Stop, Thief!

God has given us His Word so that we might know His heart and have direction for our lives. His Word even empowers us to walk in obedience. Deuteronomy chapter 10 says:
12 "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

There's an example out of England involving a violation of one of the 10 Commandments - by stealing Biblical artwork, including a rendering of the 10 Commandments!  As The Christian Post reports:

Thieves have stolen a mural of the Ten Commandments and other Victorian murals from a church in Lincolnshire, England. Having discovered the missing artwork and two other Victorian paintings, representatives of St. Andrew’s Church in Little Steeping wondered if they had read the Eighth Commandment.

All three were displayed in heavy wooden frames and depicted religious themes, including the Lord’s Prayer and Moses delivering the commandments, The Telegraph reported. Police have not confirmed their precise market value, but said they “have sentimental value to the church and its members.”

The Post article went on to include the words of churchwarden Basil Harwood, who said, according to the Independent: "They probably wanted to learn a bit more about the commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal,’...They clearly didn’t read it when they stole it. And if they did, they obviously didn’t understand it."

The Christian Post goes on to say:

Police have circulated descriptions of the stolen artwork to local dealers and haven't linked this theft to other incidents.

Harwood said he's relieved nothing else was damaged.

The congregation hopes the thieves recognize the Ten Commandments text and rethink their act.

Right now, courts and legislatures are attempting to consider the subject of posting the 10 Commandments in schools. This is especially important as courts consider religious liberty cases under new standards established in the Coach Joe Kennedy Case.   

Back in 1980, in the case of Stone v. Graham, involving a Kentucky law requiring the Commandments to be posted in schools, Justice William Brennan on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Education Week, made these comments regarding young people reading the Ten Commandments

“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments..."

That's certainly a noble goal - students ideally should read the Commandments and perhaps heed them. However, the justice threw cold water on that premise, stating: "However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”

Justice Brennan, the article noted, "said the Kentucky statute did not pass muster under the Supreme Court’s then-prevailing “Lemon” test for evaluating government support for religion. The test, from the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, says that a statute must have a secular legislative purpose; its primary effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion, and it must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion."

Brennan noted, “This is not a case in which the Ten Commandments are integrated into the school curriculum, where the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like,” adding, “Posting of religious texts on the wall serves no such educational function..."

Of course, we know that God's Word does not return void, and we're talking about more than so-called "private devotion" - we recognize that the 10 Commandments, as Justice Rehnquist said in his dissent to the court's majority decision in Stone, "have had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the Western World.”  That's a quote from the Education Week article, which says that Rehnquist noted that the 10 Commandments are "undeniably a sacred text."

The 10 Commandments, like all of Scripture, are intended not only to be read, but heeded.  So, these thieves in England obviously were not heeding the Commandments when they stole them.  From a church. And, the justices in 1980 on the high court denied school children in Kentucky the opportunity to be exposed to those sacred truths, which could have, as I believe it's been pointed out, changed their behavior. 

We also can see how our inability to keep the 10 Commandments show us the need for a Savior, as Ray Comfort says.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the Bible says, and we need the power of God's Word operating in our lives so that we can come into salvation through Christ and live in a manner that pleases God.  

The enemy, as the parable of the sower shows us in Mark 4, will come to steal the word from our hearts.  He is a thief and we have to contend against im in the power of the Spirit to keep the Word growing in our hearts.  James tells us to be doers of the Word and not just hearers.  So, we can keep our ears - and our hearts - open to allow the message of Christ to energize our hearts and our walk with the Lord.