LAW HOMILY: Stealing Hearts

Why the Eighth Commandment Includes More Than Taking Property

We go through the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to his people. We want to understand how to obey God. We do not believe that now that we're saved that we just get to do whatever we want.

We do not believe that now that we're going to heaven we can live like hell. We don't believe that. We believe that grace accomplishes something, that grace is not a license to sin. We believe that now in the Spirit, finally, we can begin learning how to obey.

So we go through and we look at the law of God every week. Today we're on the eighth commandment, which is, you shall not steal. Just two words in the original Hebrew. Now there's a kind of thief that the law doesn't catch.

Absalom as a Picture of Stealing Hearts

Because he leaves the house exactly as he found it, walks out carrying the one thing that nobody could lock up, and that, before the sun is over Jerusalem, he's already standing at the gate. He's the handsomest man in the kingdom.

The kingdom has told him so since he was a boy. Fifty runners go out before his chariot to clear the road because a man who intends to wear the crown ought to be seen as though he was already wearing it.

And he waits every morning at the one place where the wounded in the city are certain to pass the gate, where men bring their grievances to be judged by the king. A farmer comes up to this young man with dust still on his feet and a quarrel in his chest and a complaint that he has rehearsed a thousand times on the three-day journey.

And the prince, who could have ridden past him, steps down and instead asks the man his name. And then he asks what town he's from. And then he leans in and he listens. And for a one hurried moment in this man's hard life, somebody important was giving him his full attention.

And then softly the man twists the knife. Your claims are good and right, he says, but the king doesn't care about you. Your cause is just, but the king does not listen to you. He doesn't know about you.

He's too busy in his high and mighty palace to see you. Before the farmer could even imagine what was being saying to him, the prince had already stolen his heart. This is what Absalom did in the kingdom of David.

He stood at the gate. He listened to the people of Israel and he turned their hearts away from David. He stole away the proper affection, the proper submission, the proper love that they should have had for their leaders.

And then he led a rebellion that ultimately led to his death. One of the ways that we can steal is by turning the hearts of people with our words and with our actions away from what God has actually called them to.

Refusing to Steal Hearts Through Ungodly Counsel

Imagine someone comes to you and asks you for help because they're struggling in their marriage and you say, I wouldn't put up with that. I wouldn't stand for that. Have you really encouraged them towards what God has told them to or have you stolen their heart away to rebellion?

Somebody comes to you and they say, this person has sinned against me. And you lead them towards vengeance instead of forgiveness. There's so many ways that we can play the part of Absalom in people's lives by stealing their heart away from what God would call them to and yet empowering them for evil.

Our Mutual Obligation to Point One Another to Christ

That's a kind of theft. Each of us in this rugged individualistic society that we believe in where I am the almighty I, I am so important in my pomposity and snowflakedness. All of us think that we belong to ourself.

You don't. I belong to you all. You belong to us. My job is to care for your heart. Your job is to care for my heart. Your job is to point me to Christ as I point you to Christ. If you don't, you're stealing my heart and I'm stealing yours from the things of God.

It's a kind of theft we rarely think about, but it's an obligation we have to each other. So in whatever way that we failed in that, because we have, you failed that with your husband, you failed that with your wife, you failed that with your children, you failed that with each other.

In whatever way we've stolen the heart, let's pray. Let's ask the Lord to forgive us and let's ask the Lord that we would be mindful to instead of stealing from each other, to deposit in each other the things of God.

Amen? Let's pray.