, well -being, estate in advancement.
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Very wonderful insights here. And I think we're going to see this a lot more as people opt out of society in a normal pattern of vocation, work, provision, advancement, and so forth.
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That's breaking the eighth commandment, why? That's not God's intention for you. You are not an image of God to go waste away in a tunnel unobserved.
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You are an image bearer of God. There's a lot that comes with imaging God for his purposes in this world.
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And you are not your own in an absolute sense. You belong to God. To him, you must give an account.
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So you don't have the choice of letting go as it were. You must be concerned about your own wealth, your own outward estate, and that of your neighbor.
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You see? Well, how can we keep the eighth commandment? Really, the rest of our time, I want to just bring our attention to Ephesians 4, verse 28.
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Because this is Paul's answer to keeping the eighth commandment. Ephesians 4, 28.
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Let him who stole, steal no longer. Rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good.
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So that he may have something to give him who has need. Ephesians 4, 28.
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Now Ephesians 4, 28, we see has three sort of chunks, three turning points within the logic of the passage.
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Let him who steals, steal no longer. So we could say that is, let a person have integrity.
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Let someone who had been a thief, someone who had been dishonest, someone who had been self -seeking, self -serving, let him now have integrity.
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Let him who stole, steal no longer. Rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good.
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That is, let him be industrious. Let him be productive. Let him be fruitful.
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So that he may have something to give to him who has need. That is, let him be generous.
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So integrity, industry, generosity. Those will be our points here.
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And how do we keep the eighth commandment? Integrity, industry, generosity.
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That's how we keep the eighth commandment. Integrity. Let him who steals, steal no longer.
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Paul is addressing a group of people where he could rightly say, such were some of you, right?
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You came from all walks of life, all manner of backgrounds. I know some that maybe grew up shoplifting.
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That was just, you saw what your parents did or what your friends did and you just followed in that train.
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You never had any complex, any guilt, any consciousness about it. It's just getting ahead. You gotta do what you gotta do to get by.
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Such were some of you. No longer. Let him who steals, steal no longer. So if you understand the full depth of the eighth commandment we see, in one way or another, everyone is prone to stumble because the eighth commandment requires perfect integrity.
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That means there's no possession I have that I don't rightly recognize why
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I have it, how I'm to use it for my own provision as well as to meet needs for my neighbors and to do so in a way that glorifies
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God and follows through on God's purpose for my life. Perfect integrity with all of my possessions.
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Perfect integrity with all of my position. Perfect integrity with all of my strength and my skills.
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Perfect integrity with every hour of the day. That's what the eighth commandment requires.
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Anyone feeling uncomfortable yet? I hope so. Do you procrastinate when it comes to any of your work?
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C .R. Wiley made the point that the household has become the sort of refuge from productivity, right?
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You're productive at work and what is your home to you? You go home and you throw the muddy boots off to the side and the home is the place where you don't have to be productive.
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That's now where you have you time, right? This is me time. This is, you know,
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Bruins and beer time. I hope the Bruins pull through, you know, another victory over the Leafs, let's hope. This is me time.
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In other words, I'm not gonna be productive now. Well, C .R. Wiley makes the point that that's a relatively new way of understanding the household.
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Throughout most of human civilization, the household was the center of productivity. Yeah, you had various things to do outside of the home, but you came home to be productive in ways that you couldn't be outside of the home.
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This was a home where you mastered certain skills. This was a home where you produced things for the good of the community and the neighbor.
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So we need to get back to the idea of the household not being the absence of productivity, the sort of refuge and spa from work, but actually the place of a different kind of work toward a different end, a productive household.
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Are you straightforward and diligent in every respect at all times? Whatever task it is before you, are you diligent in doing that task?
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Some guys can show up 30 minutes early to their work shift, polished boots, and be diligent all the way through, and that's tremendous.
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God bless them. They know that that's an important part of their witness. It's how, in part, God is going to bless them in a temporal way.
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They'll be able to advance with that sort of consistency and dependability, but for some reason, as soon as they step outside of that work environment, where does all that diligence go?
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Now, you know, well, can you follow through on this or that? Well, what about this chore, this errand, this study, this book read?
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I thought you were diligent. What happened? What happened to all that wonderful diligence? Your employer should not be the only one who understands you to be diligent.
