11/12/17-Eph 6:2-3, The 10 Commandments, Pt. 25, The 8th
Commandment, Pt. 1. Lesson # 17-121
Pastor/Teacher,
Jim Rickard
Grace Fellowship Church
Grace Fellowship Church
Before we begin, if you are a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, (If You have - Trusted in Him for Eternal Life), it is
important to prepare yourself to: Take-in God’s Word and/or Participate in a
Communion Service, so take a moment to name, cite, or acknowledge your sins
privately, directly to God the Father. This will assure that you are in
fellowship with God the Father & the Holy Spirit’s convicting ministry will
then be able to teach you as the Holy Spirit is the real teacher.
1
John 1:9 says— “If we confess [simply name, cite, or acknowledge to God the
Father] our sins [known sins], He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins [known sins] and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness [all unknown & forgotten sins].”
For those of you who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as
your Lord & Savior, please see: The Salvation
Message @ the end of this document.
2 Pet 3:9, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness,
but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all
to come to repentance.”
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Doctrine of the Ten Commandments Related to the Church Age,
Part XXV.
The 8th Commandment.
Ex 20:15; Deut 5:19, “You shall not steal.” Cf. Ex 21:16; Lev 19:11, 13. Ex 20:15; 21:16; Deut 5:19; Jer 7:9; Hosea 4:2
This is the 4th of the
horizontal commandments, given to encourage the respect of other people’s
property, and is closely related to the 10th Commandment, “you shall not covet…” This too is an
important element in a stable society to protect the freedoms, privacy, and
property of each individual.
Just as adultery is a violation
against one’s family, so theft is the violation of one’s property. The 6th
Commandment spoke of the theft of life, the 7th, the theft of the
purity and sanctity of the marriage relationship, and now the 8th,
the theft of goods and possessions.
The Hebrew reads, LO GANAB, לֹא ָגּנַב
, in the Qal Imperfect. GANAB is a verb that denotes, “to steal, rob, or sweep
away.” It is used forty times in the OT.
“To steal” means, “to take without right or permission, generally in
surreptitious way. Taking that which does not belong to you. To get or effect
secretly or artfully. To move, carry, or place surreptitiously. To rob or
commit a theft.”
Jer 7:9, “Will you steal, murder, and commit
adultery, and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal, and walk after other
gods that you have not known.”
Hosea 4:2, “There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and
adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.”
In the OT, it indicates wrongfully
taking objects or persons, Gen 31:19,
32; Ex 21:16, sometimes for a good reason, 2 Kings 11:2. It has the
sense of deceiving when used with the word for heart, LEB, as when Jacob
literally stole Laban’s heart, which meant he deceived him, Gen 31:20, 26. As such, it possesses a wider semantic range in
Hebrew than the English concept conveys, and includes things like kidnapping, 2 Kings 11:2, or selling one into
slavery without legal right, Gen 40:15.
The word GANAB reoccurs in
Deuteronomy only in Deut 24:7, in
relation to kidnapping; a particularly serious violation of the 8th
Commandment, because it typically resulted in slavery. The experience of Joseph
being sold by his brothers, Gen 37,
and Nehemiah’s charge, (which was very much later), that brothers were selling
brothers, Neh 5:5-9, illustrate the
selling of fellow Israelites for personal gain.
It also means stealing intangibles,
(i.e., dignity, self-respect, freedom, or rights), which all are important. The
word is also used for stealing in the sense of cheating; by cheating someone
out of something, you are stealing from him. Finally, this verb is used even of
robbers, who perpetrate violence upon their victims in the highway or the city
street.
This command is reinforced by a
variety of individual laws on stealing, Ex
22:1-16, Lev 6:2-5; 19:11, 13; Deut 24:7. Thus, taking anything human,
animate, or inanimate without legal right is described by this verb, and it
covers any type of deception or fraud, by which the offender takes unjust
advantage of someone else, whether in the matter of money, business, or
property.
This commandment even goes back to
the beginning when man sought to take what did not belong to him, i.e., the
fruit from the tree in the Garden of Eden. Therefore, there is obviously an
inherent evil in the illegitimate appropriation of another’s property, but on
an even higher covenantal and theological level, theft betrays an essential
dissatisfaction with one’s lot in life and a covetous desire to obtain more
than the Lord, the Sovereign who dispenses to his stewards what seems best, has
granted already.
GANAB is first used in the OT in Gen 30:33, in the story of Jacob and
Laban regarding the herd given and entrusted to Jacob, were it is the opposite
of honesty, righteousness, or justice.
On the vertical plan, our Lord,
YHWH, indicts false prophets for “stealing
My words,” or performing slander, in attributing statements to Him which
were not His, stamping them with a falsely authoritative, “Thus says Yahweh,” Jer 23:30.
God gave Israel an elaborate set of
laws to govern their use of the land, because the land belonged to Him and they
were but stewards, Lev 25:2, 23, 38.
This fact is the basis for a sane ecology. Therefore, the opposite of stealing
is to remember what God has graciously given us. Rather than stealing, we
should have thankful hearts that rejoice in what God has provided for us. We
should be good stewards with what God has given us. Otherwise, we may be more
tempted to steal and commit sin against our Lord. We must remember that what we
have is not our own, but it is the Lord’s. As He has given freely, so we too
should give freely, cf. Psa 50:10;
104:24.
What God has given to you becomes
your own legal possession, giving you personal ownership of things. This is
implicitly permitted by this commandment, which assumes that stealing is
possible, something that would technically not be possible in a completely
communal society. There are, of course, no completely communal societies;
ownership of things exists in all families and neighborhoods and entire societies,
no matter what their economic organizational structure. But with ownership
comes responsibility, and respect for ownership is a responsibility in itself
as well. Therefore, this commandment speaks of the sanctity of each person’s
own possessions. It says that people have a right to hold property that is
distinctively theirs and that other persons do not have a right to take that
property by force or stealth.
