Thou Shall Not Steal

October 13, 2024 Pastor Chris Oswald

Thesis The eighth commandment reveals that all sin is fundamentally theft, but God's cure for our wrongful taking is His merciful giving of Christ on the cross.

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What's in this sermon

The shape of the argument

41 units across exposition, application, illustration, theological claim, and conclusion. The pastor's argument is built from these moving parts.

Pastoral correction · unit #22

"Applies the theological principle to contemporary political debates about progressive taxation. The application is direct and concrete: opposing wealth redistribution is a matter of principled consistency with the eighth commandment, not personal financial interest."

Doctrinal loci· 12 surfaced

Ethics / Moral Theology · 17 Theology Proper · 10 Sanctification · 7 Soteriology · 6 Anthropology · 5 Hamartiology · 5 Providence / Sovereignty · 5 Ecclesiology · 3 Bibliology · 2 Christology · 1 Doxology / Worship · 1 Eschatology · 1

Bible citations· 14

Illustrations· 6

analogy · unit #3 — Uses Dorothy Sayers's distinction between 'the law of the stop sign' (human-made, breakable) and 'the law of the fire' (natural law, unbreakable) to illustrate the difference between conventional rules and moral laws embedded in creation. The illustration makes vivid the claim that the Ten Commandments reflect natural law — they cannot truly be broken, only broken against.
analogy · unit #11 — Illustrates the Puritan view of time by analogy to C.S. Lewis's famous passage on the eternal weight of human beings. Just as Lewis saw every person as an immortal destined for glory or horror, the Puritans saw every moment as pregnant with eternal significance. The illustration makes emotionally vivid the seriousness of wasting time.
historical example · unit #15 — Illustrates God's response to theft by recounting the Gideon narrative from Judges 6. The Midianites' systematic theft of Israel's harvest provokes God to raise up a judge and execute judgment. The illustration establishes both the seriousness of theft in God's eyes and the fact that God intervenes against systemic injustice.
historical example · unit #18 — Uses Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address as a historical illustration of a national leader recognizing that slavery (man-stealing) had provoked divine judgment in the form of the Civil War. Lincoln's theological reasoning — that God might exact blood-for-blood payment for 250 years of stolen labor — demonstrates the seriousness with which biblical figures viewed theft.
cultural reference · unit #33 — Illustrates the claim that all sin is theft by quoting a passage from The Kite Runner that articulates the same principle. The cultural reference demonstrates the intuitive recognition of this truth even outside explicitly Christian contexts.
cultural reference · unit #34 — Second illustration from Stephen King's The Stand making the identical argument: all commandments reduce to theft. The vivid, profane language in King's original passage underscores the gravity of the claim. The pastor affirms: 'They're right.'

Theological claims· 11

The universal agreement across cultures on commandments 5-10 reveals that they reflect natural law — the moral order written into creation and accessible to human reason. unit #2
Christians must read both Scripture and the natural world to discern God's moral order and align their lives in harmony with the way the world was built to function. unit #4
Stealing from yourself consists of wastefulness — purchasing what you don't need and failing to care for what you have — because it violates the stewardship God requires. unit #7
Stealing from others is a denial of God's image in them and a rejection of God's sovereign distribution of possessions. unit #14
God abhors all theft — no act is too small to provoke His anger — and He personally advocates for victims, especially the vulnerable. unit #16
Legal theft — human laws that codify violations of God's moral law — is especially offensive to God because it constitutes a direct challenge to His authority and wisdom. unit #19
Democratic wealth redistribution through targeted taxation is a form of legal theft that violates the eighth commandment by seizing property without God's authorization. unit #21
We owe God not just our wealth but our entire lives — time, talent, bodies, minds — because He is Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer who purchased us. unit #28
Because humans did not create themselves, sustain themselves, or control their lifespan, no achievement can be attributed to autonomous human effort. unit #30
All sin is fundamentally theft because it involves taking what God made and using it for unauthorized purposes. unit #32
God's cure for the universal sin of theft is the cross — the Father's giving of His Son to redeem those who have stolen from Him. unit #36

Quotations· 16

"the things which the reason, the natural reason of every man of its own accord, at once, judges not be done" — Thomas Aquinas (unit #2)

"laws, fire laws are inherent laws of nature that are discovered rather than created. These laws, like gravity and inertia, cannot be altered by human intervention. And attempts to defy them when will inevitably result in consequences." — Dorothy Sayers (unit #3)

"God wrote two books. He wrote the natural world, and then he wrote the Bible." — Francis Bacon (unit #4)

"The sins forbidden in the eighth Commandment, besides the neglect of the duties required, are theft, robbery, man stealing, receiving anything that is stolen, fraudulent dealing, false weights and Measures, removing landmarks, injustice and unfaithfulness in contracts between a man and man, or in matters of trust, oppression, extortion, usury, bribery, vexatious lawsuits, unjust enclosures and depopulations, engrossing commodities to enhance the price of unlawful callings, and all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbor what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves. Covetousness, inordinate prizing and affection for worldly goods, distrustful and distracting cares and studies in getting, keeping, and using them, envying at the prosperity of others. And then it ends with this conversation about stealing from ourselves as likewise idleness, prodigality, wasteful gaming, and all other ways whereby we'd unduly prejudice our own outward estate and defraud ourselves of the due use and comfort of that estate which God has given us." — Westminster Larger Catechism (unit #6)

