Ephesians four is our text today. And appropriate, even as we sort of looked at how the study was going to unfold, and we started realizing this is going to come in the Lenten season. And Paul is talking about some very specific sins that he's concerned about and is going to call the church to respond in obedience and confront these particular areas. We did note as well here, we've been noting as we've moved through Ephesians 4, the latter portion of the chapter, that all of these particular sins, there's five of them specifically here, are all relational. He's going to deal with some other sins into chapter 5 and what we might think of maybe as bigger sins. But here in chapter 4, he's dealing with these aspects of sin that disrupt the unity of the church. The unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. This is what he's talked about in the opening part of this chapter. He wants these people to walk worthy of the calling that they have received, to live as the people of God in unity, demonstrating the reconciling power of the gospel. So it's not just an individual thing. He has this corporate idea in his mind. He uses terminology of the body as a living organism. And the church collectively is to walk worthy of the calling that they have received. And these particular sins that he focuses on are things that would serve to jeopardize the unity of the church. And the third actually, the one we're going to address today, is this area of theft, stealing, the whole arena of possessions. and how we deal with those things. So let's look together at that singular verse here this morning. Ephesians 4.28, hear the word of the Lord. 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." May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His word. Well, a kleptomaniac is one who has a strong impulse to steal. And I think at the outset here we need to acknowledge that we have this natural proclivity to hoard, to take unto ourselves what what God didn't intend for us to cling to. We maybe think when we think about, you know, stealing or this idea of hoarding, my mind goes to, you know, a two year old, a toddler and their You know, they're fighting over the toy, right? It's mine. Or even the scenario, you know, where there's like 20 action figures and the one child has them all, you know, sort of over here, you know. He couldn't possibly play with all of these action figures at the same time. I mean, couldn't he just spare one or two, you know, for the other child? But no, they're mine. You know, and I think sometimes we look at this as sort of a juvenile behavior. And I guess in a sense, it is a juvenile behavior, but I think it's one that is present in more insidious forms in our lives as adults. So I don't want us as we at the outset to sort of distance ourselves from this, from this topic or from this arena of sin. Augustine talked about this in the fifth century as he thought about his own story. And he wrote the Confessions, which was sort of his autobiography of how he came to Christ, came to Christ later in life, lived a very immoral lifestyle for much of his life and was hesitant to give that all up for Christ. But he did, and he wrote about his early years and what God was doing in his life. And one of the accounts that he shares, one of the very sort of graphic images, is this account of him stealing pears from a neighbor's pear tree. And the tree was in close proximity to his own family's property. He and his friends as teenagers would sort of linger around in the late evening until it grew dark and then under cover of darkness they would go over to this loaded pear tree and they would shake it causing all of the fruit to fall down and then they'd cart it all off. And he reflected on what was going on there. Later in his life, he thought back on that incident. He thought, what made me do it? Why did I gravitate to that particular activity? And this is how he assessed his mind and his heart. He says, we took enormous quantities, not to feast on ourselves, but perhaps to throw to the pigs. We did eat a few, but that was not our motive. We derived pleasure from the deed simply because it was forbidden. He wanted it purely because he didn't have it. This is as old as the garden, isn't it? The thousands of trees, all of them with fruit that was pleasant to the eye and tasty, good to eat, Variety. And yet there was one tree that they were commanded and forbidden to eat from. And that was the tree that they wanted, that was the fruit that they wanted. So this is something endemic in the human heart. Augustine describes it, but it's something that really goes on in all of us. So we come to the point of asking here, a question we really want to answer today is how do you reflect God in the use of your possessions? And again, if we were to go back to just the preceding context here, verses 23 and 24, 22, 23, 24, Paul has talked about the trajectory of the believer. He's talked about the unbeliever. and the downward spiral of selfishness and self-absorption, casting off of all restraint, doing whatever they felt like doing. That's the trajectory of the unbeliever. But the trajectory of the believer is different. He says, that's not how you were taught Christ. That's not the pattern that you receive from Him. For the believer, They have put off the old person or the old self. They've put on the new self and they are being renewed in the spirit of their minds. But there's been an accomplished transformation that has