Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, New Life Gillette Church, we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: All right, good morning.
Who remembers LimeWire?
Millennials in the room, for sure. Maybe some others.
Good morning. Welcome to Church 307 online. If you think of LimeWire, what is something. What's the word that pops into your head when you think of LimeWire?
Virus. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
But there's another word that we're thinking about when we think of LimeWire. And I bring this up because today we are in the eighth commandment going this Stone series, right? We have just a couple more left, but we're on number eight today. And it's just four short words, one little sentence, and it says, you must not steal. Who thinks of stealing when they think of LimeWire?
You should.
So that is. I bring this up because that is my example of stealing. And it's not just mine. There. There's a lot of us, but that doesn't justify it. And so for those of you that don't, what LimeWire is, I'll take just a second to explain it. I'm a child in the 90s and we had CDs, right? Remember the Walkmans? And so we, we had CDs, and then we transitioned into digital music. And so I was. Right. I was a preteen teenager, right, in those years. And so all of a sudden you could buy music, like the individual songs, which is a big deal because then you could, like, curate this playlist.
And before that, it was just like you had to do dj, like put your CD in, play a couple songs, and then the next disc and the next disc, right? But all of a sudden you could buy songs individually and. And you can make these awesome mixed CDs, right?
And so we did this. And so LimeWire is a program that you can download and you could get all of this free to us music. The problem was it was illegal and it was pirated music, right. And was not what we should have been doing. But we still did it. There's a lot of us that still did it. And you mentioned viruses because. Yes, you downloaded this music and you got a lot of viruses. And it wasn't just your computer that you were getting viruses on, right? We had the family computer, Right, the big box computer, one computer for the household. Maybe it was in your living room or if you're fancy you had a computer room, right? It wasn't an office, it was the computer room.
And so we were downloading all these songs that were pirated, which means they weren't great quality. Like, I remember songs that you could hear doors slamming or people talking or just. It wasn't the original great music that you would have gotten if you would have paid for it like you were supposed to.
And so we would download all this music and I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of songs. And you know, like each song would take like an hour to download because this was dial up Internet. And so we would.
And me and my friends would make these what we call mix CDs, right? Remember mix CDs. And so you could make this playlist. And so this was before you could pay $10 a month and have like every song at your fingertips. Like, this took effort. We had to like search the song and make the playlist and wait hours and hours to have it downloaded illegally. But now I pay for Spotify and I still make playlists all the time because I love music, but I do for it now. So I have definitely stolen before. And I think a lot of us have examples of what examples that where we have stolen. Maybe you have shoplifted in the past especially. I think this is a common thing that we have to teach our kids. Just because we want something doesn't mean we can just take it. And maybe your mom had to like take you back to the store and you had to talk to the store manager and apologize for stealing those kind of life lessons. And so this commandment really makes sense to us because we, we. It's the. It's not only God's law, but it's the law of our land, right? Stealing is illegal. It's a crime. If we steal. But not only have we do we kind of understand like why people steal or where that temptation comes from, we also understand how it feels to be stolen from.
Raise your hand if you have ever had to deal with fraudulent charges on a credit or debit card.
So many of us, right? It is such a problem and which is sad. And so. And it's just really a pain because if you're anything like me, I have like a ton of stuff like automatic bill pay to make life simple, right? But it's not so simple when someone steals your credit card number and then you have to stop payment and then wait for the new card and then go on all the different places to put the new card. And it's a whole thing, right? It's frustrating and so, although that's frustrating, I don't know if I've ever been, like, devastated, devastated over it. But I do remember one incident. Me and my husband were on an anniversary trip and I had this crossbody purse and I was young and dumb and had like, the purse part behind me walking around in a big city, and I got pickpocketed. They stole cash out of my pocket. And I just remember being devastated. I cried the rest of the day. Like we needed that cash for this trip. Like it was a whole thing. And I just remember how it felt to be stolen from. And so I think we can, we can agree, like, we know the temptation to steal, and then we also know how it feels to be stolen from. And so in its very basic sense, stealing is taking something that's not yours. Right? That's like our basic definition, and that makes sense. But today we're going to go a little bit deeper with that. We're going to broaden our definition a little bit more of what stealing is. And so that definition is stealing is getting as much as possible while giving the least possible.
