So 2 Samuel chapter 12, you can find that on page 263 there in the Pew Bible. And the theme here for tonight is stealing. So 2 Samuel 12, and then we're going to read 2 Samuel 15. Notice how stealing comes up in both passages. 2 Samuel chapter 12, reading from 1 to 7. And the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to King David. Nathan came to David and said to him, there were two men in a certain city, but one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. He used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man. And he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who would come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who would come to him. And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. Nathan said to David, you are the man. Let's turn over to 2 Samuel chapter 15. Verses 1 to 6. 2 Samuel 15, reading 1 to 6. The Absalom here is one of David's oldest sons. After this, Absalom got himself a chariot and horses and 50 men to run before him. And Absalom used to rise early and stand beside the way at the gate. And when any man had a dispute to come before the king for judgment, Absalom would call to him and say, from what city are you? And when he said, your servant is of such and such a tribe in Israel, Absalom would say to him, see, your claims are good and right, but there is no man designated by the king to hear you. Then Absalom would say, oh, that I would judge in the land, that every man with a dispute or cause might come to me and I would give him justice. Whenever a man came near to pay homage to him, he would put out his hand and take hold of him and kiss him. Thus Absalom did to all of Israel who came to the king for judgment. So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel. Our real text for this evening is the Eighth Commandment. You shall not steal. Stealing Well, it's an interesting thing. There are so many ways to do it. And there are several motivations for it. You know, when it comes to murder, the motivation is generally anger. And so Jesus connects the two in the Sermon on the Mount. When it comes to adultery, there may be a few possible motivations. But mainly, it's going to be lust. And so Jesus attacks and puts the two together in the Sermon on the Mount. But he doesn't proceed there to discuss stealing next, and that is perhaps because there's various motivations that might lead you to steal. One is that you simply covet that thing. I remember a theft going down in front of me when I was a middle school student. We were outside for gym class, and we were coming in from the field, and we had to walk by the bike racks. And my junker of a bike was locked up there, so I kind of cared what was going on in those bike racks. I had nothing to fear. But some other kid had some really fancy-looking things on his spokes there, dice or something. And sure enough, one of the other kids ran over and was taking them off and putting them into his own pocket. Yes, he coveted the thing. He had to have it. And what you need to realize, if and when you find yourself with that kind of coveting eye, is that you're making an idol of that thing. That is to say, you are saying, I am not happy, but I will be happy if I can just have that thing. God has told me not to take things that are not mine, but I'm going to set that aside because I see something so precious, so essential to my being, that I will ignore God in order to take it. That's essentially, you could say, making an idol of it. When you say, this is more important to me in this moment than God Almighty and what He has said. And of course, I began by saying, you covet the thing. Of course, coveting is two commandments later. In the 10th commandment, you shall not covet, whether a person or a thing or anything else. And so you see the commandments are connected. Coveting comes usually first, and then perhaps stealing. But then there's a scripture that says that coveting is idolatry. And you say, well, that's the Second Commandment. It's the Eighth Commandment. It's the Tenth Commandment. Yes. These things, sin tends to snowball. It attempts to get all connected together. So stealing, one motivation is simply that you covet the thing. But you know, it could also come about more because you see your neighbor as prey. And because you see your neighbor as prey for you, Well, quite naturally, you then proceed to take whatever it is from him. Again, in middle school, I had a teacher, very smart teacher. Spent a lot of time with this teacher, the way the school was set up. And he began by talking about chickens. He said, if you have a chicken in a cage, it'll go around pecking. And if it pecks a given bar and nothing happens, it'll move on to the next bar. But if it pecks a bar and some food pops out, It'll eat the food and go back and peck that bar again. And it'll keep pecking until it's full. But he said, the way to keep the chicken pecking that bar forever is to give him food sometimes. So he doesn't know. Once out of every four or five times, suddenly there's food. Make it unpredictable, and don't fill the chicken up too fast, and he'll be pecking that thing forever. Then he said, and I apply this with my friends. I play bridge for money. I'm a better player than they are. I could beat them every time and take their money from them, but in order to keep them playing so that I can keep taking money from them, I make sure that I let them win every fourth time or so. He was, of