Word of Salvation – January 2011
DON’T STEAL; GIVE LIFE INSTEAD
By Rev. John de Hoog
(Sermon 9 in a series on the Ten Commandments)
Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-21
Text: Exodus 20:15; Luke 12:13-21
The reading from Luke 12 contains the famous story of the rich fool. A simple story with an obvious meaning – don’t put too much value on earthly goods for you cannot take them with you. Don’t be greedy for more all the time, for you will lose it all in the end anyway.
Let’s think briefly about this parable. Notice three things about this parable. First, God calls the rich man, “Fool!” In the original Greek language it doesn’t say “You fool” but simply a blunt “aphrôn” – FOOL! Why is God so blunt?
The background is in Psalm 14:1. The verse says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” You see, the rich man in the parable has been living as if there is no God. Effectively he has been saying in his heart, “There is no God.” His life has been totally self-centred. He speaks of “my crops,” “my barns,” “my grain,” “my goods,” and significantly, in vs 19, “myself” or “my soul.” Vs 19 “And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years,” or it could also be translated as, “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many good things laid up for many years.’” You see, the man is totally self-sufficient… he thinks! It’s all summed up in him saying to himself “Myself” or “My soul.”
But that brings us to the second thing to notice about this parable. In vs 20, God says to him, “Fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” That word “life” – “your life will be demanded from you” is again the word “soul” – “your soul will be demanded from you.” The very thing that he regards as his own, his very life, will be required of him. And the words “will be demanded from you” are words used to refer to the repayment of a loan. You see, his soul is on loan. And now the owner, God, wants it back!
Here is the crux of the parable. The rich man’s very soul is on loan from God. His very life is not his own. If his soul is on loan from God, what about everything else? What about his crops, his barns, all his goods, everything that will allow him to eat, drink and be merry for many years to come? Of course! They are all on loan from God!
The fool is everywhere in Australia today. The fool may be sitting here this morning. The fool effectively says in his heart, “There is no God.” Oh, he may actually believe there is a God, but it makes no difference to his life. In his head he may believe there is a God, but in his life he is an atheist.
And all the time, God is absolutely, intimately involved in the fool’s life. For the fool cannot breathe without God giving him breath, the fool’s heart cannot beat without God allowing it. Everything the fool has – his possessions, his achievements, his employment, his very life – they are all on loan from God. And one day, the owner, God, will recall the loan. And the fool will have nothing left.
What is the alternative? That’s the third thing to notice about this parable: Jesus’ conclusion. In vs 21, Jesus says, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God.” You can either gather riches for yourself, or you can gather riches for God. The first leads to having nothing at all left over. The second, gathering riches for God, leads to true wealth that lasts forever.
All that you have, including your very life, is actually on loan from God. So use that loan for the enrichment, for the glory, of the owner, God. That will make you truly rich as well.
The saying is that you can’t take it with you. But in fact, you get to keep what you give away. What you give to the Lord and for his work in invested in your heavenly bank account, so that you store up treasure in heaven.
Pause
I’ve introduced this straightforward, famous parable in connection with the commandment against stealing. But what has this parable got to do with this commandment? The rich man in the parable isn’t stealing, is he? He’s greedy, he’s self-centred, but he’s not taking someone else’s property is he? He may be breaking some commandments, but not the Eighth, is he? The answer is… This parable actually gets to the heart of the commandment against stealing.
Let’s proceed this morning in three steps. We’re going to be looking at what God says about how you should use your money and possessions. We will look at 1. The importance of ownership; 2. The limits to ownership; and 3. The life-giving joys of godly ownership.
First, the importance of ownership. All the commandments are connected with the fact that God has made us human beings in his image. We’ve seen that as we’ve studied these commandments. Commandment 5 – we must honour our parents. God calls himself our Father; the family is a reflection of how God made us, and bad families dehumanise us. Commandment 6 – human life is sacred, to attack another human being by murder or even hatred is to attack someone made in God’s image; it’s like tearing God’s picture, and it dehumanises us. Commandment 7 – we’re made for faithful sexual relationships and to enter into adultery dehumanises us, it makes other people into objects of pleasure rather than partners in joyful relationship.
