The Doctrine On Stealing

And verse 6 says, if a fire breaks out and spreads to thorn bushes, so that stacked grain or the standing grain or the field itself is consumed, he who started the fire shall surely make restitution. That could be significant. If you burned down someone’s stacked grain or burned their field, you had to make restitution. If a man gives his neighbour money or goods to keep for him, and it is stolen from the man’s house, if the thief is caught, he shall pay double. If the thief is not caught, then the owner of the house shall appear before the judges to determine whether he laid his hands on his neighbour’s property.

You give your possessions, your valuables, to a friend, and you come back after he’s held your valuables while you were gone, and he says, oh, it was stolen. How do you know that it was stolen? And he didn’t steal it. You have to take him to court to determine whether in fact there actually was a thief, or whether the friend you trusted laid his hands on your property. Then verse 9 sort of sums up. For every breach of trust, whether it is for ox, for donkey, for sheep, for clothing, for any lost thing about which one says, this is it, the case of both parties shall come before the judges, he whom the judges condemn shall pay double to his neighbour.

If you steal, you have serious, serious consequences. In the book of Leviticus, just a few verses in chapter 6 to strengthen the understanding of this. The Lord spoke to Moses, chapter 6, when a person sins and acts unfaithfully against the Lord, and deceives his companion in regard to a deposit or a security entrusted to him. And that’s what was in view in Exodus 22. How do you know that the guy who told you a thief took it didn’t make up that story, and he himself has it? So this is defrauding, any kind of fraud.

Or through robbery, if he has extorted from his companion, or has found what was lost and lied about it, and sworn falsely, so that he sins in regard to any one of the things a man may do. Then it shall be, when he sins and becomes guilty, that he shall restore what he took by robbery, or what he got by extortion, or the deposit which was entrusted to him, or the lost thing which he found, or anything about which he swore falsely. He shall make restitution for it in full, and add to it one fifth more.

He shall give it to the one to whom it belongs, on the day he presents his guilt offering. So he shall go to the priest and make a guilt offering. And on the very day he did that, he had to provide the restitution. This is what Zacchaeus did, didn’t he, in multiples. But he was following Old Testament law. In Isaiah 61.8, God says, I hate robbery. I hate robbery. That assumes the right to private property, the right to personal possessions. And that assumes that God has designed that what you earn, you keep, because it’s yours.

It’s yours. In Jeremiah, Jeremiah indicts the people of Israel in chapter 7, and he does so starting in verse 9. Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known? Then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, we are delivered. Are you going to have the audacity to steal, murder, commit adultery, speak profane languages, engage in idolatrous sacrifice following other gods, and then come into the temple, which is my house, and say, we are delivered.

God is our redeemer. God is our deliverer. Do you think that saying that allows you to do all these abominations? And then, verse 11, has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, declares the Lord. Those are the very words that Jesus declared when he went in to attack the temple, said, you turned it into a den of robbers. Why? Because you come here, you ostensibly worship the true and living God, but your lives are full of sin.

You commit adultery, you lie, and you steal. Don’t come into my house if you’re a robber and think everything is okay, it’s not. In Hosea chapter 4, and these are just some samples, but in Hosea chapter 4 verse 1, listen to the Lord, the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery. It’s these same default sins that are common throughout all of human history.

Swearing, deception, or lying, murder, stealing, and adultery. This is the case the Lord has against his people. God hates robbery, don’t steal. Jesus repeated that command in Matthew 19 18, you shall not steal. Paul repeated that command in Romans 13, you shall not steal. Titus 2 10 says, not pilfering or embezzling. So this is another very clear command, directed at a default kind of sin, that is very very normal to all fallen humanity. We are an entire race of robbers. Children have to be disciplined firmly to learn that some things don’t belong to them.

Greediness is in the heart, profound, selfish, proud greediness, and stealing is a function of greed. People don’t really steal out of need, it is possible that that does happen on occasion, of course, for a person who is destitute, and at the end, and has no choice. But they don’t generally steal out of need, not in the modern world, because, well, for example, in our country, the government provides a trillion dollars worth of protection against the kind of starvation that people would be threatened by, by providing all the available government resources that people can access.

But psychologists say people don’t steal out of need, that’s very rare. They steal out of greed, they steal out of what is basically suggested as deprivation. I don’t have what you have, I want what you have. And that’s why another of the Ten Commandments is don’t covet. It’s envy, it’s jealousy, and the envy and the jealousy leads to theft, and it can also lead to massive upheaval in society, as people collectively become jealous and seek vengeance. It’s a universal problem, you know that, because we have to have a key to everything.

We have to have passwords ad nauseam, we have to put our money in banks, they have to be in the bank but in the safe. We lock everything, we have to have codes, security systems, guards, we have to have police, detectives, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, juries. All of this entire system, for the most part, of all the kinds of crimes there are, is devoted primarily to the crime of stealing. Now we have new crimes of identity theft, hackers, one of the reasons I don’t drive an electric car. I have a 2006 car, nobody can hack into my 2006 car.

I get to go where I want to go, nobody can reroute some electric machine and stop me before I can get to Grace Church. You do understand that if you have an electric car, at any point you can be rerouted by powers you don’t even know exist. We have every imaginable kind of theft, from smash and grab, people raiding drugstores and just taking everything they can get their hands on, smashing cases in jewellery stores, auto theft, all kinds of theft, non-payment of debt that’s stealing, falsifying expense accounts that’s stealing, cheating on your taxes, embezzling money, holding back wages that are due.

But this is the way of the world because there’s just corruption in the world and corrupt people lie and they get angry and they steal, that’s just the way it is in the world. Now today, instead of our society trying to help people stay within the framework of honesty and not steal, we have a society that wants to allow for stealing and the new justification for it is something called crimes of survival or crimes of equity. It’s a new trend. It was explained this way in one article, the homeless, the poor and the people of colour commit robberies and theft to survive.

Any enforcement of the law on these is a violation of their basic human rights. Now we’re seeing this play out right in front of us. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the doctrine on stealing. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].