The Ten Commandments Part 3 (Exodus 20:15-17)

Transcript. 

Going through the book of Exodus, we have come to the Ten Commandments, and so far, we've looked at seven of them. As mentioned in the two previous episodes we've had on this. That traditional way to divide the Ten Commandments is in two parts: The first four deal with our relationship to God, and the last six deal with our relationship to one another. I've landed on that division because Jesus himself said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and the second one was like unto it: love your neighbour as yourself.  So that is a perfect division of the Ten Commandments, so I've chosen to use that one. In other words, our first responsibility is to have reverence for God, and the second responsibility is to have respect for one another. Now beyond that I chose to arbitrarily break them up and deal with three yesterday and now another three today. The reason I did that was because there's so much material and so many things, I want to cover that it would take too long to try to cover all six at one time. 

One other thing I will mention before we look at these last three, and that is I've chosen to do something I don't recall ever having done, at least not like I've been doing it in the exposition of the Ten Commandments.  I am known to quote other people now and then, but in this case, I've chosen to quote extensively John Calvin, whom I don't quite a lot, but having recently been deeply involved in creating a contemporary English version of some of his writings I have been exposes to his deep insightful teaching on this issue. Calvin along with Martin Luther who I mentioned yesterday has some particularly good insights into the Ten Commandments. Now, I don't agree with everything Calvin said, and I certainly don't agree with what has become a version Calvinism by some who use his name, but he had some interesting insights on the Ten Commandments, So, let's turn to Exodus, chapter 20, one more time and the Ten Commandments, and look at verse 15. Let's take them one at a time. The next commandment says.

, "Do not steal."

(Exodus 18: 12)

That's would seem pretty straightforward. I assume that that's talking about don't steal property, and that would be don't steal somebody's material things. 

As we've gone through the Ten Commandments, I've said there are implications beyond the simple statement of the commandment. For example, that commandment probably assumes the private ownership of property. I mean, if it says, "Don't steal," then that indicates that somebody else owns it and has the right to it, and you should not deprive them of that right to their property. I think, in that sense, it teaches respect for someone else's private property. Now, that may sound like an awfully simple thing, but this was really driven home to me a number or their employer, or a large institution is not really theft. I can’t count the number of times I hear people expressing disrespect for other people property, hotels, Airbnb’s, I’ll leave the heat on all day, as I’m paying for it. I remember thinking embedded in this commandment is the fact that you should respect other people’s property. Attitude towards borrowed or collective resources is what give us a stable society.

Let me quote Calvin again, He says, "Even if we abstain from wrongdoing, we do not, therefore, satisfy God, who has laid mankind under mutual obligations to each other, that we may seek to benefit, care for, and succour their neighbours." Hence, he thought in order that God should not consider us thieves we must endeavour, as far as possible, see that everyone should safely keep what he possesses, and that our neighbour’s advantage should be promoted at all times no less than ours. 

Jewish theologian, Dennis Prager, writing on this says.

"A good case can be made that the eighth commandment, 'Do not steal,' is the one commandment that encompasses all others. What a statement! This one commandment encompasses all of the commandments. Murder is the stealing of another person's life. Adultery is the stealing of another person's spouse. Coveting is the desire to steal what belongs to another person. Giving false testimony is stealing justice, and so on. This commandment is unique in another way. It is the only commandment that is completely open-ended. All the other commandments are specific. The fifth commandment, for example, states that it is our parents whom we must honour. The sixth commandment prohibits murder, which is about taking the life of an innocent human being. The seventh commandment, prohibiting adultery, is also specific to a married person. Two unmarried people cannot commit adultery. But the commandment against stealing doesn't even hint at what it is we are forbidden to steal, we are just not to steal, full stop”.

Which means that we cannot take anything that belongs to another person, in any way."First and foremost, the commandment against stealing has always been understood to mean that we are also not allowed to steal another human being. This is why no one with even an elementary understanding of the eighth commandment would ever use the Bible to justify the most common form of slavery: the kidnapping of human beings and selling them into slavery. Critics of the Bible argued that the Bible allowed slavery, but the type of slavery described in it was, in almost all cases, was a form of indentured servitude, the selling of oneself to another person for a fixed period of time in order to work off the debt. This had nothing to do with kidnapping free people, such as was done in Africa and elsewhere, that was expressly forbidden by the 8th command.

