Dennis Tuuri

corporate worship services of the church. They are a continual source of strength and encouragement and joy to me. I pray they are to you as well.

Last week I really spoke very pointedly to the maturing children in our church. I would exhort you today that as you mature, mature in the worship of our Lord and Savior. Delight to come to the worship services of the Lord. Sing forth loudly as you worship God.

Men lead, women follow. And it is a sad thing, but all too often in many churches, the women sing louder than the men. Let that not be so with our maturing men. You know, you practice at home, fill your diaphragm, push it out to those wonderful mechanism of your larynx and your voice that God has given to you to praise him. Take home the order of worship, young men. Practice these songs. The first hymn of praise taken from Isaiah 6 is a manly hymn.

Is it not to be sung forth with strength and manliness and by strong women as well? Do that. And the second hymn we sang was a little more—I don’t want to say feminine, but that aspect of our being. I think it being a tune that we all know as “Ode to Joy.” I did want to correct just one little thing in that song, by the way. In verse three, we sang, “But our sins have spoiled, have spoiled thine image. Nature conscience only serve as unceasing grim reminders of the wrath which we deserve.” And of course, actually the scriptures tell us that our consciences both attack and confirm—affirm the good things we do as well as remind us of the bad things we do.

So our consciences really are given for a twofold purpose. They don’t just convict us of sin. They also commend us as we walk in the spirit of power of God’s law by his grace. Take home song we just sang as a reminder to you yourself as you sing it that indeed the law of God is to be our vision as we look to the future—the application of that law in every area of life and thought—that ultimately God himself, as he was to Abram, is our exceeding great reward.

All else is secondary to our appropriation of the person of God, or rather his appropriation of us. Praise God for the worship services of the church. Let us mature in it. And young men particularly, I’m urging you to sing during the week, praises to God in your heart and with your voice. Practice how to sing loud. And when you come forward next week, let’s sing louder than we have this week. I didn’t see anything amiss today, by the way.

That’s not why I’m saying this. I just say it by way of encouraging the young men to grow up as a worshiping community in the midst of this particular communion.

The scripture today is on Exodus 20:15—it’s on the 8th commandment. So you could turn there in your scriptures. God has brought us in a very appropriate time to consider Exodus 20:15. My communion talk today will be on the agape and the love in the agape, and particularly the aspect of kindness.

Love is kind, the scriptures say. And by kind, there the word means useful, and useful in terms of, among other things, property, possessions. And we have the opportunity today in the context of our joy and worship to God to be a useful, kind, loving community—not a thieving community, but a loving, kind, useful in terms of possessions community as we minister to the Mallisters as a result of their fire Friday night.

And we have the alms box on the table this morning so you can remember to bring your offerings. If you bring any today to give to the Mallisters to assist them with their possessions. So turn to Exodus 20:15 and we’ll read the sermon text, which is very short. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word: Exodus 20:15. You shall not steal.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your command to us, the simplicity of it and the depth of it. And we pray now that as we consider some of these things as it relates particularly to our ballots of the Oregon election at least, and by way of implication and principle in Washington state and other places as well. Help us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit to illumine this text for understanding, that we might know better how to apply it in our day. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, it would be convenient for you to have one of the biblical ballot measure voters guides that we’ve provided. We’ll be getting to this in the second half of the sermon. The sermon has two parts. And some of you know that some of us listen to Doug Wilson and Doug Jones Friday night and Saturday morning past. They’re most well known for a magazine he puts out called Credenda Agenda. That’s taken from the structure of the epistles, or the epistles—most markedly in Ephesians. The first three chapters are filled with statements that you’re supposed to believe, have credence in your creed—credenda. And then the last three chapters of Ephesians are filled with all commands, an agenda, a list for you to do.

And so we have truth first, a belief system that emanates forth in a practice—credenda agenda. So the outline is that way. We want to talk today. Our agenda is to get to some things to do relative to your ballot. I’m not telling you how to vote, but I’m telling you how I understand some of the ballot measures based upon the word of God. And so we want to look first at that word of God.

This is my annual election day sermon. I try to do this every year. Last year I spoke on “do thyself no harm” in relationship to the ballot measure that made Oregon the first state in the nation to let, or even encourage in some cases, people to kill themselves—a great sin against their person. And in a way I’m going to talk about some of the implications of theft in the same way. Our life isn’t our own. Our possessions aren’t our own. It’s wrong to steal, and there’s many implications to that.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about today is the reference of these things in many ways, but particularly to the political action and looking at the ballot measures. And I have first a series of observations on the eighth commandment. And after the series of observations, we’ll talk specifically about some of these ballot measures.