"we must render to every man his due. In substance, then, the commandment forbids us to long after other men's goods and accordingly requires every man to exert himself honestly in preserving his own." — John Calvin (unit #7)

"he is a thief to himself by idleness when he misspends his time. He who spends his hours in pleasure and vanity robs himself of that precious time which God has given him." — Thomas Watson (unit #8)

"it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you've now met, if at all, only in a nightmare. He continues, there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals with whom we joke, work with, marry, snub and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendors." — C.S. Lewis (unit #11)

"to fill every minute with 60 seconds run" — Kipling (unit #12)

"getting your bread from the sweat of other men's faces" — Abraham Lincoln (unit #17)

"fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn from the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, and so still must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." — Abraham Lincoln (unit #18)

"for we must consider that what each individual possesses has not fallen to him by chance, but by the distribution of the sovereign Lord of all, that no one can pervert his means to bad purposes without committing a fraud on a divine dispensation." — John Calvin (unit #20)

"when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic." — Benjamin Franklin (unit #21)

"I don't believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare." — C.S. Lewis (unit #27)

"I worked harder than any of them. He worked hard, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." — Paul (unit #32)

"There is only one sin, only one, and that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. When you steal his wife, you steal his wife's right to a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. And there is no more wretched act than stealing." — The Kite Runner author (unit #33)

"the father of sin was theft. Every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to thou shalt not steal. Murder was the theft of a life. Adultery, the theft of a wife. Covetousness, the secret slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. BLASPHEMY was the theft of God's name, swiped from the house of the Lord and sent out to walk the streets like a strutting whore." — Stephen King (unit #34)

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0 · Opening frame establishing the church setting and dismissing children

You're listening to a sermon recorded at Providence Community Church. Truth and beauty in community. If you are in the Kansas City area, please consider joining us in person next Sunday. We meet in Lenexa, Kansas at 10:00am every Lord's Day. Until then, we pray that as you open your Bibles, the Lord will open your heart to receive his word. This is the moment where I reveal that I don't ever preach live. It's always lip synced and they play the wrong track this time. And I got busted. Kids, you're dismissed. If I didn't say that, I was a little taken aback.

1 · Direct reading and repetition of the primary text — the eighth commandment forbidding theft

And Exodus 20:15 is our text today. Exodus 20:15 simply says, Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not steal.

2 · Establishes the theological claim that the latter commandments of the Decalogue reflect natural law — universal moral truths discoverable by human reason and written into the fabric of creation itself

Now, we're at a certain point in the Decalogue in the Ten Commandments, where a good question to ask we haven't asked yet is what do we make of the relative agreement that we find across all cultures on these subjects of murder, theft, adultery, so on and so forth? You understand what I'm asking? I'm asking why is it that we could go to really any time, any place, any culture, and for the most part, with the exception of some freak societies, for the most part, everybody would find these five commandments to be agreeable. And we would probably find more unity on the appropriateness of these commandments than we might find on almost anything else. What's going on here? Well, Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian when it came to kind of looking at the Aristotelian concepts of nature and logic and sort of processing Aristotle through sort of a, what does the Bible say? Kind of a lens. Aquinas was therefore big on natural law. And I would agree with him when he said that the Ten Commandments are the things which the reason, the natural reason of every man of its own accord, at once, judges not be done. We would look at the violations included from commandment number 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 and say, as a reasonable human being, no particular faith alignment, we would say that natural law, the way things are ordered, tell us that these things are wrong.

3 · Uses Dorothy Sayers's distinction between 'the law of the stop sign' (human-made, breakable) and 'the law of the fire' (natural law, unbreakable) to illustrate the difference between conventional rules and moral laws embedded in creation

So again, I'm answering a question. Why is it that we would find essentially unilateral agreement on these principles across all cultures, with obvious exceptions and so forth? And it is because I believe that what we see in the Ten Commandments is simply the revelation of the way things are. This is simply just the outline of natural law. You see, the world is ordered in particular ways. And we readily acknowledge that when it comes to the physical laws that govern the universe. But I think that really, forever, most people have believed that the world was also governed by particular moral laws. And these are simply the way things are meant to work, the way life is meant to go. You know, Dorothy Sayers was this incredibly impressive intellectual around C.S. lewis's time. And I share this probably once a year with you. I think it's just key. She talked about this idea that there are two kinds of laws, and the one kind of law she calls the law of the stop sign. The law of the stop sign is when man, in whatever civil kind of organization they might find themselves in, realizes that they need to write a law to change behavior of some kind. The thing about the law of the stop sign is that you can always revoke it. You could change it, you could modify it. And most importantly to our point, you can break it. You can break the law of the stop sign. But then she says there's a second kind of law, and that is the law of the fire. In contrast, she writes, laws, fire laws are inherent laws of nature that are discovered rather than created. These laws, like gravity and inertia, cannot be altered by human intervention. And attempts to defy them when will inevitably result in consequences. You can break the law of the stop sign and face no consequences. But if you attempt to break a natural law, you will simply break yourself against it. That's what Dorothy Sayers was getting at.