course, recommending his cleverness to us. I want you to note that, but also note something else. Would you want to have a friend like that? Remember, they're playing for money. This isn't just the chess player who throws you a game once in a while. He's deliberately taking his friend's money because he can't. This is gambling, of course. But you notice it wasn't really gambling for my teacher because he was better at it than the others. He wasn't gambling. They were. He was, in effect, the house, which always wins. And so gambling also is something that is off limits for us. It is not a good stewardship of what God has entrusted to us. And if we say, oh, it's good stewardship for me, I win, then we're viewing our neighbor as prey. But you will say, well, but gambling is fun. I suppose it can be. That gets us to a third possible motivation for stealing, and that is the adventure of it. Augustine talks about stealing some fruit. It might have been pears. I don't know. But he talks about how he didn't even like pears. But he stole them for the adventure of it. He stole it for the thrill of it. And in high school now, I remember friends talking about their comic books, and they'd go to comic book shows and steal the comic books. And I could tell it was a combination, that they actually liked comic books, but also it was the thrill of the thing. Although then I remember them talking about the time that one of them got caught, and they sounded much more sober about it. Yes, you shall not steal. And you might steal from a variety of motivations. But they're all wrong. They're all wrong. Proverbs notes that one, at least, is more understandable than others. Men do not despise a thief if he steals bread when he is starving. It says in scripture. You understand that? He's starving. At the same time, he still has to pay it back. So that is a crime. How much more when we steal not out of an empty belly, but out of adventure, or making an idol of something, or just because we think our neighbor is prey. So you shall not steal. Let me briefly give a couple of the ways in which people steal. If you punch someone and take his lunch, that's stealing. On the other hand, if you just go into the closet at school and take his lunch when he's not looking, that is still stealing. If you look over and check your answer on Kevin's paper next to you and then change your answer because Kevin's answer looks better, that is also a form of stealing. If you need to get a paper done quickly and you open up Wikipedia, I guess it would be now. Start copying and pasting. This also is stealing. If you break something that belongs to someone else, if you walk by a camper and decide to break the windows, this also is a form of theft. A man had once owned an intact camper. Now he owns a damaged camper. You've reduced its value. You have stolen from him. If you agree to do a job, and you're getting paid by the hour, but you're on your phone for 20 minutes every hour, this is also stealing. Because you're getting paid to do the whole hour, and you're only giving them 40 minutes. David with Bathsheba, you'd say, now that's adultery. But in the parable that Nathan tells, that he lays down alongside the adultery, he tells a parable of stealing. The rich man stole the poor man's sheep. And of course, you all see what a close parallel it is, how appropriate it is for Nathan to say at the end of it, you are the man. Which tells us again that adultery, looked at from another angle, is stealing. Not because wives are property, but because the relationship belongs between the two of them. And it does not belong somewhere else. So of course, what we read second. Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel. That is, they had a rightful king. A king anointed by God's prophet. A king that they had acclaimed and signed a covenant with. A king who had saved them in battle on multiple occasions. And he wasn't doing so well now, but he was their rightful king. And it was not for a prince to steal their hearts. Now, you need to understand that God calls us to a much higher standard than the laws of any state. We are called to a much higher standard than what the law will enforce. That is to say, there are many ways of stealing that are illegal according to the laws of the state, but are forbidden to us as believers. For example, if you have the skill, you can write a contract and perhaps get the other party to sign it, knowing full well that in this contract you're putting all the risk on the other person. I recently saw this attempted. My parents own a cabin and some acres, and there's a stream, and there's people upstream and people downstream, and people in one direction kept coming onto our property to do such and such. We all figured out who each other was. We sat down and made an agreement orally, OK? This is how it's going to be, all right? You can do what you want on our property if we can do what we want on your property. We had it worked out. Then we got time to, you know, she on her side had her lawyer draw it up. And we looked through the first draft that got sent to us. It basically said, You will promise to let us do what we want forever in perpetuity, but you might get what you want until you mess up, and then you won't have that right anymore. We didn't sign that one. We sent it back and said, try again. But a lot of people don't read the contracts. Some contracts get fantastically long so that you won't read the whole contract. Some people