taken place. And how he ends that in verse 24 here is that we are being, having put on the new self, which is in the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. So Paul says what he desires for his people, what God desires for people is that they would once again reflect Him. That's what we were created to do. We were created in His image to bear His beauty, to reflect His glory, His goodness in the world. And that's what God is doing now again and restoring and redeeming. humanity to reflect him. And that's where he then goes into these specific arenas of lying and anger and now stealing and possessions. And what do we need to do in each of these areas to make sure that we are reflecting God? So that's our question. How do you reflect God in the use of your possessions, what you have? Three things, and this has been a consistent pattern again in this text. He always gives us a behavior to adopt, a behavior to avoid, and then a rationale, a motivation, something to sort of urge us on towards this course of action. So these are the three things that I'm going to suggest to you that you need to embrace and respond to if you are going to reflect God in this arena. Number one, don't take what doesn't belong to you. Don't take what doesn't belong to you. Pretty straightforward, right? I think the ESV translation of thief here is a bit unfortunate. It's not a bad translation, but literally the text says, let the one who steals, steal no more. You say, well, this is not rocket science, Pastor. The one who steals is a thief. And that's what the translators arrived at as well. That's why they translated it. Let the thief steal no longer. But I think it's significant that Paul doesn't use the word thief. In our minds, when you think of that terminology, I'm thinking of a convicted felon. I'm thinking of someone who has an open, well-known reputation for pilfering things. Paul is not writing to criminals. He's writing to people in the church. He's writing to upstanding people. And so he says, he doesn't use the title, he just says, the one who steals should steal no longer. I think maybe he was heading off knowing that perhaps there would be resistance to that terminology of a thief. Let the thief steal no longer. Well, I'm not a thief. Paul just kind of breaks it down into the actions that are underlying that type of a lifestyle. Let the one who steals, steal no longer. To steal is to take the property of another or others without permission or right, especially by secrecy or by force. And we could think about it in different categories. Certainly we could think about stealing from others, that would probably be the predominant category that would come to our mind, taking something from another human being. We could think of the professional thief, you know, again, maybe that stereotypical thief who maybe has a criminal record, maybe, you know, again, is well known, has been apprehended on several occasions. There would be what we might think of as the inside job. A person who doesn't break into a house brazenly to steal but has access to that house because they work there. They nanny there. They clean that house and they use their access to profit themselves. Certainly it could be the case even with an employee who doesn't maybe have to break into the company to steal from it because they work for that employer. There's the shrewd manipulator who cheats someone out of their property. Thomas Watson, one of the Puritan writers, reflected on this topic and he talked a little bit about lawyers. Interesting, back in the Puritan era, lawyers still had that reputation as being able to twist and manipulate things to get the widow's property. It's this crafty type of theft. There's the crooked merchant who steals by selling. Right, they still sell something of inferior quality, or they overcharge for that product and in a sense take advantage of someone else even in the act of selling something. There's the one who takes by extortion or the biblical term of usury, exorbitant interest, taking advantage of someone's desperate situation to sort of pile on and profit at their expense. There is the trustee who skims funds that were intended for someone else. There is the borrower who doesn't pay back, and in essence, steals from the lender. And of course, Watson and others in the Puritan era would have been thinking about just simply physical objects. There was no intellectual property in the ancient world, but we have all sorts of different categories in our time too, don't we, to think about when we think about property, intellectual property, the realm of ideas. And so it is stealing for a person to make photocopies of copyrighted material to copy digital music files onto their iPod, which they did not purchase themselves to watch a pirated film that you were able to find on a website hasn't been released yet on DVD or you just didn't want to pay for the rental. And so you find another way to watch it. That is theft. It's taking what doesn't belong to you. So we have all sorts of different categories for this in our day. A person steals when they take goods or services that they don't qualify for, whether it be Medicaid or disability or food stamps. These things are put in place to serve as a safety net for people, but some manipulate the system to be able to get funds that really aren't theirs. That's a form of stealing. A person steals when they take credit for something that someone else did. A person steals from their