(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

So we read in Exodus 21 this morning, the whole chapter, and of course now we did Exodus chapter 22, and we're obviously going to continue with the series on human government and why it's important. Tonight I'm going to be comparing a little bit more between God's law and then our current laws. I don't know how many more topics I'm going to end up preaching on this series. I've got one more. I'm going to give you a little bit of an outline of what we're going to be looking at this evening. So in this chapter, the first half of the chapter is all about thieves, and that's why I'm going to cover the topic of people who steal thieves and how the Bible says a person ought to be punished if you're caught stealing and what the proper punishment is. And we're going to compare that with what Georgia says, the state of Georgia and what our laws are and kind of where they may line up and where they're different and just the whole viewpoint and stuff because our whole criminal justice system is broken in this country. It used to be pretty good way, way, way, way back a long time. I would say even before the United States of America came into being when there was just colonial America, they actually had from my reading of history and understanding of their laws and their sentencing and stuff, it was actually pretty good. It was a pretty good system way back in the day before everything was set up and kind of slowly got worse and worse, but I'm going to get into all that a little bit, not some huge history lesson. We're going to look at it a little bit. So that's kind of the roadmap for what we're going to be looking at today. And one of the things that we see in the scripture, we went over in previous sermons the death penalty punishment. There's not very many punishments that the Bible gives for different crimes. You're basically going to have an option of either being put to death, and I'm not saying an option like you get to choose. The options are just, these are the different punishments that the Bible prescribes for different things, right? It's either going to be punishment, you're going to be paying money, you're going to get a financial payment, or you'll be getting beat. That's pretty much all it is. There's no prison sentence in the Bible. And that's going to be the last thing that we kind of go into more is just the different prison sentences and stuff and why it's not good, it's not scriptural, it's not what we should be doing. But we're going to start off just looking at what the Bible teaches and just getting the very clear surface teaching on thieves. People who decide to steal, for whatever reason, they want to steal from someone. Let's look down at our Bibles here, verse number one, the Bible says if a man shall steal an ox or a sheep and kill it or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an oxen, four sheep for a sheep. Now right off the bat, you might say, Pastor Burzins, I don't know anyone that owns oxen or sheep, right? So what am I going to do with this? Well, the great thing about the Bible is that we could learn biblical principles on what's right and what's wrong so that God doesn't have to spell everything out for you of like list every possible item that can possibly be stolen for you to make an equivalence of, well, this is like this and this is like that, right? So that's what we're going to do when we look at this. So don't get too caught up in the animal thing. But the animal thing is important because right off the bat, you're going to see here, well, there's a difference between an ox and a sheep, right? Because there's a different multiplier of having to give back, of having to restore, of having to pay for what you've done. Obviously, I would say an ox would be more valuable and probably more, not just more valuable, but it would take, it takes more time. It's more time consuming to replace the ox, like whether it be with training and whatever usage that you're going to be using the ox for. So it's going to, it's going to take more away from the owner thereof, which is why you're being compensated with even more when that is stolen. So what you're going to see here as we get into this and just pay attention as we read through it, some things are just restored twofold. It's just double fold. So like if someone just steals like some money, they're going to get doubled. In these cases, though, when it comes to livestock, there's more that goes into it. It's not just like the value of a pound for pound for meat, because you're putting work into these things. You're putting more effort into it. So to get really back to be fully restored to where you were, it requires more time and effort, which you need to be compensated for, for having all of that loss. And on top of that, and that's ultimately what all of this is, is that not only does the person get their goods back, get their property back, whatever it is that's stolen, they're being then compensated for their loss of the time and everything else. It's not just getting the thing back, like, hey, you stole this from me. Give it back. No, you're going to make it right. There's going to be a justice system here. And when we see this, you'll start to notice like, oh, OK, that's why. I mean, that's the principle. And it makes sense and doesn't have to be even spelled. You could just get this by reading, OK, I could see an ox isn't exactly the same as a sheep. And why would that be? It's pretty obvious. But let's keep going here. Verse number two, if a thief be found breaking up and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him. Now the Bible operates on a principle of if man sheds blood, then by blood shall his blood be shed. Right? If you kill someone, then the proper just judgment is then for you to be killed. But in an instance where a thief is coming in to break up and to steal, the Bible says if he ends up being smitten, like you come in, you find him, and you get in a fight, and you end up hitting this guy that he dies, well, the person that ended up killing him, because he was caught trying to steal the stuff, he's saying he's not going to be held responsible for that. The thief shouldn't have been going in there and breaking up his stuff and trying to steal. It's his own fault. Now verse three says, if the son be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him, for he should make full restitution. If he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. So there's differences in how someone can be found and caught. If the son's up, you can see they're not coming in to harm you. You can kind of see what their intentions are, and you can see him, and there's no doubt about it, like he's just stealing. He doesn't deserve to die for stealing. And this is an important distinction to make, because some people go a little bit too extreme on this, you know, my house, my castle, you're going to die if you step foot here. I get, you know, if you're defending your family, amen, you're allowed to use whatever