Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come this morning to discuss what is verboten according to the eighth commandment. "Thou shalt not steal," as we saw last time, requires us to get, keep, dispose of, and grow our property in a lawful and godly way. Property is not absolutely ours, but only relatively so. That is where the obligation to use it lawfully comes from. Today we are going to talk about why property is only relatively ours, and I'm going to address some of the most common abuses of property that I see among us. We'll conclude with a look at the Christological implications of property and our rule over it as a sign and icon of Christ's rule over the whole earth.

The commandments are arranged in order of importance, and this one is less crucial than honoring others, than preserving their lives, and than preserving their families and relational happiness. That much is clear. But though this commandment is less important, it is still important — important enough to be listed in the ten commandments. Our culture has many things right about this commandment; but as usual, the world's understanding of the commandment gets some major things wrong. We tend to think that whatever is legal is also moral, but the laws of the state do not forbid the greed that seeks to amass wealth for its own sake, instead of for the sake of fulfilling our callings from God. The other error we make with property is to treat it as something absolute, instead of something relative. We are owners only in a certain sense; as creatures and slaves of God, we are better understood as stewards, taking care of what God has granted to us but holding it for Him, not for ourselves. Because the world belongs to Christ, this commandment requires all lawful endeavors to procure, preserve, and further our own and our neighbors' outward estate.

We come this morning to the sermon you've all been waiting for: What is forbidden in the seventh commandment. All you have to do to see an instance of something forbidden in the seventh commandment is to walk around town, or turn on the television. We are surrounded by the breach of this one; we ourselves, and our fellow Americans, truly have eyes full of adultery and cannot cease from sin. In Hell, everything is pornographic and nothing is exciting. So says Peter Kreeft, and he is exactly right. Precisely because this commandment is so big, and we are so sexually broken, there are many ways to organize it. I have chosen to present it under the three headings of sins against providence, sins against love, and sins against life. All of these sins, particularly in their sexual dimension, are violations of this commandment. And if, like me, you have broken this commandment many times, don't despair. God is a cleansing, forgiving God. Trust Him for salvation from sin, also from sexual sin.

Chastity means contentment with your sex and with the expression of it that God has providentially allowed you. Married men, your genitals are there not only to please God but also to pleasure your wife. Married women, your figure is there not only to please God but also to pleasure your husband. Chastity means that you don't use your sexuality on yourself, but for God and for your spouse. Because our culture has deliberately forgotten this, they don't know how to be chaste. Nor do many of us in the church. How can you be chaste? How can you learn to be content with your sexuality and the mode of expressing it that God has given to you?

What we'll see is that the seventh commandment requires chastity, and that chastity means making right use of your sexuality. We're going to talk about that in terms of what men and women are called to do, at the most basic level. Both sexes are called to take dominion, love God and neighbor, and make disciples. Men are particularly called to work and guard, while women are particularly called to make homes and glorify the joint task of dominion. All of this is background that you need to know before you can exercise the virtue of chastity and use your sexuality rightly.

We come this morning to discuss what is forbidden in the sixth commandment. We saw last week that, positively speaking, the commandment requires us to exert all lawful endeavors to preserve our own lives and the lives of others. Negatively speaking, though, this commandment forbids us from taking away human life unjustly — and it also forbids anything that tends that direction. Again, this is a law from Jesus our King. It is a gospel law because it is given to people redeemed from Egypt, redeemed from slavery to sin. And it is a good law, a law that preserves and protects our lives and the lives of all people.

Right now, the world around us is obsessed with safety, obsessed with preserving life, and in general keeps one side of this commandment to excess. That is matched, of course, by a defective observance of other parts of the commandment. Lockdowns are necessary to save lives, say the same people who are in favor of assisted suicide, abortion, and abortifacient birth control methods.

We saw last time the duty of honor that the fifth commandment requires. We saw that this commandment is echoed in the New Testament with the broader command "Honor all men." And we saw that honor as a category applies not just to superiors (such as father and mother), but to all persons whatsoever, whether your superiors, inferiors, or equals. So today we are going to look at the sins forbidden in this commandment, the sins of superiors, inferiors, and equals. In general, these boil down to two major sins: the sin of wrongly shaming others, and the sin of repudiating authority. Shame and disobedience: These are the two major ways in which we break this fifth commandment, this commandment of foremost importance.

This commandment does not just refer to one relationship in your life, the relationship to your parents. It refers to every relationship in your life. How can I say that? Well, for one thing, we posited at the outset that every commandment names the worst instance of that particular kind of sin. In this case, then, the particular kind of sin is the sin of dishonoring others, and the worst instance of it is dishonoring your father and your mother. Furthermore, we know that this commandment deals with all our relationships because it is part of the law that can be summed up as "love your neighbor as yourself." Your parents are two of your neighbors, but they certainly aren't your only neighbors. This fifth commandment, then, speaks not just of parents but ultimately of neighbors in general. We will talk, then, about how it requires that we honor others according to their different places and the relationships we sustain to them.

If I say that in order to keep the eighth commandment you must measure property boundaries to the nearest millionth of a meter, I am going beyond Scripture. I am erring in excess. If I say that to keep the sixth, you must adopt my exact diet and exercise regimen, again I am erring in excess. So don't let me or anyone else tell you "The way I keep the Sabbath is the only way." Only one person can tell you that, and His name is Jesus Christ. The Bible is much simpler, and leaves far more room for your conscience and mine. All it says is to avoid daily work and keep the day holy. And further, it says that to take those statements as though they forbade works of necessity, piety, and mercy is to err in excess, to go beyond what the Almighty requires. So keep the Sabbath, and don't err in defect or in excess either.