Are You Struggling With Trusting In God's Provision In Tough Times?

Cameron: [00:00:00] Hi, 121. My name is Cameron, I'm our tech and creative manager at the church. And today we're at DBU, we're going to be walking around asking some of the students what their thoughts are on the eighth commandment, which is Thou shalt not steal.

Ethan: [00:00:11] Hey, what's up guys? My name is Ethan. I'm one of the visual arts residents at 121. And today we're at the DBU coffeehouse, and we're going to ask people about the eighth commandment.

Cameron: [00:00:21] Are you good to get interviewed?

Unknown: [00:00:23] Yeah.

Cameron: [00:00:24] Okay, cool. So do you know what the eighth commandment is?

Ethan: [00:00:27] Do you know what the eighth commandment is?

Unknown: [00:00:31] Not off the top of my head.

Unknown: [00:00:36] No.

Cameron: [00:00:38] Do you know what the eighth commandment is?

Unknown: [00:00:40] Oh my gosh, i do not.

Unknown: [00:00:44] I, you know, I was just thinking about it the other day and not off the top of my head. But I bet if you look in the Bible, it'll give you the answer.

Ethan: [00:00:53] What is the eighth commandment in Exodus 20?

Unknown: [00:01:00] Is that the steel one? Do not steal.

Ethan: [00:01:06] Yes. That's it, that's it. Have you ever stolen anything before?

Unknown: [00:01:12] No.

Ethan: [00:01:14] When was the last time you stole something?

Unknown: [00:01:17] So I did it without knowing, the other day I was at Walmart.

Cameron: [00:01:24] Have you ever stolen anything?

Unknown: [00:01:26] No.

Cameron: [00:01:28] So my question is, when was the last time that you stole something?

Unknown: [00:01:31] The last time, I would say the other day, I took one of my roommate's Gatorades because he wasn't home, and I was really thirsty, and I think it still counts. But I don't necessarily have a moral qualm about it, which is probably bad, but.

Ethan: [00:01:50] Let's say you go somewhere; you buy a coffee.

Unknown: [00:01:54] Right.

Ethan: [00:01:54] You hand them some cash and they give you some change back. But it's a little more than what you should have got. Does that count as stealing?

Unknown: [00:02:03] I don't think it counts as stealing because they gave it to you, so it's not your fault. However, being a good Samaritan, you would, I would preferably give back the change.

Ethan: [00:02:16] If you get change from a place and it is not the correct change, you receive more than what you're supposed to get, and you keep it. Is that stealing?

Unknown: [00:02:26] Yes. A thousand percent, its integrity in the small things.

Ethan: [00:02:30] What's one thing that you would count as stealing that a lot of other people may see that and think that's normal?

Unknown: [00:02:39] Probably like taking someone else's ideas, you know? If they took the time to think about it and come up with it, I don't think you should take credit for it.

Unknown: [00:02:48] You know, it could be called stealing, it could be called being a clout chaser, but honestly, I am definitely guilty of this. I hear something super funny, and then I'm like, wait, I came up with it myself.

Unknown: [00:03:03] Thank you guys. You're a king, bro.

Ethan: [00:03:04] Thank you.

Cameron: [00:03:06] All right, so this has been fun. We've been able to walk around the campus and get to talk to a lot of people. And while it has been fun, it's actually been really eye-opening to me to see a bunch of people who might or might not realize the different things that they might be stealing. And so we're actually going to give it back to Eric as he talks through this commandment with us, and we can really open our eyes to different ways that we might not see how we could be infringing on the eighth commandment. So let's get back to Eric.

