Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life

and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Tanya Wilmoth and right now we're in the book of Exodus.

Today on the podcast we're dealing with the 8th commandment do not steal. Now that

might sound benign to you or it might sound like something you don't really struggle with.

But let's just say you're walking on a public trail and your kids or your family are with you and you all see a

tree full of ripe apples. In fact, there are so many apples on the tree, they're falling off

onto the ground and they're rolling around.

While the trail is public use, you know there are people who own the property that

butts up to the trail and it's likely that those owners don't even know the apples are ripe

in falling off, or maybe they don't even know the apples are ripe and falling off or maybe they don't even

know they have an apple tree. So you step off the trail to investigate the

apples and you take one hanging from a low branch and you buy it into it and

then do your surprise the owner steps out from behind the brush with a gun in her hand.

This actually happened in Missouri, not too many years ago, but it was a river instead of a trail and all the people involved had a few drinks.

It took a lot of lawyers, a lot of time to solve its problem.

Now we know as civilized human beings that stealing is morally wrong, but we also know that taking an apple doesn't give someone the right to shoot us.

And this is one of the ways the Torah has stepped in and shaped our lives.

See, the Torah isn't just an account of how God gave his people laws to follow.

It's the true story of how God interrupted the lives of sinful people with his mercy and his grace.

Before the Torah, the near eastern culture killed and mutilated people for stealing.

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