FOUNDATIONAL TUTORIAL ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS – LESSON THREE: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
“Thou shalt not steal.”
(Exodus 20:15)
Welcome to the Foundational Tutorial lessons on the Ten Commandments! These lessons are intended for you to learn what you need to learn; they are not meant as a condemnation or judgement. As born-again followers of Jesus, we’re all still here on Earth because we’re all still learning about the Kingdom and how to live in it. As much as he was the Messiah, Jesus was also a teacher during his time here. His followers are likewise expected to teach others, after they themselves have learned what they need to learn, and practiced it.
We aren’t expected to be perfect (even Jesus wasn’t perfect), but we are expected to strive for perfection (“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect”) and to constantly work at improving ourselves.
The foundation of Jesus’ teachings was the Ten Commandments and everything that stemmed from the Commandments, so we clearly need to focus on them. They are the lifeline for staying on God’s Way, particularly in times of trouble and temptation. You’ll note that there are no asterisks (*) on any of the Commandments. That means there are no exceptions to these ten rules. You break them, you pay the price.
For an overview of the blessings that come from keeping the Commandments and the curses that come from not keeping them, see Deuteronomy 28.
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LESSON THREE CONTENTS
- STEALING: A DEFINITION
- WHY DO PEOPLE STEAL?
- WHY DO PEOPLE NOT STEAL?
- STEALING AS A CULTURAL NORM
- THEFT AS A SPIRITUAL FELONY
- WHO REALLY BENEFITS WHEN WE STEAL?
- tl;dr: SUMMARY
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1. STEALING: A DEFINITION
Satan is constantly presenting us with temptations. It’s up to us, as born-again believers, to see them as such in order to avoid falling for them. We need to pray for help with that, like Jesus did.
Stealing is a major and omnipresent temptation. It comes in many different forms, but the most common is theft of money and material goods. Theft of time, reputation, opportunity, and health are also examples of stealing, as is withholding something that is owed. Anything of value can potentially be stolen.
As with the other Commandments, there are numerous examples of theft in scripture. Stealing is in fact one of the three main tasks that Jesus tells us Satan has come to accomplish – to kill, steal, and destroy. But Satan doesn’t actually do the stealing (or killing or destroying); he gets us to do it, by tempting us. Judas stole from what was essentially the disciples’ joint bank account (the bag that he was entrusted to keep), and the Old Testament teaches us that withholding what is owed to God in the form of tithes, offerings and thanksgiving is also considered theft.
Of all the Ten Commandments, the one not to steal seems to be the most straight-forward. It’s also usually the one we learn first as children. Most of us, from a very young age, have been taught what stealing means (taking what doesn’t belong to you), and most of us have also had ingrained in us from a very young age that we shouldn’t do it. But even the simplicity of the Commandment doesn’t stop a lot of people from breaking it.
Why is that?
2. WHY DO PEOPLE STEAL?
There are as many reasons why people steal as there are people who do it. Even so, probably the main reason is that they want something they don’t or can’t have. Maybe they can’t afford it or maybe they’ve been told they can’t have it, but stealing presents itself as a way to get what they want. Some people also steal just for the thrill of it or to show themselves or others that they can get away with it. Or some people steal because they’ve been ordered or feel pressured to steal.
Another reason why people steal is that theft is quite easy to do. It doesn’t require a lot of planning or forethought and can be done within a few seconds of conceiving the deed (that is, within a few seconds of being tempted). And while the official consequences of theft can be quite deadly, depending on the legal system under which it’s done, most of the consequences are indirect and come via God’s justice. Unfortunately, people who don’t believe in God or don’t understand how God operates in the world won’t make the connection between their stealing escapades and their lousy life. They’ll believe they’ve gotten away with the theft and that their subsequent lousy life is completely unconnected from it.
There are also people who steal believing what they’ve stolen is owed to them. In these cases, either they believe that they’ve been deprived of what they need, or they’re simply balancing the scales by taking what they deem to be rightfully theirs.
Some people even steal because, according to them, they can’t help it. Kleptomania is allegedly an illness that manifests as a compulsion to steal. People diagnosed with this condition claim that it overcomes them seemingly out of the blue and they can’t stop themselves from stealing. The devil operates under a lot of different names these days.
3. WHY DO PEOPLE NOT STEAL?
On the other hand, there are those who have a heightened awareness of the wrongness of theft, and I hope I’m including us born-again believers in that category. However, you don’t have to be a Christian to know that stealing is wrong. Scripture tells us that God has written his Commandments on everyone’s hearts, so even if no-one teaches us not to steal (and even if the laws of the land permit us to steal), we can still know that stealing is wrong and choose not to do it.
When I was too young to remember, I once walked out of a grocery store carrying a bag of bread that I hadn’t paid for. My mother had given me the bread to hold while we were in the store, but she forgot about it when we were at the cash register. Only when we were walking home did she realize that I had “stolen” the bread. Again, I was too young to remember (not quite 3 at the time), but she marched me back into the store, mortified, and profusely apologized for her part in the theft. For my mother’s generation, being thought a thief was unthinkable.
