Stealer to Sharer(07Nov10)
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Series: Loving God through the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M7: Sermon Notes D: (10 11 07)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Stealer to Sharer
Text: Deuteronomy 5:19; Ephesians 4:28; Exodus 20:15
BIG IDEA: We express our love for God and our neighbour by not stealing and by giving generously.
When I was a young teenager, one of my favorite hobbies was shoplifting. I loved the rush of walking into a store and stealing. At first I stole little things like a little black rubber ball just to see if I could do it. I gradually worked up to the point where I felt confident stealing a baseball batting glove. Then I moved up a little further and started ripping off handheld electronic football games.
Especially if with a friend while stealing, I felt like I was part of a mini version of a movie like Mission Impossible. I always rationalized my stealing by saying to myself, "I'm not hurting anyone. This big store isn't going to be impacted by my little shoplifting. Besides, I'm giving some of the stuff away, and having a great time."
Personal computers were just becoming popular when I was a teenager, and I never figured out how to do this, but I understand today that teenagers (and older people) enjoy hacking into other people's computers and stealing their credit cards. Like me as a teenager, they enjoy the thrill of stealing something and they rationalize their "carding" by saying that actual credit card owners will not have to pay for the stuff that they (the hackers) have charged on their credit card because the credit card companies will pay for it. The credit card companies just assume that fraud is part the cost of doing business.
Today we’re going to look at God’s perspective on stealing as we look at the Eighth Commandment. Again we’ll see how it’s not motivated by God out of desire to wreck our lives, but so that we can flourish and others can flourish because of us.
Please turn to Deuteronomy 5:19: You shall not steal.
You shall not steal. Simply put. In the Hebrew it is even more simple, one word—no stealing.
The commandment against stealing, as we will see in the Old Testament, typically referred to kidnapping or the taking of cattle or sheep or tools.
Now there is a 3-fold reason for this commandment against stealing.
One of the reasons that God says no stealing is because it hurts our neighbour; that is, it hurts the person you steal from. Have you ever had something stolen? Your bike? Your laptop? Some money? It felt like a violation, didn’t it? It hurt. Stealing hurts the person who is stolen from.
A second reason that you are commanded not to steal is that stealing hurts the stealer—it hurts us. When I was in my first year of undergrad, I remember reading Plato’s Republic. In one of Plato’s dialogues, he sets up a conversation where someone asks Socrates, “Is it ever to your advantage to be dishonest if, for instance, you knew that you would not be caught? For example, if you had the ring of Gyges, the magic ring that granted its owner the power to become invisible at will, would it ever be to your advantage to steal?” And Socrates in a very elaborate dialogue argues, “No, it is never in your advantage to steal, even if you know ahead of time that you will not get caught, because when you steal, you damage your own soul. It is never in your interest to damage your soul.”
If your life is like a character in a movie, do you want to be a character whose choices make your soul darker and darker?
Because stealing hurts our neighbour, the one we steal from, and us--it also hurts God. When we hurt our neighbour, we dishonour our neighbour’s Maker. When we hurt us, we dishonour our Maker. So stealing hurts our neighbour and us, and thus dishonours our Maker.
Some of you may be saying that this particular commandment is not one that I have a problem with. (Perhaps you think, “I never sereptitiously slid a Kit Kat into my pocket at the checkout stand at the grocery store.” You might think, “I would never even think about snatching a purse from an elderly lady standing at an intersection waiting for a traffic light to change. I don’t even steal towels or robes from the hotel. I don’t even take the little shampoos and conditioners from the hotel--which I think may be complimentary. Unlike 93% of Canadian parents, I don’t even steal candy from my kids Halloween bag.”
There are lots of different ways to steal today that are not quite so obvious. We can steal from our workplaces. People in older generations who felt the impact of the Great Depression and World War II, and the older baby boomers tend to work really hard—and in many cases were defined primarily by their work. People in younger Generations, members of Gen X (people who in mid-forties and to late twenties), members of Gen Y (people who are now 28 and younger) tend to put a fairly clear line between work and personal and recreational life and work and their family life—if they have a family, which in many ways is a very good thing. They felt their parents stole time from them and gave it to their companies. Younger people today are much more likely than older generations to say, “I live for the weekend,” meaning that work is simply a means to generate income so I can enjoy the weekend. We are much more likely as members of the Gen-X and members of the Gen-Y group, to hesitate to make any long-term commitment to a job. We are more likely to think, more than older generations, about what a company can do for us, rather than what we can do for the company.