So in this scenario, we are talking about how we are gaining as much, trying to get as much and trying to get. Or give the least. We're trying to gain as much as we can and give the least. And so I'm going to give a little. A couple examples of what this looks like. Just because we're not talking all the time about just physically taking of something that is not ours.
I think the most common place that we see this is in work.
Are you fudging on your time card? Are you saying that you're working when you're not working? Or are you going to work physically but doing everything except what you're actually supposed to be doing to get paid?
That is stealing from work.
And this has just become more and more common, especially online. I work two jobs, one of them is online. And it takes a lot of integrity and honesty to work online and to truly be working when you say you're supposed to be working.
And the world has justified this kind of stealing so much that they sell devices that you can hook to, like, your computer or your mouse, and it either it moves it or it makes it look like you're online working when you're not there. So people will put that on their computer and then go about their day and doing everything that they are not supposed to be doing during work hours. Right. Stealing. This is very commonplace in the workplace.
How about school students? We hear a lot about cheating in school. Anytime we are using other people's words, work, or words as our own, that is stealing. And so plagiarizing, right? We all learned plagiarizing is stealing from others.
And with the rise of AI students, if you are copying and pasting ChatGPT and turning it in as your own, that is stealing.
We are trying to gain as much as possible while giving the least possible.
How about your marriage?
Is there an area in your marriage where you are taking advantage of your spouse?
Is there an area that is just very one sided?
Are you sharing responsibilities with your spouse? Is it a true partnership? Or are you trying to gain as much as you can from your spouse while giving the least amount possible?
And last is church.
We gather here on Sunday mornings and, and we get a lot of things from church, right? And they're not bad things, they're all good things.
You might walk in and get a coffee. I get coffee every Sunday. Multiple, multiple cups. Maybe get a donut.
You get to have fellowship, you get to hear a teaching. You get to take your kids to a safe place that they are learning truth and they are learning that they are a part of God's big story.
You get all of these things. And so are we getting as much as we can without giving?
That could look a lot of different ways. Is that that giving might be serving? Are you serving and giving of your time? Are you giving of the gifts that God has given you?
And then we often think about giving financially to the church. When we talk about giving at church, that's what your mind goes to, right? And so we talk about a tithe and giving a portion of what is God's back to him. That's what a tithe is. And it goes as far as prophet Malachi says that if we are withholding our tithe, if we are withholding what God has asked us to give back to him, or maybe we are giving from our leftovers and not making him priority and making him the first that we are stealing from God.
And so are we trying to in all these areas, get as much as we can and give the least amount possible. That is what we're talking about for stealing today.
And so as we, as we lean into this, we know that God wants our hearts, especially when we're talking about generosity and giving. We know that God wants our hearts. That's why he. We do the tithe, right? It's not because God needs our money. We, we know that he doesn't financially need our physical money. But when we give, when we are giving to the Church in different ways. He knows that he has our heart. And so throughout all of this, this is a heart, heart issue. Throughout the ten Commandments, we have heard that these ten words were vows, like a wedding vow to the Israelites, right? And so this is a vow saying, you don't need to steal because I am going to provide for you.
God is saying, I will provide for you so you don't have to do that. He wants our hearts. That is the priority. He wants us to come to him first, for him to be number one in our life and to have our, our hearts.
When I think about stealing, I think of a popular verse, John 10:10. I love this verse for many reasons, but it has the word thief and steal in it. And so it says, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, okay? But Jesus says he comes to bring life and bring life abundantly. So we can see that stealing is not of God. And so it must be the opposite, which is the enemy. And so at any time that we are stealing, we are going along with the enemy's intentions. We are following the enemy. If we are actively stealing and not going along with God's plan, who says that he will provide for us.