Years later, when my parents were visiting me in Toronto, we ended up with someone else’s paid-for whole roasted chicken among our groceries, which we didn’t realize until we got back to my place. When we found the “hot” chicken among all the bags, my parents immediately wanted to return it to the grocery store, which was a half-hour’s drive away. It took a lot of fast-talking on my part to keep them from hopping into their rental car and making the return trip to the store. They are of an upbringing and a generation that still finds theft or the appearance of it abhorrent.
Western culture, though no longer Christian, is based on Christian precepts. These precepts form the basis of Western laws and norms that still, for the most part, dictate Western modes of behavior, but this is rapidly changing.
4. STEALING AS A CULTURAL NORM
Not all cultures and generations are as squeamish about theft as those of my parents. Stealing is relatively easily accomplished and, unlike my 2-year-old self, most people who steal do it on purpose.
Shoplifting is another term for stealing in a retail environment. Unfortunately, shoplifting has become so rampant over the past few generations that businesses now cost it into the price of their merchandise, knowing that deterrents such as security tags and surveillance cameras will only stop a small percentage of the theft. “Shrinkage” is the official term allotted to profit that disappears from the balance sheet through shoplifting. Due to shrinkage, we pay more for merchandise, because the business assumes that some of it will be stolen and they need to cover their losses.
Mass shoplifting events or “looting”, where a gang of shoplifters converges on a business, overwhelming the staff and security personnel, are becoming more and more frequent. The frequency of these events is making them more and more expected and, sadly, more and more accepted as an emerging norm. Looting is particularly prevalent (and expected/accepted) during natural disasters and protests.
Theft, however, should never be expected or accepted as a norm, no matter how widespread it is or how “justified” someone tries to make it. Like every other Commandment that decrees not to do something, the Commandment against stealing has fallen out of fashion in the hearts and minds of some cultures and sub-cultures, including in former Christian nations. So, for instance, social justice in many Western countries now conceives of theft as permissible for some people of a certain race or socioeconomic status, leaving us with new laws like theft under $1000 no longer being a felony. The response to these new laws has in some cases been a serious run on stores in places where the laws have taken effect. People are showing up with empty garbage bags and cleaning out whole aisles before casually walking out, dragging their overflowing loot bag behind them. The staff, during these attacks, no longer even bothers to call police, as the police in most cases won’t show up.
Some non-Western cultures consider successful stealing a sign of high intelligence, and some parents even teach their children to steal (pick-pocketing, bike theft, etc.) as a means of earning a living. Considering that God has written his Commandments on everyone’s hearts – without exception – the lessons in theft these children learn from their parents may be be winked at by God while the children are still young. When they reach the age and maturity level where they’re able to know right from wrong, however, God will hold them accountable for their thefts from that point onward, regardless of what they were taught by their parents or culture. Having been taught to steal by your parents or being encouraged by your culture to steal doesn’t exonerate you from unrepentant sin (in this case, theft) on Judgement Day.
5. THEFT AS A SPIRITUAL FELONY
Regardless, and no matter how it’s dressed up to appear to be “nothing” or a sign of intelligence or a career choice, theft is a spiritual felony that has spiritual if not legal consequences. Broken Commandments always require some form of payment in hardship and pain, and the payment is always extracted one way or another. And unless we have a deal with the devil to defer that payment until after death, we’ll feel the pain already in this life.
As God told me at the moment of my rebirth: “The pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned.”
Repayment of theft through suffering is guaranteed, regardless of whether you’ve been taught that stealing is right or wrong or somehow justified. As mentioned above, God has written his Commandments on everyone’s hearts, so if you break a Commandment – regardless of your background – you will suffer for it. Satan knows this, and in his position as ruler of the world, he works overtime to downplay and rebrand theft, in much the same way as he downplays and rebrands every other spiritual felony so that we’ll suffer for it. His aim is to get us to sin in the same way as he got Eve to sin – by overriding our first instinct not to do something we know is wrong. If he can get us past our initial squeamishness and implant in us some kind of justification for the sin, he knows he’s got us.
Ultimately, whether or not someone steals when given the opportunity is an excellent basis for measuring that person’s character and trustworthiness, given how easy it is to steal and how many opportunities present themselves on a daily basis.
6. WHO REALLY BENEFITS WHEN WE STEAL?
I was on a forum recently where some participants were bragging about how self-check-outs and “bring your own bag” policies have made shoplifting that much easier for them. Reading their accounts of how much they claim to have stolen, I couldn’t help but wonder whether making it easier to steal isn’t one of the underlying motives for doing away with cashiers and store-provided bags. These policies are being uniformly applied around the world all at the same time and seem to fly in the face of common business sense: any savings brought by replacing human cashiers with machines or by not having to provide bags to customers would certainly be offset by the surge in shoplifting. The only one who truly benefits from our being more and more tempted and falling for the temptations is Satan, and Satan, as Jesus reminds us, is in charge of this world and its policies.
7. tl;dr: SUMMARY
- From a young age, most of us learn that stealing is bad, but many of us still end up doing it.
- The reasons why people steal are as many as there are people who steal, but the main reason is that people want what they can’t otherwise have.
