The Eighth Commandment

The Eighth Commandment as a Call to Stewardship

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.

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. 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. Well, I want to assure you that no one should be feeling unscathed if we rightly understand the 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. You shall not steal in terms of, you know, petty theft, perhaps, maybe even great theft. I think the greatest heist that I'm aware of is actually in our backyard, the museum heist at the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum, 1990.

Still unsolved, 13 masterworks of art that were stolen from that museum. I think they say it's estimated around $600 million were yet to be recovered. What's the point of having it, right, if it's rolled up in some closet somewhere in East Boston?

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 Eighth Commandment.

You shall not steal. We don't steal, right? Well, we consider the dynamics of theft. 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.

We find often that theft has this language of strong desire or covetousness bound within it. A classic example of this is Joshua chapter 7, another famous theft, the theft of Achan. 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.

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. And so as they inquire of the Lord why they were defeated, the Lord prosecutes them.

And this is what the Lord says, Israel has sinned. They have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. They have even taken some of the accursed things. They've both stolen and deceived. So here you have theft.

They've stolen. Now the accursed things were things put under the ban. That is, there was to be a wholesale destruction of those that had wrongly possessed the land that God was giving to His people. 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. And so anything that was preserved from them is accursed by God. And this is what happened. Achan ended up smuggling out some desirable things and hiding them in his tent.

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. And Achan answered Joshua and said, I've sinned against the Lord God of Israel.

This is what I've done. When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, shekels of silver, a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, 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.

Now, if we're reading Joshua 7 carefully, we might notice some allusions to Genesis 3. We have God, as it were, cornering the offender. What is it that you've done? 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. 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.

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. And ever since then, mankind is born as thieves.

Ever since Genesis 3, every human being is born a thief. 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.

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. 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. Some new gift somehow becomes their gift. And so you don't teach children to steal. Children are born thieves. To steal, in other words, is already in the heart of fallen man.

It needs only to be borne out in action by opportunity. 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.

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 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.

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.'". 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.

Sin made man deny that he was a creature of God. Accordingly, he looked upon this world as just being there. Here it is. Dog eat dog, my disposal. I'll go and wrap my hands around this world and squeeze what I can out of it.

There's those who gain and there's those who lose. It's just the law of the jungle. And that's the way that people in defiance of God think about the world. It's just there somehow. And Van Til says in this way, it's up for every man, up to every man to grasp what he can.

Right, get what you can out of life. 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.

You see, 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. I do with it as I see fit. There's no obligation toward God or toward neighbor. This is a distortion from the fall.

Paul corrects the church at Corinth by asking that great question, what do you have that you didn't receive? 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.

You are not self-made men and women. No one is a self-made man or woman. 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.

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.

Stewards are those who recognize they are entrusted with possessions, positions, skills, relationships, and opportunities. We are not possessors, we are stewards. That is, we manage what God has entrusted to us.

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. 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.

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.

I depend upon my master's goodwill, my master's mercy. He's entrusted me with these things. 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.

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? So the eighth commandment contributes to God's purpose for humanity, right?

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.

How so? How so? How does the eighth commandment help humanity to flourish in three ways? Well, this is Grudem's insight. First, it presents the opportunity for human achievement by entrusting property to us.

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.

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. Now, you can do something with these things that you're possessing.

Now, there's a place for opportunity, for achievement, for provision. Secondly, it expects human achievement by making us accountable stewards. Again, the idea that because we have possessions that are given to us, we are accountable for them.

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. All of these three points, Grudem's rightly arguing, would have been how Adam and Eve and their progeny, short of the fall, would have kept the Eighth Commandment.

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. And I have obligations, therefore, to God and to fellow man with it. And as I share those things, I glorify God.

And as I receive from others, those things entrusted to them, I also am thankful. 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?

It was Karl Marx who said communism is, if nothing else, communism is the abolishing of private property. 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, 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. That's what the Eighth Commandment is about, that in no way do we impede, or obstruct, or deprive our neighbor.

These are our possessions for the sake of God and the neighbor, alongside provision for ourselves. In this way, the law prevents the rich from taking advantage of the poor. A major concern for the prophets, and as modern affluent Westerns, we just read right past it.

In most settings, for some reason,.

We think we're the poor.

We're like, oh yeah, Jeff Bezos, you know, doom on him. Compared to the global population, we are the affluent ones. We need to look in the mirror. The law prevents the rich from taking advantage of the poor.

But by the logic that we understand the Eighth Commandment, it also prevents the poor from robbing the rich, which is the world, our society's answer to inequity. Let's have the poor basically rob the rich.

Well, 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.

You have the seventh Sabbath year, the Jubilee year, when everything reverts to original ownership. And so the biblical view on material possessions does not leave anyone comfortable, right? There's a pinch on everyone, why?