And so it all comes back to these heart issues. And if it's of the enemy, then we know that the enemy sees, speaks in lies. And so these heart issues come about because we are believing a lie, right? It's not very common that we would just go steal to steal just because, or take advantage of someone just because. Like, it's because we are truly believing something that becomes a heart issue because we are believing a lie.
And so I'm going to go through a couple of the common ones that I think that we fall into that, that we start living out as we believe these things, lies. The first one is not being content. And so it's this lie that I deserve more.
I deserve that, I want that.
And we, we kind of go down this rabbit hole with these lies. I work as hard as them. I deserve what they have.
I want what everyone else has. I don't understand why God wouldn't bless me, me in that way. I'm a good person. Why hasn't God given me what I want? And so it's the spirit of discontentment, right? We're believing this lie that I deserve more. And when I, when I say those kind of statements, it kind of sounds like an entitled, entitled child, right? Like we have those conversations with our child. Like, I want that, I want it now. And we, we have those conversations as they grow up. Adults do it too. We just, we don't say it out loud, right. We are sometimes discontinued because it's a heart issue believing the lies that we deserve more.
And so I think it's helpful to remember that God is the owner of all things. He is the owner over it all. And it's his job to provide for us. And so it's our job to be stewards.
And so that means that when I am flipping my mind from thinking about what I deserve and what I want, I can instead focus on how does God want me to use what he has given me.
If we are focusing more on that, we can see that God wants to use what he has given you to meet needs of you and for others to further his kingdom. And so we can flip that and focus more on being a good steward of what he has given us and not be so concerned about being the owner. Right. We can replace that lie that we need and deserve everything and instead believe that he has given us what I need and, and, and decide how am I going to use what he has given me to further his kingdom.
The next heart issue that I, I think we fall into is this scarcity mindset.
This comes about with lies like, there's not enough for me.
I need to take control and take it into my own hands because there's not enough to go around that. Or not believing that God is going to provide for us, not trusting that God is going to provide for us. And oftentimes this leads to fear and anxiety and worry about our future because we are not truly believing that God is faithful and that he is going to provide for us.
I think this is an area that we can all relate to and it's spoken about a lot in the Bible. And there's a passage in Matthew that I'm going to read and it's a little bit longer. If you want to flip to it. It's Matthew 6 and I want you to really hear it today. It's talking specifically about living in this scarcity mindset and worrying and fearing about needs being met. And you might not be in that spot right now, but I think a lot of us have walked through that. And maybe it's as simple as realizing that God understands what, what's, what's going on in our world right now. Okay, so Matthew 6, I'm going to start at 25.
And so this is God saying this over you. This is Jesus's words saying it over you in, in this time right now.
That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life, whether you have enough food and drink or enough clothes to wear. Isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing?
Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your Heavenly Father feeds them.
And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are?
Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?
And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.
And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.
Why do you have so little faith?
So don't worry about these things, saying, what will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?
These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers. But your Heavenly Father already knows all of your needs.
Seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
And so we read this and we see that God takes care of the birds, feeds the birds. We don't have to worry about that.
He takes care of the flowers that are alive and then gone the next day and how much more he cares about you. He loves you. He cares about the details of your life. He wants to take care of you. And so we can believe this to be true, that he is going to meet our needs and our job in that says, seek the kingdom of God, live righteously, and he will provide what we need. Now, that's not saying that every believer is going to be extremely wealthy. That doesn't mean that we're never going to walk through hard times. But it's saying that God, God sees us, he cares about us, that he is going to provide.
God is the ultimate provider and we can trust. He has shown us over and over again that he is trustworthy. We can trust that he is going to provide for us. And so what does this look like in our everyday life? Maybe it's after job loss. What is. What does your life look like? You lose your job, what do you do? Are you freaking out?
Are you panicking?
