Pastor Cal Lord's Recent Sermons
Who Are You Really Robbing?
August 26, 2007 Exodus 20:15
In the Norman Rockwell Museum in Philadelphia you can find reproductions of many of those
great covers from The Saturday Evening Post. Among them is one that depicts an encounter in a
butcher shop.
A woman shopper and a butcher face each other with a turkey on the scales between them. Each
has the pleased smile of someone who is in on a private joke. A careful look shows the butcher’s
heavy thumb on the scales, while the customer pushes up on them with a dainty forefinger. It is
a perfect depiction of the way we view what is fair when it comes to our dealing with things.
We can laugh at this and none of us would think of either person as being necessarily evil or bad.
We might even try to justify what they were doing. After all, we are only talking about a few
cents one way or the other. Is that really stealing? Who does it really hurt?
On the other hand it does add up. In the United States alone, department store pilferage exceeds
$4 billion a year. That means that one in every fifty two people who goes into a store walks out
with something they didn’t pay for. That doesn’t sound like much. It adds up to $4 billion dollars
though.
We may not call it stealing but when you fudge a little bit on your taxes, when you get too much
change back from the cashier and you walk away, when the clerk misreads the price tag and
gives you a real deal, when you take an extra fifteen minutes on your lunch break, when you buy
a Gucci purse on the street in New York City for fifteen dollars, when you sneak into the drive-in
in the back of your friends car, when you pick up something that doesn’t belong to you, you are
saying something about yourself and your relationship to God.
The Eighth commandment is very simple. You shall not steal. Four words with big implications.
Like so many of the other commandments, we look at it and think it doesn’t apply to us. We
aren’t crooks. We would never walk into a bank with a gun and rob the place. Stealing is so
much more than that. It is no so much an act as it is an attitude.
20/20 or one of those news shows recently presented an hour long program on the subject. They
took 50 brand new I-pods and left them in various places and then filmed what happened next.
Now you might have preconceived notions about who would pick up a bag with a brand new I-
pod in it and you would be wrong. Men, women teens, black, white middle aged, they all did it.
Some of them looked around to see if anyone was looking. Others slid in next to the bag and
looked at it and then slipped it in their purse. It was obvious that the people knew what they were
doing and that it was wrong.
Each of the I-pods was rigged so that when it was registered the news crew would get a call
with the information. Then the team went out and confronted the thieves. Some actually had the
I-pods. Others had been sold. One woman said her husband had given it to her as a present. He
told her he bought it at best buy. When he was pushed he admitted he bought it off the street..
The funny thing is that all of these folks looked like you and me. That is scary.
Stealing is taking something that doesn’t belong to you and claiming it as your own. You see God
affirms the fact that we all can have personal property, those things we call our own. Seventeen
of Jesus’ thirty-six parables in the New Testament speak of property and ownership. The parable
of the Good Samaritan talks about loving our neighbor on its most basic level. But when you
delve a little deeper it has something profound to say about our attitudes toward things.
The story begins in Luke 10:30: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell
into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him
half dead. The robbers’ attitude was, “What’s yours is mine: I’ll take it.”
That’s the attitude of the businessman who pads an expense account. That is what people are
thinking when they cheat on their income tax, or buy stuff on credit with no possibility or
intention of paying for it.
It’s a pervasive attitude in our society today. I deserve to have what you have and if you don’t
give it to me I am going to take it.
I heard a story about a woman who complained to her husband one evening, “The housekeeper
swiped two of our brand new towels.” He replied, “What a despicable person. Which ones did
she take?” The wife said, “The pretty pink ones we brought back from the Holiday Inn last
week.”
Oops! It is the little things that get us. But you know, a lot of you are sitting here today thinking
“I would never take something that doesn’t belong to me.” We all know it is wrong to actually
take something from someone else, but the definition of stealing can be broadened to include
looking the other way. When we let someone else get away with robbery, we become a part of
the act.
Go back to the parable of the Good Samaritan again. A priest and a Levite walked by the injured
man and walked right by him. They knew something had happened but they didn’t want to get
involved. In effect they were saying “What’s mine is mine, and I’ll keep it.” You can steal by
doing nothing.
