Sermon by Rev. Frank Rose

Lessons: Joshua 7:1-13; Joshua 10:1-14; Arcana Coelestia 4174

Sermon: A few years ago my wife and I came home from a movie. At first we didn’t notice anything wrong and then we saw the broken glass. After that we saw things that had been strewn around the room. The first emotion was shock, and a feeling of being invaded On looking around we noticed that the person stole some jewelry but not much else of any value. As robberies go it was not very serious, but besides losing material things, something else was lost - our feeling of security.

A friend of mine went out of her apartment to unlock the door of her car and found that the key wouldn’t work. Then she discovered the reason. The lock had been broken. So she opened the door and looked and there on the front seat were the remains of the dash board. The stereo had been taken, and bits and pieces were scattered everywhere. She had a tremendous shock, and a feeling of being violated. Then she had the grim realization that she had to go through the process of replacing the stereo and fixing the door.

You can imagine what had happened to this stereo. Did the person who stole it want a stereo? Very likely not. The person was rather after money. This means that the person had to sell the stereo. Who would buy a stolen stereo? Another thief, of course, called the fence, the person who buys stolen property and sells it to the public. Very often the public knows that they are buying stolen goods—why else would it be so inexpensive, so in a sense the person who bought the stereo from the fence was also a thief.

So a $200 stereo for the thief might end with him gaining, I don’t know, $25, $50, something like that. And with the money he or she might get an hour’s high. On the other hand the person who has been robbed faces weeks--sometimes months--of inconvenience. Beside the cost of replacement there are many other difficulties.

In a sense everyone had at one time or another been robbed. Every time you buy something in a store, part of your money goes to pay for theft. And the interesting thing is that probably the largest percentage of that money is for theft by people who work at the store. You hear of the bank robberies—a person who holds up the bank with a gun—they don’t take anything like as much money as those top-level executives who have learned how to embezzle, and who take away million of dollars. We live in a society in which people constantly prey on one another, and rob from one another.

There have been many corporate scandals, some of them involving billions of dollars. In some cases, the cost is born by the taxpayer. There are some large-scale thieves in this world. And they do tremendous damage to the economy—really hurting it out of greed and selfishness.

What a different society we would have if people really understood and followed this simple commandment: you shall not steal. Think how different your life would be. As you around in your daily concerns notice how many things in your life are there because of the danger of theft, the little precautions: the locks, the bars. We are a society that has to protect ourselves.

And then there is that very strange form of theft known as vandalism. A person drives by, throws a rock out the car, and smashes a window. The vandal is not enriched. The window is gone. So who is benefited from that form of stealing?

If someone stole paper money they would that much richer. What if they burned it? Nobody is enriched by it. Vandalism is like that where something is taken but it can never be restored and nobody is enriched by it. This is what happens in riots. Property worth millions just goes up in smoke. And nobody benefits, least of all the people who live there. Sometimes the residents never recover. Years later everybody is impoverished by this senseless form of stealing. There is something else about those riots that is striking - the media coverage. We watch the riot as it takes place. We see people emerging from the stores laden with stolen goods, some of them smiling as if on a holiday. But the other thing that is so sobering is that those who are involved are often ordinary people. Now no doubt some of them are people who are very poor and who need what they were taking. But others drive up in taxis. It just reveals how prevalent is this attitude towards stealing and that when people have an opportunity, it seems they don’t have any internal controls. If there is a store with a window broken, there are those who will walk in and rob it blind.

This goes right back to beginnings of the Bible. What is the first crime in the Bible? Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, stealing of the forbidden fruit. The very first crime is theft. The second one is murder when their two boys, Cain and Abel, had a dispute and one killed the other. What was the first crime that took place when they entered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua? It was theft: Achan stealing of the accursed things and in so doing endangering the whole nation. That’s why the punishment was so swift.

There is another remarkable story in the book of Judges. And the story opens with Micah talking to his mother and saying: “Mother, the money that was stolen that you have been cursing about, I took it-“ it was a sum of 1,100 shekels of silver. Strangely she was saving the money to give him a present! So here we have the phenomena of a man stealing his own gift. As such it is a symbol of the way in which human beings in their impatience take the very things that God is wanting to give them.

What is wrong about stealing? There are certain situations in which we can get away with theft and it seems as if no one is hurt. But theft is contrary to love of the neighbor. If you really loved your neighbors, you would rather give to them than to steal from them. It’s very simple isn’t it? If you really think about the welfare of other people, you would want your life to be a gift to them and you would hate to think that you are robbing from others.

The second thing that is wrong with theft is that it is against sincerity and honesty. This is why it is always done in secret, in devious ways. The evil of theft enters deeply into people since it’s attended with this level of deceit. But the worst thing about theft is that in the long run we don’t just steal from others, we steal from ourselves and that means a loss of integrity.

There is spiritual theft in which we take away people’s spiritual values—take away someone’s hopes or dreams, take away their religious beliefs. And this is more like vandalism in that you are taking something but you are not benefiting from it yourself. All you are doing is taking something of value that you can never replace.

In the Garden of Eden who was the victim of that first theft? Who did they steal from? It was just Adam and Eve in the Garden. They were really stealing from God. In the story of Achan, who was the victim? He was stealing the accursed thing, that meant that he was stealing those things that had been set apart for the worship of God: the gold and the silver and the garment, and he robbed his own people of their security.

There is a question in the Word: Will you rob from God? Will you steal from God? The amazing thing is that everything we have is a gift. All our material possessions are a gift and we only have them for a time. And when we die, and leave this world, we leave all those things behind.

How can we steal from God? Well stealing from God really is a question of attitude. If you take credit for the things which are really God’s doing, then you are robbing from God. Just as if you were to publish a book that someone else had written and you put your name on the title page and you get the benefits, you are stealing from that author. So when we think about all the good things in our life that are gifts from our heavenly Father, if we fail to acknowledge Him as the source, then in that sense we are robbing from God.

What we need to do is notice that we have at least two levels in our life. On the external level we are thieves and robbers. We are self-seeking, self-centered. We do not look on other people as friends but rather as beings to exploit. But we have a higher level—the spiritual level—that looks outward and is generous and wants to make a contribution to life. So in our own personal spiritual growth we need to be aware of the lower level and its thieving tendencies especially the tendency to take credit in things that are not really our own doing and then we need rise up to a higher level where we can appreciate the gift of life and acknowledge the many and wonderful blessings from God.

In that spirit of acknowledgment we rise above the thieving nature of our lower self. When we do that, our blessings immeasurably increase just as the material prosperity of this country would immeasurably increase if all thieving stopped. In a similar way our spiritual blessings would increase if all people could have this spirit of the acknowledgment looking for the kingdom of God and His values and His virtues. That’s why the Lord said that if you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things will be added to you. He will shower blessings on your life beyond number, if you can go through life with the spirit of integrity, respect for other people, respect for their property and a willingness to give all credit and glory to God.