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Deuteronomy 5:19 The Eighth Commandment
For the second week in a row, I begin with a case of Puritan church discipline. As lovers of Puritan history as you all are, last week I mentioned an obscure case that I only read about, I found somewhere, and I probably could never find again.
Brought before a Puritan church involving the bedroom, this week is actually one of the most prominent cases of church discipline, but it involves the shop. John Winthrop, the governor of the Puritans, leading the Puritans to America, somewhere between Boston, England, and what was to become Boston, Massachusetts, told his fellow Puritans in a sermon entitled A Model of Christian Charity that they were going forth to plant what he called a city upon a hill.
He said, quote, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superflities, our luxuries, in other words, sacrifice our own luxuries for the supply of others' necessities.
We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together. So that was their vision. So when they arrived in New England, the very first case of church discipline, the first case of church discipline in all of American history was not involving sex, but involving money.
A merchant, Robert Keane, was censured by the church for profiteering, for overcharging, charging his fellow colonists too much for his wares, taking advantage of their scarcity, and the fact that he was the only supplier, to make more money than he needed.
Keane had, by his price gouging, violated Winthrop's vision of a revolutionary community based on love, a model of Christian charity. For all the world to see, Winthrop and the Puritan church, for that matter, was angry that one Christian had taken advantage of another for profit.
The church, about making disciples, said, you have broken the eighth commandment. Now, in the original Hebrew, this verse, Deuteronomy 5, verse 19, is the third of our two-word commandments. No killing, no adultery, now here, no stealing.
And so it seems simple enough, you know, just don't steal. It's a big deal, end of sermon, right? End early, be out of here, we make it to the golden corral before the Methodist. Just don't steal, don't take things that don't belong to you.
Simple enough, but once we scratch below the surface, we open up an enormous can of worms. Who's to say what belongs to me? Or what belongs to you? Maybe I need the car you drove to church in more than you need it.
Does my need for it give me a right to take it? Some cars out there look pretty good to me, though. I wouldn't mind driving off with them. If I own something, what about my own stuff? If I own something, then do I have a right to do anything with it I want?
I mean, do I have a right to turn my house into a garbage dump, no matter what the neighbors say? It's mine, I can do anything I want. In other words, do I really own the things I possess? Is my house, my furniture, my vehicles, my money, all ultimately mine to do with as I please?
None of your business. If you think the answer is yes, you're a thief. Oh, you might have come into possession of everything you have perfectly within the laws of the state and of the United States. Your titles, your receipts, your deeds, your account statements will all hold up in a court of law, clearly establishing that you are in legal possession of all those things.
But if you think you own them, you're a thief. If you are thinking and living as if the things you have ultimately belong to you, that you have an absolute right to do with them as you please, then you are stealing from the real owner just as surely as a man behind a mask with a gun in a bank.
Often in the history of the church, this commandment has been interpreted, and rightly, I guess, to support the right of private property. Well, that's what a lot of people will do with this commandment.
See, this shows we have a right to private property. You have a right to own that car you drove in. After all, the reasoning goes, the very idea of stealing implies that what I have belongs to me. If it belonged to everybody, anyone could take it.
There would be no stealing. But that's not what it says, there's no stealing. Therefore, just not anyone can take it. That's true, but I think it's only a half-truth. Notice the way the commandment is put.
It's not phrased in a positive way. It's not like keep the Sabbath or honor your parents. It's not put, protect your property. God could have inspired it that way, I guess. That's the emphasis he wanted.
Rather, it is protect your neighbor's property. Do not steal what? Others' things. Look after their things. So while it is certainly true that this commandment does not allow for a kind of Christian communism, yeah, we just share everything, no one has a right to anything, I believe we are missing the main point if we think it's all about individualistic, unaccountable private property rights.
That's mine. The commandment is first not about rights at all. It's about responsibilities. The truth is, you don't own anything. You are responsible for some things, but you don't own them. You are, at best, a steward.
