Clough Proverbs Lesson 63
DI #1: Theft
…the divine
institutions that God established at the very beginning concerning
responsibility, labor and money. We have
dealt with the laws of property and the laws of labor and before we get to the
laws of money I thought it appropriate to deal with the evidence that God gives
us in His revelation that He takes this institution seriously, so seriously
that certain condemnations are pronounced upon men who violate and transgress
its boundaries. And the evidence that
God gives us that He protects and takes seriously the first divine institution
are the condemnations of the sin of theft and so this morning we are going to
study the evidences in the Word of God that have to do with spelling out the
sin of theft, what it is, why is theft something that’s committed against men,
against society, against the state or against God, and the biblical solution to
the sin of theft.
So to begin we’re
going to deal with the problem of what theft is in Scripture. And it’s not what you think it necessarily
is. Let’s begin by turning to the Ten
Commandments, Exodus 20. This is the
center of the law that’s reflected in Proverbs.
And while we will not be spending too much time this morning in
Proverbs, the truths that we do spend time studying will be truths that are
reflected in the book of Proverbs in many points.
In Exodus
This is a very
important principle as we discuss what is taught because the human viewpoint in
our culture today, and it’s so easy to just go right along with this and slide
right in the groove, says that the laws that we make in the city of Lubbock,
state of Texas, nation of the United States, that these laws rest upon society,
they are laws that are made by man, so the lawmaker is now not the Creator but
the creature. And we call this human
viewpoint idea of law fiat law because it is law simply because somebody said
it is, not because it actually is. Man
just simply into the thin air decrees that something is right or wrong and he
makes his laws, and his laws hang in thin air; they have no ground, they have
no support, they are just simply nothing statements into the void.
All law that is
not out of the Christian base, out of the biblical base, is simply fiat
law. And if you wonder why people
disrespect the law in a culture it’s because it’s fiat law; it’s grounded on
nothing and hangs on nothing; if man made it then man can break it. Since we, basically are not less physically,
mentally or spiritually than the men in Congress or the men in
To show you that
theft is a violation of the law of the Creator and not the law of the creature,
and therefore in divine viewpoint we do not have law hanging in thin air, we
have revealed law, God discloses what will and will not be the terms that
undergird legislation. In the nation
Now to show you
that the sin of theft was in truth not a sin against fiat law but against God
Himself, turn to Leviticus, we’ll be turning to various passages of the Old
Testament this morning; Leviticus 6:6-7.
This is talking about a man who violated the law, “Thou shalt not steal.” And when the man violated the law he didn’t
just violate a man-made law; it wasn’t just because a group of legislators got
together in
A similar thing is
found in the book of Numbers 5:6-9.
“Speak unto the children of Israel, When a man or woman shall commit any
sin that men commit, to do a trespass against the LORD, and that person be
guilty, [7] Then they shall confess their sin which they have done; and he
shall recompense his trespass with the principal thereof,” and so on which
we’ll get into a little bit later. The
point of this passage is that the sin is against the Lord, not against
men.
This illustration
was used when I was going through seminary, it’s a simple one but it shows you
the point. If you go and tell your child
not to go down the street with his football or something, and he goes down the
street with the football, and the first thing you know he puts it in somebody’s
window, the question is, has he offended against the person whose window he’s
broken or has he offended against you.
The answer is he has not offended against the person whose window was
broken; he has offended against you since you were the one who gave him the
instruction. The crime is never against
the victim, the crime is against the lawmaker.
If a person, for example, goes out here and assaults you, the crime is
not against you; the crime is against the state of Texas because that is the
source of the law. Always remember that
about crime and about punishment; it is not crime against the person, it is
crime against the law and if there is no law there is no crime. And so therefore taking it to the logical
conclusion to the universe, if God is not a lawmaker there would be, by
definition, no evil. Evil only exists
because God has revealed what we should not do and we do it anyway. So our crimes are not against victims, our
crimes are against the lawmaker.
So now summarizing
this problem of theft to start with; theft in Scripture, and we’re going to
expand this, is basically rebellion against the God of the first divine
institution. Theft is basically a
rebellion against the God of the first divine institution! It is He who has decreed property; it is He
that has decreed values; it is He who has decreed labor. And any violation of these represents a
rebellion, whether by Christian or non-Christian, for remember the divine
institutions are creation ordinances that apply to all men. All men are created, aren’t they? Yes; then all men fall under the creation
ordinances, whether they have accepted Christ or not. So men, then, are guilty of violating God’s
creation ordinances and theft is a violation of the ordinance of the first
divine institution.
Now, there is a
punishment for this violation. If theft
is just fiat, rebellion against man’s law, if man catches it then man punishes
man, but if theft is more than that and theft is violation of God’s law, then
in addition to being socially punished theft is also spiritually punished in
the soul of the person who does the thievery.