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Oh, who really is? Who could be like that all of the time? Who could be productive like that all the time?
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Who doesn't procrastinate? It's like a thief saying everybody steals. Everybody, everybody, you know, you gotta cheat a little to get by.
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It's the way of the world. You gotta be street smart, you know? You fudge things here or there, you know?
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You take your, take your, you know, your car to the mechanic and, you know, you kind of fudge some things, you know?
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You try to get by. You try to, hey, you know, you pat my back, I'll pat yours. There's little ways. It's just gotta be street smart, right?
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Everybody does it. I'm not gonna be robbed. So the answer is you're gonna rob them. You're gonna steal.
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You see what the Eighth Commandment forbids. Let him who stole steal no longer. Part of the problem is a thief thinks nothing of their theft.
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It's a wonderful thing. It's a fruit of the Lord's work in someone's life when they develop a consciousness about dishonesty.
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That's a wonderful thing. Someone who had been clothed in dishonest gain for much of their life, and then when they come to the
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Lord, all of a sudden they have this consciousness and it troubles them. They feel very guilty about things they have.
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It's sort of very uncomfortable for them. You've been in that position. It's sad.
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This happens all the time now. You're at a restaurant, and we were talking about this yesterday morning. And some worker's like, hey,
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I got something for you. You know, don't worry. It's on the house. And it's like, don't put me in this position. You're trying to be kind to me, but this isn't yours to give.
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You're making me an accomplice to theft. You know, hey, don't worry. This one's on the house. It's like, well, is this your house?
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Or is this a restaurant that you work for? You know, what's the authority here that you can do this?
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A thief thinks nothing of their theft. It's their way of life. They're actually satisfied in their theft.
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Look what I got. And look what I got away with. Look how this worked out. Look how I got ahead.
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Augustine in his Confessions, and he's writing this in his mid -40s, and the whole
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Confessions, which are tremendous to read. You could read it like a devotional. Are written as a long -form prayer to God.
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This whole thing is, he's recounting his life and his conversion experience, and the whole thing's written as a prayer to God, and as a praise to God.
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And he recounts this episode in his life, and he's with all of his friends. It was late at night. They were playing out on the streets.
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Usually, a group of kids late at night, nothing good comes from that. He was with his friends, and they decided, they were bored, they decided, you know, here's our sort of neighbor's estate, and here's this pear tree that's nice and full of pears.
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Let's rob it. Let's take as many pears as we can. They weren't hungry.
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In fact, he said, we took a few bites, we didn't even, we weren't hungry at all. So we ended up just throwing them to a bunch of hogs.
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It was just stealing to then throw it over to waste. And this is what
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Augustine recognized. He says, doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden.
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We wouldn't ransack our own pear tree. That wasn't the drive. It was the fact that the tree wasn't ours.
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We weren't supposed to do this. He says, such was my heart, oh God. Such was my heart.
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He's looking, he's just saying, I can't believe that I could have acted in that way.
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I can't believe I had a heart that just wanted to injure my neighbor's property for no reason at all, but to injure my neighbor.
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So he's recognizing, even at a young age, just this resentment and this sort of, you know, wicked desire that was welling up within him.
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He says, it was wretched and I loved it. It was wretched and I loved it.
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I loved my own undoing. You see, this is a result of what the
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Lord is showing him now that he's come to grace and he recognizes so much of my sin wasn't the need.
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What did AOC say, you know, if they don't go and steal bread, then, you know, they might not have something to eat that night.
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Are they going to steal Wonder Bread when they break into Gucci stores in the mall? No, it wasn't opportunity.
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It was evil and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. This is the condition of sinfulness.
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It wasn't out of opportunity. So much out of just an opportunity to do evil. So we need integrity.
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This is what the Lord will produce in the lives of his people. Men and women of integrity. How are we the salt and light of a society that's fallen and corrupt?
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Integrity, integrity. Why was it that Egypt was spared through a dismal famine that was corrupting the world?
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Because a man at the top named Joseph had integrity. We see
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Job and we see his integrity. Look at David and through so much of his life, he was that man after God's own heart.
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And he had such integrity that in one of the Psalms, he says, God, examine me and search out my integrity.
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Have you ever prayed like that? Do you have the kind of integrity in your walk with God that you would say, Lord, test my integrity?
