verses 16 through 22. This is God's word. And behold, a man came up to him saying, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good? There's only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, which ones? Jesus said, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him, all these I've kept since I was young, what do I still lack? Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Let's pray. Father, as we come to worship you through the ministry of your word, we pray that you would open our ears, open our hearts, that you would change us. In Jesus' name, amen. Today we're returning back to our series on the 10 commandments after we took a break during Christmas time to look at the incarnation of our Lord. So today we look at you shall not steal. Well, what is stealing? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines stealing as taking the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice. Now this of course refers to physical property. And at the time Moses was writing this, most wealth was in the form of property. Some was land. Most wealth was livestock, herds, flocks, things like that. So taking someone's animal was a really big deal. In fact, the law provided that if you did take someone's animal, for instance, if you took a sheep or a lamb, you had to pay it back four times over. So if you take a lamb, you have to return to the person you took it from for lambs. Well today stealing still involves property and the victim seems or feels a sense of violation. Depending on the extent of the theft, I experienced two times that I can remember when I was young, things being stolen from me. The first time I was in either junior high or first year of high school and someone stole my baseball glove. That was a real violation. I was talking to Tracy yesterday about baseball. And when I was a little kid, seven, eight, nine, ten years old, I thought about baseball all the time. I thought about baseball when I got up in the morning, especially in the summertime. We played baseball all day long. We played in the backyard. My dad, if he was home, would hit me ground balls. We would play outside in something called wiffle ball. Mostly we played outside and played baseball and those sort of things because there was no such thing as internet. You couldn't play inside. You had to play outside. So my mother would say, go outside, come in when the street lights come on. But then when I got a little older, graduated high school, I had my first car. It was a 1972 Chevy Impala. And I bought a cassette tape radio combination stereo system. I know some of you don't even know what a cassette is. But it was great. It had great speakers. The eight-track tapes had faded by then. But I got in the car one morning to visit a young lady and spend the day with her, go to the beach, et cetera. Got in the car, reached down to push in the Gary Wright Dreamweaver album, and the thing was gone. Somebody had stolen my stereo system. And I felt so violated. And that's how people feel when they have something taken from them. They feel violated. But in addition to property, stealing often involves money, either by force or through deception. Robbers steal from banks, stores, people on the street. Often the theft involves violence or the threat of violence, and sometimes even murder. But one of the worst forms of theft is fraud. People have lost their entire life savings because someone has somehow gained access to their accounts and has taken their money. Some have posed as investment experts and simply spent the money they were supposed to be managing. One famous case is Bernie Madoff. It took place in the United States. He stole $18 billion. How do you steal $18 billion? He stole it because he would take the money, spend it, and he would produce false reports of profits. Supposedly he had turned this $18 billion into $65 billion, all the while spending it on a lavish lifestyle for him and his family. It was what's called a Ponzi scheme. There are numerous instances where pension funds have been stolen or borrowed, usually by governments. But then there's the thing of stealing ideas. I read one time that pastors, we borrow from each other. We hear a really good sermon and we use part of it. And the definition goes like this. If you borrow from one pastor, it's called plagiarism. If you borrow from several, it's called research. But recently in the news, the president of Harvard was forced to resign. What's interesting is that she had said, and answered to the question, is the genocide of Jews wrong? She said it depends on the circumstances. You would think that would be enough to get her fired. It wasn't. But some people started digging into her past and discovered 50 incidents of plagiarism, and she was forced to resign. Now everyone knows that stealing is wrong, and yet it seems to be pervasive. People cheat a little on their taxes. If you are given too much change at the grocery store, maybe you just keep it. But it's not only taking what doesn't belong to you, but it's also keeping what you shouldn't keep. It's important enough to be included in the commandments given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. And God calls keeping what you shouldn't stealing as well. For instance, God calls us to tithe, to give to the church. Traditionally that means 10%. There's some disagreement over whether that still applies since we are no longer a theocracy. In other words, Israel, when they collected the tithe, they would use it for everything, for the governance of the people. But there's still scriptures that give warnings about giving. And one of them is in the prophet Malachi. In chapter 3, I'm going to read seven verses. For I the Lord do not change, therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your father you have turned aside from my statutes that have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts. But you say, how shall we return? Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, how have we robbed you? In your tithes and contributions, you are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Here God is equating the lack of giving, as he's instructed, to the church, or in this case the temple, with stealing. He says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open a window of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing, until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of Hosts. Then all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of Hosts. So if we do not give to the church as we ought, in other words, if we keep more than we should, we are, according to God's word, robbing or stealing from God. Proverbs 3 says, honor the Lord with your wealth, and with the first fruits of all your produce, then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. So it seems like there's a direct correlation to being faithful in your giving to God, and God's blessings. Now that doesn't mean that's the reason to give. So in other words, we don't give to get. We give out of gratitude to God for all that he's done for us. And we, as Christians, have even more obvious reason to give than the people of Israel did, because we have seen them sigh. They were waiting in anticipation, hoping that someday he would come. And for us, Jesus did come. We learned all about that in the last few weeks, as we saw that the Son of God was made manifest to us through the birth of a baby, who would grow up and live a perfect sinless life in our place. So we give, or supposed to give, out of gratitude to God for all that he has done for us. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9, the point is this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one of you must give as he has decided in his heart not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. So the tithe in the Old Testament was 10%. Now there are those that argue the tithe doesn t apply anymore, but I think the real argument is that 10% is a good barometer. It s a good starting point. But it doesn t necessarily mean it s the limits. For instance, some of you, if you give 10%, you ll feel it. You ll have to do without something that you think you could ve bought with that money. Maybe a vacation, maybe an extra car, maybe an appliance that needs to be replaced. But for some of you, 10% is like, no big deal. Hardly even notice it. I think if it isn t costing us something, if we don t feel it, then it isn t giving as God intends. We are called to be generous. So each of you in your own heart must determine whatever that is. For some of you, it ll be 10%. For some of you, it might be a little less. Maybe you ve misspent your money, maybe you haven t paid attention, and you re just coming under the conviction that you should be giving to the Lord, but you have all these debts, and so you do what you can. But for some of us, 10%, we hardly notice it. So you have to decide, what will I notice? It should cost you something. We re called to be radically generous in our giving to the Lord s work. The second thing I want us to notice is that I want you to notice how God closely ties not stealing with helping the poor, with loving your neighbor. Let s look back at the passages that we read throughout the service. Back to Leviticus 19. It says, You reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor gather the gleanings after your harvest. You see, this is in terms of helping poor people. It s not what you steal. It s what you don t keep. They were to leave some in the field. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God. God ties, very closely, not stealing with helping the poor. The Hebrews were to leave some in the field for the poor and for the sojourner, those who were passing through. Then verse 11 says, You shall not steal, you shall not deal falsely or lie to one another. Verse 13 says, You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. You see, he s tying very closely, helping the poor, giving to the poor, loving your neighbor with not stealing. So much of what God calls stealing is treating poorly the disadvantaged. He goes on to say in Leviticus, The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until morning. Now what does that mean? You see, what happened, it was common. It still is in some places. It s common to have people who are called day laborers. They would be hired for the day. They would come into my field, pick the grapes, harvest the wheat. Whatever the job was, you re hired for the day. At the end of the day, you re supposed to be paid so that you can then exchange the money for food or clothing or whatever to feed your family, to keep them warm. And it was the habit of some who were hiring to hold the wages until the next morning. Well, if you re a poor person, that s not fair. That hurts. What the person hiring was hoping, possibly, is that you wouldn t be able to come back in the morning and get your money. But God says keeping that from the person to whom it rightfully belongs is stealing. Verse 15 says, You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. Verse 17, You shall love your neighbor, I m sorry, 18, as yourself, I am the Lord. So this Leviticus passage talks about how stealing, or not stealing, is related to either treating the poor badly