March 12 Sermon: God Provides

I can remember the first time that I heard about someone that I know violating the Eighth Commandment. A friend of mine and I were playing outside, and he invited me in to hear a little bit of gossip. I guess I was violating the ninth commandment too. But anyway, he invited me in to hear this gossip regarding his older brother. Now, of course, my four or five-year-old ears wanted to hear something bad about what his brother has done. He was a couple of years older than us, and he didn't treat us nice all the time, so I wanted the dirt on this kid. I was excited. Well, when I told my friend that I wanted to hear about this, he let me know what he had done, and I learned about the great Eminem heist of Worthing South Dakota. It was a big deal. That's right. His older brother had taken the five-finger discount of a bag of Eminens at our little grocery store there in town. 

Now, I don't remember any other details about his shoplifting. I don't remember how my friend knew about what his brother had done. Was he an accomplice and creating a distraction? My guess is at that time, there was probably either a Frogger cabinet or a Pac-Man cabinet or a Donkey-Kong cabinet, and the owner of the grocery tour spent a lot of time over there, so it was probably pretty easy to heist some M&Ms at that time. But whatever had happened, my friend knew. Don't know any of the details on what happened. I just remember I was shocked. I could not believe that somebody that I knew had stolen something. Now, the details of this event surely were not very impressive. They're not going to make a heist film out of it, right? This isn't going to be Oceans 11 or The Italian Job or anything like that. It was pretty simple. I'm sure he nabbed the M&Ms and ate them on the walk home so nobody would see the evidence, right? But I know for a fact that his parents, and he would have learned it in church as well, that this friend of mine and his older brother both knew you shall not steal. 

Certainly, he had to hear this prohibition on not taking something that is yours. Just like the other commandments in the second table of the law, we not only know what these commandments are, we also feel them. We know that they're wrong. We've talked about this already. There's just inherent sense in the second table that what you're doing when you violate these aren't good, mostly because we know that we don't want these things to happen to us. We don't want someone to disrespect us. We don't want someone to harm us. We don't want someone to be unfaithful to us. We don't want somebody to take our possessions. People value their possessions. None of us want something that we've labored for taken from us. It's just wrong. When that does happen, when somebody takes something that's yours, you feel a sense of loss. You feel more than just this thing is absent from you. You also feel a sense of violation. It's very personal when something is stolen from you. It would have been, I'm guessing, 2004 or 2005, I woke up on a Sunday morning, and at that time, the Sunday school class I was teaching in Sandusky, Ohio, at our church, I gave them breakfast to bribe them to come. 

I hope they would have come anyway, but I wasn't about to take that chance. So every Sunday morning, I would go to Kroger and get donuts and have them out for them. Well, I didn't remember if there was any sunny delight left this morning, and so I walked. At this church, there were the two wings, like a Sunday school wing and then another some classrooms and a gym, and there was a little very narrow courtyard with a sidewalk. I walked through there completely oblivious, walked into the kitchen, looked in the fridge, checked whether or not I needed more juice to go along with the donuts I was buying at Kroger, walked out, didn't think anything about anything else other than what I was doing, tunnel vision. I go to Kroger, I come back, and everybody is completely... People look like they've been offended. People are in shock. Did you see this? I had been in the church. I had literally walked into the kitchen. I saw nothing. I walked up to the stairs to my office and there was glass everywhere. Now, I hadn't gone up there yet. Well, what had happened was in this courtyard area, the lower level, the windows were at ground level. 

Someone had come and kicked in the windows and they had crawled in, gone upstairs. That's how they got in. Again, like I said, I was oblivious. I walked by that window three times before I found out. You can take anything from me, I won't notice. But anyway, I went into my office, and what they had done is they had done something to break the glass on the office doors and then reached in and unlocked the knobs that my laptop was missing off my desk. They had stolen the computers. Actually, this is when I learned the importance of offsite backup. We had been backing up the secretary's computer on a big USB hard drive sitting on top of her computer. Guess what? They didn't leave it behind when they stole her computer. But anyway, the reason I tell this story is the sense of violation that I had that somebody stole my stuff. As I looked around the room of different people who were there, people who had nothing personal taken from them, but just because it was their church, there was a sense of violation of being offended. In that general, it was more than just that who would steal from a church feeling. 

