Delve into an insightful exploration of the often-misunderstood 7th and 8th Commandments. Join us as we uncover their profound implications for our personal relationships, community stewardship, and the pursuit of a balanced life.
Join the conversation and gain practical insights into:
- Purity, chastity, and the sanctity of marriage (00:11:39)
- The importance of modesty in preserving relationships (00:13:00)
- The far-reaching impact of broken marriage vows on the community (00:23:34)
- The varying levels of theft and how they violate God’s commandments (00:26:58)
- The need to moderate our desires and avoid wasteful practices (00:35:37)
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Watch, Listen, & Read the Full Transcript
00:00:00:28 – 00:00:41:55
Clint Loveall
Thank you again for being with us as we continue through the Ten Commandments. Commandments seven and eight tonight, both interesting in their own way, probably particularly from a historical standpoint of what our people have done with them, not just our people, but the ways in which we have interpreted them and transmitted them. As we move into the seventh Commandment, which is, you know, thou shalt not do not commit adultery, we we obviously understand that anybody who has been affected by that, that is a painful reality, that is a struggle and a difficulty.
00:00:42:00 – 00:01:03:22
Clint Loveall
We know that, you know, there are we have all found ourselves on the wrong side of commandments. But that is one I think that is particularly difficult. So we we mean not to point any fingers tonight other than what we think the commandments says to us. And again, some of what we think it is said to our ancestors in the faith.
00:01:03:27 – 00:01:47:10
Clint Loveall
So this is the third commandment, regulating human relationships. That second table that we’ve talked about, honor your father, mother, do not murder. And now we have that focus specifically turning toward family. We got some of that with father and mother, and now we get the marriage relationship as well. And this commandment, I think when we talk about, as we’ve tried to do the last few weeks, the idea that the commandment is bigger than just the one thing that it points out, I think maybe this is the commandment that is most convicting.
00:01:47:15 – 00:02:27:02
Clint Loveall
Once you realize that you’re not innocent of it. In other words, even if you check the box that says, Well, I’ve not done that. Something in the expansion of this commandment, when when Jesus talked about this commandment, he equated breaking this commandment with lust. And at that point, when Jesus makes that bridge, we all kind of get included in a way that probably feels convicting the the idea of inappropriately thinking about someone or something or or looking at things that we shouldn’t see.
00:02:27:07 – 00:03:03:34
Clint Loveall
So on the surface, this isn’t a commandment that needs a lot of explanation. I think people are familiar with what adultery means. However, when we look at our sexuality and our commitment to one another in relationship, it changes pretty quickly. This commandment expands that net. It’s really big, really fast. And I think most of us, even though we might start off feeling fairly confident, realize, no, I guess that one is saying something to me as well.
00:03:03:39 – 00:03:26:37
Michael Gewecke
So there is a certain level of importance, I think, in this ordering. So I just want to not to repeat what Clint said, but let’s look at those ordering of human relationships. So the first one and this second table is either your father or mother. So this kind of hierarchical relationship between you and your superior. Right. Then the second is do not mirror the preservation of life.
00:03:26:42 – 00:04:03:56
Michael Gewecke
So the third then, is a commandment regarding your most personal relationship, protecting the family order. And what is interesting about that is, number one, from the societal perspective, this is essential to people who are going into very difficult circumstances to protect the family order and to make it possible for them to succeed. But it also has a way of keeping society within an order in which it’s possible to do the things that society needs to do to raise children to be able to pass on the faith from one generation to the next.
00:04:04:01 – 00:04:35:21
Michael Gewecke
It also creates a kind of system in order by which you can sort pass down tradition from family lineage. Now, we would be not totally there. We would have to give ourselves some grace if we think of this commandment from our perspective. But for a moment, remember all of your stories from the old Testament where there are often multiple wives, there’s often a significantly different social order than what we take for granted in our own time or place.
00:04:35:25 – 00:05:05:45
Michael Gewecke
So you need to remember that when you’re remembering this commandment that this is more than just what we would think of as in one man, one wife. This is being received in a time in which that as a much more broad kind of interpretation. But that said, the point of it remains the same to keep a kind of basic societal order so that you can pass on in in that order the faith, as well as the ability for family members and humans to grow in the midst of difficult circumstances.
00:05:05:45 – 00:05:33:40
Michael Gewecke
So it provides a way to put order in a rather broken type situation that people who are moved towards a disorder in their lives. And, you know, we have as we think about the Old Testament or sorry, the New Testament, we have major themes about things like faithfulness, the idea of being faithful to God first, which we have in the first table, and then being faithful to one another.