As I looked, by the way, at those ballot measures, the reason I’m talking on theft is that it seemed to me that at least nine out of the 14 ballot measures in the state of Oregon—statewide measures at least—nine of these measures had as a common component theft, either retardation of theft or an encouragement or stabilizing of current forms of theft.

So that’s why I chose this particular topic. It seemed to be one of the main principles of the word that are affected by various ballot measures this time around.

Okay. So first, a series of observations on the eighth commandment. Obviously this has to be a summary series of observations. We could spend a long time talking about the implications of this part of God’s law. But first of all, I want to say that the eighth commandment protects and thus sanctifies property.

The eighth commandment protects and thus sanctifies property. Real simple statement. Our six-year-old children, our two-year-old children, for the most part, know what it is not to steal something. It protects property. And because it protects property, there seems to be assertion that property is something good. Now, we don’t really need that at this church. We’re convinced of that. But that was a lot of what these talks we heard over the weekend were about—is that the things that God gives us are good things, that the created order is a good thing from God.

We spent a long time in Genesis 1-4, and certainly we see there that God created things and called them all good. Property is a good thing. It’s not to be disdained. It’s placed in this list of the ten commandments from God—and the five particular commandments relative to how to love our fellow man—and by implication, how to love God—is to have some degree of esteem, value, weight that we place on property because God says it’s important.

In Deuteronomy 28:47, we read—because, now, he’s talking the context of this is the curses of God. Remember, Deuteronomy 28:8 and 28 contain blessings for obedience and cursings for disobedience. I think to be understood as general covenantal blessings and cursings, not necessarily individual to you, but when Israel as a nation either obeys or disobeys—either in the power of the spirit or walking in their own flesh—they’ll suffer certain consequences or they’ll have certain blessings.

And in Deuteronomy 28, when it talks about some of the curses that are going to come upon you, this is a key verse as to why these curses come upon us. Because you serve not the Lord your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all things. We’re to have joy and gladness of heart in the things that God has provided to us in our property. God wants us to enjoy property, and I need to reassert this today because in our culture—as I’ve said, like in reference to the sexual relationships and marriage, so it’s true with property—we have a culture that either abuses the whole idea: whoever dies with the most things wins—an idolatry of property—or we have a church that, in response to that, or in a working out of again these Greek systems of thought that spirit is good and physical is bad, you know, there’s this kind of two gods myth, and the good God is the one who wants to bring you away from all things physical.

And so the church tends to either go like the world does after property—lusting after it—or it retreats from property by saying those things are evil. And that Greek idea that things are evil in and of themselves are reinforced by looking at our neighbors around us who indeed do use them evilly.

So our tendency is to fall off the wagon one way or the other—either lust after property or to disdain property, or maybe alternating cycles of both depending on how well we’re doing or how poorly we’re doing. But God says we should have a positive appreciation for the physical created things that he gives us. We should delight in our homes. We should delight in the structures that God gives us to live and worship in.

We should delight in the property itself. And he actually says that if you don’t rejoice and if you don’t have gladness of heart about these things—now, I know it’s not just referring to the things. It’s seeing these things as mediated by God, God’s word, and as means by which we can glorify him and enjoy him forever. But if we don’t have that kind of joy in property, we’re cursed. It’s why the curse comes upon Israel.

So, first of all, the eighth commandment protects and thus sanctifies property. It refers to the goodness of the created order. I’ve got here as a subpoint: Adam and other impatient little children. Adam committed theft, and he did it by taking property. He took the forbidden fruit that God said he couldn’t have. He was just like our three-year-olds or five-year-olds or six-year-olds or hopefully not our eight-year-olds—hopefully not our older children—who we tell them, don’t take cookies today. Can’t have cookies. We’re in control of that property. But they go after it. Little kids steal all the time, don’t they? Your little ones, they steal. That’s what they do because they think, as they’re born and with their fallen nature, that the world revolves around them, and they see they don’t understand why they shouldn’t have that cookie. It’s their cookie, you know, and they’re impatient. It’s the mark of childhood to be impatient.

