The Struggle for Integrity

A few weeks ago, when we were looking at the 6th command, I introduced the idea of a railway with many stops. We’ve looked at the route to murder and the route to adultery, today we look at the route called “theft”.

The Theft Route (reference)

While you may not appear in an episode of LivePD or Cops for theft, and you may not ever get caught on video taking packages from a person’s front porch, might there be other types of theft that are on this same route?

Theft is all about giving and receiving. Theft occurs when we “intend to get as much as possible while giving as little as possible”. Using this definition, theft is much more frequent in our jobs, our homes and our churches.

Employees (Matthew 20:1-14 & 25:23)

1. Do you give full value to your employer?

a. False timecards by arriving late/leaving early

b. Stretching breaks

c. Surfing the web while on the clock

d. Working at half-effort

2. Christians especially must pay attention to our work ethic, because just one incident that we get caught wasting time can ruin our integrity and undermine months of witnessing.

News outlets frequently report about workers who are demanding increase wages, but are they increasing the value of their employer to the same extent? Are we as eager to go to work on Monday as we are on payday?

Transition: The news is not only reporting about the demand of workers to increase wages regardless of contribution to their companies. There are also many who think the solution to national debt and other economic challenges is to take it from the “1%” who are “getting rich off of our efforts”.

Employers (1 Tim 5:18 & James 5:4)

1. While business owners assume great risks that deserve to be recompensed, whenever employers withhold what should be distributed to the producers they are just as guilty of breaking this command.

1 Timothy 5:18 (ESV) —For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

2. The point is that your worker is a meaningful contributor to your success and deserves to be cared for.

Trying to do business with a staff that is unappreciated and undercompensated is like starting a trip with a car when the dash shows the temperature gauge in the red zone and the check engine light glowing. You may get started, but you are unlikely to reach your destination.

3. James has much to say about favoritism and fairness. In chapter 5 he specifically mentions stingy, dishonest employers

James 5:4 (ESV) — Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

4. Employers face the temptation of trying to get as much as possible while giving as little as possible, and that is stealing. God will hold Christian employers responsible for their stewardship in paying appropriate wages to those who generate the wealth they enjoy.

5. Alongside the issue of fair payment, there is the troubling issue of late payment.

Romans 13:7 (ESV) —Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

When businesses do not have enough operating capital, one temptation is to operate in the margin. I chose this illustration because I do not know of any plumbers in our church so I am not speaking of any one individual. If you are a plumber, this is NOT directed only at you or your industry! Acme Plumbing agrees to do a job for Mr. Coyote for an agreed price. Acme goes to RoadRunner Plumbing Supply to purchase the parts necessary to do Mr. Coyote’s job. RoadRunner sells the parts to Acme on 30 days credit. And Acme assumes the job will be done by the end of the week and when Mr. Coyote pays Acme for the work then Acme can pay RoadRunner what is due. But what happens if Mr. Coyote is crushed by a falling anvil and is hospitalized. Mr. Coyote is late paying his bill and Acme Plumbing then is late paying RoadRunner Plumbing Supply. The unforeseen emergency is bad enough, but what happens if Acme Plumbing operates on an internal policy of not paying any vendors until the due date is Net 60 or Net 90. Acme’s policy is a form of stealing from their suppliers because those are not the terms under which RoadRunner sold the supplies to Acme.

6. If you owe money on a bill and you don't pay it, or if somebody gives you a loan and you don't repay, that is stealing. It is no use saying, "Well, they don't need the money" or “I haven’t been paid for the job either”. That's not your business. Your responsibility is to pay what you owe. It is part of integrity, and that is the basis of trust.

Vendors

1. Price Gouging – there is not a one of us who is happy when tuition, healthcare or fuel prices increase much faster than the cost of production or the rate of inflation. How is it that we can buy gasoline at $2 a gallon that just a few years ago was pushing $5 unless someone is manipulating the system for profit?

2. “Good Enough” -

Since the SuperBowl a soft drink has tried to advertise that it is “more than OK”. Or you may have seen the ads with a babysitter, tattoo artist and a surgeon that conclude with “when just OK is not OK”. Ironically, the unreliable wi-fi in our church is provided by this company. But these ads illustrate a point that honest business should offer products with excellence.