It was just like that they had been personally taken from and nothing of theirs was missing. They felt that way. Then we had to announce it at the eight o'clock service and that you could just see it like you're standing in front of their telling people. You could get that feeling in the room. Then we said it again at the 10:30 service. Again, these were people who hadn't even seen the glass on the floor. They didn't even arrive to church and feel like they were shocked by it. They had this sense that their church, even though, again, they didn't take their laptop, but they had this sense of betrayal, this sense of being taking take an advantage of. That is what happens when someone takes something from us. I can really only imagine what it would be like to have somebody come into your home at gunpoint and take something from you, or to have an armed robbery face to face. Imagine that level of violation, that feeling of betrayal that would be overwhelming for you. You can feel it. You know what I'm talking about. When somebody takes something that is yours, it is more than just, Oh, I don't have that thing anymore. 

There's more to it than that. As we continue through the second tail of the law today, we find ourselves at the Eighth Commandment. We've been making it clear. Jason told on himself just a few minutes about the steering wheel. We know what we're talking about today. This commandment that you shall not steal. Compared to what we've navigated through the past two weeks, you might be thinking, You shall not steal. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal compared to, You shall not murder, and, You shall not commit adulry. Well, it does seem tame compared to those two commandments, but it doesn't change the fact that this commandment involves the level of betrayal and violation that I was talking about, this betrayal and destruction of trust that we have when this commandment is violated. There's a deeper component at work in this commandment as well within us, too. As I've mentioned on several occasions, the law of God continually reminds us that God is a God of distinctions, right? In His law, we see today that God makes an important distinction, a distinction of respecting individual property. Property isn't everybody's. If property was everyone's, there wouldn't be a necessity for a command against theft, right? 

But God makes a distinction that there is such a thing as individual property. Now, we're going to get into all of this stuff. Like I mentioned, we know that stealing is wrong. We feel this. You don't need to get out your Bible and flip to Eccles 20:15 to make a case against this in the greater culture. Everybody knows that stealing is wrong. This is morally unacceptable. But before we get onto the greater details, I do want to take a minute to take a look at what is said specifically, and we know it by heart, but I want to take a look at what we see specifically as these words in this commandment. It's short, You shall not steal. Ridiculously straightforward. We know what every one of those words mean. Four words, You shall not steal. We get it. It might be very clear to us, but if we go to the original language, if we look at what is being said here in Hebrew, we get some further insight into what is being meant here. The Hebrew word that is used here is gnaf. Now, that doesn't mean anything to you, and quite frankly, I don't remember Hebrew well enough for it to mean that much to me. 

But I did the research here. It means not only to steal, but inherent in this word, deeply baked into this word, is the idea of forcibly carrying something off and doing it with stealth. There is deception involved here. That phrase, you shall not steal, or the word there, ghanaf, that really comprehensively gets to the root of what this command forbid and what we need to understand. It's more than just stealing. We're also talking about the deception that is involved when we do take something. Not only are these four words very clear for you and I, we also get a very easily defined idea there of what is covered in this commandment. Now, I've already given a couple of examples. Shoplifting would very obviously be covered by this command, and so would breaking into a church and stealing my laptop off my desk. We know that as theft. We don't have to think about that. We also know breaking into someone's home and taking something from them. That's covered here by the idea that you shall not steal. We would also definitely add something like hijacking, serious crimes that we know are stealing. We know this, armed robbery of an individual or a business. 

We know this very serious stuff. We know that is stealing. But we would also quickly add other activities that are serious theft, right? Things like embezzlement, extortion, they're covered by this command. We know that. We would also make room on the list for more petty theft activities like, say, snatching someone's purse or picking their pocket. I'm guessing that most of us are feeling pretty good about us and this command today. I hope none of you are pickpockets. I don't think any of you have ever done purse snatching. These aren't things that we necessarily do. We feel pretty good about this when we see the terrible things that can happen. When we rank these different types of theft, we feel pretty good about ourselves. The list I've lined out has some pretty serious stuff on there, stuff that will get you places where you need to go visit with bars between you. This is pretty serious stuff, but there's more to it than this. Like we've seen with the other commandments, we get down to the condition of our hearts, the condition of our minds. There's other things that aren't as big a deal in the world as what I've listed, but they are still violations of this command. 