- Theft is mostly vilified in Western culture due to deep-rooted Christian norms, but these norms are changing to view some theft as justified or acceptable up to a certain amount.
- Some non-Western cultures view stealing as a sign of high intelligence and encourage it.
- Regardless of whether or not stealing is considered good or bad within a culture, God has written his Commandments on everyone’s hearts, so stealing is a spiritual felony and will result in some degree of suffering by the thief.
- Satan works overtime to arrange opportunities for theft to present itself and also tempts people into trying to justify stealing.
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“It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes.
The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.”
Psalm 119:71-72
CHRISTIANS DON’T CHOOSE SIDES
Just a timely reminder that Christians don’t choose sides in a war.
Also a timely reminder that Christians don’t fight in a war or in any way support a war.
We are to treat all people as equal before God and all people as loved by God.
We are to love and pray for those who hate and oppose us in the same measure as we’re to love and pray for those who love us.
You don’t kill or malign those you love.
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If you choose a side in a war, you are not following Jesus, you’re following the world.
Even Jesus, in his occupied country, didn’t favor his people over the occupying Romans.
Just a timely reminder, because Satan is working overtime to get God’s people to fall for the war propaganda.
Don’t be tempted into hating or supporting one people over another.
Don’t be fooled.
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Love all equally. We are all made in God’s image and all equally loved by God.
Remember how kind Jesus was even to Judas Iscariot, knowing full well who Judas was.
That is our model of how to treat people: love all, without exception.
That is our job description.
And that is how we differ from the world.
A CALL TO SPIRITUAL ARMS: PREPARING FOR PASSOVER
When I started this blog several years ago, it was not my intention to form a ministry. This was never meant to be an outreach or evangelical site. It was just intended to be a place where born-again believers could touch base, see their views reflected, get some guidance, and maybe get a spiritual spanking, if one was warranted. There are few places like that left in the world, even online, and even fewer among those spaces designated as Christian.
My intentions for this blog have not changed over the years. This is still not a ministry and still not an outreach or evangelical site. If anything, I work hard to push people away by constantly challenging them. It’s more a boot camp than anything else and I’m the drill sergeant. I play the role willingly and well. That’s why God put me here.
If you’re not DAILY examining your conscience before God, comparing your thoughts and actions with those of Jesus and adjusting them accordingly, then you’re falling short of your duties as a born-again believer and you’re getting spiritually flabby. Those who are spiritually flabby won’t make it home. I don’t care what your worldly pastor or some donation-grubbing, feel-good “Christian” on YouTube tells you – being born-again is not a guaranteed ticket to Heaven. Being born-again is a pass that gets you into the Kingdom and a blank check that pays for the services of God’s Holy Spirit to guide and protect you as you make your way through the temptations of this world. But born-again believers can still lose their grace. That is scriptural. “Once saved, always saved” is a lie to keep you spiritually flabby.
In the Bible, every major transition to a higher spiritual state is preceded by a fast or some form of significant separation from the world that lasts 40 days and 40 nights. We see it with Noah during the flood. We see it with Moses on Mount Sinai. We see it with Jesus in the wilderness and again after his resurrection, when he appeared to his followers off and on for 40 days and nights before his ascension. The 40-day-and-night time span is clearly important in God’s economy, so we need to pay attention to it. We should be constantly striving to evolve to a higher spiritual level by following ever closer behind Jesus and drawing ever closer to God.
Over the next seven weeks leading up to Passover, we have the opportunity to do a 40-day fast of some kind. How you choose to fast is between you and God, but I strongly suggest that you do it. A reminder is in order here that Jesus says God requires mercy not sacrifice, and that Isaiah 58 gives a very clear explanation of the kind of fast required by God and the rewards that come from doing it. Again, I’m not telling you how to fast (that’s between you and God); I’m just saying that you should fast in the weeks leading up to Passover.
For us born-again believers, Passover is the annual commemoration and celebration of our freedom from physical, political and spiritual slavery. It also commemorates and celebrates our reconciliation with God. Through Moses, God told us we should always celebrate Passover while we’re on Earth, and through Jesus, God showed us the new way to do it – with wine and bread, rather than with blood and a slaughtered lamb.
We should be constantly challenging ourselves as born-again believers. We should never be satisfied to remain where we are spiritually; we should always be striving to be better than we were yesterday, with our ultimate goal to “be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect”. No, we’ll never attain that goal while we’re in our imperfect bodies, but we still need to strive for it to our dying breath.
To do this, we need to be constantly comparing ourselves with Jesus, not with the world. Our standard should be Jesus, not the world. If we have problems, we turn to God, not to the world. If we need guidance and healing, we look to God, not to the world. If we’re angry and frustrated, we go to God, not to the world. Jesus always went to God, and we need to do that, too. But we can’t do it if we’re too attached to the world and its ways. The world has a way of coming between us and God. We need to prevent that from happening.
Separating ourselves from the world through a 40-day fast is a good way to refocus everything on God.
You have your marching orders.
Passover starts at sundown on April 15th, 2022.
A HIGHER STANDARD
As born-again believers, we’re held to a higher standard.