Having a personal life-work life-family balance is a very good thing. I am not glorifying workaholism. But, if we don’t work hard while we work and produce quality work (and it’s possible to work hard while we work AND to have a personal life and family life, too), then we are stealing from our work places.
Part of what it means to not steal is to work hard and well while we work.
If we are students or if we write for our living, we can steal through plagiarism. The New York Times recently had an article entitled Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in the Digital Age. It is becoming more and more common, as we know, for students to simply copy paragraphs from the Internet and paste them into their papers without giving credit. We can steal by not attributing our sources in our school work or work-work.
In the Digital age, as I suggested earlier, today people can hack into other people’s computers and steal credit cards, calling cards, and software.
Some younger artists like the rock band Radiohead. They are OK if people download their music for free. They want you to video their music and post on YouTube without getting permission (knowing that if more people are exposed to their music more people will come to their concerts and buy their T-shirts). I know the laws regarding what you can digitally copy are still evolving, and, depending on your age, you’ll probably view the ethical issues differently here (and we don’t have time to get into an extended discussion of in this sermon). But since this is an issue relevant to so many of us, I would say let’s be mindful, prayerful, and seek integrity in our choices.
Our income tax protocols here in Canada are in part based on an honour system. If we cheat on our income tax, we are stealing from the government.
So the Eighth Commandment against stealing is broader than we think at first glance.
(Transition)
For every commandment that is stated in the negative in the Ten Commandments, there is a positive corollary. The positive corollary to this Eighth Commandment against stealing is to share what we have, to be generous. As stealing damages our soul, so living generously brings life to our soul.
As I said earlier, if we are working, part of the way we can give is by working hard while we work. Again, I am not suggesting by any means that we become workaholics, that we let our jobs take over our lives. Having a personal life, time for family and friends is very good. But I am saying part of what it means to honour God is by living generously, and part of what it means to live generously is to give our best while we work.
If we find ourselves with a job, which in our current economy is something we can be truly grateful for, if we are a follower of Jesus Christ, part of the way we honour the positive corollary of the Eighth Commandment, to not steal, is to give generously to God and to others.
In the book of Malachi, God is utterly transparent, like he’s in a lover’s quarrel with his people, “You have been unfaithful to me; you have turned away from me.”
And he says to his people, “Return to me, I will return to you.” But then his people ask, “How will we return?”
It is interesting that God’s first response isn’t to say “pray” or “sing” or get rid of your bad anger or your lust or sign up for Practicing the Presence.
God’s first response is to say, “Stop robbing me.”
In Malachi 3:8-10:
8 "Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, 'How are we robbing you?'
"In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
God says that when we his people don’t tithe, which means when we don’t bring the first tenth of our income to him, we are actually robbing God.
Have you ever thought of the fact that if you are stingy with your money, God regards you as a thief?
God calls us to bring our tithes as an expression of our love for him…
If we are faithful toward him in giving him our treasure, he knows our hearts and other things in our life will tend to follow. Jesus would later say in the Sermon on the Mount where your treasure is there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21). This is why when God says “return to me,” he speaks first not of prayer or worship in song, but of money.
When we give of our tithe, our first fruits, our hearts tend to follow.
Once in a while I will get an e-mail after I have mentioned tithing, and someone will say, “In the Old Testament it is really clear that God’s people should give away 10%, but in the New Testament that 10% requirement is not as clear.” The unstated implication in the email seems to be that—“you don’t actually think God requires us to give 10% of our income to him—do you?”
I usually respond by saying, “Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (which of course is in the New Testament) did affirm the tithe. As teachers of the Bible have observed, part of the reason the tithing requirement isn’t laid out as clearly in the New Testament is because, first of all, it is assumed, and, second, we have received more of God’s truth and grace than Old Testament believers. As New Testament people we have received the benefits of Jesus Christ’s life and death on the cross for our sins. We have been given everything by God in Christ. So if we have been given much more grace than people in the Old Testament, then it makes sense that the tithing is not the maximum that we would aspire to, but the minimum starting point for Christian believers. It is this place of gratitude to God that makes us want to be generous in our giving toward God.
