8th Commandment - Exodus 20:15

[27th June 2009]

8th commandment – You shall not steal

I do not go around with a conscience that I might have stolen something. In fact I am a thorough-going Westerner with a strong, self-centred views on personal property of the individual. In my time in a culture where the lines and boundaries of personal property were less clear, it was hard to decide what is and what is not theft when property is considered to be in common, when held in an extended family or community. The downside is that nothing is looked after. There is no maintenance. No responsibility for material items, nor forward planning. But this commandment legitimises the ownership of personal property which is a helpful in any human society.

Superficially this commandment seems to be about taking things which are not ours. We certainly live in an era when theft on a commercial, even an industrial scale is in the news: Email and internet scams; false accounting; the pillaging of company and shareholder funds by executives who then hinder the introduction of transparent rules.

Hundreds of members of the British House of Commons exploited lax supervision to claim as expenses mortgages on second homes, even when there was no mortgage to pay. In the global picture of things the sums of money were not vast but the collapse of trust in what should be a responsible institution has been total.

The sin of theft is not new and some of the heroes of the Bible were thieves of sorts. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright; Laban stole Jacob’s promised wife and seven years labour. David stole Uzziah’s wife and then stole Uzziah’s life.

The interpretation of this commandment is broad even in the bible and might be broader still today. In the covenant code which follows and applies the 10 commandments in Exodus, false dealing of any kind is regarded as theft, as is the exploitation of the weak in their helplessness. Ex 22 insists that stolen goods should be returned twofold and non-recoverable goods fourfold. All trickery is commerce in condemned in the Book of Proverbs – false scales, price-fixing, bribery and so forth.

The negative examples of the religious Pharisees are there in the New Testament to warn us – especially those of us who might be tempted to a more intellectual or legalistic approach to the bible. The Pharisees according to Jesus were full of extortion [Mt 23]. They exploited legal loopholes and means of accruing extra funds to a remarkable degree. Theft can be a problem in churches, and the presence of such warnings to Christians in the New Testament churches against theft in the New Testament tells us that it was a real temptation.

The root of theft is covetousness and greed. It is hard to differentiate between the 8th and 10th commandments. There is a unity in the commandments - they speak to the whole man – not just to bits of us. To commit adultery is a form of theft and covetousness, and often involves false witness as well. Wanting something that is not rightfully ours. Jesus was sold by Judas for 30 pieces of silver. Consider that Judas Iscariot was a thief next time you are tempted to cut corners on your income tax declaration form.

Throughout the New Testament the rich are condemned not because they are rich as such, but because of how they acquired that wealth and for their attitude to it now they have it. There are strong parables: the Rich Fool, and the Rich Man and Lazarus which should catch our attention.

So what if you do have funds? The bible gives us guidance: Be generous. Job was a wealthy man – but he appears to have been very generous to the poor, the widow and naked [Job ch31]. Being wealthy has its obligations. In Israel’s law, God provided for the redistribution of wealth through tithing, the Sabbath years and the Jubilee years - when debts were forgiven and slaves set free and in the 50th Jubilee year land was returned to its original families.

The New Testament encourages Christians to do paid work so we can help others. The image of generosity and ‘untheft’ - to coin a word for the day - is that given in Matthew ch25 in the criteria with which the Lord will judge his people at the end of time. These are acts of untheft – sharing, which are the antidote to theft – even the subtle theft carried on by evangelical Christians.

This sharing was carried on in the local church in Acts 4 and internationally between Europe and Jerusalem as the richer Greek churches tried to help out the poorer Jerusalem church. This is an extension of the use of our spiritual gifts. One of our spiritual gifts might even be having wealth! And even if you do not consider yourself to be wealthy, we are still called to be generous. You are called as missionaries to bring life. This might be in the very practical way of personal generosity.

We here this morning are unlikely to become members of Parliament, Wall Street executives or be involved in trade to such a degree. It is a cheap luxury of Christian missionaries to rail against sins and temptations we are never going to face. But we are still in danger of being involved in varieties of theft. Theft of intellectual property; failure to pay taxes properly; and in particular the theft of time. Not for nothing did Paul warn us to ‘redeem the time’ – it has value in God’s sight. For us the danger might be in fund-raising for ministries, exaggerating their success; and, having raised the support, not using the time as you stated you would but on other things.

Jesus said, “The thief came only to steal, but I came that they might have life and life in abundance.” To steal is to do the exact opposite of what Christ came to do.