Okay, I ask you to turn back. If you have a church Bible, there's Bibles at the back
if you want to take a Bible, but we're going to, I'm just going to read from Exodus, chapter
20 and verse 15. If you're visiting with us tonight, we're going through the Ten Commandments
in our evening worship. And this evening is, You Shall Not Steal. And please remember also
the reading from John, chapter 10. So I'm going to ask you a question. How's your heart
tonight? And I don't mean your ticker. Okay, my old boss in Ruskin, Kenny McDonald, told
me a story of visiting an old man and he was asking, How's your heart? And he was meaning
spiritually. And the old man said, Well, I got it checked out last week and it's as good
as ever. He had no idea that he was meaning spiritual, but I'm not meaning your ticker.
I'm not meaning your physical heart, obviously, spiritually. How are you spiritually? All
of you. Ask yourself that question. You know, because it's the key to your life, isn't it?
It's the key to everything that you do. It's the focus. It will be that you will focus on
what you love in your lives, because what you love will inform your mind and it will
drive your will and will be what prioritizes all that you will do. And I think when you
come to church, when we come to church, that should be a question that every single, each
one of us should ask as we come to church. How's our heart today, before God, as we come
under Him in His living Word? You know, Corey and I were just talking about preaching last
week. And have you ever asked yourself what you think preaching, why preaching is part
of worship? And what is the intention of this half hour of preaching? It's really declaring
the good news of Jesus. That's what we're doing with authority and in the power of the
Holy Spirit to enliven our hearts. That's what it is about. It's about enlivening our
hearts, who warm them, to challenge them, and to lead to transformation. So each time
we come, we should really come and we should leave with a view to being, if not actually
being transformed in the evening. As we apply God's Word to our lives, we should see it
transforming our hearts and our lives. So I'm asking several questions this evening by
way of a long introduction. As you consider in the last month, or even the last week in
your Christian life, can I ask if there's anything that you specifically pray for regularly?
What would maybe be, if you would, I'm not going to ask anyone, obviously, saying, but
what would be the two things that you regularly, maybe daily, consistently pray for? Or maybe
that question exposes the fact that you don't really pray very much at all as a Christian
and you can't think the last time you prayed. Well, intentionally, if you can't think of
anything specific, can I ask you to consider praying two prayers every single day? Lord
Jesus, help me to love you better. And Lord Jesus, help me to love other people better.
You can make two prayers, intentional prayers every day. You're really saying, Lord, please
change my heart. I want you to change my heart. Why? Why is that such an important prayer?
Because it sums up everything God demands of us. It sums up all the law and the prophets.
It sums up life actually to the full. Really? Like life to the full? Yeah, loving God and
loving one another. John 10 describes as life to the full, to the brim is when we know and
recognize that in our lives. And I'm asking that we pray that because it highlights God's
law, the Ten Commandments, highlights everything we aren't. And it drives us towards Jesus,
everything He is and what He has done for us. And it alone enables us to receive His
redeeming and transforming love. So for us, it needs to be a measurable reality in our
lives when we live as Christians. We can't allow ourselves to week to week be static,
unchanging Christians. That's really insulting to God. It's a real denial of His love. It's
a real denial of His promises. It's because I'm okay. I'm fine. I don't need any more.
And when I speak about love, it's nothing to do with sentimentality or softness. It's
the meaning of everything in our lives. It makes us complete. It enables us to live life
to the full. And from the very beginning, Satan's work has been as the enemy, as John
10, 10 reminds us, to steal and to destroy that life in us. He is the ultimate thief.
He is the one who stole humanity's innocence in the very beginning. And we've been complicit
with Him ever since. Complicit with Him ever since. So I guess in a sense, preaching, when
we talk about preaching, preaching is about presenting the big picture. It's about recognizing
and trying to remind ourselves when we get hung up on just what's right in front of our
eyes every day. Sometimes the minutiae that just fills up our lives as if it's massively
important. And I guess preaching is there to remind us that some of these things, many
of these things will one day mean absolutely nothing. And it's so important to be reaching
out to God in Christ and recognizing what life to the full is through Him.
So I'm going to ask another question and try and answer it honestly just in your own
heart as we're here this evening. If you're not a Christian, it's a really big question.
And if you are a Christian, it's probably an even bigger question because you know the
right answer, and I know the right answer, but I struggle with it. It is, what does life
to the full look like for you? If anyone is to ask you this evening, how would you describe
what life to the full is for you? How would you answer that? Is it a comfortable life?