Now, the first thing that came to my mind that we might move down the list a little bit on things that we don't think are that big a deal. Jason demonstrated it to us with the coin jar, and that would be pilfering. You're helping yourself to something that isn't legitimately yours. Now, my first thought, as I was thinking about giving examples of what we mean here, my first thought was to go to an internet search engine and ask the question, How many towels disappear from a hotel in a year? Okay, you might have thought the same way. Now, I didn't get an answer to that. I was hoping to have like, it's figured that 42 million towels disappear. I was hoping for that. Couldn't find anything like that. But let me tell you, I ended up on a rabbit trail about hotel theft. I'm going to share some of this pilfering that happens. Get ready. Room numbers disappear on a regular basis. People pilfer those. Okay, I see the look on people's faces. What? Room numbers? What are you doing with those? I guess you could put that on the category of pilfering, but still, it's like, what are they doing? 

Now, then we cross over into some other stuff that would seem a little bit more serious, but it's also like, why? The other thing that they discovered disappears a lot is the coffee maker. If you like coffee enough to take the coffee maker at a hotel, you probably have a coffee maker at home, right? But yet you wonder, what is it? Do they like the size of it? Or is there something about the thrill of taking it? Or is there something about, I've paid to stay in this hotel, I'm not getting my money's worth? I'm walking out with a coffee maker? I don't know. What was interesting about this is that there is a 5.3 fold increase in the theft of coffee makers between four-star hotels in Austria and five-star hotels in Austria. Either they're fancier or those people spent a ton of money to stay in a five-star hotel and they're getting theirs by taking the coffee maker. I don't know. You'd think people who could pay to stay in a five-star hotel would afford a coffee maker on their own, but I guess not. Anyway, some other things that surprised me is, well, first off, that people obviously have more room in their luggage than I do because people are walking out with all of the blankets and sheets. 

Where do you put those? Then the artwork. Seriously, is there anything more generic than hotel room artwork? Why do you want to put that on your walls? My favorite one, in Italy, three dudes walked into a hotel lobby in overalls and left with a grand piano. You got to appreciate the effort there. I don't know if they ever caught them. I don't know if they were trying to look like they were grand piano repairman or what, but they got away with it. Now, the point that I'm making by telling you... I'm trying to think of one of these examples is that probably like me, you suddenly progressed through what was leaving the hotels and you suddenly started to think, Pilfering a towel or maybe a few rolls of toilet paper ain't that bad compared to walking out with a grand piano. But the truth is that theft is theft regardless. All of theft is sin. None of the commandments of God are on a sliding scale. We quickly do that in our minds. We don't see ourselves as bad as someone else who does something on the level of taking the piano, but theft is theft. 

We need to be mindful of keeping God's law, regardless of the monetary amount involved or the social consequences if we get caught doing this. As with the previous commandments of the second table of the law, we also need to remember that our violation of this command isn't just about the physical act of stealing. It isn't just about what we do. It's also the condition of our hearts. Remember what Jesus had to say about lust and about anger. It's about our hearts and our minds as well. Just as our thoughts of disrespect to people in positions of authority or anger towards someone else or lustful thoughts, even though those violate the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Commandments, when we scheme, when we have these thoughts of desiring something that isn't ours, we are also violating this eighth commandment. Now, those thoughts we might have of how we can acquire more money or even recognition that is not ours. How can we find an illegitimate way to get this stuff without getting caught? When we scheme in those ways, we are violating this commandment. We do this. When we canive ways to manipulate people to do something that we should be doing ourselves as well. 

Because what are we doing? We are stealing time from others. When we canive ways to make other people do our work, we are stealing their time. You get the general idea of what I'm talking about. There is more to this than just pilfering or just stealing. There's also the ways in which we can do things to steal things from other people. You get the general idea. Like the other commandments, where our focus needs to be is getting our hearts right. We need to have hearts that trust God's provision for us. We need to have a heart that is content with what God has blessed us with. Because if our hearts are content with what God has given us, we're not going to scheme ways to acquire that which isn't ours. Instead, we are going to desire to work hard to the glory of God, and we're going to be content with the blessings that God bestows upon us. Now, in just a few minutes, we'll be reciting from Lord's Day 42 from the Heidelberg Catechism together, like we have been every week looking at what the Heidelberg Catechism has to say about this commandment. There are two questions pertaining to this commandment in the Heidelberg Catechism. 