The second significant meaning of this commandment against stealing is the sanctity of people’s property. Just as we are forbidden to steal people, we are forbidden to steal what people own. It has been shown over and over that private property begins with land ownership and that ownership is indispensable way towards creating a free and decent society. Every totalitarian regime takes away private property rights. In the ancient and medieval world, a few rich people owned all the land, and the majority of the population worked on the land for the enrichment of the owners. 

In 19th-century Europe, many socialists argued that taking away private property and giving it to the people, where that advice was followed to the extreme in what came to became known as the communist world, that a quickly resulted in the death of freedom and ultimately mass death. I know this is controversial to some but I don’t believe you can be a hard line communist and be a Christian because the Bible says don’t steal, and that means you have the private right to property.' To steal an individual has to own private property.

The third enormously important meaning of this commandment against stealing concerns the many non-material things people own: their reputation, their dignity, their trust, and their intellectual property. Let’s quickly run through these.

One, a person’s reputation. Stealing a person’s good name, whether through libel, slander, or gossip, is a particularly destructive form of theft because, unlike money or property, once a person’s good name has been stolen, it can almost never be fully restored.

Two, a person’s dignity. The act of stealing a person’s dignity is known as humiliation, and humiliating a person, especially in public, can do permanent damage to that person's most precious possession, their dignity.

Three, a person’s trust. Stealing a person’s trust is known as deceiving someone. In fact, in Hebrew, a term for tricking someone literally means stealing knowledge. One example could be tricking people into buying something, like not telling someone the problems a car has. Another example would be when someone deceives another person with insincere proclamations of love in order to obtain material or sexual favours from them, that’s a common one. 

Four, a person’s intellectual property. This form of theft includes anything from copying software or downloading music and movies without paying for them. And the young people listening to this all went quiet.

There is hardly any aspect of human life that is not harmed, sometimes irreparably, by stealing. That is why it is fair to say that if anyone observes only one of the Ten Commandments, observing the commandment 'Do not steal' would, all by itself, go a long way towards making the world a better place. It’s just one line, 'Do not steal', but it’s open-ended, it doesn’t say 'Don’t steal property,' it just says 'Don’t steal.' I hope you never think of this commandment the same way again. The next commandment is.

 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

(Exodus 20: 16)

If the previous commandment dealt with property, this one deals with truth. One commentator said, 'This commandment forbids damaging the character of another person by making statements which are not true and thus possibly causing him to be punished or even executed. It teaches respect for a person’s reputation.'  Another I read said,“This commandment concerns is bearing false testimony against anyone that would cause him to be unjustly injured or undone. Keeping this law helps maintain stability in a society by protecting individuals' reputation. Our social order depends on truthful speech. Does this apply to court? Sure. But does it also apply to other forms of speech? This of course includes slander and all such things said that unfairly and unjustly hurt people.

If we hold onto the idea that in order for an action to be prohibited or demanded in the Ten Commandments, it has to be fundamental in some way undermine the creating of a Godly civilization.' A society cannot survive if it holds onto contempt for truth. Whether inside or outside a courtroom, if people testify falsely in a courtroom, there can be no justice. And without even the hope of justice, there can be no civilization. This is one of the things that I really gleaned from extra recently from studying these commandment’s this time is that they are not just meant to deal with individual conduct. They have social ramifications for society, and the day we lose truth in court, we lose justice. And the day we lose truth in life, we do great harm to everyone. Both the great 20th-century Jewish commentator Rashi and  one of the most influential biblical scholars of the 20th century, Dr. Nick Childs at Yale University, agree that the commandment is about truth-telling generally. As Childs pointed out, if the Ten Commandments were solely concerned with truth and falsehood in a courtroom, it would have added words such as "in court." But it doesn’t say "in court." So, it applies to all lying.

There are many important values in society, but truth is probably the most important. Goodness and compassion may be the most important values in the individual and personal realm, but in the wider or social realm, truth is probably more important than everything else. Virtually all the great social ills such as African slavery, Nazism, and all the recent totalitarian states have all been based on lies. Psychopaths in order to murder millions, need vast numbers of otherwise normal, even decent people to believe a lie. And is that not exactly what’s happened in the 20th century in places like Germany, Russia, and China, and more recently today in North Korea, everybody lies, and millions of people are killed." Lying is always a bad thing. Even lying on behalf of a good cause is destructive? Because if we don’t know what is truth, how and where do we know how to properly advocate society's limited resources? No cause is more important than truth-telling. The Ten Commandments is the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth. So, these two commandments are a lot bigger than 'don’t steal, don’t lie.' They have ramifications for property and truth. That’s the foundation of these commandments.