I believe that if we are really grateful to God for the things he has done for us, that gratitude will be expressed in our giving and in our financial choices.
I have three sisters. Two of my sisters, when they were younger, worked as waitresses in restaurants. One of those sisters is now an executive at a Silicon Valley high tech firm. In the past she has worked as the director for marketing for Walt Disney and before that as a producer for the US television network ABC. The other sister now works as professor at the University of California.
They both work hard in their jobs. But, both of them will tell you that among the hardest jobs they ever had was working as waitresses. I notice that when we go to a restaurant together, and if one of them picks up the tab--even the one who is very, very careful about she uses her money and is a master at getting the cheapest fights and the best deals on the Internet, she or the other sister always tips generously. They always give well beyond 10% because they have been waitresses. They know how hard a job that is, so they are grateful for the services that are offered to them in a restaurant. So they give generously.
Many of us who have never worked as a waiter or as a waitress in a restaurant, when we are served well in a restaurant, and particularly when we feel like we made a personal connection with a waiter or a waitress because we frequent that restaurant regularly, for us 10% is not the maximum, but it is the base minimum starting point (for some our minimum starting point is 15%). If we are really grateful for how someone has served us, then it will be reflected in our giving and we will give even more than what many people consider the standard minimum 10%. We will give beyond that.
So it is when we feel God has been generous to us: he has taken care of us; he has given us the capacity to work. He has blessed us so much through Jesus Christ. If we feel that in our heart, we won’t begrudge the 10% that God says is his, but we will want to give over and above the tithe as some kind of offering to his work.
There is a waiter in Vancouver my wife and I love. He takes really good care of us. When we express our gratitude to him through what we give, it’s a joy to give. And there is God, whom we love, and we love to express our gratitude to him in what we give. It’s a joy to give. Sometimes, when at a restaurant writing out the tip, I think, “God, you’ve served me so well, I want to be just as (proportionately) generous in my giving--if not more--to you.”
Giving is a gift—good for our soul.
In Luke 19, we read about the story of the Zacchaeus the tax collector.
If you are a tax collector today for Revenue Canada, you are not likely to advertise that at a party. But in Jesus’ day tax collectors were despised. They were seen as traitors--in bed with Rome. They would have been seen in the same way we see a drug lord who is collaborating with a huge drug cartel. So then why would anyone become a tax collector in Jesus’ day? Why would anyone choose a vocation that would stigmatize them as a social pariah? The money. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were required to give Rome her share of money, but they then could charge people whatever amount they wanted to and pocket the rest. They were seen as thieves.
Zacchaeus was a tax collector and he was also a short man. He heard that Jesus was coming through town and wanted to see who Jesus was. He knew how despised he was as a tax collector, so he knew that no one would let him stand in front of them. He did something that would have been considered humiliating for a Hebrew man in his day. He did something that would have opened him up to utter ridicule. He climbed up a sycamore tree to get a better view of Jesus.
When Jesus reached the spot under the sycamore tree, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I'm coming to your house today."
Zacchaeus was stunned. "Who me?" "Is there anyone else in the tree?" Jesus may have said._ Zacchaeus was so overjoyed that Jesus chose him that at Zacchaeus' house afterwards he said, "Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."
Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham."
When salvation comes to you, when you have really been touched by God, one of the ways you know faith has "taken" over you, that the penny has dropped, is that you will find yourself giving generously to God and others. Unlike Zacchaeus, it may not giving away 50% (which by the way was higher than the law required), but it will at least be the first tenth.
If our heart has been touched by Jesus Christ the question will not be "how much must I give?" But rather, "how much can I give?" One of the clearest signs that salvation has come to our lives is that we have a new attitude toward giving.
When God touches us, we will also become generous with through sharing our other resources with people.
Last week I was meeting with my colleague Ken Pierce at his home who is senior level pastor of small group here. The reason we were meeting there was because Ken and Aisyah had ordered a big wrap-around couch. We were waiting for it to come from the BRICK. It arrived and Ken and I carried it from the truck across the front yard to his door, but let the pros take it up the stairs. Ken shared, just before they came, that he and Aisyah had sold most of their furniture for next to nothing in Georgia before they came to Vancouver and had committed to simplifying their lives and to not buy furniture here. But they found as part of their ministry at Tenth, they are having people over at their house two or three times a week. They really needed a couch. They had a reclining chair, but no proper couch.