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Search how much integrity I have, right? Be like, you know, the old shipbuilders that go around and sort of kick the shipboard, looking for the sound, making sure it was stable.
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Lord, go around and kick the edges of my life. See how much integrity I have. Integrity is a guide of safety for those who trust the
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Lord. Proverbs has a lot to say about the man of integrity. A poor man who has integrity is better than a rich man in all his perversity.
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In fact, I think what Proverbs is saying there is many men are poor because they have integrity. Many men will remain poor because they are men of integrity.
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Maybe they're in a line of work where the only way to get ahead, the only way to make bank is if you lose your integrity.
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You kind of know the value, but you're gonna triple it. You recognize where there's leverage, and though it's at the loss of your neighbor, you're gonna press it.
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That's the only way to get ahead, and you argue everyone has to do this. This is just the nature of the business. Well, maybe you're in the wrong business.
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Or maybe you have to recognize you're not gonna be as successful because you need to maintain your integrity. And by the way, you will be blessed in so doing.
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I think in God's purpose in the world, and while we still have something of a free market, if you have that integrity and you have fair weights and fair measures, customers will come to you eventually, right?
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They'll want to do business with a man who has integrity. So we need integrity.
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Proverbs 20 says that a man who has integrity, his children are blessed. Some of you grew up, and you didn't have examples of integrity in this way.
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But now you have the opportunity in your own life to be an example of integrity, to be a blessing to your children, to teach them the virtue of honest gain through hard work.
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Part of having integrity is hating anything that's deceptive or dishonest.
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Hating it, hating sin is having integrity. Delighting in everything that's righteous and pure, that's part of having integrity.
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One of the questions you can ask yourself in this regard as far as a diagnostic of whether or not you have integrity is are you the same person to all people?
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Is there a Sunday morning you and a Monday morning you? Are you the same person at all times and all places, in all forms of company?
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If your church showed up, if we crashed you for a Saturday barbecue and you were with your family or with your relatives or with a group of your friends, would you be comfortable or would you be very uncomfortable?
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Ah, now I have to somehow play both sides. Then it means you don't have integrity.
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You're not walking in a way that is pleasing to God. So the first way we keep the eighth commandment is integrity.
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Let him who stole steal no longer. Industry, secondly, industry.
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Ephesians 4 .28, let him who stole steal no longer but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good.
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So rather than depriving now, there is producing. Rather than sort of robbing, there is an act of creation, creating things that are good, needful.
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So the apostle, we see this throughout his letters, he encourages putting off one type of behavior by putting on another.
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And he says for one who was looking to avoid work by stealing, he must now avoid stealing by working.
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Similar advice, 1 Thessalonians 4 .10, you get the sense that this was a big problem among the early Christians.
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Arguably because the early Christians, so much of their gospel witness was through charity.
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They were the ones going out to the fields, taking those that had been abandoned. Children that were left to die because they were undesirable.
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In the ancient Roman world, the sort of pater potestas, the head of the household, if his slaves had babies, and they could, slaves could have relationships, or maybe even the master would have relations with his slave.
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If he didn't want that child, it was out in the field. Well, the mother had no say. There's good reason to think that the early
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Christian church was able to turn the empire upside down simply because they sought after those cast off orphans.
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Or they worked to free slaves. They raised funds as it were to help free their own among their assemblies.
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And so there was this gospel witness that was running through almost all of their activity.
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And as soon as they were charitable, there were fleecers among them. Right?
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Oh, we heard these Christians like giving out bread and clothing. We heard these Christians love to share.
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In fact, their God commands them to share. Looks like I don't have to work as hard if I just join their ranks.
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And so this seems to be addressed in many letters. We heard you, brethren, Paul says, 1
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Thessalonians 4, that you increase more and more, that you aspire to lead a quiet life and mind your own business and work with your own hands as we commanded you so that you may walk properly toward those who are outside and lack nothing.
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So Paul's solution is work with your own hands so that you'll advance more and more so that you can live a quiet life, so that you can meet your needs and not lack anything, but almost crowning all of that so that you can walk in a proper way to those that know you.
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It's not good Christian witness to be seen as a man of dishonest gain, to provide not with your own hands, but with the hands of others.
