Ten Commandments for Today
09/08/2002 - The Value of Integrity
When I was twelve years old I made my first major purchase with my own hard earned money, money that I had made cutting lawns and shoveling snow and doing odd jobs for the neighbors. And I can still remember the afternoon that I got into the car with my mom and a pocket full of cash and we drove down to Morey's Cycle Shop on Rhawn Street in Northeast Philadelphia and I bought myself my very own gold, Tour de France, ten-speed bike.
Now you gotta' understand that was a couple of years ago and ten speed bikes were brand new. They were on the cutting edge of two-wheel technology. Not many people had them. In fact, almost everybody I knew was riding around on the old 20" Sting Ray bikes with the banana seats and the sissy bars. Anybody have one of those? I mean this was way before the X Games were X Games, they were like A or B Games then!
But I wanted a ten-speed bike and I saved a hundred dollars to buy it. And that seemed like a fortune to me. And so I got a big bike that I could grow into, so tall I could barely reach the pedals, but I wanted to keep it for a long time. Yet I never imagined that I'd still be riding it today. In fact, it's only the bike I've ever owned and it's lasted a lot longer than those 20" Sting Rings with banana seats and sissy bars.
It's in our garage and often when I ride it I can't believe how old I am or how much that bike meant to me. I'll never forget the feeling of pride and satisfaction that came from purchasing something with my very own money, something more than just baseball cards or bubble gum.
Interesting, around that same time of my life, when I was twelve or maybe thirteen, my parents went away for the weekend and I was staying with a friend. And on Saturday afternoon we got bored and so we decided to ride our bikes over to my house and just hang out. But when we got there the front door was wide open. At first, I thought my parents had come home early, but I didn't see any car in the driveway. And so we tip toed up to the door and my friend said, "Bruce, don't go in. Let's go to the neighbors and call the police. I think you've been robbed." And I said, "No I'm gone in and get 'em!" Not the smart thing to do.
But that's what we did and I can remember going through the whole house yelling, "Hello. We're home. Get out of here!" I don't know what I would have done if somebody answered. Fortunately nobody did, but the house had been ransacked and the closets and the drawers were wide open and there were clothes strewn on the floor and my mother's jewelry box had been emptied out. This past weekend I spent sometime with that childhood buddy and he reminded me that there was also jar of olives left open by the front door. Apparently, the thief got the munchies while he was ransacking the place and started to pop some olives!
Eventually, we did go to the neighbors and called the police and they came and took fingerprints, collected evidence, took the olive jar and wrote up a report. But we never did find out who did it. And to this day I'll never forget the feeling of confusion and anger and rage that I had that day. Somebody had broken into my house and stolen our stuff. How dare they do that! I wanted to hit somebody! There was a tremendous sense of violation. Two strong feelings, one of satisfaction for something earned and purchased, my bike, and one of anger for something taken away, the theft.
This morning we continue our series called Ten Commandments for Today with a look at the eighth commandment and the value of integrity found in Exodus 20:15. If you have your Bible, please turn to Exodus 20:15. The eighth commandment is the shortest commandment of them all. It simply reads, You shall not steal. But it packs a powerful punch.
How many of you have ever had anything stolen? Raise your hand. Anyone ever had money stolen? A bicycle stolen? Your home broken into? An automobile stolen? Then you can relate to the feeling that I described. You get angry. Most of us, at one time or another, have had something ripped off and it doesn't feel good.
This week I read about a guy from London who's been the victim of 15 car thefts in the past eight years. That's like two a year. He's got to learn to take the keys out of the ignition! He doesn't feel good most of the time! The first four cars he owned were all stolen. One was returned and then stolen again. One time he was called to the police station to pick up his tape player, which was stolen from his car and then recovered, and while he was at the station somebody stole his car. The police officer who knew him well by now said, "You need to either start taking public transportation or get a bumper sticker that says, 'This car protected by a pit bull with AIDS!'"
Now, let me flip it over, how many of you have ever stolen something? Don't raise your hands. I don't want to embarrass the few of us who have. Have you ever taken anything that wasn't yours, a piece of candy as a kid, a towel from a hotel room, supplies or tools from work, a grape from the produce stand? If you have then you know another feeling. You know the thrill of getting away with something, getting something for nothing. You also know the tremendous capacity we all have for rationalizing why it's okay. "Nobody will ever know. I deserve it. Everybody else does it. The company owes it to me. It's only one little ... whatever."