And that’s what Adam was. Adam and Eve were, in a sense, immature, young, newly created. They were kind of like infants in that sense. And they impatiently broke the eighth commandment by stealing from God what he has said they couldn’t have yet.

So the point is that you can apply the eighth commandment real simply by recognizing first that your children are prone to impatience and theft, and secondly understand that many years of their little tiny life will be teaching them not to steal because patience is a hard thing to learn. It’s not intellectually attained. It’s attained through a series of life actions that God gives us. It’s going to take a long time to teach people not to steal.

Another implication of this is when we live in the context of a culture that is marked by the kind of theft that this culture is marked by, it means we live in the context of little babies, little children. Or as R.G. Rushdoony said, we live in the context of a culture in revolt against maturity, Christian maturity.

And so it shouldn’t be a surprise to us when our three or four-year-old child takes a cookie when we’re not looking, or even sometimes when we are looking, and it shouldn’t really surprise us either that an immature culture that’s rejected the crown rights of Christ over most of it would impatiently reach out to take through theft various things that it wants. That’s what we expect.

Now I want to spend a little bit of time reading the Westminster Confession of Faith—or the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms’ definition of the eighth commandment. And you know, typically when one of us speaks on the Ten Commandments, we’re going to turn to the Westminster Catechism, usually the Larger Catechism, to explain what it is because they did a wonderful job three and a half centuries ago putting together what the scriptures teach. So I’m going to read here the statements of the Westminster Catechism. First, the Shorter Catechism.

What’s the eighth commandment? The eighth commandment is “Thou shalt not steal.”

Question 74: What is required in the eighth commandment? The eighth commandment requires the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.

Summary statement: So it requires the lawful procuring—getting—and furthering, not just maintaining but furthering the wealth and outward estate—property, in other words—of ourselves as well as others.

Okay? So when you further the outward estate of the Mallisters through your alms offering, you’re obeying the eighth commandment—the positive requirements of it—and there are various scripture references that are cited there.

And secondly, the Shorter Catechism says: What’s forbidden in the eighth commandment? The eighth commandment forbids whatsoever doth or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbors’ wealth or outward estate.

So if it hinders either the obtaining or the legitimate obtaining or the furtherance of property, that’s prohibited. So it opens up and makes it much wider than just what we think of—don’t take the cookie out of the cookie jar or don’t steal money from your friend. It’s wider than that.

Now, this wideness of the eighth commandment is articulated even more in the context of the Larger Catechism. That was the Shorter Catechism that children were supposed to use. And the adult catechism goes into it at a little more depth than that. It says this: “What are the duties required in the eighth commandment?”

The duties required in the eighth commandment are truth, faithfulness, and justice in contracts, covenants, and commerce between man and man. And then there’s various scriptures cited. We would know Psalm 24, you’re supposed to swear to your own hurt as an entrance requirement. You’re supposed to obey your contracts and covenants and commerce that you enter into. Okay?

And it goes on to say: the restitution of goods unlawfully detained from the right owner thereof. So if you’ve something that belongs to your neighbor, the eighth commandment says if you don’t give it back, you’re stealing. So it isn’t just stealing or grabbing something; it’s not returning to someone what you know properly belongs to them.

Or if you have stolen from them, this exposition of the eighth commandment by the Westminster Divines says that you should make proper restitution—the restitution of goods unlawfully detained from the right owners thereof. They cite here as a case reference Zacchaeus in the New Testament. Salvation had come to the house of Zacchaeus because he knew that he was supposed to reform, return by means of making restitution from all those that he had stolen from.

The spirit of God was moving in his heart to move him in a conformity to the law by making fourfold restitution of the things that he had stolen. So it’s not enough just to not steal. When you do steal, it’s not enough, the scriptures say, just to give it back. The scriptures say you’re supposed to make restitution.

Now, if you come to the knowledge of your theft on your own, the scriptures say you’re supposed to add a fifth part to the thing. If I steal $100 from John Patrick, for instance, and I feel bad about it, I’m supposed to go back and say, you know, I know you don’t know about this, and you didn’t find me out, but my conscience found me out. The Lord Jesus convicted me. Then I’m supposed to add a fifth part to that and pay him back $120. Because restitution in the scriptures involves both restitution and a degree of retribution. Okay?

