The Eighth commandment

Introduction

Doctrines

Exodus 20:15 says simply, “You shall not steal.”

But before we go any further, let’s get something out of the way.

I do not want to shame anyone here, but raise your hand if you have ever taken something that did not belong to you.

The truth is, if we are honest, every one of us has likely done this at some point in our lives. Maybe it was a pen at work. Maybe it was gum out of your mom’s purse when you were a kid. Maybe it was something else.

The details may be small or large, but the reality is the same: It is likely that everyone of us are guilty.

But what is it that we are guilty of exactly?

Exodus 20:15 is remarkably short. In Hebrew it is only two words,

In English, 4 words.

“You shall not steal.”

Throughout this series we have seen that the Ten Commandments teach us how to honor God and how to honor those around us. The first commandments focus on honoring God. The later commandments focus on honoring people who are created in His image.

This command belongs in that second group.

When we steal, we dishonor our neighbor by taking what belongs to them. But we also dishonor God, because He is the one who commands justice among His people.

But as with all the commandments, they expose something deeper in us as well.

Stealing ultimately reveals a heart that is not trusting God, but trusting itself.

That is why our sermon today will focus on 3 points.

I. The Taking What Is Not Ours

II. The Temptation to Trust Ourselves Instead of God

III. The Transformation of our Hearts

I. The Taking What Is Not Ours

The eighth commandment is simple: “You shall not steal.”

But what exactly does that mean?

The Hebrew word used here is ganav,

and it carries the basic idea of taking something that belongs to someone else without their permission.

It includes theft done secretly,

deception for personal gain at the cost of someone else,

or taking advantage of another person in order to get what is not rightfully yours.

Throughout Scripture, theft is treated as a serious matter.

For example, Exodus 22 describes how a thief was required to make restitution, often paying back more than what was taken.

God required restoration because stealing damages real people.

This is because stealing is not just about property. It is about people.

When we steal, we take something that belongs to someone made in the image of God.

God has given people possessions, resources, and responsibilities, and stealing disregards those gifts.

It says, in effect, “My desire matters more than my love for my neighbor”.

Jesus said we can summarize the law as love God and love your neighbor.

We are doing neither when we take from others for ourselves.

That is why the eighth commandment belongs among the commandments that teach us how to treat our neighbor.

Scripture gives us several examples that show how destructive theft can be.

One example is Achan in Joshua 7. After the fall of Jericho, God commanded Israel not to take the devoted things.

But Achan secretly took silver and gold for himself.

His theft did not only affect him, it brought judgment upon the entire nation of Israel and led to Israel’s defeat at Ai. it led to His entire family facing judgment as well.

One man’s hidden sin harmed the entire community.

That is how serious sin.

Another example is Judas Iscariot.

In John 12:6, we are told that Judas kept the money bag for the disciples and used to help himself to what was inside.

What started as just a little theft, no big deal, nobody is being seriously hurt, eventually grew into betraying the savior of the world.

These examples remind us that theft rarely stays small.

Sin grows.

A heart willing to take what is not it’s own often moves further and further away from obedience to God.

So when you violate this commandment, remember that this is a heart issue that if not repented of, will continue to lead you further and further from God.

Now, when we think about stealing, we often picture obvious crimes…

breaking into a house,

robbing a store,

or pickpocketing someone on the street.

But the commandment goes even further.

Stealing can happen in many everyday ways.

It can happen when someone takes items from work that were never meant for personal use.

It can happen when a worker is lazy on the job while still collecting a paycheck.

It can happen by being desceptive for our own gain at others expense.

Scripture actually talks a lot about this when it refers to unequal weights.

This was a common practice when merchants would have one set of weights for selling and another for buying, ensuring they would get more than what was agreed upon in both transactions.

A more modern example may be shop keepers taking advantage of the elderly and charging them more than the listed price because they won’t notice.

It could be when a woman takes her car into the shop to be fixed and the mechanic assumes she knows nothing so he makes up things that need fixed to charge her more.

In each of these situations, something is being taken that does not belong to us.

Stealing ultimately disregards the dignity of others as image-bearers of God.

But stealing is not only about what we take. It reveals something deeper about who we trust.

That leads us to our second point.

Point II — Trusting Ourselves Instead of God

When we look deeper at the command “You shall not steal,” we begin to see that theft, like all sin, begins in the heart.

Scripture shows that sin follows a pattern.

James 1:14–15 explains this progression:

James 1:14–15 ESV

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Notice how the process works.

Sin does not begin with the action.

It begins with desire.

A person first wants something that does not belong to them.

Then the mind begins to justify it.

Thoughts appear such as,

“They will never notice,”

or “they already have so much and I have so little” or “I deserve this,”

or “It is not really a big deal.”

Eventually the desire gives birth to the act itself.

That is why the tenth commandment, as pastor Rick will teach us in a couple weeks, forbids coveting.

Coveting is the root.

Stealing is often the fruit.

The commandment therefore exposes a deeper issue than behavior.

It exposes the heart.

Scripture also shows us that stealing often reveals a lack of trust in God’s provision.

Proverbs 30:8–9 gives a prayer that speaks directly to this struggle:

Proverbs 30:8–9 ESV

8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, 9 lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

This prayer recognizes two dangers.

Wealth can lead to pride and forgetting God.