We can’t compare our thoughts and actions with those of people who are in the world. We need to compare our thoughts and actions with those of Jesus. How do we know Jesus’ thoughts and actions? We can read about them in the Gospel. That’s why we continually need to learn from the Gospel, so we’ll know the right way to act and and the right way to direct our thoughts in any given situation, especially in emergencies.
Note that being held to a higher standard doesn’t mean we hold ourselves to be better than those who are held to a lower standard. In no way does being held to a higher standard mean that we’re somehow “better” or that God loves us more. It just means that God expects more from us, in the same way that parents expect more from their eldest than from the baby of the family.
We need to remember this when we feel drawn – tempted – into issues that are affecting the world, such as war or mass protests. We need to look to Jesus for guidance in these issues, not to the media or the government. The guidance provided by Jesus is much different than that provided by the media or government. In most cases, it’s the opposite.
We also need to remember that the Commandments have no asterisks next to them denoting exceptions to the rule, and that they haven’t changed in meaning or content since they were first given to Moses thousands of years ago. The guidance provided by the Ten Commandments remains valid to this day. So we continually need to read and learn from those, too, and to remind ourselves of them whenever temptation comes our way.
War and the loyalties demanded by war are temptations.
We are to love our neighbours and our enemies without exception. There is no exception to that rule. We love and pray for our neighbours and our enemies equally and without distinction. That is our job as born-again believers. In John’s vision of the Kingdom in the book of Revelation, people of all nations and races and tongues stand before and serve God TOGETHER as one.
We are not the world.
We are the Kingdom.
And the Kingdom is ruled by different laws than the world.
Please remember that in the days and weeks to come.
Love all, without distinction.
That is our Commandment.
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27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
(Luke 6:27-38)
SOMETIMES VICTORY LOOKS LIKE DEFEAT
Just before he finished the work that God had sent him to do, Jesus told his disciples that he would soon be arrested, beaten, and killed. The disciples immediately went into a war huddle, vowing they would never let such a thing happen to Jesus, even if it meant they would have to die with him. To their shock and confusion, Jesus was angry with their response and accused them of thinking as man thinks, not as God thinks.
We, as born-again believers, need to think as God thinks. The thought of Jesus getting arrested and killed was unimaginable to the disciples, not only because Jesus was their leader and they loved him, but because it would mean Jesus’ defeat. There was no way they were going to let Jesus be defeated. They knew that if he went down, they all went down, and they weren’t going to let that happen without a fight. They’d sacrificed too much too long to fail.
This is how man thinks – you fight your way out of a bad situation. You fight with your fists or you fight with your sword or you fight with your money or you fight with whatever you have at hand, but you put up a fight. Jesus didn’t want his disciples to fight. He wanted them to stand down and let happen what needed to happen. He wanted them to put their ego and testosterone and weaponry aside and let God do what God needed to do. He wanted them to stay out of it.
Thankfully, when it came time for Jesus’ arrest, most of them did stay out of it, not because they took Jesus’ advice to “think as God thinks”, but because they were terrified for their own physical safety. They were afraid that what was happening to Jesus would also happen to them. That Jesus was actually in the final stretch of a race that he was winning by leaps and bounds was the last thing that occurred to any of them at the time. They saw in Jesus’ arrest his defeat, and in his defeat they saw theirs, and their real (rather than hypothetical) response to their perceived failure wasn’t to fight, but to run and hide.
Sometimes victory looks like defeat.
Our job as born-again believers isn’t to fight physical battles, but spiritual ones. We know that God and all those who side with him ultimately win the war, so what happens to us in between – which battles we win or lose – doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we stay the course and remain true to God, regardless of the witness of our eyes. To think as God thinks is to see beyond what is in front of us: to see by faith, as Jesus did all through his life, and especially in the hours of his crucifixion.
We know how it all ends. We know God and we know Jesus, not as our enemies or as a spiritual concept that is ‘out there somewhere’ – we know God and Jesus as our Father and our brother, respectively, who are always with us. This deeply personal relationship we have with both of them is inseparable from who we are as born-again believers and is all we need to be victorious in our daily battles, regardless of what happens to us physically. We don’t need to use physical weapons because we are weapons. Scripture says that Jesus rides into battle wielding a sharp sword that comes from his mouth. As Jesus’ followers, we have that same sword coming out of our mouths. We just need to remember to use it.
When you take up physical weapons with the intention of using them, you’re fighting as man fights, not as God fights. When you protest the way of the world and the unfolding of God’s justice on Earth, you’re thinking as man thinks, not as God thinks. We need to fight as God fights – with the sword of God’s Word – and to think as God thinks, through the witness of our faith.
Sometimes victory looks like defeat, but only because you’re viewing it with your eyes.
FOUNDATIONAL TUTORIAL ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS – LESSON TWO: THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOUR
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
(Exodus 20:16)
Welcome to the Foundational Tutorial lessons on the Ten Commandments! These lessons are intended for you to learn what you need to learn; they are not meant as a condemnation or judgement. As born-again followers of Jesus, we’re all still here on Earth because we’re all still learning about the Kingdom and how to live in it. As much as he was the Messiah, Jesus was also a teacher during his time here. His followers are likewise expected to teach others, after they themselves have learned what they need to learn, and practiced it.
