Sermon Tone Analysis

It Begins in the Mind

Last week, we looked at the 6th and Seventh Commandments, You shall not murder, and you shall not commit adultery.

This week we will look at the last three commandments.

In my sermon last week, I mentioned a passage we would get back to today, and it is James 4:1-2

James really gets right down to the heart of the matter.

and we may say the mind of the matter as well.

as we wrap up this multi-week study of the Ten Commandments, we will see that the violation of all the commandments may end in the action of violating those commands, but its beginning is in the mind.

So let’s read our last three commandments and then we will dive deeper into them.

One comment I want to make before we get into these is that throughout human history, humans have tried to water down, or make these commands less strict.

We will see examples of this in each of the three commandments we discuss this morning, but really it happens with all of the rules for living God gives.

Love your neighbor, well thank good ness my neighbors all share the same politics and religion with me, so I can love them.

Some guy in Afghanistan certainly isn’t my neighbor, he is too far away.

And yet, if we really understand the bible, it turns out that neighbor is not limited to your physical proximity, even though we may understand the word to mean those who live close by, but scripture shows that our neighbors are really all human beings.

We don;’t like the idea of loving all human beings, so we try to define neighbor in some other way.

This weaseling out of things was going on in Jesus’ day, too.

People would ask Jesus questions, seemingly to find is the least they can do to keep the law.

And when Jesus was asked about who one’s neighbor was, he told the story of the Good Samaritan, and that story is about taking care of someone not like you, in an extravagant way, elevating the other person’s needs above your own.

I’m sure the person who asked the question, who is my neighbor, after Jesus told that parable, wished he had never asked the question, because when Jesus was asked these clarifying questions, he just about always gave his listeners a higher standard than they expected.

And not least of these is in the Sermon on the Mount, as we reflected briefly on last week, when Jesus said the sin of adultery happens in the mind, and murder as well.

So we come to the 8th commandment, and you shall not steal, and we think we can find ourselves safe from its violation if we do not physically steal an object.

But the commandment is not limited to the physical theft of objects, and in our hearts we know this.

You can steal someone’s reputation.

You can steal someone’s opportunities.

You can take advantage of someone else’s weaknesses to profit yourself.

Why were the Jewish people commanded not to take interest on a loan to a fellow Israelite?

Because it is easy to exploit people who, for whatever reason, are unable to provide for their needs.

In their desperation, they will agree to any terms to get their temporary need met.

But there are many sharks who will take advantage of that, charging high interest, or claiming the property of the one in debt, or in some cases, even causing the one in debt to sell themselves into slavery.

Taking advantage of someone by charging exorbitant interest may be stealing no less than if you took the persons physical property.

And the implications for this must spread into many areas.

If a family has to move, and they must sell their house quickly, there are many companies that may promise a quick sale, but far below market value.

There are many way in which taking advantage of someone’s weak position may be tantamount to theft.

One way this commandment was watered down over the centuries is by those who say this commandment specifically applied to the theft of people.

In other words, selling someone into slavery.

So think of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery, there have been those who have said this command is about human trafficking and nothing else.

However, this is not all the command is about, and as we hopefully are beginning to see, the bar for keeping these commands is much higher than most of us would want to admit.

We should keep in mind, these laws are not there simply to say here is what gets you in trouble and here is what does not.

Our human laws may be like that, but God’s laws are to be kept, we are to strive for perfection in them.

And the perfection we ought to seek is not simply so we can stay out of the pokey, it is because we, who are made in the image of God, are representatives of Him, so we are to reflect his nature, his communicable attributes, that is, the characteristics of His that we can share.

We are to seek this perfection to bring Him honor and glory, and because He is a holy God, who has called us to be holy.

We are to seek this perfection out of love and reverence and a desire to please Him, not simply to do the least we can to technically keep his laws, but rather, we are to live our the spirit of those laws.

So certainly the law against theft includes human trafficking, but it by no means is limited to that, and the scope of this commandment goes far beyond what we may usually consider.

Calvin included, in the exposition or elaboration of this commandment, laws on usury, pledges, bribes, correct weights and measures, moving a neighbor’s landmark, returning lost property, fraudulent use of another’s property (e.g., Exod22:5 ““If a man causes a field or vineyard to be grazed over, or lets his beast loose and it feeds in another man’s field, he shall make restitution from the best in his own field and in his own vineyard.”

) and negligence (e.g., Exod21:33–36 ““When a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make restoration.

He shall give money to its owner, and the dead beast shall be his.

