Sermon - Lent Midweek 4, 2025 - 7th & 8th Commandments

Seventh Commandment: You Shall not Rob or Steal, Lucas Cranach, 1528

What is The Seventh Commandment? You shall not steal. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or possessions, or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income.

“The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand; You satisfy the desire of every living thing.” All good things come down from our Heavenly Father to us His beloved children. While we may presumptuously behave as if all that we have is a result of our hard labors, this is simply false. All things belong to the Lord, and He has given them to us freely as a gift. Regardless of how much you may think you deserve what you have, it’s a gift, not a reward. So the Lord sends rain upon the just and the unjust alike. 

Thus, since all that we have is a gift from the Lord and rightly belongs to Him, as James teaches us: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Since all is a gift, and we are but stewards of God’s gifts, we are to use what we have for the sake of one another. When we see another in need, and we have more than we immediately need, it’s only proper to leverage our gifts in benefit to our neighbor.

Additionally, it’s important to recognize that God in His wisdom doesn’t give everyone the same things. We all have private personal property, and at times some of us have things that others of us also wish we had, and it can then be tempting to take those things for ourselves since we reason that we’re more worthy of those things than them. Or others won’t even miss those things because they have such a large abundance. Simple thievery is evil, and is condemned in the 7th commandment.

But if the 7th commandment is understood too narrowly to be simple thievery, then this commandment seems like an easy one to keep. However, let us broaden our understanding of this commandment, and apply it to everything that has to do with our neighbor.

How many employees waste time on the job, or do lousy work, and get paid for that? How often do employees waste the resources of their boss? How often do employers underpay their employees, raising the prices, and putting the extra money in their pocketbook and treating their employees like slaves?

Or today we think in a free-market economy we can charge whatever prices we want and it’s okay. But when businesses, especially ones we can’t reasonably live without, have a monopoly and charge exorbitant rates, that’s thievery on the broadest scale! If it costs me pennies to produce a product, but I know I can make you pay $100 because you need it, that’s stealing. It’s a bit foolish that we fear the simple thief and scorn him so greatly, when it’s relatively easy to lock up our goods and punish him severely enough to stop him in the future. But we laud the businesses who rob people blind, and we give them prizes and awards for their misdeeds. But this hits closer to home, since our retirement accounts depend on this.

From credit card companies to insurance providers, from hospitals to mechanics, from diaper manufacturers to church supply stores, from local property taxes to the federal level. How many people grow richer by fleecing and striping the poor and destitute? 

Let us learn to apply the 7th commandment very broadly. God gives us all good things as gifts from Him, and so let us broadly distribute these good gifts to others as we see they have need. As God gives generously to us, let us give generously to one another.

Moving on: What is The Eighth Commandment? You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.

Outside of stealing someone’s property, a most grievous theft is that of one’s own reputation: “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.” The way that we speak about one another is terribly significant, and this 8th commandment is one broken very frequently and popularly. Gossiping is what many of us do best! Many a coffee group sit around doing nothing more than complaining about anyone and everyone else, including the members of the coffee group who might be missing that morning. Sitting in these groups we’re encouraged to spread rumors and make stories more dramatic so that we have some juicy gossip others will find interesting. In so doing we think we’re building up our own popularity at the expense of another’s reputation.

Now, it’s important to understand what types of talk are included in this commandment. So, obviously, it’s wrong to lie about your neighbor. But it’s also wrong to betray confidences and hurt reputations even if you know the truth but the matter isn’t exactly public information. For example, if you hear your neighbors having an argument, and you see one of them storm off and not come home for a day or two, this isn’t something to tell other people about. You may not know the whole situation, and even if you do, talking about it with others won’t help them, but hurt them.

Just because you know the truth about another person, doesn’t mean you should share that truth about them if it’s going to hurt their reputation. In these instances your job is to cover their shame. I know I said it’s wrong to lie, and it is, but in some cases it’s more wrong to tell the truth. This is like the principle of lying to hide Anne Frank. For example, let’s say a man’s wife is struggling with some addiction problems, and she’s working on it, but if it became public it would destroy her reputation and set her back, so her husband would at times have to tell lies, so to speak, in order to protect her reputation. Or even more simply, to use the example pastor Matheny used last week, of a wife burning her husband’s eggs: if someone were to ask him how her cooking was that morning, he should tell them it was great, and his wife is wonderful. Because the issue at hand really isn’t the eggs, the issue is the relationship between the husband and wife, and her reputation is more important than how his breakfast tasted.

The other issue at hand here is that while most of the time we are to keep our mouths shut, there are certain people whose job it is to open their mouths, particularly when the sin is public. For instance, rulers and judges are to publicly identify sins, call out evildoers, and punish them all in a very public manner so that others learn to not sin as they do. Likewise, pastors and teachers must call out false teachers in a public manner, and speak against them, so as to warn others from believing their false teaching. In the home, fathers and mothers are under obligation to do the same. Thus, when the sin is private, then go and confront the offender privately so that you may resolve the issue quietly, protecting the offender’s reputation. When the sin is public, where everyone knows about it, then their reputation is already ruined and the sin must be dealt with publicly so that all may learn to guard against it. 

In conclusion, at the heart of this commandment is the admonition to do no harm to the neighbor with the tongue. Just as God covered the nakedness and shame of Adam and Eve by clothing them with garments of skin, and just as God covers our sin and shame by covering us with the blood of Jesus, so are we to cover up the sins and shame of others when we have the opportunity. The Lord looks upon us and knows all of our sins, seeing us as the miserable sacks of worms we really are, and instead of gossiping about us, ranting and raving how stupid and horrible we are, He looks upon us in love, forgiving our sins by His own death, and covering our shame with His righteousness. See how generously the Lord hides our shame at the cost of His own life. Let us also learn to cover one another’s shame by biting our tongues once in a while.