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In other words, there's no place for grifters in the kingdom of God. He says it again in the next letter to the
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Thessalonians. Even when we were with you, we commanded you this. If anyone won't work, he won't eat.
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Because we hear that there are some who walk among you in this disorderly manner, not working at all, but are just busybodies.
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Now those who are such, we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.
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You can almost read between the lines to see what the issue is. I doubt the people involved in this way, the men involved in this way thought themselves as thieves.
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Just like, well, you know, I really wanna be strategic about how I'm gonna bring about this new kind of career shift.
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You know, I'm getting out of the idol industry, and so I just need some time to kinda, you know, relearn and reorient and so on.
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And I really love that you guys do these big agape feasts, by the way. This is really great. You know, do you mind if I bring some Tupperware with me each week?
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And Paul says, go get a job and work with your own hands. Eat your own bread. All right, the church is to be a resource for those in need, not to create need that people can then utilize to enrich themselves.
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This means we have to be very discerning and very thoughtful about how we meet the needs or how we engage in mercy ministry.
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Because there's a way of actually enabling poverty, of actually creating and reinforcing a cycle of need and provision.
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And at some point, someone who's received the beneficence of the church has to hear something like, work with your own hands and eat your own bread.
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Right, you've been brought in by charity and now you should be the one who's exercising it toward others, not still receiving it.
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And so there's a whole logic to the way that needs are to be met by the church of God. Hard labor, Wenzel says, will be necessary and men will always seek to escape it by transferring it to others.
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This is essentially breaking the Eighth Commandment. I don't wanna have to work for my own. I wanna profit off of others' labor.
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So the Eighth Commandment encourages, in fact, it demands industry, productivity. If anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his household, he's denied the faith.
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You almost get the sense that Paul's just like, why do I have to keep saying this? Why are there men that refuse to work, that refuse to work, refuse to provide?
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They're denying the faith. So being industrious is at the very heart of being a
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Christian because what is a Christian? A Christian is a faithful steward of all that God has given them.
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A faithful steward. A faithful steward doesn't waste and wait for things to be given to him.
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He doesn't have things just to sort of go through them for his own benefit and then fleece others.
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No, a steward has been given things to be used according to the master's purpose. This means we'll make wise use of all of our possessions, wise use of all of our opportunities, patiently, prayerfully seeking to balance the various competing demands on our lives.
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Provision for families, probably at the very top. It's our immediate requirement and responsibility to provide for our own, provide for our household.
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But then not far from that is meeting the needs of our neighbor, loving our neighbors and meeting needs for those who are in need.
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Then we also have to balance that with certain needs and plans for the future. You don't impoverish yourself in a way that you're openly liberal and generous to all and now you've become poor because you weren't wisely planning and preparing for the days ahead, which is in fact, maybe in the short run that seems like a better plan, but now you're not able to maintain charity to those in need because you were thoughtless and short -sighted, do you see?
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We should be heavenly minded when it comes to being industrious, heavenly minded in our pursuit of productivity.
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In other words, we recognize that this is not about amassing all that we can in this life, but just seeming more righteous than others.
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What we recognize is our industry, our productivity is not even for ourselves.
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It's for our immediate needs, the needs of our household, it's for the needs of our neighbor, it's for the needs of the community in that sense, it's for the advance of the kingdom and the advance of the church.
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But you recognize that in a lot of ways, your productivity, your industry is for the sake of your children's children.
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It's for the sake of the future, the legacy that you lay down. And so you always have to have this heavenly mindedness about it.
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It's not just about getting just enough to kind of plan out my end, it's about always being industrious so that I can pay it forward as long as God will be pleased to give me.
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A wise man leaves an inheritance to his children. Proverbs 27 says, "'Be diligent to know the state of your flocks.
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"'Attend to your herds, because riches aren't forever.'" Isn't that interesting? Be diligent, be industrious, be diligent to know the state of your flocks, to attend to your herds, right?
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Go get your fingers in the wool, be industrious, be on top of everything, all the things that would lead to success and wealth.
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And he says, be diligent in this way because riches aren't forever. You mean be diligent because I wanna have these?
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No, be diligent because riches won't last forever. And a crown will not endure.
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So he recognizes a certain sense in that you're diligent and you're industrious, not for your own sake, but for the sake of God's purpose, for your neighbor, for your children's children.