can't read. And so doubtless, some of these, say, sharecropping arrangements made in the South between those who had educations and those who did not, no doubt many of those arrangements were made and were oppressive, but legal. Or the song, 16 tons and what do you get? I owe my soul to the company store, lays out another way in this nation's past where those in a position to have others over a barrel made sure that they would stay over a barrel. You can get paid, but not with money, only with script that you can only use at the company store. And then how are you ever going to get anywhere where you can only spend your money at the company store? Things like this are often legal. But the Lord calls them stealing, when it is a trick by which you deprive the other of his due. So there are many ways in which people steal. In the book of Exodus, you have the commandment, you shall not steal. And the next time you see the word steals, in the next chapter, where it says, whoever steals a man should be put to death. Now, why would you steal a man? In recent American thought, it might be for ransom. But actually, the main reason to steal a man is to enslave him. And that is what we're after there in Exodus 21, 16. One of the most, well, the most heinous way to steal is to steal a person away from his family, away from his life, and put him to work as a slave somewhere else. Or Native American treaties. A country would often make a treaty and then break it. There's actually a recent shocker from the Supreme Court. There was an old treaty that made Oklahoma, before it was the state of Oklahoma, it was Indian territory. And then we went back on that, ah, forget it. It's the state of Oklahoma. But just in the last month, the Supreme Court said, well, actually, we're going to start respecting one of these treaties again, in terms of the jurisdiction that this particular Native American man is going to be under. And people said, what? Supreme Court saying, the United States signed a treaty. Going back on a century or more of theft. Well, a few years ago, a man made the news. He became known as Pharma Bro. What did Pharma Bro do? Well, Pharma Bro was in the pharmaceutical, the drug industry, the legal drug industry. And he saw that there was some necessary medication that was being sold, manufactured and sold relatively cheaply. So he figured out how to buy the rights to it. so that it was in his control. And once he had control over this product, then he jacked up the price like 50 times or something like that. This was a hardship for the people who need this drug to live. He was interviewed and was very pleased with himself. And what a brilliant guy he was. Notice what he did. Now how could he go on TV and be proud of himself? Because it was legal, that's why. But it was stealing. Stealing in the sight of God. God calls us to a higher standard than, I can make it work legally in this country. People in this church have been affected by this. I know a family that got a mortgage, and they were told, this is a high beginning interest rate, but just make your payments for a year, and we'll give you a new low interest rate. They said, OK. After the year, they couldn't get the company, they couldn't get back to them. You could never get back in touch with the company to negotiate that promised lower mortgage rate. Somehow the company had a lot more incentive on the front end than on the back end. So don't assume that business, big or small, is out for your good. You need to read the fine print. You also have to know that God Almighty holds you to a higher standard. Let's come to the positive side of the commandment. If we are not to steal, what are we to do? Well, we are to guard and protect our neighbor's good. And we are to do to our neighbor as we would have him do to us. One amusing to us specific in the Torah is if you see your enemy's donkey wandering away, you shall not kick it to make it go faster. You shall not steal it to make it your own. You shall not simply turn around and say, I didn't see that. No, you will take your enemy's donkey, and you will go to the trouble of returning your enemy's donkey to your enemy. You're to protect your neighbor's goods, just as you would want your neighbor to protect your own goods. And we're to do this out of a reverence for God who has distributed goods as he sees fit, from which we see that private property is a legitimate thing. There are some things held in common, like the air we breathe, like at least a few of the beaches that are available. There's a few things that are held in common. And then there are things that are yours or mine or someone else's, like the house you live in. Somebody owns that. It may or may not be you, but somebody does. The shirt you're wearing. Yeah, we'll just leave it yours, OK? It is right and proper that there be a fair number of things, a lot of things, that are private property. And so God here, you could say, establishes the legitimacy of private property. Now, once in a while, somebody kind of comes up with a Christian spin on why there should not be private property. So just to equip you, let me quickly equate you with two facile arguments so that if you hear them, you're not struck dumb with the ingeniousness of them. All right? You'll say, well, I heard this before. Acts 2, Acts 4, the first church in Jerusalem, it says they have all things in common. And it kind of talks about how great that was. No one said that anything was