Because no one can say, absolutely, this is mine. Rather, they can say, as a steward, this has been entrusted to me. And there's obligations toward God and toward my neighbor. And therefore, I seek to serve God according to His will and bless my neighbor.

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. There's really no economic model that can quite get its arms all the way around how 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? Uprooting private interest, uprooting sort of personal property or lineage or roots in the land. You know, the state doesn't have this absolute determinism.

That's heavily criticized in the way that God commands 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.

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. 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. This is how God has designed the Eighth Commandment to function.

A surprisingly large amount of Jesus' teaching concerns wealth, labor, and commerce. 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 Gospels that would have something to do with wealth, poverty, commerce, labor, injustice, the Gospels would be glowing orange.

Jesus comes and preaches good news to the poor. The Song of Mary, the Magnificat. She says, you've made the rich empty and the poor full. Jesus has come, not as some sort of agrarian Marxist, you know, revolutionary, as some would have it, but Jesus has come to rectify the injustice of material possession in ways that distort God's original purpose.

So again, the Eighth Commandment rectifies obligations to God, first table, and then obligations to neighbor. This is in part how we love our neighbor. Peter Brown, by the way, a very important book called Through the Eye of the Needle.

He was a man who not only studied, but basically coined the study of late antiquity. 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.

What is a righteous and just way for the church to administer wealth in the 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 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? How can there be a right understanding of the privilege and therefore responsibility of wealth?

In the affluent West today, perhaps we desperately need to return to actually wrestling with this as a challenge. We just read right past it. We don't even wrestle with it. Jesus has many, many stark warnings about the danger of wealth.

We read right past them. We think this is poetic. This is abstract. This is something that belongs in the first century. 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, we read right past it. And that's why we can come on a Sunday morning and think, Eighth Commandment, easy, easy breezy.

I don't struggle with this one. We need to remember that the first table is the foundation for the second table. And as Van Til said so rightly, not all men have faith. And for this reason, Christians should help remove injustice between men.

Since the entrance of sin into the world, man has become man's wolf. A beautiful image. The result of the fall is not only this, this sort of resentment toward God and a fleeing from the presence of God, but it's also you become a wolf to fellow man.

How can they serve me, meet my needs? I'll maintain or pursue a relationship so far as it serves my interest. So we ignore and we break the commandment of God to our own loss, to our own ruin. A society that breaks the Eighth Commandment breaks it to their own loss and to their own ruin.

A society cannot stand long where the Eighth Commandment is not held in honor among all. And we are quickly watching our society decay. Go to some of the coastal cities and watch society decay for breaking the Eighth Commandment of God.

You shall not steal. Empires were hollowed out in decay because of this very thing. 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.

Let me ask you a question. Do you see an increase in our culture in respect for private property? Now we live in Hubbardston and every now and then we'll walk around the 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.

It's amazing. How many more years do we have of that? Right, as Fitchburg kind of encroaches on Hubbardston. 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?

We're living in a place where private property is no longer respected as it once was. Here's a case in point. I grew up, maybe some of you did as well. We never locked the door at night. 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 Leamington. We never locked our doors at night. It was always open doors. You never even thought about it.

We didn't feel unsafe. Now I live in a condo. We have literally neighbors all around us. We lock every window, every door. Even if I'm just going out down the street for 10 minutes, I lock the door. 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?

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.

So it was a certain trust. Or if you saw something being done, you'd look out for your neighbor in that regard. Now it's kind of like, hey, everyone stay in their own lane. Mind your own business. That's not my property, not my problem.

The Eighth Commandment forbids that kind of isolated way of living. Every 15 seconds in San Francisco, a car is broken into. Every 15 seconds. There was a proposition that was passed that reduced theft from a felony to a misdemeanor.

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?

For smashing car windows and going through and taking what he could to go sell on the black market. And he said this during the interview. The DA doesn't care. Shout out to the DA. I love this DA, he's the best DA.

He doesn't care that I've been caught 44 times. 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. Literally leaving the courthouse to go smash car windows.

And by the way, 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. There's ways that this factors out depending on what's stolen, but the basic principle is that there's a twofold restoration.

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. So they get back not only what was originally theirs, but then even more, a full restoration doubled on top of that.

And the idea is the thief isn't withdrawn, he's not put in some correctional facility, he's not given a ticket. 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.

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, it's saying now you're losing in trying to illegitimately gain.

With animals under certain conditions, it could be a fourfold or even a fivefold restoration. But instead today, the victim receives almost no compensation. Just like, oh, sorry, these things happen. I hope you had insurance.

So there's no restitution. And then the offender is taken out of society. And it's not that society actually successfully rehabilitates them, it almost reinforces theft. 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.

But now the community has to pay for the offender. The state of California pays $109 ,000 per prisoner per year. That's coming out of the taxpayers' pockets. And now the state is stealing in order to pay for stealers.