But poverty can also lead to temptation.

A person who fears they will not have enough may begin to rely on themselves rather than trust in God.

That lack of trust is often what drives stealing.

My aunt does foster care.

She takes care of children and has adopted several who came from very bad home situations.

Honestly, I have lost count of how many children she has cared for over the years.

One thing that sometimes happens with children who come from those environments is that they will steal food from the kitchen and hide it in their bedroom.

They are not doing it out of rebellion.

They do it because they simply do not trust that the next meal will come.

I have a cousin who for the first few weeks in my aunts home would take food out of the trash can so that he could feed it to his sister later.

That happens because those children learned that they could not trust their parents.

The very people who should have sacrificed and cared for them failed them.

So the children learned that they had to rely on themselves and take what they could in order to survive.

What is sad is that we often think in a similar way about our Heavenly Father.

The difference is that human fathers sometimes fail.

Human fathers can be selfish, broken, or even cruel.

My cousins biological father was an evil wicked man who could not be trusted.

But our Heavenly Father has never failed.

He has never given us any reason to believe that He will not care for His children.

Yet when we take what does not belong to us, what we are really saying is that we do not trust Him. that is the heart here is it not?

We are saying that we must secure our own future.

We must provide for ourselves.

We must take what we need.

But that attitude reveals a heart that is trusting its own cunning rather than trusting the faithful provision of God.

and God may not provide as we want Him to. He often doesn’t. Sometimes, as a result of the sin in the world, we will go without. but in these times, do we trust the God of the good times is still God of the bad times?

Our worship and obedience isn’t based on circumstances but in Trusting in the Will of God no matter what!

Some of you maybe came into today’s message thinking, finally, a commandment I don’t have to go home convicted over.

I have not stolen in years!

But I hope that you now see that we all are prone to the heart failures that lead to violating this commandment.

The truth is, none of us our innocent here, and that leads us to our third point…

III. The Transformation of Our Hearts

As we have said many times at Hutong, none of us our innocent.

1 Corinthians 6:9–10 tells us…

1 Corinthians 6:9–10 (ESV)

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,

10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

We may think taking a small thing from someone, especially someone who has so much more than ourselves is not a big deal.

But God through Paul list this sin along with adulterors, drunkards, and homosexuals.

To add to this, James 2:10 tells us…

James 2:10 ESV

10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

That means this commandment is not just about criminals who steal large sums of money.

The law exposes something about every one of us.

It exposes our hearts.

It shows us that we are sinners who need grace.

But the good news of the gospel is that Christ does not only forgive sinners, He transforms them.

Listen to the transformation described in Ephesians 4:28

Ephesians 4:28 ESV

28 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.

Notice how radical this change is.

First, the thief stops stealing.

Repentance begins with turning away from sin.

The gospel does not excuse sin; it calls us to abandon it.

Second, the thief begins to work honestly.

Instead of taking from others, the redeemed person uses his hands to labor with integrity.

But the transformation does not stop there.

Paul says the former thief now works so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

The person who once took from others now gives to others.

The gospel does not merely restrain sin.

It reverses the direction of the heart.

It changes Closed hands that once grabbed to become open hands that give.

History gives us powerful examples of this kind of transformation.

One of them is the man who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, John Newton.

Before he came to Christ, Newton was deeply involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

He was in the business of paying money for human beings who were stolen from their family

and then sold these people into slavery.

In other words, he was quite literally involved in stealing people, robbing men, women, and children of their freedom and their lives for profit.

But God changed his heart.

After coming to faith in Christ, Newton eventually left the slave trade.

He became a pastor.

And as the years passed, he became one of the voices speaking against the evil of slavery in England.

He used his influence to support the growing abolitionist movement and to call attention to the wickedness of the slave trade.

The gospel transformed him so deeply that the man who once profited from the theft of human lives spent the rest of his life opposing that very evil.

And the same man, with all that in mind, wrote the words many Christians still sing today:

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

That is the kind of transformation the gospel produces.

Christ does not merely forgive our past.

He gives us a new heart and a new direction for our lives.

And that means the gospel also calls us to real repentance.

Sometimes repentance involves more than simply feeling sorry for sin.

When possible, it means making things right.

So it is worth asking ourselves some honest questions.

Is there anything you have taken that does not belong to you? Is there something you need to return? Is there someone you need to repay?

For many of us, the temptation to steal is not about survival.

Most of us are not tempted to rob a bank or break into a house.

But the heart can still be tempted to take what God has not given, whether that is money,

possessions,

opportunity,

or recognition.

The eighth commandment ultimately calls us to something deeper than simple honesty.

It calls us to trust.

When our hearts are transformed by Christ, we begin to trust Him to provide according to His will.

And instead of taking from others, we become people who work honestly,

live faithfully,

and even give generously to those around us.

Why?

Because The grace that forgives sinners is the same grace that transforms them.

So let us now go into a time of Prayer.

I want us to first take a minute to pray alone in our seats repenting of any violation of this commandment, as well as any time we have failed to fully trust God.

After about a minute, we will get into our groups to pray.

Here, I want us to focus on this slide.

Praise God for what He has given us.

Thank Him for His provisions.

Pray to lead us from the temptation of desiring what He has not given us.

Pray that we may trust Him more.