Exodus 20:15 Do Not Five Finger Discount

To commit a sin is a selfish act, and to steal something some can but want badly is selfish and hurtful to the person it happens to. Stealing may have not been a major act at the time the Lord told the Israelite the laws of the ten commandments. In a material world where the desire for worldly material is really high, theft is very common. This sin is not one I am innocent of myself, I have stolen many things and I am not proud of them. One item that was stolen that the modern world may have forgotten, is the thief of the Leonardo da Vinci painting “Mona Lisa“. In August 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen off the walls of the Louvre in Paris. The famous Leonardo da Vinci painting wasn’t recovered until two years later. The word steal is the Bible 30 times, and the thief is 25 times. Stealing can happen any couple fashion according to scripture, either from each other or from God Himself and let’s get serious if a person steals, do they care who they steal from. One form of stealing is called shoplifting, and just like the act of stealing is selfish, shoplifting will hurt the community and the neighbors of the shoplifter. Shoplifters will steal anything they are desperate for and shoplifters come from all ages, races, and ages. Some shoplifting comes from the retail store employees, & the vendors who visit the store to supply it. When I was in a convenience store, it was common to walk into the cooler and see an open empty beer can after the beer vendor left and most of the time it was the competitor beer company of the vendor. The thief the shoplifters do is not free at all, the retail store has to jack up the prices of the product they sell to make up for the loss and sometimes the loss is so much, the retail store will move to a place where people steal less and their customers have spend more money on fuel to travel to new relocated store. Another word for stealing is looting which its definition is more of a violent form of stealing cause a piece of property has to be destroyed and an army or people take whatever he or she feels and don’t care who sees, the public, the media or the Lord looking at the thieves . You might ask how can a person steal from God? The word rob is in scripture 124 times but some of it is short of robe, but scripture tells how a person steals from God.

Malachi 3:8  “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you! 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts“if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.

Now on social media I see a lot of people make excuses why they don’t pay tithe or offering. Some say the idea was done away with, some pastors are greedy and the church or God doesn’t need money. But these same people are the same ones who will go to a church and ask for money for food or bills or medical needs. For many years I called myself Christian and  suffered for it. One day I was advised to test God and pay my tithe and you the Lord fulfilled promises. Like he always does. God bless you all, the Lord loves you and so do I. Samuel H.