Sermon: "Some Stuff About Stuff"

8th in the "Stone Tablets in a Wireless World" series.
Delivered August 2, 2009 by Charles Bailey.
Sermon Text: Exodus 20:15

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While Charles is here working on the tech side, making sure everything is ready to go here, I want to introduce him. Charles Bailey, the guy right over here, is one of the elders in this congregation. On weekdays... yeah, that's... Everyday Charles is a father and a husband of a wonderful family, and on weekdays, he is a lawyer and he is one of the most enjoyed teachers in this congregation. Some of you know him in that role, some of you don't. But we are very blessed to have Charles here, and so I'd like to pray for him for a moment.

Lord, thank you for this moment that we can come into your Word. Thank you for the gifts you've given Charles. Thank you for this time. We pray that you speak to us through your Holy Spirit. And we thank you, for we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.

That would be a good idea. I could do it opera style. You know, you go to the opera house, they don't use microphones, and you get used to the sound coming at you, but most of you probably aren't in that nerdy crew. There are a few of us disturbed people who are opera types.

I got this call to do this sermon, and so here it is. Right? And we're doing this, and the real question is... what is the verse? Here is it. It's pretty complicated. Ready? "You shall not steal." I didn't tell this story in the first hour. I won't tell it... didn't tell it the second hour, but I'll tell it now because my mother is here, and it will embarrass her.

This one has always made sense to me because sticky fingers are not appreciated in our family. And my Aunt Beverly lived next to us, and she was one of these big-time gardener types. And you know she had a garden for everything. And she had, of course, a tomato garden. And around August in Alabama you get a lot of tomatoes.

And my brother was about four, and he decided to bring home some tomatoes. Well four-year-olds shouldn't... really... can't get their hands on tomatoes, so Momma knew he had stolen it out of Aunt Beverly's garden. And so she said, "Where did you get that?" He said, "I found them." And she said, "Uh-uh, where did you get those?" He said, "Aunt Beverly's garden."

So Mom had this old Buick station wagon. It was yellow. It used to overheat all the time. She grabbed my brother, grabbed me, threw them in the back of the car, we drove up to her house. My brother knocks on the door, and she is upstairs, and he says, "I have to give you these tomatoes back." Aunt Beverly says, "You can have them." Mother yells, "He stole them!" And she said, "Oh, I understand. Leave them at the door."

So I always figured I had the stealing-thing down. You know, I got that. You don't take your aunt's tomatoes. But then I started thinking about it, and I started saying to myself, "Wait a minute. There's got to be more to this." You know, Jesus always makes us uncomfortable. You ever notice that? I mean, you'll say... the guys in the Old and New Testament will say, "I don't commit adultery." And Jesus will say, "Well, you think about it?" Probably most guys say, "I don't know." And he said, "Well, you just did it."

And all of a sudden, the standard gets a little higher because the rules aren't something you check off. So I started thinking about it more, and three things came into my mind that I want to go over with y'all. These three things are, first, why do we steal?

I want to put stealing in the context of an ancient problem. And I want to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and I want us to look there because the genesis of stealing... no pun intended... is found in Genesis. Why we steal is in that book.

The second thing I want us to look at is how that problem relates to us today. Why does that ancient problem still matter?

Then the third thing that I want us to do is have some practical steps, and we're going to look at four practical steps. This is where, as we say in Alabama, "I'm going to go from preaching to meddling, " because I'm going to talk about some things that will make me uncomfortable, and I hope it makes you a little uncomfortable.

Alright, the first thing I want us to look at is... why do we steal? It really is a very ancient problem. And if you look in Genesis, chapter 3, verses 1-6 you see the basis for our problem.

"Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'

'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."

Now, I want you to pay attention to what the serpent does here in this story. Now the first thing that he does is he says something to her. He says, "God is holding out on you. God doesn't want you to be as happy as you can be." That's the first thing he says. That's why he starts off with this lie, "Did God really say you can't have anything? Did God say you can't be happy? God say you can't do what you want to do? God give us a bunch of rules to keep us down?" That's the first thing the serpent says to her. And she catches that. She says, "No, no, no, no. He just said, 'You can't have this thing.'"

Then he pushes it again. He says, "Well the reason God says that is because God knows that if you eat that, your eyes will be opened and you'll be just like God." Now, pay attention to the upshot of this because see what he is saying is, "If you do this, you will know what's right and what's wrong. And you don't need to have God there to tell you that anymore. And you can make your own decisions based on your own values and your own needs about what is right and what is wrong." And that's when Eve says, "Hey, this looks good." And that's when Adam says, "Can I have a bite?" That's when it happens. It's that point. I can be like God.

Now, let's ask another question... is stealing just taking somebody's stuff? And the reason I ask this is because you probably are going to get, "No." Well when I was in law school, 20-something years ago, there was this new thing that was coming along called intellectual property. And lawyers were saying, "There is going to be this thing coming along in 10 or 15 years called the internet, and there are going to be all these new computers and ideas will be as valuable as brick and mortar buildings."

And everybody in law school had a hard time getting their arms wrapped around that. Well, now here we are. And we all understand you can have your identity stolen. And that's not a thing, is it? It's not something you can point at and say, "There is my identity." It's an intangible concept. So now we're starting to get this idea.

So if you really want to understand stealing, what it is - is it's taking something that belongs to someone else without their permission. That's really what stealing is about. Now you see how we're going to start getting uncomfortable a little bit here because now what can we steal? Well we can steal all kinds of things, can't we?

We can steal someone's good name through gossip. We can steal someone's sexual purity through sexual immorality. We can steal someone's dignity through cruelty. You could steal someone's humanity through racism and prejudice. I mean the way the Nazis got people to buy into their program was they said, "Jews are subhuman." You name some human something else, and then you can create all kinds of... "Oh, well they're not a human." We do that today. That's the way it works.

You can steal your family's peace through your own selfish desires. I mean, I'm... boy... this makes me uncomfortable right here. "I want my time." I mean, what a stupid idea. Who can possess time? You can't possess time. You just don't do that. "But I want my time and I want to be left alone." And God will say, "No. You have a duty as a father. You have a duty as a husband. You have a duty to do these things."

I have this chair, my "throne" that I have in my house, and that's where I have my "me" time, in my leather chair. Chuck W., my friend, always calls, "Is he in the chair? Get him out!" Because he knows what that means- that's my selfish place, right there. And the thing is, is that God has a sense of humor and my kids will come in and sit down and start talking to me, and I'm reading my New York Times, and I want to be left alone. And God will say, "Uh-uh." And I have to remind myself that my time isn't mine. I exist for other people.

So now, when we steal... let's take this idea, and let's start driving this home because when we steal three things come into play here. First is the paramount importance of my needs. The second thing is the assumption that God cannot or will not meet them. And then after you make that assumption, you then reach a conclusion that I have to take matters into my own hands. "God, my needs are important." God's not going to meet them. I'm going to take matters into my own hands. That's what I'm going to do.

So now, what do we do? Because all of us I think, if we're honest, fall down on this. I know I sure do. And if you don't think I do, ask my wife because she will straighten you out. All of us do, if we're honest. We all tend to have this predisposition toward selfishness because that's why we got ourselves into trouble in the first place, wasn't it? And so that's where we're always going to run back, is to me. And so what do we do?

Well here are four things I want us to look at. Now if you're one of those crazy, obsessive, compulsive note takers, like me, don't worry the slide will be back. We will repeat this. So here are the four things:

1. Make Christ your Lord.
2. Spend time reading and studying in Scripture.
3. Practice generosity.
4. Remember God's promises.

Let's look at number one first of all. The first step is making Jesus Christ your Lord. We must replace ourselves as ruler, as authority, as 'the decider' to quote a former president. We must replace ourselves on the throne and put Christ as the center. Put God back as God. That's the first step.

And if you're a believer and you have asked Christ into your life, it's something you still must do every day. For some of us it's something we have to do about every 15 minutes. And so we have to be replacing ourselves and we have to be watching and saying, "Who is in the center?" Because I'm always looking down and saying, "It's me." That's number one.

And if you don't know Christ, that's the first step. If Christ is not the Lord of your life, if you don't even know what that means, if I'm saying something that just doesn't make sense to you, here's what I'm going to suggest. At the end of this service there will be people standing underneath those posts over there, and they will be happy to talk with you about what that means because none of this is going to work without that first step. It all falls down.

The second thing is we must read and study Scripture. We have to change our focus from myself to God. Now here is the thing. You can try to change your focus by thinking, "I'm not going to think about something." And what are you going to think about? I picked up the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, and there was an article, "Scientists have proven that if you tell somebody not to think about something, they think about it." Duh.

I mean, who has been on a diet? What do you think about when you're on a diet? I tell you what I think about: food. Heck, I think about food all the time, but I really think about food when I'm on a diet. I mean any of us who are horizontally inclined... you know what I'm talking about. That's just what you think about. And if you say, "I'm going to think about... " I like stuff I don't even like when I'm on a diet. It's unbelievable.

And that's how it is, but what God does is God gives us a way of thinking about God by allowing us to study him. And God does that through Scripture. Here's the amazing thing about what God does. God tells us about God through stories. And they are stories of people like us. And so what we get are stories of people who have the same problems, the same hang-ups, the same issues that we have, and we can look at their lives and say, "That's how it's done." I get it.

But God does this even one step farther than that because God didn't just say, "Here's what I want you to do, and here are some people who got it right." God became a human being and did it. Jesus Christ is God. Don't forget that. That, by the way, is why we say as Christians... Jesus is the only way to God. The reason we say it is because he is God.

And God became a human being and God did it all for us, and we can look at Jesus and we can see his life and we can say, "Now I see the way it's done right." And we can start imitating Jesus and then we start putting God first because Jesus did it for us. That's what makes Christianity different than any other religion is it's the only one where God became a human and did it too. Think about that. So we can study that. So God gives us this blessing, and we need to get into it.

The second thing is we need to practice generosity. The natural instinct that we have when we want to put ourselves first is to hoard and protect. That's our natural instinct. Take what I need and hold onto it. And because of that, God says, "No, I want you to think in a different way. And the way I want you to think is I want you to think and live a life that's marked by generosity."

And when I say generosity I don't mean just money. We have lots of things. Some of you might not have any money, but God gave you something. You have time and you have talent and everybody has something. You might be an organizer. You might be a teacher. You might be... who knows. Use that with generosity because that is something you can use and receive a blessing. And here's the thing about gifts that God gives us. If you don't use your gifts, you're not going to receive the blessings that God meant for you to receive when you use them. That's just how it is.

If you're always hoarding your gifts and using them for yourselves and using them for yourself, it's not going to work because see when you do that you buy the lie. Don't buy the lie. And the lie is that I'm going to take care of myself. Don't buy it. I'm going to go through two verses with you all today and they are two of my life's verses. These are verses that I remind myself of all the time.

The first one is in Luke 12:13-21, "Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Now let me stop right there because as a lawyer, let me tell you what's going through my mind. This is a will dispute from a rich family because if you ain't got no money nobody is disputing. Right, who cares? But this is a will dispute of a rich family and one brother has taken the money from another brother.

Now a lawyer looks at this and says, "Cha-ching!" Because this is going to be a fight. Because if there is one thing families fight over, it's stuff. Man, they will fight over it. Actually correct me, even if they have nothing they still fight over it. And so here is this brother and he has obviously done something to another brother so he goes to Jesus. "And Jesus looks at him and he says, 'Man, who appointed me judge or arbiter between you?' Then he said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.'"

You see, the one brother stole from the other brother, why? Because he bought the lie that I need to have it all, and if you don't get anything well, tough luck. And Jesus says, "Don't buy that lie. You're life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions."

And then he tells this parable that scares me to death. And here's the parable, "And he told them this parable: 'The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. 'But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

Now think about this. This guy has so much stuff that his own barns are full. Now the reason he builds barns is the barns are there for his needs, for what he is going to need for the coming year. So when he says, "My barn is full," that means I have more than I need. And so his response isn't the response of someone, say like Boaz in the book of Ruth, who when he is blessed he then turns around and blesses other people. He gives it away. He takes care of the poor. He brings in this widow and her daughter-in-law, and he cares for them.

Instead of doing that, this guy says, "I'm going to keep it all for myself and then I'm going to have everything I've ever needed and I'll live the rest of my life happy." And God looks at him and says, "You fool!" Now I don't know about you, but when God says, "You fool," that might be something you ought to take notice of because God doesn't do that very often, does God? Moron. You know, you hear that you might want to say, "Hmm."

And then he says, "God gave you these blessings so that you can be rich towards God, so that you can do the things that God blessed you for." There was a reason why you were blessed and that was to be a blessing to other people. So don't buy that lie that I can have it all. And for those of us who may have bought into that lie, a lot of us got straightened out by God in November of last year, didn't we? Huh? I mean God pretty much straightened that out. Hey, everything is looking good.

I do some plaintiff's work, and one of the things you do is when people get hurt you figure out what their life expectancy is going to be and how long they're going to work, if they can't work anymore, and you figure out damages. And it used to be you pretty much stopped their work life at age 65, and if you tried to go past age 65 you were in for a dog fight because people retired at age 65.

I called one of my experts up the other day and I said, "Hey, I have a case and a guy can't work and he's 50, what's the work life expectancy?" He said, "Easily 70." I said, "Wait a minute. I thought it was 65." He said, "No more." He said, "If you think anybody is going to retire at 65, you're crazy." He said, "Everybody lost it. They have to take at least five to get back to where they were." This is an economist telling me this. See God has straightened a lot of this out for us, I think. That's the first thing.