When we give generously of money and resources, we experience this as a gift—if stealing is bad for our soul, giving is good. It’s no accident that miser and misery have the same root word. A generous person is a joyful person.
The positive corollary of the Eighth Commandment is by giving generously in our workplaces, by giving generously to God and others, and, third, and finally, by using our gifts and our creative talents to contribute to God’s world.
Paul in Ephesians 4:28 says these words:
28 Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.”
Paul says, “Those who have been stealing must steal no longer…: but the second part is also important. “The one who has been stealing… must also work doing something that is useful with his own hands.” He says, “After you stop stealing, you must work.” In this context, work does not necessarily mean that you get a job job, but you do something creative with your hands that enables you to contribute. It might be a hobby.
Rob, a pastor I went to school with, says stealing causes an adrenalin rush that is addicting (I shop lifted as a teenager largely because of the rush). Stealing is just like other addictions that cannot be instantly stopped. It is a process fighting an addiction. That is why the verse is so profound. You cannot just go through the same routine in life and just leave the stealing aspect out of it. You must add something to your life to replace it. Do something different with your hands, something that will give you a rush, too. If you think that stealing is a rush, try giving your stuff and money away. That’s even more of a rush. Part of what it means to live generously is to find creative ways to work with our hands or our brain or our feet, and to give our stuff away.
Earlier I mentioned that my generation Gen-X and the generation that follows, the Generation Ys, tend to make a clear separation between work life and personal life, work and family life. But, Generation-Xers and the Generation Yers also tend to be highly entrepreneurial. We can use our entrepreneurial gifts to bless people.
I just heard about Jonathan, now about 27 years old, who as a young person was very interested in making a difference for children. But he didn't know what to do with that desire. When he was in his early twenties he went on a missions trip to Mongolia. While they were in a village in Mongolia he noticed that a lot of children didn't go to school. So he started asking people in the village, “Why don't your kids go to school.” The answer was, "We can't afford to buy textbooks." Jonathan discovered that was the only reason they didn't go to school. He also discovered that it only cost a student $20 a year for their textbooks. Jonathan was in his early 20s at the time and came back to North America to his university campus. He put up a table with a sign that simply said "change the world for $20." He began his own non-profit organization to enable kids in Mongolia to go to school by providing them textbooks. And it took off like wildfire. Last year they were able to send 3000 Mongolia kids to school because of the money they raised. Jonathan is now living in Mongolia—facing the frigid winters-- and he is working with the local government and the Department of Education to facilitate teacher training there. He is using his gifts to make a difference.
We can obey the positive corollary for the commandment against stealing by giving generously to God and people.
So how do we become people who honour this commandment? This may sound like one of those old broken records, but we are able to honour the Eighth Commandment in the same way we are able to honour the Seventh and the Sixth; that is, by putting the First Commandment first. It is as we put God first, have no god but God, and say, “LORD, you are first in my life,” and we invite Jesus Christ to be the centre of our heart.
When Christ is truly at the centre of our lives as we said last week, we will become more conscious of him… and more grateful for how generous he’s been to us.
Paul describes this generosity of Jesus Christ to us in 2 Corinthians 8:9.
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
Jesus had infinite wealth, wealth that surpassed the combined wealth of Bill Gates, Jimmy Pattison, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. If he had hung on to his wealth, we would have died in spiritual poverty. If he clung to his riches, we would have died poor. If he died poor on the cross, we could become infinitely rich; our sins could be forgiven, and the door would be open for us to be adopted into God’s family. And this is what he did for us..
When we understand that Jesus gave up all his treasure in heaven in order to make us his treasure, then we will find ourselves able and wanting to live generously, too.
To the extent that Christ is the centre of our heart and to the extent we are filled with his Holy Spirit, to the extent that we appreciate all that he has done for us, we will become generous people: with our money, our resources, and talents.
As we prepare to come to the table in just a moment, let’s pray:
We thank you, LORD, that though you were rich, you became poor for our sake so that through your poverty we might become rich
Freely, freely, we have received. Help us now to freely, freely give.