Or are you. Do you have a peace? A peace that can only come through Jesus, because you know that. You know that. You know that he is going to provide. He is going to show up, he is going to meet the need. You know, the fruit of the Spirit is peace, not fear. And so we don't have to walk in fear. And worry and anxiety because he has shown us that he cares about us and he is going to show up and meet those needs.
God is not lacking, and so he is not going to run out, right? So we can. We don't have to have this scarcity mindset.
The last heart root issue that I, that we commonly see is this survivalist mentality.
And this heart issue comes out with lies like, I have to take care of me and my own. It's all about me. It's all about surviving, focused on me and me alone. And so maybe that's, you know, climbing the ladder. And whoever gets in the way, I'm stepping on them to get to the top.
And that is, that is the enemy's intentions, right? Isolation, not being a part of community. God calls us to be a part of community, to walk in community. And we know that we are called to love our neighbor. Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. And so if we're stealing from our neighbor, obviously we're not loving them, right? And so as, as I was digging into this, you know, we have the Ten Commandments and all the laws, and then it goes into Deuteronomy and it's expounding on it a little bit more right before they're going into the promised land.
And so it talks about, obviously, don't steal, the consequences for stealing.
Which really lines up with what our justice system is. It talks about restitution and how you pay it back. And oftentimes you pay back what you stole and then some, because not only are you paying back what you stole, you're repairing the relationship, right? Because sin breaks relationships. And so we are. We have this idea of restitution throughout scripture that we also have in our justice system, right? And then it goes further.
It says they, it talks a lot about ox and sheep. Back then, that's what they had. And so it says if your neighbor's ox gets out, goes astray, and you see it, you are to get it and take it back to your neighbor. That's saying you are not off the hook to just turn your back and be like, sucks for them. That's going to be their loss.
Right? It's our responsibility. If we see it, we get a responsibility to get. Get the ox, take it back. And so we have a responsibility to love our neighbor. And then it goes further, says, if you, if you can't find the owner, or maybe you see a lost sheep, don't know who the owner is, it's your responsibility to take in the sheep and to care for it until the owner returns. It is your job to take your finances, your time, your resources to treat it like it is your own. And so we see where Jesus is saying, love your neighbor as yourself.
That means that we are loving our neighbor, having respect for our neighbor, not only just the person, but also their belongings, also their livelihoods. We are to walk with empathy and compassion for those that God has placed around us. We are not off the hook to just turn the other way and say that's their problem.
We have a duty to our neighbors. Love God. Love. Love those around us. Love our neighbor.
And so how do we walk this out?
We have this definition of trying to gain as much as possible while giving the least.
We see these heart issues of lies that we're believing of why we are tempted to take advantage in this way.
But how do we actually walk this out?
In Ephesians 4, 28 there's a verse that really just walks us through it. And so it says, if you are a thief, quit stealing.
Instead, use your hands for good hard work and then give generously to others in need.
And so there's three action steps in this verse that we're going to have as take homes today. Three action steps. And so first is very blunt. Quit stealing. If you are a thief, quit stealing.
We don't have to pretend that stealing doesn't happen anymore. We don't have to pretend that this is not an issue. You know, I was just at Walmart yesterday. I know that I had to show my receipt to prove that I had done self checkout and I didn't put something in my cart that I didn't pay for. Right? Like stealing is still a problem. And so if that's the message, but for you today, that's great, that's the next step, quit stealing.
And maybe if it's not that physical, like taking a physical objects, if you have thought of maybe some ways that you are trying to gain as much as you can and give the least.
I encourage us to walk with integrity. Walk with integrity in a way especially when nobody is watching. I think those are the hardest areas that we are asked to walk with integrity. And my friend challenged me on this the other day.
She had something happen to her that kind of gave me a heart check. I had a friend that went to the ATM at her bank, got some cash out of the atm, counted it there, it was great. Went home later, went to go and use it and counted it and saw that she had an extra hundred dollars, like maybe they were stuck together or something.