00:05:33:45 – 00:05:54:15
Michael Gewecke
That is, I think, expressed in this commandment pretty clearly from the start. I’ll be really brief with this because I don’t want to bore you all right at the start, but. Or do you want to say something there? Okay. So this this next movement of this is probably not a thing you immediately care about. So I’m going to try to make you care about it for a second.
00:05:54:19 – 00:06:22:30
Michael Gewecke
The ancient church care the lot about celibacy. We don’t know what to do with that. In modern first world America. But the reality is that it matters a lot to them, that you had a theology that made sense of what if you don’t get married or what if you can’t have children? Because you have to remember when your societal order follows directly down the path of who is your first born son.
00:06:22:35 – 00:06:49:25
Michael Gewecke
And then you have all those stories in Genesis when that just doesn’t happen and how tumultuous that is. You have to think so. What does it mean then, If you are someone who is celibate, who is not in a marriage relationship, and who is not acting outside of that marriage, outside of marital relationships? And the early church talked extensively about how celibacy is a gift and a virtue granted by God.
00:06:49:26 – 00:07:19:12
Michael Gewecke
Maybe the closest you can get to this is in the Catholic Church today. If you are a father, if you’re a priest or if you’re a nun, you’re you’re not married, that’s out. There are actually exceptions to that throughout the world. Not very often, but it does happen. But largely the idea is you are married to Christ. The time you would put in investing in that human relationship is instead put in a spiritual relationship with God and in the effort of loving your neighbor.
00:07:19:12 – 00:07:53:04
Michael Gewecke
And so you’re Calvin makes the point that we should we should recognize that the commandment of marriage, the fact that God gives us a commitment of marriage, gives marriage a certain level of primacy or importance in our lives, that in other words, God is saying that this is a good covenantal relationship that you should desire. That said, Calvin doesn’t go so far as to say that it is the only blessed relationship.
00:07:53:06 – 00:08:19:27
Michael Gewecke
He wants to say that you don’t have to have a marriage to be a blessed Christian. You don’t have to have that kind of relationship to be a person who God to give the special virtue of celibacy. And you have to you have to know that’s a pretty brash claim for Calvin, who is arguing against the Catholic Church, and he himself arguing that pastors should get to have wives so that this for him is a theological kind of minefield.
00:08:19:31 – 00:08:41:37
Michael Gewecke
And so it’s significant that he wants to preserve the idea that there is virtue in having a non-marital relationship, that you being married to God, you being celibate, you investing that time in a relationship that’s not a marriage. I’m not doing a very good job of convincing you why you should care about this other than the point you’re being.
00:08:41:42 – 00:08:55:57
Michael Gewecke
You need to know that a commandment that involves covenantal relationship and marriage involves the messy, complicated human stuff outside of that. And they cared about that, and they thought about it.
00:08:56:02 – 00:08:56:21
Clint Loveall
Yeah.
00:08:56:22 – 00:09:01:28
Michael Gewecke
So try to transition to that.
00:09:01:33 – 00:09:29:22
Clint Loveall
Let me let me just add a little bit to that idea. When the Bible speaks of celibacy, it actually speaks about it as a gift. So in the earliest evolution of the church, they lived under the expectation that Jesus would be back any day. And so in that context, Paul says things like, it’s better if you don’t get married, but if you need to get married, go ahead.
00:09:29:27 – 00:09:59:28
Clint Loveall
But it is a gift to you if you can focus on your faith, because we know Jesus is going to be back any minute now. What is interesting I think about that is a that Paul understands that that level of purity. So no sex outside marriage and intentionally not being married is not an act of will. It is a spiritual gift.
00:09:59:33 – 00:10:37:07
Clint Loveall
That’s how he talks about it. And secondly, that the expectation of purity outside of marriage transfers over to inside of marriage, that sexuality inside of marriage, though permissible, is still dangerous and still needs fences around it. That simply being married is not a kind of guarantee against things like lost in adultery. And we go back to Jesus words that when you look at someone lustful, if you’ve committed adultery in your heart, which is you know what he says.
00:10:37:12 – 00:11:10:23
Clint Loveall
And so while marriage is the primary pathway to purity and sexuality for Christians, Calvin and Luther have and based on Paul, have argued that it’s not the only and I think that’s significant. I think in the context of of where they were as a society. It is an incredible thing that Paul says to people, if you don’t need to get married, don’t.