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So industry. And then thirdly, generosity. And this is perhaps the most important, the real turning point. Ephesians 4 .28,
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"'Let him who stole steal no longer, "'but rather let him who has stolen steal.'"
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Something to give him who has need. So you recognize generosity at the end.
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We go from a certain integrity to then industry, and that industry is given over to generosity so that he may have something to give the one in need.
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Now, everywhere in God's law, we see that nestled within the Eighth Commandment is this desire for generosity, that if you're to flip over what
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God is forbidding in the Eighth Commandment, what he's requiring is a generous spirit. The opposite of theft is generosity.
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Deuteronomy 15 is an example of this. "'If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, "'within any of the gates in your land "'which the
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Lord your God is giving you, "'you shall not harden your heart. "'You shall not shut your hand toward your poor brother.
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"'You shall open your hand wide to him. "'Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, "'saying, well, the seventh year is coming up, "'the year of release.
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"'Or your eye be evil against your poor brother, "'and you give him nothing. "'And he cries out to the
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Lord against you, "'and it becomes a sin among you. "'No, you shall surely give to him.
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"'Your heart will not be grieved, "'because the Lord your God will bless you.'" You see what
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God is saying? The Eighth Commandment is a way that we keep our heart from becoming hardened.
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Do we need this now? That's okay. We keep the
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Eighth Commandment in a way that we don't allow our heart to become hardened. The Eighth Commandment requires us to have an open, loose hand with our belongings, with our position, our time, our resources, which requires us to have a soft heart.
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It requires us to have a generous eye. In other words, if you have a tight grasp, if it could be said of you that you're not generous in the way you look at opportunities or needs among you, that you are breaking the
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Eighth Commandment. Maybe you're not physically going out and stealing, but as it were, you have all that you need to be depriving your neighbor of what's good for his health, his wealth, his estate, his advancement.
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God wants us to see others with generous eyes. It was Judas when
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Mary came in with the spikenard. It was Judas who said, oh, that was a waste.
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That's worth so much money. That could have gone on to better things. And the gospel writers say, John says, it's not because he was caring about the poor.
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He was a thief. A thief says, that's a waste. A thief says, oh, no,
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I could do better with that. I'll just hold onto it. I have a better purpose for that. A thief doesn't know how to open their fingers.
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A thief doesn't have a soft heart. A thief doesn't have a generous eye. If you don't care for the poor, you're a thief.
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That's essentially what the Eighth Commandment is saying. Now, notice, there's been nothing taken.
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All I'm saying is, in the status of the heart, and we're gonna see this in the Sermon on the Mount when we get there, very clearly.
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If you do not care for those in need, you are a thief. You are a thief because you are not your own.
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And your possessions have been entrusted to you. And they've been entrusted to you, in part, so that you will have a care and an ability to meet the needs of the poor.
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If you don't care for the poor, you're a thief. Isn't that what Deuteronomy 15 says?
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Lest your eye be evil against your poor brother, lest you give him nothing, and it becomes a sin among you.
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What sin? Ultimately, what sin? The Eighth Commandment. Now, a foolish man can be so liberal in giving, as we said, as Watson said, he boils his great estate down to nothing.
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Having established that, let me say that we are on the farther end of the opposite side of that danger.
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It is far better for a man to have empty barns out of generosity than to have stuffed barns because he's a miser.
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It is far better for a man to be in poverty because he's been foolish in his generosity than it is for a man to be wise and full because he's never been generous.
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And those riches, as James say, will howl out against him at the end. Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge, probably would have been held in high regard in many churches.
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Here's a wise businessman, all sorts of integrity. He keeps his books stellar.
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He's a tough man, but he gets results. Ebenezer Scrooge is a man after God's own heart.
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We should not aim to be wise, exacting, diligent men of integrity in a
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Scrooge -like way. What does God say in Deuteronomy 15? Open wide, open wide.
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Be the converted Scrooge, right? Be the just, I can't contain. The cheerfulness in giving.
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God doesn't love an exacting, calculating miser. God loves a cheerful giver.
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God loved one who opened his hands wide, who has a generous eye. Biblically speaking, there is few things that can put us in more spiritual danger than money.