Is it a conflict-free life? Is it just having lots of friends in your life? Often think
of friends of the series, and the very sad reality of Matthew Perry's death this week,
kind of shattered the image and the dream of eternal youth and the friendship that it
spoke about in so many disordered ways, didn't it? It attracted in so many ways but disordered
ways of friendship and security and family and laughter and love, searching, but searching
in the wrong places. What would describe fullness of life? Passing your exams, success and
work, pleasure, there's lots of different things. I wonder how many of us would say,
knowing Jesus better in Christ, knowing God better through Christ and knowing His love
in a more deep way. Okay, lots of questions thrown out just to make us consider this eighth
commandment. So I'm going to make a statement now, rather than ask a question, because stealing
in God's eyes is all about the wrong priorities. It's about having the wrong priorities. And
that's really what the Ten Commandments do. They expose the fact that in so many ways
we love but our loves are disordered and they're in the wrong way facing the wrong direction
to the wrong people and they're broken and self-centered. The Ten Commandments expose
us. That's what they're intended to do. They tell us about the level of love that God requires,
which is perfect love for God and perfect love for one another. And it reminds us that
we fail and we fall miserably short of His standards. The Old Testament people is a great
testimony to that record of failure. But we're no different. Naturally, we're no different
from that whatsoever in our lives. On the scales of God's justice, we are failed lovers.
That's what we are, what it matters. And maybe you think, well, the eighth commandment, I'm
not okay with that one. I don't steal. I'm not a thief. And we kind of brush over it
and think it's probably not that significant a one, but I would beg to differ on that.
Because the sobering reality that God reveals in His commandments and this one also, to
put it differently, is that we're all thieves. We're a gang of thieves. Naturally, humanity
is a company of thieves and beggars. That's what we are. Because we've stolen from God
His rightful place. And we've put self at the center instead of God being at the center.
We have stolen His Lordship and we've taken... And there's quite a lot of dovetailing between
me and Kory tonight. And I promise we didn't speak to one another to share our sermon.
But there is that reality that at a human level, sin has made us either put ourselves
or material things or something else above God and above other people. And what does it
look like? Well, it looks like that we take God's gifts, as we were reminded this morning,
as of right. And we use them without reference to Him at all, humanly speaking. Our talents,
our health, our time, our opportunities. We take them. We take them. We take them at
the expense of a relationship with God and a relationship with others. And we see it
all the time in the society in which we live, don't we? At all kinds of different levels,
as employers, as employees, as from the government or by the government. We see it with goods
and services. We see it with shoplifting, with armed robberies, with property theft,
with contracts and politics and business. We see it between nations as they steal land
off one another, shoot at insurance scams and online abuse, identity theft, copyright,
bribery and hypocrisy of scale. Sometimes it's the little thieves that seem to be exposed,
but theft on a grand scale seems to be okay politically or governmentally or economically.
There's a fantastic... One of my favorite lines of all time in music is from Bob Dylan
in the great album Infidels, Sweet Heart Like You. And he says, steal a little and they
throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king. And that's such a great summary
of some of the perverse and hypocritical thinking we have around if thievery. And the Bible
makes clear that it's actually a spiritual issue. It's a heart issue. Not primarily
a material one where we maybe steal something from somebody else, although that obviously
is part of it. It's saying God is not worth obeying. God's not worth making Lord. God
is not worth giving the glory to Him. We do not respect Him or love others enough to not
steal from them. It's about believing a lie. It's about choosing to believe the lie. And
every day we are prayerless. Every day you go into work without praying. Every day you
live your life without praying to God as a Christian. Every time we harbor a grudge against
a fellow believer. Every time we accept a culture of stealing in the workplace or treating
an unbeliever with disdain or sit in the throne of judgment, we're stealing from God. We're
stealing from God. Prayerless Christian life is the life of a thief. We're saying that
we don't need Him. And we are lords of our own lives, and we're not dependent on Him.
So what is God calling you and me to do this evening in the light of that great command?
Well, in the first place He's encouraging us to see Christ in a new light. I want you
to see Christ as a despised thief. We're told in Isaiah chapter 53 and verse 12 that
He was numbered with the transgressors, numbered with the thieves. Now it's not insignificant
that it was a thief that was on either side of Jesus Christ, and He was numbered with
them. Martin Luther said there was three thieves on Calvary Hill. It was the two thieves, and
there was Christ who became, as it were, a thief, who took all the thievering from God
symbolized in sin and took it upon Himself. God in the flesh became numbered with the
transgressors. And that's a powerful recognition of His association with us in our guilty humanity.
And it pierces the very heart of Satan and his thieving destruction, because Jesus takes
on Himself the human consequences of all that we have done in rebelling against God, and
all the thieving that was involved in that, all the stealing of the glory of God and taking
it from Him. He receives it. Our death and the hell we deserve, the selfishness and the
thieving mentality, He carried them. Isaiah 53 says He was crushed by them. He was wounded.
He was punished. But He rose again to offer life and peace with God, and the ability to
have a new heart of love for Him and for one another that dissolves this motive of thieving
and taking from God His glory and His right. So we see Christ in a new light as the commands
all point us towards Christ in His finished work and also the way and the burden that
He took. But also to pray with a new perspective, to pray with that perspective of wanting to
live life to the full. I wonder if you're praying a prayer about living life to the
full, what that would look like for you? What is the... If loving God and loving one another
is not the focus of your prayers, what is the focus of your prayers? If we believe prayers,
God answers prayers for us because He loves us. Do we treat Him like the genie in a lamp?
Are our prayers based on our material lives or our circumstantial lives? You know, Lord,
change what's happening around me. Make it better or make my own life better materially.