00:11:10:28 – 00:11:39:36
Clint Loveall
Now, that doesn’t sound like great advice, though. I’ve heard people say that, but they don’t mean what Paul means. They mean why don’t you just live together? Why do you need to get married? That’s not what Paul meant at all. But the idea that he puts that out there is significant and our people pick up on that. So then the question turns to what is the character of relationship?
00:11:39:41 – 00:12:13:00
Clint Loveall
And with that idea of purity, the character of relationship is to be pure, both in our pre-marriage relationships and in our marital relationship. I think this is your quote, Michael, from Calvin. Modesty is purity in heart and chastity in body. So purity and heart, we get. I know a lot of people would say that it’s a good thing to be pure with your heart.
00:12:13:04 – 00:12:46:18
Clint Loveall
I think chastity is not a word that 21st Century America knows what to do with the idea of being chased. The idea of being restrained. The idea of being restricted. We don’t live in a moment where that is celebrated very highly. But we are responsible for that from a biblical worldview, from a biblical perspective. That is the nature of this commandment that we are required.
00:12:46:22 – 00:12:59:57
Clint Loveall
We are expected to set limitations for ourselves and pursue purity or faithfulness, whichever it is that our station demands.
00:13:00:01 – 00:13:30:30
Michael Gewecke
So purity is, in our view, most often an individual reality. We know we’re responsible for what we do with our own bodies. But the early church was very, very interested in also recognizing the importance of modesty. In other words, your attempts to help your neighbor be pure because you think in the early church there are highly communal group of people that care a lot about helping each other live out their faith.
00:13:30:30 – 00:14:02:36
Michael Gewecke
And so you have things that we we wrestle with here today are still in the 21st century church. Paul writing things like women, you know, don’t wear this kind of adornments, don’t do these things. The spirit behind that was the idea of keeping this commandment. The idea behind it was, as far as it is for you, do what you can to help your neighbor remain chaste, remain pure, and that not just with what they do with their body, but also what they do with their imagination or what they do with their mind.
00:14:02:36 – 00:14:29:45
Michael Gewecke
And this is all the more complicated because of Jesus move. We know Jesus as teaching, He says. It’s not enough to just not act on a sexual impulse outside of your marriage. Jesus says that simply looking with lust is breaking the commandment, and when he does that, he makes us unbelievably impossible in 21st century America to just simply say.
00:14:29:58 – 00:15:03:03
Michael Gewecke
And that’s what it is, because we live in the moment in which it’s not just access to that kind of sexualized reality. Our culture continues to think about it as an ultimate place of freedom. How could you restrict any form of what I do with my body? As long as it’s consensual, it’s fine. Right. And if you’re a Christian, you have to hold that intention with God’s covenantal image for human relationship.
00:15:03:14 – 00:15:28:55
Michael Gewecke
God has made a covenant with us. God expects us to make covenants with others, and that means that we agree to certain boundaries and terms for the health of our relationship with God and our relationship with others. It’s a difficult conversation because people will say, well, ultimately aren’t all restrictions bad? And you say, Well, no, some restrictions are essential, right?
00:15:29:00 – 00:15:50:31
Michael Gewecke
Things like nobody loves getting pulled over for having a speeding ticket. Right. But the fact that our roads are regulated, I guess I’ll very quickly tell you we were. This is a biblical that. I promise I’ll bring it around. So we were on our way back. We were on our way back from this thing that we did in Jamaica to the cruise ship this November.
00:15:50:36 – 00:16:12:23
Michael Gewecke
And we were late, which we didn’t know until our bus driver started driving like we were an ambulance or a police car. And we we drove on every part of the road that’s imaginable and other parts I didn’t know existed. Like we drove off on the shoulder. We had goats cross the road and he interwove between them. We blew through intersections with red lights.
00:16:12:37 – 00:16:30:30
Michael Gewecke
We honked at cars until they moved off the road. And in that moment I realized, I live in a place where roads are highly regulated because this guy drove and everyone else knew what to do with them. But but I was tired of white knuckling hoping that we made it back to the ship. By the way, you got us there on time.
00:16:30:30 – 00:16:52:39
Michael Gewecke
So thank you, driver. But there is, as it is very simple, it’s easy to take the boundaries for granted. If you’ve always looked for them, it’s easy to take the benefits of shelter and protection, which is what God intends for the community by giving these commandments. This is what you should do for the sake of your community. This is the best way to live.
00:16:52:44 – 00:17:12:00
Michael Gewecke
And we sometimes turn that into a thing. Society certainly turns it into a thing that needs pushed back against, and the church has learned things in that push back. But ultimately, the intent of this is to provide a safe structure in which the community can thrive and grow.