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. Jeremiah 2 says, a thief is ashamed when he is found out, so the house of Israel will be ashamed.

Well, maybe in Jeremiah's day, thieves aren't even ashamed anymore. A thief is ashamed when they're found out, 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.

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 I hope you recognize is a further symptom of the judgment that has already come upon this nation. 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.

It used to be that hypocrisy was the sort of tribute that vice paid to virtue.

Well, no longer.

You don't have to be hypocritical at all. Yeah, I steal, so what? Everybody steals. A really tragic point of this is the squatters in New York City. Has anyone heard of these? 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.

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. 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.

So they call the police, or they maybe turn off the utilities, or they change the locks. 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.

So again, watching TV interviews where they have a room full of people basically saying, I'm going into debt because I'm not allowed to turn off the utilities for these strangers that have squatted in my house.

And there's absolutely no shame at all. We break this commandment to our own loss and ruin. A society cannot exist that disregards the Eighth Commandment. You shall not steal. 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. 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.

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. Whatever you do that obstructs or hinders their advancement or their provision, that breaks the Eighth Commandment.

I like, by the way, that it says our own or our neighbor's wealth. Our own or our neighbor's wealth. I think that's really important. Now, you watch these documentaries about the sort of opioid crisis or the fentanyl crisis in some places.

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 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. They're just there in need, doing what they can to get by living in these really dark tunnels.

So they go in there, they give out supplies, first aid kits, food, basically try to get them to come into treatment. The thing that amazes him is how you would think that they would be running with the opportunity.

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. 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. We've given them all this offer 1 ,000 times. And they don't come. So the interviewer was going, well, why is that? 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. And he says, so imagine just letting that go. Saying, you know, I'm done being in a community.

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. 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, I've got no overhead concerns. All right, perfect peace. I don't have to deal with stress. I don't have these problems.

And there's a way that that actually is breaking the eighth commandment. You're preventing your own health, well-being, estate in advancement. Very wonderful insights here. And I think we're going to see this a lot more.

People opt out of society in a normal pattern of vocation, work, provision, advancement, and so forth. 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. You are an image bearer of God. There's a lot that comes with imaging God for his purposes in this world.

And you are not your own in an absolute sense. You belong to God. To him, you must give an account. 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, you see?

Integrity, Industry, and Generosity in Ephesians 4:28

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. Because this is Paul's answer to keeping the eighth commandment.

Ephesians 4, 28, "'Let him who stole steal no longer. "'Rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good, "'so that he may have something to give him who has need.'". Ephesians 4, 28. Now, Ephesians 4, 28, we see has three sort of chunks, three turning points within the logic of the passage, right?

"'Let him who steals steal no longer.'". So we could say that is, let a person have integrity. 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.

"'Let him who stole steal no longer. "'Rather, let him labor, working with his hands what is good.'". That is, let him be industrious. Let him be productive.

Let him be fruitful.

"'So that he may have something to give "'to him who has need.'". That is, let him be generous. So integrity, industry, generosity. Those will be our points here and how do we keep the eighth commandment.

Integrity, industry, generosity. That's how we keep the eighth commandment.

Integrity.

"'Let him who steals steal no longer.'". Paul is addressing a group of people where he could rightly say, such were some of you, right? You came from all walks of life, all manner of backgrounds. I know some that maybe grew up shoplifting.

That was just, you saw what your parents did or what your friends did and you just followed in that train. You never had any complex, any guilts, any consciousness about it. It's just getting ahead. You gotta do what you gotta do to get by.

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.

That means there's no possession I have that I don't rightly recognize why 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 God and follows through on God's purpose for my life.

Perfect integrity with all of my possessions. Perfect integrity with all of my position. Perfect integrity with all of my strength and my skills. Perfect integrity with every hour of the day. That's what the eighth commandment requires.

Anyone feeling uncomfortable yet? I hope so. Do you procrastinate when it comes to any of your work? C .R. Wiley made the point that the household has become the sort of refuge from productivity, right?

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. That's now where you have you time, right?

This is me time. This is, you know, Bruins and beer time. I hope the Bruins pull through, you know, another victory over the Leafs, let's hope. This is me time. In other words, I'm not gonna be productive now.

Well, C .R. Wiley makes the point that's a relatively new way of understanding the household. 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.

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. 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.

Are you straightforward and diligent in every respect at all times? Whatever task it is before you, are you diligent in doing that task? Some guys can show up, you know, 30 minutes early to their work shift, polished boots and be diligent all the way through and that's tremendous, 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, 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?

Now, you know, well, can you follow through on this or that? Well, what about, you know, this chore, this errand, this study, this book read? I thought you were diligent, what happened? What happened to all that wonderful diligence?