It involves the making of the other person whole, but it also involves punishment of sin to remind me not to do it. You see, now if I steal that $100 from John and I don’t get convicted in conscience and he has to actually do some investigation and find out I took it from him, then I’m required to pay back twofold restitution. I got to give him $200. You see, it is the basis for the adage that crime doesn’t pay.

If all you had to do is give back what you stole whenever you were found out, and you know you’re not going to get found out every time, crime would pay. Theft would pay. But if you know when you get found out you’re going to pay double back, then crime doesn’t pay. So the Westminster Divines properly asserted the importance of the case laws of the Old Testament—or, to use another term, the sermonic illustrations of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy—relative to the need for restitution, which involves a degree of retribution.

Making the other person whole, punishing the sinner—goes together. They said the eighth commandment also encourages the giving and lending freely according to our abilities and the necessities of others. When we talk today at communion about love being kind, this is one of the things you should keep in mind: that the eighth commandment, according to the Divines, included the responsibility to give or lend freely according to our abilities and the necessity of others.

So we see people like the Mallisters in necessity and we have means. The eighth commandment tells us not to steal from them—in other words, to help them by means of our excess, to help them by means of our excess.

So the scriptures tell us, “Whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” Well, the answer is it’s a rhetorical question. The answer is it doesn’t. The answer is the spirit of God would motivate us to be kind, useful, loving to those that we share community with. And by implications from the eighth commandment, that includes the use of our possessions.

The Westminster Divines also said it included a provident care and study to get and obtain possessions, to keep, use, and dispose these things which are necessary and convenient for the satisfaction of our nature and suitable to our condition. So in other words, they said, as the Shorter Catechism did, that it doesn’t just include not stealing—it includes the positive requirement to value the property that God says is good and to go about getting those things in a proper and lawful way.

A lawful calling, according to the Divines, was also a requirement of the eighth commandment—to have a job, in other words, and diligence in that calling. You can see all these things are implied by the eighth commandment and its assertion of the goodness of property and its sanctification of it to us—not just to abstain from stealing it, but to positively value it the way that God’s word tells us to value it.

Let’s see. Avoiding unnecessary lawsuits, sharp dealing, or like engagements, and endeavor by all just and lawful means to procure, preserve, and further the wealth and outward estate of others as well as our own—not just ourselves with our property obligations. Extend to our brothers. The Divines went on to say, expand on this statement: What are the sins forbidden in the eighth commandment?

Well, theft. It’s obvious. Robbery, that’s obvious. Manstealing—1 Timothy 1:10—where kidnappers are related in a long string of great offenses. And we’ll return to that in a couple of minutes.

Receiving anything that is stolen. So you can’t say you kept the eighth commandment, the other guy stole it for you, and all you did was receive his stolen goods. No. The scriptures say when you saw a thief, the evil man consents with him and is a partaker with adultery. Proverbs 29:24: “Whoever is a partner with a thief hates his own life. He swears to tell the truth but reveals nothing.” The one who receives the stolen goods is also in violation of the eighth commandment.

Fraudulent dealing is also prohibited, as are false weights and measures. We could talk about these a long time. False weights and measures. If you go to represent a car you’re going to sell and your representative says it’s in good shape and you know—well, I won’t use the—I won’t try to use car terminology because I’ll get it wrong—but there’s something bad with the car, something real bad wrong with it, then you’re fraudulently obtaining wealth of the other person in exchange for something you fraudulently misrepresented as having more value than it does.

Okay? So unjust weight and measure. You have to have proper evaluations. Both your scales and the evaluation of the thing you’re going to be transferring over should be a proper evaluation. You may not know everything in it, but there is a requirement to disclose major problems in things that we’re going to sell to somebody else. That’s part of the eighth commandment.

Removing landmarks. The scriptures—see, again, the earth is a very important part of our faith. We don’t pray that we would get away from earth and get to heaven. We pray that thy will might be done on earth as it is in heaven—so that we work with the property and the things that God gives us in our relationships in relationship to God’s law. Our faith is an earthy faith. It’s landbound, so to speak. It seeks to establish here the right use of property according to the scriptures.

And that’s why the people of Israel were required to say cursed be he who removes a landmark—that moves it, that takes it over by force. It is theft.

We can go on, but the point I hope is clear. The eighth commandment affirms the importance of property and sanctifies property and its proper use to the people of God.

Secondly, next observation: The eighth commandment promotes biblical dominion. Remember that God made property. He made land, and then he put man here for the purpose of exercising dominion over that land. And so property is a vital aspect of our dominion.

