The church that we worked at in Atlanta was in a great section of town when it was built in the mid 50’s. But as time passed businesses who were landlocked began to relocate to the outskirts of town and left abandon buildings, which drove down the appearance of the neighborhood and the value of the property and by the time we accepted the Job the church was in the most undesirable area of town.
The church there had a set up much like we have here, two buildings a main building and one used for fellowship meals, but in Atlanta the building was not the old church building but an old house that was also used for classroom and office space. I noticed very early working there that sometimes I when I would enter the building the water would be running, the AC or the gas heater would be running and the back door would be wide open. It gave me the willies and I asked the men about it and they encouraged me to make sure the building was locked up tight and everything was off when I left for the day. But every now and then I would arrive to an open door lights on and water running.
One day when I arrived I noticed a man running out the back door and called the police but nothing was missing so we assumed that he was just breaking in and living there. The police offered to keep a watch on the building and the men screwed the windows shut and we went home for the weekend.
Sunday morning I arrived at the building to notice my office door was open, and that my office was ransacked. My laptop, DVD player, television were missing from my office and the teens had lost their TV, Playstation, and VCR/DVD player as well. We noticed that the thieves had also taken a large amount of food from our pantry. He police had checked the building three times that night before and everything was fine at the 6 am shift change.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been the victim of theft and I pray not. But if you have then you know that more is lost than stolen property. Your sense of security is erased. If someone would brazenly break into a church to steal from me on a Sunday Morning with neighbors working in their yards and children playing in the street, what wouldn’t they do in the darkness?
Your trust in other human beings is shaken. The inevitable question a victim of theft asks is, "Who did it?" Was it a stranger? Or was it a neighbor? I found myself looking at everyone in that neighborhood differently, suspecting everyone. Could they really be trusted or were they waiting for another opportunity to violate my church and property?
Security and trust are replaced by fear. Yu find yourself never driving up to an ATM without looking in the mirror or, sometimes, circling the bank to assure that no one is lurking in the shadows, waiting to rob you. Even when using in-store ATMs you look over your shoulder to see if someone is watching. Self-defense experts call that smart. But smart isn’t what I feel. I feel fear.
At traffic lights you double check your doors to be sure they are locked. You watch your mirrors for suspicious looking pedestrians. Evaluate escape routes if someone should approach you car and demand that you give it to them. Living in a small town you think that it might be a little paranoid and I won’t argue. Most people who have been victims of theft don’t really care what you call it. They know what it is. It is fear.
And fear is one of Satan’s most effective weapons for destroying community. It is hard to love people you are afraid of. It is hard to share fellowship with people you don’t trust.
Beneath the terse wording of the eighth commandment, "You shall not steal," an ageless principle is being proclaimed. God intends for his people to live in trusting, loving community. That principle is valued and protected by this four word commandment. Five principles of community are affirmed in the eighth command. Let’s notice these together.
First, the right of ownership is affirmed.
If you and I are forbidden to take by stealth or violence the property of another, then God affirms the rights of human beings to accumulate and own possessions. It is not a sin to have things. You may greet that with a shrug that says, "Well, of course," but not everyone sees it that way.
In 1603 the Jamestown Colony attempted to organize itself around a socialist model, bypassing the institution of private property with state control of production and distribution. The goal was for everyone to have the same amount of everything. It failed miserably until Thomas Dale, the new English governor, came to the colonies and instituted free enterprise.
In 1830 the Transcendentalists attempted the same approach and failed. Between 1815 and 1870 there were scores of such failed experiments in North America. Without doubt the most spectacular failure of that kind of economic system is the former Soviet Union.
Everyone of these groups who try to start such a model turn to the Scriptures for support. Acts 2:42 – 45 "They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and good, they gave to anyone as he had need."
That certainly sounds like communism, but there are two distinct differences.
First, it was voluntary.
Acts 4:34, 35 makes it clear that from time to time, people would voluntarily sell lands or fields and donate the money to the apostles to help care for the poor. No one demanded that kind of generosity as a condition of membership. In fact, when Ananias and Sapphira tried to boost their standing in the community by claiming to give all the proceeds from a sale of land, Peter said to them, "Didn’t the land belong to you before it was sold? And wasn’t the money at your disposal?"
Second, this economic arrangement was temporary.
We do not read of another circumstance in which first century Christians so willingly and generously gave of their means. Certainly this is a worthy example to follow, but Acts 2 and 4 do not constitute a binding economic model.
All through the Scriptures, the rights of people to own and manage property and possessions are affirmed. In fact, in the Old Testament, restitution is demanded of thieves who steal another’s property.
Exodus 22:3 requires a thief to pay back double what he took. It is important to understand why God sought to protect the right of ownership. It isn’t because things can make us happy. But we
do need things - houses, money, food, clothing, and transportation - to live. In protecting ownership, God was protecting life and health.
The second principle of community affirmed in this commandment is the dignity of work.
There are really only four scriptural ways to gain something; work for them, purchase them, inherit them, and receive them as gifts. Any thing else is sinful.
The experiments with early socialism failed in the colonies precisely because people stopped working. Why work when the community will force those who already have the necessities of life to give them to you?
Paul talks about this in Ephesians 4:28. "He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his hands, that he may have something to share with those in need."
Stealing is often, not always, but often a means of avoiding work. By its very nature it devalues labor and productivity. But it does more than that. It devalues people. It assumes that other human beings exist as an opportunity for exploitation and gain. They exist to serve the needs or desires of the thief.