Series: Loving God through the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M7: Sermon Notes D: (10 11 07)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Stealer to Sharer
Text: Deuteronomy 5:19; Ephesians 4:28; Exodus 20:15
BIG IDEA: We express our love for God and our neighbour by not stealing and by giving generously.
When I was a young teenager, one of my favorite hobbies was shoplifting. I loved the rush of walking into a store and stealing. At first I stole little things like a little black rubber ball just to see if I could do it. I gradually worked up to the point where I felt confident stealing a baseball batting glove. Then I moved up a little further and started ripping off handheld electronic football games.
Especially if with a friend while stealing, I felt like I was part of a mini version of a movie like Mission Impossible. I always rationalized my stealing by saying to myself, "I'm not hurting anyone. This big store isn't going to be impacted by my little shoplifting. Besides, I'm giving some of the stuff away, and having a great time."
Personal computers were just becoming popular when I was a teenager, and I never figured out how to do this, but I understand today that teenagers (and older people) enjoy hacking into other people's computers and stealing their credit cards. Like me as a teenager, they enjoy the thrill of stealing something and they rationalize their "carding" by saying that actual credit card owners will not have to pay for the stuff that they (the hackers) have charged on their credit card because the credit card companies will pay for it. The credit card companies just assume that fraud is part the cost of doing business.
Today we’re going to look at God’s perspective on stealing as we look at the Eighth Commandment. Again we’ll see how it’s not motivated by God out of desire to wreck our lives, but so that we can flourish and others can flourish because of us.
Please turn to Deuteronomy 5:19: You shall not steal.
You shall not steal. Simply put. In the Hebrew it is even more simple, one word—no stealing.
The commandment against stealing, as we will see in the Old Testament, typically referred to kidnapping or the taking of cattle or sheep or tools.
Now there is a 3-fold reason for this commandment against stealing.
One of the reasons that God says no stealing is because it hurts our neighbour; that is, it hurts the person you steal from. Have you ever had something stolen? Your bike? Your laptop? Some money? It felt like a violation, didn’t it? It hurt. Stealing hurts the person who is stolen from.
A second reason that you are commanded not to steal is that stealing hurts the stealer—it hurts us. When I was in my first year of undergrad, I remember reading Plato’s Republic. In one of Plato’s dialogues, he sets up a conversation where someone asks Socrates, “Is it ever to your advantage to be dishonest if, for instance, you knew that you would not be caught? For example, if you had the ring of Gyges, the magic ring that granted its owner the power to become invisible at will, would it ever be to your advantage to steal?” And Socrates in a very elaborate dialogue argues, “No, it is never in your advantage to steal, even if you know ahead of time that you will not get caught, because when you steal, you damage your own soul. It is never in your interest to damage your soul.”
If your life is like a character in a movie, do you want to be a character whose choices make your soul darker and darker?
Because stealing hurts our neighbour, the one we steal from, and us--it also hurts God. When we hurt our neighbour, we dishonour our neighbour’s Maker. When we hurt us, we dishonour our Maker. So stealing hurts our neighbour and us, and thus dishonours our Maker.
Some of you may be saying that this particular commandment is not one that I have a problem with. (Perhaps you think, “I never sereptitiously slid a Kit Kat into my pocket at the checkout stand at the grocery store.” You might think, “I would never even think about snatching a purse from an elderly lady standing at an intersection waiting for a traffic light to change. I don’t even steal towels or robes from the hotel. I don’t even take the little shampoos and conditioners from the hotel--which I think may be complimentary. Unlike 93% of Canadian parents, I don’t even steal candy from my kids Halloween bag.”
There are lots of different ways to steal today that are not quite so obvious. We can steal from our workplaces. People in older generations who felt the impact of the Great Depression and World War II, and the older baby boomers tend to work really hard—and in many cases were defined primarily by their work. People in younger Generations, members of Gen X (people who in mid-forties and to late twenties), members of Gen Y (people who are now 28 and younger) tend to put a fairly clear line between work and personal and recreational life and work and their family life—if they have a family, which in many ways is a very good thing. They felt their parents stole time from them and gave it to their companies. Younger people today are much more likely than older generations to say, “I live for the weekend,” meaning that work is simply a means to generate income so I can enjoy the weekend. We are much more likely as members of the Gen-X and members of the Gen-Y group, to hesitate to make any long-term commitment to a job. We are more likely to think, more than older generations, about what a company can do for us, rather than what we can do for the company.