4 · Argues that the eighth commandment exemplifies natural law and that the proper Christian response is to read both 'books' God has written — Scripture and the natural world — and align our lives accordingly

And so if we're going to observe this sort of universal agreement of the nature of the Ten Commandments, we have to have an explanation for why. And the most common historic explanation has been that there is, in fact, a natural order, a natural law to the universe. Just as the law of gravity is a real thing, so are these moral laws. And what you find across all time and civilizations and so forth is simply the discovery or the noticing of the way the world is meant to run. And one of the greatest examples of that is the commandment that we're looking at today, which is, thou shalt not steal. All you need to know is about this and its natural origin is all you need to do is just have someone steal from you, and you'll know immediately something's wrong, something isn't right. Right now, these laws are just the way that they are. Now, one of the things that we see in this sort of Aquinas perspective is that what we ought to do is we ought to read both books. We talked about that last week. Francis Bacon said that God wrote two books. He wrote the natural world, and then he wrote the Bible. We need to get Better at reading both books. And one of the things that we'll do when we read both books, well, we look at the way that the world actually runs is we will order our lives as rational beings in coherence to, in harmony with the way the world was built to run.

5 · Structural pivot announcing the sermon's three-part outline: stealing from yourself, stealing from others, and stealing from God

Right? So that's really what's happening when we look at these 10 commandments, is we're ordering ourselves according to the way the world is actually built. Now when it comes to ordering ourselves, we have three kinds of ways of interacting with truth, and that is applying it to ourselves, applying it to our interactions with others, and applying it to God. So today we're going to talk about this commandment, thou shalt not steal. And we're going to simply talk about three areas. Number one, stealing from yourself, number two, stealing from others, and number three, stealing from God.

6 · Introduces the Puritan category of 'stealing from yourself' by citing the Westminster Larger Catechism's comprehensive list of eighth commandment violations, which includes self-directed sins like idleness, prodigality, and waste

Now when it comes to stealing from yourself, that is not a category I would have had in my mind at all. One of the things I love so much about reading like this 17th century literature and all that is that, you know, the self esteem thing wasn't a thing. They were not reacting to it or embracing it. They had a very reasonable perspective of self. They shunned self humility. They didn't feel like they needed to tear themselves down to gain entrance into some level of social acceptability. They were confident without being cocky. And one of the ways that they manifested this as they processed God's truth was they were able to ask like, how do I violate this or that command against myself? Something that some people would be in a hurry to think of. They love to think about themselves. And some of us would be very uncomfortable thinking that way. We first saw this when we looked at the command not to murder. You remember that? And surprisingly, in all of these puritanical literature we found all of these discussions of how you can hurt yourself and how you should not hurt yourself and how you should not murder yourself. And sure enough, when we go to the eighth Commandment and we talk about this idea of stealing, these old people, these ancient men who studied the word and meditated on it day and night, were able to see that there is actually like a personal way that you can steal from yourself. And I want to present that to you today in the Westminster Larger Catechism. It's a little bit long, but let me just read the way that they describe the eighth Commandment. The sins forbidden in the eighth Commandment, besides the neglect of the duties required, are theft, robbery, man stealing, receiving anything that is stolen, fraudulent dealing, false weights and Measures, removing landmarks, injustice and unfaithfulness in contracts between a man and man, or in matters of trust, oppression, extortion, usury, bribery, vexatious lawsuits, unjust enclosures and depopulations, engrossing commodities to enhance the price of unlawful callings, and all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbor what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves. Covetousness, inordinate prizing and affection for worldly goods, distrustful and distracting cares and studies in getting, keeping, and using them, envying at the prosperity of others. And then it ends with this conversation about stealing from ourselves as likewise idleness, prodigality, wasteful gaming, and all other ways whereby we'd unduly prejudice our own outward estate and defraud ourselves of the due use and comfort of that estate which God has given us.

7 · Synthesizes the Puritan view into a concrete claim: violating the eighth commandment against yourself means wastefulness — buying unnecessarily, failing to steward possessions, and generally making life harder than God intended

I understand that's a mouthful, but essentially, when you ask the Puritans, how do I violate the 8th Commandment? What are the ways in which I could violate the eighth commandment? One would be, you're making your own life harder than it needs to be. Specifically, this category essentially would be something like this. Buying things you don't need, not taking care of the stuff you already have. Again, on the 8th Commandment, John Calvin wrote, we must render to every man his due. In substance, then, the commandment forbids us to long after other men's goods and accordingly requires every man to exert himself honestly in preserving his own. You have to take care of your stuff, otherwise you're stealing from yourself.

8 · Elaborates on the Puritan concept of stealing from oneself by focusing on idleness — the wasting of time — as the primary and most serious form of self-theft

And the primary expression of all of this comes down to just this idea of wastefulness. This is how the Puritans described stealing from yourself most consistently, is that you're just being wasteful. And the main category for the Puritans of waste would be idleness or laziness. That is the wasting of your life, the wasting of your time. Listen to what Thomas Watson says about this idea. He says he is a thief to himself by idleness when he misspends his time. He who spends his hours in pleasure and vanity robs himself of that precious time which God has given him. So we're asking, how do we steal from ourselves? The Puritan said, it's all kind of in the category of waste, not taking care of what God's given you explicitly. Most specifically, most concerning would be, you're not taking care of the time that God has given you.

