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.
This brings up the principle of ownership. I want something that belongs to someone can be stolen. But the reason that anything belongs to anyone is because it comes from God, and we do not have the right to take for ourselves what God has given to others. On the positive side of the commandment receive the Bible teaches us about ownership. Ownership according to the Bible is not about processing things for the use of our own purposes, but receiving things from God to use for his glory. So at the same time we are forbidden to take things that don't belong to us, we are called to use what we have in ways that are pleasing to God.
The 8th Commandment isn’t just about stealing; it is also about being a good steward. The definition of a steward is a person who cares for someone else’s property. I, along with our elders and Executive Team in this church have been given the responsibility steward finances that God has blessed us through the generous giving of His people.
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:28 ESV)
See Jesus even purchased the church with his blood. Therefore he is the owner and we are His stewards. Because we embrace that all the gifts come from God through his people we don't get to spend it anyway we want. Rather we are accountable to God and each other seeking to manage these gifts the way God intended.
Same is true for you. All of your possessions belong to God and he is given you the responsibility as stewards to look after it. This is the way it has been since creation. Adam did not own his own property he simply managed it. We read in Genesis 2:15
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15 ESV)
And like Adam, we too are called to be good stewards of what God has given us. We have all broken the 8th Commandment by robbing God of his ownership and not being good stewards with his gifts. This is why we need a savior. Last Sunday we spoke about the promise of God to save us and how he accomplishes that by sending his only son Jesus to live a perfect life, fulfilling the demands of the law by keeping the commandments perfectly on our behalf. Jesus died the death that we deserved for saying sacrificing His life, purchasing our lives with his blood and taking our sin to the grave. Jesus rose from the grave to demonstrate that he has power to bring dead things back to life. The moment we place our faith in Jesus for salvation. We who are dead in our trespasses come back to life. In that moment God gives us new hearts and a new spirit and He causes us to walk in his ways. (see Ezekiel 36:26)
It is with this new heart but that we see the Gospel with new eyes. God reveals things as they truly are and how life is intended to be lived. In our opening scriptures in Ephesians chapter 4 Paul instructs Christians who have been saved, to not walk like those that are not saved. He writes:
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...
And then we come to verse 28 which reads
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)
The apostle Paul begins by saying: Let the thief no longer steal (Ephesians 4:28a ESV). The reference to the thief is everyone who is guilty of violating the eighth Commandment. And so in the context of these verses we see those who have come from death to life are referenced as the thief. Here Jesus calls the thief who is been saved by grace to a life of righteousness. The first thing we learn is that a thief no longer steals. Paul says in verse 24 we are
“…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. (Ephesians 4:23-24 ESV)
So we need renew our minds by understanding what is true, right, and hold. And when it comes to money and gathering riches it begins with truly understanding this distinction between owner and steward. God has created us, is given us life, the air in our lungs, the ability to learn and work. Any calls us to be a good steward of all those things. Paul uses verse 28 to transform our thinking and our mind when it comes to stewardship.
Paul teaches us to be a good steward means to work hard.
“let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands” (Ephesians 4:28b ESV)
In Proverbs we read that laziness leads to poverty.
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. (Proverbs 6:10-11 ESV)
And as we work hard Paul teaches us to be a good steward also means to work honestly. Being careful not to have a finger on the scale trying to rip people off. There's a story in the Gospels were Jesus turned over the tables in the temple. They were selling animals to sacrifice at the temple. People travel long distances, bringing their animals for a sacrifice. The money changers in the marketplace would exchange their foreign money at ridiculous rates. Once they got ripped off by the money exchange they would go take their animals in for an inspection in there they be told that their animals are not good enough. So they had to that they had trade there animals in and purchase animals approved for sacrifice at the temple. Jesus would call their operation a den of thieves. (Matthew 21:13). He turns their tables over, cleansing the temple of their thievery by driving them out with a whip.
Jesus does not condemn capital gain as long as it is honest and fair. Life transformed by the gospel no longer steals, works honestly and does it for the right reason. Look at verse 28.
“so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” (Ephesians 4:28c ESV)
The last thing Paul teaches us to be a good steward means to be generous. Jesus summarized and simplified the law by saying love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Obedience to Jesus’ is and eighth Commandment can be lived out by generous giving to our neighbors in need.
Being a good steward means giving in a way that God has given to us so that other people will have what they need. Christians are called to live generously. We do not work simply to satisfy her own desires, but also to provide for others.
This is not to say that we can never enjoy what God is given us. Enjoying God's gifts is actually one aspects of being a good steward. But Christians should always be thinking about what we can give to someone else. Money loses its power over us when we lead and generosity. Kent Hughes, Reformed pastor and author of Disciplines of a godly man, said “Every time I give, I declare that money does not control me. The perpetual generosity is the perpetual de-deification of money”. Kent says that the perpetual generosity smashes the god of money.
Good stewardship starts with being generous to our families meeting the needs of our household. Then generosity extends to the church and to the work of bringing Gospel to the ends of the earth. Finally our generosity reaches out to the poor in our own community and around the world. When we give to generously to the church and the mission of the Gospel the consequences of such generosity will last forever. A. W. Tozer explained; “Any temporal possession can be turned into an everlasting love. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with in mortality.” A. W. Tozer. In other words, the only money we can count on ever seeing it again is the money we invest in the kingdom of God.
Jesus says;
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21 ESV)
In this, Jesus transforms the eighth Commandment, by helping us set our hearts on true treasure. True treasure, as Jesus shows us, can be stored up in heaven. Jesus himself brought the treasure from heaven to us by coming to establish a lasting kingdom, in which we have an inheritance. That inheritance is his very presence, for he is himself the treasure that we must value above all others. Jesus himself was crucified between two thieves. But as far as God's justice was concerned, there were really three thieves on the cross that day: to have died for their own crimes and One who took our sins upon himself.
This is a great comfort to everyone who has broken eighth Commandment. When Jesus died on the cross he died for thieves so that every thief who trust in him will be saved. The first thief to be safe was the one hanging next to them on the cross, the one who said;
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42 ESV)
And Jesus says to him what he says to everyone who turns to him and repentance and faith.
“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43 ESV)
If you have never repented and put your faith in Jesus we want to give you that opportunity today.
PRAY
Benediction
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14 ESV)
