The Seventh Commandment: “You Shall Not Steal” | Rev. Coleman S. Glenn

Welcome to our 11 o'clock adult service.

This year we have been following the Ten Commandments, looking at one commandment every month.

This month we are focusing on the seventh commandment.

You shall not steal.

Hear now the word of the Lord.

First, as it is written in the book of Genesis, part of chapter 44.

And Joseph commanded him that was over his house, saying, Fill the men's bags with food, as much as they can bear, and put a man's silver in his bag's mouth, and set my goblet, the silver goblet, in the bag's mouth of the youngest, and the silver of his rations.

And he did according to the word of Joseph that he had spoken.

The morning gave light, and the men were sent away, they and their donkeys.

They were gone out of the city, not yet far away, and Joseph said to him who was over his house, Arise, pursue after the men, and when you overtake them, say to them, Why do you repay evil in return for good?

Is not this it is in which my Lord drinks, and in which foretelling he foretells?

You have done evil in what you have done.

And he overtook them, and he spoke to them these words.

And they said to him, Why does my Lord speak according to these words?

Far be it from your servants to do according to this word.

Behold, the silver which we found in our bag's mouth we return to you out of the land of Canaan.

And how should we steal out of your Lord's house silver or gold?

And with whomever of your servants it be found, let him die, and we also will be to my lord for servants.

And he said, Even now according to your words, so shall it be.

He with whom it is found shall be to me a servant, and you shall be innocent.

And they hastened, and they made each man his bag come down to the earth, and opened each man his bag.

And he searched, he began at the eldest, and completed at the youngest, and the goblet was found in the bag of Benjamin.

And they tore their clothing, and loaded up each man his donkey, and they returned to the city.

And Judah and his brothers came into Joseph's house, and he was yet there, and they fell before him to the earth.

And Joseph said to them, What is this deed that you have done?

Did you not know that a man who is such as I foretelling foretells?

And Judah said, What shall we say to my Lord?

What shall we speak?

And how shall we be justified?

God has found out the iniquity of your servants.

Behold, we are servants to my Lord, both we and he in whose hand the goblet was found.

Amen.

Reading further, from the Gospel of John, a part of chapter ten.

Jesus said, Amen, Amen, I say to you, He who enters not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

And when he lets out his own sheep he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice.

But a stranger they will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.

This parable Jesus told to them, but they did not know what things they were which he spoke to them.

Then Jesus said again to them, Amen, Amen, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.

I am the door.

By me, if any one enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out and find pastor.

The thief comes not except that he may steal and slaughter and destroy.

I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

Amen.

Reading finally from Arcana Celestia, part of number 57, 47.

Joseph's brothers are accused as if they had taken Joseph's cup.

The reason why they were so accused, although the cup had been placed there, is plain from the internal sense, which is this The truth which is given by the Lord is first received as if it were not given.

For before regeneration, a person supposes that he procures truth for himself, and so long as he supposes this, he is in spiritual theft.

To claim good and truth to oneself, and to attribute them to oneself for righteousness and merit, is to take away from the Lord that which is his.

Before he has been regenerated, a person's belief about how he acquires truth cannot be any different.

He may, it is true, say with his lips, because of what he has been taught, that the truth of faith and the good of charity come entirely from the Lord.

Nevertheless, he does not believe it until faith has become implanted in good.

Only then does he begin to acknowledge it in his heart.

Amen.

Here end our lessons.

Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

You shall not steal.

This morning we are talking about the seventh commandment.

You shall not steal.

In the most basic literal sense, this means that we should not take things that do not belong to us.

More broadly, it forbids using fraud and deceit for personal gain.

In the spiritual sense, true Christian religion reveals that this commandment forbids depriving others of the truths of their faith, which is done by means of falsities and heresies.

We will come back to that later.

For now we'll go on to the next, the highest sense, the celestial sense.

Of that we read, thieves mean those who take away from the Lord his divine power, also those who claim for themselves his merit and righteousness.

We steal from the Lord when we claim the things that come from him as our own personal possessions.

This celestial meaning of the commandment is the one that the heavenly doctrine speaks of most often when addressing the internal sense of what it means to steal.

Our lesson from the Old Testament this morning described an instance of apparent theft.

Joseph, the son of Israel, had been sold by his brothers to be a slave in Egypt.

From slavery and imprisonment, he was eventually raised to become second in command only to Pharaoh in Egypt.

And then during the widespread famine, he was in charge of distributing grain that had been stored in Egypt.

His brothers, apart from his youngest brother Benjamin, had already made the trek to Egypt once to get grain.

They hadn't recognized Joseph.

He gave them grain, but he told them that if they wanted to return for more, they would have to bring their youngest brother with them.

So now, when a reading takes place, they'd come again with Benjamin, and they'd been given grain.

We read how Joseph had his own silver cup planted in Benjamin's bag of grain before they left.

When they'd gone a short distance, Joseph sent his servant, who accused them of stealing, and revealed the missing cup in Benjamin's bag.

Now, in the literal sense, this might seem confusing, although even there it does make some sense.