Now the same is true for Commandment 8. We are made for ownership. It’s connected with how God made us. He made us to own and care for things. It goes right back to creation. Adam and Eve were made to cultivate and care for the garden.
God says to us, “You shall not steal”. That implies that we are meant to possess things. In God’s will, individuals, families, groups of people, organisations, companies, churches, nations and so on, are meant to possess land and houses and food and animals and books and computer software and intellectual property and medical technology and jet fighters and spaceships and all the other things that God has given us and that mankind has been able to invent and make. If God did not mean any of these things to be owned, then he would not have given us the eighth commandment. The commandment, “You shall not steal,” implies the right to own things. If there were no such right, there would be no such thing as stealing.
Our problem is that we have distorted and destroyed our right to ownership through our sin. So God has to say a huge amount in the Bible about the protection of property and ownership.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
Habakkuk 2. “Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin! … The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it… Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion!” (Habakkuk 2:9-11, 6)
Micah 6. “Am I to forget, O wicked house, your ill-gotten treasures and the short ephah, which is accursed? Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights?’” (Micah 6:9-11)
It’s not just a prominent theme in the Bible. It’s prominent in our lives as well. We know what it’s like to have something stolen from us. In Canberra we were burgled three times in our house next to the church, once while we are actually in church. You know how it feels – you feel violated, attacked. Someone has intruded into your home and messed with your stuff. It’s not right, is it! Why does it feel like that? The explanation goes back to this basic truth that we are made to own and care for things. It’s part of what it means to be a human being made in the image of God. To attack our ownership is to attack something intrinsic to our nature.
But even though ownership is important, we must recognise that ownership is not absolute. There are: 2. Limits to ownership.
A few years ago David Mitchell, whom some of us might know, was working in a Presbyterian church in Tasmania for no pay. He was helping them to begin a new work. In our conversation, I asked him how he managed to do that, to work for no pay. How did he survive? “Ah,” he said, “my father is very rich. He’s a cattle baron, and he supplies whatever I need.” I didn’t realise that David had had a rural background, and I asked a bit more about his father. He said, “My Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills.”
Then of course I realised I had been had. David was quoting from Psalm 50, where God says, “I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.” (Psalm 50:9-10) Haggai 2:8 says something similar. God is, through Haggai, urging the people to be generous in their support of building a temple. God says to them, “‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” (Haggai 2:8) Be generous with your silver and your gold, because in the end, it all belongs to me anyway!
In the end, there are limits to ownership. Everything belongs to God. Ownership is a blessing and a right, but it is not an absolute right. In the end, God owns it all.
Everything belongs to God, but he uses human means to distribute things – buying and selling and trading and finance and lending and inheriting and paying interest and all the other means of redistribution – all ways that God uses to distribute what is his to people.
The problem comes when stealing finds its way into this mechanism of redistribution. When stealing enters into buying, so that you get a much better deal than you should or the person makes an error on your bill or you get too much change, or into selling, so that you rip the other person off or you sell something you know is going to fail, or into trading, so that what you trade is not nearly worth what you get back, or into finance and lending, so that the interest you charge is unjust, or into inheriting, so that you unjustly exclude a family member from your will or hasten the death of a parent in order to get your hands on the inheritance… and I can go on and on, and so can you, imagining ways that stealing can enter into human ways of redistributing goods and services.
Do you see the point? We have been called, as human beings, to be stewards of God’s world. The world and all it contains belong to God.
In our human relationships there is ownership – we must not rip off what God has given to someone else. That’s stealing. That’s attacking something profound in another person who is made in God’s image, who is made to look after the stuff God has entrusted to him or her.
But in our relationship with God, it’s different. We can’t assert ownership against God, because the whole world actually belongs to God, and he only entrusts parts of it for us to look after according to his design, his purpose.
Imagine you are the rich fool in the parable in Luke 12. God has given you a huge crop and you prepare bigger better barns and a retirement plan. Is that OK? Well, it could be OK, as long as you remember that actually God gave you these things, he even gave you your very life, your soul, and you are accountable to him for how you use all that he has given you. It could be OK, as long as you are making decisions that are compatible with what God wants, because he is actually the owner.
