Eighth Commandment
Exodus 20:15 “You shall not steal.”
John 7:24 “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”
So often our judgment is done through colored glasses. We bring our own prejudices, dislikes, likes, favoritism, etc. into our judgment. We often have our own agenda in what we believe. This is why it is so important to make sure that we have the mind of Christ that we see things from God’s perspective. What is God’s perspective? It is the Holy Scriptures, and specifically the Lord’s Ten Commandments that we are to live by. This should be the basis of our judgment.
With our judges, when they pass judgment on any and all cases that come before them, their united judgment should be based upon our biblical Constitution which rules our land, but so often the judges bring into their judgment their own human perspective and agenda which is not true justice.
The right understanding of this commandment: “Do not steal” has behind it that it is a God given right for man to own and keep property. In one sense this commandment speaks to us about the restoration of our fallen world. In other words, we are to take back what Satan has stolen from us and to take our proper responsibility to what God gave us in Genesis 1:26–28 as in the Cultural Mandate. God has given to man and his family the right to own property, and not to the state the right to own property.
Many today believe that the state has sovereign rights on property. This is what we find in the French revolution. Thomas Paine in his article, “Rights of Man” in writing for the national assembly said: “The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any individual, or any body of man, be entitled of all sovereignty; nor can any individual, or any body of man, be entitled to any authority which is not expressively derived from it.” So we find today that man will take dominion, either under God’s law which will produce life, or the law of man which will produce tyranny and death. This to me is the lesson of the French revolution.
Civil lawyers defined theft as: “The laying hands unjustly on that which belongs to another.” What are some of the causes of theft?
Unbelief: The unbeliever will ask, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?” Because he believes that God cannot they then try to prepare their own table and often that results in man coveting more than what he owns or actually needs.
We know that an external source of theft is Satan’s activity. Satan is a thief and he will produce thieves of all kinds. We read in John 12:6 that Judas was a thief and it would seem that the reason he became a thief was that Satan entered into him. (John 13:27)
There are also different kinds of theft mentioned in Scripture. For example, we can steal from God by not giving Him our best. King David said that he would not offer to God anything that did not cost him. Another example, we can steal from others by holding back the truth that they deserve to have. We can steal like the robber, who goes into the house to take away another man’s possessions. We can steal from our employer the time to do something other than the work we were hired to do. We also find that the state has passed laws that take from one group of people that have, to benefit another group of people that do not have.
Other examples with the state are their inflationary economic policies.
History is filled with examples of tyranny reigning.
In Scriptures we see that the right for personal ownership of property comes from God. He owns everything and gives it to man as a gift. He gave it to Adam and Eve and later we find that He gave it to Israel.
America’s Founding Fathers did not want to go the way of the feudal system which was predominant in Europe but instead accepted God’s definition of property belonging to man and not the government. In the beginning of the founding of our country the government owned no large tracts of land on a permanent basis. If any lands were acquired they were made available to the public. Stephen McDowell brings out that the government owns little land east of the Mississippi which is in great contrast to the Western United States where large portions of many states are owned by the government.
Also under biblical law there was no “property tax.” The reason for this is because the earth belongs to the Lord and He has given it to men and their families, not to the state. This means that man cannot be dispossessed from his own land. Every man has a basic security in his property.
There are many other points that we could bring out regarding this commandment, but we do see that America is at war with God’s Law and we can understand why the Ten Commandments are being removed from public offices.
When I speak about America being at war with God’s laws we need to keep in mind what David Kupelian says in his book, Snapping of the American Mind: “In politics and culture we speak casually of ‘the left’ and ‘the right,’ as though these were two morally equivalent camps or worldviews. In reality the socialist/Marxist ideology that has captivated today’s Democrat Party is at war with reason, human nature, common sense, history and truth – indeed, at war with God and His laws.”