Joseph is testing his younger his brothers to see how they will respond to his younger brother's plight, whether they will abandon Benjamin as they abandoned him, or if they have changed.

But in the literal, or rather, in the internal sense, this particular part of the story, the planting of the cup and the accusation of theft, illustrates a truth that is hard for us to admit about our spiritual lives, namely that in the process of regeneration early on, we cannot help stealing from the Lord.

As we read in our lesson from Arcana Celestia, before regeneration, a person supposes that he procures truth for himself, and so long as he supposes this, he is in spiritual theft.

Before he has been regenerated, a person's belief about how he acquires truth cannot be any different.

Even if intellectually we know the truth that everything good belongs to the Lord, we still don't really believe it.

When we're not consciously thinking from the doctrine, we just feel like truth is ours.

Again, this kind of theft is unavoidable, and because of this, we're not held responsible for it until we're aware of it.

But that doesn't negate the weightiness of what it means to be stealing from the Lord.

Just a few passages further on, speaking of this chapter in Arcana Celestia, it says, the whole of this chapter has as its subject spiritual theft, which consists in laying claim to good and truth that come from the Lord.

This is a matter of consequence so great that after death a person cannot be admitted into heaven until he acknowledges in his heart that nothing good or true originates in himself, only in the Lord, and that whatever does originate in himself is nothing but evil.

And we can't begin with that acknowledgement fully in our hearts.

But we also can't get to heaven, can't enter heaven until we arrive at that acknowledgement.

And arriving at that acknowledgement that everything good is the Lord's is painful.

When Joseph's brothers realize that the silver cup is indeed in Benjamin's bag, they're distraught and they tear their garments.

And there's a few things going on here.

When we realize we've been stealing from the Lord, there is, of course, the pain of knowing I have sinned against the Lord for my whole life.

But along with that, there's also a painful realization that I'm going to need to change.

I'm going to need to let go of something that has mattered to me.

This perception of myself as being the source of at least something good and true.

It's one thing to pay lip service to the idea that everything worthwhile comes from the Lord, but it's another thing to recognize that this is the case, that there is nothing we can take credit for.

Eventually that's a freeing realization, but in the moment it can feel like a loss.

When we come to that realization that we've been stealing, we're faced with a crucial decision.

Am I going to admit that I've been stealing from the Lord?

Or am I going to find a way to excuse myself, to say, no, that wasn't really stealing?

Joseph's brothers here demonstrate the right course of action.

They do not deny that the cup has been found with one of them.

They go with the servant, and Judah says when they get there, God has found out the iniquity of your servants.

And that in this case is not just an acknowledgement of the theft of the cup, but of the selling of Joseph into slavery.

This willingness to admit guilt is an important part of the process of repentance.

Whether repenting of stealing or any other sin.

We recognize a way that we've been breaking the Lord's commandments, and we make ourselves guilty.

We do not make excuses.

From here we offer a prayer to the Lord.

True Christian religion says that this prayer does not need to be one in which we list our sins because it is the Lord who guided our self-examination, disclosed the sins, and inspired sadness, and together with this an effort to desist from them and begin a new life.

So this prayer is a prayer that the Lord have mercy, that he grant us power to change, that he give us an affection for doing good in its place.

And the Lord does answer those prayers.

The doctrine of life says that when we reject the evil of theft in particular, when we stop taking credit for things that belong to the Lord, when we stop trying to get our own way using manipulation, in place of that, we're given a love for sincerity and integrity.

A love for living in the truth that all things are gifts from the Lord.

So it is helpful to know that in our spiritual paths, we will have continual unveilings of ways that we have stolen from the Lord and continual opportunities to give him more and more credit for everything.

At the same time, we can't control when we're going to have those realizations.

And remember, this is just the deepest sense of the commandment.

And as with the other commandments, we often need to make progress on the lower levels of the commandment before we even see how we could start to follow it on those higher levels.

So the reality is that shunning evils on the natural level is how we begin to shun them on the deeper levels, because those literal sins are connected to the deeper ones.

And this might be clearest in the case of something like murder.

So, the decision to literally murder someone from hatred contains within it a desire to kill their spiritual life, which is the spiritual sense of the commandment.

And that in the celestial sense is a desire to kill the Lord, because the Lord is the source of their life.

So that's how these things all tie together when it comes to murder.

It might not be as obvious with theft.

How is failing to give the Lord credit the same as wanting to take someone else's truths?

How does it lead to a desire to cheat someone of what's rightfully theirs?

How are those connected?

And while the heavenly doctrine doesn't provide an explicit answer in its treatment of this commandment, we can start to see connections when we reflect on what's at the heart of stealing on all these levels.

Lurking in all of them is a sense that everything in the world is created for me.

That I'm owed something, maybe even owed everything by the world.

So we have this sense that things basically exist for my sake.

And children start out with this innocently enough to sense that things exist for my sake.

But it's behind all these different ways of breaking the commandment.

We don't tend to recognize it, though.

Just as we don't immediately recognize our tendency to steal from the Lord, we can be blind to our tendency to hold this attitude on the spiritual and natural levels.

