Exodus 20:15 (ESV)
15 “You shall not steal.
As best as I can recall, it happened to me the first time during my 3rd year of college. I was living in a dorm at that time attending Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, IN, a Lutheran college that was geared primarily toward the training of future pastors. But I was soon to discover that just because it was a Christian college, that did not make its students exempt from temptation and sinful actions. For I began to notice small amounts of money disappearing from the envelope of cash that I kept in one of my drawers. Then one day after returning from lunch I noticed that a much larger sum of money was missing, so in the words of one of my childhood heroes, Popeye, “I’d had all’s I could stands; I couldn’t stands no more.” So I came up with a little plan. Though I had no idea who was pilfering from me, I wrote these words on a piece of paper: I know who has been taking my money. Please return it or I will report you to the Dean of Students. – – Doug Meyer I then taped it to the door of our dorm that everybody used and went back to my room to do some studying. And I’m not lying when I say that within a matter of minutes somebody slipped an envelope filled with cash under my door and returned to me all that they had taken from me. To this day I have no idea who it was, but at least my little plan worked.
That was the first time that I ever found myself a victim of theft. There have been other times since then, like the time Marilyn bought me a new bike for Valentine’s Day the 1st year we were married, only to have it stolen out of the storage room in our apartment building. Thankfully we did find it a day or two later in a grove of trees not too far away and returned it to its rightful place, this time with a lock and chain firmly attached to it. Then there was the time my family and I were at the swimming pool in Tuscola and someone stole my wallet out of our stuff. I reported it to one of the workers there who suggested I look in the trashcans, which I did, and wouldn’t you know it? There it was lying right on top of the first one I looked in, now emptied of the small amount of cash it contained, but thankfully with my credit cards still in it. Then some years ago Marilyn had her purse stolen at Wal-Mart when she inadvertently left it in her grocery cart out in the parking lot. That purse contained all of our food money, some money that she had been saving for our daughter Kim’s wedding dress, and Marilyn’s own personal money, not to mention debit and credit cards, driver’s license, pictures, and a whole host of other things. Like Marilyn said, her whole life was contained in that purse. And though they had the female culprit and her van on video, the police never did locate her.
Every time I have been a victim of theft I feel violated. I feel as though my privacy has been invaded. And I become angry that we live in a world where things like this happen. In fact, the day that Marilyn had her purse stolen, I had just helped 3 financially distressed people who had shown up in my office that morning looking for assistance to pay their bills which I gave them out of our 2nd Sunday Sacrifice fund. And I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This isn’t fair. Here I’ve just helped people meet their financial needs and somebody else decided to help themselves to what we were going to use to meet our financial needs.”
All of which is one very good reason why I want to spend some time examining the 7th Commandment which is “You shall not steal.” This is part of a sermon series I began preaching last year on the 10 Commandments entitled “The Fundamentals of our Faith: Straight Talk for Crooked Lives.” Now something that you may not know about yourself is that at the very heart and core of your being, you are a kleptomaniac. And what exactly is a kleptomaniac? According to one definition that I looked at on the Internet, “People with this disorder have an overwhelming urge to steal and get a thrill from doing so.” Now you’re probably thinking, “That doesn’t describe me. I don’t have an overwhelming urge to steal from someone else.” And that’s probably true of most, if not all of us here today. So let’s modify that definition just a little bit and have it say this: A kleptomaniac is a person who wants to get something for nothing and who gets a thrill out of doing it. Now that does sound a little more like us, doesn’t it?
For example, have you ever gotten one of those invitations in the mail or over the phone to visit some nice resort where they promise you free lodging in one of their time share condos and maybe some free meals if you’ll just sit through one of their 90 minute presentations in which they try to sell you one of those time shares? And have you ever taken advantage of that offer with no intention whatsoever of buying anything, just because you’re getting something for nothing? Marilyn and I did that one time back when we were first married. We went to a place in Arkansas called Hot Springs Village and stayed in a very nice condo. But when the time came for their presentation and they found out we weren’t interested in spending any money, they really put the pressure on in a way that became quite uncomfortable for both of us. And you’d think we would have learned our lesson, but we did something similar when we were living in Florida and Marilyn’s brother came to visit. Only this time we got free passes to go deep sea fishing. Well, we got our free passes, but only after a time of intense pressure to buy. And then to make matters worse, we all ended up getting sick on our little deep sea fishing expedition.
Now I’m not saying that there is anything wrong or sinful about taking advantage of offers like the ones I’ve just described because those businesses know very few people are going to make the purchase, but I use those as examples to demonstrate that we all have this deep-seated desire to get something for nothing. And sometimes that desire manifests itself in a way that leads to the actual act of stealing.