force is necessary to protect your family from evil. Yes. But if someone decides just to steal from you, it's not right just to kill that person. It's not. I mean, the punishment is they just restore back, hey, you did wrong, there's no one's not, you know, don't say that you didn't do wrong. They need to make it right. And that would be justice, but they don't deserve to lose their life for it. But here's the thing is that if someone if a thief's breaking in your house, say at night, and their intention is just to steal, you don't know what their intention is. You have no idea. So the Bible prescribes that it's okay. Like basically, there's not going to be anything done to the person who kills someone who breaks in your house at night, because you have no idea why they're there and you need to protect your family. But if it's daytime, and you can see him and like they're out in your backyard, and you can see they're trying to steal your car, they're trying to steal something that you have, you don't just whip out your gun and shoot the guy, right, and just kill them because they're in your backyard trying to steal something, then then you would be guilty of murder. The whole point is to be able to, you know, just deal with this stuff appropriately and God said, you know, there's a fine line there, but I think it's very easy to tell where that line lands, according to Scripture here, let's keep reading here, verse four, if the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it be ox or ass or sheep, he shall restore double. So the first verse was saying, if he kills it or sells it, then he's got to restore either fourfold or fivefold, depending on whether the sheep are an ox, right? But if it's actually still alive, then you can give the owner back exactly what he had, right? So he's not really losing out of that, he gets that right back, but you still have to restore him double, you still have to give him another ox or another sheep or whatever. Again, because it's all the trouble caused by the thief going in and doing that to begin with, he's going to have to pay double. So even though it's the same exact object, you know, it has to do with the amount of investment that's lost in whatever was stolen. So we can apply that today to, you know, you can make whatever the application would be if you get something stolen, something that maybe you spend a lot of time on investment in, there's more to it than just getting the actual physical object back to you. I mean, I could think about even just if someone were to steal like your computer at home, maybe you put a lot of work and a lot of stuff on there. There's more value to everything that you've done in that system than just the physical pieces of hardware, right? If someone says, well, someone stole this, it's like, well, they just need to pay you back then a hard drive and, you know, that's not the way that the Bible would work as what justice would be for someone who's stealing that stuff from you. You can say, well, no, I mean, there's a lot more that goes into this. I mean, this was my work. This is my livelihood. There's a lot, you know, this brought a much bigger burden on me because this was taken and they destroyed it. They sold it. It's gone. You know, like I need to be compensated now to get back everything that truly was lost through that theft. And this is a biblical model of, you know, it's making whatever was done wrong right. It's God's sense of justice. Verse number five, if a man shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten and shall put in his beast and shall feed in another man's field or excuse me, of the best of his own field and of the best of his own vineyard, shall he make restitution? That's pretty self-explanatory. So in verse number six, if fire break out and catching thorns so that the stacks of corn or the standing corn of the field be consumed therewith, he that kindled the fire surely shall make restitution. And you know, essentially we've got, you know, arson kind of mixed in here with the theft. It's still a loss. It's kind of like you're stealing from them. So he's just going to make restitution on whatever was lost in a similar fashion. Verse seven, if a man shall deliver unto his neighbor money or stuff to keep and it be stolen out of the man's house, if the thief be found, let him pay double. So now this is referencing it's money or stuff, right? It's not an animal. It's not other things. It's just kind of real simple things that if it's stolen, it would be the same way. If it was not even given to someone else and a thief is found, they're going to be paying double. But there's a separate matter here is that like if you give someone to someone, hey, watch this for me, I'm going to give you some money. I'm going away on a trip. Can you watch this for me? And then you come back and they're like, yeah, sorry, someone stole your money. You'd be like, what do you mean someone stole my money? Like I'm entrusting this to you. And you come back and then you're gonna be suspicious going like, well, you know, who stole it? Right? What happened? Is this guy just trying to steal from me because he had it and it's easy for him to say, oh, yeah, I don't know what happened. Someone must have come and stolen it. The Bible says in verse eight, so in those types of situations, if the thief be not found, so the thief is found great, right? He pays double, everyone's good and justice is served. If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall be brought unto the judges to see whether he had put his hand unto his neighbor's good. So now you're going to get a much bigger investigation. The judge is going to look into it and diligently inquire and see, you know, their motive, everything else, you know, get into all the details of that. Verse nine says, for all manner of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of lost thing, which another challengeth to be his, the cause of both parties shall come before the judges and whom the judges shall condemn, he shall pay double unto his neighbor. So basically, it's going to end up ultimately just being up to the judges to decide that if someone stole it or not. And if they determine that someone's guilty of stealing, then they have to pay double. Verse ten says, if a man deliver unto his neighbor an ass or an ox or a sheep or any beast a keep, and it die or be heard or driven away, no man seeing it, then shall an oath of the Lord be between them both that he hath not put his hand unto his neighbor's good, and the owner of it shall accept thereof, and he shall not make it good. So now, this isn't to do with money or stuff, right? This has to do with an animal. And something happens to it where it dies, it gets hurt, right? Basically what the Bible is saying here is then, the guy who is watching the animal or using the animal or whatever, he's going to have to pledge an oath. Now, in our day, you could say, well, that's not going to work. Look, this is God's system, and I'd much rather use God's system, and if we're