00:17:12:05 – 00:17:47:26
Clint Loveall
So just back to that idea of modesty for a minute. One, Michael mentioned the church kind of, I guess, having conversations that maybe the culture occasionally helps us have. You don’t have to respond to this if you don’t want, but if you’re a female in the group and you grew up in church, at some point, would you, if you’re comfortable, would you raise your hand if you were told that you had to dress carefully so boys wouldn’t wouldn’t look at you in the wrong way?
00:17:47:31 – 00:18:25:57
Clint Loveall
So some of you have heard that, right? Well, women have borne an inordinate amount of blame in regard to these commandments. And some of that is it was men riding them and it was easier to blame women. So we did. And not okay with that. No, I’m just. But we we have tried. We have tried to learn that it it’s not simply our fault that that easy to say who is at fault.
00:18:26:02 – 00:18:56:18
Clint Loveall
But again, and if you have you know, if you’ve done the thing if you’ve raised daughters or granddaughters recently, if you know young people in this day and age, the concept of modesty is brutally hard to communicate. Why shouldn’t I wear my volleyball shorts to Wal-Mart? And why can’t I wear yoga pants and a crop top to the park?
00:18:56:31 – 00:19:26:31
Clint Loveall
And why? Well, you can, but should you? And that’s a very hard conversation to have when that’s the water that our young people swim in. What does it mean to be modest? And and we are hopefully landing in a better place. Then it’s your job to make sure boys don’t look at you. Wrong. Right. I don’t as a as a dad of daughters, I didn’t find that a helpful metric.
00:19:26:36 – 00:19:59:10
Clint Loveall
I you need to be unattractive because otherwise, you know, they could have lost when they look at you. Well, it’s not their fault. However, that doesn’t mean that modesty doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean that purity doesn’t matter. We we live in a culture. I think this is one of the probably the great disconnects. You know, if we said don’t murder, we go out and talk to secular people and they’d say, Yeah, well, it seems good.
00:19:59:15 – 00:20:23:47
Clint Loveall
If we went out and said we think modesty and purity matter and lost is not helpful. They’d say, What are you talking about? This is one of the biggest disconnects I think Christians have with the world in which we live. If you look at the statistics and then the figures for things like online pornography, if you look at clothing, if you look at this idea of you can do anything as long as there’s consent.
00:20:23:49 – 00:20:51:54
Clint Loveall
If you if you if you listen at all to our culture, this is a place where I think the the church, particularly the historic church and the modern world, are a chasm apart. We are miles apart on how we think about sexuality, how we think about maturity, how we think about relationships and responsibility piece. And that makes a thing like marriage difficult.
00:20:51:59 – 00:21:12:02
Clint Loveall
And marriage is already tough. Michael and I were talking about this a little while ago. You know, every time we do a wedding and nine times out of ten, those are two young people looking at each other and they’re thinking, this is so finally great. You know, they can you have no idea. You just you just have no idea.
00:21:12:07 – 00:21:40:41
Clint Loveall
Right. Because you just can’t imagine the scope of being in a covenant with another human being every day for the rest of your life. That’s not an easy thing. You can’t imagine where that’s going to take you. You can’t imagine the temptations and the struggles that are going to be. And then here you have a culture that says, Well, just here’s your outs.
00:21:40:46 – 00:22:07:05
Clint Loveall
Get on the computer, do this, do that, whatever you want. It’s okay. Well, it isn’t. We don’t we don’t take our marching orders from the culture. And so this is a place where I think Christians often seem old fashioned. Sometimes we seem judgmental, sometimes we are. But I think Christian people understand that there is a danger to lust, That there is.
00:22:07:10 – 00:22:35:16
Clint Loveall
It is a gift. Our sexuality is a gift, but it’s a gift that comes with responsibility and it’s a gift that needs to be understood and to some extent protected. Because when it is let out without restriction, it does damage to people, It hurts people. And so not just about protecting marriages, but protecting people, protecting minds and hearts.
00:22:35:16 – 00:23:00:48
Clint Loveall
And I think, you know, again, rightly understood, this is a convicting commandment. It’s easy to say, well, I haven’t done that, but when you start unpacking it, you go, well, okay, I guess I’m in there somewhere. But I think also a crucial commandment and one that the church is going to continue to struggle with. This isn’t one that this isn’t one that’s going to go away because we all agree on it.
