Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Recognize Your Sin? | Torah | Exodus 20:15, 21:33-22:14

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Is "do not steal" the easiest commandment to follow? What does stealing look like? How does God react to stealing? In today's episode, Tanya discusses the eighth commandment and how stealing doesn't always seem like stealing. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 20:15, 21:33-22:14 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth and right now we're in the book of Exodus. Today on the podcast, we're dealing with the Eighth Commandment, Do Not Steal. Now that might sound benign to you or it might sound like something you don't really struggle with. But let's just say you're walking on a public trail and your kids or your family are with you and you all see a tree full of ripe apples.

In fact, there are so many apples on the tree, they're falling off onto the ground and they're rolling around. While the trail is public use, you know there are people who own the property that butts up to the trail, and it's likely that those owners don't even know the apples are ripe and falling off, or maybe they don't even know they have an apple tree. So you step off the trail to investigate the apples, and you take one hanging from a low branch, and you buy it into it, and then to your surprise, the owner steps out from behind the brush with a gun in her hand. This actually happened in Missouri not too many years ago, but it was a river instead of a trail, and all the people involved that had a few drinks.

It took a lot of lawyers a lot of time to solve its problem. Now, we know as civilized human beings that stealing is morally wrong, but we also know that taking an apple doesn't give someone the right to shoot us. And this is one of the ways the Torah has stepped in and shaped our lives. See, the Torah isn't just an account of how God gave his people laws to follow. It's the true story of how God interrupted the lives of sinful people with his mercy and his grace. Before the Torah, the Near Eastern culture killed and mutilated people for stealing. If you were a woman, you were mutilated so you couldn't use your hands.

And if you were a man, you were usually killed on the spot, no matter how big or how small the thing you stole. But the Ten Commandments and the laws of the covenant that followed gave the command, Thou shalt not steal. And it made room for restitution for thieves. And this was completely countercultural. In Bible times, if you stole someone's ox, you not only got the animal, but you were taking away the time the farmer spent training it. You were taking away the labor the ox would have done for the farmer.

You were taking the hide that could have made clothes or tents and the flesh that could have been eaten. And then you hurt not only the farmer, but your entire community when the farmer couldn't grow enough food and the price went up in the marketplace. For this reason, the Hebrew law commanded the thief to pay the owner back five times the original ox. Now, I don't think we're as good at restitution today, and maybe it's because stealing has become more widespread or more ambiguous or maybe both. Now, if I ask you to come up with a list of things commonly stolen or ways we're tempted to steal in modern culture, it might sound a little bit different than it did in Exodus. It doesn't seem like we're hurting anyone if we're honest. If we shave off from the government and our tax deductions or skim off the top of a large box chain store when they don't charge us for the bananas in the bottom. of our cart. They have plenty, right? If we take a good idea from someone who's written several

books without giving them credit, it doesn't really hurt them because they're so successful and popular they won't even know. But as the creator and owner of all things, God is blessed and gifted people accordingly. And when we take one another has, we're taking away more than their property. We're taking their time, their effort, and their potential. The book of Oseaa talks about how stealing is an indication of social breakdown. Josea 4 or 2 includes stealing in a list of crimes that breaks all bounds and talks about crimes that have bloodshed that leads to bloodshed. That's pretty serious.

So let's say you pad your expense report at work, or let's say you claim receipts for dinners out with friends that aren't really business related. Does that hurt anyone? Well, probably more than we think. See, perhaps it eats into the company's overall budget in a way that creates less margin for charity and forgiving. Perhaps it eats into the relationship with your friends, as they see the way you take advantage of your company. Most likely, though, it eats away at us as we brush past our conscious and what the spirit is telling us,

and as we become hardened in our hearts to the way sin is really just sin. Stealing like all other sin, it creates bloodshed. It turns our hearts and minds away from God. And it does the opposite of what God intended for society to generously care for one another, to encourage one another, to build each other up. Now, there's another way the Bible addresses stealing, and it's not about taking something away, but withholding what we have.

Listen into these verses in Maliki, beginning with Malachi chapter 3, verse 8. Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, how have we robbed you? In your ties and contributions, you are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me,

the whole nation of you. you bring the full tithe into the storehouse so there may be food in my house. See, God has given us good things. He has given us time, money, resources, affections, abilities, talents, gifts, resources so that we can use them for him so that we can give them back in a way that redeems his world. When we rob God when we hoard our money, when we hoard our time, when we hoard our affections, when we hoard our talent, when we place our comfort over his command.

See, God gives us these things and he asks us to use them well. Because as creator, God is concerned about all of his creation. He involves himself in the protection and distribution of physical and intellectual property, time, and talent. Now when you hear that list, money, time, talent, affection, which one do you hold most tightly? The opposite of stealing is living within our means and contentment and generosity. The opposite of stealing is doing what God has equipped us to do with our time and intellect and trusting that what we have done is good enough.

The opposite of stealing is giving away, even when it hurts. hurts or disrupts and believing he is sufficient to meet our needs for rest and provision. We aren't going to do this perfectly, but we can ask God to help us. We can lean on him to affect our hearts in a way that we want to do it more. This is how Exodus is such an integral part of God's redemptive story. God gives commands and God tells us what to do when they're broken. God gives his law and God offered his son because we can't keep it. His expectations are never lowered, but His grace reaches into our lives to redeem us from our broken, from our sinful natures.

And the more we know this, the more aware we are that we need a rescuer, the more aware we are of Jesus Christ. And the more we know our rescuer, the more we want to be generous and intentional and honorable to people and their property in all the ways. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.