So, I bought a new pellet grill smoker for my wife. Yes, I thought it was the perfect Mother's Day gift, and it has all the bells and whistles on it. It even has, get this, wifi connectivity, so my wife can sit in the living room and monitor the progress of the meat being smoked from her iPhone! Crazy, isn't it? It's almost as though it is the perfect gift for the man who has everything, which I do, which is why I bought it for my wife. Of course, when she rejected the gift outright on Mother's Day, I had no choice but to take it as my own. It was the only way to rectify the situation. What a waste of a perfectly good pellet grill smoker with wifi and an app on the iPhone (or android) in which I can sit myself in a chair and never get our of it while the brisket smokes.
What's this have to do with the Seventh Commandment you may ask? "You shall not steal." Well, in reading the explanatory notes of "What does this mean?", it is all right there in front of us. Don't take what's not yours via robbery, theft, or "dishonest ways of getting things." So, I took our money and bought a smoker, not really for my wife, but in the guise of buying it for her for Mother's Day, and bought it for myself.
Once again we see that Luther, through Christ's own words, takes a physical act (in modern day, we also can steal without touching anything via identity theft, information theft online and other types of "skimming" as they call it, so it isn't all physical) and places the actual intent, a matter of the heart, at the heart of the sin when he instructs us to not go about getting something dishonestly. In my case, taking our money and using it for alternative purposes.
I have only one manner of redemption in this case (after getting Cindy her very own Mother's Day gift) and that is to take this matter to Christ and confess my sin. In a serious way, we should all examine our lives as we live in a very materialistic world and begin to see how the commandments overlap. Lying, stealing, wanting things that we can neither afford or need (coveting). In essence, going neck deep into sin to obtain stuff we didn't need because, like the shiny lure in the water that attracts the fish, we had to have it until it snagged us and dragged us down.
We go to Christ and ask Him to sustain our lives and to help us faithfully and honestly get what we need. We thank God for what we have and ask that we use a measure of faith and thought in God-pleasing ways when we seek to gain things we want. We ask for forgiveness when our lusts of our flesh cause us to seek those things we desire but really shouldn't have. We thank God for the mercy and grace He gives us when we take our eyes off of Him and turn to our material world for gratification.
Hope Men's Ministry
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