Yet God comes along in the eighth commandment and says, "Don't do it. Don't take what's not yours. Don't rationalize it. Don't justify it. Because I know what's best for you. Remember these at Tender Commandments. I know what will make your life rich and full and meaningful. I will provide for you. I want you to enjoy the deep satisfaction of earning what you have and being content with how I can take care of you. Don't be fooled by the thrill of getting something for nothing, because it doesn't last. It's soon followed by a sense shame and disrespect for yourself. It erodes your character and pretty soon when you look in the mirror you're not going to like what you see. You won't be able to trust the person in the mirror."
God says in the eighth commandment, "I want you to enjoy life and have things. But I want you to get your stuff the right way." The Bible gives at least five God honoring ways of acquiring possessions, getting stuff, without stealing, ways that are good and right and show that we trust and obey God. The first is by working hard. In Ephesians 4:28 the apostle Paul writes these words to Christians. Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.
Paul says, "Stop stealing. Get to work. And start sharing." Work is a good thing. Work is how we develop confidence and self-respect and self-esteem. I'll never forget my very first paycheck. I've saved that pay stub to this day. I don't always keep it in my Bible, but today I brought it with me. I was fifteen years-old working in a supermarket, stocking shelves, unloading trucks, collecting carts, bagging groceries and running the register all for $1.75 an hour. Can you believe that? They got a real bargain with me. And at the end of that first week I had worked thirty hours and make $52.50, took home $45.28 and felt like Bill Gates! I was rich. I never made that much money in a week shoveling snow or cutting grass. But even more than that, I had a deep sense of satisfaction that I had earned that money. And that felt good.
Work is a good thing as long as we keep it balanced with worship and recreation as we saw in the fourth commandment. We're not to be addicted to our work. But a good day's work is meant by God to give us a sweet sense of satisfaction, of a job well done.
The second is by investing wisely. The Bible encourages us to invest our money wisely. That's a trick these days, I know, with a slumping economy and plunging stock market. Billions of hard earned dollars have literally evaporated over the last 18 months. But the principle of investing and earning interest is still biblical.
In Matthew 25, Jesus told a story about a man who went on a journey and gave some money to each of his three servants and told them to invest it wisely. Two of them did, but one buried his money in the ground for fear that it would get ripped off and Jesus criticized him for it in Matthew 25:26-27 when he said, You wicked, lazy servant ... You should have at least put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
This summer we changed bank accounts for our two oldest children to teach them something about the principle of earning interest and getting their money to work for them. So now instead of getting .25% interest they're getting a whopping 1% a year!
Working hard, investing wisely, receiving an inheritance is another way to gain possessions. The Bible has a lot to say about inheriting property handed down from one generation to another. It was the custom in Jewish families that the firstborn child would receive a double portion of the inheritance. That means if there were two kids in the family the firstborn would get two-thirds of the loot when mom and dad died. The youngest would get one-third. It was a way of honoring the duty and responsibility that often went with being a first-born child.
The fourth way of receiving property is through receiving gifts. There's no way that we could live in the house where we live now if it weren't for the generous gifts of my parents. There's no way. Anything we possess as a church has been the result of the gifts of God's people. Chairs, sound equipment, our LCD projector, the Big Old House in Phoenixville have all been purchased with the generous gifts of those who are committed to Christ and the mission of Valley View Community Church.
And the fifth way is through believing prayer. It's through trusting God. Many of us could tell story after story of how we prayed and waited and watched God provide in supernatural ways. Things like houses and cars and furniture and clothing and food and you name it. God gave us a beautifully restored barn to meet in, rent free, for the first 2 ½ years of our church. That was a huge answer to prayer and a confirmation that God was with us.
If you haven't had that kind of experience yet, you're missing out on a big part of the adventure. Bring your needs, your wants, your desires to God and watch him provide. Not everything, but always what we need.
Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:25, 32-33, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
The apostle Paul put it this way in Philippians 4:19, My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
You see there's a heart attitude that drives stealing, just like there's a heart attitude that drives adultery and murder. The heart attitude behind adultery is lust. The heart attitude behind murder is anger. And the heart attitude behind stealing is pride. It's an attitude that says, "I've got to look out for myself. I got to take care of number one, because if I don't know no one else will. I'm my own God. I'm my own provider. So I make the rules and that means taking all I can get."