When I was in college I took a job at the Universal Grocery Store. I was excited and began
working and like all new employees I worked extra hard. Two guys who had been there for
years witnessed this and they pulled me aside. “Slow down” they said. “You are making us look
bad. Take it easy. Go get a magazine. No one cares. Just put in your time.” My father used to
talk about guys at Pratt & Whitney who would take a book into the men’s room and spend hours
at a time goofing off while getting paid.
How many of us think of this as stealing. We don’t say anything because we don’t want to
jeopardize our own situation. But we might as well be putting our hand in the cash register and
taking money out.
In the book of Malachi, the prophet says whenever we steal, whenever we look the other way,
whenever we hoard up what we have, we are actually stealing from God. You may think you are
getting what you deserve when you get away with something, but you are really are committing
a crime against God.
God wants us to be blessed and to enjoy the fruits of our labor. He wants to give us more than
we can imagine. But too often we forget to thank him. We devise schemes to get it on our own.
We leave God out of our planning and feel its okay to shortchange someone else. And that’s
where we break this commandment.
But there is a better way and this commandment should wake us up and turn us around. That’s
what God wanted. He wants us to stop being so selfish and to look to him for our provisions.
You see God will give us anything we need if we ask him. We don’t need to steal it. When we
steal something we are saying in effect, “I can’t depend on God to get what I need.” Think of
the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. God gave them manna, quail, light and leadership. God
has promised to take care of us as well. We just need to remain faithful.
And you know the best way to remain faithful. It is to share what you have. The Good Samaritan
in our parable exemplifies this attitude. It is simply this: “What’s mine is yours; let’s share it.”
The Good Samaritan saw the man who had been beaten and he took care of him. He brought him
to the inn and paid for him to stay there. He bound up his wounds and shared himself and what
he had with the man in need.
When we understand that all we have comes from God we can be generous and give it away
because we know God is a generous God.
One of the most important choices and one of the most liberating we can make in life is to let go
of our reigns on our wealth and become generous people.
You see in this twisted line of thinking, when we hold onto the things God gives us we are really
stealing from God. We are called to be the conduit for his giving. His blessings are supposed to
flow through us. When we hold back and keep it to ourselves, we are not living up to God’s
standards.
A lot of people see this commandment as simply a warning against taking from others. It is so
much more than that. It is a reminder that anytime we take that which doesn’t belong to us,
whether it is from a store or of out of the abundance we are blessed with, we are really robbing
God.
Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’S, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in
it.” All we own is from God. Everything we are and have is His. We have been called to be
caretaker of God’s gifts.
That means we rob Him when we fail to respond to the needs of others and we are unfaithful to
Him when we lavish our wealth on ourselves. You have to remember that in Moses’ day the
people did not own very much. They had left Egypt and carried all their possessions with them.
They were people without a home. To talk about stealing must have seemed absurd to them.
Some scholars say this was a warning for when they settled into the promised land. God knew
that some would be tempted to horde and keep what he had given them. I think there is truth in
that. We have seen it played out over the centuries that followed. But I think it is even more basic
than that. It was a call to the community to share with one another. For in doing so, the whole
community would be blessed.
Have you read or seen Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Miserables? Jean Valjean, the hero of the story,
is released from prison after nineteen years of cruel confinement for a petty theft. Bitter and
consumed by anger, he finds it impossible to make a fresh start. He is treated kindly by one man,
a bishop, whom Jean Valjean repays by stealing some silverware from him. He is caught with the
loot and returned to face his victim. Facing life-long confinement, the desperate thief is
astonished when the bishop tells the arresting officers that the silver in Jean Valjean’s possession
is a gift. He offers the startled thief two silver candlesticks implying that he had forgotten to take
them the first time. It is a magnificent moment. It happens in the first act, but you immediately
sense that it is a new beginning for Jean Valjean.
It is like a parable of the grace of giving, and the new life offered by Jesus Christ. His grace
makes it possible for those who have stolen to steal no more.
The eighth commandment is a statute of liberty. As we serve others instead of stealing from
them, we are released from greed and selfishness. Giving is a means of grace, and we all need
the liberating experience of giving.
The philosophy of the world is “Get all you can, can all you get, and then sit on the can!” John
Wesley put a Christian twist on that philosophy and it set him free. He taught, “Earn all you can,
save all you can, and give all you can.” That is the Christian’s faith.