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The eighth commandment trains us not to cling to it, not to serve it, not to idolize it.
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You can idolize it by spending it like a madman to get all that you covet. You can also idolize it by never spending it.
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You always need to save a little bit more. You've always gotta keep those knuckles a little bit wider and tighter.
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God would condemn both. It's hard, Jesus says, for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
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It's hard. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,
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Paul says. Now, of course, we remember that God filled this world with good. Our future, the glory of the new heavens and new earth is a land of opulent abundance, luxury, feasting, fat, plenty, right?
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Flowing with milk and honey. And so the world is filled with good things and we are genuinely meant to enjoy them.
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We're not to look at everything that is good and given from above and see it as a temptation to be avoided. We are to enjoy good things, but in a right order, in a right proportion.
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One of the ways that we're able to understand what that looks like is keeping the eighth commandment. Generosity here and now.
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Which Jesus says, for a man who's generous here and now, he's laying up treasure in heaven. He's saying it's right that you want to be wealthy in a
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God -honoring, neighbor -serving way. Even if you're at a loss in this life, you'll have that wealth in the life to come.
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And of course, you don't have to wait for heaven to enjoy the fruit of being generous. A generous man, even if he doesn't have a material return, he has his reward.
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You know, one of the hardest things, I think, about becoming a dad is you're no longer on the receiving end of birthday presents and Christmas presents, right?
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You're on the giving end. Although, wool socks come in for the clutch. I love getting wool socks.
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But it's really no loss at all because I'm almost more excited to give my children presents than they are to open them.
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I'm like, oh, not yet, not yet. Let me get the camera out. And I'm all excited and beaming. And I have the joy of picking it out.
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Oh, they're gonna love this. And the joy of, I wait till they see this. And then, like, they're done, you know, in 10 minutes playing with it.
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It's like, ah, that didn't really turn out like I thought. But there's a certain joy in giving.
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You know that this gift is going to mean something to them. It's gonna fill them with joy. And that gives you a certain sense of joy.
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And that's a small glimmer, a small taste of how we are blessed when we seek to bless others.
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It's the outflow of what it means when Jesus says it's more blessed to give than to receive, according to Paul. So the question is, well, how much do you give?
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We have to ask that question in the Scrooge voice, right? How much do I have to give, right, as we cling? I like C .S.
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Lewis's answer because it's sort of tongue -in -cheek. And he means it as a way of actually testing our integrity.
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C .S. Lewis says, I don't believe one can actually settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is we should always give more than we can spare.
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Do you see what he's doing there? The thief thinks, I can't,
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I can't spare that. I can't spare that, I can't spare that. Lewis is saying the safe rule is give more than you can spare.
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In other words, knock down those lame excuses as to why you're not generous. God loves a cheerful giver.
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A lack of generosity is a form of poor stewardship. If God is a generous master, he gives to his stewards so that they will be generous.
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Something is distorted if God is a cheerful giver, a generous master, and then he gives to his servants and stewards all of these possessions and they're the misers and they're callous and they don't care about need and they don't want to give.
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Do you see how distorted and upside down that is? What we're doing in giving and seeking to be generous is we're seeking to imitate the generosity of our master.
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That's what Jesus says in Luke 4, you'll be sons of the most high. All right, if you lend to those whom you hope to receive back, what credits that to you?
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Sinners do that. Friends of friends that hate God do that. That's no credit to you.
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But love your enemies, do good, lend. Don't expect anything back. Your reward will be great. You will be sons of the most high.
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Why? Because the most high gives and gives and gives and gives to a fallen world sending rain on both the just and the unjust, providing food and air and good things and good relationships and many blessings.
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And they're taken from him without the slightest thoughts of gratitude, without the slightest recognition that all comes from him, without the slightest concern about standing before him.
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And yet, does he fail to give the next day or the day after that or the year or the decade after that?
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Do you see? God gives, he cheerfully gives, he patiently, consistently gives.
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Jesus says he's kind even to the unthankful and evil. He's kind. There's people sitting here this morning.
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He has been kind though you've been evil to him. He's been kind to you. You have some aspiration that you're trying to work out?
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That's because God's given you a mind to daydream, eyes to covet, hands to work, skills to utilize, relationships to support.
