Rules for Kingdom Living, Part 5
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Rules for Kingdom Living, Part 5 by Rev. L. John Gable
November 10, 2019
This morning we conclude our series on the Ten Commandments: “Rules for Kingdom Living”. We have seen that these laws, given long ago by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, established the boundary lines, the parameters, for life within the covenant community of Israel. The first four give instruction on the vertical dimension of life, our relationship with God, while the remaining six address the horizontal, social, relationships of our lives. We have seen their timeless application to life in any community in any age, but we have also seen that these laws are given uniquely to God’s people in order that they/we might live as God desires us to live. The Rabbis taught that the Kingdom of God would come if every Jew obeyed every commandment for just one day. Whether that is true or not I do not know, and I rather doubt, but I am quite certain that the world would be a better, kinder, gentler place if we were all to live with in the broad and gracious boundaries of the Law.
Imagine how different life would be if everyone lived by the 8th commandment: “You shall not steal.” Imagine, no need for locks on your door, security systems for your home, secure passwords for your internet accounts. Like other commandments we have seen before, this one almost seems so obvious that it hardly needs to be mentioned, but given that God gave only 10 commandments for right living, apparently it does.
This law is based on the right to private property and ownership and it establishes a basic principle for any society: you shall not take what does not belong to you; a necessary understanding for life together.
Perhaps this is one we may affirm as being necessary for social living, but may not necessarily apply to us. We aren’t the kind of folks who rob banks or break in to other people’s homes, but if we are honest with ourselves we can see areas of our lives where we may readily cross over the line of this commandment. Webster defines stealing as “taking anything without permission or right”. Does that include outwitting the IRS on an income tax report, or padding the expense voucher a little, or stretching out the lunch hour? Or would we say those kinds of things are only hedging, or being clever, or getting what is due us? Did you hear about the man whose guilty conscience prompted him to send a letter to the IRS saying, “I haven’t been able to sleep because last year when I filled out my income tax report I deliberately misrepresented my income. I am enclosing a check for $150, and if I still can’t sleep, I’ll send in the rest.”
Years ago I remember reading a report from a conference on criminality which addressed the issue of so called “white collar” crime. They reported, “White collar crime is when no one would think of taking from the cash register, but we would from the motel room, the supply room, or the IRS.” My dad was a banker in St. Louis and I remember as a boy his telling me about a bank that found that about $10,000 had been embezzled. The authorities decided to give all of the employees a lie detector test to see if they could find who had taken the money, but to their dismay, when asked, “Have you ever taken anything from the bank?” nearly ¾ of the employees answered “yes”. Needless to say the test was meaningless as each employee remembered the pad of paper, the stamps, the pens and pencils that “somehow” made it home with them. Each of us can no doubt think of similar incidences when we have “borrowed” small things, insignificant things hardly worth mentioning, yet none the less, things which did not belong to us.
As I reflected on this commandment, I began wondering if it might also be applied in another way. Have you ever wondered if perhaps your/our/my affluence might in some measure be an act of “stealing” from the poor? Without question we are given rights to private property and ownership, but how much is enough? And at what point does my sense of ownership tip over in to hoarding or trying to create for myself my own sense of security which an earlier commandment would call “idolatry”? As Christians we need to continually grow in our understanding that all that we have been given is a part of the Lord’s bounty to be used not for our own selfish ends alone, but for the work of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. We are all aware that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing increasingly wider, which makes me wonder if in some way my accumulation of wealth and stuff might be considered “stealing” in its purest form.
One antidote to this, of course, is generosity. Centuries ago St. Basil wrote, “What keeps you from giving now? Isn’t the poor man there? Aren’t your own warehouses full? Isn’t the reward promised? The command is clear: the hungry man is dying now, the naked man is freezing now, the man in debt is beaten now – and you want to wait until tomorrow? ‘I’m not doing any harm’, you say, ‘I just want to keep what I own, that’s all!’ You own! If everyone took only what he needed and gave the rest to those in need there would be no such thing as rich or poor. After all, didn’t you come in to life naked and won’t you return naked to the earth?” Similarly, Martin Luther once said, “If our goods are not available to the community they are stolen goods.” We would do well to reflect deeply on the meaning of the 8th commandment for our time.
Just as the 8th calls for honesty in our actions so the 9th calls for honesty in our speech: “You shall not bear false witness.” You know I chose this sermon series months ago, so it seems ironic, or perhaps timely, that we address this topic now, even as witnesses are being called to testify in the impeachment inquiry of our President. I say this in no partisan way at all: it is absolutely necessary, for the maintenance of a free society, that truth be told in all relationships but most importantly by those who lead us. If the foundations of honesty crumble the walls of society will surely fall.
This law originally pertained to truthfulness in the court of law. The legal system of any society is dependent on the honesty of its witnesses. We can easily see how lives can be ruined and justice miscarried if truth is not told. I don’t know if the question is still asked this way or not, but before testifying witnesses are asked to affirm the positive aspect of this commandment, “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” I have often wondered if it is the reference to God that binds people to the truth, or only the fear of the penalty of perjury; I fear it is the latter.