But at any time God can ask you, “What are you doing with all this that I have given you? Are you using it as I want? I actually own it. Don’t imagine you can use it anyway you please. To do that would be to attempt to steal from me, and that’s never going to work.”
The rich fool in the parable may not be stealing anyone else’s property, but he’s doing something even worse. He’s stealing from God! In his practical life he believes that there is no God… no God who’s going to do anything anyway. He doesn’t realise that he’s attempting to steal from God. But he is. That’s why he’s a fool! He’s fooling himself!
Pause
How then should we treat our money and possessions? We’ve seen: 1. The importance of ownership – we are made to own stuff; 2. The limits to ownership – but God owns it all; so now let’s see 3. The life-giving joys of godly ownership.
1 Timothy 6:6-10 gives us a good guide. “Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
What is the Bible saying here? Here are two simple steps we could take:
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Work out what you need. Paul says, “But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” Food, clothing, housing, transport, expenses for kids, saving for the future, etc. It could be very complex, it could be very easy, depending on your situation. But work out what you need to live. Work out what you need to serve God and your dependants. God provides for your needs; thank him for his provision.
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The rest could be called your “disposable income”. How should you use that? You should see it as stuff that God owns and has entrusted to you to be used according to his will and design. So ask how God wants you to use it, and then use it that way.
Such a scheme is radically different from anything else in Australia today. Imagine if we followed that approach! Our houses, our cars, all our possessions would be used to serve God and others. And nearly all of us could be radically generous. Most of us would be able to give in ways that would amaze our friends and neighbours.
If you don’t, if you use your disposable income for your own comfort and luxury, then you are stealing from God. Then you are the fool in the parable. You are acting as if your disposable income is yours to do with as you wish.
It’s very threatening, isn’t it! What God says about how to use your money and possessions is far more offensive to us than anything he says about sex. It’s so contrary to our culture that we think it can’t be true. But here it is. This is much more than “Give 10% and spend the rest on yourself”. The New Testament asks much more of us than the Old Testament tithe ever did.
What is God after? He’s after our hearts. I had an email conversation with Karl Deenick in September last year. Karl pointed to some verses right next to our passage, in Luke 12:33-34. It reads like this: “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Karl pointed out that Jesus doesn’t say, “For where your heart is, there your treasure should be also.” No, Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Karl wrote, “If we continue to spend our money on treasures in this world our heart will be drawn more and more to this world. On the other hand, if we sell possessions and store up treasure in heaven, more and more our hearts will be drawn there because that is where we are amassing treasure.”
In other words, the wallet controls the heart! Where the wallet leads the heart will follow! In other words, said Karl, a very important way of becoming less worldly is through extraordinary generosity.
What he could also have said is that the only way to avoid stealing is through extraordinary generosity. We either steal, enriching ourselves like the rich fool, or we are amazingly generous, enriching others with what God has given us. There is no neutral ground. You are either a thief or extremely generous.
God actually calls to follow our Lord Jesus in this matter of generosity. 2 Corinthians 8:9 says “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” It’s in the middle of a passage urging people to give generously. Jesus, who was the richest of all, became the poorest of all to save us. In the light of his cosmic generosity, how can we refuse to be generous with what God has entrusted to us?
When Jesus hung on the cross, who did he hang between? It was between two thieves ! Two breakers of the Eighth Commandment were Jesus’ company as he died. But one of them believed Jesus and entrusted his future to Jesus, and that man is now enjoying the riches of Jesus’ company in Paradise.
If you find yourself unable to give generously, do you really own your money and your possessions? Perhaps, they own you! Perhaps you are enslaved to them.
There is life-giving joy in extraordinary generosity. Jesus is no-one’s debtor, you cannot out-give Jesus. He returns your investment three times over.
First, he uses what you give for the immediate blessing of those you give it to.
Second, he treats what you give as something given to him. Matthew 25:40 “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.”
Third, he adds what you have given to your account in heaven. You only get to keep what you give away. “ Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
You are either a thief or incredibly generous. There is no middle ground. Extraordinary generosity is the only the way to obey the Eighth Commandment. It is also the best investment strategy anyone could think of.
Amen