The Spectrum of a Commandment

Scripture: Exodus 20: 15 and Various Pentateuch Texts

Sermon: The Spectrum of a Commandment

Topics: Theft, Generosity, Cheating

Preached November 6, 2016 am communion Woodlawn CRC

Rev. Mike Abma

EXODUS 20: 15

15 You shall not steal.

Again, the 8^th commandment is simply 2 Hebrew words: no stealing.

So what does this mean?

To help get at what this means, we will be looking at various laws in the Pentateuch – the first 5 books of the Bible.

My hope is that looking at these laws will give us a sense of the spectrum of this commandment.

We will be looking at a lot of passages, so, for your convenience, I have put the passages into a powerpoint so that you can simply follow on the screen.

The texts are listed in the bulletin if you want to check later.

OUTRIGHT THEFT SLIDES 2-4

So we will start in Exodus, two different passages:

First Exodus 21: 16

16 Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is still held in possession, shall be put to death.

Second Exodus 22:1

When someone steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, the thief shall pay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. The thief shall make restitution, but if unable to do so, shall be sold for the theft. 4When the animal, whether ox or donkey or sheep, is found alive in the thief’s possession, the thief shall pay double.

Both these laws deal with outright theft, plain and simple.

A few things to notice:

in the law code of Israel, people were more important than property.

That is why kidnapping, literally, the stealing of a person,

was punishable by death.

But the stealing of anything else was punishable by a fine:

So steal an ox, and you owed 5 oxen.

Steal a sheep, and you owed 4 sheep.

Return something stolen, and you owed double the value of the stolen

item.

The point is this:

many of the law codes of the surrounding cultures,

for example the Hittite Law code,

imposed the death penalty for the stealing of many things

– whether people or property.

But not Israel.

Property was important and valuable,

but never important enough or valuable enough

to cost a person their life.

PASSIVE THEFT SLIDES 5-7

Now to some murkier areas of stealing.

You may have heard the old adage:

Finders keepers, losers weepers.

In other words,

If you happen to find something, you are entitled to keep it.

Listen to what Deuteronomy 22 says:

Deuteronomy 22: 1-3

You shall not watch your neighbour’s ox or sheep straying away and ignore them; you shall take them back to their owner. ²If the owner does not reside near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it to your own house, and it shall remain with you until the owner claims it; then you shall return it. 

³You shall do the same with a neighbour’s donkey;

you shall do the same with a neighbour’s garment;

and you shall do the same with anything else that your neighbour loses and you find. You may not withhold your help.

According to the law, finding something belonging to someone else, and claiming it as your own was a form of stealing.

Clearly you did not actively set out to steal it.

But in not returning something, anything, to its rightful owner,

you were guilty of theft.

It may be passive theft, but it is theft nonetheless.

Again, what is the ethic behind this commandment?

The ethic,

to quote the Heidelberg Catechism,

is that we must do whatever we can for our neighbor’s good.

So if you find something,

you do not passively keep it.

You actively try to find its owner.

SNEAKY THEFT SLIDES 8-10

Now for a third type of stealing. I call this category “sneaky theft” because I think the word “sneaky” covers a wide range of ways we fudge things, or package things, or label things in deceptive ways

that are not in the best interests of the other person

but are in the best interests of ourselves.

Deuteronomy 19:14

14 You must not move your neighbour’s boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

Deuteronomy 25: 13-14

13 You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, large and small.¹⁴You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, large and small. ¹⁵You shall have only a full and honest weight; you shall have only a full and honest measure, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁶For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are abhorrent to the Lord your God.

Notice how in both these laws,

the boundaries are being moved,

the scales are being rigged,

and the rules of fair commerce are being bent

just so that you will win and your neighbor will lose.

You move the boundary marker little by little

so your property gets bigger and your neighbor’s property gets smaller.

You have two sets of weights and measures,

so that when you sell something,

say milk, you sell less than a full gallon,

but when you buy, you buy more than a full gallon.

Again, all so that you win and the other person loses.

We’ve all heard the phrase “Buyer beware.”

But here it is clear that the Seller has to beware too –

they have to beware

not to sell a false set of goods,

not to try cheat,

not to try hoodwink the other person.

I think this type of sneaky theft has many parallels to the various types of fraud that happen today.

Now to another form of theft, what I am calling heartless theft.

HEARTLESS THEFT SLIDES 11-12

Deuteronomy 24: 14-15

14 You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy labourers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. ¹⁵You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.

Here we have the relationship between employers and employees.

Again, the commandments in this area

are so that the employers – those with power —

do not take advantage of the employees – those without power.

This means not only paying them on time,

but it also implies paying them a fair wage for their labor.

The laws in this area also imply that laborers,

on their side,

must work a fair day’s worth in order to earn their fair wage.

So both employer and employee

are cautioned against forms of stealing

in the labor market.

Now for a commandment that will strike all of us private property obsessed North Americans as very odd.

ISN’T THIS THEFT? SLIDES 13-14

Deuteronomy 23: 24-25

24 If you go into your neighbour’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container.

25 If you go into your neighbour’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbour’s standing grain.

Just think about this commandment for a moment.

Someone can walk into your garden and take a tomato?

Someone can stroll into your orchard and take an apple?

Someone can saunter onto your property and cut a few flowers?

Yup.

Here is a commandment that in essence forces people to practice

a basic level of generosity.

Why does this commandment strike us as so odd?

Because we North Americans have almost a sacred view of property,

and we call it our private property –

Our laws are set up to protect our private property.

But in God’s law, property is not so sacred.

In God’s law, all property is first of all God’s property

that we happen to be tending or caring for.

In God’s law, people are sacred,

and the law is there to ensure that property,

God’s property,

is used in such a way that every sacred person is blessed,

and provided for by that property.

ANTIDOTE TO THEFT SLIDES 15-17

Deuteronomy 15: 7-11

7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbour.⁸You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. ⁹Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near’, and therefore view your needy neighbour with hostility and give nothing; your neighbour might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.

¹⁰Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. ¹¹Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.’

The commandments are never simply about what we should not do.

They are also about what we should do —

Like holding people more sacred than property;

Like doing what we can for our neighbor’s good.

But the great antidote to theft and its root cause, greed, is generosity.

God gives a full-throated plea that his people must be generous people

because he is a generous God.

Here is something we must always keep in mind.

In the economy of grace,

God practices what he preaches.

In the economy of grace

we are the poor and needy ones.

and God is the one who opens his hands and his heart to us.

God, the one from whom all blessings flow,

opens his hands and his heart

and gives us the one thing he treasures above all else.

He gives us his one and only Son – his beloved.

so that, by his death, by his resurrection,

we might gain, we might inherit,

the wealth and the riches of His Son —

so that we might gain the treasure

that is Christ’s righteousness, his holiness, his obedience.

We gather around this table,

praising our generous God,

who has given us the gift, the treasure, that can never ever be stolen away.

Amen