employer when they pad their expense account or when they report more hours than they really worked. A person steals from the government when they fail to report income to the IRS. Now we're meddling here. A person steals time from others when they're chronically late and make other people wait. Retail stores have grappled with this increasingly over the years, $8 billion in inventory shortages each year. And statistically, my mind goes to shoplifting, right? I'm always thinking of this because, you know, at Christmas time, you know, these childproof packages and things, you know, I mean, the tamper proof stuff. I mean, I get so mad trying to get those things open, you know, We're reminded of what a big problem shoplifting is, right? And so they have to go to all these measures. And that's kind of where my mind goes when I think of this $8 billion. But the retailers say that 60% of that is employee theft. Much more subtle than that, by and large. And what's becoming an increasingly big issue is what's being called fraudulent returns. some stores have very liberal return policies and so people will go and they'll buy a product and they'll wear it to an event or for a week or a month and then take it back or they'll buy a pair of pants and then a month later take back an old pair of pants with that receipt and keep the new ones working the system to their advantage stealing what doesn't belong to them So there's all sorts of subtle applications of this and we have just given a very brief list. There certainly would also be what we categorize as stealing from God. Achan would be a great biblical example of this. You remember when the people of Israel came in and took Jericho and it was the very first city that God gave them in the promised land. So they were going to take all sorts of plunder in the midst of that as God brought judgment on the Canaanites and delivered his people. But this first city of Jericho was devoted to the Lord. They weren't to take anything from it. It was God's. It was the first fruits of what he had given them. And of course, Achan violated that. He saw something that he wanted and he buried it in his tent. And we know the story. And that can happen to us. Malachi confronted this with the people of Israel. He talked about the fact they were robbing God when they withheld from him their tithes, what belonged to him, what was rightfully his. He accused them of robbing God. So we have these major categories of stealing from others and stealing from God. One of the ugliest stories in the Bible involved a man by the name of King Ahab. And there was a lot of ugly stories actually involving King Ahab. But one in particular sort of seems to characterize his life. You might remember he had an individual in his kingdom by the name of Naboth. And Naboth had a vineyard. And apparently the vineyard was beautiful. It was well manicured and cared for. And Ahab looked at that vineyard and he wanted it. And so he approached Naboth to work out a deal to be able to purchase that vineyard. And Naboth refused, perhaps because the property had been in his family for however many years and it was significant to him. It held great significance beyond money. And so he said, no, King Ahab, I'm going to keep this property. And you know the story that Ahab went to very malicious ends to falsely accuse Naboth. Naboth ended up being executed for these supposed things that he had said. And then Ahab sweeps in and assumes the property. Hideous, hideous account for which Ahab would stand in judgment and ultimately meet his own demise. It's interesting how we would maybe distance our own stealing from that. We wouldn't consider it to be nearly as heinous when I would suggest to you that we should. It's an act of violence. It's taking something that doesn't belong to us. Scripture talks a lot about this in the Proverbs under the guise of what's called unjust gain. Profiting through illegitimate or underhanded, manipulative, unethical means. And I find it interesting there that in most of these passages, it's presented as not only morally wrong, but unwise. Notice Proverbs 10. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. Proverbs 13. Wealth gained hastily will dwindle. The money grab doesn't turn out like you think it will. Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. Proverbs 20, bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man. It seems like this was a windfall. Notice what the text says, but afterward, his mouth will be full of gravel. It will not have the result that he hoped for. It's not only morally wrong, but it's not wise. It doesn't really get us ahead. We need to come to embrace God's mindset in this regard. Certainly, if we're going to be like God in this arena of our possessions, we need to stop taking what doesn't belong to us. But of course, it goes beyond that. Secondly, we need to work hard to provide for your own needs. Work hard to provide for your own needs. Instead of stealing from other people, we ought to provide for our own needs through hard work. And we could make a number of observations. Let me just give you a few about what's involved in this work that he's talking about. First, it involves strenuous effort. So he says there, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, or the old King James terminology, toil. It's a word that has to do with exhaustion and exertion and perspiration and fatigue. Work hard. Okay, give yourself over, expend yourself to provide for your own