The Ten Commandments Part 8
Scriptures: Exodus 20:15; Romans 13:7-10; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15
This is part eight of my series “The Ten Commandments.” I want to begin this message with a few questions to hopefully set the stage for the commandment we will cover this morning. How many of you have ever “tested” the ripeness or sweetness of grapes in the produce aisle to determine if you wanted to purchase the grapes? Have you ever purchased candy where you filled the bag and you paid according to how many ounces and/or pounds you purchased? If you have ever brought this type of candy, did you snack on the candy before you paid for it as you continued your shopping within the store? What would be the harm since you were eating the candy out of the bag you were purchasing? Let’s make this more personable. Have you ever been given too much change back from a cashier and you kept it as a blessing from God? What about having a co-worker clock you out because you had to leave work early and you did not want to lose any of your pay? Or, you were running late so you called your co-worker to clock you in so you were not docked pay for being late? I have just one more example. You work in an office that purchase office supplies “to be used within the office only.” These supplies include pencils, pens, note pads, etc. You routinely take some of the items home with you because everybody does it and it’s no big deal. I want you to keep these examples in your mind as I will revisit them later. But one thing I want you to know up from and remember, God will NEVER bless you with deceit or something stolen. He does not need to steal and He definitely does not need us to steal!
If you have not already figured it out, the commandment for today is the eighth commandment found in Exodus 20:15. It says, “Thou shall not steal.” Stealing is defined as, “to take something unlawfully; taking something belonging to someone else without their permission.” This definition is very broad because its application is broad. All of know that it is wrong to steal. It is wrong to take something that does not belong to you. We understand this concept because none of us would like to have our personal possessions stolen from us. But here is the problem, our definition of stealing does not always line up with what God’s definition of stealing is and that my friends is what I hope to clear up this morning. Through this message I hope you will leave here today with a very clear understanding of what is and is not acceptable when it comes to taking the property of someone else without their permission. It’s interesting to me that “stealing” is so important to God that He includes it as one of the prohibitions found in the Ten Commandments. In the Hebrew the word steal means to thieve, or to be a thief. But there’s more to it than that. The word implies that a person is “willing to deceive” another. How many of you know that you don’t steal from a person or deceive a person accidently? How many of you know that there is some forethought that takes place before you steal from someone? And, after the deed is done, you commit another sin when you lie when asked if you are the culprit.
I have one very vivid memory of when I was a child and I got caught stealing. This memory was permanently burned into my mind not only because of the consequences that I experienced, but also the pleasure. Let me explain, when I was a child my older brother had a paper route. Now this was during the days when the paperboy had to go to their customers’ homes to collect their subscription payment. One day my brother had finished counting the money he had collected from his customers and left it lying on the floor in our bedroom (why he did this I shall never know, maybe it was to tempt me which it did.) I saw the money and thought about what I could get if I just took one dime which he probably would not miss. I was not thinking that this would make him come up short with what he owed the company as I was focusing on what I could get with the dime. So I stole the dime and went to the store that was located besides my grandmother’s home. This store was owned by a local minister who had very reasonable priced food. With the dime I purchase a bag of potato chips. But I got caught. I got caught because even though I had hidden my goodies under my shirt I decided to share them with my next door neighbor. (How many of you know that when you are successful it’s hard not to share it with someone? I was successful in getting the dime and buying the chips. It was too good not to share it with somebody.) As I was showing him what I had brought with the dime I had stolen, my brother saw me. Of course he now ran and told my mother that I had been to the store which meant I had taken the money from his paper route since none of us had money to buy anything at that time. Well you can imagine what my mother did to me with my brother watching and smiling. But you know what, after I received my punishment, my best friend and I ate those potato chips.
