GOD’S MARRIAGE COVENANT – DON’T WITHHOLD WHAT YOU CAN USE TO BLESS OTHERS

“You shall not steal.” Exodus 20:15

On the surface this was a simple command. “Don’t take things that do not belong to you” is a basic idea found in most cultures.  Even a child knows that it is wrong to take someone else’s property. However, this commandment has a much deeper significance than that.

First, we must define what is ours. There are two ways to obtain things: We earn money and buy them, or somebody gives them to us. However we obtain our possessions, we claim that they are ours.

But what does God have to say about our possessions?  Deut 8:10:17, 18. “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth and so confirms His covenant, which He swore to your forefathers, as it is today’. Remember that whatever you get by increase or multiplication comes from God.  Don’t forget where you came from, and what He has done for you, so that you don’t become proud and claim that you are responsible for your wealth. All our possessions are gifts from God. God must always be in the centre so that we use our possessions to honour Him.

God tells us how to honour Him. If we ignore His instruction, we endanger ourselves by taking up the attitude that “I earned it, therefore it is mine.” Stealing is wrong because it perverts God’s way of our getting things. If we claim ownership because we earned it, it takes God out of the centre.

To a Hebrew person, stealing is much more than taking something that isn’t ours; it is also withholding what we can bless someone else with because God is the centre of our lives.  He wants us to be generous with what we have because He is generous.

The Apostle John picks up on this principle. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in Him?” 1 John 4:17. If there is someone in need and you can meet it, do it. This applies, not only to money but to life on every level.  God is trying to weed out of us the attitude that we have the right to hoard. 

God’s idea in this commandment is not only to protect property but to protect property so that we have something with which to bless others who have a need. God hates a huge gap between the rich and the poor. When the gap between those who have and those who have not gets too big, a nation implodes on itself. God wanted to protect the nation’s existence by creating a culture where those who have share with those who have not to maintain equality, not to foster laziness. By promoting generosity, the nation would continue to fulfil its destiny.