Eric: [00:03:30] Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for just today that we get to gather together, that we get to be here. Lord, I pray that we would just bask in your kindness and your goodness and who you are. Lord, I want to especially pray today for the 200 students who went to camp this last week, the middle school and high school students, and, Lord, you did some incredible things in them throughout this last week. And God, I pray, we all pray, we beseech you to seal that within them, that as they get back now to the normal day-to-day lives, Lord, that what you stirred in their hearts would stay, that the sins that they turned from, Lord, that they would continue to fight and to battle that, Lord, as you drew some towards you and more and more closer to you, Lord, I pray that they would continue to press into that. For those that you saved, Lord, I pray that you would then continue to cultivate that faith and grow them to know you more and more and more. Lord, we thank you for what you've done in that week in our students and our leaders, and we thank you for that. And, Lord, we thank you for this time we have today. As we open your Word, I pray that you would stir our hearts, that we would be convicted, that we would be encouraged, and that we would grow in our love for you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Eric: [00:04:41] Alright. several years ago, my family was taking a road trip. We were going to my grandmother's 80th birthday up in Illinois, and we stopped on the way in Saint Louis. And there's this really cool museum that my kids love that we went to. It's hard to describe, I don't even know if it's a museum, but they call it that. They take a bunch of random stuff and put it in rooms, and they weld stuff together and kids climb all over it. It's a really cool place, and so as we went there, we played all day, and then we came out to our car, and as we walked out to our car, we realized that we had been robbed. The lock on the door had been ripped off and they'd gotten into the van, they stole several things, and they stole my son's laptop. And as a dad, you just don't, you just hate that your kids were stolen from, it's just an awful feeling. And then they took things that weren't even of value to them but were of a lot of value to me. So they took my backpack, and in it, I had my Bible, which I had just, you know, written all kinds of stuff in it, and it was really meaningful to me. They also took my journals that I had in there, and this was the time period when I was really wrestling with moving from the corporate world into vocational, full-time ministry. And so those thoughts, that wrestling with God, and how that played out were all captured, and they took it. And so it just felt so, I just felt so violated and so wronged in that moment. Many of you have probably been in that same situation, and I don't know what it is when someone steals from you, it just feels awful. I've heard a lot of people say that there's nothing worse than a thief. Now, I don't know if that's really true, but it feels like it in that moment, right? It's awful when someone steals from you.

Eric: [00:06:29] Well, today we're going to be in Exodus 20, verse 15, and we're going to look at the eighth commandment, which is do not steal. Right, it's pretty simple in that so many of you are probably saying, yes, finally a week, I think I'm good on this one. Right? You go, okay, I don't rob banks, I don't embezzle money for my company, I don't shoplift, I think I'm going to be pretty good, this is probably for other people out there, right? Well, not so fast, because what we're going to see as we really understand what goes into what the fullness of stealing, is that we're going to see that by nature, we're all guilty. By nature, we're all takers. But here's the good news, we're also going to see that Jesus was not; that Jesus was the opposite of that, that Jesus was a giver. And when we trust in him, when we press into him, he takes us and he turns us from takers into generous givers. He transforms us from taking to trusting and to treasuring him. So that's what we're going to see today as we look at this commandment.

Eric: [00:07:35] And we've been in the ten commands for several weeks now. And as we've been going through them, we've seen a lot of different things. We've seen that these are ancient commands, but yet they're so applicable for us today. And we've seen that they serve much like a mirror, remember the first week we looked at that mirror and they reflect God's character. And when we look at that mirror, what we see is where we fall short of God's character. And so they serve, each and every one of these commands, to point us to Jesus, who was the one who perfectly fulfilled these commands, who was the one who saves us and takes away the condemnation and the punishment that we deserve for breaking these commands.

Eric: [00:08:15] So as we've pressed into these commands, Ross has been taking us through this, and he's been using the Discovery Bible study method to go through this. So it's a series of five questions that we ask when we're reading Scripture, and we can do this with any scripture. And the five questions are, what does it say, to kind of summarize it? What does it say about God? What does it say about people? What do we do with this, or how should this change us? And then finally, who are we going to tell? So that's kind of going to be the process that we go through as we look at this command as well. I'm going to add one more question in there as we go through this.

