Beyond Theft: Understanding The 8th Commandment
In this series, I take our law homily from our church gathering each week (The law homily is where we read from the law of God and let His law examine our hearts so that we can be a tender-hearted and repenting people), and I post them here for your edification. Here is this week’s law homily on the prohibition against mental idolatry.
As we continue making our way through the Ten Commandments, this week we come to the eighth, and the instruction that we shall not steal. While this command is clearly short and seemingly straightforward enough, I can assure you that its application to us should go far beyond crimes of shoplifting or pickpocketing.
This morning, I’ll focus on two primary applications — one at the societal level, and one more personal, as is fitting since we are the ones confessing our sin here this morning and asking the Lord to cleanse us of our unrighteousness as we come before Him.
As Pastor Wilson mentioned last week, our culture suffers under a severe Father Hunger. Largely, we have rejected our Heavenly Father and elevated the state, or civil government, in His place as Sovereign over us. Like Israel in the days of Samuel when they beseeched God for a king like the other nations had, our nation — a once proud, Christian nation — has turned its collective heart away from its fathers and Father, and sought a government that is godless and tyrannical.
In 1 Samuel 8:10-18, we read of the LORD speaking with Samuel regarding this king that He would give to His rebellious people:
10 So Samuel spoke all the words of the LORD to the people who had asked of him a king. 11 He said, “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. 12 He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. 15 He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. 16 He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. 18 Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.” - 1 Samuel 8:10-18
The LORD, in His wisdom and with great judgment, will discipline His people for their wickedness. They would seek for a worldly king? Well, they will get one, and they will see that the governments of men, when rooted to the will of men and not of God, will be corrupt and will corrupt. Let me say that again, the untethered governments of men will be corrupt, and they will corrupt.
The first is obvious, this wicked government of Israel’s first (and most of her later) king will steal much of the wealth of her citizens. Not only ten percent of their seed and flocks, but also their sons for unjust wars and their daughters for labors in other men’s homes, and even, as we read in verse 17, “you yourselves will become his servants.”
Sound familiar?
We certainly live in a time where the state has sought to establish itself as the ultimate authority in the lives of its citizens. And in this, our government, our ancestors, and even some of us here who have participated in this political system for some time, have collectively stolen from ourselves, one another, and our posterity by establishing an unjust king in the place of our God to unjustly tax us at seemingly every turn, to enlist our men and women for unjust war, and to enslave masses of people through inflationary spending, predatory lending, and property taxes that would allow the government to seize a property from you that you own outright — and all this to name only a few.
As John Owen put it:
“Without justice, great commonwealths are but great troops of robbers.”
And what’s worse, this type of thievery by the state produces even greater corruption in God’s people. Notice that God tells Samuel that this king will take a tenth for himself — the same tithe that God requires His people to give to Him. Without fail, when the state would seek to establish itself above the Most High, it will work to steal not only from you, but also even from God Himself.
What, do you imagine, was the result of this extra burden upon the Israelites? Do you think it made them more generous? More eager to honor their tithing obligations to the Levites? To God’s temple?
Look at yourself, giving that ten percent tithe would be a lot easier if you weren’t already giving 30-40 percent to the government, wouldn’t it? And yet, it’s this weakness that the godless state knows it is preying on with its people. They don’t want you to obey God! At the very least, they want to make it very difficult for you to obey.
And so we, as God’s people today, must reckon with our current station. We live under a government given to us by our fathers. What can we do to fix this situation we’re in? Another way to ask this question is, What does repentance look like here? Because we do have a responsibility to live repentantly for these societal sins and how we may be personally participating in them.
Well first, we need to believe that God would have good for His people. We need to believe that it doesn’t make God happy to see us suffering under wicked rulers. Does He use that in our sanctification? Of course, He does, and thankfully so! He is able and uses our suffering for our eternal good.
But He also would have us labor to give something better to our children and our children’s children. We should care about the injustices done to our neighbors by an unjust government. We should not submit to the societal norms that would make us to be slaves by taking on large debts that we can’t afford, we shouldn’t be sending our sons (and obviously not our daughters) to fight in unjust wars, we shouldn’t be sending our wives and daughters out into a workplace to build another man’s kingdom, and we certainly shouldn’t use these economic hard times to justify our own robbing of God of His due tithe and the overall desensitization to disobedience that results.
If these are things you’ve done or are doing, take heart. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even greater for the believer. Trust in the LORD, that His ways are good, that He will lead you through your repentance, and that He has given us all one another to bear each other’s burdens as we walk this life of faith.
But today, brothers and sisters, I’d charge you in the name of the LORD to confess your sins to Him in light of His glorious Law, and ask Him to help you, by His Spirit, in your repentance.