actually able to follow God's system in its entirety and not just piecemeal, this would actually make more sense. God's system relies heavily on people having integrity and having their word mean something, and it actually used to mean something to people, even unsaved people. People used to just, your word was who you are, and that's the way it should be. Your word is who you are. People know you just to be a liar, then who's going to trust you, right? But the oath will be made saying, look, I didn't do anything to cause this to happen. It was an accident, whatever. Then basically, they're just saying, the oath is just going to be between you, like God's going to be involved with this oath. If you swear that this is what's happened, then they're just going to have to agree to that, and He's not going to restore or pay anything for the animal to be hurt, because oftentimes you're going to get to a point where it's just like, there's no way of proving this stuff anyways, right? It's going to be one person's word against another, so that's where they're going to have this oath. But then it says in verse 12, and if it be stolen from him, he shall make restitution unto the owner thereof. So if it is stolen under your watch, basically saying, then you need to make restitution unto the owner. If it be torn in pieces, then let him bring it for witness, and he shall not make good that which was torn. And you say, well, why would he have to pay if it's stolen? Because it's being entrusted to him. That's the whole purpose. He's keeping it, and it's his job and responsibility to watch it. So if you're entrusted with something like that, then you ought to get paid. If you have money in the bank, and someone comes and steals the money out of the bank, well, I've entrusted you, the bank, to keep my money secure and safe. So don't tell me that you don't have it. You have to make it right with me, because you allowed it to be stolen. It's a similar concept here. Verse 13, if it be torn in pieces, then let him bring it for witness, and he shall not make good that which was torn. Verse 14, if a man borrow aught of his neighbor, and it be hurt or die, the owner thereof, being not with it, he shall surely make it good. But if the owner thereof be with it, he shall not make it good. If it be an hired thing, it came for his hire. Now, this is pretty simple and straightforward. I didn't want to spend all sermon on just thieves in general, because it's pretty straightforward. But I just wanted to go through and spend the time going through it, because this is God's system. And it's not very complicated. It's not very difficult. And it all makes sense. And you can see why it is the way it is. But then when we start looking at our laws, you're going to be like, why does things have to be so complicated? Why does it have to be so difficult? Why do we have to have all these extra? And I would say, we don't. It doesn't have to be that way. It would be much better if we had it on God's system. The Bible says in Leviticus 19, there's a couple other verses regarding thieves and people who would steal. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him. The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. And this is a little bit of a side note from what we just read on just stealing in general. But man, would to God that this could be practiced even today, you know, people who get hired for a job that the wages aren't held back. There's a lot of people that rely on the wages that they make even for a day that having to wait a week or having to wait two weeks to get paid for work that you've already done. That's not right. And the Bible is saying you're, you know, you're not supposed to defraud thy neighbor nor rob him. And that when you're not, when you're withholding the pay that someone has worked for and they earn and they deserve to have, you know, you're defrauding them. It's like, well, wait a minute, I've worked all these days and you're still not paying me. You know, I need this money to survive. And you know, we live in a society where it's just normal for people to get paid every week or every two weeks or whatever, and just kind of like, that's when you get a paycheck. But that's not the way that God designed it. According to the Bible, it's, you know, you put in a day's worth of work, you get paid for that day's worth of work. And you don't sit on it. And you give that person their money for whatever they've worked so that you are trued up with them on a daily basis. That's right. And that, and that, that is, that is the way that people ought to be doing business. Now it's not, may not be the way it's done now. But again, we look to God's laws, not to just what man comes up with and decides is better. The Bible says in Proverbs 6 verse 30, men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry. But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold. He shall give all the substance of his house. And you know, basically saying that people, and this was in context of, you know, adultery, you know, men aren't going to look past adultery. It's going to make them angry. It's going to make them want to kill somebody. And rightfully so. But, you know, obviously if someone steals from you, you can, you can get over that. You can just say like, yeah, I'm not going to, you know, especially if someone's poor and hungry and they, you know, okay, I get it. Yeah, you better pay me, you know, what you, you know, it's going to, it's going to do a lot more damage to you because you decided to steal as opposed to, you know, stealing someone's wife. Right. That's, that's a much bigger deal. But my whole point of bringing up that verse is, you know, the thief is going to be hurt financially and they ought to be hurt financially to, to make it not that good of a, of an option. You know, a thief that's going to go and steal something like an ox or a sheep, they have to restore four or five told. I mean, think about how many times then you'd have to be successful in stealing to kind of, to make, to make it a, you know, a cost benefit analysis, right? If you're thinking, if you're thinking in terms of, of business, like, well, let's see, if I wanted to steal from people all the time, I'd have to just be getting away with it, you know, like all, all the time really. But, but how many times would you, would you allow yourselves to be caught where it's just like, this isn't making sense financially to keep stealing? Like, why don't I just go to work, right? That's, that's a much, there's a much better option, right? There's less risk. I don't have to risk being killed because someone might kill me and they're not going to get, you know, in trouble for it. So, you know, whatever. There's, there's, there's all those things that God's law is, is actually very, very sound. Now, one last thing I want to look at, as long as I'm covering thieves until before we get into our laws and everything else, you can turn to go to Malachi chapter three. This is just a side note. And I know the scope of my