9 · Adds scriptural warrant to the claim about idleness by exposing Proverbs 18:9, which equates slackness in work with destructive theft

In Proverbs 18:9, we read, Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys another Way that we've maybe heard this verse is the sluggard is a companion of him who steals or him who destroys. In other words, when you're lazy, you're very similar to someone who is intentionally stealing something.

10 · Exposits Proverbs 25:28's image of the broken-down city as a picture of what happens when we lack self-control: we dismantle our own defenses and allow destructive forces (including wasted time and resources) to plunder what God has given

Proverbs 25:28 says a man without self control is like a city broken into and left without walls. What does that mean? Well, walls were used to guard a city from invaders who would steal the stuff in the city. And if we don't learn to get our hustle on and manage our time and live in industrious frugality, if we don't learn these simple virtues that had been passed on for generations, we really are stealing from ourselves by our lack of self control. We're tearing down the walls and inviting all sorts of other things to come in and take from us what we're really talking about here.

11 · Illustrates the Puritan view of time by analogy to C

Just as an aside, we need to talk about this more seriously at some point forward is what is known as the Protestant work ethic, but should be more explicitly called the Puritan work ethic. For them, industriousness was an act of worship. It all boiled down to them seeing people or seeing time the way that C.S. lewis saw people. I'm going to read this quote from Lewis to you because it's one of those that I'd love to keep in your forefront of your mind. Lewis said it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you've now met, if at all, only in a nightmare. He continues, there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals with whom we joke, work with, marry, snub and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. So Lewis is just telling us there, you've never met an ordinary person. People are unique, they're immortal, they're special. And what Lewis thought of people, the Puritans thought of us. With time, the Puritan motto would be this. There are no unimportant moments.

12 · Completes the exposition on self-theft by describing the Puritan worldview: every moment matters, no time is 'dead time,' and industriousness is a form of worship

There are no unimportant moments. Every moment of every day is pregnant with possibility. They sought to live with a kind of sober minded happiness as they looked at each minute and tried to do something like what Kipling describes is to fill every minute with 60 seconds run. They were frugal people. They were industrious people. They were typically wealthy people. They were typically intellectual people. They were quite sensuous in their marriage beds and so on and so forth. But a lot of what came down to the civilization we now live in came down to people who looked at a minute as a treasure and looked at each minute as a treasure and didn't look at their calendar and say, there is dead time. Time to waste, time to spend. No, they counted every minute. And in that way, they did not steal from themselves.

13 · Summarizes the section on stealing from oneself (waste, especially of time) and pivots to the second major section: stealing from others

So that's one idea. In order to not steal from ourselves, we have to watch waste, waste of all kinds. We take care of the things we've been given. We don't need to go excessively above and beyond that which we currently have. And more importantly, we need to be super careful with our time. So how do we avoid stealing from others?

14 · Introduces the section on stealing from others by grounding it theologically: theft is not merely a social crime but a violation of divine property distribution

Well, this is obviously probably the thing you would think if you saw Exodus 20:15 is about stealing from others. And man, I want you to see that this is wrong. Because as Lewis said, there are no ordinary people. There are only people created in God's image, whom God has bequeathed, given various things that are not yours and eyes to touch.

15 · Illustrates God's response to theft by recounting the Gideon narrative from Judges 6

You know, I was listening to a sermon from our sister church up in Sioux Falls. They're going through the Book of Judges right now. And the sermon was on the story of Gideon. I thought you might get a kick out of this because I'd never heard this, and pretty cool. The preacher was giving sort of comparisons between Moses and Gideon and showing how similar they were. They're both sort of hiding from the problem. God approaches both of them with a specific call to deliver his people from a great injustice. And he essentially uses both Moses and Gideon to bring great judgment on a people who were doing what? Stealing. Stealing. In the Gideon passage, it says the following in Judges 6. 6. This is the situation that God saw. This is the situation that God chose to raise up Gideon to judge. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land as far as Gaza and. And leave no sustenance in Israel, no sheep or ox or donkey, for they would come up with their livestock and their tents, and they would come like locusts in number. Both they and their camels could not be counted, so that they laid waste the land as they came in. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out to help from the Lord. So the image is this. Literally every harvest time, you know, all spring, all summer, the Israelites are working their land. A harvest comes in. The Midianites notice the harvest and just swarm in, sitting on their land, consuming all their goods and starving the people of Israel. Just theft 101. And God sees this, and he is absolutely disgusted by it.

16 · Establishes God's absolute hatred of theft, citing Proverbs passages that use the language of abhorrence and divine advocacy for victims

I think this is an important moment. I want us to understand, maybe more than anything else, just how much God hates theft. And no act of theft is too small for God to be quite upset about. In Proverbs 11:1, it says that God abhors, one of the strongest words you can get. Abhors a dishonest scale. God abhors a dishonest scale. He abhors a dishonest trade. Proverbs 23:10. Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is strong, and he will plead their cause against you. So God isn't playing. He feels anger toward theft. He feels anger in particular to a kind of theft that Abraham Lincoln described as getting your bread from the sweat of other men's faces.

17 · Identifies Lincoln's language as describing man-stealing (slavery) — a form of theft the Westminster Catechism explicitly names and God especially abhors

He said that in a second Inaugural, Getting your bread from the sweat of other men's faces. Essentially what was covered in the Westminster Catechism as man stealing. God is especially angry at that.