Okay? So when we talk about the requirements to obey the laws of theft in the scriptures, we’re talking about the importance of dominion itself. God gives us dominion over property, the earth, which belongs to him, not to man ultimately. He gives dominion of land in the scriptures not to the state or institutions. He gives it rather to men and their families.

Now, some people are afraid of the word dominion. I remember we’ve had long conversations in the past whether we should use the word dominion at Reformation Covenant in our literature or not, because it scares people off. They’ve seen the domination of men like Hitler, and so they get afraid of the word dominion. They see the perverseness of a man exercising improper, unbiblical dominion. So we don’t want to—we hold back from it.

But you know, when you pull back from dominion, it’s not as if dominion won’t be exercised by someone or something. When men are afraid of private property ownership and dominion over property, the state is all the more eager to go in and assert its dominion capability via the oversight and use of property.

E.C. Wines, writing over a century ago, said that really there are primarily two uses, or two means by which men exercise power or dominion in a culture, and these things are by way of knowledge or property. He said the two primary sources of power are knowledge and property. When private property is disdained by the church, all that does is give ground to the state to exert increasing authority over private property. And when we do that, we are ceding over dominion to the state as opposed to exercising it as godly men.

So the eighth commandment asserts the goodness of property and the dominion calling of men.

Third: The eighth commandment affirms God’s property rights and our stewardship responsibilities.

Leviticus 25:23 says, “The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine. You are strangers and sojourners with me.” Psalm 24:1: the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. The created order is God’s property. There is no such thing ultimately as private property in its extensive sense of the term.

We are not free to do to our land, our house, our possessions, our chairs—whatever we want. We should teach our children when they cut up or break or hurt things—which they’re prone to do as little children—that’s a violation of the eighth commandment because God says we’re supposed to have a proper respect for the property that belongs to him.

Adam lived in that garden, but the tree, the fruit, was God’s fruit. And to use that fruit in some way other than the way God said to use it was theft from God. And when we don’t take care of our property and make due diligence to protect it from problems, and certainly if we go about harming or destroying property, it’s just as bad as suicide because our life doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God. Our property doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God.

It’s not just as bad. We’re a more primary image bearer than our property. But you get the point by way of analogy. It’s sacrilege when we do anything wrong to the property that God has provided us as stewardship responsibilities too.

Ultimately, all theft—David said, “Against thee, against thee only have I sinned,” in terms of his theft of another man’s wife. And remember, when Nathan the prophet comes to David, that’s what he uses as an analogy: the laws of theft against sheep and the need for restitution relative to those sheep. Right? So he correlates the stealing of another man’s wife to David to the eighth commandment. The eighth commandment is broad. Many implications to the eighth commandment.

When we do not make proper use of our property, when we cede over dominion of it to someone who shouldn’t have dominion of it, when we’re afraid of being property owners in the proper biblical sense of the term, or when we are simply negligent over the property God gives us, we are violating the eighth commandment of God’s word.

God requires us to respect the life, marriage, and property of other men because they’re the ones God has in his providence granted these gifts to, regardless of their state. Well, it’s an evil guy who owns that property, so I should be able to take it from him. No. The law of God binds you to his property rights, but to God’s property rights. And if God has given him the property, you must not steal it.

Just because he’s a bad guy, you think he’s not going to make proper use of it—open that door up and all law is gone and anarchy reigns. And actually, the state reigns because the state’s going to control men who are in anarchic rebellion against God. That’s what God wants it to do: be a taskmaster for us.

So private property—the eighth commandment, rather—asserts the goodness of property. Private property shows the importance of the exercise of dominion, and ultimately shows that theft is from God ultimately.

Fourth: The eighth commandment applies to groups as well as to individuals.

Now, this should be rather obvious. If a gang of thieves come and steal from you, it’s just as wrong as if a particular person did it. If a corporation is formed, such as the mafia—I don’t know if it ever existed or not, but let’s say there is a mafia, and let’s say they had an organizational structure to it—that doesn’t legitimize the theft they engage in just because they’re doing it as a group or an institution.

So if a group or institution passes a law to say it’s okay—if there was a law passed in Salem next week that said you can steal, every person with an even-numbered address can steal from the people with an odd-numbered address—that doesn’t make it okay. It’s still a violation of God’s law. It’s theft on the part of the civil state.