sermons in general is for, for human government. But since we're on the subject of stealing, I just wanted to cover this. And there's a reason for this too. That in Malachi chapter three, you know, the people are being rebuked for, for all these things that they're not right with God about. And they don't, don't get it. They're like, what are you talking about? How, what do you mean when, you know, we're not doing this, we're not doing that. And verse number eight, it says, well, a man robbed God, yet ye have robbed me, but ye say, wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. So he's talking about people who are stealing from God by not paying their tithe, by not giving their tithe that, that, that is, that is required of them. He says, ye are cursed with a curse for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation, bring ye all the tithes in the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. So while this isn't like the law of the land, and this was never intended to be the law of the land, in the sense that if you don't do this, there's a punishment against you, right? Even the Old Testament, it's not like there was a crime of not paying your tithe to God, right? You're not, you're not doing anything against any individual other than not supplying the needs that, that God commanded needed to be met for the priests and, you know, with people executing the office. But the reason why I'm even bringing this up is if we see how God institutes punishing thieves, just in human law, right, and, and how you have to restore fourfold or fivefold and how, how bad that's going to be for you. How do you think he's going to punish those that rob him? You know, God's sense of justice for someone who would steal in just, just from another person is, I mean, very minimum, you're paying double. If you're stealing from God and, and look, this is the scripture saying you're stealing. This isn't me just, just, you know, coming up with this thought on my own that if you don't pay tithes and you're stealing from God, this is what the Bible says. And I preach this not because I want your money. I preach this because I want everybody to be right with God so that you're not stealing from God because just as much, I mean, you look at the punishment that people who steal from God get. I don't want you to face that punishment either from God because it, I mean, it doesn't matter to me personally, but it's going to matter to you because if God's going to deal with someone who steals from him and you say, well, no, no, I need this money and I need to keep it back. You're stealing from God. How much do you think God is going to hold you now and take it out of your end when, when you think you're saving money and you're not giving back to God what is supposed to be given to him, you're stealing from him. He's going to make sure that you pay fourfold, fivefold, whatever it is, whatever he deems is justice and what you think you're saving or what you think you're doing. It's going to be way, way worse. I mean, it's not, it's not a good idea for you financially to not tithe. It's a really bad idea because you're stealing from God and God will hold you accountable. And it's always ends up being in ways that you may not even realize it, but it's like, you just lost all this money for, you know, it could be for health reasons or some things come up and things break and then, you know, whatever it is, it's like, oh man, I'm just trying to get my, you know, to get myself together and get kind of feel like I could get my head above water here, but all these disasters keep happening. Well, maybe it's time to take a step back and think, am I robbing from God because he's making now all the money I should, has been given to him is now coming out some other way. And it's just something to consider. Like I said, I, you know, the Bible talks about the, you know, the children of Israel, I think it's in Hosea where he tells them, you know, consider your ways and how they're like, oh yeah, it's not time to build the house of God. And they're just worried about their own houses and getting their selves settled. And they don't care about, about, you know, fixing the house of God and they're not putting God first and they're just worried about themselves. He's saying, you know, you're, you're going out and you're making money just to put it in a bag of holes, right? Like you think you need to get all of your stuff settled first and you're never going to have it settled because you're not putting me first. There's a teaching in Hosea where he's saying, you know, I'm blowing on, on your, on your crops. I'm making sure it's not gonna, you're not going to be fruitful. It's not going to be blessed. You're going to keep working and working and spinning your wheels and you're never going to get forward because you're not being obedient. And I want you to be blessed. So that's why I'm teaching on that and that's why I brought this up, but let's go back to now. Let's compare the system of punishment God's way. You pay back four or five times what you stole and it doesn't sound like it's really worth it to steal, but those are the consequences. And the person who is the victim of the theft, they get restored. I mean, it's, it's, it's made right. No one wants to have to deal with things getting stolen from them. Right? I think everyone would agree. Like I don't want anything to be, you know, it's a big hassle that you don't want to have to waste your time with, but if it's going to happen, at least there can be some justice served and say, okay, well yeah, this wasn't fun, but okay, it was made right. It's equal. And I've, I've gotten back what, what was, was owed. That's God's system. In our system, the criminal doesn't pay the victim. Okay, now, now our system screwed up because we'll get into that because there is a way where the victim can get paid. Well, that's a whole nother process. The criminal charges, which in the Bible, there isn't criminal and civil charges. It's criminal, right? And this is, when we get into this, you're going to start to see, oh, this is why our justice system is so screwed up. When you follow the money, you'll see where the, the problems all stem from or mostly stem from. Right? Obviously part of it is just, is just the people who don't really want to have good laws anyways to begin with. But when you start seeing the way that things are designed and set up, it really becomes apparent and the differences are just, are blaring. Even with something as simple as theft. There's nothing complicated about people stealing stuff, right? It really isn't. I mean, we went through, it's half a chapter covered, easy, right? There shouldn't be any real hard cases of, of stuff being, having to be restored. Well, in Georgia, or I mean, and you could replace this essentially with any state in the United States for the most part, but we live here. I went and I, and I, and I found a section online of like a theft and there's lots of different types of theft. I'm not, I didn't want to