The story is told of the little boy who was called to testify in a lawsuit against his own father. The prosecuting attorney was cross examining him and delivered what he thought to be the crushing blow to the child’s testimony. “Your father has been telling you how to testify, hasn’t he?” “Yes”, replied the little boy. “Now”, said the lawyer triumphantly, “tell the court what he told you to say.” “Well”, said the boy, “He told me that there would be people who would try to tangle me in my answers, but if I would be careful to always tell the truth, I could repeat the same thing every time.”
The intention of this law is not only to safeguard against false testimony, but in a greater sense is a call for honesty and truthfulness in all of our relationships. In Jesus’ teaching, He calls us to absolute integrity, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no”. We should need no other oaths to bind us to the truth for we are God’s people and that should stand for something, with us at least if not with others, because we know that every word we say and every promise we make has been uttered in the presence of God, under oath or not.
Have you ever noticed that we are wonderful “social liars”. In an effort to minimize them we call them “little white lies”; at times to protect ourselves or the feelings of others; other times to protect confidences which have been entrusted to us. We may argue that such social lies are necessary in communal living and there may be some truth to that, but we must ever be careful to safeguard between those seemingly harmless untruths of convenience and the malicious lies of gossip and gain. James Boswell wrote in his journal back in 1778, “We ought to be perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.” “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
The 10th and final commandment again falls under the umbrella of our right relationship with our neighbors, yet it is different than any we have seen before: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Up to this point the commandments have dealt with outward actions, but this one addresses an inward attitude.
Covetousness is forbidden throughout Scripture. From the opening chapters of Genesis we see the impact of this violation. Adam and Eve fell from the grace of the garden because they “coveted” something that was not theirs. They wanted that which had been strictly forbidden. Interestingly the addition of this commandment addresses not only the taking of that which does not belong to us, “Do not steal”, but also the harboring of a desire for it which invariably precedes the action, “Do not covet.”
We live in such a consumer oriented society, so we must be on guard against the threat that that poses to our spiritual lives. We are tempted on every front to obtain more things, bigger and better and newer and faster. As Arthur Gish put it, “We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.” I cut out an article from the Indy Star in January, 2014 written by Peter Dunn, Pete the Planner. The title was “How much stuff is enough?” He writes, “I’ve long thought money to be about flexibility. The more money you have the more flexible you can be. Stuff is the opposite. The more stuff you have, the less flexible you can be…Take for instance the self-storage industry. It’s a $24 billion a year industry. This is an industry primarily serving people who want to pay money to store the things they don’t use.” He goes on, “Take a moment and consider these questions the answers you give will tell you a lot about your relationship with stuff and more importantly money.
- Do you have stuff, not memories, but stuff in boxes?
- If you had less stuff would anything change?
- If you had less stuff would you buy more stuff?
- If you had less stuff would you care more about the stuff you have?”
I would add to that, I wonder how much of that stuff we have that we don’t
use could be well-used by our neighbors in need?
While Pete the Planner is addressing the financial aspect to the question I
think our accumulation of stuff is at root a spiritual issue. We look at our accumulation of stuff or wealth in an attempt to achieve or measure our success, our happiness, our sense of self-worth. We try to measure ourselves by what we have, often in comparison to what others have, invariably comparing ourselves to those who have more not less. We use that superficial standard of measure rather than recognizing ourselves as beloved children of God created in the image of God who are valued not by what we have, but by who we are and by Whose we are.
Of course, the desire to acquire and possess is not inherently wrong, but it tilts that way when it gets out of proportion in our lives. Covetousness is the forbidden attitude which plants seeds of discontent and desire in our lives that eventually bears the fruit of other sins. As we have seen, when “things” become too important to us we fall to the sin of idolatry. When the desire to acquire leads to dishonesty, we steal. When personal gain and profit becomes more important than honesty and ethics, we lie. When our desire for another person leads to the breaking of the covenant of marriage, we commit adultery, and so on.
As Christians, again, we must continually be on guard because we live in a society that finds ways to justify our every action and desire. Richard Foster writes, “In our society, covetousness we call ambition; hoarding we call prudence; greed we call industry.” At its root this commandment warns us against the delusion of seeking our satisfaction and sense of self-worth from things that ultimately will not sustain or satisfy. Possessions do not ensure happiness; affluence cannot purchase contentment; savings do not secure salvation; net worth does not equate to self-worth. Covetousness is an insatiable desire in our lives, so Jesus reminds us to seek the things of God, first, and all else will be ours as well. That is, when God is given His proper place in our lives, all other things will find their proper place as well.
As we have looked at these rules for Kingdom living I imagine each of us have, at one point or another, felt the rub of God’s Law chafe against the leniency of our own ethic and behavior; I certainly have. A gentleman walking out of worship last week said, “I felt like you were talking right to me today.” I said, “I feel the same way. Sometimes I feel like I am just talking out loud to myself and wondering who else would like to listen in.”
Together we have been reminded that these are God’s 10 Commandments, not 10 “suggestions” – not were, but are; and those we haven’t outright broken we have bent considerably. Just like the laws of nature, we find that these laws given and received long ago remain constant for us today in their truth and application. As one has rightly said, “We don’t break the 10 Commandments, we break ourselves against them.”
These commandments are given, not to restrict us and reign us in, but to enable us to enjoy life as God intended it to be lived. They remind us of who we are and Whose we are, and of what He calls us to do and be, because we are God’s people called to live by God’s Kingdom rules.