And this was illustrated a while ago by a counseling situation. Dr. Jay Adams, in his book, Competent to Counsel, gives this
illustration of a man who paid a price for theft:
“John was a
college professor, highly respected among his colleagues. He was suffering from severe insomnia. No matter what he tried he couldn’t get to
sleep; doses of sleeping pills had been increased to a danger point. The upshot of counseling revealed that he had
been cheating on his income tax.
Underneath his evasion bothered him greatly because he was afraid that
the IRS would find out and he would be exposed as a thief. At night his conscience would not let him
sleep. Eventually John faced up to his
sin and wrote to the IRS suggesting a plan of repayment and promising to make
full restitution. He no sooner had
written the letter than he began to sleep like a baby and had no future
occurrences of the problem.”
Now had he been
counseled by a non-Christian psychologist after hours and hours of
psychotherapy it would have been deduced that he had a problem somewhere. But the Word of God says his problem was sin;
the problem was transgressing, not of man’s laws but of God’s laws, and so
therefore theft is an attempt to bypass the three methods of gaining wealth; by
gift, by inheritance, and by labor.
Those are the only authorized means of obtaining property and wealth in
this creation and to violate these methods, to short-circuit these methods is
to cut across the fiber of the way the universe is made. God has not made us to function except by
these three means of gaining wealth, and any time we transgress these three
means we are in the sin of theft.
Now if that’s the
case, then there ought to be another test, besides the fact that when men steal
God punishes them, whether the state does or not, by the conscience. The other test ought to be that when you have
a maximum amount of positive volition in any society, regardless of the law and
order in the fiat sense, regardless of the laws that men know, you should have
a tremendous reduction in (?). Here you
have a maximum percent of the population on positive volition, who seriously
take the Word of God as the absolute authority in every area of their life,
then it ought to be reflected socially.
And sure enough, back just 100 years ago this incident occurred, and
this shows you the power, socially, of the Word of God being applied.
A man by the name
of Sobel wrote a book called Panic on
Wall Street. He has this interesting
statement in his book. “By the late 1860s
gold was transported openly in New York City.”
Now I need not tell you that New York City is not known as the capital
or morality in the western hemisphere.
But nevertheless, this incident occurred, and was occurring, in New York
City, of all places.
“Gold was
transported openly in New York city, carried by messengers in heavy canvas
bags. From time to time one of the bags
would break and its contents, usually about $5,000 in gold coins, would scatter
in the street. The custom on those
occasions was for a crowd to form a circle around the area, not moving until
the messenger had picked up every coin.
Anyone who stooped to take a gold piece would receive a boot in the
rear.” Now how did that happen? Because everybody in New York City were
Christians? No, but because the fact
that theft was looked upon, not as a violation of man’s laws, it was a
violation of God’s laws and it would be enforced, whether the state saw it or
not. And so theft is rebellion by man
against the first divine institution.
Now having defined
what is theft we have to see the kinds of theft. Turn to 1 Kings 21; most people will be
willing to grant one of these kinds of theft but very, very few indeed will
ever say I agree to the second kind of theft.
We have two kinds of theft; what are they. We have defined what theft is, now who can
commit theft. Well obviously,
individuals can steal; obviously people will agree to that, believer and
nonbeliever, Christian and non-Christian.
Certainly you can agree that the individual steals. But what the modern man cannot get through
his head is that the government can steal.
For example, 1 Kings 21, Naboth’s vineyard. We’ve seen this incident before but it’s a
very critical incident in the Old Testament.
I Kings 21:1, “And
it came to pass after these things that Naboth, the Jezreelite, had a vineyard,
which was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. [2] And Ahab,” Ahab is the king, Ahab is the
government, “And Ahab spoke unto Naboth, saying, give me thy vineyard, that I
may have it for a garden of herbs, because it’s near unto my house,” this would
be akin to the state government saying to you we need your property for public
purposes, the state is vested with eminent domain, the state has a claim on all
property within its geographic boundaries.
Certainly that’s a 20th century concept, certainly the
average person would agree to that. How
then can a state seize: simply because in the Bible the state does not have the
right of eminent domain, the state does not own all the land within its
geographical boundaries. Ahab does now
own Naboth’s vineyard; Naboth’s vineyard is a property of Naboth, not the state
of Israel. [3] “And Naboth said to Ahab,
The LORD forbid me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto
you.” I refuse to sell my private
property to the government. [4] “And
Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased,” and the story goes on how
Jezebel worked out a little deal where they came and they killed Naboth to gain
his vineyard.
And then in verse
17 Elijah hears about the theft of Naboth’s vineyard by the state of
Israel. “And the word of the LORD came
to Elijah, the Tishbite, saying, [18] Arise, go down to meet Ahab, king of
Israel, who is in Samaria; behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he is
gone down to take it. [19] And you shalt
speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Have you killed, and have you
taken possession?” This is a
confrontation, not between Ahab and an individual and Elijah; it is between the
entire government of Israel and Elijah.