Now here is what I want you to see and why this memory is still alive within me. As a child I knew that there was a chance I could get caught. But there was also a chance that I could get away with it. The desire for what I could purchase with the dime and not getting caught was much greater than the potential whipping I would get if I did get caught. This was within me as a child and it’s the same thing we go through today as adults. Whenever we are doing something we are not supposed to do, we give in to the stronger desire. If the desire to walk before God righteously is greater than the desires of our flesh to sin, we will walk before God righteously. But don’t be fooled, those competing desires changes daily and it’s not uncommon for even a righteous man to fail every now and then, key words being “every now and then.” Now I wish I could tell you that I learned my lesson after that and never stole again, but I can’t because within me was the thought that “I almost got away with it” and next time I needed to be smarter. The next time I “five-fingered discounted” something I had to keep it a secret if I wanted to increase my chance of not getting caught. If you take nothing else from this message, please know that taking anything that does not belong to you is stealing, no matter how big or small the item may be. This includes those additional deductions taken on tax returns in April. I have learned through experience that the Bible is right. Proverbs 20:17 says, “Bread obtained by falsehood is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be filled with gravel.” Nothing gained through stealing or deceit is profitable in the end.
When God talks about stealing in the Old Testament, He is dealing with people who have to be told not to do it because they didn’t see anything wrong with it (not any difference from today.) God has to give them (and us) a commandment to follow otherwise they would destroy themselves. That’s why we see in Exodus 22:11 that if a person stole someone’s ox they had to give him five in return. If they stole a sheep, they had to replace it with four sheep. The punishment was not one for one (you take one you replace one) but the person who stole had to give back multiple times what they stole as a deterrent for them and others to not do it again. Today we call these punitive damages, which are damages awarded to the plaintiff in order to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in similar conduct in the future. Now, in case you did not pick up on this, if someone had enough ox or sheep to pay the punitive damages, why were they stealing in the first place? The reason was because they wanted more than they had. What they had was not enough so they decided to take what belonged to someone else. Are you seeing this? How many times do we sacrifice what we have in order to get something that does not belong to us? We lie, we steal and we destroy to get what someone else has only to end up losing what we had in the process – our freedom, our material possessions, our lives and sometimes even our souls.
In these examples, the penalty for stealing was primarily financial even though to God the financial cost was not the most important thing. Now we’re going to read a verse that really helps us see how God views the act of stealing. In Leviticus 19:11 it reads “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.” As we saw earlier, the word “steal” implies that a person is “willing to deceive” another. The word “deal falsely” means “to be untrue”. Can you say “willing to deceive”? The word “lie” means “to cheat, to be untrue”. Can you say “willing to deceive”? In this verse, the stealing, the dealing falsely with and the lying are all done with words and with action. You understand stealing, but dealing falsely with someone can result in you stealing also if your lies get you something that does not belong to you. Oh yes my friends, many a theft has taken place with the mouth! Words are important. We tell the truth with words. We lie with words. When we tell the truth, we align ourselves with God. When we tell a lie, we align ourselves with Satan and we see this in John 10:10 – “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” We know that the thief is Satan and what is the first thing he does? He steals. And based on what we saw in Leviticus, how does he steal? He steals with words. He deceives us with words. How many of you desire to be aligned with Satan? If you are one who steals, you are aligned with him, not God.
In my series, Satan’s Battle Tactics, I shared with you that what Satan really wants to do is keep the Word of God from taking root in our lives. Do you remember that? He wants to steal that word before it takes root within us. Mark 4:14, 15 – “The sower sows the word. These are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them.” If Satan can “come and take away the word” – when he can steal the word from you – he will keep you from living the life your Heavenly Father wants you to live. And that includes having dominion and authority over him and the spirits who report to him. If you do not have the word of God living within you then it becomes a lot easier to justify your thefts. Your company is not paying you equally so you lie on your expense account to make up the difference. You use your company fuel card to put gas in your personal vehicle. It’s okay to have your co-worker clock you in or out because everyone does it and no one seems to care. All of these things we do when the word of God is missing from our lives. Our moral compass is off – it’s sending us in the wrong direction!
I want you to see something because there are many Christian leaders who get into trouble because they steal funds from their ministry because they are seduced into believing that the money actually belongs to them as the leader (especially if they started the ministry.) They also teach doctrines that enable them to do this with the people’s blessings. Turn to 2 Corinthians 11:13-15. It says, “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.” Let’s stop here for a moment. This is how Paul is describing preachers who were making the rounds in the local fellowships and disagreeing with his teachings. He calls them “deceitful workers”. Based on what we saw in Leviticus, we saw that deceitful words were used to steal from someone, to deal falsely with someone and to lie to someone. And the men Paul is describing were respected by those in the local fellowships. The men that Paul called false prophets and deceitful workers were really speaking lies birth by deceiving spirits. But they truly thought they were speaking for God. Satan had deceived them.