God owns it all. Some of it he has distributed to you. He's given you, given the things to you either through your hard work, by you earning it, by doing things that are a service to other people, which they pay you gladly for, or it is a gift from someone, someone who is being generous with you.
God has used the kindness of others or the wages of your work to give you something that he ultimately owns. The commandment is not about rights, but about responsibilities. Ever gotten too much change from a cashier, right?
You gave him a $10 bill for a $5 thing and he gave you $15 back thinking you gave him a 20, something like that. The money is put in your hands. You know what they say, possession is nine tenths of the law.
You can walk away with a profit. After all, you didn't intend on stealing it. It wasn't your fault, so why not keep it? It's yours, isn't it? And that's the question.
What is yours?
What belongs to you? In this case, the cashier made a mistake and gave you change that didn't belong to you to keep it would be to take something you neither earned through honest work nor was given to you as a gift out of love.
So to keep it would be to steal it. It doesn't matter that the money was voluntarily put in your hand. What matters is whether you earned it or it was given to you intentionally as a gift. That's how we come to legitimately possess anything, either through work or through love.
In other words, God has ordained two ways for us to be rightly in possession of something, love and work, not luck or fraud. If we live in an apartment without paying rent, you know, you think it takes, you know, the law takes several months for the courts to allow the landlord to evict me.
And in the meantime, I can live for free. We're stealing from the landlord. The landlord is the steward over that apartment. He's letting you live there on the promise that you will increase his investment.
If you fail to do that, you've stolen from him and from God, who's the ultimate owner. And you're a thief. Stealing is the attempt to take something that God has not provided that we should have. He didn't give it to us as a gift through someone's generosity or give us the opportunity to earn it through our work.
We just decided in our sovereignty, according to our pleasure, to claim it. Remember what we said about sin? Now, what is sin? Sin is willfulness. It's the conviction that I will do and say or take whatever I want, no matter what anyone says.
Not even, no matter what God says, I'll take it. God says that that fruit does not belong to you. You're not supposed to have it. And you say, well, it looks good to me. God says his money belongs to the store.
But you say, eh, I think I'll keep it. God says the apartment belongs to the landlord. You say, eh, I'll live here for a while as if I'm the owner. God says that the laptop or the stapler belongs to your employer.
You say, eh, I think my need entitles me to have it. So you take it. Stealing then is the attempt to usurp God's place. He's decided who is the steward over that money, over that laptop, over that stapler, over those tools, or even over your time.
And you decide differently. You decide that the money, the laptop, the stapler, the tools, the time, or whatever will be used as you decree.
It suits you.
I want it to be used like this. And you assert your will, and you think that's enough. Take it a step further. The thief decides he knows best to whom something should belong, right? That's the definition of a thief.
He takes it onto himself, who will get to use some piece of property. To put it another way, stealing is defying God as to who should be the owner, or I should say the steward, over something. God has said, Joe, Joe's not here today, Joe will be the steward.
The thief says, Bill should be the steward. And usually the thief is named Bill, but he keeps it for himself. Or to focus in on the core of the problem of stealing, the thief is someone who does not recognize that God is the real owner of all things.
The thief does not submit to God's claim to everything. The thief does not submit to the Lord and become his steward. Now, usually we think the thief is a person who takes what belongs to one person for himself.
And it's true, that's thievery, that's stealing. A shoplifter is a thief, even if the store is wealthy and the shoplifter is poor. In Exodus chapter 22, a man who simply takes an ox or a sheep that's not his own, he's a thief.
Obviously, there's no mystery there. He should pay, not only restore what he stole, but pay a penalty so he'll learn the lesson to not steal again. But really that's only one small category, that's kind of the surface thief, the surface stealing.
The thief, remember, is anyone who does not recognize God's claim to everything. Anyone who does not let God be the owner. Anyone who defies God's authority as to who should be the steward over anything.
You can do that by taking from others, or you can do that by handling your own things, as if God were not the ultimate owner. If you forget you're merely a steward, if you think you're the ultimate owner,.
Then you're a thief.
