8th Commandment: Do Not Steal

BibleProject

BibleProject Podcast

Jesus, Theology, Old Testament, Demons, Satan, New Testament, Angels, Tim Mackie, Christianity, God, Spiritual Beings, Spirit, Religion & Spirituality, Bible, Jon Collins, Torah, Bible Study

4.8 • 20.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 10 Commandments E11 — The 8th Commandment, “Do not steal,” seems straightforward enough. But why does God forbid theft in ancient Israel? What harm can come to a community where people’s property is always vulnerable? And what lies beneath the surface of our desire to take from our neighbor what doesn’t belong to us? In this episode, Jon and Tim unpack the eighth command, discovering its deeper invitations to contentment, generosity, and stewardship.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Think of a time that you took something that wasn't yours.
0:09.2	Maybe it was small.
0:10.5	Maybe it was something big.
0:12.0	But why did you take it?
0:13.8	The sole purpose for stealing is you want to benefit from something that you are not currently benefiting from.
0:20.7	You take something of value that you didn't earn or work for.
0:24.3	I want that. I'm going to take it.
0:26.3	Dig even deeper. How did you justify taking it?
0:30.1	Everything that my neighbor has is God's gift to them.
0:34.7	And one way of thinking about stealing stems from this probably unconscious
0:40.5	belief that I think that God should have given that gift to me. That should be mine.
0:47.5	Today, we're going to talk about the eighth command, do not steal, and how actually this command
0:54.1	is an opportunity for gratitude.
0:56.4	Deuteronomy 6 says,
0:57.7	He will give to you large and fine cities that you didn't build and houses full of all sorts of things that you didn't fill.
1:06.5	Everything that we have is a gift to us.
1:09.8	And so, the Eighth Command is a call for contentment, which is cool.
1:14.6	But as we're going to see in today's episode, the wisdom of the Eighth Command goes even deeper.
1:20.7	Flip over, do not steal, into the positive.
1:23.2	And this command becomes profound.
1:25.7	It's a call to not take people's stuff, but to help people steward their stuff.
1:31.2	You really have to believe that God has given me what I need and more, and that God has given my
	...

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