So groups are the subject of this law as well as private individualism. And in the history of our country, we’ve had problems from both sides. There was a social Darwinism that occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries. Men said, “Well, yeah, we like this evolution stuff. We like the survival of the fittest.” And the robber barons developed, and they really were robber barons who would do whatever they could to manipulate, by harassment, coercion, whatever it was, to accumulate to themselves huge land holdings.

See, we’re just as prone to attack a godly, self-governing man with his proper exercise of dominion and property as we are subject to attack by those robber individualists. And we’re also subject to attack by men who combine themselves together either by way of corporation or by way of the civil state—both of which things are proper in their place, but they can become instruments of theft.

Fifth: The eighth commandment forbids the theft of men.

Now I mentioned this. In the Westminster articulation of the laws, they say that it prohibits the theft of men—kidnapping. And it clearly does. In Exodus 21:16, just a chapter away from the eighth commandment, we read: “He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.”

Deuteronomy 24:7: “If a man is found kidnapping any of his brethren of the children of Israel and mistreats him or sells him, then that kidnapper shall die, and you shall put away the evil from among you.”

It is theft to steal a man. And in fact, a commentator named von Rad in the last century said that actually it perhaps is true that the eighth commandment refers primarily to the theft of men. Notice how the five commandments of the second part of the Decalogue are prohibitions of sins against men, right? You don’t commit adultery, you don’t kill, you don’t bear false witness, you don’t covet your neighbor’s wife. It’s violations of men. So maybe we should read the eighth commandment in the same way.

In fact, von Rad said: “It is regarded as certain that the original prohibition of stealing referred to the kidnapping of a free person,” based on this fact that the commandments are personal.

R.J. Rushdoony in his Institutes of Biblical Law on the eighth commandment says that we could paraphrase this commandment or reinterpret it in this way: “Thou shalt not steal another man’s freedom by forcibly enslaving his person or his property. His person or his property.”

To quote in a more extended way from Rushdoony: “False weights and measures, fraudulent money, the destruction or impairment by theft of property, all diminish or destroy a man’s freedom. Property is basic to man’s freedom.”

Remember, property is basic to our exercise of dominion. It’s basic to our freedom. A tyrannical state always limits a man’s use of his property, taxes it, or confiscates that property as an effective means of enslaving a man without necessarily touching his person. So the eighth commandment clearly at least involves the theft of men, and maybe explicitly is written for that very purpose: to say you should not steal a man. And when you steal his possessions, it’s stealing some aspect of man—that is, his freedom or liberty.

Sixth: The eighth commandment forbids the theft of liberty, the theft of liberty. That’s an obvious implication of the theft of men.

If a kidnapper is someone who takes the liberty of the person away, and he’s to be punished by death, this is a very serious offense to restrict or reduce man’s liberty as a citizen of God’s commonwealth.

Speaking on this particular aspect of the eighth commandment, Rushdoony writes this: “To return again to the definition of theft as the stealing of freedom—the implication is clearly that property is freedom. A man is free if his person and his possessions are under his control. To the degree that his person is free and to the degree that he has property free of hindrances, to that degree a man is free.

“The old word ‘freeman’ or ‘free man’ has as one of its older meanings ‘the member of a corporation, a property owner.’ The same is true of the word ‘freeholder.’ The restriction of suffrage to property owners has as its basis, in part, the restriction of the vote to free men. And he’s talking there about how in early colonial America, in order to vote, to cast your ballot on one of these measures, you had to be a free man who had property and exercise dominion by means of that property. Otherwise, they didn’t want you having a stake in civil elections because you’d probably steal.”

So freedom and liberty are essential to property owning.

Now, just one aside here—and I know I’ve thrown in a lot for you to consider—but another aside point of application. That’s why it’s important to keep our building fund in front of us at all times. Our culture is marked by an absence of freeholding. Nobody here owns land freely. I don’t care if you paid off your house. We’ll talk about in a couple minutes. But the state has eminent domain, supposedly over your house. It can claim it whenever it wants it for its purposes. The state taxes your house based upon its claim of sovereignty of eminent domain.

And the state tells you what you can and can’t do on your property—again, based upon this theory that the state is sovereign. And so nobody is really a freeholder. God has sold us into slavery. Why? Well, in part, because the early Christians in this country loved property, and they loved it too much. There was a thing called King Philip’s War, an uprising of Indians against the Puritan colonists in America. And Increase Mather diagnosed the problem as a love of property.