And that's the heart of what it means to steal, to forget who the real owner is. Stealing can come about in a whole host of legal ways then. There's a lot of legal stealing going around all around us.
If you take advantage of someone else's ignorance and overcharge them, you've stolen. You've used your advantage to manipulate them. They didn't know that the card you were selling had so many mechanical problems.
They didn't know that there were better cards going for cheaper down the road. Oh, you can say, let the buyer beware, but he shouldn't have to beware of Christians. The buyer only has to beware of thieves.
And if he has to beware of you, maybe you're a thief. The Puritan minister Cotton Mather said, all that we have has been a loan from the great God to us. God himself said in Psalm 50 verses 10 to 12, for every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird of the mountains and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all that is in it. That means that we can even steal our own things if we forget we are but stewards and start acting like we're owners.
Because we're stewards, we have to take care of things. You have a responsibility from God to protect and increase those things you have. If God has given you a dollar, you have a responsibility from God, the ultimate owner of that dollar, to make the most of it.
The very last parable the Lord Jesus tells in the gospel of Matthew is Matthew chapter 25 verses 14 to 30, the parable of the talents. Now a talent, we use it now that word like to make for a skill someone has, but it originally is a measure of money, it's a sum of money.
And the parable is a story about an owner, a rich guy who went away on a trip and he gave three of his servants some of his money to be stewards over them. And he gave to one five talents, that's a lot of money, to another two talents, less, still a good bit of money, and to another, he gave only one talent, so another hunk of money.
And he then went away, and when he came back, he expected the servants to have made something out of the money that they were given. He wanted them to increase his money, he's the owner. The servants were just the stewards.
Now the first two servants doubled the investment they were given, I wanna find these guys, give them my money, because they're pretty good. But the third one only returned the principal. He just buried the money and then gave it back.
That does nothing more with it. He didn't lose it, he just didn't increase it. And he is condemned as a wicked servant. He's thrown out. And the moral of the story is, according to the Lord Jesus, to him who has much will more be given.
And to him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. God gives people things, whether spiritual insights, ministry gifts, knowledge, money, or property, and expects them to grow it, to reproduce it, to make more out of it.
God is the owner, and he gives things to us as stewards, and if we just squander it, squander what he's given, if we waste it, we treat it just as if it's for our own personal happiness, our own recreation, for the thrill we can get out of it temporarily, then we are stealing from God, and he will hold us to account for it.
So we need to have these words ringing in our ears at all times, render account for your stewardship. We each have a mission from God to take care of, to improve, and to add what God has given to us. So we better be serious, students, about how we can fulfill our stewardship, how we can fulfill our mission to return back to God by God's power more than we originally received.
I forgot to look it up, but I heard in the news a week or so ago that Johnny Depp supposedly has squandered, what, almost like hundreds of millions of dollars? Forgot what it was, on sort of just frivolous things.
I wish I could give you the illustration, but he just wasted all this money that he's gotten from being a movie star, and it's though people think, well, he can do that, he's a big star, but no, he'd be held accountable for all that he's wasted.
For us, we don't have millions of dollars to waste, most of us, I don't think, but the lottery's another form of gambling, are lousy ways to invest. You almost certainly lose. That's the truth of gambling.
No faithful steward would think of gambling as a good use of the money he's been given. God has given you money. You are stealing from him. If you take that money and throw it away on lottery tickets, it'll almost certainly be worthless.
No matter what the education lottery says on TV, talk about a propaganda term, you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lottery. Okay, that's not wise investing. If you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than the investment turning out well.
The lottery lies to people and encourages them to see wealth as something that just kind of falls out of the sky. It discourages stewardship, and it usually preys on desperate people to squander what little they have.
It encourages people to steal from their own futures. You shall not steal means that you are not the ultimate owner. God is, and you are responsible for how well you are taking care of what you have. With every paycheck, with every walk through the mall, every enticing commercial, every flip through a catalog, let these words ring in your ears.
Render account of your stewardship. If we can't control our impulse to buy, every little thing you see on eBay, or now, you know, Facebook ads come up, you got to have. If we have so little regard for God as the owner, so little hope in his reward, then we are thieves.