Eric: [00:08:55] So as we ask, the first question we ask is what does it say or what does it mean? So in Exodus 20:15, it says, "You shall not steal." Right? So a lot of places when we're in Scripture, sometimes it's hard to understand what they're saying in there. So we have to spend some time really asking that question, what does it say? What does it mean? Well, we don't have that problem here, right? It says you shall not steal. So what does it mean? Don't steal, right? Pretty simple. If we were to summarize it, sometimes we're in a big chunk of scripture and we want to summarize like what's the main idea. Well, if we summarize this, what would it be? Don't steal, right? Pretty easy, right?

Eric: [00:09:34] Well, not so fast. Because as we really understand what this means, there's a lot more here than just not taking stuff. As a matter of fact, many of us probably steal in ways that we're not even aware of, and so we want to look at this in a few different categories. There's first of all, the theft by taking, right? That's what we're all familiar with, right, when we take from something else. Okay? But then there's also this theft by cheating, where it's not quite as overt as that, but it's just kind of, you know when nobody's looking, we kind of cheat a little bit here or there. And then there's the theft by holding, by keeping what's not ours to keep. So we're going to look at those and the different ways that we see this stealing play out.

Eric: [00:10:17] The first one is pretty easy and obvious right? Theft by taking. Right. We all kind of understand that one intuitively. The word here is, it's in the Hebrew here, but when it's translated into the Greek or when it's used in the New Testament, it's that word klepto. That might resonate with some of you, a klepto is someone who compulsively steals or is addicted to stealing, right? And so it's that idea of taking something that's not ours. It's the the embezzlement. It's the shoplifting. It's the robbery. It's all of those things, right? And that's the obvious one, and my guess is, there's probably not a lot of people who are really struggling with that in here right now. Maybe so, and maybe today is a day where God's going to really convict you on that.

Eric: [00:10:58] But there's also, the next one, is theft by cheating. This one's a little more subtle. This one is one we probably fall into a lot of times and may not even know it. It's things like cheating on our taxes or cheating on an expense report. Just a little thing, they're not going to miss it. Right? Or maybe it's things like, if you're an employee and a company has hired you to do your best work, if you're not giving your best work, then you're, in essence, stealing from them. If you're an hourly employee and they expect you to be working, and you take and you go into the bathroom and you're on your phone for hours, you're in essence stealing from them, right? But it's not just for the employee, it's also for the employer. In any area where we are taking advantage of others for personal gain, we're taking. So as employers, if you are hiring someone and you're paying them a wage that's not a fair wage, then you're taking advantage of them for personal gain. If your advertising is deceptive, you're taking advantage of people for gain. If you're charging exorbitant prices to someone who has no choice but to buy from you, then you're taking from them. There are all these ways that we see that idea of cheating and taking and stealing that we might not even think of on a normal basis.

Eric: [00:12:20] Let me show you a couple of examples in Scripture of this one. In Proverbs 11:1 it says, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight." So this is a practice that happened in the ancient world a lot. They would have a scale and when you bought a product, they would kind of weigh it on a scale and that would tell you how much it costs, much like today. But they would have these scales rigged, so if you went to buy 5 pounds of barley, that scale might only be, it might show you 5 pounds, but it's really only 3 pounds. And they say that's an abomination, that's strong language. The Lord hates that because it's taking advantage of someone for personal gain, it's stealing.

Eric: [00:12:58] Here's another example. This is from Jesus in Luke 19 when Jesus goes into the temple, it says, "He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, "It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers." So here's the scene, people would travel from all over Israel to come to Jerusalem to make sacrifices at the temple. They would walk for days, and when they got there, there were people set up selling animals for them to sacrifice. So far, so good. But what they were doing was they were charging exorbitant prices for these animals because the people had no choice, they had just walked days and days and days to get there, they didn't have any choice, and so they took advantage of them. And notice the words that Jesus used, first of all, this is legal by the way. So they're not breaking the law. But notice the word Jesus used, you den of robbers. They were stealing by taking advantage of others.