or treating them well. Let s look at the Ephesians 4 passage. Verse 28, it says, Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing some honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. So you would think that the opposite of stealing is not stealing, but that s not the case. The opposite of stealing isn t not stealing. That s the first step. He says, Let the thief no longer steal. That s the first step. But then the second step is, let him rather labor. There s working, being productive, earning your income through honest labor. Do something that benefits others. Now, you may end up making a lot of money. You may end up making millions or even billions of dollars. Well, probably none of you will make billions of dollars, but some people do. I was reading about Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, started it in his garage. He got a $10,000 investment from two of his siblings. And that $10,000 is now for each of them worth over a billion. But a lot of people believe that he s benefited greatly, many, many people, because of the millions of people they ve hired, the products they ve provided at a discount. Do something that benefits your fellow man. Do something that benefits others. That s the second step of not stealing. But there s a further step. The reason the thief no longer steals and does honest work, it says, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. So the opposite of stealing is working, well, not stealing, working and then sharing with those in need. The reason the thief no longer steals and does honest work is so that he has something to share. Even if you don t take what is not yours, but you spend all of your money on yourself, or worse, go into debt, you will not have anything to share with the needy, which according to the Scriptures is stealing. Helping those in need, giving to the poor, giving generously to the work of God is all part and parcel of the commandment, you shall not steal. I m sure when you first heard you shall not steal, you re thinking, well, I don t steal. All of us do. By the definition that God is giving us. All of us have, I should say. But look at our Gospel passage. The whole demand came up to him saying, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? It s a basic misunderstanding that he can earn his way to heaven. He said, why do you ask me what is good? There s only one who is good. If you want to enter life, keep my commandments, which one? And one of them is you shall not steal. Jesus said, if you would be perfect, go sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful for your great possessions. You see, every single passage that we looked at, Leviticus 19, and there are others, but Leviticus 19, Ephesians 4, Matthew 19, ties not stealing with giving to the poor, not stealing with helping the disadvantaged, not stealing with giving generously to the work of the Gospel. Why did the man go away sorrowful? He wanted eternal life. He said, what must I do to enter life? He was told what he must do. But he wanted his wealth more than salvation, and I hope that s not the case for you, that you prefer your wealth more than you prefer obeying God. So he went away sad. But there s more. You see, all the commandments are tied together, and violating one of them violates all of them. Let me show you. How is stealing a violation of all the other commandments? Let s just go back from commandment 8, you shall not steal. Commandment 7, adultery is stealing fidelity. Murder is robbing someone of their life. Not honoring your parents is taking from them the honor and respect that they are due. Not keeping the Sabbath is robbing God of the worship that s due him, is taking stealing time that belongs to God for yourself. It s saying that he s not worthy of your time to worship him and honor him one day in seven as he s commanded. Taking his name in vain withholds in your heart all that his name means. Worshiping a God other than the one true God is idolatry and gives to false gods worship that only the true God deserves. So you see, disobeying any of the commandments disobeys all of them. I could show you how they all connect to each other, each one, but stealing connects to all of them. There s one more thing. We have the gospel of Jesus Christ. I assume, looking at all of you, that you believe the gospel. You have it in your heart. You know it to be true. It s the good news that every person needs, that every person should know, that every person should hear, and we have that treasure. And when we withhold it, either intentionally or by omission, we are stealing from that person the words of eternal life. If you ve listened to the sermon, there s no doubt that you should ve come to the realization that on some level you are guilty of stealing, and thereby not honoring and loving God, and not loving your neighbor as yourself as we should. But we do have the gospel and the grace and forgiveness that comes with it. So as we come to this table, be aware that Jesus did for you what you could not do for yourself. He lived in your place. He died in your place so that you could now live to honor Him and anticipate eternal life with Him. We close with this passage from Philippians 2. Have this mind among yourself, which is in Christ Jesus, who though He existed in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men and found in human form, He humbled Himself by coming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. Said at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you for providing for us. Your Son and our Savior Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.