00:23:00:48 – 00:23:09:45
Clint Loveall
And everybody, you know, gets on board. This is a going to be an ongoing conversation, I think, as long as the church is the church.
00:23:09:50 – 00:23:34:12
Michael Gewecke
One quick final note for me on this is there is an element as we begin transitioning to the eighth commandment, there’s an element here of stewardship and you think of stewardship. I think most often from the financial crime tax, the idea of what do we do with our resources? But here we are called as Christians to be good stewards of the community that we’ve been given.
00:23:34:17 – 00:24:03:16
Michael Gewecke
And I know we have lots of people who have had lots of experience over your lifetime in different churches. I would have to guess that in one of our experiences, someone in this room has had an experience where a pastor broke the bounds of marriage and the impact that had on the church community. I’ve got two things. Statistically, there’s at least one of those stories that could be told in this room because it happens way more frequently in the church than we would like to admit.
00:24:03:21 – 00:24:26:20
Michael Gewecke
The reality is we’re not just stewarding our bodies and we’re not just stewarding someone else’s bodies. We’re stewarding the covenantal relationship of the community. We’re doing the best that we can to make it so that people can come to this place. And by place we don’t mean the building. We mean within this gathering of disciples, and they can hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
00:24:26:20 – 00:24:50:56
Michael Gewecke
It can be an inspiring message that calls them into a well founded and and life giving relationship with the living God. This is what we aspire to do. And when we allow our sinfulness in any area to to move us outside of good stewardship of what we’ve been given, then we put ourselves in a position for others to be impacted by that choice.
00:24:50:57 – 00:25:09:20
Michael Gewecke
And I think that is a it’s a different way to look at it. But it ties this commandment into the commandment that’s going to follow the next commandments, going to be far more clear in the sense that it’s a stewardship commandment. But I think there’s an element of stewardship in this commandment as well.
00:25:09:25 – 00:25:18:06
Clint Loveall
Okay. We move on. Our next commandment, Thou shalt not steal.
00:25:18:10 – 00:25:54:06
Clint Loveall
Again, pretty self-explanatory. Taking something that isn’t yours on its surface. Pretty easy to check the box, yes or no. Under that very simple definition. Now we won’t do confession. You just think about whether or not you have taken something that didn’t belong to you. I think that’s not an uncommon kind of thing. Certainly from a societal perspective, it makes sense.
00:25:54:10 – 00:26:25:15
Clint Loveall
A community would be a place of trustworthiness. I have friends that live in other places who are just they literally can’t wrap their head around the fact that if you see my key, my truck parked somewhere, the keys are in it, and that our house is open so something disappears. Right. And that’s not to say you should or shouldn’t do those things.
00:26:25:19 – 00:26:51:25
Clint Loveall
Just to say that the benefit of living even in a small bubble where you have a high degree or you feel the the ability to have a high degree of trust in people is a wonderful blessing. There are places where clearly that is not a good plan and shouldn’t be done. Arguably, it shouldn’t be done at all. But how do we how do we live with our stuff in a way that we are content with it?
00:26:51:39 – 00:26:58:54
Clint Loveall
And how do we avoid taking from other people? I think this is the direction this commandment points us in.
00:26:58:58 – 00:27:17:19
Michael Gewecke
Okay, I’m so excited for this. There are four levels we’re going to go for the top to the bottom. The first one, Talbott gives us four different levels of theft. Okay. And I’m going to be curious how far we need to go before we all get really uncomfortable. All right. So first level, I think we’re going to all be fine.
00:27:17:20 – 00:27:45:37
Michael Gewecke
Most of us are brazen and violent. That’s from another. So, you know, robbing somebody on the road side, breaking into space. I’m sure most of us feel pretty good at that. Okay, move it to the next one. Malicious deceit through fraud. So the idea of defrauding any other form is so by the way, that would include the government, because Talbott has a very high view of the government and its role in our lives.
00:27:45:37 – 00:28:24:05
Michael Gewecke
So whatever you owe someone else, if you fraudulently keep it from them, that is a form of theft. He goes on. It’s getting good concealed craftiness. That’s the exact quote. Can the craftiness where a person is part it with their goods by seemingly legal means, including when you take someone to court and when he explicitly says this, you take to someone The Court and you win by the letter of the law and you take the thing from them that belonged to them because you wanted it.
00:28:24:19 – 00:28:56:31
Michael Gewecke
Even if you secured it through legal means, it is in the eyes of God. Talbott would say theft. And then we keep going on the line Flatterers where one is cheated of your things by being told what you want to hear. There’s entire industries built upon that, right? you will look great if you buy this product. You will be happy if you go to this place.