needs. Paul speaks of it as a physical effort. He clarifies that we're to work with our own hands, a terminology, a phrase that's used often in the scriptures. And we might think, well, that's a reference to sort of manual labor. What does that look like in our culture? But I think that it's really very transferable. Really, all of our human pursuits, our tasks that we do, whether we have a white collar job or a blue collar job, ultimately are sort of carried out with our hands. Whether you're a farmer who's planting crops or a mechanic repairing cars, or an artist wielding a paintbrush, or an engineer designing products, through a computer drafting type of method. Even an author who spends a great deal of time just thinking eventually has to put those thoughts down on paper or a word processor, right? Somehow that finds expression through his or her hands. We shouldn't use our hands to pilfer from others, but we should use our hands for productive tasks. and earn our own keep. In the medical community, and I understand this is the case in other communities as well, sometimes there's a reference to you eat what you kill. Which is sort of, sort of has to do with how you get paid, right? You could be salaried and get sort of a flat wage no matter how many hours of overtime you have to work or you can eat what you kill. And you have to build up your clientele because you only get paid for however many clients you see. or however many surgeries you perform, whatever it might be. And it seems that the Bible has that sort of a notion to it, where Paul will even say in Thessalonians, the one who won't work shouldn't eat. You know, there's a very clear tie between work and reward. We can also note that this involves an honest effort. This labor that he's talking about. The text uses a word for good or it's translated also as honest. Some translations say good hard work or useful work. In our terminology, in our vernacular, we might say an honest day's work. Not every endeavor is characterized as an honest day's work. The Bible presents a rich theology of work. And the value of people's contributions. Can you imagine what our community would be like if the trash collectors all stopped working? Right? Very important. I have been really thankful if we have ice dam issues on my house. I know I'm probably the only one. But we've been fighting it in one particular little spot. And I have been very thankful for the people that make those heat cables. Some guy laboring in some factory somewhere, churning out these little wires, saved me thousands and thousands of dollars this year in trying to deal with all that ice on my roof. What about the people down in the mines, you know, mining salt for places like West Michigan, right? How about the people who fix potholes? When there's money to, you know, repair them, of course, Scalping tickets or selling drugs does not constitute an honest day's work. So he qualifies for what he's talking about here. Not just any means you can to get a buck, but engaging in honest or good labor. It doesn't mean it has to be highfalutin, it doesn't have to be your engineering biophysics types of products, but good work, honest work. And I think it also at least intimates or assumes what I'm going to call an ongoing effort. The imperative command here, let the thief no longer steal, rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, it's all in the present tense. There's no qualifiers there. So the text does not say, work if you are over the age of 16. The text does not say work if you are under the age of 62. The text does not say work if you really enjoy your job. No, work. No matter how old you are, you might retire from a given company, you might not be getting a wage, but we are all called upon to work, to engage in meaningful tasks. Randy Alcorn, you might not agree with this as a parent, I have to admit I've struggled with this since I first heard him teach on this. Randy Alcorn has written a book on money, possessions, and eternity. He's written a lot on the financial sector. He advocates paying your children. I struggle with this concept. But I'm becoming convinced, of course he wants to talk specifically about paying your children for work that they do. And his concern is that children learn the value of money and they learn where money comes from. Money comes from effort. And so he says this, when a child loses or breaks a toy, a parent who feels sorry for the child will often replace the toy with a new one. Meanwhile, the child is deprived of learning the way life functions. You must care for things because there are consequences to having them lost or broken. If the consequences are removed, the wrong lesson is learned. It's okay to be careless because you get what you want anyway. The wrong behavior is reinforced rather than corrected. If a 12-year-old squanders his lunch money, what should his parents do? Nothing! He must earn some more money, use the money he saved, or go without lunch. Heaven forbid! You'd be in the news if you took this course of action. Lessons of life are very simple and effective if we will just stay out of the way. We have this culture where we shield our kids from the realities of life. They call them helicopter parents, right? Who swoop in and prevent their child from nicking their knee. And some of us, if the truth be told, have not learned this lesson ourselves. That reward comes as a result of work. And that's the pattern that we're given. Not to steal from someone else, but to engage in hard work to provide for our own needs. Third thing that we need to embrace is if we are going to reflect God in the area of finances, we need to put a cap on your lifestyle so that you're able to help those who are in need. So it's not enough to simply stop stealing. That's good and that's foundational. We ought to also provide for our own needs, but it's not enough to just simply provide for your own needs. God intends for us to use our resources to help others. That's where the text goes here. 