None of these things are wrong. But let's pray with that perspective of saying, Lord,
Jesus, help me to love You better and love my fellow believer better in church, not in
church, not in the building. I just mean in community. Awkward, the difficult, the struggling,
the needy to love them better and to love my enemy. God's Jesus' great extension of
the Ten Commandments that we love our enemy in a remarkable way because that's the whole
law and that's life to the full. That's where we enjoy life to the full. It's the best.
That will always involve confession and renewal. It must. That's why prayer is so significant
because it does mold us and transform us and change us because we need in our sanctification
to become more like Jesus. Lord, help me to listen to the right voices of the true shepherd.
Don't listen to the lies, the destruction, the thieving of the false shepherd that's
spoken about in John 10, but the true shepherd. So pray with a different perspective. See
Jesus in a different perspective who becomes dirty and a thief on your behalf to make
you clean and to make you one who loves God and loves your neighbor. And then lastly,
I think the practical implication is, as we love with the love of Christ in us, we will
practice honesty. We will practice honesty in the workplace. As an employer, you give
your employees a proper wage, not steal from them in our great capitalistic way. We're
not to use dishonest scales as Hosea 12 or 7 says. Remember, the laborer is worthy of
his wages for Timothy 5, 18. Employee. Many of your employees, some of your employers,
probably many more of your employees, don't steal from your employer. Don't be lazy in
the workplace. Don't steal time. Don't steal your expenses. Don't steal property that belongs
to your employer. Remember, these are the small practical things that trigger people
to say, what is the reason for the hope that's within you? Why do you live like that? Why
don't you just do what everyone else does and steal from the employer because they're
doing all the time anyway to you in the workplace as a citizen in the society. Go away from
here and recognize our responsibility as bladers to stand up against corruption, against dishonesty,
against the oppression of the poor. Don't support policies or practices that take advantage
of the poor or encourage corruption. Pay the taxes that you're due. Don't avoid or evade
because it's just acceptable. Stand against fraud. These are the kind of ordinary everyday
things that we might be challenged within a very difficult work environment. I'm not
suggesting any of these things are easy. In practice, generosity. We see that, don't we,
as a practical outworking of the way Jesus transforms Zacchaeus' heart, who had stolen
from the people all the time, didn't he, to make himself rich? What was the response of
Zacchaeus when he was overwhelmed by the generosity of Jesus? He gave it all out. He gave it back.
It didn't mean anything to him. He didn't hoard wealth anymore. And that's the command
of God through Paul in Ephesians 4. 28, when he talks about the Christians in the church,
he said, if you've been stealing, don't steal anymore. Don't break any of the other second
table of the law commands, but change. Be transformed, he says. Once you are like that,
but you're not like that anymore, he says, work. Don't be lazy. Do these things as you
can. Be generous. Recognizing that all that we have is a gift from God. And not stealing
it from Him as if it's a right and hoarding it to ourselves. When we keep all that we
earn, when we keep all the gifts that we've been given, we're robbing God. Malachi makes
that clear. We're robbing God, because it's all from Him anyway. And lastly, I think,
a broad practical application, think about your use of time. Think about how you use
your time. Time's God's precious gift. Precious gift from us. We never get it back. We can't
repeat it. It's limited. It's the one thing we can't buy back. And those of us who are
getting old or know and recognize that even more than most, you will never be in the context
you are in ever again. It's only a short time you're in the workplace with the colleagues
you have. It's only a short time you're in the neighborhood. You only have a short time
with your family before they've grown up and they're away. Short time, God gives it to us.
And He gives it to us to live life to the full in Him. Loving Him by loving one. That's
the priority. Living His way for the short time. Giving Him the glory. Growing and being
transformed because it will not happen anywhere else but here. Are we stealing the time that
God gives us with relentless scrolling, with mindless pleasure, with a careless, reveling
and hurtful tittle-tattle, or simply for selfish ambition? To build bigger barns. What are we
doing with our time which is God's greatest gift to us in many ways other than His love,
of course. And I just want to finish by reading some words from Romans chapter 13, which I
think helped sum up what I've been trying to say this evening in many ways. Oh, no one
anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
For the commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not
steal, you shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word. You
shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor therefore. Love
is the fulfilling of the law. Can't finish with better words than that. Let's pray. Father,
God help us to understand you, to understand your love and to understand that it's not
an insignificant thing, it's not a soft and a sentimental thing. It is what transforms
us at the very core of our being that motivates and transforms our will and our mind. And
we pray and ask that we would see each of these commandments not simply as separate individual
commands, but we would see them as a whole. And we see how they are interlinked. The first
table of the early commandments reminding us of how we, in Christ can love you and only
in Christ and reminding us that only in Christ can we love one another as we're called to.
So keep us Lord from being thieves. Keep us from stealing the time that is yours for
our own selfish ends. Keep us from enthroning ourselves as Lords of our own lives. Make
us humble, we pray, and gentle and respectful and with great serving hearts to love you
and to love one another. And transform us, we pray, as we pray every day that you would
teach us to love you better, to love one another and to be forgiven and to repent of when that
is simply and clearly not the case. We ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen.