24th November 2025

24th November 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 20:15)


Message (Alan Burke) 


"Home Taping Is Killing Music” that was the slogan of a 1980s anti-copyright infringement propaganda campaign by the British Phonographic Industry. I even once considered getting that slogan with the cassette tape and crossbones as a tattoo on my shin. Yes I’m of that generation that remembers that slogan, who were seen as destroying the British Phonographic Industry which we’d likely now call the music industry and when CD recorders came in and then Napster arrived it changed everything again and again. There are cases where theft is pretty easy to define to the average person. Say if your car gets stolen from your driveway, you wake up in the morning look out you’ll wonder where your car is before the penny drops. If your identity gets stolen when on one level you’re still you but someone is using your details to buy services or obtain loans all in your name which you are liable for. Home taping was great because you could make your ultimate mix tape but you had to time it just right to get those songs off the radio and sometimes the DJ waffled on for too long and ruined it but yes technically even that was stealing according to the law of this land even though you only made a copy without permission it is seen as copyright infringement. 


Today we come to the eighth commandment and the LORD says “You Shall Not Steal”


Notice thought that this commandment doesn’t go into detail, it is generic in what it commands. 


This command is a prohibition against stealing in all forms, at any time and for any reason. We are not to steal. Of course situation philosophy will argue that there are times that stealing is justified, but as the LORD speaks to the covenant community there should be no need for any of them to steal, they were to care for those who were in need, the widow and the orphan, the disabled, the elderly and vulnerable. So what does this commandment mean? What does it mean to steal? You might have guessed already that it goes beyond what we might initially think, it’s generic in its scope so it’s more than putting on the balaclava and breaking into the neighbours house. In Exodus 21-24 it begins to draw out the implications of the Ten Commandments. Yes directly there it is spoken of housebreaking, then also if your animal does damage in Ex 22 how you are given restitution for they have stolen from you by  the animals damage, the same with borrowing and you loose what you have borrowed or you borrowing something then break that item. Then there is defrauding a neighbour even paying them late is seen as robbing from them (Lev 19:13). 


The implications, the outworking of this commandment are much greater than we may have thought. If you’ve permanently borrowed a pen even accidentally you’ve broken this commandment, failing to pay a bill on time then you’ve broken this commandment. In effect this commandment makes it clear that there are rights for those who have property, there are responsibilities for those who have property, the commandment not to steal here means not depriving our neighbour of what belongs to them what ever it is. We shall work through an extensive list of application on this on this coming Sunday but for now I’ll mention a few more. If you’ve take a sick day when you’re not sick that is stealing, if you do personal calls or send emails when you’re being payed to work by an employer you’re stealing from them, when we pay cash knowing that no tax is paid we’re stealing from the government and from our neighbour. Some of these may be things we’ve not thought of but ultimately none of us have kept this commandment we are thieves. 


In Ephesians 4 speaking of those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ, those in the church Paul says; “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.” (Eph 4:28 ESV). If we claim to be a child of God, that we are his, when we have come to know his grace it should lead to a changed life, a life that steals no longer. We have all failed to do what is required of us but we should desire to leave our sin behind and when we fail look to Jesus who has perfectly kept this command for us. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q27 Wherein did Christ’s humiliation consist?
A. Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.
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