waste time getting into all of them, but the, the law that I'm going to be referring to this evening in Georgia is a theft by taking laws. You're like, well, what other theft is there? Theft by taking. Yeah, you're taking something that belongs to someone else. That's theft, right? That was the most simple one. I'm like, okay, that sounds pretty clear cut straightforward. There's no mitigating factors to make it more complicated. This is real simple. We saw what the Bible says about this stuff. Theft by taking. You take something that belongs to someone else, okay? You got to restore them at least double, but it could be more. But here's what I found here. I'm going to read this for you. The penalty for theft by taking, this is if someone's found guilty, can either be a misdemeanor or felony in Georgia. When the theft involves property valued at $500 or less, then the crime will be deemed a misdemeanor in Georgia. The consequences of misdemeanor include a fine of no more than a thousand dollars and a jail sentence of no more than 12 months. So they've got this range of how the judge can give someone a punishment based on this crime. So they're basically saying, okay, if they only stole stuff that's not quite worth 500 bucks, they're putting a limit on it and saying, here's all you can do to this person. But it's still not consistent. Like, I mean, God's punishment, it's just real consistent, right? Here's what it is. You're paying double at the very least. That's what you're doing. Here it's, you can pay up to double, but paying up to double, that's a fine. Guess what? The fines for criminal charges don't go to the victim. The fines go to the state. They go back to the government. So it's like, well, wait a minute, this guy stole from this guy. Why is the government getting paid? Right off the bat, we have this really weird incentive for the government to try to find people guilty, and you have a government, right, where the judge and the police and the prosecutors are all paid by the state, and when you get convictions, then more money comes in. That's right. That doesn't sound like a very fair system. Now, with the judges in the Bible, the Bible talks about duties and taxes being paid where they're due, and that people who are supposed to be the judges to execute the justice, this would be something where their salary is paid, but it'd have nothing to do with the convictions. They get paid for their job because it's something that they're giving of themselves or being a servant, and there's nothing wrong with that. The Bible teaches that that's fine, that they're there to be the ministers of justice, and they're not going to bear the sword in vain, and they're doing this job. So yeah, they ought to be paid to do that job, but it doesn't matter how many people are found guilty and how many fines are rolling in. That has nothing to do with it. But when you have this source of revenue coming in, now all of a sudden you've got motivation to be crooked and to pervert justice and judgment. Right off the bat, huge problem, right? On top of that, now, you have a person that can be fined up to $1,000 here in this crime, but then also be sent to jail. So now you're just going to sit in prison for up to a year, because you're not only paying them, but now you're going to go sit in a cage and do what? Now how does being thrown in a cage help the victim? Now isn't justice supposed to be balancing the scale of justice between the victim and the perpetrator? Right? I mean, that's the whole point. And now we've added to our scales of justice, like this third arm. Because now you've got this government, but they're like, how does that balance? Like no, they're supposed to be making these scales balance. And they've added something else into the mix. Someone getting thrown in prison isn't going to help the victim get his money back from that person, because how is he going to be able to work to pay that person back? Whatever he stole. And we'll get into the prison in a little bit, but that just perpetuates everything that doesn't help at all. But I'm going to keep reading for you here from this article that I printed off. It's just this legal resource, right? If a defendant receives a jail term of six months or less, then the judge has the ability and discretion to allow the sentence to be served via weekend confinement or during the defendant's non-working hours. So there's some flexibility here for them to get them so that they could still work. Which OK, that's a good thing, but I say, how about we just don't have prison at all? But we'll get to that. Now if the theft involves property worth more than $500, the crime will more than likely be deemed a felony. The judge can use discretion when determining whether to regard the offense as a misdemeanor or felony. If you receive a felony charge, then theft brings a penalty of a prison sentence of no less than one year and no more than 10 years. So there's minimum sentencing here. The other one, you could go to jail for up to a year, but it doesn't mean you have to go to jail. This one's just saying, OK, if you're found guilty of a felony, you're going to jail for at least a year. You're just going to prison, and you're going to be sent there for a year. And that's if you just steal something that's worth more than $500, you're going away for a year. And it says, there are particular circumstances in which theft is punished as a felony in Georgia. These include, of course, number one on their list, a bulleted list of things that will just automatically make it a felony, theft of government or bank property by an employee. Oh, you're going to steal from the government? Felony? Right off the bat, we're going to throw the book at you. It's not going to be the minimum, I guarantee you, if you're stealing from the government. It's fine for them to steal from you, but if you're going to steal from them, they're going to throw the book at you. If found guilty of this, the consequence is a 1 to 15 year prison sentence and or a fine. You better believe they're going to fine you and throw you in prison. Theft involving a grave site or cemetery decoration. This carries a punishment of 1 to 3 years in prison. Theft of a motor vehicle or part of a motor vehicle worth more than $1,000. Here you could be punished by 1 to 10 years in prison. In addition to a prison sentence or fine, there are other consequences of committing theft. The person you stole from could bring a civil action against you for damages. They can sue you and recover monetary damages and monetary damages could include, now this is what can happen from a civil lawsuit. And this is where the victim actually gets compensated for what was stolen from them. Monetary damages which would include the value of the property and any other loss sustained as a result of the theft. So basically just being compensated for what was stolen, specifically, is what you could get back. Liquidated exemplary damages accounting to $150 or twice the value of the loss as long as the total amount of