Again, the focus is not on possessions, but on people. Paul wanted his readers to work not so that they could amass for themselves limitless possessions, but so that they could help people in need.
A third principal of community affirmed in this commandment is honesty.
Without honesty, community becomes a combat zone where people take advantage of every opportunity to exploit another’s misfortune for their own gain.
Dr. Laura tells this story. Not too long ago in Los Angeles an armored car crashed off a freeway over pass and fell to the street below. Money from the car’s vault flew through the streets. Adults and children from everywhere began to pick up the crisp bills and pocket them. When the police arrived all of the money was gone. And so were the people. The press found some of them and interviewed them. Several of the people claimed that the money was a gift from God because their lives were so hard. It didn’t matter that the money belonged to someone else.
It’s pretty easy for us to judge to people who, in a dishonest rage, pillage an overturned armored car. But what about change errors made by convenience store clerks? What happens when the waitress forgets to include something on the tab? Insurance claims? Taxes. Expense reports. Bootleg cable de-scramblers. Fudging the age of a child to get a discount. Incorrect or falsified billings - charging a customer for 60 billable hours when you only worked 55. What happens when you find a $ 20 bill in lying on the tile floor of the mall?
We’re tempted to blame the inefficacy of clerks or the gullibility of customers. Or we fall back on that tired old cliché, "Finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers."
But the Bible calls us to a rigorous standard of honesty. Deuteronomy 22: 1 says that if you find your brother’s ox you are to return it. And just in case someone tries to get fancy with the definition of "brother," Exodus 23:4 says that if you find your enemies ox, return it!
Stories like the one about the pillaged armored car are balanced by stories like this one, also from Dr. Laura. A man in a utility van filled his gas tank, paid the attendant and was preparing to drive away when he realized he’d been given too much change. He parked his truck, went back inside and reported the error to the owner of the station. The owner was taken aback by the man’s honesty. He said that in twenty years that had happened only once before. He remembered that a man, somewhat older than this honest customer, had returned for the same reason. "In fact," the gas station owner said, "the man was driving a truck with the same sign as the one you have on your van." There were only two trucks in the whole city with that sign. One owned by this honest customer, and the other by his father. Honesty runs in the family.
The fourth principle of community affirmed by the eighth commandment is the importance of giving.
I suppose it will go down in the annals of Ridiculously Obvious Things Said in Sermons to say that stealing is the direct opposite of giving. But I’m not the first to say it.
In Malachi 3:8 - 10, the prophet asked a sobering question. "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, ’How do we rob you?’ In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse - the whole nation of you - because you are robbing me."
Israel was stealing from God by failing to give. But pay careful attention to what the next verse says.
"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house."
God didn’t want the food for himself. He wanted money in the treasury so that those who needed financial help could find it. God has always wanted his people to give so that those in need could be cared for.
Stealing does more than reduce the victims ability to give. It reduces his or her will to give as well. When something is taken from us, we naturally become more possessive of what is left. The more possessive we become, the less generous we are. The less generous we are, the poorer the church becomes. It is rare that you find a victim of theft as eager to give as someone who has never known that fear. And you never find a thief who has a heart to give. The eighth commandment seeks to protect and affirm the value of generosity.
I know that this is true in my own life. When Trista and I received our first Tax Refund we decided that if God blessed us then we would use a portion of the money to buy something for the church that we believed the church needed outside from the regular budget. Over the past 9 years we have been able to do just that and never struggled, until we were robbed in Atlanta. That next year was a hard year. We wanted to give to the church but why give something that would only be stolen or destroyed.
One last community principle is affirmed in this commandment; the inability of possessions to make us happy.
Burton Coffman writes that contentment is a virtue to be cultivated not by expanding wealth, but by diminishing desire.
When we keep a bill we find on the floor of the mall without trying to return it to its owner, when we pocket the incorrect change from a clerk, when we cheat on our taxes, when we over bill a client, when we lie about our kid’s age to get a discount, we are confessing something. We are confessing that we believe happiness comes from possessions. The more we possess the happier we are.
It’s a slow process so we don’t notice it. But when we live that way, our community begins to break down. Eventually we begin to see people not as valued creatures made in the image of God, but as something to exploit. Possessions become more important to us than our relationships.
We see people who have more than we do and we envy them. Envy turns to jealousy and our jealousy has the potential to turn to violence. Life together becomes a dangerous, sometimes deadly game, where the one with the most is perceived to be the winner. Ultimately, though we all lose.
But loosing touch with each other is not the greatest loss. When we violate the eighth commandment, whether by outright theft, or by other, more socially acceptable forms of dishonesty, we are also violating the first commandment to have no other gods before the one, true God. Something has become more important to us that the most important Someone; God. And like we said at the beginning of this study that every command hangs from the first one of putting God first.
When we left Atlanta we still didn’t know who took my stuff, it never showed up in a pawn shop, the police dusted for fingerprints but they didn’t give them any clues.
From the perspective of time, I don’t really care to know. With the exception of the Laptop Trista and I was able to replaced everything else. It is fairly easy to replace stolen possessions.
But when God wanted to replace a stolen relationship, it cost him dearly. That’s what’s at stake here. Not stuff but Souls. The next time you or I are faced with an opportunity to practice community building honesty or community destroying dishonesty, we need to remember what price our God had to pay for us to have community in the first place.
The same price He paid for your soul.