Eric: [00:13:59] In Luke 19, also, we see the story of Zacchaeus. Many of you know that story. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and he was, and many would consider him kind of the biggest sinner of them all. Because he was a Jew, but he worked for the Roman government, the enemy, the oppressors. He worked for them, and he would extract money from the Jewish people to give to the Roman government, so he was hated. He had an encounter with Jesus, and after the encounter, here's what he said in Luke 19 verse 8, he says, "And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” Notice the word he uses there, he says, defrauded. What he was doing was legal, but he considered it and after he encountered Jesus, he realized this was wrong. He was defrauding others. He was cheating others. He was taking for his own personal gain.

Eric: [00:15:03] But there's one more way that we take that we steal, and that's by keeping and holding on so tightly to what we have. I want to show you in Ephesians 4 verse 28, this is Paul writing to a church that had a lot of new believers and he says here's what you're to do as, as you encounter Christ, here's how you're to live now. And he says, "Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need." Now notice what's happening here as he's addressing these two believers. First, it's pretty obvious, he's saying don't steal, right? Okay, if you're a follower of Jesus now, one of the first things, hey, don't steal. If you're a thief, give it up, and get a new job. Right? So that's pretty obvious in that, that as Christians, we shouldn't steal. But then notice what happens next, he says that they should work with their own hands. And this is just a cool picture of how God values our work, that we are to work to provide, that he values work. As a matter of fact, when we work, when we do good work, we are worshiping God, we are bringing him glory and honor in that. But notice why, the purpose of our work, he says, "So that we may be able to share with anyone in need." You see, it's not just about not stealing, it's also about giving generously.

Eric: [00:16:35] Tim Keller, when he was writing about this, and by the way, I've taken a lot of what I'm talking about today from Tim Keller, from his book Counterfeit Gods, as well as his sermon on that particular passage. But he talks, and he's the one who differentiates between the theft of taking and the theft of keeping. Okay. But as he does that, he tells us that what we do is not enough to just give up not taking, but we need to also be willing to give generously. Oftentimes, if we want to look at a particular sin or a particular thing and realize, okay, where am I missing the mark here? We can look at the opposite of that and say, that's what I should be pursuing. We should be pursuing, not being takers, but being generous givers in that.

Eric: [00:17:23] So I'll give you an example of this in Malachi 3, verses 8 and 9. This is Malachi, he was an Old Testament prophet, and he's talking to God's people. And here's what he says, he says, "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me." So he is speaking on behalf of God here. He says, "But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. 9You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you." So oftentimes we don't think about withholding things from God as robbing him, but that's what he says here. When we hold on so tightly to our stuff, when we don't give it back, then we are robbing him. The Old Testament concept of the tithe, we see it all throughout Scripture, is this idea of the first 10% of what God gives me, and then the first 10% I give back to the Lord. And then the contributions or the offerings are above and beyond that out of the generosity of our heart, out of the overflow of what God gives us, out of sacrificially giving back to him that we are to give in those areas. And he says, if we're not doing that, then it is robbing him. Now, why is that? Is it really stealing from him? I mean, he gave it to us. Well, let me put it this way to kind of paint a picture. If you are hired by someone to manage their company, let's say they own a factory, and that factory makes widgets, right, just a made-up product, whatever it is. And so the person hires you and says, I want you to continue doing this. I want you to manage this company, and here's kind of the parameters by which I want you to do that. And you say, okay, I got it, I'm going to manage this company. And you take that company and then you, you start selling off the different pieces to it, the factory equipment that makes the widgets. And then you take that and you kind of do whatever you want with that money, maybe you give it to your friend Bob who's in need, maybe you put it in a pool and, you know, hey, so the employees can come to swim at my house. If that were to happen, when that owner comes back and checks in on you and you tell them what you did with it, he's going to say you stole from me, right? Because the owner gave you something to manage and you didn't manage it, you took it and did whatever you wanted to do with it.

Eric: [00:19:49] And the same is true when we look at our relationship with God. God is the owner of everything, he owns it, everything that we have, our income, our money, our possessions, it's God's, he owns it, and he gives it to us to manage. And he gives us some principles to manage it with. The first one is that tithe, it's that the first 10% comes back to God. In today's environment and the church age that comes back in through the local church to do God's work. And then beyond that, the contributions and the offerings, we look for other needs to get in on what God is doing. We look for those opportunities to help those in need, that's what we're to do with what he's given us to manage. And then the rest, he says, live on it, use it, enjoy it. But first and foremost, there's a giving component to that. And so if we are holding on tightly, if we're keeping, then we are in essence robbing God. See, stealing isn't just taking what's not ours, it's also keeping what's not ours. And by nature, we're takers, we hold on too tightly, and we actually become thieves.