Laziness is a sin because it's squandering of our time, of our opportunities to be good stewards. We dare not just let so much of our time just slip away consumed by too much television, too many video games wasted on distractions that add nothing to us, that don't make us better, or wiser, or healthier, or wealthier, or don't help us, you know, rejuvenate so that we can then invest in ourselves.
Rather, we need to invest in our time and activities that produce some good that we can one day be able to present to God and say, here, Master, this is what I did with what you gave me. When we waste our time, we steal from God, and we're thieves.
When we invest our time, we can hope to hear God say, well done, good and faithful servant. So we're called, then, to use our time, our jobs, our money, whatever, not only for our wealth, but for the common wealth.
Our vocations are given to us by God so we can contribute to the well-being of others. Again, it's not rights, it's responsibilities. The Word of God says in Ephesians 4, verse 28, let the thief no longer steal.
And then what happens after that? Just let him sit home, you know, living off of others? No, let him not steal, but rather, he stops stealing by doing what? By, rather, let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to spend on himself, to support himself?
No, so that he may have something to share with anyone, anyone else in need. So we misuse our work when we think it's only about ourselves and not for the common good. We are all bound to work for the common good and advance it as much as we can so we should be such good stewards, not wasting our earnings on eating out too often at too expensive places, indulging our every appetite, but buying everything we feel like having because we should not be like that because we see clearly that we have more important things to do with our money, to support our family most of all, to give to the needy, to save for the future, to invest in the kingdom of God.
This commandment not only tells us that we don't own anything, that we have to take care of things, but also that we have to give many things. Remember, it's about our neighbors. Do not steal from your neighbor.
As we've seen in Ephesians 4, verse 28, we stop stealing and start working not just to be self-sufficient, it's all about me, but no, to be able to share with others. Remember, there are two ways to get something legitimately, through work or through love.
If we can be good stewards, we can be in a better position to be the one who gives to others through love. We believe in charity, but not dependence. Relief for the desperate, but not a career on welfare.
Now, sometimes there is a charity in severity. The Apostle Paul told the Thessalonian church in 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 10, that if some of their fellow church members simply will not work, what do you do?
Well, that's their problem. No, he said, well, let them not eat either. If they refuse to be good stewards of what God has given them, if they refuse to add to the wealth, first of themselves, of their families, and then to others, he said, that's stealing.
Even if they dress up their stealing with a kind of pseudo-spiritual garb, saying, well, we're watching and praying for the Lord to return any moment now. No need to work.
No need to save.
That's too worldly.
Spiritual people shouldn't be concerned for such earthly things. They were probably saying stuff like that. All of that is just the smokescreen that bad stewards use to steal from God. And the penalty, the inspired Apostle said, oh, so they think they're so spiritual that they don't need to add to the commonwealth.
Okay, let's see if they're spiritual enough then that they don't need to eat too. Let's see how spiritual they are. Even in ancient Israel, the people were instructed in Leviticus chapter 19 to leave some of the crops out in the field, to leave it unharvested for the poor to go out and take.
So you harvest most of it, but you leave kind of corners and edges for other people, the poor, and they are allowed to come. There's not a no trespassing sign up. They can come after you've harvested and they can get the remnants.
And you think, well, why do it that way? Why not tell the landowners to harvest all their crops thoroughly, every last little piece of grain, every olive from olive trees, every grape from the vineyards, and then give a percentage to the poor.
Why not do it that way? That's even more efficient, maybe.
I don't know.
But doing that requires nothing from the poor. They're coddled. They just kind of have the food handed to them. But in the way that God told them to do, the poor still have to go out and harvest the crop.
They have to do their part. They have to add to their own wealth and so to the commonwealth. They aren't encouraged to steal from God. God says in Malachi 3 that people were stealing from him by not contributing to the upkeep of worship, to the ministry.