Having a personal life-work life-family balance is a very good thing. I am not glorifying workaholism. But, if we don’t work hard while we work and produce quality work (and it’s possible to work hard while we work AND to have a personal life and family life, too), then we are stealing from our work places.
Part of what it means to not steal is to work hard and well while we work.
If we are students or if we write for our living, we can steal through plagiarism. The New York Times recently had an article entitled Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in the Digital Age. It is becoming more and more common, as we know, for students to simply copy paragraphs from the Internet and paste them into their papers without giving credit. We can steal by not attributing our sources in our school work or work-work.
In the Digital age, as I suggested earlier, today people can hack into other people’s computers and steal credit cards, calling cards, and software.
Some younger artists like the rock band Radiohead. They are OK if people download their music for free. They want you to video their music and post on YouTube without getting permission (knowing that if more people are exposed to their music more people will come to their concerts and buy their T-shirts). I know the laws regarding what you can digitally copy are still evolving, and, depending on your age, you’ll probably view the ethical issues differently here (and we don’t have time to get into an extended discussion of in this sermon). But since this is an issue relevant to so many of us, I would say let’s be mindful, prayerful, and seek integrity in our choices.
Our income tax protocols here in Canada are in part based on an honour system. If we cheat on our income tax, we are stealing from the government.
So the Eighth Commandment against stealing is broader than we think at first glance.
(Transition)
For every commandment that is stated in the negative in the Ten Commandments, there is a positive corollary. The positive corollary to this Eighth Commandment against stealing is to share what we have, to be generous. As stealing damages our soul, so living generously brings life to our soul.
As I said earlier, if we are working, part of the way we can give is by working hard while we work. Again, I am not suggesting by any means that we become workaholics, that we let our jobs take over our lives. Having a personal life, time for family and friends is very good. But I am saying part of what it means to honour God is by living generously, and part of what it means to live generously is to give our best while we work.
If we find ourselves with a job, which in our current economy is something we can be truly grateful for, if we are a follower of Jesus Christ, part of the way we honour the positive corollary of the Eighth Commandment, to not steal, is to give generously to God and to others.
In the book of Malachi, God is utterly transparent, like he’s in a lover’s quarrel with his people, “You have been unfaithful to me; you have turned away from me.”
And he says to his people, “Return to me, I will return to you.” But then his people ask, “How will we return?”
It is interesting that God’s first response isn’t to say “pray” or “sing” or get rid of your bad anger or your lust or sign up for Practicing the Presence.
God’s first response is to say, “Stop robbing me.”
In Malachi 3:8-10:
8 "Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, 'How are we robbing you?'
"In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
God says that when we his people don’t tithe, which means when we don’t bring the first tenth of our income to him, we are actually robbing God.
Have you ever thought of the fact that if you are stingy with your money, God regards you as a thief?
God calls us to bring our tithes as an expression of our love for him…
If we are faithful toward him in giving him our treasure, he knows our hearts and other things in our life will tend to follow. Jesus would later say in the Sermon on the Mount where your treasure is there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21). This is why when God says “return to me,” he speaks first not of prayer or worship in song, but of money.
When we give of our tithe, our first fruits, our hearts tend to follow.
Once in a while I will get an e-mail after I have mentioned tithing, and someone will say, “In the Old Testament it is really clear that God’s people should give away 10%, but in the New Testament that 10% requirement is not as clear.” The unstated implication in the email seems to be that—“you don’t actually think God requires us to give 10% of our income to him—do you?”
I usually respond by saying, “Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (which of course is in the New Testament) did affirm the tithe. As teachers of the Bible have observed, part of the reason the tithing requirement isn’t laid out as clearly in the New Testament is because, first of all, it is assumed, and, second, we have received more of God’s truth and grace than Old Testament believers. As New Testament people we have received the benefits of Jesus Christ’s life and death on the cross for our sins. We have been given everything by God in Christ. So if we have been given much more grace than people in the Old Testament, then it makes sense that the tithing is not the maximum that we would aspire to, but the minimum starting point for Christian believers. It is this place of gratitude to God that makes us want to be generous in our giving toward God.