This is a government action and the state does not have eminent domain
in God’s Word. That is a pagan concept
and it is anti-Christian, it is wrong for the state to seize private property,
according to Scripture. The state
violates the law, “Thou shalt not steal.”
So both the individual and the state can steal according to God’s
Word. According to man’s word only man
can steal, not the state. Why? Because the state is the one that makes the
law according to human viewpoint and the lawmaker by definition, that who makes
the law is above the law, so what the lawmaker does is irrelevant.
But according to
Scripture the state can steal. So we
have two kinds of theft; theft by an individual and everybody agrees to that
concept, and also theft by the government and very few people are prepared to
accept this; only those who have a deep understanding of God’s Word concede
that the government also thieves and steals and appropriates private property to
itself and this is a sin and Elijah condemned it as a sin.
What, then, is the
biblical solution to theft. We dealt
with the definition of theft; the kinds of theft, now a long series of passages
on how the Bible dealt with theft. And in
going through these passages we’re going to see not only how the Bible deals
with theft but we’re going to see the various ways in which you can steal; you
never dreamed there were so many ways to steal things as you’re about to
see. The sin of thievery is very, very
wide in its definition in God’s Word.
Turn to the first
passage, Exodus 22:1-17; here many, many ways are stated. As always in the Mosaic Law God first states
the principle and then He gives you many, many illustration of that principle. The principle is, “Thou shalt not steal,” but
the average Jew would not have understood what does it mean to steal, so God
gives concrete examples of theft. Exodus
22 gives us some, verses 1-4. “If a man
shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he shall restore five
oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.”
Skipping verses 2-3 because there’s a special problem of manslaughter;
verse 4, “If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it be ox,
or ass, or sheep, he shall restore double.”
I want you to
notice the difference between the restoration.
In God’s Word the answer to theft Godward is confession; the answer to
theft manward is restitution.
Restitution, however, in God’s Word is always of varying value and here
we see it. In verse 1 the man stole an
ox but had to give five back. Why? Because he had killed it and he had sold
it. In other words, five oxen were given
for the one who stole because that is how much value, the implication is, that
the oxen had grown, had reached a marketable price, had been sold, and by
paying five back for the one he stole he was compensating the victim for the
price of replacement, so it would take the price of five to replace that one if
you take into account all the labor, all the food, all the effort that would
have been required to market it. So
restitution in the Bible compensates not for the value of what is stolen but
for the future value of what is stolen and the skill needed to replace it. Restitution in the Bible is not on a one for
one basis; it’s always greater than one because it compensates for how much
value it would take to replace.
Exodus 22:5-6,
obviously verses 1 and 4 simple theft.
What about verses 5 and 6?
Another way of stealing. “If a
man shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten, and shall put in his beast,
and shall feed in another man’s field; of the best of his own field, and of the
best of his own vineyard, shall he make restitution. [7] If fire break out, and catch in thorns, so
that the stacks of grain, or the standing grain, or the field, be consumed
therewith, he that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.” So another illustration of theft is not just
ordinary theft but damage to property.
In the Bible damaging someone else’s property is considered the sin of
thievery, because when you damage the property you devalue the property, just
as though you would devalue the property by stealing it. So the sin of theft includes damage to
property.
Now this is
something where today very few people have respect for private property. Children are not being taught to respect
property. You can go to be public school
and watch what the children do to public property. You can walk into people’s homes and see what
the little brats do to property. And
this, obviously, they have been taught in the home to have their parent’s
attitude to property. And if you walk in
a home and you see the kids damaging property, and you see them being invited
in someone else’s home and there they damage the property, you can bet they
have learned that from their parents.
Something in the way the parents act toward those children has conveyed
into the minds of those children that property doesn’t count, you do not have
to respect property. But the Bible says
yes you do because God says it’s theft, and respect for property is respect for
the God of creation. And if you don’t
respect property then you don’t respect God, it’s that simple. And children raised not to respect property
aren’t going to respect property as an adult and it leads to the collapse of
the whole culture.
Exodus 22:7-13,
another way to steal. If a man shall
deliver unto his neighbor money or stuff to keep, and it be stolen out of the
man’s house; if the thief be found, let him pay double.” This is something like what we would call
embezzlement, where funds are entrusted to you and you steal. Verse 8, “If the thief be not found, then the
master of the house shall be brought unto the judges, to see whether has put
his hand unto his neighbor’s goods. [9]
For all manner of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for
raiment, or for any manner of lost thing,” notice this, the all encompassing
nature of this, “for any manner of lost thing, which another challenges to be
his, the cause of both parties shall come before the judges; and whom the
judges shall condemn, he shall pay double unto his neighbor. [10] If a man deliver unto his neighbor an
ass, or an ox, or a sheep, or any beast, to keep, and it die, or be hurt, or
driven away, no man seeing it, [11] Then shall an oath of the LORD be between
them both, that he that has not put his hand unto his neighbor’s goods, and the
owner of it shall accept thereof, and he shall not make it good. [12] But if it be stolen from him, he shall
make restitution unto the owner thereof.