In their day, that meant that they weren't tithing. Now, a lot of Christians want to debate, well, do we have to tithe today? Is it still a law for us? Now, I regard that whole debate, whether tithing is still binding, to be beside the point.
What are you talking about? If we're looking for a law, a line marking how much we must give, and thinking the rest, once we reach that line, the rest is ours to keep and to do with as we please, that's the way we think.
We've missed the point completely. If we can look at the cross of Christ, where he gave his life for us to ransom us from sin, and then think that somehow there's only a percentage we have to give back, then I don't think we've seen the cross rightly yet.
We, every part of us, the church, all of us, is bought with a price. We're to lay our whole lives before the Lord as a living sacrifice. If we think we can get away with just giving a measly 10%, then we don't understand that we are stewards, and God is the owner of 100%.
God wants everything. Now, some of it we must use to pay for our obligations, to support our family, to feed our families. Some of it should be saved. Some of it, as our church covenant says, is to be given cheerfully.
Cheerfully is important for the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel through all nations. For some, giving 10 may be a good guideline, but the Christian law is not 10%.
The Christian law is generous.
Generosity.
Grace means not that you can get away with less than what they had in the Old Testament with the law, but that you give him your whole life. So your money, your things, your life, you give generously.
The new church understood this. So amazed were they by grace. In Acts 4, verse 32, it says that no one said that the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. Those who owned land or houses, they sold them, and then they put the money into one big pot, and then they shared.
Now, Barnabas, the name means the son of encouragement. It wasn't just words. It wasn't just when he went around saying, oh, you're a nice guy, you're a great singer,.
You're a good drummer, you're a good this, that.
Maybe he did stuff like that, too, but he was also the son of encouragement. He did. He sold a field that he owned, and he laid all the money, it says, at the apostles' feet, the end of Acts 4. In other words, in public, before the whole church.
So everyone was in on this in the church. The church, again, like what the Thessalonians told a star of lazy members into working, the Puritan church censuring Robert Keene for price gouging. The church makes disciples who serve God with their money, their work, their business.
Another couple in the church saw this, saw Barnabas and the rest of them, decided, hey, I like the way everyone's approving of Barnabas, and for his generosity, I want to get some of this approval, too.
I want to be thought of like him. And they were Ananias and Sapphira. We talk about the first case of church discipline in American history. Here's the first case of church discipline in history, period.
In Acts 5, they had a piece of property. They sold it like the others. They gave to the common pool, just like the others. But they wanted to keep some of the money back for themselves. Now, were they free to do so?
Yes, they were. No one was obligated to give all their money. Those like Barnabas did it. They did it out of love and grace. Now, if Ananias and Sapphira had only given 50%, or maybe even only 20%, that's really still pretty generous, you ask me.
20 is pretty generous. What they did wrong was first lie about it, and then act as if the church didn't have a right to know. If they had given their 20 to the common pool, yeah, here's 20 of what we give.
We're keeping the rest. Okay, that's good. Thanks. You're giving. But they laid their donation at the apostles' feet in public, just like Barnabas, and then acted as if that's all there was. That's all of it.
As if the church didn't need to know that they were keeping some of it for themselves. As if what they did with their money was none of the church's business. They must have been Americans, I think, out of attitude.
They've got to be. Peter told Ananias, while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? In other words, you know, when you were the steward over it, God entrusted it to you.
You could have sold it, and done anything with it you wanted. But now you've laid some of it before us. You're lying to the church. Peter, by the way, says he's lying to the Holy Spirit. This is interesting.
Peter apparently challenges Ananias in public, before the church, and Ananias falls down dead. Three hours later, his wife, Sapphira, comes in, again, apparently, before the whole church, in public, and Peter asks her, before the church, whether what they gave was everything that they earned.
She says, yes. And Peter responds, how is it that you have agreed, you and your husband have agreed together, to test, interesting, they're lying to the church, but he says, test the spirit of the Lord.
She then falls down dead, too. Among the many lessons here is the fact that the church is involved in your giving. We may normally do it privately, to avoid the temptation of being a hypocrite, and so, showing you off, look how much I'm giving, but it's not private.