I believe that if we are really grateful to God for the things he has done for us, that gratitude will be expressed in our giving and in our financial choices.
I have three sisters. Two of my sisters, when they were younger, worked as waitresses in restaurants. One of those sisters is now an executive at a Silicon Valley high tech firm. In the past she has worked as the director for marketing for Walt Disney and before that as a producer for the US television network ABC. The other sister now works as professor at the University of California.
They both work hard in their jobs. But, both of them will tell you that among the hardest jobs they ever had was working as waitresses. I notice that when we go to a restaurant together, and if one of them picks up the tab--even the one who is very, very careful about she uses her money and is a master at getting the cheapest fights and the best deals on the Internet, she or the other sister always tips generously. They always give well beyond 10% because they have been waitresses. They know how hard a job that is, so they are grateful for the services that are offered to them in a restaurant. So they give generously.
Many of us who have never worked as a waiter or as a waitress in a restaurant, when we are served well in a restaurant, and particularly when we feel like we made a personal connection with a waiter or a waitress because we frequent that restaurant regularly, for us 10% is not the maximum, but it is the base minimum starting point (for some our minimum starting point is 15%). If we are really grateful for how someone has served us, then it will be reflected in our giving and we will give even more than what many people consider the standard minimum 10%. We will give beyond that.
So it is when we feel God has been generous to us: he has taken care of us; he has given us the capacity to work. He has blessed us so much through Jesus Christ. If we feel that in our heart, we won’t begrudge the 10% that God says is his, but we will want to give over and above the tithe as some kind of offering to his work.
There is a waiter in Vancouver my wife and I love. He takes really good care of us. When we express our gratitude to him through what we give, it’s a joy to give. And there is God, whom we love, and we love to express our gratitude to him in what we give. It’s a joy to give. Sometimes, when at a restaurant writing out the tip, I think, “God, you’ve served me so well, I want to be just as (proportionately) generous in my giving--if not more--to you.”
Giving is a gift—good for our soul.
In Luke 19, we read about the story of the Zacchaeus the tax collector.
If you are a tax collector today for Revenue Canada, you are not likely to advertise that at a party. But in Jesus’ day tax collectors were despised. They were seen as traitors--in bed with Rome. They would have been seen in the same way we see a drug lord who is collaborating with a huge drug cartel. So then why would anyone become a tax collector in Jesus’ day? Why would anyone choose a vocation that would stigmatize them as a social pariah? The money. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were required to give Rome her share of money, but they then could charge people whatever amount they wanted to and pocket the rest. They were seen as thieves.
Zacchaeus was a tax collector and he was also a short man. He heard that Jesus was coming through town and wanted to see who Jesus was. He knew how despised he was as a tax collector, so he knew that no one would let him stand in front of them. He did something that would have been considered humiliating for a Hebrew man in his day. He did something that would have opened him up to utter ridicule. He climbed up a sycamore tree to get a better view of Jesus.
When Jesus reached the spot under the sycamore tree, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I'm coming to your house today."
Zacchaeus was stunned. "Who me?" "Is there anyone else in the tree?" Jesus may have said._ Zacchaeus was so overjoyed that Jesus chose him that at Zacchaeus' house afterwards he said, "Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."
Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham."
When salvation comes to you, when you have really been touched by God, one of the ways you know faith has "taken" over you, that the penny has dropped, is that you will find yourself giving generously to God and others. Unlike Zacchaeus, it may not giving away 50% (which by the way was higher than the law required), but it will at least be the first tenth.
If our heart has been touched by Jesus Christ the question will not be "how much must I give?" But rather, "how much can I give?" One of the clearest signs that salvation has come to our lives is that we have a new attitude toward giving.
When God touches us, we will also become generous with through sharing our other resources with people.
Last week I was meeting with my colleague Ken Pierce at his home who is senior level pastor of small group here. The reason we were meeting there was because Ken and Aisyah had ordered a big wrap-around couch. We were waiting for it to come from the BRICK. It arrived and Ken and I carried it from the truck across the front yard to his door, but let the pros take it up the stairs. Ken shared, just before they came, that he and Aisyah had sold most of their furniture for next to nothing in Georgia before they came to Vancouver and had committed to simplifying their lives and to not buy furniture here. But they found as part of their ministry at Tenth, they are having people over at their house two or three times a week. They really needed a couch. They had a reclining chair, but no proper couch.