00:28:56:36 – 00:29:18:10
Michael Gewecke
That is a form of that because you are essentially you’re using flattery to to cheat someone out of what belongs to them for something that’s in your own interest and not their own. And the principle underneath all For now, I should move on. Did any of those land that any of you. They did on me? I thought to myself, Wow, that’s.
00:29:18:25 – 00:29:50:20
Michael Gewecke
That’s good. The thing that connects all four of those, right, is ultimately that every one of them violates our Christian responsibility to love our neighbor, which means that we owe to our neighbor, our growing is that we look out for their legitimate best interests. And when it applies to stuff, the things that we’ve been made stewards of in our life, our calling is to ensure that other people’s stuff remains.
00:29:50:20 – 00:30:16:32
Michael Gewecke
Their stuff, because that was given to them by God. So if you take from them what God has given them, you are not just stealing from them, you are stealing from God. And that is a remarkable frame because what it does is it says it’s not a question of how did I get it? It’s a question of does it belong to me?
00:30:16:37 – 00:30:25:16
Michael Gewecke
And that is a radically different way of turning this commandment. I think it lands in a different way.
00:30:25:21 – 00:31:09:46
Clint Loveall
So essentially, then I’m going to bring up a quote from Martin Luther and this is where I think we take this commandment from Do not steal, which again, is a thing. Maybe at some point people pocket this. I I’m amazed when you read the statistics of the Walmarts and Targets and hives of the world, the the millions to slash billions of dollars that they lose from just people taking things who who just find a way to walk out of the store with something they didn’t pay for.
00:31:09:51 – 00:31:40:55
Clint Loveall
I think most of us find that surprising. I don’t think most of us are out there looking for those opportunities and I’m I’m not patting myself on the back it intentionally because I’ve I’ve got plenty of problems. But I in honesty I’m the guy you want finding your billfold if you drop your billfold and it’s full of money, I’ll get it back to you and it’ll be full of money.
00:31:41:09 – 00:32:17:06
Clint Loveall
It’s just I don’t know why that’s not a thing that tempts me. Maybe I’ve never found a big enough billfold yet, but I. If, if, if I. If I would. This happened a couple weeks ago. I left the store. Well, hold on. Let me read you what Luther says first. Luther says one steals not only when he robs a safe or picks a pocket, but also when he takes advantage of his neighbor at the market, the workshop, the grocery, the butcher, wherever money and goods or labor is exchanged.
00:32:17:11 – 00:33:02:44
Clint Loveall
Now, this is when it goes from I don’t think I have to worry about that to what does he mean? Any time we take advantage of someone, you know that moment when the busy waitress gives you an extra $10 and your change? Yeah, so does Luther. Luther raises serious questions about that. When the store makes a mistake, When the clerk makes a mistake, when you work an angle and take advantage of something, when a person doesn’t know what they have and you say, I’ll give you five bucks for it when it’s worth 500.
00:33:02:49 – 00:33:38:04
Clint Loveall
Luther raises questions about whether this is honestly dealing with one another, and if it’s not honestly dealing with one another, he’s going to call it stealing. When we take something and we get an advantage in taking it and for Luther, I mean, that sounds legalistic and I’ll grant that to you. But for Luther, this is connected to the idea that we don’t own our own things.
00:33:38:04 – 00:34:19:26
Clint Loveall
We are not free with our goods and money, that they belong to God, that they are on loan to us, and that we are indebted to Christ, how we treat them. And as Michael said, that transfers to our neighbors as well. Even, you know, corporations. You might find this surprising. I think I did both Calvin and Luther write page after page, hundreds of pages of theology on what it means to own something, starting with the question Can Christians should Christians own things again?
00:34:19:26 – 00:34:46:52
Clint Loveall
Keep in mind, they’re dealing with the Catholic Church and some of the Catholic order that said, no, a person shouldn’t own anything. And if a Christian does own something, do we can we rightly call it ours? What do we do with that language? And so Luther raises all of this, as Calvin Calvin does. How do we think of what we quote unquote own?
00:34:46:56 – 00:35:16:32
Clint Loveall
How do we hold on to what we have with open hands and how do we interact with others in a way that doesn’t try to get the best of them and take something from them to our benefit to our advantage. And in a kind of market driven capitalist society? Again, that’s a tough question. I’m not blaming America for that being a tough question.