his own. They all shared with each other as anyone had need. And Christians ever since have read their Bibles and said, man, we should be like that. How did we go wrong? So does that overturn everything we've been saying tonight? Well, no. Think of all the other churches that you read about in the Book of Acts. Are any of them told to share everything in common? No. Are we told that they did it anyway? No. Think of all the letters that are written, not just letters by Paul, but letters by John, letters by Peter, letters by Jude, letters by James, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem. Are we ever told that private property is not legitimate? No. Well, then the church in Jerusalem is the exception there. And you might notice that later on, they're poor, and they need the other churches to send them help. But what about the rich young rulers? He goes to Jesus, he says, do I lack anything? Jesus says, well, do you know the commandments? They run through the commandments. The rich man ruler says, well, I've kept all the commandments. And Jesus says, still one thing you lack. Sell all you have and give to the poor, and come follow me. Is that what he says to every believer? that we are all to sell all that we have, give to the poor, and come follow Jesus." He does say, follow him. But think of all the other people that Jesus interacts with. Do we see him saying that to anyone else? No? Well, then that was the exception. He had asked to be shown what he lacked, and Jesus found a way to show him what he lacked. So private property is a legitimate thing. Some things are rightfully yours, rightfully hers, rightfully his, rightfully theirs. And that is in God's hand. Now, we've covered the positive side, what we are to do. But who are we to be? What kinds of people ought we to be? What habits of mind? What virtues in life? And I'm going to go here to Ursinus, which is not a college in the first place. It was in the first place a gentleman, a Christian writer, a little bit after, about the same time as Calvin or a touch later. Our sign is at this point. It says, the one thing we have to have is contentment. It is a great virtue to say, all right, I am content with the little that I have. Consider 1 Timothy 6. Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who want to be rich, fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Do you have what you need? I didn't say, did you have what you want? Take your eyes off the rich. And boy, we've got some rich people in this neighborhood. Never mind them. Do you have what you need? Yes? Well, then be content. After all, Jesus taught us to pray, give us this day our bread for today. Give us this day our daily bread. And if we can be in that spot, I've got today's bread, I'm good. And that is a wonderful place to be. And the Bible often says, you're better off with a little and content than having a lot and being discontented. And really, that's just pretty much a matter of definition. Because if you're discontented, what's another word for discontented? Unhappy. You are better off with a little and contented than you would be with a lot. When you're discontented, you're unhappy, and you're disputing with God about how things go. So what kinds of people are we to be? We are to be content and thankful, and we're to be faithful. We're to make a just deal. And then we're to keep the deal. As we are, of course, trying to protect ourselves from losses, we also ought to have that other part of our mind saying, and how can I also protect my neighbor from a loss here? Maybe I could charge him 80 bucks an hour here, because he doesn't know what he's going to do. Is that just to my neighbor? That depends, of course, on where you're at, what we're talking about, and so on. But we ought to be considering our neighbor as well. We're to be generous. Scripture says we ought to give to the needy. We ought to give to the needy as we are able. We ought not to consider. Again, this goes back to the example there of the church in Jerusalem. People were giving to those who had need. But take care. You have to give to the needy as you are able. I knew a man once. He had people come from far away, and he wanted to make them comfortable, and so he began to give them walking around money. A lot of walking around money. Every week, more than he could afford. And you say, you can't do this for your own family. Why are you doing it for them? We ought to be generous and balance that with some prudence. You might say, or Sina says, some frugality. That is both that we're to know the state of our own flocks, the state of where things stand with our business. When you don't pay attention, that's when you're in danger, you'll lose. We're to avoid unnecessary expenses. If we're always spending as much as we can on ourselves, how then will we be able to give any to someone else? And when we do give to someone else, let us take care. We're not giving so abundantly over here that we're impoverishing what God has given us to live on. I'm going to be hospitable, especially to strangers, especially to travelers, especially to those who've been driven out by persecution. You have to be aware of being stingy. I can't help you because I might not have enough. That's not good. You also got to be aware of being imprudent. I'll just give and give and give with no mind, no thought of where I'm going to be. You're required to have a moderate and modest attitude, being alert to guard. God is