[13] If it be torn in pieces, then let him bring it for witness, and he
shall not make good that which was torn.”
This is to distinguish the responsibility of the holder here.
The point is that
a third way of theft in Scripture is embezzlement. Not only simple theft, not only damage to
property but embezzlement of property that is given to you for safe keeping.
Exodus 22:14-15,
another illustration of the sin of theft.
“If a man borrow something from his neighbor, and it be hurt, or die,
the owner thereof being not with it, he shall surely make it good. [15] But if the owner thereof be with it, he
shall not make it good; and it shall be a hired thing that came for its hire.” We can’t go into the detail of that
particular law except to say that this is the loss of loaned property; property
that is put up on a loan basis, and it temporarily comes under your
jurisdiction, if you do not respect it and it is hurt, you have stolen. Notice the Bible is not talking just about
simple thievery, there are all sorts of complications into the problem of
theft.
Now Exodus
22:16-17, something that is rarely ever considered as violation of the sin of
theft. “And if a man entice a maid that
is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his
wife. [17] If her father utterly refuse
to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of
virgins.” What is this? This is the principle of the best man and the
best woman. The idea is that God has
given us partners for life, potentially and that as a person is young he can
look forward to that partner. That
partner has property that belongs to the other one. In this case the virginity of the girl. That belongs to her best man, no one else,
only him. It really doesn’t belong to
her and the Bible recognizes that this act of seduction was a violation of a
sin of theft. That’s why it says her
father had to be paid. Why? Because the dowry was a financial external
empirical sign of this intangible thing called virginity and this was a sin of
theft. Now you’d never think of this as
a sin of theft but that’s the way the Hebrew criminal placed it. This was considered theft of property.
And to show you
that this same concept of property applies, turn to 1 Corinthians 7:3-5. Strange to speak of things of sex as things
of theft. “Let the husband render unto
the wife due benevolence; and likewise also, the wife unto the husband,” it’s
talking about sex. [4] The wife has not
power of her own body,” that is the right of ownership, “but the husband does,
and likewise also the husband has not authority” or “ownership of his own body,
but the wife.” And abstinence over a
long period of time is considered fraud and so verse 4 is used in laws that
have to do with theft, “Defraud ye not one another,” why does Paul use that
verb? Because he’s talking about it in
the Old Testament framework; it’s a sin of theft.
That’s an
expansion; that surprised some of you about what the Bible means when it says
“Thou shalt not steal. Let’s go on to
some more areas of theft. Turn to
Leviticus 19:13, another example of theft.
This chapter is saying that many Christians have such a bad attitude
toward these portions of the Word of God; I mean the Law, the Old Testament,
Leviticus, Numbers, because you know by reading these concrete examples it
makes you much more acute in thinking through what the New Testament is talking
about. You always learn, children learn
from the time that they begin to learn by concrete example, and that’s all the
Law is, one concrete example, one illustration after another, and by looking at
these illustrations, even though we are not under this kind of legislation,
this is where you develop your insights into God and His nature and man’s sin,
by looking at concrete illustration after concrete illustration and you won’t
find them anywhere in Scripture except the (quote) “boring passages” (end
quote) of the Law.
Let’s look at
Leviticus 19:13, “Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor,” thou shalt not steal
from him, “neither shall you rob him; the wages of him that is hired shall not
abide with you all night until the morning.”
Another way of theft is to not pay a laborer his wage. This, in the Bible, is considered the sin of
theft, for the employer not to pay the employee when the employee has done his
work. To withhold wages when those wages
are due is a sin of theft.
To see how
insistent this particular sin is made in Scripture turn to Deuteronomy 24:15,
over and over God’s Law demands that the employer pay his employee just
wage. “At his day thou shalt give him
his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and sets his
heart upon it; lest he cry against the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.” Do you see that, again the laborer, the
employee, might pray to God? See this
laborer is pictured in verse 15 as a believer, and it’s very interesting, you
have an employee, you may be in this situation, this employee does not take the
employer to court over his wage. What
he’s doing is he’s just simply making a petition to the Father about it. And when that believer makes a petition to
the Father, immediately you have the Father Himself taking up for his
cause. And this is a believer who’s
prayed, and the warning is here to the employer, and the warning (??) to the
employer is be careful because if you have an employee to whom you are (?) and
he comes crying to Me because you haven’t paid him, we’re going to have a
little visit.