That's what's really behind the eighth commandment. It's all about trusting God to take care of us. God's saying, "I love you more than anyone ever can or will love you. And I want you to depend on me to take good care of you. Like a loving Father takes good care of his kids. I don't want you stealing because I am your provider. I don't want you to have to scheme, manipulate, and deceive your way to getting stuff, because when you do that you become a schemer and a manipulator and a deceiver. You become an untrustworthy person and that breaks down every relationship you have. I don't want you to feel responsible for securing your own future. Trust me."
The classic story in the Bible on stealing is the story of Achan in Joshua 7. The nation of Israel had just crossed the Jordan River and they were about to see the walls of Jericho come tumbling down. But before they did God said everything in the city was to be devoted to him. They were not to keep any of the spoils. And they all obeyed except one man, Achan.
And when he was found out he confessed and said this in Joshua 7:21-22, When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent. Right there you have the psychology of stealing. I saw. I coveted. I took. Eyes first. Then heart. Then hands.
Rather than waiting on God to provide want he really wanted, Achan took what didn't belong to him. And it brought a stinging defeat to the army of Israel. And a death sentence to Achan and his family, who were executed, burned and buried under a large pile of rocks in the Valley of Achor, which means the Valley of Trouble. All that for one act of stealing.
What's even more tragic, and here's the lesson, if Achan would have obeyed God and just waited a few more days he could have had a whole wardrobe and all the gold and the silver he could carry, not just the little bit he could hide under his tent, because in the very next battle, God gave all the plunder to the troops. Achan refused to wait on God. Had he waited he might have been set for life. You see the lesson? We need to take God at his word and trust him to provide for us in his time. Don't short cut God's provision through stealing.
And like every one of the commandments there's so much more to this one than meets the eye. There are lots of ways that we can steal, aren't there? In fact, a good case can made that these last five commandments are all about stealing, someone's life, do not murder, someone's wife or husband, do not commit adultery, someone's reputation, do not give false testimony against your neighbor, someone's stuff, don't covet your neighbor's house and wife and servants and cars and toys and vacations.
We can steal from the IRS when we don't declare all of our income. We can steal someone's good name through slander. We can steal a girlfriend's virginity through lust. We can steal company time by taking long lunches and surfin' the web and making a bunch of personal calls from work. And we can even steal from God. Did you know that?
In Malachi 3:8-10 God is grieved that his people are ripping him off. He says, "Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse-the whole nation of you-because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."
We steal from God when we don't give him a portion of our income. In the Old Testament that was a tithe, ten percent. In the New Testament, no percentage is given. Instead, the command is to give generously to God, recognizing that everything we have belongs to him. And when we don't give to God and his work, we rob God and that's not a good place to be. When we spend everything on ourselves God feels violated. As violated as we feel when someone steals from us. As violated as I felt when someone ransacked my house.
On the other hand when we do give to God and his work we get him on our financial team and he promises to open the floodgates of heaven and pour out his blessing on our lives. And so many of us could stand up here and tell you what those blessings have been. And they're not just financial. They're the blessings of contentment and freedom and joy and the peace of knowing that we're obeying God in this area. And it all starts when we sign everything that we have over to him and say, "It's all yours God."
If this is new for you and you don't feel comfortable with ten percent, then start with two percent, then five percent, then eight percent, then ten percent and then beyond ten. And watch what God does to your financial life when you stop robbing him and start inviting him to bless you.
The eighth commandment is all about trusting God to take care of us. And we show him that not just by not stealing what doesn't belong to us, but by giving to him what belongs to him anyway.
Ephesians 4:28 says again, Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.
It's interesting to me that when Jesus was crucified he was hung on a cross between two thieves, two men who had broken the eighth commandment. They were both the same distance from the Lord, hanging on their own individual crosses. They both started out cursing Jesus. Yelling at him to get down off the cross and take them off with him. But then one of them softened. He realized that they deserved their punishment, but Jesus didn't deserve his. And on that cross, inches from eternity, he came to believe that Jesus was who he claimed to be, received forgiveness, and was given eternal life. He never went to church. Never was confirmed or took communion. Never was baptized. He just believed in Jesus and who said, Today you will be with me in paradise.
And if we're honest all of us are like those two thieves. We've all broken the eighth commandment and the nine others as well. We all need the cleansing and new life that Jesus offers. And if you've never received the gift of eternal life I'm going to give you that chance this morning. And if you already have, maybe you need to ask God's forgiveness for the ways you've been robbing him or stealing from your company or violating the eighth commandment in some other way. Get a fresh start today in trusting God to take care of you.