Commandment #8 Thou Shalt Not Steal
Exodus 20:15
Thoughts :
It's okay to steal a kiss from your spouse.
My husband says I stole his heart, but he knows he gave it to me for safe-keeping.
From Bits and Pieces : When someone get something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.
This is right after the commandment not to steal anyone’s husband/wife. An extension of that in a way.
I might open with news headlines. There are so many of them relating to fraud.
1. Do not take from another and claim as your own, anything. Do not keep for yourself anything you find or you know that is not yours. Not physical property, not money, not an answer to a test question, not an idea, not someone's husband or wife, nada, nothing.
2. If you find something someone else has lost, you know one thing for certain, it isn't yours.
Bible has something to say about what to do with what someone else has lost and we have found. We are to take care of it, whatever it is, as if it were our own, until the owner can be found. DT 22:1 "You shall not see your countryman's ox or his sheep straying away, and pay no attention to them; you shall certainly bring them back to your countryman. 2 "And if your countryman is not near you, or if you do not know him, then you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall remain with you until your countryman looks for it; then you shall restore it to him. 3 "And thus you shall do with his donkey, and you shall do the same with his garment, and you shall do likewise with anything lost by your countryman, which he has lost and you have found. You are not allowed to neglect them.
We are not to keep something we find as our own, for that would be a lie. To keep it is stealing.
LEV 6:1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 "When a person sins and acts unfaithfully against the LORD, and deceives his companion in regard to a deposit or a security entrusted to him, or through robbery, or if he has extorted from his companion, 3 or has found what was lost and lied about it and sworn falsely, so that he sins in regard to any one of the things a man may do; 4 then it shall be, when he sins and becomes guilty, that he shall restore what he took by robbery, or what he got by extortion, or the deposit which was entrusted to him, or the lost thing which he found, 5 or anything about which he swore falsely; he shall make restitution for it in full, and add to it one-fifth more.
CAVEAT - If you honestly try to find the owner and cannot, if it is useable, donate it to someone or some organization that can use it. If it's money, put it in the offering plate. If it is something, donate it. If it is of no real use, it probably would be okay to keep.
Society today:
1. "Finders keepers, losers weepers." Not Biblical.
2. It's okay, as long as you don't get caught. - Newspapers ripe with people, especially men, caught in fraud and students stealing test questions and answers.
3. Temptations, especially with intellectual property and on the internet.
Be holy (separate, different):
1. When you discover that are given the wrong change in a store, when you return it, it is an opportunity to witness. "I could get away with it with you, but I couldn't get away with it with God. He is always watching."
2. (You can use this without my name) I thought men who were laying carpet at our house had stolen my jewelry. The insurance company paid us several thousand dollars. Nearly a year later, I found it, hidden where they certainly stashed it, planning to come back to get it. It was on a bookshelf I needed a ladder to reach to clean. I'd probably interrupted them when they took it from my bathroom. When I called the insurance company, they were incredulous I was reporting that it had been found. They arranged for us to pay the money back over time and said repeatedly, "You didn't have to let us know. We'd never have known." Each time they said that, I told them about God watching and our and their being accountable to Him. It was wonderful opportunity for testimony.
3. Tithing: MAL 3:7 "From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes, and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts. "But you say, `How shall we return?' 8 "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, `How have we robbed Thee?' In tithes and offerings. 9 "You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you! 10 "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. 11 "Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it may not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes," says the LORD of hosts. 12 "And all the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land," says the LORD of hosts.
Final thought: To be aware that God is in you and watching you, and that you are accountable to him 24/7, enables one to change the temptation to steal into a sense of triumph over the temptation. Remember, 1CO 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it.