entrusted to our care, not being stingy, not being obsessed, not being anxious. It says in Proverbs, Lord, let me be neither rich nor poor. If I'm rich, I might say I don't need you. The rich imagine their money to be their answer to everything. And if I'm poor, maybe I'll be that man who steals bread because he's starving. And so profane the name of my God. And so to avoid poverty, You need to each seek a lawful calling. Now, there's some old-fashioned language for you. You need to seek a law. Abby, you need to seek a lawful calling. What does that mean? That means, young people, that as you go to school, along with learning about the world and trying to do good in your classes, you have to, and as you get older, this has to take up, you know, gradually take up more of your thinking. How am I going to earn money when I'm a grown-up? How am I going to earn enough money to support a family? By the time you get to, say, college, that needs to be something of a governing concern. How is it that in a legitimate, God-honoring way, I will earn money, like with God's grace and God's help, enough to support a family? We need to be alert to do these things. And yet, as we think about that, we're going to have to become anxious. But not to be like the world that idolizes these things. When you go to school, I've been using school examples today. You go to school, half the school is telling you the ultimate life is parties. And the other half is saying, no, the ultimate life is when you work hard, and you get A's, and you get your bachelor's in chemical engineering, and then you get your master's in business administration, and then you start at $200,000 a year. Am I quoting pretty exactly? Oh, yeah. All right. Two of us know exactly what teacher we're talking about. Now, right now, we're all hoping that the chemical engineers come up with something great for us, right? So it's good to have chemical engineers. Thank you very much. But that's the other half of the school. It's either parties or it's career and money. And that is the good life as put before you by the schools. I knew I had to see through that. You come, you hear the word of God preached, and you know that after all those things the Gentiles eagerly seek, but it is not to be so among you. You are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And in that vein, you also need to be sadly realistic. You're to watch over your estate, sure, but thieves can still break in and steal. The moth can still eat it up. the flood can sweep it away. All kinds of ways where you can be doing everything you're supposed to do, and it gets washed away. That should make you more eager to make a more secure investment. And that is what Jesus tells us to do. He says, don't be laying up treasure on earth, where it has such a good chance of being inflated away, or stolen, or ruined. But lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where it cannot be reached by a thief. Stealing is often a case of a misplaced hope. I'll be secure if I have that. You won't be secure if you have that. You'll be less secure. You will have offended God. Let us pursue a secure hope, a living hope. The living Savior, Jesus Christ, who forgives thefts and sins, and who will take us to be with him. The commandment stands, you shall not steal, even when it's legal. You shall do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You shall guard your own and your neighbor's property. Now, I want to pivot here at the end to any of you who may have a guilty conscience, whether you're here before me or watching online. No matter what your past is, there is hope for you because Jesus Christ has not insisted on keeping hold of what is His. Rather, He emptied Himself. He took on our poverty so that in Him we might become rich. He took on our mortality so that in Him we might become immortal. Yes, He took on our sins which oppress us. so that in Him we might be the righteousness of God. This is the marvelous exchange that He has made with us. So if your conscience pricks you, because you perceive the thefts that you are guilty of, go to Christ, ask forgiveness for the sins, return what you can, and live a new life. As it says in Ephesians 4.28, let the thief steal no longer, but rather let him labor. That's the right way to get things. You work, you earn money, you buy them yourself. Working with his hands, what is good? Again, a good thing, help to others. So that he might be able to share with the one in need. And there we have a total reversal of the thief. When instead of taking from someone unjustly, you share with someone mercifully. Jesus said it's more blessed to give than to receive. when we lay hold of them. The Lord God sees and rewards us when we are truly His image, when we glory in giving more than in receiving. Let us join together. Heavenly Father, we thank You that we are fed, that we are clothed, that we have a place to go home tonight. Thank you that you have provided that for us. Lord, we ask that you would provide it for us and help us also not to be anxious about it. Lord, please forgive us for our sins of envy and coveting. Please forgive us if we have viewed our neighbor as a prey. Help us, Lord, to find adventure in following you. And we thank you that our Lord Jesus Christ has come, that our sins may be washed away, and that we can stand before you, forgiven by you, glorying in the treasure that is laid up in heaven. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.