the claim is less than $5,000. So what do you do if they sell more than that? Or the costs of bringing the suit against you. So the victim, in order to get justice, they have to bring a lawsuit. Now how many people do you know know how to just bring a lawsuit against somebody without having to pay some lawyer to get involved and do all this process? So now this person is found guilty, already, they committed the crime, the state brings their case, they've got the cops, they've got their experts, they can prove this guy is guilty, they can throw him in jail, and they can collect their fines, oh but the victim needs to, yeah sorry, I know you just got your stuff stolen, go hire a lawyer, bring a suit against this guy, and then try to get your money back, and you have to hold a whole new trial for it. It is, it's a whole new trial. Bring a civil suit against someone even after they've been found guilty of a crime. And if you remember, one great example that a lot of people are familiar with is OJ Simpson, because he had a criminal case against him for murder where he was found not guilty of, but then he had a civil case where he was found guilty where he had to pay damages to the family, but even this whole thing, it's like, isn't that kind of double jeopardy? Like you're saying, I know how they work around it, I get it, I understand it, but we don't see any of this in God's law, at all. This two different systems of judging and governance, and in our country it's not even just two because then you've got family courts, and I'm not even going to get into all that, that would have been from this morning sermon, which is just a total lack of due process and just a total shame and a sham of our system. So God's law, victim gets compensated, judges aren't receiving anything, there's no motivation for a judge to lie unless they're being bribed personally. There would be no motivation for them to get a conviction or not. It should be what's right judge based off of facts. In our system, there's much more motivation not just for the fines being collected, but also there's more people that would be interested in bribing as well, because you've got the prison industrial complex that knows, hey judges can start sending customers my way, because the prisons get money to house criminals, to house people in their prison system. Follow the money. So it makes sense for them to want to have as many people in their system as possible because that's their bread and butter. They want to build more prisons and have more people filled in, so they're going to want to have more laws, they're going to want to make more criminals out of people, and they're going to want to get to judges to get them to start sending people to their systems. And you think I'm crazy, well it's already well known and well documented, many judges who have been found guilty of doing this very thing, especially with the juvenile courts of judges that have been found guilty of being bribed to send kids off to these juvenile detention centers, where they end up getting defiled and abused and everything else, all because they wanted to just get more kids in there. So the judge just gives a sentence, and that's even easier because you can't publicize all the information on juvenile courts. See at least with adults in what's called real court, that's all public information, be public knowledge, but when it comes to kids, there's a lot less scrutiny, a lot less eyes on it, and it just opens the door wide for abuse. And that's what we see. And think about when people go to prison, this can put a thief in contact with other thieves and criminals, so they want to rehabilitate them, but instead you're just putting them in a can to hone their skills, to learn how to do it better. And not only that, let's say someone does want to change and they do want to repent and they want to get right, and they made a mistake, well now they've got the stigma of being, one, just being in prison, you try to find a job after you've been thrown into jail, you've got to explain the gap in employment or whatever, like where have you been? Well I've been sitting in jail for a year, right? And you have to carry that sentence around with you for the rest of your life, I mean especially if you get a felony, you're convicted of a felony, that doesn't go away. And you try to just get right and try to get past and get on with your life, that's not justice, on many levels, it's not justice. You've got too much perversion going on there, God's method is real simple. Because you know what, once the thief restores fourfold, fivefold, twofold, whatever the actual judgment is, it's done, it's done. The victim's satisfied, the perpetrator's punished, done. There's not this big sticky mess now and you've got taxpayers paying for this guy to be in prison and paying for his food. Why am I paying for a thief? He's the one that's supposed to be paying, he's the one that's supposed to be working it off. And one thing when it comes to a thief, I'm going to preach on this probably next week, I was going to have it part of the sermon, but it's much too complicated to get into and attach it to this. In Exodus 22, I don't know if you turned away from there or not, but in verse number 3, Bible says, if the sun be risen upon him, there shall be bloodshed for him, for he should make full restitution. Then it says, if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. So with God's system, you say, well what about a person who steals and they don't have anything. So obviously they can't pay fourfold, fivefold, they can't pay anything, they don't have anything, which is why they're stealing to begin with. But what you do in those situations, you don't just put them in a prison and say, well you can't pay, so now you're just going to sit here and other people are going to pay for you to eat and to sleep and whatever, they're going to say, no, you're being sold as a bond servant now to work off your debt. And you know who's going to receive the benefit of them working off their debt? The person they stole from. Say, now you have an employee that's going to work and serve you because they stole from you. Not like the prison system who gets, like if you say, oh you can't pay your fines, well you're going to jail and then they'll put you to work, right, and then you're just going to be working to build government because that's what they do. Whether it be license plates or whatever job they're going to have you doing, it's for their benefit. So what does the victim get? Nothing because you can sue them and go, hey, I won my civil case against them. Even if I win, I already had to pay my lawyer or even if I get the court cost pay, I'm still going to see nothing because they don't have anything and they're in prison so they're not going to make any money for them to give me to make it right with me by working. But you know what? The prison system is getting something out of it because now they've got real cheap labor, cheap labor that they can use for their prison industrial