“When one man’s ox butts another’s, so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and share its price, and the dead beast also they shall share.

Or if it is known that the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has not kept it in, he shall repay ox for ox, and the dead beast shall be his.”

), as well as laws that protect the weak and poor from oppression, provide release for slaves, and ensure access of the poor to the needs of life (e.g., Deut.

23:24–25 ““If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag.

If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.”

).

Calvin connects all of these and other rules of the bible into his dissertation on stealing.

God clearly set up rules that the violation of could be considered theft.

In fact, Calvin, in a sense, attempts to reverse our thinking of this commandment from the negative “you shall not” to our positive responsibility towards others:

Since charity is the end of the Law, we must seek the definition of theft from there.

This, then, is the rule of charity, that every one’s rights should be safely preserved and that none should do to another what he would not have done to himself.

It follows, therefore, that not only are those thieves who secretly steal the property of others, but those also who seek for gain from the loss of others, accumulate wealth by unlawful practices, and are more devoted to their private advantage than to equity

This will be the last quote of Calvin:

We must remember that a “positive” command, as it is called, is attached to the prohibition.

If we merely refrain from all evil-doing, we are far from satisfying God, who has bound men mutually together so that they may strive to help one another to get ahead by counseling and assisting one another.

There is not the slightest doubt that God commands generosity, and kindness, and the other duties which give warmth to human society.

Therefore, if we are not to be condemned as thieves by God, we must seek our brothers’ advantage no less than our own.

Of course, theft may also involve stealing someone’s reputation through spreading rumors or violating the ninth commandment, Deut5.20

Once again, we see how all of these commandments are interrelated.

Bearing false witness.

That is, telling a lie about someone else, is theft of reputation, and if it happens in court with a testimony that someone committed a crime they did not, and that crime was punishable by the death penalty, then the violation of the ninth command may make you guilty not only of bearing false witness, but of murder as well.

Now, let’s talk for a moment again about how people have tried to water down the commandments, or to raise the bar of violating them.

In this case, some have said, bear false witness, this command specifically means under oath.

Or in a court setting.

But one who would try to do this is making excuses as to why we can tell lies about someone if it isn’t that serious.

And certainly the command can be translated this way, “You shall not testify against your neighbor as a lying witness.”

Of course, the penalties for violating this command are very severe.

I pointed this out in May when I preached on the cities of refuge and how God is a God of justice.

The false witness was subject to whatever the penalty would have been to the one who was lied about:

And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Now, I said that there are those who have attempted to convince themselves this only has to do with testifying in court, but clearly this is not the limits of the spirit of this commandment.

We do not like to point the finger towards ourselves, do we?

And yet, there is another category of violation of the spirit of this command that has plagued many churches, and that is gossip.

John Maxwell said Gossip is the lowest level of communication.

It is devious, often cloaking itself in spirituality.

Gossips may assume a self-righteous attitude, saying, “I don’t mean to gossip about him but …” and off they go.

Sometimes this gossip takes the form of false sympathy, as in, “Isn’t it too bad that Mr. Wrong beats his wife?”

Very often this “religious gossip” sneaks into the prayer circle.

We can usually recognize it—“O Lord, please help Mrs.

Wrong to stop running around on Mr. Wrong, even though he’s sneaking out with Mrs. Bad.”

The Old Testament story in which Noah’s son speaks wrongly of his father’s drunkenness teaches us that the one who talks about another’s sin is worse than the one who actually commits the sin.

Of the seven things that God hates in Proverbs 6:16–19 , three relate to the tongue.…

Now, I think it is good to put a positive commandment or exhortation next to the negative, so let us look at a couple other proverbs, because these give us a positive here, so that we can look at this commandment not only in what we should not do, but what we should do.

So here is the positive: a faithful witness does not lie.

Hopefully we would desire to be faithful witnesses.

Here we see that truth telling is life-giving.

So then, let is be said of us, as Jesus said of Nathaniel, John1.47

Now, as we have looked so far at the first nine commandments, we turn to the tenth.

And indeed, this command is directly linked to all the others.

This command tells us that the sin of breaking God’s commandments really begins in the mind:

We can see two other commandments directly linked.

Coveting your neighbor’s wife may lead to violation of the seventh command, you shall not commit adultery.

And coveting your neighbors other things may lead you to steal.

But the key here is that the sin of the tenth commandment is not something you do with your hands or with your mouth or with your body.

It happens in your mind.

The sin happens in your thoughts.