When the police officer showed up and took my statement, she was very kind. The first thing she told me that I hadn’t been robbed, I had been burglarized – this didn’t comfort me too much. Then she asked me how I thought they entered into the house. At this point I remember feeling somewhat embarrassed because I had to tell her that it was really all my fault because I never closed my garage door and the door from the garage to the basement didn’t have a lock on it and the door from the basement to the kitchen didn’t have a lock so it was really my fault that I was burglarized. I will never forget what the officer said, it’s not your fault, people aren’t supposed to steal. This officer understood the eigth commandment – you shall not steal, or burglarize, or shoplift, or rob.
Most of the time when we hear this commandment we think about a burglar prowling through a home at night, or a bank robber sticking up a bank, or we think about those surveillance camera images of masked thieves holding up convenience stores or this week there videos of men purse snatching. Or we might think about someone like Bernie Madoff caught in an investment scheme or involved in an insider trading scandal. When we hear this commandment we often just think about some hardened criminal and don’t think of it as something we would never do, but I have to say that I have been amazed by some people I have known who have broken this commandment.
A good friend of mine worked at a bank for a while and she waited on two women. One woman was very wealthy and one woman had nothing. One day my friend decided to deposit some of the wealthy woman’s money into the account of the poor woman. We aren’t talking about a lot of money and she didn’t think anyone would notice – the rich woman wouldn’t miss a few dollars and the bank would never know and then the poor woman would have a few more dollars. Even though she wasn’t keeping the money for herself, she was acting as a modern day Robin Hood, she was none the less guilty of stealing and the bank did notice and my friend ended up in court and on probation and in all kinds of trouble. We all know people who have written bad checks, shoplifted something as a child or teen, taken an item from work or cheated on our taxes and all of this can be defined as stealing – so this is a command we all need to take seriously.
As with all of God’s commandments – there really is no grey area here. When God says don’t steal – he means don’t steal in any way shape or form. We are not to take things that do not belong to us and use them for our own purpose or our own pleasure and the reason we are not to do this is because it breaks down the trust that is needed for people to live in relationship with one another. For communities to be healthy we need to be able to trust our neighbors and family and friends and stealing breaks down that trust. Again, think about when God gave this commandment to his people. The people of Israel were travelling as a group through the wilderness so they didn’t have homes and storage units and safe deposit boxes and so if they were going to make it as a people into the promised land, they had depend on each other which meant they needed to be able to trust each other and stealing in any form breaks down trust.
One of the reasons we can’t gloss over this commandment and think that it will never apply to us is that for some reason we are all prone to taking things that do not belong to us. Children aren’t taught to steal and yet they do it well. I remember being in 2nd or 3rd grade and was grocery shopping with my Mom. We walked down the candy aisle and there was a bag of Starbust candy that was opened and pieces of the wrapped candy were all around. I lingered near that candy while my mom shopped and when she wasn’t looking I took a few pieces of the candy and put them in my pocket. I remember walking out of the store and being incredibly relieved that sirens didn’t go off, but I was sick about what I had done.
We went into a drug store after that and I was so overcome with guilt that again I lingered in one of the aisles by myself and when no one was looking I took the candy out of my pocket and put it on a shelf. I know it made no sense, but at least I didn’t have the evidence on me so I wasn’t going to get into trouble. Now here’s the thing, I didn’t even like Starbust candy then and today I really don’t like them – maybe because of that moment - but no one taught me how to steal and yet I did it and we can all do it because there is an urge in all of us to want more. We might want more for our own personal pleasure, or we might feel like we need more for security, or status, or to feed our addictions – people steal for all kinds of reasons - but there is an urge in all of us to want more and if we don’t have the means to buy it or if the opportunity is just too tempting – we are all prone to simply take.
We are all prone to take and the reason I say this is because if you think about it, stealing is the manifestation of the original sin. God said to Adam and Eve, you can eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but when the serpent told Eve how good that fruit was and how if they ate it their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, she wanted to take it and convinced Adam to go along with her and while the sin may have been pride and a desire to be like God the sin manifested itself in stealing. So maybe there is something in all of us that still wants to take things that don’t belong to us and if that is the case, none of us can say – I have this commandment covered, we need to be on our guard at all times and in all places.
But it is not just stealing things from others that we need to guard against – Adam and Eve stole from God and maybe that is the bigger problem for us when it comes to this commandment. In Malachi 3 God accuses his people of stealing from him, look at Malachi 3:8-9. Here’s how the people were stealing from God. God made the heavens and the earth and everything in it. Psalm 24:1 says the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. In Haggai 2:8 it says, the silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord. So everything in this world belongs to God. Everything that we have in our possession and all that we work for doesn’t belong to us – it all belongs to God and as the owner God calls us to use his creation according to his purpose and plan and when it comes to our possessions there is one basic guideline that God calls us to follow and it is called the tithe. 10% of what we earn and what we have is to be given back to God – I say given back to God because it all belongs to him in the first place. The tithe was to be used to support the work of God in the world, to help spread the truth of God and call people to trust God, and the tithe was to be used to care for the poor and God’s people who were in need.
When the people did not bring their full tithe to the temple and give it as an offering to God – they were robbing God. When we are not willing to tithe today the same is true. When we aren’t willing to give God 10% of what he has given us we are stealing from God and the result of stealing from God isn’t just a weakened body of Christ and a limited and ineffective ministry of God in the world – the result of stealing from God is a broken relationship with God.
Remember, stealing breaks down trust, so when we steal from God it shows that we don’t trust God to provide for us and to meet our needs and in turn God can not trust us. Why would God continue to pour out his blessing and his abundance on us if he can’t trust us to use his resources according to his will and purpose?
But if God can trust us to use his creation the way he has called us to use it doesn’t it make sense that God will give us more and more of it? This is exactly what God says in Malachi 3:10-12. When we show God that he can trust us with his creation – he will give us more of that creation.
I have to tell you that I dream of the day that we take this call to tithe seriously because if we all did this, if all of God’s people did this we would be able to do so much for the mission of the church and we would be able to meet so many more needs of people both here and around the world. The tithe really adds up. 10% from all of God’s people is a huge amount of resources and it would make a radical difference in our world, but we aren’t there yet because we still struggle with this commandment, we are stealing from God and we steal because we don’t fully trust God.
But it is not too late to turn all of this around. We have seen in the past few weeks that although many of God’s people failed to keep these 10 Commandments – God forgave them and God redeemed them. God forgave murders and adulterers and then used them to build his kingdom and he did the same thing with thieves. In Luke 19 there is the story of Jesus turning around the life of a thief named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a tax collector which meant that he not only collected taxes but he collected more than what was owed and he kept the excess for himself. He was stealing from the people and got rich doing it and then he met Jesus. After Zacchaeus heard the truth of God, after he received God’s forgiveness and grace he decided to live according to God’s principles and so he returned all the money he had stolen, but the story doesn’t end there. Zacchaeus doesn’t just return what he took, he gives back 4 times as much, he has been transformed from someone who only knew how to take into to someone who freely and generously gives and ultimately this is what God wants for our lives.
As children created in the image of God – God wants us to give because God gives. God gives freely, graciously and generously and that is how God wants us to live our lives. Adam and Eve got into trouble when they decided to take instead of give – Zacchaeus finds life and freedom when he decides to give instead of take and that is where life can be found for us. If we have stolen from God, from others, from our employer, from the government or from anyone we need to stop taking and start giving. It might start by giving back what we have taken and returning what we have stolen, but then we need to start living a life of giving – giving to God and to others. It’s time for us to trust God and give back to him what he asks for – the full tithe – and then thank him for all that he gives us each and every day.