August 26, 2007 Exodus 20:15
In the Norman Rockwell Museum in Philadelphia you can find reproductions of many of those
great covers from The Saturday Evening Post. Among them is one that depicts an encounter in a
butcher shop.
A woman shopper and a butcher face each other with a turkey on the scales between them. Each
has the pleased smile of someone who is in on a private joke. A careful look shows the butcher’s
heavy thumb on the scales, while the customer pushes up on them with a dainty forefinger. It is
a perfect depiction of the way we view what is fair when it comes to our dealing with things.
We can laugh at this and none of us would think of either person as being necessarily evil or bad.
We might even try to justify what they were doing. After all, we are only talking about a few
cents one way or the other. Is that really stealing? Who does it really hurt?
On the other hand it does add up. In the United States alone, department store pilferage exceeds
$4 billion a year. That means that one in every fifty two people who goes into a store walks out
with something they didn’t pay for. That doesn’t sound like much. It adds up to $4 billion dollars
though.
We may not call it stealing but when you fudge a little bit on your taxes, when you get too much
change back from the cashier and you walk away, when the clerk misreads the price tag and
gives you a real deal, when you take an extra fifteen minutes on your lunch break, when you buy
a Gucci purse on the street in New York City for fifteen dollars, when you sneak into the drive-in
in the back of your friends car, when you pick up something that doesn’t belong to you, you are
saying something about yourself and your relationship to God.
The Eighth commandment is very simple. You shall not steal. Four words with big implications.
Like so many of the other commandments, we look at it and think it doesn’t apply to us. We
aren’t crooks. We would never walk into a bank with a gun and rob the place. Stealing is so
much more than that. It is no so much an act as it is an attitude.
20/20 or one of those news shows recently presented an hour long program on the subject. They
took 50 brand new I-pods and left them in various places and then filmed what happened next.
Now you might have preconceived notions about who would pick up a bag with a brand new I-
pod in it and you would be wrong. Men, women teens, black, white middle aged, they all did it.
Some of them looked around to see if anyone was looking. Others slid in next to the bag and
looked at it and then slipped it in their purse. It was obvious that the people knew what they were
doing and that it was wrong.
Each of the I-pods was rigged so that when it was registered the news crew would get a call
with the information. Then the team went out and confronted the thieves. Some actually had the
I-pods. Others had been sold. One woman said her husband had given it to her as a present. He
told her he bought it at best buy. When he was pushed he admitted he bought it off the street..
The funny thing is that all of these folks looked like you and me. That is scary.
Stealing is taking something that doesn’t belong to you and claiming it as your own. You see God
affirms the fact that we all can have personal property, those things we call our own. Seventeen
of Jesus’ thirty-six parables in the New Testament speak of property and ownership. The parable
of the Good Samaritan talks about loving our neighbor on its most basic level. But when you
delve a little deeper it has something profound to say about our attitudes toward things.
The story begins in Luke 10:30: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell
into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him
half dead. The robbers’ attitude was, “What’s yours is mine: I’ll take it.”
That’s the attitude of the businessman who pads an expense account. That is what people are
thinking when they cheat on their income tax, or buy stuff on credit with no possibility or
intention of paying for it.
It’s a pervasive attitude in our society today. I deserve to have what you have and if you don’t
give it to me I am going to take it.
I heard a story about a woman who complained to her husband one evening, “The housekeeper
swiped two of our brand new towels.” He replied, “What a despicable person. Which ones did
she take?” The wife said, “The pretty pink ones we brought back from the Holiday Inn last
week.”
Oops! It is the little things that get us. But you know, a lot of you are sitting here today thinking
“I would never take something that doesn’t belong to me.” We all know it is wrong to actually
take something from someone else, but the definition of stealing can be broadened to include
looking the other way. When we let someone else get away with robbery, we become a part of
the act.
Go back to the parable of the Good Samaritan again. A priest and a Levite walked by the injured
man and walked right by him. They knew something had happened but they didn’t want to get
involved. In effect they were saying “What’s mine is mine, and I’ll keep it.” You can steal by
doing nothing.
When I was in college I took a job at the Universal Grocery Store. I was excited and began
working and like all new employees I worked extra hard. Two guys who had been there for
years witnessed this and they pulled me aside. “Slow down” they said. “You are making us look
bad. Take it easy. Go get a magazine. No one cares. Just put in your time.” My father used to
talk about guys at Pratt & Whitney who would take a book into the men’s room and spend hours
at a time goofing off while getting paid.
How many of us think of this as stealing. We don’t say anything because we don’t want to
jeopardize our own situation. But we might as well be putting our hand in the cash register and
taking money out.
In the book of Malachi, the prophet says whenever we steal, whenever we look the other way,
whenever we hoard up what we have, we are actually stealing from God. You may think you are
getting what you deserve when you get away with something, but you are really are committing
a crime against God.
God wants us to be blessed and to enjoy the fruits of our labor. He wants to give us more than
we can imagine. But too often we forget to thank him. We devise schemes to get it on our own.
We leave God out of our planning and feel its okay to shortchange someone else. And that’s
where we break this commandment.
But there is a better way and this commandment should wake us up and turn us around. That’s
what God wanted. He wants us to stop being so selfish and to look to him for our provisions.
You see God will give us anything we need if we ask him. We don’t need to steal it. When we
steal something we are saying in effect, “I can’t depend on God to get what I need.” Think of
the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. God gave them manna, quail, light and leadership. God
has promised to take care of us as well. We just need to remain faithful.
And you know the best way to remain faithful. It is to share what you have. The Good Samaritan
in our parable exemplifies this attitude. It is simply this: “What’s mine is yours; let’s share it.”
The Good Samaritan saw the man who had been beaten and he took care of him. He brought him
to the inn and paid for him to stay there. He bound up his wounds and shared himself and what
he had with the man in need.
When we understand that all we have comes from God we can be generous and give it away
because we know God is a generous God.
One of the most important choices and one of the most liberating we can make in life is to let go
of our reigns on our wealth and become generous people.
You see in this twisted line of thinking, when we hold onto the things God gives us we are really
stealing from God. We are called to be the conduit for his giving. His blessings are supposed to
flow through us. When we hold back and keep it to ourselves, we are not living up to God’s
standards.
A lot of people see this commandment as simply a warning against taking from others. It is so
much more than that. It is a reminder that anytime we take that which doesn’t belong to us,
whether it is from a store or of out of the abundance we are blessed with, we are really robbing
God.
Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’S, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in
it.” All we own is from God. Everything we are and have is His. We have been called to be
caretaker of God’s gifts.
That means we rob Him when we fail to respond to the needs of others and we are unfaithful to
Him when we lavish our wealth on ourselves. You have to remember that in Moses’ day the
people did not own very much. They had left Egypt and carried all their possessions with them.
They were people without a home. To talk about stealing must have seemed absurd to them.
Some scholars say this was a warning for when they settled into the promised land. God knew
that some would be tempted to horde and keep what he had given them. I think there is truth in
that. We have seen it played out over the centuries that followed. But I think it is even more basic
than that. It was a call to the community to share with one another. For in doing so, the whole
community would be blessed.
Have you read or seen Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Miserables? Jean Valjean, the hero of the story,
is released from prison after nineteen years of cruel confinement for a petty theft. Bitter and
consumed by anger, he finds it impossible to make a fresh start. He is treated kindly by one man,
a bishop, whom Jean Valjean repays by stealing some silverware from him. He is caught with the
loot and returned to face his victim. Facing life-long confinement, the desperate thief is
astonished when the bishop tells the arresting officers that the silver in Jean Valjean’s possession
is a gift. He offers the startled thief two silver candlesticks implying that he had forgotten to take
them the first time. It is a magnificent moment. It happens in the first act, but you immediately
sense that it is a new beginning for Jean Valjean.
It is like a parable of the grace of giving, and the new life offered by Jesus Christ. His grace
makes it possible for those who have stolen to steal no more.
The eighth commandment is a statute of liberty. As we serve others instead of stealing from
them, we are released from greed and selfishness. Giving is a means of grace, and we all need
the liberating experience of giving.
The philosophy of the world is “Get all you can, can all you get, and then sit on the can!” John
Wesley put a Christian twist on that philosophy and it set him free. He taught, “Earn all you can,
save all you can, and give all you can.” That is the Christian’s faith.
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