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He has been kind to you. You've been thankless, thoughtless. And Christians are to imitate the generosity of God.
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Therefore, Jesus says be merciful as your father also is merciful. Thieves are greedy. But God is generous.
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Thieves take, but God gives. God opens his hand wide.
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God's people should open their hands wide. Isaiah 32 says a generous man devises generous things and by generosity he stands.
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Could that describe you? Would your neighbors, would your distant relatives and cousins, would your coworkers describe you as a generous man or a generous woman?
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Do you devise generous things? All right, not just you're walking by and you see someone on the street and you're like, ah,
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I guess I should. We made eye contact. You devise generous things.
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The rest of the day you're daydreaming. You're scheming about how to be generous. And by generosity you stand.
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This is just your way of life. It's who you are. A good man deals graciously.
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Psalm 112 says he lends. He won't be afraid of evil tidings. His heart is steadfast, trusting in the
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Lord. Do you deal graciously? Generosity directly results from acknowledging the grace of God.
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Directly results from acknowledging the grace of God. And recognizing we don't have time to press forward,
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I think I'll close with this point. If you're not a generous person, you are or fast becoming a thief.
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If you're not a generous person, whatever algorithms you use to justify your lack of generosity, what you are essentially is a poor steward, perhaps even a thief.
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Generosity directly results from acknowledging God's grace. By the grace of God, here
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I am. By the grace of God, this is who I am. By the grace of God, this is what
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I have. By the grace of God, anything
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I am, anything I have has been given to me. And so generosity directly results from acknowledging
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I'm not my own. My things are not my own. My position's not my own. My strength, my time, my relationships, all these things are free.
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From God, for God's purposes. And if you've been in a way of lacking generosity, the only way that you can truly become generous is not by me putting in sort of, you know, pyrotechnic effect the
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Eighth Commandment, the Eighth Commandment, the Eighth Commandment. I know that though that may unsettle you for an afternoon, it's not gonna make you generous the rest of this week.
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What will always make you a generous soul, a good man, a good woman, a man or woman of integrity and industry and abundant generosity is when you recognize the grace of God in your life.
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Isn't that the story of Zacchaeus? We can close reading this.
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Luke 19. Jesus is passing through Jericho.
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He's making a point to go out this way. You should know something about dynamics in the ancient world.
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If you have a noble person, a dignitary, you know, someone of high status coming, if you're coming to a village or a small town, usually the local leaders would plan, well, what family's going to host this speaker while they're among us?
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We wanna show them the honor that they deserve. And so there might even be a retinue that runs ahead to receive him.
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And so you have sort of stages. We kind of saw this with Jacob receiving Esau, right? There's stages of, let me introduce myself and so on.
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And this, by the way, is the town council. Oh, let me introduce myself. And there's sort of this train of reception, bringing them into the village.
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And then at the end of that train, here's the most noble person, perhaps the wealthiest, the most intelligent or educated among them.
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That's the house where this noble person will stay. And so at the end of this long retinue and train, here's the host, as it were.
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And it's a way of showing honor. And so Jesus is receiving this train. There's people that are running out of the town ahead.
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And among them is Zacchaeus. Now, Zacchaeus knows that he's hated by all.
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He's a tax collector, synonymous with sinner, thief. People hate him.
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He's a patsy for the Romans. He's fat and rich off of stealing from his own community.
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So he's an outcast, a pariah, hated by all. And he had to sort of become callous and leather -like in his emotions.
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He kind of had to be willing to be disowned and discounted and hated. It was kind of like this calculus.
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At some point in his life, he thought, yeah, I'm okay if my community hates me if I can be wealthy. I'm okay with that, right?
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And every time he saw a spite or resentment in the marketplace or as he went about, he just thought, oh, I'll get him at tax time.
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I'll get him back, right? Revenge is a dish best served cold. Well, he's coming out to see
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Jesus, too. There's been a lot of buzz about this man. Some say he's the Messiah. Some say he's Elijah. Some say he's
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John the Baptist. So Zacchaeus runs out and he finds a sycamore tree. You've got to think of a tree that has sort of low, limbering branches and a lot of foliage.
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It's a good place to hide. So he figures, I'll run out ahead before this retinue comes out to receive him.
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And I just want to see him. I just want to sort of hide. At least I'll be able to see him as he passes by.