Let’s see where
this is taught again; Malachi 3:5, notice again as we go through these verses;
this is an independent thing of a labor laws of the nation; it doesn’t matter
whether the NLRB is involved in this or not; it doesn’t matter whether various
state statutes are being violated or not; the issue is whether God’s statutes
are being violated. Theoretically if you
had a population operated on God’s Law the legislations would really never be
used that men crank out, because you’d have the citizenry operating already with
their own built-in moral restraints.
You, incidentally would have a lot freer society and you’d have a lot
more economically prosperous society because think of all the money that would
be saved that we spend enforcing these laws if we didn’t have to enforce
them.
Malachi 3:5, “And
I will come near to you in judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the
sorcerers, and against the adulterers,” the sorcerers are the people involved
occultism, horoscopes and all the rest of the trash that Satan has cranked out,
“against the adulterers, and against false swearers,” these are people who
commit perjury in court, “and against those that oppress the hireling in his
wages,” those that oppress the hireling, those that attack the employee, that
deprive him of his wages. He is rated in
Malachi 3:5 on the same plain as an occultist from God’s point of view. Does this kind of give some of you an idea of
the value that God places on the first divine institution, and that He is
furious over the sin of theft? He
doesn’t take it lightly.
Finally, in the
New Testament, James 5:4, “Behold, the hire of the laborers, who have reaped
down your fields,” see, the labor is then finished, it’s been accomplished, and
notice the same theme that you thought was just in the Old Testament; sorry,
it’s in the New Testament too; “the hire of the laborers, who have reaped down
your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, cries; and the cries of them
who have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth,” see here we
have God, the recipient of petitions by the employee who has been deprived of
his wages and God warns the employer, don’t you let me have to deal with you
over this issue. I wonder, it’s just
something that you can think about as we go on; I wonder how many business
failures are due to a violation of this principle and have been brought about
by a judgment by God upon the business for a violation of these
principles. Do you think God isn’t going
to defend his institutions in our society here in the 20th
century? He will; He’s the Creator who
made them and constantly transgressing His boundaries reaps corruption and
chaos. So it’d be interesting to see
business fatalities in the light of violation of this law.
Let’s turn to
another concept of theft. We’ve dealt
with wages, the sin of wages, keeping wages back. Let’s go back to Exodus 21:16 for another
kind of theft. This should enlarge your
idea of theft. “He that steals a man and
sells him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to
death.” This is the theft of freedom;
that freedom is likewise considered a commodity that can be stolen and to
violate one’s freedom by the sin of theft is slavery. Taking slaves is theft; you have destroyed
freedom by one in the first divine institution; slavery is a social attack
against the first divine institution, whether it be the state enslaving its
people or whether it be slave traders.
And you think that God doesn’t protect His laws; what is the problem
we’re having in the United States today that was brought on 300 years ago by a
violation by a race that was brought here as slaves. And we reap the results. The white man broke the first divine
institution by the sin of theft and the white man is paying for it. Men don’t break God’s laws; God’s laws break
men and we see them operating in front of our eyes. So again, slavery is a sin of theft. And it’s interesting to note that the Code of
Hammurabi did not consider adult slavery theft; only Moses’ Law considered
adult slavery a sin.
Now Proverbs 6:30,
another passage dealing with theft but this one emphasizing more on what to do
about it. We’ve looked at this passage
before so we needn’t spend too much time on it. And if you should have some
notes in the margin when we went through this before, “Men do not despise a
thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry. [31] And if he be found, he shall restore
sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house.” Notice, this is a person who could possibly
justify the sin of theft, but even in this instance he was to restore seven
fold, even it means that he loses everything he owns, restitution must be
paid. God decrees it, it is His creation
order. And so the point here is even
so-called justifiable theft is still theft.
Now all of this so
far you can say is pretty much Old Testament, in the sense that we’re not under
the Mosaic Law. The Church is born
again, the Church is in a new dispensation and in this dispensation the Mosaic
Law does not have legislative for us socially.
But the principles of the Mosaic Law still are in application. Turn to Ephesians 4 and watch how Paul deals
with the sin of theft in the local church.
This shows you once again a theme that I have tried to show over and
over and over, that very little is new in the New Testament; it simply extends
the Old Testament way of thinking. Look
at verse 28, “And let him that stole, steal no more,” “him that stole” is a
habitual thief; it is a participle, that means one who continually does it,
it’s in his nature. And so here we have
a believer in compound carnality; how do you distinguish compound carnality
from simple carnality? Simple carnality
is when you’re out of fellowship and all you have to do get back in fellowship
is to acknowledge your responsibility for that sin before God. That’s what confession is, and that’s what
people do not do. They will (?)
something and this is why sometimes confession doesn’t seem to work, nothing
with confession, something wrong with you in that you refuse to admit your
personal volition was involved, it was always something else that made you do
it, the devil made me do it or something, not your volition, it couldn’t have
been your volition, it is always someone else’s fault, it was circumstances
that forced you to do it and God, you know those circumstances, they were
really bad. That’s not confession;
confession is when you admit you are responsible for it, period over and out,
no other cause.
Now compound
carnality is another thing; compound carnality is when you are out of
fellowship, you’ve been out of the bottom circle for some duration of time and
what has happened is that while you have been out of fellowship for this
duration is that you have larded –R learned behavior patterns, you’ve picked up
habits of behavior, ways you respond to various situations. All these things you have picked up all the
time you were out of fellowship. Now
watch what happens; you try to use 1 John 1:9, you say I acknowledge my
personal responsibility for this sin, I am restored to fellowship and then five
minutes later it seems you are back out of fellowship. Now Paul had a way of dealing with this kind
of problem, I want you to notice this.
Here compound carnality was the case of a believer. Believers don’t steal? Are you kidding, ever been stolen by one real
good, it’s a fantastic experience; if you haven’t had it cheer up, you’ll get
it someday. But believers steal, they’ll
steal you blind; believers can steal like anyone else can steal.
Now here you have
a case where a believer has stolen and stolen and stolen and he’s got a habit
pattern developed. He can be in
fellowship and see something and immediately he steals it. You see, he has learned by repetition to keep
doings this, over and over and over.
He’ll steal and not even notice he’s stealing; he’ll walk into a store
and half his pockets are full of stuff from the shelf and honestly sometimes he
won’t even know he’s done it. He has
become a habitual pathologic person who steals.
He has constantly embedded in his soul these –R learned behavior
patterns. Now watch; Paul says to him I
know you’ve got this problem of compound carnality; I know that confession of
sin is going to restore you to fellowship but there’s something else I want you
to do because if you confess your sin and get back in fellowship, and you’re
out here for a long time and come back in fellowship, you’re not going to stay
in because these –R learned behavior patterns have been trained. You hit some situation and you have a certain
response to that situation and that’s your –R learned behavior pattern, so you
have some situation out here that’s very tempting for you to steal something,
and you have told yourself over and over and over and over to take the easy way
out; you have told yourself to ignore the three ways of gaining wealth; gifts,
inheritance and labor. Of course,
inheritance is out because the government attacks us at that point but gifts
and labor are two ways that you have ignored habitually to keep from getting
wealth. These are bona fide ways and they are the only ways of legitimately gaining
wealth under the first divine institution.
Now you have
short-circuited this; you have tried as an autonomous person, as a person in
rebellion against God’s law, you have said look, I don’t kowtow to a superior
law, I make my laws. But there’s only
one problem; there’s always judgment for breaking God’s laws. So God has erected the law, the first divine
institution, and this believer has over and over and over and over and over
broken this creation ordinance, so much so that he has a great problem in his
soul, so that when he confesses his sin, when he is restored to fellowship,
when he begins to move again in the Christian life he moves about 50 feet and
then bang, he’s into another situation again.
So you’ve got to do something with compound carnality, it’s not just a
simple question of confessing sin; something else has to be done, the
confession of sin is the only thing necessary to bring you back in fellowship;
we agree, but we do not agree that there’s nothing for you to do after you’re
back in fellowship. There’s something
else that needs to be done. Why? Because you have to eradicate this behavior
pattern that you picked up. This is
sanctification. This is maturity. This is spirituality in the relative sense of
the term, the growth that comes. And
your growth curve, any person’s growth curve from the time they accept Christ
to the time they die looks like this; and those places where you see it going
down, sort of like the stock market, those places where you see it going down
are periods when you are out of fellowship, over some period of time, and you
actually lose your chokmah, you lose
your wisdom and start operating foolishly and begin to learn patterns of
behavior and so on that have to be eradicated.
So in the next
time up on the upswing here where you’re now in fellowship, now you have a
battle to try and erase those patterns that were picked up on the decline. This is why the Christian battle is always a
fight. Now Paul gave a specific form of
advice to this kind of compound carnality in a local church. “Let him that constantly steals, steal on
more,” all right, that’s the idea that obviously you know under the authority
of the first divine institution, Paul presupposes this knowledge on his
reader’s part, because of the first divine institution, because God has
created, because of the creation ordinances, he doesn’t mention Roman law here,
does he; wasn’t Ephesus in the empire of Rome?
Do you see Paul saying now believers, the Romans have a law about this
and they’ll come get you if you steal, so don’t steal. Is that the motive that Paul gives to these
believers? Huh-un, because they must
live their life not before Caesar but before Christ.
And that parents
is where you fall down when you don’t give an adequate base behind authority
and command; if you’re saying you do it because I said, that isn’t
sufficient. That is a sufficient command
if you have first explained where you get your authority from. It’s not sufficient to expect your children
to build authority on you; who are you?