The doctrine of life says the evil of theft enters more deeply into a person than any other evil, because it is conjoined with cunning and deceit.

Now, this is true in that we often mislead people to get the things we want, but it's also true in that spiritual theft often involves deceiving ourselves, lying to ourselves.

To get a little more specific about this, uh true Christian religion 319 says that the spiritual sense of the commandment against stealing forbids depriving others of the truths of their faith.

And on first blush, we might think, well, I don't think that applies to me.

I don't intentionally try to take away someone else's faith.

But the passage goes on to explain how that might look in the case of a priest.

It says, priests who minister solely for gain or from a lust for honor, and teach what they see or might see from the word to be untrue, are spiritual thieves, since they take away from the people the means of salvation, which are the truths of faith.

These are the bad shepherds, the ones who climb into the sheepfold another way, rather than turning people towards the Lord Jesus Christ, who's the source of everything good, who is the door of the sheep.

Now, there are definitely priests who do this with eyes wide open.

There are ministers, clergy people who know full well that their expert exhortations for their followers to give lavishly are empty and self-serving, and they don't care.

That does happen.

But it might be easier to imagine a priest who simply shies away from saying anything that might offend the people in the congregation for fear of losing his good standing in their eyes.

And here's how we start to see that subtle attitude creep in, this offspring of celestial theft, the attitude that the truth is my truth.

If it's my truth, I'm not really under any obligation to share it with anyone else, particularly if they don't want to hear it.

And with that in mind, we can start to see how this might apply to people other than just priests.

Even if we're not actively trying to steal truth from someone else, do we withhold the truth as we see it?

Because it's more comfortable to do so.

Do we have this attitude that, oh, my truth is mine and I can use it however I want?

This attitude doesn't just lead to spiritual theft taking things that ought to be shared with others, but even within ourselves, when we have this idea that I can use truth however I want, we can end up using truth from the Lord's word to justify evil.

There's theft even within ourselves.

When we realize that spiritual theft entails all these things, our eyes might suddenly open to ways that we've been stealing on this level, just as they might have been opened to the ways we steal from the Lord on the celestial level.

On this level, as on the highest one, we're not held guilty for the fact that up until now our eyes were closed to the evil.

But now that they're opened, we are responsible for whether we continue to steal or whether we work with the Lord to stop spiritually stealing.

Stop making that truth mine.

What about the natural level?

Are there ways we steal naturally without realizing it?

Again, if we look at that core attitude that things exist for my sake, we might start to notice places where we do this.

True Christian religion says, workers transgress against this commandment when they do their work dishonestly and deceptively, retailers when they mislead customers with their merchandise, weighing, measuring, and calculations, officers when they dip into their soldiers' pay, judges when they tilt their judgments toward friends or relatives, or for bribes or other inducements, and thus bias their judgments or investigations and deprive others of goods that belong to those others by law.

And when we have that attitude of, you know, my time belongs to me, I can do with my time what I want.

My talents belong to me, I can do with my talents what I want.

My possessions belong to me, it can lead us to break this commandment on this broader natural level.

Where it might not be obvious, but we're we're bending the rules a little bit.

We're cutting corners, we're looking for loopholes.

Because our concern is not how can I serve others, but what do I get out of this?

What's in it for me?

That's true whether it's monetary things that we're stealing or credit for things that other belongs to other people, time that we steal from others, energy from others, manipulating people to do what we want them to do without doing anything for them.

And again, it's probably inevitable that sometimes we will break this commandment, even on the literal level, without meaning to.

And again, the question is what do we do when we realize we've been breaking it?

There's a passage in New Jerusalem and its heavenly doctrine about what it means to have conscience.

It gives this example.

If someone has in his possession someone else's goods, without the owner's knowledge, so that he can enjoy them without fear of legal action or losing his honors or reputation, but still gives them back to the other person because they're not his, such a person has a conscience.

What do we do when we realize we've been accepting credit for someone else's idea?

What do we do when we realize we've been bending the numbers a little bit on a tax form?

What do we do when we realize we have been careless with the time and help someone has offered us?

We can choose in those moments of realization.

Not to make excuses, not to put off any action until later, also not to crumple in shame and embarrassment, which can be a tendency, but instead to simply say, I'm going to act differently.

I didn't mean to, but I have sinned against the Lord.

We shun the evil of theft as a sin against the Lord and pray to the Lord for strength to begin a new life.

As we make a habit of doing this, that tendency toward theft, that attitude that says, Everything is created for my sake, can be replaced by an attitude of generosity and gratitude and a life of integrity rather than deceit.

At the conclusion of the story of Joseph and his brothers, Judah offers to take Benjamin's place as Joseph's servant.

Joseph sees that his brothers have changed.

He sends away all the Egyptians and reveals himself to his brothers, weeping and forgiving them for their sins.

There is reconciliation.

And this is the hope for all of us.

That in admitting our own failings, our own unworthiness, we can then allow the Lord to come in, lift us up so that we're reconciled to Him and to one another.

Amen.