00:35:16:32 – 00:35:37:48
Clint Loveall
That’s been a tough question in all societies. But I think there’s something here that is, again, I don’t steal. Then you hear Luther and you go, man, Luther, come on. Maybe, maybe I need to think about some of this.
00:35:37:53 – 00:36:04:46
Michael Gewecke
So we’ve spent a lot of time in Westminster, but Westminster has a line in here that I thought we should spend a little time reflecting on together. Because not just this question ownership, but Westminster takes it further up. Ed teaches that this commandment should teach us to, and I quote, moderate our concerns for worldly goods. So in other words, it’s not just whether we take from someone else.
00:36:04:51 – 00:36:33:16
Michael Gewecke
It’s that our desire for other people’s things should be moderated, that we should have control over our impulse, a desire to accumulate and to acquire and I shared this with Clint earlier. I’ll share this with you. Public confession. This is Lent. So here we go. Confession for Michael Gokey. I like collecting things I like. Most of them are digital things like, you know, nerd things like video games.
00:36:33:26 – 00:37:01:34
Michael Gewecke
But there’s also some techno gadgets in our house as Rochelle will tell you, in somewhat increasing measure. I like collecting things that I’m not in a good position here with this commandment. I’m not 100% certain what to do with that, to be honest with you. Right. Is it the thing that has power over me? Right. It is. Or is it rather an enjoyment of a gift that’s been given by God?
00:37:01:39 – 00:37:27:22
Michael Gewecke
Calvin would make room for both. Westminster would make room for both. But the motivation behind it is essential to be discerned correctly. And so that I do think that it’s striking. It’s not just do we take from others, but do we moderate our desire, that innate human desire to be jealous or envious of what another person has? That’s the thing that would motivate us to take it in the first place.
00:37:27:27 – 00:38:08:35
Michael Gewecke
And then very briefly, Westminster also included a category that I thought might interest us. It included that it is a sin not only to take from another or to desire to take from another. It’s also a sin to steal from yourself, like gambling or like horrible financial choices. You should have known better, like imprudence. And the idea is that when you defraud yourself today of the benefits God has given you, you’re scoring the thing that you were given to be steward of.
00:38:08:40 – 00:38:22:01
Michael Gewecke
So therefore it is a violation of the commandment to also steal of the resources God gave you for your own betterment when you squander them on things that aren’t for your betterment.
00:38:22:06 – 00:38:52:25
Clint Loveall
Interesting interpretation that would come under a heading probably that we would call wastefulness. And and again, if you think how did we get from stealing and to me not being able to use my money however I want, it has to do with this idea of what is our right, what is our responsibility to what we’ve been given in a similar way that we talk about our sexuality, the gift we’ve been given and the defenses around it.
00:38:52:30 – 00:39:22:46
Clint Loveall
How do we talk about our possessions and the fences around them and it is not to produce guilt, it is to produce faithfulness. And so one of the dangers is the New Testament. This is Old Testament, too, but it’s especially apparent in the New Testament that the danger of finance is that it convinces you your security and future are in it.
00:39:22:51 – 00:40:04:25
Clint Loveall
And so the thing that people are quickest to idolatry, this is their stuff, their possessions, the things they need, you know, so it’s the story that Jesus tells the bigger the guy with bigger barns. I mean, you can read the gospel of Luke, you’ll be beaten down with possessions over and over and over again. But what does it mean to celebrate and use our resources appropriately to connect with others and not deprive them of their resources, but to do so under the idea of stewardship, that those are gifts that they’re not.
00:40:04:30 – 00:40:28:15
Clint Loveall
They’re not ours, they’re not about us, and they’re not simply for our enjoyment. They’re therefore covenant relationship with God and with others. And so I think, you know, that’s where this idea of wasteful us comes in. Now, I would actually say and Michael, you push back on this. I would actually say this is a place the church has to be careful.
00:40:28:15 – 00:40:55:31
Clint Loveall
I don’t think we should probably wade terribly far into that because I think that tends to be a personal thing. You may go to Starbucks every day. I don’t think the church should tell you if that’s an appropriate use of your money. You may have more bicycles than would fit in one room. I don’t think the church should tell me.
00:40:55:31 – 00:41:25:12
Clint Loveall
I mean, you that that’s not okay. Yeah. No, I. I do think that this is one of those places where the church should be upfront with principles. And then as Christians, we should seek what is the right balance for us. I think this is a place it’s very easy to lapse into legalism, and I think it’s very difficult to do that outside of the context of relationship.
00:41:25:12 – 00:41:43:52
Clint Loveall
And so I think this is an important idea conceptually and spiritually, but I don’t think it’s one where the church should necessarily have a checklist for people because I, I we’ve tried that in the past and it hasn’t worked very well.