3. “Extended Warranties” – Why do businesses offer products that are unlikely to continue doing their task for the expected lifetime of the product?

Ann and I just ordered a couch for our living room that reclines. The furniture store said that the “expected lifetime” of a couch is 7 years (Who replaces a couch every 7 years? But that another rant). But the manufacturer only warrants the reclining mechanism for 1 year. For a couple hundred dollars extra we could buy a warranty for 5 years, but that is still less than the expected life of the couch. How about manufacturing and standing behind a product that will last until its expected lifetime without requiring customers to purchase a 3rd company warranty?

Deuteronomy 25:13–16 (ESV) —“You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small… 15A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 16For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God.

4. Price Gouging and Inferior products are an abomination. Not everyone can afford or wants to buy top of the line. Just make sure your customers are getting what they pay for.

Producers (Do your own work)

1. This one is especially relevant to our students, it is the issue of plagiarism—turning in an assignment under your name that has been done by someone else, or cheating – turning in a quiz where the answers were copied, rather than coming from your memory.

2. In this digital age, it is easy to cut and paste. When you get to college, did you realize that there are programs that allow professors to compare your paper to all of Google looking for wording or phases that have been used before? High School teachers may not invest the time to check against plagiarism, but you are preparing now for the next level and now is the time to learn to do your own work.

As an example of giving credit where it is due, I began this series of messages attributing many of the ideas in this sermon series to the book The 10 greatest Struggles of Your Life. I want to state again that I have learned much from this book and do not want to leave the impression that all the ideas I’ve shared are my own.

Transition: God wants to exchange the “most reward with least effort” mentality with a mindset of meaningful contribution.

The Honest Workman (Ephesians 4:28)

The antidote for stealing is not the lottery, it is work.

Ephesians 4:28 (ESV) —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.

To the Point of Exhaustion

1. Have you ever done an afternoon of hard physical labor then collapsed on a chair and exclaimed, “I’m beat!”?

2. That is exactly the meaning of “labor” in this verse. Hippocrates used this word in secular Greek to mean a “beating” or “weariness as though one had been beaten,”[i]

3. The Bible commends this as a good thing.

With a Good Attitude (Col 3:23)

Colossians 3:23 (ESV) —Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,

1. Imagine that it is the Lord who does your performance review at the end of the year. If it were the Lord who distributed payroll for your employer, would you feel guilty receiving it?

2. In the last 5 years I have worked as a night worker in the kitchen of a convenience store, a TV salesman for Best Buy, a salesman for US Cellular, a courier drive with radio-active Pet Scan dye, a janitor for a church, and as a Pastor.

a. Question: In which of these jobs was I working for the Lord?

b. Answer: all of them.

c. We commit a huge mistake when we separate “secular” from “sacred”

d. This is what I tried to communicate when we studied the sabbath and I showed you that God is an example of both production and management.

Something to Share

1. Can anything be more opposite to “you shall not steal”? Instead of taking from others, God challenges us to give to others.

2. Sometimes giving is a transfer of goods, other times it is a transfer of knowledge or compassion.

3. Our church cannot be what God wants us to be without volunteers! From loving our youngest members in the nursery, to mentoring our elementary and adolescent youth, to teaching one-another, to calling or visiting our homebound, to cooking, to lawn and building repair, to prayer and a hand-written note – our community needs you to share.

4. Sometimes sharing will involve your checkbook, other times it will involve your wristwatch.

Transition: This morning we have looked at 2 opposites—taking and giving. Which one is most like our Savior?

Conclusion:

Change of Heart

John 10 tells us that Satan is the prime example of a taker – he comes to steal, kill and destroy.

God is the best example of a giver – For God so loved the world that…He gave.

Whose example do you want to follow? God gave not only so that we could have eternal life, but that we also could be givers. The power of the Gospel is that Christ turns takers into givers.

[i] Friedrich Hauck, “Κόπος, Κοπιάω,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 827.

Related Media

Related Sermons