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. Paul modeled this. Acts chapter 20, you have the text in your notes there. He expended his life for the good of others. And he sort of drew attention to this pattern in his life. It seems to me that there are many professing believers who are purely consumers. They take and they take and they take. That's certainly not the pattern of Christ, is it? It's not God's pattern. God didn't use all of his resources for himself. God lavished those resources on us. That's the pattern that we've been given. So you have, in contrast to Paul and his sort of selfless actions and his hard work on behalf of other people, you have the account in Luke 12 of the rich fool. had this bumper crop more than he could ever use. I mean, more than he or his family needed for the coming year. And so he's saying, what do I do to sort of, you know, be able to retain all of this wealth? And he decides he's going to build these big barns to be able to store all the grain in. He assumed that all of his possessions were intended to provide for his own needs. When in reality, God had intended for him to use extra possessions to care for the needs of others. Matter of fact, Ambrose, a contemporary of Augustine, said that this man had a place to store his grain in the mouths of the needy. That was God's intent. He didn't have to build bigger barns. The barns were there. He just needed to put it in the right places. I've talked to you before about my grandparents on my mother's side, Bill and Irma Ludwig. There's a lot of stories to tell. I could use it as an illustration each week. They lived a very Spartan lifestyle. Everything in their house seemed really ancient. I don't remember anything ever being replaced. It was just the way they rolled. Grandpa had a good job. He worked for Ford at the proving grounds. And he was very industrious. He worked on the site. He built several houses in our little town. One of which actually my parents bought when they got married. And my parents bought it on a land contract. So I remember going as a young boy over to my grandparents' house and my parents would be doing business with Grandma and Grandpa, giving them the payment for that month or whatever the arrangement was. And I remember Grandma going back into her bedroom and coming back with the biggest roll of $100 bills I've ever seen in my life. She's just peeling them back, you know, making change for my parents. And I'm like, I thought they were poor, you know. They just set a cap on their lifestyle. This is enough. I don't necessarily think that everybody should live like my grandparents did. Matter of fact, I would recommend that you don't live like my grandpa. My grandpa would never buy electrical supplies. Electrical tape was good enough for any repair that needed to be made in the panel or anywhere else in the house. So I wouldn't recommend that. All right. But I think that we have to grapple with that question. What is enough? Because all of this isn't intended simply for you and the needs of your family. God intends in giving people what they need through their work, but He also intends on using those possessions, intends on us using those possessions for the good of others." I think a lot of believers really wrestle through that issue of giving. They're going to be generous when they reach a certain income level. They're going to be generous when they get the house paid off, or when the student loans are paid off, or when their kids are through college. They're going to leave something in their will. They'll be generous when they die, as it were. And Jesus had a word for that, the word fool. That was the mindset of this man who was building bigger barns, caring for his own needs, maybe always intending someday to be generous. And then his life was taken from him. And he was a fool. He didn't plan for eternity. He didn't use his resources for eternal significance. So what do you need to do this morning to reflect conform to the image of God in the arena of possessions. Perhaps there is some areas in which you've been guilty of taking what isn't yours. I'm sure not an overt way, but maybe in a more subtle way, maybe as it relates to these intellectual properties and taking other people's ideas and qualifying for things that really you don't qualify for. Perhaps you need to renew some commitments in your work patterns. You say, you know, I'm an hourly employee, and I need to revisit my pattern of checking email, personal email on work time. That's stealing from my employee, and I need to just revisit my patterns there. And perhaps you need to think about this idea of putting a cap on your lifestyle. of realizing that the resources God has given to you are not intended simply for your own use, but are intended to help provide for the needs of others. I don't know what that commitment needs to be for you, but it's my prayer that God would conform us to His image in this critical area.