We aren’t expected to be perfect (even Jesus wasn’t perfect), but we are expected to strive for perfection (“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect”) and to constantly work at improving ourselves.
The foundation of Jesus’ teachings was the Ten Commandments and everything that stemmed from the Commandments, so we clearly need to focus on them. They are the lifeline for staying on God’s Way, particularly in times of trouble and temptation. You’ll note that there are no asterisks (*) on any of the Commandments. That means there are no exceptions to these ten rules. You break them, you pay the price.
For an overview of the blessings that come from keeping the Commandments and the curses that come from not keeping them, see Deuteronomy 28.
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LESSON TWO CONTENTS
- BEARING FALSE WITNESS: A DEFINITION
- WHY DO PEOPLE BEAR FALSE WITNESS?
- WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BEAR FALSE WITNESS, AND WHY IS IT WRONG?
- EXAMPLES IN SCRIPTURE OF BEARING FALSE WITNESS
- THE TEMPTATION TO FALSELY ACCUSE OTHERS
- SAMPLE LIST OF BREAKING THE COMMANDMENT ON NOT BEARING FALSE WITNESS AGAINST YOUR NEIGHBOUR
- tl;dr: SUMMARY
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1. BEARING FALSE WITNESS: A DEFINITION
It’s important to note that the Commandment does not say that you shouldn’t lie. The Commandment not to bear false witness has been paraphrased over the years as that you shouldn’t lie, but that’s an inaccurate representation of it. God does not tell us not to lie; he tells us not to bear false witness.
So what is false witness, and how does it differ from lying?
Bearing false witness and lying are not mutually exclusive acts. In fact, bearing false witness against someone necessarily includes lying on some level, whether a little white lie or a big black one. At the same time, bearing false witness involves implying and imputing blame that doesn’t belong. It’s essentially falsely accusing someone for something they didn’t do.
2. WHY DO PEOPLE BEAR FALSE WITNESS?
Why do people do that? Why do people falsely accuse others?
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does cover most of the major reasons why people break the Commandment:
- Sometimes they do it out of ignorance. They believe that someone has done something wrong, and they (whether consciously or not) misrepresent evidence to support their accusation.
- Sometimes they do it without knowing they’re doing it. That’s actually the most common reason and the one that many born-again believers (myself included) are guilty of.
- Sometimes they do it purposely, either because they’re jealous or want to get back at someone, or they want to deflect blame from themselves or from someone else they’re trying to protect.
- Sometimes they do it to support their ideology, believing that collateral damage is necessary to achieve their desired end.
- Sometimes they do it because they’re following orders or simply following the crowd.
- And sometimes they do it for money.
We’ve probably all been the victim of false accusations and also likely perpetrators of them, whether consciously or not. Jesus certainly was a victim of false accusations throughout his ministry years, particularly at the end. At the same time, he lived his life under the shadow of his mother being falsely accused of fornication for having become pregnant before consummating her marriage. Jesus well knew the impact of false accusations, as he not only perpetually lived with them, he was killed because of them.
3. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BEAR FALSE WITNESS, AND WHY IS IT SO WRONG?
When you falsely accuse, you misrepresent the truth. You claim an alternative reality that has no bearing in truth. It is the realm of lies, which is the realm of Satan and his hordes. This is an abomination to God, which is why it is a Commandment not to bear false witness.
Furthermore, when you falsely accuse someone to save your own skin or to spread the blame, you’re doing the same thing Adam and Eve did in the garden when God confronted them with their disobedience. Instead of owning up to it, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. The outcome was the loss of a personal relationship with God, which is as bad as it gets on Earth. The only thing worse is eternal damnation.
4. EXAMPLES IN SCRIPTURE OF BEARING FALSE WITNESS
Scripture is full of scenarios where individuals or groups falsely accuse each other. As mentioned, Jesus had the worst of it during his ministry years. From the outset, he was falsely accused of blaspheming God and misinterpreting scripture. Can you imagine how messed up a human you’d have to be to accuse Jesus of blaspheming God and misinterpreting scripture? The mind boggles at the level of confusion that would require, considering that Jesus spoke by the power of God’s Holy Spirit and also interpreted scripture by God’s Spirit. To accuse Jesus of blasphemy and misinterpreting scripture is to accuse God of the same, which is absolutely ridiculous. And yet Jesus lived that reality of messed up humans and was ultimately killed because of it.
We born-again believers will also suffer the same; Jesus warned us we would. Our worst enemies on Earth – that is, those who are subverting the Gospel message more than anyone else – identify as Christians, just as Jesus’ worst enemies identified as children of Israel. Our worst enemies aren’t atheists (although they are our enemies, don’t be fooled into thinking they’re not) or those who put their faith in some spiritual being other than God – our worst enemies are dressed up as sheep and even believe themselves to be sheep. These will be our undoing, just as they were Jesus’.