18 · Uses Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address as a historical illustration of a national leader recognizing that slavery (man-stealing) had provoked divine judgment in the form of the Civil War

And I want to mention that because Lincoln actually, in the second Inaugural, said this as he was hoping that this whole thing would come to an end with the Civil War. But he did understand that this act of man stealing had greatly angered the Lord. And he says, fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn from the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, and so still must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

19 · Introduces the concept of 'legal theft' — human laws that codify violations of God's unchangeable moral law

I include that because I want you to see, first of all, how much God is angered by theft. And secondly, I want to introduce this category of theft that is essentially legal theft, that is essentially man's attempt to change the unchangeable laws of God and make various means of stealing from others legal, which is in fact the case of what slavery was in America. It was a disavowal of God's law and a rewriting of human law to match the desires of the individuals in charge. And this greatly displeases the Lord at multiple levels. Mostly because what you're doing is you're saying, God, you didn't do it right, I know better.

20 · Explains the theological reason for God's anger at theft: all possessions are divinely distributed according to God's sovereign will, so theft is not merely horizontal (person-to-person) but vertical (person-to-God) — a challenge to divine wisdom

When you steal from someone, what you're doing is you're saying, God, you have not distributed correctly. You have made a mistake in the distribution system that you have exercised. Calvin writes, for we must consider that what each individual possesses has not fallen to him by chance, but by the distribution of the sovereign Lord of all, that no one can pervert his means to bad purposes without committing a fraud on a divine dispensation. It's like, why is God so upset at theft? Well, because it's you telling him that his ordering his distribution of goods, his distribution of gifts was unwise or unjust and that you know better.

21 · Introduces a contemporary application of 'legal theft' — democratic seizure of property through taxation and wealth redistribution

Now, theft comes in all kinds of forms, and all of it essentially is a rejection of, of the divine dispensation. But I thought maybe we'd draw attention to one area of theft that is actually quite legal and quite similar to slavery. And this will be potentially a relatively hot take. Benjamin Franklin wrote, when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic. That's interesting, interesting, interesting quote. When people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. So what I'd like to suggest to you is that the founders, if you want to look up more of this, you can read Madison's Federalist number 10. But they were very concerned about mob rule democracy. Specifically, they were very concerned that a whole bunch of have nots would team up and legally vote for the seizure of property of the haves.

22 · Applies the theological principle to contemporary political debates about progressive taxation

Right. And so I would just want to say, like, why would I be against taxing the rich? Is it because I'm a billionaire? No, I would be against unfairly singling out taxing the rich for the same reason I'm against slavery. Simple, simple idea. That's their stuff. That's not my stuff.

23 · Transitions from stealing from others to stealing from God by acknowledging the human tendency to rationalize theft and redefine terms in self-serving ways

So one of the things I want to point out is that actually as much as we agree on the simplicity and the universality of these common ideas of thou shalt not steal, our hearts are always looking for ways to redefine the terms and work it into our favor. So that's a little bit about stealing from others. Now let's talk about stealing from God.

24 · Introduces stealing from God by expositing Jesus's parable of the rich fool in Luke 12

Well, the most obvious application here has to do with generosity. Jesus says, if you've done it unto the least, of these, you've done it unto me. If you've not done it to the least of these, you've not done it unto me. The most common issue in the Bible related to stealing from God has to do with a person who has chosen not to be generous. In Luke 12, Jesus tells the parable, a land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is Jesus says, the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

25 · Pastoral aside preemptively addressing potential suspicion that the pastor's teaching on generosity is self-serving

Now, I just want to be super clear about something. I'm just kind of, how should I say this in a. A non arrogant way. There may be pastors out there who would talk about generosity with a motive of enriching themselves and so on and so forth. If you are concerned about that, I'd love to sit down with you, have a cup of coffee and just. I'll just get detailed about what I've given to the Lord and then you can talk about what you've given to the Lord and we can see who's more motivated by money. So I don't feel any encumbrances in this area. It would just be illogical to feel any guilt over someone else's misbehavior when at least in this area, my conscience is really, really clean.

26 · Establishes that generosity is not optional moral advice but a natural law governing wealth accumulation — plans to build wealth without generosity will inevitably fail

I'm just letting you know that if your basic plan to accumulate meaningful wealth does not include meaningful generosity, your plan will fail. I'm just letting you know that that's a natural law. It's just a part of the deal. If you seek to acquire meaningful wealth, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just letting you know how to do needs to include meaningful generosity. And if you have some reason as to be suspicious about giving to me, I'm not even asking that or giving to the church, not asking that. What I'm actually asking for you to do is just to give, give. And I'm asking you to do that for you. It's important. Proverbs 13:22 says, A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, and the wealth of a sinner is stored up for The Righteous Job 27:16 says of this kind of man, though he heap up silver like dust and pile up clothing like clay, he may pile it up, but the righteous will wear it, and the innocent will divide the silver. Proverbs 28:8. Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.

27 · Applies the natural-law principle to the listener's financial planning with Lewis's provocative guideline: give more than you can spare

So again, as CS Lewis once said, I don't believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. Again, any plan to accumulate meaningful wealth that does not include meaningful generosity is a plan destined to fail. I can't tell you how, I can just tell you it will.