As usually with the 10 commandments, what do you and I focus on? We focus on the negative, what we want to avoid. You shall not steal. That's a negative statement, right? But what I like about the second question we're going to look at today in the Heidelberg Catechism is the focus that it has on the positive. I forgot to put it in there, so I'm going to have to remember. Actually, Nancy, can you jump ahead to the Heidelberg Catechism slides for me? Because it's really important. I don't want to go from memory. Go on a little bit to the next question. Sorry. There we go. What does God require of you in this commandment? You can see here that it is in the positive that I do whatever I can 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 might share with those in need. I like that because instead of saying, don't do this, don't do this, it says, do this, do these good things. The emphasis is on the other and not on ourselves. Instead on dwelling on what we can acquire for ourselves, we as believers are to positively aid in the good of our neighbors. 

Instead of taking advantage of our neighbors for our gain, we're to follow the words of Jesus that tell us to treat others as we would want to be treated, the golden rule. Again, something in the positive. In contrast to taking, which is what we think of with the eighth commandment, we are called to be a people that are giving. We are called to be generous to give to others, to share, to think of others above ourselves. That's a complete opposite of theft, isn't it? The complete opposite. That's what we are to do. It's a hard here of giving because we understand that God has not only provided for us in giving us life, but we also understand that He has given us what we need to be saved. He has blessed us with the gift of salvation in Christ. God provides all that we need, not only right now, but He provides what we need into eternity, and so we are to be generous. We are to share. We are to act in this way. We are to work hard so we can share with others. This is where we're called to share the grace of God with others. 

As we come to this section here of the commandments, we're going to, once again, look at the three uses of the law. Remember, pretty simply, I hope, hopefully this is simple, I've had a lot of comments that people have appreciated me using these three images, and it must be working because everybody that's talked to me about it is actually repeating the three images, so I'm getting through. The first use of the law is as a curb on society. When we think about our application of the law, the curb helps us know which way society should go. It gives guidelines. That's the first use of the law. The second use of the law is as a mirror. It shows us our sin. It shows us that we are guilty of violating the commandments, and we need forgiveness from God. The third use of the law is as a map. It shows us how to live in a good and holy way to God's glory. With the first use, this is a pretty obvious one. Now, society works best, we know this, when the personal property of others is respected and valued. When that distinction of personal property is removed, it causes a host of problems. 

Theft is not good for culture, and it's not good for society. Having personal property instills in us the value of work. It allows us to be generous, as the Heidelberg Catechism is indicated for us. We know this is true, and those rights are something to advocate for, advocating for personal property that we might be blessed and bless others. That's important. But I want us to think beyond just the conceptual and the things that we would advocate for this week. I want to be a little bit more practical with the first use of the law today. As believers, this could easily be categorized as third use of the laws, how we would live a holy life. But I want to put it under the first use of the law because you don't need to be a believer for what we're talking about here today to be true. That application here, I've had it up here for a while, be honest and work hard. Work hard. It is a good thing for society to have people who are living honest lives, good and honest lives and desiring to contribute to the culture and to the community instead of looking for what we can take from it, looking how we can manipulate it, looking how we can get ahead. 

If we are working hard and being honest, what are we doing? We are contributing to the culture in the society around us. Now, as believers, we can have an impact not only by advocating for these things, but by doing our best to live this out and to send an example of integrity in even the simplest of transactions. As the Catechism suggests, this hard work also allows you and I to be generous in the community and to contribute to those in need in important way in which we can make a difference in the culture, being honest and working hard makes a difference. We can easily forget that, but is so vital for how we interact with the world as believers. Then as the second use of the law, it shows us our need of forgiveness. Well, this commandment does just that. Now, sure, we haven't pulled off a bank heist. We haven't gone on an armed robbery spree, and most of us probably haven't even had a snatch of bag of M&Ms from the local grocery store. I realize this, but we all have plotted to get something that isn't ours, whether indeed or in thought. 