Paul also suffered from false accusations, particularly at the hands of those who stood to gain from getting rid of him because he was interfering in their local commerce, or so they claimed. Stephen was falsely accused of blasphemy, Peter and John were falsely accused of blasphemy in the weeks following Pentecost – in fact, all of the early church was outlawed and condemned based on false accusations of blasphemy. The same accusations were leveled at Bible-believing Christians who refused to bow down to the authority of the Pope during the several centuries of the Inquisition. Torture and death were their reward. Blasphemy appears to be the go-to false accusation favored by those in positions of authority who say they know God but clearly don’t.
5. THE TEMPTATION TO FALSELY ACCUSE OTHERS
But we won’t only be falsely accused, we’ll likely also be tempted to falsely accuse others. We may already have been so and done so. It’s crucially important that we understand what a false accusation looks like so that we don’t fall for it and inadvertently break the Commandment about not bearing false witness.
As I mentioned at the outset of this lesson, the tutorials on the Ten Commandments are not about judging anyone (including ourselves), but about learning what we should and shouldn’t do. Sometimes we break a Commandment without even knowing we’re breaking it.
Here are some examples of violating the Commandment against bearing false witness. I can tell you that, based on this short list of samples, I myself have been guilty of breaking the Commandment on more than a few occasions without realizing it. These tutorials are as sobering for me as they are for most people reading them. At the same time, they’re also an opportunity to learn from them and to do our best to do better in the future.
How many times have you broken the Commandment over the past week or so?
I stand before you and God guilty, penitent, and doing my best to do better next time.
Let’s see how you do!
6. SAMPLE LIST OF BREAKING THE COMMANDMENT ON NOT BEARING FALSE WITNESS AGAINST YOUR NEIGHBOUR
- Blaming others based on hearsay.
- Believing someone is guilty of something because they’ve been guilty of similar things in the past.
- Knowing you’re guilty of something, but not wanting to be the only one to take the fall for it, and so ratting on others, whether or not they’re actually guilty.
- Saying things like “All politicians are liars” or “All men are violent”.
- Imputing guilt based on race, sex, or other inherent quality that one is born with.
- Imputing innocence based on race, sex, or other inherent quality one is born with.
- Blame-shifting, like Adam and Eve did.
- Outright lying because you’re trying to protect someone, for whatever reason.
- Leading others to arrive at the conclusion that someone is guilty without actually stating that the person is guilty.
- Refusing to come to a person’s defense when requested, because doing so might cause you harm.
I don’t know about you, but I find it to be a very sobering list, and it’s only a partial one. Finger-pointing comes very easily to bossy people like me who are always right (lol). If nothing else, it spurs me to want to do better and be better the next time a temptation lures me into falsely accusing someone.
7. tl;dr: SUMMARY
As with all of the Commandments, the best way to avoid breaking this one is to do the following:
- Treat others as you would want to be treated.
- Follow the example set by Jesus.
If we follow these two rules in everything we do, we will not break any of the Commandments.
Most of us aren’t there yet, but we’re well on our way, and we’re doing our best every day to be better.
And that’s what counts with God.
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“I hate vain thoughts; but thy law do I love.”
(Psalm 119: 113)
A CALL TO REPENTANCE: THE SERMON THAT SHOULD BE HEARD IN THE CHURCHES OF EVERY FORMER CHRISTIAN NATION
“I have set before you life and death… choose life.”
When a nation turns from God, and instead of repenting, rebels; when a nation chooses death instead of life, and yet still demands the reward of freedom that comes with choosing life; when a nation cries in its anthem for God to keep its land “glorious and free”, and yet opposes God by supporting laws that kill the unborn, the sick, and the aged: then God has no choice but to give that nation its reward not according to its cries and demands, but its due.
God is giving that rebellious nation not what it wants, but what it has earned.
All formerly Christian nations are now reaping the rewards of choosing death, even while the people of those nations take to the streets and demand the rewards of choosing life.
Instead of repentance, there’s rebellion. Instead of understanding, there’s confusion. Instead of turning back to God and choosing to live in accordance with the Gospel, there’s a doubling down of sin and pride and the tabling of further demands.
But these rebellions now taking place across former Christendom are nothing new. They’ve been seen before, in heavenly places, when a third of God’s angels refused to accept God’s rule and rebelled. I don’t think I need to remind you that their reward for rebellion was a fall from grace followed by eternal damnation.
We who call ourselves Christians are supposed to be children of God. We who call ourselves Christians are supposed to be followers of Jesus. Children of God and followers of Jesus need to set the good example and show guidance to others, not fall in lockstep with the rebellious, many of whom don’t even believe that God exists.
As Christians, we need to lead the call for repentance in former Christian nations, not in an effort to bring those nations back to what they were previously (that will never happen), but to call forth any among them who still love God and still choose life. We need to remind those few, through the call to repentance, that rebellion against the way things are in the world – including restrictions on freedoms – is rebellion against God’s justice as it plays out in the world. We need to remind those few that God’s justice is perfect, and that to rebel against it is to rebel against God. We also need to remind those few what the rewards are for rebelling against God.
And we need to remind them what the rewards are for doing God’s will.