Eric: [00:21:13] So when we look at this idea of stealing, this commandment, what I want us to keep in mind is stealing is not just taking, but stealing is taking or keeping what belongs to someone else. Okay, so we've looked at what does this say? Now let's switch gears and ask the question, what does this say about people? What does it say about us? First of all, we do need to see that when we view stealing this way, we're probably all guilty to some degree, we're all takers. And what we need to understand is that we take what we treasure. Okay, we take what we treasure. So if we want to ask the question, what was that, I think that's a little leftover from active.

Eric: [00:21:59] So let's ask the question, why do we steal? Why do we take? Why do we keep? Well, why does a thief steal? We'll start there. Now I am sure if you asked a thief, why do you steal? You'd get probably a lot of different answers, and they would justify what they do in several different ways. Right? They might say, well, it's not fair that some people have this or that, or I really need this, or various other reasons why they would say this. I'm not really hurting anyone. Ultimately what it comes down to is greed, they are treasuring something above everything else, they're treasuring what they're taking above their conscience, above their reputation, above the consequences that happen when you steal. They're treasuring something above that.

Eric: [00:22:48] I know when I was in high school and into college, I ran with a group of guys, and we just kind of took whatever we wanted. We just thought that we were smarter than everybody else and deserved it, and so we would take things and it wasn't even so much for the thing, it was probably more for the thrill of it a lot of times. But we thought that we could do whatever we wanted to never get caught. By the way, you'll eventually get caught. And in that, I was putting those things above everything else, above my very own soul.

Eric: [00:23:27] So let me ask the question, why do we steal? If we say stealing is taking or keeping what should go to someone else, then why do we do that? Why are we takers? Well, it's the same reason, it's because we take what we treasure. We're putting whatever it is above God. Each of us treasures different things, we all treasure things, and when this is the number one thing we treasure, then it puts it above God and we start to see the world and see things differently. Tim Keller says this is greed. Ultimately, treasuring something above God is greed. And he says this, he says, no one actually thinks they're greedy. He says greed hides itself from the victim. So, therefore, all of us should begin with the working hypothesis that this may be a problem for me. So ultimately, why do we break the eighth commandment? Why do we steal? Why do we keep? Why do we hold on so tightly? It's because we're breaking the first commandment. Do y'all remember the first commandment? You should have no other gods before me. And that one really drives all the rest, because when we steal, what we're doing is we're putting this above God, we're breaking the first commandment, you should have no other God before me. And this is how it works with all of the commandments. When we commit adultery, we're putting sex above God as an idol, above him. When we lie, we're putting approval above God. In each and every one of these cases, it's what we treasure that we put above him, and that's what gets us in trouble. That's what causes us to break all the rest of the commands, is by putting something else above God.

Eric: [00:25:22] In Matthew 6, so Jesus says a lot about our money, and how we manage it, and how that interacts with our faith. And in Matthew 6 verse 21, he says this, he says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Whatever you treasure, that's what your heart's going to be given to. If you're treasuring this, then that's where our heart goes, and it doesn't leave a lot of room for God. He goes on in verse 24 and says, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." We often think that we can have God and then, you know, still really hold our money really tightly, but ultimately, we can't have both. One's going to win out, and we see over and over again that play out. So what are you putting first? Is it our money or is it God?

Eric: [00:26:22] In First Timothy 6:9-10 he says, but those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless, senseless and harmless desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." If we hold our money so tightly, it separates us from God. We wander from him when we do that. You see, we take what we treasure when we're not putting God first, when we're putting other things above him, that's what we're treasuring and that's what we tend to take. So we've seen so far that stealing is both taking or keeping what belongs to someone else and that we're all guilty of that. And then now we've also seen that we take what we treasure.