And so she called the bank and she said, hey, the ATM gave me an extra hundred dollars. It didn't get taken out of my account. This isn't my money.
And the bank teller was like. And she's asking like, what. How do we handle this? What do we need to do? And the bank teller is shocked, right? Like, I don't know. We've never had this happen before. No one has called saying, I got extra money from the bank and it gave me a little heart check. Because I thought, I don't know if I would have called the bank.
I don't know if I would have said, oh, that was my. I need to call the bank. They gave me extra money. In fact, even worse, public confession time, I think I would have twisted it and been like, thanks, God, thanks for this extra hundred dollars. Like, you know, I need it, right? I would have twisted it. And, no, no, that's stealing. This is stealing. This is not a gift. It was not my money. And so she got an opportunity to walk with integrity and to show this bank teller Jesus. Because not everybody's calling the bank saying, I got extra money. Here's it back. Like, let me bring this back to you, right? This is how we get to shine. Jesus walking with integrity. So quit stealing. The second one is work.
It says, use your hands for good, hard work. And so it's this idea that instead of taking and stealing and taking advantage, work hard, work hard. Christians should be the hardest workers. We should have the best work ethic, right? Because we work for God. We don't work for man. We work for God. And so we are called to be set apart. We are called to show that we are. Have a. A stellar work ethic and that people should notice that. And. And when they ask why, it's because I'm working for God. I'm not working to please men. I'm working for God.
And oftentimes I think we think of working hard as like a punishment or that it's only result because sin entered the world and it's part of the fall. But I want to remind you that working hard and having a job was all the way back in the Garden of Eden. Adam was placed in the garden and he was told to tend and overlook the garden. He had a job. He had a purpose in the garden. And so we have a purpose wherever God might place you, we have a purpose. We have an opportunity to contribute. And so that means if it was in the garden before the fall, we are going to have an opportunity to contribute in heaven.
We're Going to have a purpose. It's not going to be just wandering around, doing whatever. Like, we are going to have a purpose. And so we can, we can work hard now, not only because that's how God provides for us, is working hard, but also because we have a purpose and we are going to continue to have a purpose.
The last and third action step is to be generous. It says, give generously to others in need.
And so we.
I love this picture of like, quit stealing. Use your hands for good hard work and then give generously. Like it's this posture of open hands, our hearts open to use what God has given us for what he has called us to give. And so this can look different ways this might look. We talk a lot about being living life on mission here, right?
Connecting, serving, giving.
So what is that next step for you? How can you be generous if you have never tithed before? Maybe it is to make a step in that direction. If you've been tithing for a while, maybe it's taking the next step and giving above the 10%. Or maybe God is showing you a place that needs your gifts, your talents, whatever that looks like for you. God is calling us to be generous with what he has given us.
I love that this verse shows us like the. The gospel doesn't just stay at quit stealing. Like it's not just a rule. Quit stealing. This verse shows us like the thief.
This, this path of the thief to quit stealing, stealing and to work hard and then to give generously. And so this is our path because we have the gospel, we get to shine the light of Jesus. The world tells us to get as much as you can and take advantage and be on top.
But what if we flip that and said, how can I give more? How can I be generous? How can I move in that direction as I'm becoming more and more. More like Jesus?
So we talked about stealing is getting as much as we can while giving the least. And I encourage you to flip that. How can we become people that give as much as we can while getting the least amount possible?
As we move forward in this week, that's my prayer for us today.
Pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you that you are our provider, that you are not lacking God, that we can trust you. We will trust that you provide for all of our needs, that we don't have to walk in worry and fear and anxiety for our future because you care about us, you love us, you love us so much.
And God, I ask that you would show us what our next step is when we're talking about stealing and taking advantage. Lord, open our eyes to areas that we're justifying this.
Open our eyes to our next steps and how we can be more generous or work harder. Be honest and walk with the integrity that Jesus has shown us.
We thank you Lord, for your love and, and your mercy and your grace and pray this in Jesus name, amen.