I hope I am preaching to the choir here, but I know there are some hearing this sermon who will reject its message and will continue to embrace rebellion. Those same people will also continue to call themselves Christians, even as they trail behind Satan, waving banners cursing their neighbour and doing the will of the Father of Lies. Some will do these things conscious that they’re rebelling against God, while others will do it blindly, lost in confusion.
But for those very few of you who understand that the way forward is through repentance, not rebellion – your job is to lead the way. Even if you’re the only one – lead the way. Stand separate from those who rebel. Repent and pray for those who have been blinded and have gone astray. It is the job of the church to pray for those who are in the church as well as for those who have gone astray. I see in the protests in former Christian nations only rebellion against God’s justice and curses against those who are administering it. These things should not be done by Christians.
This is a call to repentance to all those who choose life. The fall from grace of former Christian nations is nothing new, and neither is their rebellion against the rewards for choosing death. Scripture tells us that such falls from grace have happened before, but scripture also teaches us that the way forward is always to stand separate from the rebellious and to repent.
Stand separate, repent, and preach repentance, and you will receive the reward of repentance, which is freedom.
Run with the mob, rebel, and preach rebellion, and you will receive the reward of rebellion, which is slavery.
The choice, as always, is yours, but the right choice – the one that leads to life – is to stand separate, repent, and preach repentance.
May you always choose life.
Amen.
ON THE LAW, THE LAWS OF THE LAND, AND GUARANTEED RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
As a Christian, I know that the Ten Commandments are the Law for me. The Commandments tell me what I can and cannot do, and they comfort me.
At the same time, as a Canadian, I also know that I have rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to me under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. The Charter is part of the Canadian Constitution and is the highest law of the land. No Canadian law is higher, and no Canadian law can supersede my rights and freedoms as a Canadian. Even under a state of emergency, my rights and freedoms remain intact. They cannot be nullified by any temporary directive or order. That is my guaranteed right as a Canadian.
I mention this because Paul knew his rights and freedoms as a Roman citizen. He was first and foremost a follower and apostle of Jesus, but he was also a Roman citizen. The rights afforded him as a Roman citizen gave him special protections by the Roman soldiers who helped him escape from the posse of temple elders who were planning to kill him. Being a Roman citizen also enabled Paul to live a life of relative freedom and comfort in Rome during the years he was awaiting trial.
While we’re yet in the world, we need to know what our rights and freedoms are in whatever country we are a citizen or resident. And not only do we need to know those rights and freedoms – we need to claim them, we need to assert them, and we need to stand on them, like Paul did. If we don’t know our rights, we can easily be misled by threats and coercion, or by the ignorance or malignance of people in positions of authority over us.
Case in point: Several years ago, I rented an apartment in Nova Scotia that was heated by electricity. The landlord told me, when I signed the lease, that the electricity bill was a certain amount per month on average. When it came time for me to move into the apartment, I called the power company to have the electricity account changed to my name. I also asked, out of curiosity, what the average power bill was. I was SHOCKED (pun intended lol) to hear that it was three times the amount I’d been told by the landlord.
When I got off the phone, I prayed. I knew there was no way I could afford the apartment with the power bill that high, and the apartment just wasn’t worth the high cost anyway. So I asked God to help me find a way out of the lease that wouldn’t involve me simply walking away from it.
He immediately had me go online to a website that had a verbatim copy of the Residential Tenancies Act, which are the laws governing landlord and tenant relations in Nova Scotia. I had never read the Act before. Once on that website, God guided me to the very clause that would get me out of the lease. I remember staring at it for a few minutes and thinking: “This can’t be real, I must be misunderstanding it”. So I called the government department responsible for landlord tenant issues and asked them to confirm whether the clause would in fact get me out of the lease. The woman I spoke with confirmed that it would. She herself had to consult with a colleague to make sure her interpretation of the clause was correct, because, as she confided, she’d been working at the department for over 20 years, and no-one had ever, to her knowledge, used that clause to get out of a lease.
I called the landlord and informed him that I was moving out (I’d never actually moved in) and told him why and on what grounds. The landlord then consulted with his lawyer about what I’d told him, and he was informed by his lawyer that the reason was sound and irrefutable. The lawyer also advised him to give me back all my money and to let me go. To the landlord’s credit, he did, and that was that.
Laws are made for a reason. God cherishes laws, and he wants us also to cherish them and to use them to our benefit. The Ten Commandments are there for our guidance and comfort, just as the laws of the land are there for our protection. Like Paul, we need to know the laws of the land pertaining to our rights, we need to claim them, we need to assert them, and we need to stand on them. For me, whether it’s the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the Residential Tenancies Act – these laws have been put there by God for my protection as much as the Commandments have been put there for my guidance and comfort.
God wants me, as his child, to take full advantage of every right and freedom afforded me as a Canadian. But it is my responsibility to learn about my rights under the various laws of the land, and then to assert them. No-one is going to do that for me; I have to do it for myself.
I invite you now to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with the laws of whatever land you’re living in. I’m going to post a link to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms below, for any Canadians who are reading this. As with the Commandments, we are responsible not only for knowing the laws, but for informing others about them. Informing others about them is as important as informing ourselves.