28 · Broadens the concept of stealing from God beyond financial generosity to the totality of life stewardship

Now let me be clear. This again is not a law of a stop sign kind of thing. If it were that, I wouldn't be talking about it. This is more of the law of the fire kind of thing. And if you want to try to break it, you just need to be prepared to break yourself against it. It's pretty simple. Well, moving on from that like kind of ground level concept of generosity to God, I think that we should zoom out and talk about this more broadly because the reality is, is that we owe God our lives. He is our Creator, our Sustainer, and our Redeemer. Our lives are not our own. If we are in Christ, we've been bought with a price. Our lives belong to God, and so do our bodies, and so do our brains, and so do our time and our talent, our treasures.

29 · Exposits Paul's three rhetorical questions from 1 Corinthians 4:7, which dismantle pride by demonstrating that every distinction, possession, and accomplishment is a received gift

So what I want to do as we wrap up is actually just ask you three questions that Paul very cleverly issued to the Corinthians, who were honestly being very full of themselves. Pride is the root of this sin as well. And Paul gave three penetrating rhetorical questions that I think could be helpful as we try to grow in our generosity to God. And the first one is this. This is from First Corinthians 4. 7. Who sees anything different in you? Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? What do you have that you did not receive? And then if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it, as if you earned it? These three rhetorical questions are meant to devastate prideful stinginess at every level, especially the various forms of what I would call glory stealing that we commit against God.

30 · Answers Paul's rhetorical questions by establishing that human beings exercise no sovereignty over the fundamental conditions of their existence — birth, death, or the energy sustaining life between them

Here's the answer to these three rhetorical questions. You did not choose to be born, and you will almost certainly have no choice over when you die. You are not the Creator, nor are you the sustainer of any energy you've used over the past X number of years to accumulate to live life. Your whole life, my friend, is a product of divine activity.

31 · Acknowledges the reality of human effort while exposing its dependence on God's sustaining power

So that even if you were to devote yourself with diligent hard work and say, I have what I have because I worked for it, and I absolutely believe you that you did, I absolutely believe that that's very likely, that you did work very hard. Were you conscious of the heartbeats that drove that moment? Were you conscious? Were you able to give yourself breath? Were you able to give yourself life as you worked very hard?

32 · Establishes the balanced biblical anthropology: human effort is real and should be acknowledged (Paul worked harder than all), but it is entirely enabled by God's grace

See, again, the biblical perspective isn't like super false humility where I claim that, oh, I don't deserve any of this, like, I didn't do anything for any of this. Biblical perspective is more reasonable than that. Paul says it quite clearly in 1st Corinthians 15. I worked harder than any of them. He worked hard, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. The truth is, is that in a very fundamental way, all the sins we commit are actually just acts of theft, because they all involve the rewiring, the hijacking of the stuff God made for our own purposes. Fundamentally, all sin is theft.

33 · Illustrates the claim that all sin is theft by quoting a passage from The Kite Runner that articulates the same principle

And what I find so refreshing, going back to this idea of, like, these are kind of universal ideas, guys, is just two random novels I've read in the past have passages about this. And by the way, both these are good novels. Definitely not for the squeamish, though. So the first one is from a novel written not that long ago, at least doesn't feel like it was. Which means it's probably 20 years in the Kite Runner. And I can't remember the author's name, but he writes this. There is only one sin, only one, and that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. When you steal his wife, you steal his wife's right to a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. And there is no more wretched act than stealing.

34 · Second illustration from Stephen King's The Stand making the identical argument: all commandments reduce to theft

Many years previously, in the 80s, Stephen King wrote what is probably his best novel called the Stand, and he has the same section. He writes, the father of sin was theft. Every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to thou shalt not steal. Murder was the theft of a life. Adultery, the theft of a wife. Covetousness, the secret slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. BLASPHEMY was the theft of God's name, swiped from the house of the Lord and sent out to walk the streets like a strutting whore. They're right. All sin is fundamentally theft.

35 · Transition from the problem (all sin is theft) to the solution (the cross)

Now, what do we do with that? Here's why I think the cross is remarkable. Is the cross, oh, my goodness, the cross.

36 · The redemptive-historical climax of the sermon: God's response to the universal sin of theft is the cross — a great act of merciful giving (John 3:16) that answers humanity's wrongful taking with divine self-donation

Is this remarkable answer to theft? What is God's answer to a world that has broken itself repeatedly against this law? What is God's answer to a world that has broken itself by taking what it did not belong? What's God's answer to that? God's cure for our great wrongful taking is a great merciful giving. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever perishes that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life. The great cure for the great sin of taking is God's great act of giving in love, his only begotten Son.

37 · Exposes the theological significance of Jesus's position between two thieves at the crucifixion

It is no coincidence, my friends, that Jesus is crucified between two thieves. For at the end of the day, that is what every human being is. Is the only question that remains in the picture of Jesus between two thieves is, what thief will we be? Will we be the unrepentant one clinging to his pride all the way to death, or will be the other one who says, remember me, represent me, forgive me.

