INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a motor home trying to steal gasoline. The man had plugged his hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had. http://maxpages.com/klingel/Stupid_Criminals
• A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving
revolvers. The first one shouted, "Nobody move!" When his partner moved,
the startled first bandit shot him.
• A guy walked into a little corner store with a shotgun and demanded all of
the cash from the cash drawer. After the cashier put the cash in a bag, the
robber saw a bottle of Scotch that he wanted behind the counter on the
shelf.
• He told the cashier to put it in the bag as well, but the cashier refused
and said, "Because I don’t believe you are over 21." The robber said he
was, but the clerk still refused to give it to him because he didn’t
believe him.
• At this point, the robber took his driver’s license out of his wallet and
gave it to the clerk. The clerk looked it over and agreed that the man was in fact over 21 and he put the Scotch in the bag. The robber then ran from the store with his
loot.
• The cashier promptly called the police and gave the name and address of the
robber that he got off the license. They arrested the robber two hours
later.
• Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. Some people think that crime pays.
• It is amazing how hard some people will work at being dishonest.
• Today we are going to look at another commandment that appears to be a simple one, but it is one that is frequently ignored.
• In the most comprehensive study of its type, an article in the Journal of Law and Economics (University of Chicago Press) says that crime costs $4,100 or $17 per day per person, or $1.7 trillion in 1997 dollars. The report, researched and written by David Anderson, an economist at Davidson College in North Carolina, covered such details as police and private security expenses, corrections costs, expenses of crime-related injuries, amount of theft. Anderson says that criminals annually steal $603 billion in assets while also creating an additional $1.1 trillion worth of lost productivity. http://www.identex.net/cost_of_crime.html
• SLIDE #2
• In Exodus 20:15 we are told, "You shall not steal.” (ESV)
• Let’s take a look at the 8th commandment together today.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
I. IF IT IS NOT YOURS, DO NOT TAKE IT.
• In this commandment we see that God is telling us that we are not to take the property of another person.
• Dr. Laura in her book on the Ten Commandments states the following:
• The commandments thus far have dealt with issues such as divine authority, life and death, sacred time, etc.
• Suddenly the gears are shifted from holy spirits and holy relationships to the issue of things. God considered the possession of things of significant importance to include respecting ownership as one of the Big Ten. (p236)
• It is important to remember that God does not give us His commands to burden us, but instead to give us freedom within boundaries. Some see have laws or rules to follow as slavery, but in truth, accepting a commandment sets you free from the struggle with your internal drives towards selfishness. You do not have to think about stealing because God has said it is wrong.
• This commandment tells us we are to respect ownership of possessions. We are told we are not to take what does not belong to us.
• In the Old Testament, if you stole something from another, you were required to pay double restitution. If you took two sheep from someone, you had to give them four back as restitution. Exodus 22
• Anyone who has had something taken from them or has been robbed at gun point knows the pain of the theft. The Bible provides a way to try to ease some of the pain and suffering that accompanies a loss of property.
• If a person took something and turned himself in before he was caught, the Bible tells us the repentant thief would only have to add one fifth on top of what he took. (Numbers 5:5-7)
• SLIDE #4
• Exodus 22:1 (ESV) “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.
• Sheep and oxen were the livelihood of the people of the Old Testament; much like a horse thief was hung in the old west because the horse was the livelihood of the person of the old west.
• I wonder how things would be today if a person knew that if they got caught stealing stuff, they would have to pay anywhere from 2x the value to 5x.
• Stealing is taking something that is not yours!
• That leads to the next tough question.
• SLIDE #5
II. AM I A THIEF?
• I do not think too many of us are planning on robbing someone or I hope we are not planning to break into someone’s home to steal their stuff.
• Stealing can manifest itself in a multitude of ways. Let’s look at a few ways.
• IDENTITY THEFT.
• An interesting side note. Identity theft is becoming more and more of a problem.
• The Federal Trade Commission reports that for the 4th year in a row identity theft topped the list of consumer complaints. Identity theft accounted for over 42 percent of all complaints lodged in the FTC Consumer Sentinel database in 2004, up 40 percent from 2002. (http://idtheft.about.com/od/dataandstat1/p/GeneralStats.htm)
• Identity Theft costs almost $53 billion. The total loss to business and individual victims for all types of reported identity theft--both new account and existing account frauds is almost $53 billion dollars annually.
• More specifically, business victims experienced a total loss of $47.5 billion or an average of $4,800 per business victim per year. Individual victims account for a total loss of $5 billion and $500 per victim annually. (http://idtheft.about.com/od/dataandstat1/p/GeneralStats.htm)
• A few years ago I had someone order $65 worth of Dominoes Pizza on my Discover Card from somewhere in Indiana. I have had the card since 1988.
• COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS
• We can steal software by sharing it with other people. Software is copyrighted. When we purchase it and share it with our friends, we are stealing it. Music and choir music is the same way.
• OFFICE SUPPLIES
• When we go to our jobs and take office supplies home we are stealing from our employer. I will never forget a couple of guys I used to work with. They were a father and son.
• When the son quit the factory, he kept taking his toolbox from home to work for a few weeks before he was going to quit. Once you checked out tools from the store room, they were yours. Apparently he kept coming back from more and was taking tools home.
• Then there was his father who was an electrician. I guess the apple does not fall far from the tree. This man who was close to retirement would go into the supply room and check out electrical parts and would then throw them in the trash.
• Later he would fetch the stuff out of the trash and would take it home. He was later fired. I wonder where his son learned his morals from.
• There are many people who steal cable TV. People cheat on their taxes by miss reporting their income or by not reporting cash.
• When employers do not pay a fair wage, they are cheating employees.
• SLIDE #6
• James 5:4 (ESV) 4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
• We have white collar crime where people have their retirement accounts literally wiped out.
• When a worker goofs off on the job, they are stealing from their employer.
• In a 2006 article in Inc.com states:
• Employees spend an average of 1.86 hours per eight-hour workday on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks, the survey found. Based on those averages, employee time-wasting costs U.S. employers an estimated $544 billion in lost productivity each year. http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200608/time.html
• When a young man takes the virginity of a woman who is not his wife, he is stealing something that doesn’t belong to him or if a girls does the same with a man who is not their husband.
• When a person collects money that does not belong to them or if they refuse to work and then take money, they are stealing also.
• SLIDE #7
• Ephesians 4:28 (ESV) 28Let 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.
•
• SLIDE #8
III. IT IS STILL STEALING.
• It is so easy for us to rationalize stealing things. If it is our taxes, we say, “They are taking too much and they waste what they have, so I can cheat on my taxes.”
• I do not know how much tax fraud goes on each year, but it is a lot.
• Sometimes we will steal from a large business or our employer because we think that the company owes it to us. If it is not your, they do not owe it to you.
• I am only taking a little. What if all of us take just a little? This is one of the reasons government welfare programs do not work too well. Everyone is trying to get all they can.
• Have you ever been given too much change at the store or have you ever been given something at what you knew it was the wrong price?
• It is not stealing when they made a mistake is it? YES! GO back and let them know the mistake. Would you want them to do the same for you? Someone’s ignorance or mistake is not meant to be our gain.
• Small things really do count. God will not bless us if we cannot handle what He has already blessed us with.
• How about the one that says, EVERYONE DOES IT.
• An article in the November 1999 edition of Campus Life Magazine states the following concerning this thought in an article entitled, “Everybody Is Doing It.”
• According to a recent Campus Life survey, 80 percent of our readers say they’ve cheated in school. Most of those say they’ve cheated "seldom" or "only once," but one reader actually admitted to cheating every day! Only six percent of you say you’ve never cheated. And almost three-fourths of you (73 percent) say cheating is a problem at your school.
• When we asked why people cheat, the most common answers were: "they didn’t study" (87 percent), "to get a passing grade" (80 percent), and "to get better grades" (77 percent).
• All right, enough statistics. It’s clear that cheating is a big issue. An issue, yes. But is it a problem? After all, it’s so common, almost everybody’s "doing it"—even the nation’s very best students. According a survey of Who’s Who Among American High School Students, 80 percent of them admit to cheating. Many students find cheating easy to justify. "Cheating never hurts anybody," one guy told the Chicago Tribune in a recent story about cheating in school.
• "Ten years from now, who’s going to care?" "Why should I know the parts of a squid’s stomach?" said a girl, citing her reason for cheating on a test. When that girl’s mother heard her daughter had cheated, she hardly flinched: "It’s cheating, after all," the mom told the Tribune. "She didn’t pull a knife on somebody."
• SLIDE #9
• Luke 16:10 (ESV) 10“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
CONCLUSION
• Not too many of us will rob a bank, but are we guilty of breaking God’s commandment in other ways?
• When we belong to Christ, we are to live by a higher ethical standard. I have an accountant who will do everything he can to LEGALLY save me tax money, but if something is questionable; he will advise that I not take the deduction.
• We must be people who can be trusted. We should do everything we can to obey God’s command. You never know when someone might make one of those too much change mistakes to see what you will do.