It's part of your discipleship, and the church is about making disciples. And we see that in Acts 5, that we are accountable to the church for our giving, and God enforced it there with death. That was the first incidence of church discipline, because how you handle your money is a major part of your discipleship, of whether you are a real disciple of Jesus.
What do you do with your money, your work, your business? That's why we have an offering in our meetings. It's not just a fundraising gimmick. While you're feeling generous, we're manipulating you. We've played the nice music, and we're just about to preach, and so you're feeling like you're ready to give.
No, it's not about that. It's about discipleship. It's about teaching you to be a generous giver. To stop.
Being a thief.
Now, in the light of God's ultimate ownership, you can even tithe, faithfully, and still be robbing God. For those of you who can, who have the ability to give more, but do not, because you've mistakenly been looking at your money as if you were the ultimate owner, and maybe you think, well, God deserves a cut.
He deserves a percentage, sure. You know, it's like paying off a mafia boss. If I don't pay him, he's going to hurt me, so I've got to pay him. That's the way you look at it. The rest of it, though, you get to keep as though it's yours.
Do with it as you please. You're still robbing God. Now, this is not to say that stewardship means that you can never enjoy the things that you have, as though you can never eat a nice meal out, or you can never go on a cruise, or never go to Disney World.
Joyce is going to Disney World. I'm happy for Joyce. I think this is her first real vacation. About three years ago, some of them went with us to a place down past Boone, wherever they're. And North Carolina, Nancy was there.
But this is like their first real vacation, and maybe forever. And I'm glad for that. They deserve it.
Yeah,.
You can be a good steward and do that, or get a car with a few luxuries. You can do that, if after you practice good stewardship, and by the way, sometimes good stewardship means you've got to look after yourself.
Take care of your own need for rest, and maybe no need for recreation to get away from things, and so forth. But generally, you've waited, and you've been self-controlled. You've saved your money, and you've supported your family.
You've given to the poor and supported the ministry. At the end, God has blessed you with an abundance that lets you enjoy a treat without sacrificing the ability to continue to be a good steward. If you can do something special without stealing from God, sure, enjoy it.
If you cannot yet do that, then continue to work and save and give and fix your hope on something better than money and what it can buy. Better than what the commercials and the catalogs tempt you with.
You may never break the laws of the state and still be a thief, if only you hold one penny as if it were yours. As if you had the right to use it for anything you please, and will never have to answer to anyone for it, not even God.
If you've ever done that, and all of us have,.
Then you are.
A thief. And the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 10, that no thief will inherit the kingdom of God. Put bluntly, that means that every thief will go to hell. But the good news is that Christ is used to being around thieves.
He died hanging between two of them. And one of them believed. One of them was saved. He confessed, by the way, that he deserved this death that was coming on him because of his thievery. That that thief crucified next to the Lord experienced the wrath of Rome on that dark Friday afternoon.
But because of the crucifixion of a man just feet from him, he would not have to endure the wrath of heaven. All thieves who trust in Christ can expect to hear those same words at their deaths from the Lord himself.
Today you shall be with me.
In paradise.
So,.
You.
Murderers, adulterers, thieves, do you see now? Like that thief hanging there? Do you see what you're made of, what you deserve? Do you see that you can't buy off God with a handsome tip, with protection money?
Do you see that you can't even give to the church? And you can do that quite generously, and still do so as a thief if you think you're giving something to God that's originally yours. Do you see that one penny that you've kept as if.
It were your own,.
That you stole from God? And now as a thief, if you are to be right with God, if you are to hear those welcome words from the Lord, today you will be with me in paradise, then if you are to hear that, admit, like that thief on the cross, that that punishment is what you deserve, you must repent and confess your sin and renounce your claim to own something, anything, a penny, a life, a right, a right to stand before the judge of the whole world.
Let go of your claims to deserve, to own, to have rights, and come to Him.
And give,.
Not just some spare change,.
Give your whole life.
To Him as a living sacrifice. It's a good deal.
For us thieves.