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They may hear something of his teaching. So he's hiding in the trees. I think, by the way, that's the best understanding when
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Luke records, it was because of or on account of his short stature that he hid.
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I don't think he's saying he was a short man he wanted to see better. It's like he had a low regard among the crowd.
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He didn't want to be exposed. Oh, wise teacher, holy master, let us tell you about this scoundrel.
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So he just wanted to hide. So he's up in the branches. Jesus comes and this is the scene. Jesus looked up and saw him and said,
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Zacchaeus, make haste, come down. Today, I must stay at your house.
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Now, we might not see a lot of significance there, but again, remember what I said. The master, the dignitary, the noble one comes and they're to be received at the best house.
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The most lofty, noble, highly regarded house. Jesus walks up to the scene.
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Maybe the very noble, well -ordered family is just about to introduce, you'll be staying with us. We're so excited.
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And Jesus cuts all that off. He says, I'm gonna stay with your house, thief. And Zacchaeus is like, what?
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You know I was here. And as he clamors down the branches, now his shame is exposed before everyone.
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Now there's a problem. Honor, shame works both ways. Jesus, in calling
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Zacchaeus as the honored one, has in some ways exposed that shame by giving him honor.
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So now the crowd is beginning to, they don't understand. This is an evil man. If you go into his house, you're dishonored.
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He's so dishonorable. And Zacchaeus begins to panic because now the one that has honored him, he is bringing dishonor to.
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So when they saw it, they all complained, saying he's gone to be a guest with a man who's a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said,
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Lord, look, I'm giving half of my goods to the poor. If I have taken anything from anyone by accusation,
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I restore fourfold. So what is he doing? He's making restitution.
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Why? Was it because Jesus came to the bottom of the tree and says, don't you know the law of Moses?
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You shall not steal. Come out of that tree and answer me. Is that what
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Jesus does? Would that make Zacchaeus, oh, Lord, look, I give. He might go, all right, well, no, that was actually mine.
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I can have the receipts for that. That one's mine. I'll give him back this, I guess. That's the most that could do. But how does
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Jesus approach it when he gets to the foot of the tree? He says, I'm honoring you. I'm choosing you.
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I'm staying with you. So come down to me. Come receive me.
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And that's enough for Zacchaeus' heart to melt. And now the thief who had been closing his knuckles white around all these treasures and wealth and money and this profession that was costing him his community and he didn't care, he was so callous, so thoughtless, so selfish.
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Now for the first time, perhaps in his whole life, he lets go. The thief becomes generous.
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He says, half of everything I have, I'm giving to the poor. Line up, if you accuse me of anything,
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I'll give you back four times. That's the difference that grace makes in a person's life.
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That's how you will become a generous man or a generous woman. Do you want integrity? Do you want industry?
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Do you want generosity? Bring your shame and your dishonor to Jesus.
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Let him honor you and establish you and receive you. You will be a generous man, a generous woman.
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We will be a generous church, amen? Let's pray.
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Father, in recounting these things, we can't help but think of your generosity towards us, Lord. Jesus spoke of the evil one who came as a thief to destroy, but Lord, you're the good shepherd.
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You didn't come to take away but to give, to give to us life abundantly and the cost of that was you giving your own life fully.
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Lord, you only command us to open our hands wide because you've opened your hands even wider. You've stretched your arms far apart and opened your hands to receive nails on that tree.
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What perfectly pure generosity there is in you, Lord, laying down your life for us, that you would receive the shameful thief in a position of honor, that you, the
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Lord of perfect integrity, would be crucified between two thieves and receive one of them into paradise.
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Lord, such grace must transform us. And we pray that it does.
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I pray for my own miserly heart, Lord, that you would loosen my knuckles. I pray for this church that we would learn how to give in ways that are unsettling, uncomfortable, but faithful and full of mercy, for we know that you delight in givers who give in this way.
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And so help us to look to the needs of our community, to the needs of the poor all around us, Lord, recognizing that we are the wealthy, that we are stewards that have been entrusted so much on the grand scale of human history.
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And you've entrusted us, you've given us this stewardship, Lord, not for ourselves primarily, but for your own glory, for gratefulness and gratitude unto you, for your purposes, for a perfect love for you and a perfect love to our fellow man.