Because of that, God has placed a divine boundary around what belongs to others and what belongs to you. And that divine boundary is the 7th Commandment: “You shall not steal.” That means don’t take another person’s money, don’t take their products, don’t take their possessions, don’t take their copyright, don’t take their reputation. Don’t take or use anything that doesn’t belong to you without the rightful owner’s permission.
For example, if your employer paid for all those nice pens in your office, they are his pens, not yours to take home and use there because “I work hard and I’m entitled to them. And besides he’ll never know.” And that’s true. He may never know, but the God who knows all and sees all will.
If your employer is paying you for x-amount of hours and he has made it perfectly clear to you that you have x-amount of minutes for lunch, the beginning of that lunch break and the end of it and the time in between are your time, but the rest of the time belongs to your employer. So if you are in the habit of getting to work late or taking an extra 10 or 15 minutes for lunch, you are stealing from your employer.
When Bill Gates, who we all know has lots of money, makes copyrights for software that he created and you say, “He’s already got billions of dollars and he’s not going to miss it if I borrow this software from one of my buddies and put it onto my computer,” – when you say that and do that, then you are stealing from Bill Gates.
When you rent a copyrighted DVD from the local video store and make your own copy of it so you can add it to your already sizeable collection at home, you are stealing from that video store. And let’s face it. As long as nobody finds out about it, it feels ok to do those things because again, we’re getting something for nothing.
May I make a confession to you of a time when I was guilty of this? When we were living in Tuscola, I became friends with a fellow who used to work for the local cable TV company and he told me that he could actually make it so that our TV would receive the premier movie channels like HBO and Showtime and I wouldn’t have to pay anything for them. I knew it was wrong, but the temptation was so great, primarily because the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament was coming up and it was going to be shown on HBO at times when it wasn’t being shown on any of the other regular channels, meaning I could see a lot more matches than I would ordinarily see. So you know what I did? I am embarrassed and ashamed to tell you that I had him do that for me. But thankfully the Lord blessed me with a very strong conscience and that still small voice inside of me began to roar very loudly to the point where I couldn’t even bear to watch any of those movie channels and I finally had them disconnected. But there it was – getting something for nothing. What a bargain, right? Unfortunately it’s a bargain that comes with a very high price tag, not only legally speaking if you get caught, but also spiritually speaking for it brings with it guilt, shame, and separation from God, just like every other sin that we commit.
So I hope you’re seeing this morning that violators of the 7th Commandment are not just those people who wear ski masks and rob banks; they’re not just those who put on dark clothing at night and burglarize homes; they’re not just those who snatch purses or shoplift at Wal-Mart. They are common, ordinary everyday people like you and me who may warm a church pew on Sunday morning, but who everyday face a multitude of temptations out there to get something for nothing and who sometimes cave in to those temptations, and then come up with every excuse imaginable to justify their sinful actions.
All of which is one glaring reason why we need Jesus, why we need a Savior, why we need a Rescuer who can deliver us from the eternal consequences of our sins. You see, even though we may have somehow managed to get something for nothing at the expense of someone else, all these things that we’ve talked about this morning, no matter how minor we might think they are, all of these things are a major offense to a holy God and they earn for us his righteous wrath and judgment. That’s what we deserve for being the kleptomaniacs that we are. But thankfully, God loved us too much to leave us that way. His desire for us is that we become more like Jesus who, rather than taking from other people, made it his practice to give to other people. When the blind, the sick, the lame, the lepers approached him, rather than taking away their dignity, he gave them freedom from their physical afflictions. When a tax collector by the name of Zaccheus who had cheated many of his fellow Jews out of their hard-earned money, met Jesus one day, Jesus gave him a new beginning and a new life that led him to make restitution to those he had cheated. When a crowd of 5000 men plus women and children had taken much of Jesus’ time one day and found themselves hungry, he didn’t take up a freewill offering so that his disciples could go into town and buy them some food. Rather he gave them a free meal of bread and fish, made from a little boy’s picnic lunch.
So you see? Jesus was always in the business of giving rather than taking. And when he could have demanded and extracted from us all that we are and all that we have as payment for our many sins, he chose instead to give to us. He gave his life. He shed his blood. He gave his all. And because of that, John 1:12 tells us: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Well, we’re not finished with the 7th Commandment yet. The next time I preach, which will be 2 weeks from today, I want to spend some time talking about why we even do some of the things we’ve looked at today and we’ll examine some other more common ways whereby we violate this commandment. Until then, may the Holy Spirit help you this week to be more like Jesus, to look for ways and opportunities whereby you can give more freely of yourself to others rather than looking for ways to get something for nothing. Amen.