Love God And Love Your Neighbor : 8th Commandment Series

Intro

Open your Bibles to Matthew 5 today as we continue our Summer Series entitled “Love God , Love your Neighbor”

We are examining the 10 Commandments—God’s moral law—while focusing on Jesus is summary of the commandments found in the New Testament. Jesus tells us

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:36-39 ESV)

Jesus teaches us here that the 10 commandments are easily understood as “Love God” and “Love Your Neighbor." The first four commands and focus them on our love and worship to God. While commandments 5-10 and focus them on our mission to love our neighbor. Since Jesus teaches us that these are about loving others, and not just internal struggles against sin. We want to ask God to teach us how to love others for the sake of the gospel.

Today we come to the 8th amendment which is:

“You shall not steal. (Exodus 20:15 ESV)

In a sermon is entitled: Mission: Generosity Shows Jesus’ Love

If you're able we stand as we open up God's word today? We will read out of Ephesians chapter 4 verse 17. I pray that you will hear the word of the Lord.

READ FROM THE BIBLE

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Ephesians 4:17-28 ESV)

PRAY

The big truth is: Jesus transforms the eighth Commandment by calling us to be generous to our neighbor.

In his book on the 10 Commandments, Cecil Myers describes a picture by Norman Rockwell. It is well known painting that was appeared on the cover of the Saturday evening Post. It shows a woman buying a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. As the turkey is being weight on the scale. Cecil Myers says: “the two of them exchange a knowing smile, almost as if they are sharing a joke, but the joke is really on them because the painting shows what they are secretly doing.The butchers pressing the scale down with his own to raise the price. At the same time, the woman is trying to get a better price by pushing the scale up with her finger. As charming as this may seem as we learn, with the butcher and the customer are doing is violating the eighth Commandment. Myers comments: “Both Butcher and the lady resent being called these. The lovely lady would never rob a bank or still a car. Butcher was the config if anyone is accused him of stealing; and if a customer gave them a bad check, he would call the police on but neither saw anything wrong with a little deception that would make a few cents for one or save a few cents for the other.” In a word they both are stealing.

Now if you called them a thief they would probably get offended. Everyone knows that stealing is wrong. This is another one of those generally excepted rules that most people live by. To steal is to take something that doesn't belong to you. What the eighth Commandment forbids seems very simple. However, most of us fail to understand it's full meaning. But just as the rest of God's law the command not to steal goes much deeper than you would think. The truth is whenever we take something that doesn't want us however we do it we send against God as well as our neighbor.

Stealing is a sin against God in at least two ways. First, every theft is a failure to trust in his provision. Whenever we take something that is going to us, we deny that God has given us or is able to give us everything we truly need. Therefore, keeping the eighth Commandment is and exercising faith to a God who truly provides all of our needs. Stealing is also an assault on God’s provision for others. This is the second way that stealing is an assult against God; it robs what He has provided for someone else.