So you’re stronger than they are so you can beat them up. What are you going to do when they get strong
and can beat you up? It’s foolish
building your authority on your own physical strength; that’s stupid. And we have a lot of parents do that. It’s ridiculous and then the kids get to be
teenagers and what happened? Well, they
never built authority; they never showed why is it wrong to steal. That’s what we’ve been going through this
whole… all these passages, not because momma said no, that’s not why you don’t
steal. Not because the government says
no, that’s not why we don’t steal either.
Why we don’t steal is because God says so and to do so is rebellion
against the creation itself. You see,
you’ve got a firm base for your yes and your no, but if you don’t have that
base, forget it because your law will be replaced by convenience at the
earliest possible moment and when your kids out from under you they are just
going to raise all kinds of hell and you’re going to wonder what happened? It’s because you didn’t put Bible doctrine at
the base.
Now Paul says,
“Let him steal no more,” stop it in other words, and it’s a present imperative,
which means don’t make this a practice any longer. So he cuts off the practice by reminding them
implicitly of this first divine institution, all the doctrine we’ve studied so
far this morning. But, now he suggests
the therapy to help a believer who has compound carnality in this area, and I
want you to notice, this principle can be taken into many, many areas of
life. Very useful insight by the Apostle
Paul into compound carnality. Not only
is this person to use 1 John 1:9 and be restored to fellowship, yes, he has to
do that because the rest of this can’t be executed without the filling of the
Holy Spirit. But then he gives him an
assignment.
Paul gives the
person in compound carnality an assignment to do, something to do that is going
to train out the –R learned behavior pattern and train in the +R learned
behavior pattern and that’s what the rest of this verse is all about. So you see, Paul just didn’t have some little
now don’t sin any more, Christ forgives you, bye-bye kind of thing. He was interested in actually changing a person’s
soul and this is how he did it. He said,
“let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good,” now “the thing
which is good” is legitimate labor, something that fits in with the plan of God
for his life. He says you figure out
what God’s plan for you, what area of calling you have, and you begin to labor
and it’s present tense, you keep on laboring.
So instead of putting the person in jail, what Paul would do in this
situation is to make the person carry a job and work, and work and work and
work and work. And the emphasis here is
on a hard work for a while, until that hard work schools him in the principles
of wealth; you get wealth by this and you get wealth by labor and wealth by
inheritance, and this point Paul says now I want you to see behaviorally,
empirically, in your experience, I want you to have the experience of gaining
wealth. Look, he’s saying to this
believer, you have always faced the problem, I need something and when you say
I need you something you always say how can I get it quick, short-circuiting
the means that God has given for you to gain wealth. So because this learned behavior pattern is
in your soul, I want it changed.
So Paul prescribes
work therapy for people in compound carnality where they are going to have to
work and work and work, until they learn the principle of the created order:
wealth comes by labor. But that’s not
all; he just doesn’t leave it there.
Then he adds, “that he may have to give to him that needs.” So he goes beyond just simple work therapy,
the work therapy is not to be considered atonement for his; the atonement for
his sin came when he confessed his sin.
This is not atonement; this is not working off a fine before God. Get that out of your head. This is training, training, training the
person into what he should be doing. But
then he says I want you to not only train in this but I want you to have a
divine viewpoint of wealth, and this goes to step two of his training.
Now watch how
insightful this is. What was the first
step of Paul’s training for a person in compound carnality? That was to master by practice the first
divine institution. He had to master by
practicing this thing. Fine. But Paul was saying now that doesn’t quite go
far enough because if you look back, why did the person say I want that, and I
steal it? There was something wrong with
his whole basic mentality towards property, wasn’t it. So therefore what he does, not only does he
prescribe work therapy but he prescribes given, let him now turn around and
take his wealth that he has earned, and let him habitually give it to other
people who need it. Now this may not
strike you as very important but from what we know in the early church these
principles were enforced by the elders.
Either you did what the apostles told you in concrete things like this
or you were thrown out and excommunicated.
In other words, the church had its own binding (?) law that prescribed
certain things for its members and a believer in compound carnality was
expected to do this; this wasn’t a matter of choice, he was ordered by
apostolic directives to do this, and he would do it or be thrown out. So this was therapy that was fantastic.
Does it dawn on
you now why it could have been said of the first century Christians that they
turned the world upside down? You see
how they took the dregs of society and they changed these people from the
inside out. There wasn’t any magic;
there wasn’t any overnight miracles, it was the application of these kinds of
principles. Ephesians 4 should tell you
how the New Testament handles theft and restitution.
One further point
and it has to do with the thing hinted at at the last of verse 28 and that is
you’re supposed to give to them that have need, and that introduces us to the
final area of theft, and that is… it goes back to what was called the tithe in
the Old Testament and the purpose for it.