complex. This is the truth about our justice system. It is severely flawed and broken, severely, but you know what? It wasn't always this way. I mentioned earlier that colonial America had a much more biblical approach and I found this, I copied this information off of Wikipedia. You can look it up for yourself though. What I'm going to be reading here is not some crazy thing. This is legit. This is not hard to source. It was just nice and easy to sync to find it on Wikipedia. I copied these paragraphs. I'll read them for you. Although jails were an early fixture of colonial North American communities, they generally did not serve as places of incarceration as a form of criminal punishment. So while there were jails, that wasn't part of their judgment and their penalty. They would have other penalties. So jails serve a purpose and they do and I'm not saying we shouldn't have jails because when you arrest somebody, they've done something wrong. Someone was caught at a scene, someone's done something and they need to be tried. You need to do something with people, especially so they don't flee away and you kind of got to get everything put together and get the information, get the facts straight to have a little holding place to hold people. That's reasonable and acceptable to have something to just in this interim to deal with them. Even in the book of Exodus, after God gave Moses the laws and they found someone gathering sticks on the Sabbath, they had to put him in war. They had to take him and put him in war and say, God, what do we do with this guy? Here's what happened. Here's what we saw him doing. They broke the law. What do you want us to do? But they took him and put him in war. They confined him temporarily. There's nothing wrong with that. But see, when you start just confining people for years in these jail cells, it does no good to anyone. And I would say that's cruel punishment. I say that's worse than receiving a beating for what you've done wrong. It's way worse. And there's no need for it. We don't need to balance the scales in the wrong way. They ought to be fair and just. We shouldn't go crazy with the littering stuff. I've seen some say, I don't know how it is here, but you litter a piece of plastic or paper, and it's like, $5,000 fine. It's like, whoa, hold on a minute. That is not just or appropriate. I'm not a fan of littering. I don't think we should just be slobs and throw our trash all over the place. But at the same time, you need to have a proper balance and say, is that really fitting for the crime? Right? That's the whole point of justice. I'm going to keep reading this for you, though. So it's saying that in early colonial America, they didn't have these prisons. They just had some jails. And it says, instead, the main role of the colonial American jail was as a non-punitive detention facility for pretrial and pre-sentence criminal defendants, as well as imprisoned debtors. So people who were debtors, it was a place for them to be held. The most common penal sanctions of the day were fines, whipping, and community-oriented punishments like the stocks. You find these things in the Bible, and of course, capital punishment. And that was also taking place back then, too, by the way, capital punishment. And this is another one that's a little bit outside the scope of the sermon. But when you go back and look at colonial America, look at the laws, they all had laws against sodomy. And you know what? I would say at least the majority of them, if not all of them, because I don't remember specifically, had the death penalty on sodomy. It's in this country, before the formation of the United States of America. Now, the laws stayed on the books for a long time afterwards, but the punishments weren't quite as severe after the United States of America was actually created. But under the colony rule, under the Confederacy, yes, they had much more biblical punishments on these crimes. I've got one more paragraph to read on the history here. Colonial American jails were not the ordinary mechanism of correction for criminal offenders, according to social historian David Rothman. Criminal incarceration as a penal sanction was plainly a second choice, either a supplement to or a substitute for traditional criminal punishments of the day, in the words of historian Adam J. Hirsch. So it's basically saying that, yes, there were these jails and stuff, but it was just kind of either added on or a replacement, but it wasn't what they preferred to do. It's not the way they tried to punish people. Obviously it's saying there were some circumstances where they may do that, but that's not what their focus was on punitive penal sanctions. The 18th century criminal codes provided for a far wider range of criminal punishments than contemporary state and federal criminal laws in the United States. So this is now, you know, 18th century, so 1700s, fines, whippings, the stocks, the pillory, the public cage, banishment, capital punishment at the gallows, penal servitude in private homes. All of these punishments came before imprisonment in British Colonial America. So those were all the preferred forms of punishment as opposed to just going to prison. But going to prison got more and more popular, and what happened, this is how they got their foot in the door, is that it became an option. When you read through the history of the prison system, it became an option and started being promoted, where instead of just completely replacing what the punishment should be on the law books, they just would say, hey, let's just add this option of, well, you can also sentence someone to prison and just see how that goes. So they're saying, we're not getting rid of these punishments. The judges can still determine, but we're going to give the judges another option here of a prison sentence. Well, give it some time, give it some prison businessmen greasing some wheels and talking to some legislators and talking to some judges, and before you know it, you've got what we've got today. A lot of this is manipulation on the public and people wanting to rehabilitate, right? So that's why we came up with these prison systems. Oh, we're going to make them better, we're going to do this. It doesn't make anybody better. It doesn't help the family, it doesn't help the kids, of the dad that was stealing, for the dad to be in prison now. Doesn't help the victim, doesn't help anybody but the state, ultimately. I'm not saying there's never a time where people will get compensated in our system because it does happen, but how convoluted have we made it compared to God's simple, straightforward laws that actually work? Why can't we get back to something like that? And when it comes to the whippings and the stocks and stuff, the Bible says in Proverbs 26.3, a whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Sometimes it's just what's needed. The fool does foolish things and commits foolish crimes. You know what? They just need a beating. Just like a child needs a beating on the rear end when