Eric: [00:27:24] So let's ask the next question. What does this say about God? And what we'll see here is that we take because we don't trust in him. I mean, bottom line, when we take, it's because of a lack of trust. So in each of these commands, when we look at them, we see a part of the character of God. And so when we're violating a command, when we're breaking one of these commands, it's because we're not trusting in that particular attribute of God. When we take the Lord's name in vain, it's because we're not trusting in his holiness. When we don't honor our parents, it's because we don't trust in his authority. When we covet, it's because we don't trust that he has what's best for us. And when we steal, when we take, when we keep, it is because we don't trust that he will provide for us. We take it upon ourselves, and we man handle it ourselves.

Eric: [00:28:22] See the attribute of God that we need to focus on today to shift our perspective is that he is our provider. Do you believe that? That he is a provider, he will provide. That he is a giver, by his very nature he gives. Psalm 23, many of you all are familiar with this one. It says, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. It's a picture of us as sheep, and God is just taking care of us. He gives us everything we need, there's nothing more we could want. And then in verse 4, he continues on and he says, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6Surelyd goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Eric: [00:29:19] Hebrews 13 is another place, and in verses 5 and 6 he said, the writer of Hebrews says this, "Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I want to read that again; I will never fail you or forsake you. This is God's words, hence we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, for what can man do to me.

Eric: [00:29:44] And then, circling back to Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount that we were in earlier, Jesus says this, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" If he provides for the birds, he's going to provide for us. And here's what I love about God, he not only provides, he provides lavishly, extravagantly. Look at Romans 8:32, he says, "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" God is our provider, he's a giver, and he wants us to trust him. So the opposite of stealing is to trust in him.

Eric: [00:30:52] As a matter of fact, I think this is one of the reasons why he calls us, why he commands us to tithe, to give offerings. It's a tangible way for us to put our trust in him. It's putting our money where our mouth is, right? It's easy to say we trust in him, but what about when it actually comes to living that out? What does that look like? Oftentimes, when we have to do that, it forces us to trust and rely more and more on him. I know when Cathy and I were brand new Christians, we were trying to figure this out and somebody told us about this concept of tithing. And so we had to kind of wrestle with that, like, that's a lot of money, 10% of what we make, we give back? Like that's a lot, how do we do that? What does that look like? And wrestling through it, we just finally took the said, okay, we're going to take this step and we're going to see what this looks like. And so we said, God, the math doesn't work, but we're going to cut back on some things, we're going to try this, and we're going to step forward on this. That was 20 years ago, it was more than that, 30 years ago, and as we've done that year after year after year, we've been able to grow in our trust and confidence in him because year after year, he somehow provides everything we need. He provides for us. Yes, it's been hard, sometimes it's been painful, but he provides over and over and over again. So much so that several years ago, as I was wrestling through, we were kind of wrestling through this move from the corporate world into vocational ministry, and there's obviously a lot of financial parts to that. And we could confidently say, God's got it. He has provided for us every step of the way, and he'll continue to provide for us in this. And he has, and it's been beautiful, and we've grown in our faith because we've had to step out in that and rely more and more on him. The goal of life isn't easy living, it's dependence on him. He wants us to trust him.

Eric: [00:32:56] In Matthew 6 verses 28 through 33, he says, "And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." He says, O you of little faith; our dependence on him is that faith. What we do with our money and our stuff is a way that we live out our faith and our dependence on him. How about you? Are you trusting in him? Are you seeking first the Kingdom of God? Are you trusting in him with your stuff, with your money? What does that look like for you? Because you see, we take because we don't trust.

Eric: [00:34:11] All right, as we've walked through these questions, here's what we've seen so far. We've seen that stealing is taking and keeping what belongs to someone else. We've seen that we take what we treasure, putting other things above God. And then we've seen that we take because we don't trust in him. So what do we do about this? How do we move from out of this place, out of this natural bent of our hearts to be takers? How do we move forward in this? How do we make this not true? How do we trust in him more? How do we treasure him?