I mean, in other words, we’ve asserted that property is good, but it is a mediated relationship. Remember we said there are no unmediated relationships between us and anything we have. And if that gets down to our marriage relationship to our wife, you best believe it gets down to our property. When we love property for itself, instead of as a reflection of the goodness of the creator, God turns us over to Indians to come in and take our freedom or liberty away because we’ve really moved away from dominion, freedom, and liberty by selling ourselves into the idolatry of land.

And so it was in this country’s history that God has punished us. And he’s punishing the church now for not properly valuing and rejoicing in a mediated relationship to the lawgiver and our use of our possessions. And so now we have our liberty completely gone.

And this church—we all need to take steps, whatever we can, to be responsible freeholders in the sight of God. That the first part of that is seeking to own property. The second part of that is moving to acquire it and reduce, or rather, eliminate any debt on property. And the third stage of that is, as a property owner now, to begin the battle that’s going to have to go on throughout the land of rolling back state intrusion on the property and private property stewardship rights of Christian men and women.

Well, this church hasn’t made the first step and we’ve made the first step. We’ve desired property in the part of to worship God in, so we’re not without reduced liberty to worship God in the context of this facility. We can’t change this facility, folks. If we think the architecture would be much better or more conducive to God, to worship him with some things on the walls or knocking a wall here and there, we can’t do that here. We don’t have liberty. See, and so we’re praying that God would restore liberty to the church.

And that’s why it’s important we make a push to obtain land for the church proper and to make a push for each of us individually to obtain homes for ourselves and pay them off. And sometimes the best you can do is rent. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but that’s the way to look at that: you’re trying to be a good steward in the small thing of rent so that God will give you the broader responsibility of purchasing.

So lots of routes to get from here to freeholder status. The point is: are we trying to move there? And do we see the importance of the eighth commandment to that movement, to that goal, to that part of our life calling?

Well, freedom. Another aspect of the loss of freedom. Again, to quote from R.J. Rushdoony: “The state does transgress this law not only by acts of confiscation, manipulation of money, a false standard of value, by taxation, but also by any and every undercutting of biblical faith and education. State-supported and controlled education is theft, not only in its taxation plan but also by virtue of its destruction of public character, so that a godly society is turned into a thieves’ market.”

It used to be—and even in the 1860s—they could drive down the street and they’d have these big gold shipments. They’d walk along with these bags of gold and these carts that they would pull, and people wouldn’t steal them. And in fact, there was a custom that if the gold bag broke, whoever were the bystanders in the street—you would have $50,000 of gold sitting there in the street. The people would all form a circle, and everybody would be held back. And by this—not by force, but by the simple insertion of this circle of men, godly, you know, property-understanding men—who would then watch silently until all the gold was picked up. And they didn’t lose any of it back then.

Well, you can imagine what happens today in a downtown street when a bag of money breaks open. Whatever happens, you’ve seen the videotapes on TV, I’m sure. I mean, you’re not going to get most of it back. Why has that happened? Because the state has asserted its ownership of education and ideas and, as a result of their teaching atheistic moralism, they’ve destroyed the public character of the country.

And because the public character of the country is gone, our liberty as free men is gone. In Israel, many times they’d have over their doors a curtain covering the door. Can’t do that today. Got to have deadbolts because our liberty has been reduced through the assertion of state sovereignty in terms of education. Education in an anti-Christian school system reduces the liberty of men.

And if the eighth commandment asserts the need for liberty and freedom and proper use of our property toward that end, you can see where the school system is undermining liberty by violation of the eighth commandment.

Okay.

G: The state today is an active agent of theft.

I want to say this real carefully. Don’t want to—it’s very important that we honor our father and mother and honor the civil magistrate. But if you look at what the state has done in our lifetime, it certainly is obvious—and again, it’s God’s punishment of us, I’m sure—but it’s obvious that they’re in violation of the eighth commandment.

I mentioned eminent domain. The fact is that when some of the early colonies formed into the Constitution and into a nation, at least Virginia and then later the District of Columbia, had explicit statements in their constitutions that no man’s property could be taken from him. This is actually the State of Virginia had this prior to the United States Constitution, but it said this: “That no part of a man’s property can be taken from him or applied to public uses without his own consent or that of his legal representative.” They could not take your property, the State of Virginia, the Colony of Virginia, without your consent.

