You Shall Not Steal

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 42.
2. 0:12What does God forbid in the Eighth Commandment?
3. 0:15He forbids not only outright theft and robbery, which governing authorities punish, but also But in God's sight, theft also includes all evil tricks and schemes designed to get our
4. 0:25neighbors goods for ourselves, whether by force or means that appear legitimate, such as inaccurate measurements of weight, size, or volume, fraudulent merchandising, counterfeit
5. 0:36money, excessive interest, or any other means fraudulent.
6. 0:40forbidden by God. In addition, God forbids all greed and pointless squandering of his gifts. What does God require of you in this commandment? That I do whatever I can and
7. 0:52may for my neighbor's good, that I treat others as I would like them to treat me, and that I work faithfully so that I may help the needy in their hardship.
8. 1:02So we're looking at the commandments, and we've come to the Eighth Commandment.
9. 1:06And it's good to remind ourselves that the commandments, they reflect the character of God.
10. 1:12They're not just arbitrary rules that God somehow implements or imposes upon us, but what God is showing us is who he is and how we ought to reflect his character.
11. 1:23God is generous, God is gracious, God is open-handed, God is the overflowing fountain of all good.
12. 1:31And he wants our lives and our characters to reflect that.
13. 1:35So in the Eighth Commandment, God is teaching us that he doesn't want us to be a great person, grasping people, trying to grab everything we can for ourselves.
14. 1:43He wants us to be a giving people, an open-handed and generous people.
15. 1:48If you look at the wording of the catechism, the church divides the sins against this commandment into two categories.
16. 1:55So there's all outright theft and robbery, which is pretty clear.
17. 1:59You go up to somebody and you use force and you demand that they give you their stuff.
18. 2:04But there are also sneakier ways to break this commandment where it looks like you're doing what is right and legitimate and lawful, but you're actually stealing what belongs to someone else.
19. 2:14And that would be deceptive merchandising, for instance.
20. 2:18You pretend to be selling one thing.
21. 2:19and people think they're buying a certain thing, but actually it's not what you say it is.
22. 2:25When you sell a car and you know there's something wrong with the engine, but you assure the buyer that everything's fine.
23. 2:31It's a sneaky way of sinning against the Eighth Commandment.
24. 2:34Now, as we look at the commandments, the church has seen over the ages that when God forbids something, then at the same time he commands the opposite. Or when he commands something,
25. 2:44he at the same time forbids the opposite. So when God forbids us to steal, the other side of that is that God commands us to be generous and to work hard and faithfully.
26. 2:54And that's what the catechism speaks about in the second question and answer in this Lord's is what does God require of you in this commandment. So it's not just enough to refrain from stealing.
27. 3:07Even people who are not regenerate can largely avoid outright stealing. But God requires that we work faithfully, that instead of taking we give. And so the eighth commandment is a command for each of us
28. 3:25to be faithful in our daily work, to be honest in our labor, to be diligent, to be productive, and to see work as something that God has given us as a blessing.
29. 3:37Work is often seen as something which is part of the curse and the fall but we have to understand that work is something that was there before the fall that Adam was put in the garden to work
30. 3:47it and so it's it's something which is good and which glorifies God and it's part of who we are and what we ought to do is as children of God I'm gonna open the scriptures to Ephesians chapter 4
31. 3:59verse 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 and that teaches us something it's not
32. 4:15just enough that we don't steal it's not just that God requires us rather to get the things that we need by working faithfully. But the opposite of stealing is giving. You can think of the hand. If we live in sin
33. 4:33against the eighth commandment, we're grasping, we're clasping, our hand is closed. And then it's hard to receive grace from God and good gifts from God because our hand is grasping and tightly closed
34. 4:45and it's certainly hard to give to others as well. But God opens our hand. The power of the Holy Spirit regenerates us and makes us like Him more and more. And so we, with an open hand,
35. 4:56we receive God's good gifts and we receive them not for self and purposes, but we receive them so that we can obey God's will and obey God's law,
36. 5:06which is to love God and to love our neighbor, open-handedness. The Eighth Commandment, like all the Scriptures, points us to the Lord Jesus Christ. The
37. 5:15Scriptures say that though he was rich, he became poor, so that by his his poverty, we might become rich.
38. 5:22And so the Lord Jesus, when he was stripped of everything, and in the end gave up his life itself, the Lord Jesus teaches us what it is to keep the Eighth Commandment.
39. 5:33So let's step back and look at this whole Lord’s Day in light of what we've just talked about.
40. 5:39Keeping the Eighth Commandment isn't just avoiding the temptation to grab something in the store that you haven't paid for.
41. 5:46It's far more than that.
42. 5:48The catechism reminds us that in the Eighth Commandment, God is calling us to reflect the very character of God and the image of Christ.
43. 5:59And so the Eighth Commandment encourages us in the power of the Holy Spirit to live a life of doing whatever we can to bless our neighbor, to be open-handed with our neighbor,
44. 6:12to treat other people the way we would like to be treated, and to work hard, not so we can accumulate all kinds of toys and be the one that is the one that is the one that is
45. 6:19you know, wins the game of life by dying with the most toys, but to work hard so that we can show other people the love, the generosity, the grace, and the goodness of God in very real and practical ways.
46. 6:35And that's a fantastic way to live.
47. 6:37It brings glory to God and much joy.
48. 6:39joy to us and our neighbor.

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