One more commandment, the last of the ten says,

'You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour’s.'

(Exodus 20: 17)

The other commandments basically concerned actions. This one deals with thoughts.  Sin usually originates from a wrong desire. This commandment includes envy and greed. As one has said, God wanted His people to turn away from evil thoughts that would lead to evil actions, as well as evil actions themselves. The items listed this commandment, are there because they are meant to represent the most valuable possessions the neighbour could have. They represented all that he has. I promised you quotes from Calvin one more time. Calvin said,

'The purpose of this commandment is God’s will that our whole soul be possessed with a disposition to love. We must banish from our hearts all desire contrary to love’.

Commandments, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are the ones that prohibit acts of evil: murder, adultery, stealing, perjury. And then there is the one commandment that prohibits the thing that leads to murder, adultery, stealing, and perjury. This last one.

Why then does the Ten Commandments include a law that seem to prohibit a thought? Because it is coveting that often leads to evil. Or, to put it another way, coveting is what leads to violating the preceding four commandments. To covet is much more than to want. The Hebrew word means to want something to the point of seeking to take away and own something that belongs to another person.

Let me explain it in another way. The 10th Commandment does not prohibit you from saying, 'Wow, what a great house or car or family my neighbour has. I wish I had such a house or car or spouse.' Such thoughts have the potential to be destructive, but such thinking may also inspire someone to be constructive. How? It may spur you to work harder and improve your life so that you can obtain a house, a car, or even invest more love or just downright hard work into improving you situation. It is when you want the specific house, car, or spouse that belongs to another that evil results, and that is what the Tenth Commandment prohibits. We need to make a distinction between ambition, and coveting. So, there's a difference between just wanting something and wanting something somebody else has and wanting it, thus depriving them of it. 

Summary.

"Alright, how are we doing? Did you learn anything interesting? If you’ve been with me through all three of these sessions on the Ten Commandments, I hope you learned something, I know I did. The thing I learned a was the societal perspective and not just the individual perspective. The first four dealt with loving God, the next six deal with loving your neighbour. Some people just think of them as rules for religion, but I hope I have demonstrated they are principals for building a Godly society. Because if followed in society, the laws provide protection for our lives, our property, and our reputation. But I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that on top of all that another purpose of the ten commandments was to reveal  Jesus Christ. 

Let me explain. You can just approach these as a set of rules to tick off, like 'I've done that, done that, done that.' But the ramifications are staggering. But others have noticed that this selection of laws were given for another purpose, that is, to give the reader an understanding of the nature of the Mosaic law and God's purpose in giving it to Israel. Thus, it is possible to argue that the laws of the Pentateuch are there not to tell the reader how to live, but rather to show the leader that they could not in fact keep the laws and save themselves. Because the not only tell us what to do but they reveal who we really are before God, Particularly the last one do not covet, because that convicts us of what we thing. Not just what we do or do not do.

What does the New Testament say about all these commandments? I’ve said this before many time, but it needs to be repeated. We're under the law of Christ, not under the law of Moses, well, what's the difference? Turn to Romans chapter 13. Romans chapter 13, and look at verse 8. 

'Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.' For the commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet,' and if there's any other commandments, all summed up in this one, namely, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'

Paul says they are all summed up in love. Look at the next verse. 'Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore, love fulfils the law. I made a big issue in this short series about the fact that there are ramifications to society in the Ten Commandments, and I wanted to emphasize that because I think it's the point that's often overlooked. And it's there, there's no question. But it all comes down to each individual in society. So, there's always individual responsibility to act in these ways.

There was a story told in Victorian times in England of a young man who was employed to sweep and clean the floors in a bank after working hours. On day he found a wedge of money with a band around it under the seats  felt a small package of bills which had fallen under a tellers seat in frount of the counter.He took the money home and thought long and hard about whether or not he would keep it. His family was in dire need, and the extra money would have come in handy. The next morning, however, he returned the money. 'Tell me,' the banker said, 'what kept you honest? We never could have traced the loss or the blame to you.' 'Well, sir, said the young man, 'I'm a Christian and I thought if I kept it would have troubled conscience, and I decided that I didn't want to live with a thief.'