38 · Transitions from sermon to communion by interpreting the Lord's Supper as the weekly celebration of the gospel just proclaimed

So now we get to the table, this opportunity that is presented to us every week to celebrate the multifaceted goodness of God's gospel. And here we see yet again, by no means an artificial landing point, that even in this obscure verse, Exodus 20:15, about stealing, when we press into what the Bible actually teaches, we see that the answer yet again is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

39 · Applies the sermon by issuing a two-part invitation: believers should come to the table in gratitude for grace that made them the repentant thief; unbelievers should consider the image and their identity as they observe

So I want to invite you today, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, I want to invite you to just soberly come to this table and thank God that by his grace, He. He has given you the faith to be the repentant thief rather than the unrepentant one. And if you don't know Christ, I'll just leave that image before you and let you consider what you make of it and pray for you as I partake at the table as well.

40 · Reads the 1 Corinthians 11 institution of the Lord's Supper and prays for the congregation's hearts to be filled with faith as they partake

Paul writes in First Corinthians 11, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he'd given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Father God, we pray for this time that you would fill our hearts full of faith to see how your gospel indeed is the answer to this broken, broken problem of stealing what doesn't belong to us and wasting what you've given. We come, Lord, as people who are eager to celebrate that our only hope for eternity is grace and not works. And, Father, we pray that you would fill our hearts full of faith as we partake and see that the Lord is good. Amen.

Where this fits

Recent preaching context

The three sermons immediately preceding this one in the preaching schedule.

Oct 6, 2024

You Were Made For Love

You were made for covenantal love, not lust, and Christ has paid the price to free you from the lies and brokenness of sexual sin.

Oct 9, 2024

Treasuring God

The church must be a community of disciples who treasure God above all else because we become what we worship, and true salvation is knowing and enjoying God Himself as our highest good.

1 Peter 1:8-9

Oct 9, 2024

Are Legalism and Licentiousness Really Equal Threats?

Modern evangelicalism's treatment of legalism and licentiousness as equal threats is both biblically and experientially false—licentiousness is far more destructive, and our fear of over-applying Scripture leaves us unable to recognize and combat sin in its early stages.

October 13 · This sermon

Thou Shall Not Steal

The eighth commandment reveals that all sin is fundamentally theft, but God's cure for our wrongful taking is His merciful giving of Christ on the cross.

Take it further

Discuss · apply · pray

Small groups

6 discussion questions

Chris opened by observing that commandments 5-10 appear across virtually all human cultures and legal systems. What does this universal agre…

Daily readings

5-day reading plan

This week we walk from God's moral order written into creation, through the sin of theft in all its forms, to the gospel's radical cure — Christ's self-giving on the cross.

Prayer

A Prayer of Gratitude and Stewardship

Father, we stand amazed at Your sovereign hand that sustains all creation and distributes all possessions according to Your wisdom. You are…

Family table

What Counts as Mine?

Chris preached that stealing isn't just taking from others—it includes wasting what we have or neglecting to care for our things. Use this p…

Couples

Theft, Stewardship, and Grace

What area of your life — time, money, possessions, or talents — did the sermon expose as an area where you've been stealing from God or your…

Memorize

Exodus 20:15

This verse is the sermon's primary text and foundational command, but its brevity makes it an ideal memorization anchor—it states the prohibition with absolute clarity while the sermon's exposition reveals that theft encompasses far more than mere taking of property; it reaches to the heart of how we honor God's image in others and steward what He has entrusted to us.

Daily readings · Monday–Friday

5-day reading plan

This week we walk from God's moral order written into creation, through the sin of theft in all its forms, to the gospel's radical cure — Christ's self-giving on the cross.

Monday 1 Corinthians 4:7

Paul's rhetorical question strips away all human boasting: "What do you have that you did not receive?" This verse anchors the entire logic of theft — we cannot steal what was never ours to begin with. Every possession, every talent, every breath is a gift from the hand of God, held in trust, not in absolute ownership.

Tuesday Luke 12:16-21

The rich fool accumulates and hoards, yet achieves nothing but spiritual ruin. His sin is not wealth itself, but the failure to steward it as God requires — wasting resources on empty provision while his soul starves. We confess our own temptation to squander what God entrusts to us, and we grieve how easily we rob ourselves through careless consumption.

Wednesday Proverbs 25:28

A person without self-control is like a city breached and without walls — undefended against invasion. Proverbs speaks with the voice of created wisdom, teaching us that virtue aligns us with reality while vice fractures it. This natural-law reasoning shows us that God's commandments against theft reflect not arbitrary divine will, but the deep structure of a functioning, orderly world.

Thursday Proverbs 23:10

Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless — the command protects the vulnerable precisely because they bear God's image, and because God Himself is their defender and advocate. Every act of theft toward another person assaults their dignity and contradicts the gracious sovereignty by which God has appointed their portion.

Friday John 3:16

We are thieves who have taken what belongs to God — our very lives, offered back to Him in worship and obedience. Yet the gospel reveals a God who responds not with judgment alone, but with self-giving: He surrenders His own Son as the ransom for our thievery. This is grace so immeasurable that it compels us to return what we have stolen and to live, henceforth, as those purchased and redeemed.

Draft · pending review

Small-group discussion

6 questions for your group this week

Chris opened by observing that commandments 5-10 appear across virtually all human cultures and legal systems. What does this universal agreement suggest about where these moral prohibitions come from, and how does that shape the way we should think about stealing?