Remember – the rights afforded Canadian citizens under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms cannot by nullified under any circumstance, including a state of emergency.
May God bless you for reading this, and may you be blessed for keeping informed of – AND ASSERTING – your rightful freedoms. Just as God helped me to use a little-known law to get out of a deceitful lease, he will use his Law and the laws of the land to help all of his children thrive in the Kingdom and survive in the world. That’s his job as our Father.
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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: http://www.charter.ofrightsandfreedoms.ca/
GOD’S JUDGEMENT ON FORMER CHRISTIAN NATIONS
A judgement is falling on former Christian nations.
It has come in the form of loss of freedoms and serves as a warning of worse to come if those nations don’t return to their Christian roots. A nation’s level of freedom reflects that nation’s godliness. Considering the current state of the world, it’s no wonder there are now few if any nations that we can honestly call free.
Canada, for example, is in the grips of near civil war for the first time in its history, but also for the first time in its history, only a minority of Canadians identify as Christian, while the majority voice their support for the mass murder of their fellow Canadians through abortion and euthanasia. Abortion has been legal in Canada for some time, and euthanasia was legalized in 2016. What’s changed over the past few years is the majority’s vocal support for these abominations. Murder-on-demand (i.e., abortion and euthanasia) has also become progressively easier to access as a free “healthcare service”.
Do you think a nation in which the vast majority of the population supports the mass murder of its most vulnerable deserves the same degree of freedom as a nation that deplores the mass murder of its people? Because I don’t in any way believe that an ungodly nation – which is what Canada has become in more ways than can be mentioned here – I don’t believe that an ungodly nation deserves the same degree of freedom as a godly one.
Like all formerly Christian nations, Canada has become a stronghold of the ungodly and is now reaping the rewards of that ungodliness through loss of freedoms, as well as through a crumbling economy, out-of-control immigration, appalling political leadership, and a state of near civil war. All formerly Christian nations are more or less in the same broken condition.
A nation where the majority has outright rejected God and his Messiah deserves very little freedom, and that appears to be what Canada has brought on itself. A nation’s leadership isn’t imposed on a people; a nation’s leadership is earned. So if the people of Canada are unhappy with their leaders, they have only themselves to blame.
I believe that scripture backs me up when I say that such a judgement has been seen before by those who strayed too far from God’s laws. The children of Israel also suffered the same warning judgments a few times in their history before God permanently cut them off. Christians are not yet at the point of being permanently cut off, but they’re definitely nearing it. They’re more at the stage where they’re about to be marched off to spiritual Babylon while their nation is plundered and destroyed.
I am not against a people’s cry for freedom – that cry rings loud and clear in my own heart – but freedom can’t reign where sin runs rampant, and sin is running rampant in former Christian nations. The only way out of this devolving situation is for the majority of the population to turn back to God, but I don’t see that happening any time soon, if ever. This is a dismal prognosis and an honest one.
The sole remedy is for the few remaining Christians to separate themselves, if not physically then at least spiritually, from those nations so that they don’t share in the judgement that is coming on all Christendom.
THE LABOUR OF LOVE
What I find about most Christians is that they love the love. They love the love part of being a Christian – giving charity and helping those they think need their help. They love doing that. They love talking about it and they love planning it. They love the love.
But the labour is another thing altogether. Jesus said we should pray to God to send labourers to help with the harvest, because labourers are what we need. And labouring is where most of those who love the love call in sick.
Labour is hard work. There’s no way around that. It’s tedious, it’s physically demanding, it feels like it goes on forever, and it often seems futile. But you do it because it’s your job description, not because you love it.
You do it because it’s your job description.
In the Gospels, most of Jesus’ followers fell away when it got to the point of labouring. They loved the love, but they didn’t love the labour that went with it. So when things got hard and demanding and seemingly futile, they wandered off to look for another love.
Jesus talks about this in his parable of the seeds. Which seed are you? Do you love only the love, but then quit when the labouring begins? Or do you love until the love part becomes too hard because you have to forgive the unforgivable?
We born-agains have the most rigorous of job descriptions. We’re not only expected to love, we’re also expected to labour. And even more so, we’re expected to love as we labour. As difficult and as tedious and as seemingly unrewarding as it is, we need to love even as we labour. This is our high calling as born-again believers, and this is our job description.
Jesus did it. Jesus loved as he laboured. He never gave up, no matter how tired he was or how hopeless it looked. He didn’t give up when most of his followers fell away, and he didn’t give up when even his closest disciples deserted him. He kept on loving and he kept on labouring. He didn’t change his strategy or his tactics: He kept on loving, and he kept on labouring, right up to his last breath.
Jesus is our model: Paul isn’t our model, the disciples aren’t our models, Ezekiel isn’t our model, Moses isn’t our model – Jesus is our model. If you love only the love part of being a Christian, then you’re like the Pharisees, who love only those who love them. Loving is the easy part. It’s easy to love when those you love love you back.
Loving those who spit in your face while you’re feeding and clothing them is what separates the wheat from the chaff.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 