Eric: [00:34:46] Well, to answer that question, I want to ask another question. This is the question I'm adding in there, it's kind of a subset of what does this say about God. And it's the question, what does it say about Jesus? Or the way I like to ask this question, how does this point to Jesus? Because everything in this book, every page points to Jesus somehow. And so this is a great question to ask is, okay, well, how does this point to Jesus? How does this point forward to Jesus? How does this point back to Jesus? And so when we ask that question, what we see is that true treasure is found when we trust in Jesus, that he was the opposite of a thief.

Eric: [00:35:25] Let me show you where we see that Second Corinthians 8:9 says this, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." You know, most of us spend our whole lives trying to move from here to more and more wealth, right? We want to become from wherever we are to more and more rich. But Jesus did the opposite, he was rich beyond comparison, he was living in heaven with the Father and had everything at his disposal. And yet he came to earth as a man, lived not in a palace, but as a poor carpenter, just traveled around and was a nomad. And then ultimately was killed as a common criminal on a Roman cross, naked and ashamed. Talk about moving from rich to poor. Why would he do that? You see it right there, so that we might become rich? He's not talking about this kind of rich, he's talking about a rich way beyond that, he's talking about the richness of life in Jesus. Scripture tells us that he is our inheritance, that that one day when we're done with this earth, we will have all the riches in the world. But there's even more than that, even while we live on this earth, we see the riches in Jesus. We see riches that people with all kinds of these kinds of riches would die for. We find, in Christ, meaning, we find satisfaction, we find purpose, we find joy. All of those things can't be bought with money, we find them in Jesus. True treasure is found when we trust in Jesus.

Eric: [00:37:32] In John 10 verse 10, Jesus talks about a thief. He says, "The thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy. But I come so that you might have life." The thief he's talking about, of course, is Satan, the enemy, who's always on us, and his empty promises end up bringing destruction, death, and stealing. But Jesus, on the other hand, brings life. And the life he's talking about is the good life, the life of trusting in him? What does it look like to follow Jesus, to look for him? So what's the antidote to being takers? What's the antidote to stealing? What's the antidote to greed? What's the antidote to any of this stuff? It's to look to Jesus for everything. And as we look to Jesus, we see what he did. We see that he moved from rich to poor. He gave up everything for us. And when we do, we're filled with this gratitude that then pours itself out. A gratitude that then just allows us to open up our strings and say, this is not mine, have at it.

Eric: [00:38:50] Jesus told a story in Matthew 13, and I love this picture, I think this is a helpful picture for us. It says, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." I want you to put yourself in that situation, okay? You're out walking around in a field one day, and all of a sudden, your toe hits something and you uncover it, and you open a door, and it's like an Indiana Jones movie, there is just treasure beyond anything you could imagine. And the only way for you to get that treasure is for you to buy that land. What do you do? Do we say, uh, uh, this is my money? No, that would be crazy. We look at what we have, and we look at that, and we go, yeah, no question. Do you see Jesus? Do you treasure Jesus over our money? Over our stuff? What does that look like in our lives? You see, true treasure is found when we trust in Jesus.

Eric: [00:40:00] So the last question I want to ask is, what do we do with this now? I'm going to leave the final question of who do you tell this to, I'm going to leave that to you to kind of wrestle with. But I want us to wrestle through this one together. What do we do with this? How should this change us? Well, we talked earlier about how the Ten Commandments serve as a mirror. So the first thing we want to do is we want to look in the mirror. And as we look at the mirror of God's command, where do we fall short in this one? In what areas are we taking and what areas are we holding on to and keeping? Are you known as a taker or a giver? What characterizes your life more? And then as we look in that mirror and we wrestle through this with God, then what Scripture tells us to do is to repent. Sometimes that might be a big churchy word, but it just means, it literally means to change your mind. It means that if you're going this direction, to do a 180 and go this direction, we turn away from those sins. We turn away from where we fall short.

Eric: [00:41:13] So what does that look like? If you're taking from others, then follow Zacchaeus's lead and make it right, give it back. If you're cheating others, then then make it right. If we're holding on so tightly, then loosen it up. One way that we might step forward in this is if you're not currently tithing, doing that, taking that step, that leap of faith, and giving back that first 10% to God, then maybe this is a way to start. To just say, God, I don't know how this works, it doesn't look like it's going to work, but I'm going to trust you in this, and I'm going to just grow in my trust of you by letting you provide for me. Maybe you are tithing and maybe this is a call to say, you know what? What am I going to give beyond that? What does that look like? Maybe it's a call to say, you know, each year I'm going to give a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Maybe there's other things that that you think, you know what, there's other things that I need to be getting involved in. There are incredible things that God is doing all over the place. How can I use what he's given me to invest in that? Maybe it's just being able to help different people in need. I know several people who have a budget item in their budget that is just to help those in need, and so they have that money set aside. So they're purposely looking for what are the needs and the people around me and they generously give to them. These are all areas that we can step into generosity. Because the opposite of taking is giving, and the more we give, the more we live that out, the less selfish we become. The more we see our treasure in Jesus, the less distracted we are by other things. And I've got to tell you, this is hard. This might be one of the hardest things we do as Christians, is to part with this. But the way we do it is to look to Jesus.

Eric: [00:43:12] So one of the things we can do with this is to spend more time with Jesus. Because, let's be honest, we probably spend most of our time looking at this, right, looking at our bank account, looking at these things, looking at all the things’ people around us have. But what if we spent less time on this and more time focusing on Jesus? Abiding in him, spending time reading his word, thinking, just thinking about what he's done for us, how he's redeemed us, how he's restored us, how he's been so generous to us. Then from the inside out, that gratitude overflows itself in saying, I'm open-handed with this. He moves us from being thieves to being thankful, from being greedy to being grateful, from hoarding to being hopeful.

Eric: [00:44:08] I want to end, and kind of wrap up our time, circling back to Zacchaeus, I love that story. And when we look at Zacchaeus and his response to the Lord, because he knew he couldn't make himself right with God, he knew he had messed up, that his life was characterized by that. And yet Jesus saw him and welcomed him in. And when he saw this, he was filled with gratitude beyond all compare. He was so grateful for what Jesus did that he was radically changed. I want to read Luke 19 again he says, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” 9And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Zacchaeus knew he was lost, and that Jesus came to save him. And the result? He was so grateful that the result was incredible generosity. Look at what he did, he did much more than he had to do, he restored it fourfold, that was more than he had to. He gave half of what he owned away, and he was filled with radical generosity because he had encountered Jesus. He didn't ask the question; how much do I have to give now? He asked the question; how much can I give? He was radically transformed by Jesus. He was so grateful for what Jesus did for him that it was like, this is meaningless to me now. So how about you? Have you radically encountered Jesus? If you walk out of here with just one thing, I don't want it to be that, hey, I should probably be giving more. If you walk out of here with one thing, it should be this, have you encountered Jesus? Do you know him? Do you know that he has saved you? Do you know the price he paid for you? Not just for all of us, but for you specifically, do you know the price he paid? Have you encountered Jesus? And if you have, are you encountering him every day? Are you coming back to him and being grateful and just sitting in the gratitude of what he's done for you? Because when we do that, the generosity piece takes care of itself. We give freely because our treasure is not in this, it's in Jesus. It's like the man who's walking through the field and finds the treasure, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, I'm open-handed with it now because of what Jesus did for me. So when we trust in Jesus, he transforms us from taking to trusting and ultimately to treasuring him. Let's pray.

Eric: [00:47:18] Lord, thank you so much for our time today. God, I thank you that you are so generous and that you are a giver. Lord, I pray that you would make us a people of generous giving. That we would move from taking to giving. And Lord, that can only happen with you. So, God, I pray that each and every person here, you would meet us, and you would impress upon us what you've done for us, that we would be so filled with gratitude that it would overflow in multiple areas of our lives. God, I thank you so much for who you are, and I thank you for your son, Jesus.



Recorded in Grapevine, Texas.