Now get this, Satan was using them to “steal” the true word of God from the people. How many of you know that you can steal something from someone with just the words you used. You can steal their self-esteem. You can steal their motivation. You can steal their beliefs. The possibilities are endless as to what we can steal from someone else with the simple use of our mouths. Are you seeing that stealing goes beyond just taking things with your hands that do not belong to you? And this is happening in the Church today. There are preachers out there who are teaching things that they truly believe are right but they are being deceived by seducing spirits. Those same seducing spirits are creating within them the same desire that I had for my brother’s dime – it looks good, it sounds good so it must be good! If you’re taking notes, write down these two passages: I Timothy 4:1, 2 and 2 Timothy 4:1-4. Both of these references speak to the last days which we are living in where there will be many false prophets and preachers teaching a false doctrine.
We need to understand that from God’s point of view, if we are willing to steal, then we don’t love one another. Romans 13:7-10 says “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does not wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Paul said that we should “owe nothing to anyone.” How many of you know that when you owe someone and you do not pay you have stolen from that person? If you borrow something from someone and you do not return or repay it, you have stolen from that person. I want you to hear me clearly on this because I’m going to be very blunt. If we are willing to steal, to deceive, to lie, to deal falsely with someone, then we may not be a child of God. We may not be born again. Do you have scripture for that Pastor? You know I do. Look at First John 4:7 and 8 – “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (I want you to focus on the next verse.) The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” In a nutshell, “does not know God” means you are not born again. How can we say that we love someone if we are willing to steal from and lie to them? How can we say we are children of God if our lives consist of thefts, lies and cheating? Someone said if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. Well this is true for a duck, but not necessarily for a Christian. You can surely look like a Christian, walk like a Christian and talk like a Christian and still not be a Christian. Unlike the duck, you can look and talk like a Christian and still not be one. However, if you walk like a Christian this is hard to fake over a long period of time. That word is not describing your natural gait, but how you live. (Remember, Judas walked like a Christian for three years before betraying Christ.) Stealing, lying and cheating should not be a part of how a Christian lives! Our walk will demonstrate who we really are!
Let me share a few reference Scriptures with you as I close.
Proverbs 10:2 says, “Ill-gotten gains do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.” Ill-gotten gains does us no good but can bring death. However, righteousness delivers from death.
Proverbs 12:22 says, “Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who deal faithfully are His delight.” I have shared with you that we can steal with our mouths and this is primarily through deceit, lying. Lying always has and always will be an abomination to the LORD. However, the one who deals faithfully in all things, the LORD delights in that person.
Ephesians 4:28 says “He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.” There is forgiveness for the one who steals. Everyone should work with their own hands so that each have something to share with the one in need.
This morning I wanted to broaden your definition of stealing. I wanted you to understand scripturally that stealing is something that can be done with our hands and with our mouths. As it pertains to material things, anytime that we take something without permission we have stolen. From taking the office supplies at work to eating your sibling cookies without their knowledge; from taking additional deductions on your taxes to tasting the grapes in the produce department. All of these are examples of stealing which is a sin in the eyes of God.
Now spiritually it’s another story. When you steal someone’s mental health; their faith; their self-esteem; their sense of purpose; and everything else we steal from one another with our mouths, it is sin. Remember, God is about love and those who call themselves His children must be about love also. We cannot love God and hate our fellowman. Likewise, we cannot love our fellow-man and steal from them, materially or spiritually. So I ask you this morning, do you love God? Do you love Him enough that your desire to serve Him overrides your desire to take something that does not belong to you – both with your hands and with your mouth? If you are unsure of the answer, please go into your quiet place today and get the answer. Get right before God before your time on this earth has ended.
If you truly believe that God has you, would you EVER need to steal something that does not rightfully belong to you? And as a follow-up, would God, who said you shall not steal, bless you through the theft?
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
(If you are ever in the Kansas City, KS area, please come and worship with us at New Light Christian Fellowship, 15 N. 14th Street, Kansas City, KS 66102. Our service Sunday worship starts at 9 a.m. and Thursday night Bible study at 7 p.m. We look forward to you worshipping with us. May God bless and keep you.)