→ Can you think of a specific example—from your own experience or observation—where you've seen a society's laws align with or diverge from what Scripture says about theft?
The sermon presented three categories of theft: stealing from yourself, stealing from others, and legal theft. Which of these categories felt most convicting to you as you listened, and why?

→ What specific behaviors or patterns in your own life does that conviction point toward?
Chris argued that wastefulness—buying what you don't need and failing to care for what you have—constitutes stealing from yourself. How would you respond to someone who says that what they do with their own money is their own business?

1 Corinthians 4:7

→ What does the doctrine of God's sovereignty over all things (not just 'spiritual' things) have to do with how we answer that question?
The sermon emphasized that stealing from others is fundamentally a denial of God's image in them and a rejection of God's sovereign distribution of possessions. What shifts in how we think about theft when we see it that way rather than simply as 'breaking the law'?

→ How does recognizing God's image in the person we might wrong change the moral weight of even small acts of dishonesty?
Chris made a sharp claim: that all sin is fundamentally theft because it involves taking what God made and using it for unauthorized purposes. If that's true, what does the cross accomplish for those of us who have stolen from God in this deepest sense?

John 3:16

→ How does understanding Christ's death as the Father's answer to our theft reshape the way you respond to your own sin this week?
The sermon closed by saying we owe God not just our wealth but our entire lives—time, talent, bodies, minds—because He is Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. In practical terms, what would it look like for you to surrender control of one area of your life this week that you've been treating as your own?

Draft · pending review

Pray together this week

A Prayer of Gratitude and Stewardship

Father, we stand amazed at Your sovereign hand that sustains all creation and distributes all possessions according to Your wisdom. You are the Creator and Sustainer of all things, and we acknowledge that every breath we take, every talent we possess, every moment of our lives belongs to You alone. We confess that we often treat what You have entrusted to us — our time, our resources, our abilities — as though they were entirely our own, squandering them through wastefulness and carelessness, and in doing so we steal from ourselves and deny Your authority over our lives (1 Corinthians 4:7).

We confess, too, that our culture has normalized theft in its many forms, even encoding it into law, and we have been shaped by these patterns in ways we do not always recognize. We have rationalized taking what is not ours, justified the seizure of others' possessions, and grown blind to the ways we dishonor the image of God in our neighbors by denying them what You have given them. We are guilty, and we grieve the offense we have brought against Your holy character.

Yet in the gospel we have been ransomed at infinite cost — You gave Your own Son to redeem us from the theft that infects all humanity (John 3:16). Through the cross, Christ has purchased us entirely, and in His redemption we are freed from the bondage of coveting and the compulsion to seize. We are no longer our own; we belong to Him, and this truth liberates us to become faithful stewards rather than grasping thieves.

Grant us, we pray, the grace to see all that we have as a sacred trust from Your hand. Give us eyes to recognize wastefulness and the courage to turn from it, that we might honor You through careful stewardship. Open our hearts to generosity toward the vulnerable and the marginalized, that we might reflect Your character as the one who advocates for those who have been wronged. And teach us to rest in Your sovereign distribution of possessions, trusting that You have given us what we need and that our security rests not in accumulation but in Your faithfulness. To You alone be glory and dominion forever.

Draft · pending review

Sunday-evening family table

What Counts as Mine?

For the parent

Chris preached that stealing isn't just taking from others—it includes wasting what we have or neglecting to care for our things. Use this prompt to help your family think about what it means to truly own something and how God sees our possessions.

Chris talked about how buying things we don't need or letting our stuff fall apart is a kind of stealing from ourselves. Can you think of something you have that you're not taking good care of, or something you bought but don't really use? What would it look like to treat that thing the way God wants us to treat what He's given us?

works for ages 7+

Draft · pending review

Couples · three questions over coffee

Theft, Stewardship, and Grace

What area of your life — time, money, possessions, or talents — did the sermon expose as an area where you've been stealing from God or yourself through carelessness or wastefulness?
How do we as a couple tend to view what we have — as ours to use as we please, or as gifts held in trust from God's hand? Where do we need to repent together and realign our stewardship?
The sermon reminds us that God gave His own Son to redeem our theft. How can we pray for each other this week to grow in gratitude for that grace and in faithful stewardship of what He's entrusted to us?

Draft · pending review

Memory verse this week

Exodus 20:15

You shall not steal.

Why this verse: This verse is the sermon's primary text and foundational command, but its brevity makes it an ideal memorization anchor—it states the prohibition with absolute clarity while the sermon's exposition reveals that theft encompasses far more than mere taking of property; it reaches to the heart of how we honor God's image in others and steward what He has entrusted to us.

Draft · pending review

Where this was preached

About the church

Providence Community Church

Lenexa, KS
Sundays · 10:00 AM
About us · What we believe

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# Providence Community Church

A church preaching expository sermons through the books of the Bible.

## Sermons
- [You Were Made For Love (2024-10-06)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/10/you-were-made-for-love)
- [Treasuring God (1 Peter 1:8-9, 2024-10-09)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/10/treasuring-god)
- [Are Legalism and Licentiousness Really Equal Threats? (2024-10-09)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/10/are-legalism-and-licentiousness-really-equal-threats)
- [Thou Shall Not Steal (2024-10-13)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/10/thou-shall-not-steal)

## About
- [About the church](/about)
- [Plan a visit](/visit)

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