LAW HOMILY: Honest Wages

The Moral Scope of the Eighth Commandment

Heart for His people and how we are to obey Him in every facet of our life. We don't believe that 75 of the Bible is now unusable or somehow no longer relevant. We believe that all of God's Word is useful for teaching and for aiding us in our life and walk with Christ.

So today, we're going to be on, I can't remember if it's the 7th or the 8th, the 8th. You shall not steal. I should have wrote that down. You shall not steal. It's just four English words. It's a short fence, but it surrounds a vast field, as it were.

The 8th commandment is not merely about protecting someone else's wallet from you. It's also about protecting the God-ordained means by which wealth is created, distributed, and stewarded. It's not only a prohibition against burglary and fraud.

It's also a holy summons to honesty in how we gain wealth, righteous work, diligent hands, productive lives that glorify the God who gives us the strength in order to labor. Theft, after all, comes in many disguises.

Now, of course, there is the overt theft of criminality, breaking into homes, hijacking cars, defrauding clients, skimming money with a software that you created that will only take fractions of a penny, you know what I mean.

Pirating digital property, these are visible acts of theft. But Scripture does not allow us to leave it there. God sees theft not merely in what is taken, but in also what is withheld. You can rob a man with a crowbar or with a time card.

You can rob a man with, or you can rob your neighbor by picking his pocket or by giving him less than what he is owed. You can rob your family by gambling or grifting, but you can also rob your family by sloth or by half-hearted labor, or by laziness in your vocation, or by failing to build the kind of future and inheritance that God blesses in His Word.

Honest Wages and False Balances

Proverbs 11, 1 says a false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight. In the ancient world, a false balance meant corrupt business dealings. It meant dishonest scales that gave the appearance of fairness while cheating the customer.

But the image runs even deeper than that, because God is not just angry at corrupt merchants. He is abhorring the corrupt men, those who do not pursue excellence in their calling. Those who shortchange their employers with idle hours and minimalistic effort because everyone else is doing it.

The ones who build careers without character, the ones who use their sloth to extract resources from a company, that is theft. It robs employers, it robs co-workers, it robs companies, it robs the economy of vitality.

But more than that, it robs God of His glory, because in whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink, we do all to the glory of God. So when we do anything half-heartedly, we are robbing from the very epicenter of where all things belong and originate, which is God.

Theft, Repentance, and Joyful Forgiveness

So brothers and sisters, my prayer today is that we would have a much wider definition of theft, that in whatever we do half-heartedly, wickedly, sinfully, in whatever we do, even with crooked motives, that we would recognize that that sin is not just a sin unto itself.

Your lying is not just a lie. It's robbing from the glory of God. That that wicked business practice, that that secret thing you did, that whatever it is, it's a kind of theft. So in that sense, everyone here is burglars, and everyone here, because we've all fallen short of the glory of God, needs to repent.

And repentance, let it not be a hurtful thing. Let it be a helpful and a joyful thing, because the greatest thing that can happen to you if you have a cancer is to have it cut out. So go before the Lord, who doesn't come at you with a shank, but comes at you with a scalpel and cuts out the things that need to be cut out.

Let us together go to the Lord in prayer. Holy Spirit, all of us are thieves and liars. The minutes that I stole this week in idleness, or in throwing sanctified pity parties, or in being frustrated that an F -350 almost killed me, or in whatever, those are moments that I have a responsibility to use for the glory of God, and I didn't.

And Lord, we didn't. All of us, all of us have a ledger of theft. All of us have an account balance of things we've taken. Lord, forgive us, please, and help us to live for you joyfully and unto your glory.

Covenant Grace and the Throne of Grace

And Lord, let us live joyfully because we know that on the basis of Jesus Christ that our sins are forgiven. So let us come joyfully to the throne of grace once more this week, as we do every week, knowing that in a covenant relationship, there's two parties, and we are the party that always breaks the terms.

We're the party that always breaks covenant with you, and every week you welcome us back, and you restore us back because of what Jesus did. Lord, let that thought thrill us from our toes to our hair follicles.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. And also if you don't...