The second thing we need to remember is to live our lives generously. Give generously, and once again it's not just your money; although, I think for a lot of us that's where we need to start. Here's the book of Proverbs... Proverbs 11:24-26. Now let me give you a little background on Proverbs.

Proverbs is what we call wisdom literature. And when we use that it's not a fancy pants term. What that means is the ability to live your life with skill. So it's you saying, "That guy knows how to organize and live his life." That's what wisdom literature is, and here's what it says. It says:

"One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. People curse the man who hoards grain, but blessing crowns him who is willing to sell."

So generosity is the sign that we have been blessed by God.

God does something crazy in the Old Testament. I mean, it really is. When you look at it you say, "This is nuts." God sets up this establishment, this principle called jubilee. And the way the principle of jubilee works is this, somebody is in debt and they can't pay their debts and they have some property. So they go to a wealthy land owner and they say to the landowner, "Hey, I can't pay my debts. Tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you my land and I'm going to indenture myself over to you. You pay my debts. I'll work until the debt is paid off." That was the system.

We have a similar system in the United States. Sharecroppers did that. Well God had this system and God said, "That's fine, but here's the way it's going to work. Every seven years you forgive that debt. Every seven years you let that person go back and you forgive it." And here's the other little twist God threw in. And if the dude comes to you and year five, you still give him the loan even if you're going to give him a seven-year loan, and you're going to let five go.

And the reason God does that is God basically says, "Trust me, I'm good for the other five. I'll bless you." And so God sets the system up and here's what God says, "If a fellow Hebrew man or a woman sells himself to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year you must let him go free. And when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed. Supply him liberally from your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press. Give to him as the Lord your God has blessed you. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you. That is why I give you this command today."

So what is God saying? God is saying, "Don't just forgive the debt; set them up." Imagine that, you pay your mortgage off and the bank comes to you and says, "Mr. Bailey, thanks for paying the mortgage off and here is $100,000 in seed money for you to go out and start a business. God bless you, sir." I mean that's crazy. But what God is doing is God says, "Look people, you were slaves in Egypt, and look what I gave you. Now, act like me and bless other people with the stuff I gave you."

And that same principle comes to us today. God looks at us and says, "Hey, Bailey, you were a dirty rotten sinner." In fact, Paul says, "You were dead until Jesus Christ saved you. Now you imitate me by living a life marked by generosity. You give of your time, you give of your talent, you give of your treasure, the things you care about so that you can understand what I'm like."

Now, here's the thing. What if the people that I'm supposed to be generous to don't deserve it? Well, I didn't deserve it, did I? What if the people that I'm generous to don't say, "Thank you, or what a great dude you are?" And they just take it and take and take it... what do you do? Well, a servant isn't above the master, is he?

Did Jesus just give to the people who loved him? No, what did Jesus get for giving? He got a cross. So that's part of it. And when we experience that, we get to experience what Jesus did. And then we learn something that I hate to learn called grace and mercy. Learning grace and mercy is tough sometimes.

Here's the final thing I want us to talk about, and that's this: remember God's promises. You see, this is scary business, and if you don't think it's scary, you're not honest with yourself. If you have to lay aside your prerogatives and your rights to put Jesus Christ first and to live a life of generosity, and you don't find that frightening, then you're not really being honest because it is.

And it's particularly hard to be generous... particularly financially... when we've just gone through this tsunami that we've gone through economically. But people are still hungry. The missionaries that I know in Cambodia are still doing their thing. And so what am I supposed to do? Say, "Sorry. You're doing good work; hope it goes well." Well there are still starving children in Cambodia that my friend, Jeff, the missionary, is working with. So you have to give anyway.

And here's what God says... And that's frightening. That's scary, but here's the thing that God says. In Psalm 37, this is one of my very important life verses. This one and the "you fool" go together in my life.

"Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. If the Lord delights in a man's way he makes his steps firm. Though he stumbled, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be blessed. Turn from evil and do good; then you will dwell in the land forever."

Take a note at what the psalmist is saying. He's going right back to what we talked about in the beginning which is you have two choices, you can take the Eve sin choice and say, "I'm going to grab everything I can." And the psalmist says, "Now here's what I can tell you is going to happen. I've seen those people come and they go and they wither like grass and they're gone."

The Bernie Madoffs of this world come and go. They're just one more, but here is the other thing. "I have lived a long, long time," the psalmist says, "and here's one thing I have never seen. I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread." Never seen it happen. God never forgets his children when they live lives marked by generosity. And that is a promise that you can take to the bank.

Let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for this time that we've had to come and study. Thank you for this time we've had to come and think about your Word. We praise you and bless your holy name. In Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2009, Charles Bailey
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org