No one can claim that in their entire life they have perfectly respected the property of other people. Even if it isn't for material possessions, we have either stolen honor or glory or time from someone else to benefit ourselves or to build ourselves up. Each of us, in some way at some point in our lives, have desired to have that glory for ourselves. We even do this with God. We desire to get the glory that only He deserves, and we'll be reminded of this again in a couple of weeks when we get to the 10th commandment against covening, we're going to see this, this desiring for glory, this desiring for possessions is an issue that the command that we're going to see again with You Shall Not Covet. That'll be another reminder for us that we're not as innocent as we like to think we are. With that in mind, we come to the foot of the cross and we see our sin, and we ask for forgiveness from God, and we trust in the grace that we have because we know that God has provided for us. He's provided this forgiveness for us. He has given us this in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and he provides not only the forgiveness and righteousness that we need, but he is also the one who abundantly provides us with the faith to believe this good news of salvation in Christ. 

We have the Holy Spirit. He has given us faith. He has given us salvation. What an abundant blessing from God that we should trust in and trust that this provision is enough. Because that we know that God has given us this provision, we come to the third use of the law. Again, my challenge to you in the first use of the law applies here as well, particularly when we consider our Christian witness to unbelievers. Why do we work hard? Why are we honest? Because we want to bring glory to God. But I want us to consider here really quickly the sanctifying work that keeping this commandment does in our lives. Let's look at 1 Timothy 6, and consider this idea of contentment. Paul says, But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world, but if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

 It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. Notice what it says here about contentment, godliness withcontentment is great game. That is something that's important for us to understand. When we are lacking contentment, that can lead us to all kinds of bad places that are not good. When we are not content with what God has given us, that leads down a lot of bad paths. Really, this applies to so many of the commandments. Just two quick examples. When we're lacking contentment with the leadership that God has put over us, what happens? We end up violating the fifth commandment, and we fail to honor those who God has called us to honor. When we're lacking contentment in our marital relationships, we can easily find ourselves lusting for someone else who we believe will bring us that contentment that we seek. A lack of contentment causes us to violate God's law. With the eighth command, we find ourselves lacking contentment with the material things that God has given us, and so we desire and we lost after these possessions as well. But Paul gives us some important perspective here, doesn't he? 

We came into this world with nothing and we will not take anything with us. Therefore, the stuff that we have along this journey between our first breath and our last breath ultimately amounts to nothing. Paul calls us to be content with the things that we need for survival. That's what we're to be content with. But that is hard for us, isn't it? Especially in a time of affluence unequaled in the rest of history, we want more. The root issue here is that we believe that these things, these material things that we desire, we believe that they can make us happy. We believe that they can satisfy our deepest needs. We struggle with contentment, and we think that things can finally make us happy if we get them. But here we see that God is the one who provides us, and we are called to be content with what God gives us. Paul doesn't just leave us with that admonition, does he? He continues by giving us a very stern warning about this. When we believe these things, these material possessions can fulfill what only God can really satisfy in us, Paul tells us that this becomes a consuming desire, and this desire to have material wealth can lead us to fall into temptation. 

Notice what else he says happens. It plunges us into ruin, and it's caused people to leave the faith, to wander from the faith. This is a humbling thing because we know this is true. We've seen it, and we know what Jesus had to say. Remember what Jesus had to say in Matthew 6:19-21, Do not lay up treasures for yourself on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart is found also. Those are humbling words from Jesus. We know that the things of this earth can quickly become a consuming desire for you and I. When that happens, those things functionally become our God, don't they? They become what we obsess over. They become what we worship. Whether that's the anger that can consume us, the lustful desires that flood our minds, or the greed of the heart to have these things that we want, we know the effect that these things can have on our lives where our treasure is that our heart is found also. 

The call on our lives is to grow in holiness and contentment, seek treasures in heaven. We brought nothing into this world. We can take nothing out of this world, but the pursuit of Christ not only satisfies us in this life, it will satisfy us forever. We want to seek treasures in heaven. Christ forever satisfies. The good news for us here is that God provides this for us as well. He provides us what we need in this life through His Word and through His abundant gift and provision of the Holy Spirit that God provides. We, as the people of God, have been set apart by God, and so may we seek contentment in this life, not in the things of this world, but in Him, that we might grow in holiness, that we might bring glory to God's holy name, and we do this because He has provided for us. We are His covenant people, and He not only provides for us in this life, but He has provided everything that we need for the life to come.

This message was delivered on March 12, 2023 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.