Faithbase

Thinking about God's law, the eighth commandment, you shall not steal. And we talked about how theft or stealing is a manipulative worldview, where a person is trying to, by their own effort, create a reality that they like better than what they have. So to steal from somebody is not only to deprive them of their property and to show not love but hate to them by taking their property, but there's also a shaking of the fist at God because you're saying, I don't like the way that my life is, I don't like my reality, and I'm going to manipulate, I'm gonna make things different, I'm gonna do things my way in order to improve my lot. And so in the ancient world, you shall not steal, that was very much the case because in a peasant society, as it was in the ancient world, ancient Israel, your tools of the trade, even your clothing on your back, you just didn't have a lot of extra. Now if someone were to come to the typical American home today and steal their electronics, they could still go to work the next day, they could still make a living, they could still put on enough clothes to stay warm and so forth, but in the ancient world, in ancient Israel, if someone were to steal your implements of work, you would very potentially starve to death if you couldn't afford to replace them. If someone were to steal your cloak, you would freeze at night and so on. So to steal was an attempt to disrupt someone else's reality, but more importantly to create your own. And today we have, as I say, so much that theft to us doesn't tend to put us in a position of dire straits where our life is at stake, but any kind of theft is in fact a shaking of the fist at God and saying, my view of reality is more important, in fact, it trumps yours. And that's any kind of theft, whether it be material goods, whether it be time on the job, you waste time on the job, whether it be stealing from somebody their good name, that kind of thing, you are trying to bring them down to bring yourself up and so on. So any kind of theft that impoverishes the other person or diminishes their welfare in any way, that's what theft is doing to them and it is an attempt again on your part to make yourself something that you're not or make us something that we're not. Now we all, I think almost all of us in little ways, we would call it little ways, commit theft and we need to be cognizant of that and we need to be willing to ask for forgiveness and to change our ways on that. So I would ask you as you think about God's law, think about ways that you might be committing theft. You're probably not out shoplifting, I hope you're not part of these crash and dash or whatever they call them, gangs that loot stores. I hope you're not doing any of that sort. But what ways are you committing theft in toward individuals or perhaps towards your employer? And I would ask you once you identify those things, as I do as well, to ask the Lord God to forgive me, to forgive us and to do better next time. That we might be true and I guess I would say effective representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'll see you again tomorrow.