In the 3rd Commandment,
man was forbidden to manipulate God for personal gain; here the attempt to use
our fellow man for personal gain is prohibited. Thus, stealing threatens the
social order and causes pain to others by undermining the ability to possess
with sure access things that are useful and needful. The food thief makes
others go hungry; the work animal thief interrupts farming; the kidnapper tears
apart a family; the clothing thief makes another suffer from the sun or the
cold. This property is typically gained through the expenditure of a person’s
foresight, energy, and diligence. Thus, to appropriate another’s property is to
also steal those personal qualities.
R.B. Thieme Jr. noted, “Both socialism and communism are
characterized by the destruction of privacy and property. The concept of
government ownership of property is contrary to the Word of God. The government
does not have the right to own your property, nor does the government have the
right to interfere with industry, much less own industry. The sanctity of
private property is one of the most basic concepts of freedom. Therefore, at
any time the government gets into industry or business, a nation is already in
industrial slavery. We are in industrial slavery today in this nation because
the government has violated this commandment through taxation of industry,
through pressure upon industry and through legislation against industry. The
result of such practices is economic disaster.”
Therefore, all theft is forbidden
by this precept, as well as national and commercial wrongs, petty larceny,
highway robberies, and private stealing. Even the taking advantage of a
seller’s or buyer’s ignorance to give the one less and make the other pay more
for a commodity than its worth is a breach of this sacred law. All withholding
of rights and doing of wrongs are against the spirit of it.
This commandment also speaks of the
Faith-Rest Life. Because you have entrusted your needs to the covenant Lord,
you do not have to manipulate others to get your needs supplied. In fact, you
can value and honor others. The Bible says that those who live by these
principles not only will not need to steal, they will have abundance to give
away, Deut 15:6-8; 28:10-12.
The penalty for stealing is milder
in the OT legal codes than in other societies of the time. Death was the
penalty for a number of types of theft in most other Ancient Near East
societies, including the inability to make restitution, but this was not the
case in Israel.
Death was the penalty for stealing
humans, Ex 21:16; Deut 24:7.
Ex 21:16, “He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him
or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.”
In all other cases of theft,
restitution with interest was the penalty, Ex
22:1ff. This also involved the payment of a guilt-offering consisting of a
ram, to be sacrificed upon the altar. The specific term for this is ASHAM, אָשָׁם
in the Hebrew, which means “guilt-offering.” But, in the case of a rustler who
had stolen livestock, it was required not only to bring the animal back to its
owner, but also another one of the same kind, Ex 22:1, 4. But if he had gone so far as to kill or sell off the
stolen animal, he had to replace four sheep for a stolen sheep, or five bulls
or cows for the theft of large livestock, Ex
22:1.
The punishment for the
transgression of theft went beyond the civil law codes. The flying scroll of
YHWH in Zechariah’s vision was an embodiment of God’s judgment through the Holy
Spirit who reveals sin. It was a written source for indictment on those who
stole and those who took the Lord’s name in vain, Zech 5:3ff. A curse entered the house of the thief or by means of
this scroll.
The reward of theft is a hollow
one, as only a fool following the teachings of personified foolishness,
contrasted to personified Wisdom, subscribes to the adage in Prov 9:17-18, “Stolen water is sweet, and
bread that is eaten in secret is pleasant. 18But he does not know
that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.”
Civil and Divine penalties negate the financial gain one reaps from this act.
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A PERSONAL NOTE FOR YOU
John
6:47 says: “Most assuredly,
I say to you, he who believes in Me [Jesus
Christ] has everlasting life.”
Notice again what John 6:47 says, “he who
believes in Me [Jesus Christ] has everlasting life.” It doesn’t say,
“will have;” it says, “has.” Therefore, the very moment you believe
Jesus Christ’s promise of everlasting life, you have it, and it can never be
lost or taken away from you [John
10:28-29]. Furthermore, the gift of everlasting life [also called eternal
life in Scripture] is available to every human being; there are absolutely no
exceptions.
John
3:14-18 says: “And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not
send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does
not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of
the only begotten Son of God.”
Eph
2:8-9, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it
is the gift of God: 9 Not
of works, lest any man should boast.”
If
you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I am here to tell
you that Jesus loves you. He loves you so much that He gave His life for you.
God the Father also loves you. He loves you so much that He gave His only Son
for you by sending Him to the Cross. At the Cross Jesus died in your place.
Taking upon Himself all of your sins and all of my sins. He was judged for our
sins and paid the price for our sins. Therefore, our sins will never be held
against us.
Right
where you are, you now have the opportunity to make the greatest decision in
your life. To accept the free gift of salvation and eternal life by truly
believing that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was raised on the third day
as the proof of the promise of eternal life. So right now, you can pause and
reflect on what Christ has done for you and say to the Father:
"Yes Father, I believe that
Your Son, Jesus Christ, died on the cross for the forgiveness of my sins."
If
you have done that, I Welcome You to the Eternal Family of God !!!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Grace Fellowship Church
Pastor/Teacher: James H. Rickard
23 Messenger Street, Unit 3
Plainville, MA 02762
Pastor/Teacher: James H. Rickard
23 Messenger Street, Unit 3
Plainville, MA 02762
Copyright
© 2001 - 2017.
Property of: James H Rickard Bible Ministries
All Rights Reserved.
Property of: James H Rickard Bible Ministries
All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment