You Shall Not Steal

14 Sept

Exodus 20:14, Matthew 6:19-24

In year seven at Kirrawee High School, handball was everything. Getting to the best square before anyone else. Bringing a favourite tenny. Running out of class the moment recess started. It was benign enough, until it wasn't. Until the question surfaced: am I more excited about handball than I am about Jesus?

The solution was simple. Stop playing for a while. Sit with the Bible. Let the thing that had quietly become too important get smaller, and let the most important thing get bigger again.

That instinct, to fast from something that has crowded in too close, sits at the heart of the eighth commandment. You shall not steal isn't just about not taking other people's things. It goes somewhere deeper.

Wider Than We Think

The Heidelberg Catechism is helpful here. It expands the commandment beyond the obvious to include deceptive business practices, false weights, fraud, greed, and the wasteful misuse of what God has given us.

Martin Luther was even blunter:

“humanity is a vast, wide stable full of great thieves”

That sounds harsh until you sit with it. Stealing, at its root, is failing to trust that God provides. It's deciding that his provision isn't sufficient, or isn't coming, and going out to take for ourselves what we don't believe He'll give us. By that standard, Luther's description is fair. Most of us are more implicated in this commandment than we'd like to admit.

And yet the first person Jesus saved from the cross was a thief. There is hope in this commandment, not just conviction.

The Problem with Gambling

Gambling is worth examining specifically, because it touches the commandment at multiple points and sits quietly in the background of a lot of Australian life: in apps, in ads, in the way we're told we can't really enjoy sport without a bet on the side.

Gambling constitutes theft because it transfers money without honest work. The gambler pockets funds without legitimate labour and takes them from someone who loses. But the problem isn't just the transaction, it's what gambling does to the heart.

It fosters a something-for-nothing mentality that contradicts the call to honest work and careful stewardship. It sits covetousness at the centre — I want what someone else has. It creates a feedback loop where one win opens the door to chasing the next one, and the money that vanishes feels like an eagle taking flight, as Proverbs 23 puts it. It gradually fills the mind with noise and complexity until there's no space left for what matters.

Proverbs 13:11 makes the contrast: “wealth accumulated gradually through honest effort grows steadily, while dishonest gain dwindles away”. Faithful stewardship, receiving what God provides and using it well, is a different way of living entirely.

The apostle Paul is direct: those who have been stealing must stop, and instead work honestly so they have something to share with those in need. The movement isn't just from taking to not-taking. It's from taking to giving. That's the positive version of the commandment.

The Thrill of Generosity

There is an alternative thrill to the gambling hit, and it's available to everyone. Paying for a friend's coffee and saying nothing about it. Buying someone's lunch and not looking at the total. Finding out that someone you care about is in need and quietly doing something about it.

It sounds small. But the joy in it is real and lasting in a way the gambling hit never is. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. What we spend our money on shapes what we care about. And what we give away shapes us in a different direction entirely.

Simplify

Matthew 6:19–24 sits behind all of this: “Jesus says: don't store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy. Store them in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body, if your eyes are focused on the right things, your whole body is full of light”. But if they're fixed on darkness, how great is that darkness. And then the conclusion: you cannot serve both God and money.

The application is straightforward, if not always easy. If something has quietly become more important than it should be: an app, a habit, a hobby, a financial pattern, the most faithful response is sometimes just to turn it off. Delete it. Fast from it. Not manage it carefully, not reduce it a little, but stop.

That sounds extreme. But the freedom on the other side of it is real. When handball stopped being a competing love, it became just handball again — something to enjoy without the weight of a second master. When the Instagram app came off the phone, the Sheffield Wednesday updates stopped being a constant pull on attention. Simplification isn't punishment. It's relief.

The eighth commandment, at its most positive, is an invitation to a simpler life. One where trust in God's provision replaces the anxious grab for more. One where generosity replaces hoarding. One where the eye is fixed on the things that last, rather than the things that take flight like an eagle the moment you reach for them.

If something is complicating your faith right now, you probably already know what it is. And you probably already know what to do about it. The question is whether you're willing to do it.