When we give generously of money and resources, we experience this as a gift—if stealing is bad for our soul, giving is good. It’s no accident that miser and misery have the same root word. A generous person is a joyful person.
The positive corollary of the Eighth Commandment is by giving generously in our workplaces, by giving generously to God and others, and, third, and finally, by using our gifts and our creative talents to contribute to God’s world.
Paul in Ephesians 4:28 says these words:
28 Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.”
Paul says, “Those who have been stealing must steal no longer…: but the second part is also important. “The one who has been stealing… must also work doing something that is useful with his own hands.” He says, “After you stop stealing, you must work.” In this context, work does not necessarily mean that you get a job job, but you do something creative with your hands that enables you to contribute. It might be a hobby.
Rob, a pastor I went to school with, says stealing causes an adrenalin rush that is addicting (I shop lifted as a teenager largely because of the rush). Stealing is just like other addictions that cannot be instantly stopped. It is a process fighting an addiction. That is why the verse is so profound. You cannot just go through the same routine in life and just leave the stealing aspect out of it. You must add something to your life to replace it. Do something different with your hands, something that will give you a rush, too. If you think that stealing is a rush, try giving your stuff and money away. That’s even more of a rush. Part of what it means to live generously is to find creative ways to work with our hands or our brain or our feet, and to give our stuff away.
Earlier I mentioned that my generation Gen-X and the generation that follows, the Generation Ys, tend to make a clear separation between work life and personal life, work and family life. But, Generation-Xers and the Generation Yers also tend to be highly entrepreneurial. We can use our entrepreneurial gifts to bless people.
I just heard about Jonathan, now about 27 years old, who as a young person was very interested in making a difference for children. But he didn't know what to do with that desire. When he was in his early twenties he went on a missions trip to Mongolia. While they were in a village in Mongolia he noticed that a lot of children didn't go to school. So he started asking people in the village, “Why don't your kids go to school.” The answer was, "We can't afford to buy textbooks." Jonathan discovered that was the only reason they didn't go to school. He also discovered that it only cost a student $20 a year for their textbooks. Jonathan was in his early 20s at the time and came back to North America to his university campus. He put up a table with a sign that simply said "change the world for $20." He began his own non-profit organization to enable kids in Mongolia to go to school by providing them textbooks. And it took off like wildfire. Last year they were able to send 3000 Mongolia kids to school because of the money they raised. Jonathan is now living in Mongolia—facing the frigid winters-- and he is working with the local government and the Department of Education to facilitate teacher training there. He is using his gifts to make a difference.
We can obey the positive corollary for the commandment against stealing by giving generously to God and people.
So how do we become people who honour this commandment? This may sound like one of those old broken records, but we are able to honour the Eighth Commandment in the same way we are able to honour the Seventh and the Sixth; that is, by putting the First Commandment first. It is as we put God first, have no god but God, and say, “LORD, you are first in my life,” and we invite Jesus Christ to be the centre of our heart.
When Christ is truly at the centre of our lives as we said last week, we will become more conscious of him… and more grateful for how generous he’s been to us.
Paul describes this generosity of Jesus Christ to us in 2 Corinthians 8:9.
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
Jesus had infinite wealth, wealth that surpassed the combined wealth of Bill Gates, Jimmy Pattison, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. If he had hung on to his wealth, we would have died in spiritual poverty. If he clung to his riches, we would have died poor. If he died poor on the cross, we could become infinitely rich; our sins could be forgiven, and the door would be open for us to be adopted into God’s family. And this is what he did for us..
When we understand that Jesus gave up all his treasure in heaven in order to make us his treasure, then we will find ourselves able and wanting to live generously, too.
To the extent that Christ is the centre of our heart and to the extent we are filled with his Holy Spirit, to the extent that we appreciate all that he has done for us, we will become generous people: with our money, our resources, and talents.
As we prepare to come to the table in just a moment, let’s pray:
We thank you, LORD, that though you were rich, you became poor for our sake so that through your poverty we might become rich
Freely, freely, we have received. Help us now to freely, freely give.
posted by Shigematsu at 7:16 PM
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