Turn back to Leviticus 19; you’ve probably heard sermons on tithing,
don’t sweat it, we’re not going to get involved. But Leviticus 19:9-11 I want to show you the
purpose of the tithe. The tithe in the
Old Testament was used for social welfare, not the church. That’s the first thing that’s wrong about
these sermons you hear on tithing, bring your tithes to the church. That wasn’t true, in the Old Testament the
tithing went to the poor, not to the church.
The tithe was an income tax that was used. It was low; you figure out how much you pay
in percent on income tax, you’d be glad to pay the tithe if that was your
income tax; wouldn’t you love to pay 10% income tax rate. All right, 10% was their income tax and it
wasn’t this socialistic screw the rich policy, the more you earn the higher
percent. Huh-un, that’s socialism, not
the Bible. The Bible had 10% for the
poor and 10% for the rich, and this business of soaking the rich to pay for the
poor is ridiculous. That’s another
violation of God’s ordinances.
In Leviticus 19:9
you have the purpose: “When ye reap the harvest of your land,” this is an
addendum to the tithe, actually this verse, the tithe itself went to Bible
doctrine, one-third to finance the priest, but the rest of it actually went to
this social welfare thing, and to show you how sensitive God was, He had what
He called the gleaning, and here is the gleaning. “When you reap the harvest of your land, you
will not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the
gleanings of the harvest. [10] And you will not glean the vineyard, neither
shall you gather every grape of the vineyard; you will leave them for the poor
and the stranger.”
Remember
Ruth? How did she eat? Ruth went into the field after they had
harvested, and it was the policy of the Hebrew farmers to leave a portion of
their crop in the field and then they would invite the poor and that’s how the
poor fed themselves. Now in a granary
economy you call that gleaning; it was something that was used in some western
nations in the past; I don’t think it’s used today too much but in the
Pennsylvania Dutch country of Pennsylvania it is still used, it is the
agricultural gleaning. Now in an urban
society the nearest thing that would come to this would be Goodwill Industries,
something like this. That would be an
urbanized of the Old Testament gleaning, where the poor are actually given
directly, without the government stepping in, private property.
But to conclude
this, what has this got to do with Ephesians 4:28. Back in Ephesians 4:28 you remember there was
this admonition to give to him that had need.
Here again you see it, give to him that has need. The poor are always looked upon in Scripture
but not in a socialist way; the government isn’t the one that does the
dispensing; it is the individuals that do the giving, private charities are
biblical.
To show you this I
have two quotes how the early church looked upon tithing to the poor, the
giving to the poor. And I want you to
see how they thought about this, and remember, they were Romans, they were
concerned with the corruption politically, the Roman Empire, and they were
saying… the whole political scene is falling apart in front of our eyes. Here is a sermon by an early believer. “Whoever will not give the tithe appropriates
property that does not belong to him, he steals it. If the poor die of hunger then he’s guilty of
murder and will have to answer before God’s judgment seat as a murderer. He has taken that which God has set aside for
the poor and kept it for himself. Our
ancestors had more than they needed because they gave God tithes and paid their
taxes to the emperor. However, since we
do not which to share the tithes with God everything will soon be taken from
us. The tax collector takes everything
that Christ does not receive.” Isn’t
that interesting in light of the 20th century; “the tax collector
takes everything that Christ does not receive.”
What is the point
behind this? Without going into the
peculiarities of the tithe itself I want to show you something. This is a judgment for the sin of theft on a
national entity. God has designed the
fourth divine institution to respect the first.
If the individuals inside the fourth divine institution, that is, a
nation, do not use their property in the sense of giving their property to
those who need it, that too is a sin of theft.
Strange, not to give a sin of theft?
Yes! Not to give to the poor in a
national entity is to take property that God has given for someone’s use and
deprive it and wrench it out of His plan for your plan. All property God has given unto your
jurisdiction is not necessarily intended for you; it is intended for your use,
perhaps indirectly. So the nation, then,
who violates by the sin of theft, the theft of the property God originally
bestowed on that country to be given to the poor, as this person says, it will
all soon be taken from us, “the tax collector will take everything that Christ
does not receive.” Violate God’s laws
and then we become the victim, no one else.
And on one can
plead and whimper and say well I didn’t know, God, of the structure of Your
first divine institution. If you’ve been
here this morning you understand that principle. You understand there’s a created order that
wasn’t legislated by Washington or Austin; they had nothing to do with it. The created order was here a few years before
Washington and Austin existed; the created order was not brought about by men’s
laws; it was brought about by creation.
And you’ve got a choice, to continue in autonomous rebellion against
God’s structure, continue theft in various ways, condone theft on the part of
others or to submit to God’s law words when He says that such theft violates
His order and violations of His laws reap penalty.