00:41:43:57 – 00:42:08:06
Michael Gewecke
I don’t have much to add to that other than to say we’ve now been through four of the second side of the commandments were in the commandments about our relationship with one another does one notice every time, and without exception in the reformers interpretation of the commandment is it’s not a no, it’s not just a stop sign. It is a stop sign saying don’t do these things.
00:42:08:11 – 00:42:38:09
Michael Gewecke
Also saying do these things for the sake of your community because this is what’s best for you. It is truly wholehearted. The desire is that we might be a group of people who are living the best life that we can as stewards of God’s best gifts to us. And the idea is you’ve been given stuff, you’ve been given your deepest relationships, you’ve been given your life, you’ve been given a relationship of of learning from those who have gone before you, your superiors and those underneath you.
00:42:38:09 – 00:42:57:06
Michael Gewecke
All of this language exists for the purpose of asking the question, How do I love my neighbor? And ultimately, that’s what we come back to over and over again. So, yes, as you go, ask yourself the question, what do I do with these gifts that I’ve been made a steward of that you might look at each one of those categories.
00:42:57:10 – 00:43:14:17
Michael Gewecke
The spirit you should bring to it is how does God use this thing? Give it to me in a way that blesses the people around me. How does add life to the people that God calls son and daughter? And that is the guide that we come back to over and over again.
00:43:14:22 – 00:43:51:00
Clint Loveall
There’s a wonderful verse in the New Testament that says, no one, anything literally in the Greek says something like, no one, nothing. And then it says, Let no doubt remain outstanding except the continuing debt of love to one another. So the call for Christians to live their way, their life financially, in which we are not indebted, we’re not taking advantage that our finances become a mechanism of how we show Christ’s love in the world and properly understood.
00:43:51:00 – 00:44:14:31
Clint Loveall
That is a massive challenge, a massive task because money claims to be so much more than money. It claims to be security, it claims to be status, it claims to be future. It claims to be important. It masquerade does as all of those things that the Christian rightly finds, not in its in their bank account, but in God, their identity in Christ.
00:44:14:36 – 00:44:48:48
Clint Loveall
And so how is it that we become the best stewards so that do not steal, as Michael said, isn’t just the letter of the law. It’s not stop sign. It’s a caution Obstacles ahead side. Right? This has to be navigated. So how do we do that? Well, I think ultimately that’s where that count, that commandment points us. It’s it’s an interesting I think from a sociological standpoint, the commandment do not steal is is difficult.
00:44:48:50 – 00:45:16:58
Clint Loveall
I mean, I just recently helped a family member who got a link and click the link and gave a credit card. And, you know, the people are out there every day just trying to create ways to steal from other people. And it certainly can leave us jaded. It certainly can leave us with the impression that, you know, it’s your own fault If you if that happens to you, you should have been smarter.
00:45:16:58 – 00:45:48:36
Clint Loveall
And yeah, but again, the world lives one way and the church is to live another way. And so it’s an interesting, interesting time everybody agrees that going and holding your neighbor up with a gun and taking their stuff is not okay. But there’s that gray areas where it gets gets interesting. Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this broadcast.
00:45:48:36 – 00:46:06:56
Clint Loveall
We’re grateful for the support and the connections, the relationships we get to make through some of these offerings. We hope that they’ve been helpful. We know that there are lots of choices that you have lots of things you can listen to. We want to make you aware of some of what we’re doing, and we greatly appreciate you being a part of it.
00:46:07:01 – 00:46:25:53
Michael Gewecke
Absolutely. We want to just thank you for being one of our audio podcast listeners. It’s amazing to have you with us in the midst of our conversations. Of course, I hope you know that you can find the whole archive of all of these conversations at Pastor Taco. We would love for you to join us there. You can find options for subscribing by email.
00:46:26:06 – 00:46:59:31
Michael Gewecke
You can easily share things there with other people who you think might appreciate recordings like this. And of course, we just want to welcome you. If you’re ever interested in joining us for the video podcast, you can do that on YouTube. It is YouTube.com slash AFP, PC Spirit Lake. There you can comment and engage with us, or if you would prefer to do that without to YouTube, you can actually just click the link in the description of this podcast where you will be able to send us form and information and reach out to us.
00:46:59:42 – 00:47:08:47
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to hear from you and engage in conversation with you. Thanks again for taking time to be with us. We look forward to our next conversation and can’t wait to see you then.