Now, when the Constitution was written, this became the Fifth Amendment in a watered-down version. And then the Tenth Amendment was added to make sure that whatever wasn’t explicitly given to the federal government resided in state government. So that Virginia was assuring itself that the state—the federal government—would not exert sovereignty over a man’s property. They would not be able to assert eminent domain. They thought they had built into the Constitution a prohibition of the state taking your property without you wanting them to take it.

It was that important to them as part of an informed Christian electorate. But they didn’t do it well enough because what happened was a theory initiated in the 1600s of natural law asserted the natural law sovereignty of the civil state. Now I know it’s a little complicated, but think of the Constitution—see, it’s standing there with these prohibitions against the taking of our property. But see, all constitutions, according to this theory, are subject to the higher natural law. And the higher natural law, so it was held, said that the state is sovereign.

So the Constitution is overruled by the state by this natural law theory that the state is sovereign. And that’s what the courts found in following years, and that’s the doctrine of eminent domain. It really isn’t just that they can take your land if they want to build a freeway. They’ve got to justly compensate you, but there’s still their land and you can keep some of it. It extends to every control of the state via zoning ordinances or taxation or whatever it is.

This idea is based upon the legal principle that the state, not God, is sovereign. If God is sovereign, he’s given in his scriptures the use of private land to people. So they have a limited sovereignty under his sovereignty. But if God isn’t sovereign, the state is sovereign. They can do whatever they want. You understand?

And they have. That is the legal principle and basis whereby they take your land if they want to build a freeway. And it is also why they call whatever you get to keep from the money you earn an exemption. It’s given back to you. See, because they’re sovereign. You’re the subject of the state.

Now, who is the real sovereign? It’s God. And by his tithe, he reminds us that we have a 90% exemption from the tithe. And we’re to use that money as good stewards from him. And he can take our land whenever he wants. And he does it sometimes by acts such as the burning of a garage. In his providence, he wants that for some reason. We don’t know why.

But the state now has replaced God in the thinking of men. And so they assert sovereignty relative to the use of land, relative to taxation, relative also to zoning regulations. If it’s our land, the state says, we can certainly tell you how to build that building and whether you should build that building or not.

And then finally, government schools with their reduction of liberty have moved in terms of a violation of the eighth commandment.

Okay, so that’s sketching out some of our belief system based on the scriptures. And hopefully I’ve done that correctly and biblically as to what we think the eighth commandment implies.

And let’s talk a little bit about the ballot measures. This will go fairly quickly now.

Moving on to the agenda: What are we to do?

First, turn if you will to 2 Samuel 15:1-6. Believe it or not, we’re wrapping up. We’re moving quickly to the end. This is the story of Absalom.

As you’re turning, remember that Absalom is one of David’s sons—fine in appearance, admirable to look at, thick black hair, weighed a ton. He has committed the act of manslaughter against his half brother. He’s been exiled, said to flee. David sent him away from the land. He now has been brought back to the land. Joab has worked to intercede for Absalom. Joab is another case. But in any event, Joab has intervened and Absalom has now come back. But David doesn’t want him near him. He doesn’t want to see his face. But he’s letting Absalom live in Jerusalem.

And Absalom is going to revolt against David. He’s going to create revolution. Now, David is the picture of God’s ruler. And Absalom is going to steal rulership and attempt to steal rulership and dominion over the people of Israel. And here’s how he does it, folks. This is how he gets ready for that revolution.

Verse one: After this had happened, Absalom provided himself with chariots and horses and 50 men to run before him. Now, Absalom would rise early and stand beside the way to the gate. So whenever anyone who had a lawsuit came to the king for a decision, Absalom would call to him and say, “What city are you from?” And he’d say, “Your servant is from such and such a tribe of Israel.” Then Absalom would say to him, “Look, your case is good and right, but there’s no deputy of the king to hear you.” Moreover, Absalom would say, “Oh, that I were made judge in the land, and everyone who has any suit or cause would come to me that I could give him justice.”

And so it was whenever anyone came near to bow down to him that he would put out his hand and take him and kiss him. In this manner, Absalom acted toward all Israel who came to the king for judgment. So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.

Folks, kidnapping isn’t just wrapping a guy up and taking him to Egypt and selling him. Kidnapping is a stealing of the hearts of the people and a reduction of their liberty through revolution.