they've done wrong, it's that base, it's that simple. Some people, fools, are on that same level. You know, people who have knowledge and wisdom, they don't need that form of discipline because they should be grown up above that. But when you do foolish things, you're going to get a foolish punishment, a fool's punishment, I should say. And say, okay, well, if you don't know how to behave yourself, then this is what you get. You're going to be treated like a child, except as an adult. You're going to get the whipping. The Bible says in Proverbs 20.30, turn, if you would, to Deuteronomy 25, it's the last place I'll have you turn. Almost done. Proverbs 20.30 says, the blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil, so do stripes the inward parts of the belly. So just as the blueness of a wound is actually there, like on bruises, is to heal, it cleanses away the evil. The evil would be like the damage done to your body. And the blueness of the wound is there to help your body to recover and to heal. And it's using that analogy, so do stripes. So when you receive a whipping and receive the stripes, are supposed to heal the inward parts of your belly, meaning the source of your lust to do wickedness. And the inward parts of the belly is talking about your sinful flesh, kind of where the source of your fleshly lusts are coming from. He's saying that the stripes are going to help with that, because you don't want to get the stripes again to cause you to overcome those fleshly lusts that are causing you to commit these crimes that would be worthy of stripes. That actually serves a purpose and does good. Now the last place we're going to look at is Deuteronomy 25, because this is actually one more important concept when it comes to judges making proper judgments and punishments on criminals, on people who are found guilty. Because what we have today are judges that are able to sit back in their chair and make a judgment. And I'm not saying all judges are evil or wicked, but there's a disconnect between the judgment that's meted out and the judge actually understanding the full force and ramifications of what they're sentencing people to, right? Now in the Bible, as I mentioned, there's only a few different options. One is death. I think the judges are going to be capable of understanding the death penalty and the ramifications of that. That's very extreme. It's ending. It's done. It's over. I mean, someone's being put to death, okay? The other one is financial. Again, not as hard to understand the depths of, you know, we all understand finances. But the third one in Scripture is the beating. And if you're a judge and you're not getting whipped regularly and you're not around it, you may not understand. You might want to get this feeling of being harder and harder and harder on criminals, right? And I think it's the same way with judges in prison sentences, too. And kind of just, they're sitting back. They don't see everything else that happens to these people. They're saying, oh, no, you're in front of me again. Okay, you're going to prison now for 10 years, five years, whatever. Especially if someone comes back, they got in trouble again, oh, here you are again. Well, now you're just getting this, right? It's like, well, hold on a second. When you do that, do you really understand what you're doing to that person? And what the Bible has for judges when they're giving out a sentence on a beating is that they actually would be beat right before the judges. So you see what's happening to that person. Now, obviously, there's a righteous punishment and getting a whipping. But God limits that number, because that's where what we came up with, this country is formed with the concept of cruel and unusual punishments. That's another biblical concept, because God put a limit on how many times a person could be beat before he says, that's vile. That's really wicked to just beat somebody beyond 40 stripes. That's it. You shouldn't do that now. And he doesn't institute saying, 40 stripes is the punishment every time. No, he's just saying, don't go beyond this. And you think about the 40 stripes kind of became a norm when you read the Bible, at least in Jesus' day. There's a pulse saying, five times received I 40 stripes, save one, because they would always beat them 39 stripes just to make sure they didn't miscount and didn't go above what God prescribed of the 40 stripes being the limit. But it's just like, why was he getting the maximum every single time? Like, what did he do? And I think they were just using the maximum as just their standard. Like well, the Bible says this, so we're just giving everyone 39. It's like, whoa. But the way it was supposed to be carried out is, if you're in Deuteronomy 25, we'll look at verse number one. The Bible reads, if there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault by a certain number. This isn't in here by accident. God didn't just like insert, you know, that they need to be beaten before his face. Just for no, well, there's no reason for that at all. No, I think there is. There's a reason why it's put in there specifically to say, no, he's going to be beaten, but not just beaten like off somewhere in a dungeon and be beaten, he's going to be beaten before his face. One, he's going to be able to see that the justice is exactly the way that it was given and someone isn't just going overboard, you know, behind closed doors. And who knows what's going to happen then, but also I think, and again, this, this is, this is my opinion, okay, is that it's so the judge can see what is happening. Like here's the physical cut. When you, when you issue, okay, they're getting 40 stripes. This is what happens to that person is what he did and is found guilty of is that balance with this, with this effect, right? And that's why the Bible says here, he should be beaten before his face according to his fault by a certain number, 40 stripes he may give him and not exceed, lest if he should exceed and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee. When you see what's happening, say, okay, that's a pretty bad beating. For what he did, he only needs 20 or he only needs 10 or he only needs five, right? And it's, and they can see that and kind of keep that level as opposed to just, well, it's just a number, right? Because not just a number. But I think, I think too often for judges, when it comes to prison sentence, it's just a number. I mean, what are you really doing to these people? I'm not saying criminals shouldn't be punished. I'm just saying, you know, the prison system is not the way that God designed things to be. And especially when it comes to real simple crimes like theft, why involve prison at all? You don't need it. The closest thing would be indentured servants. And I'm going to get into that. That's a whole topic in and of itself as people have these weird, you know, these false ideas of slavery and the Bible and stuff like that. I'm going to cover that probably next week. But that would be the only thing that might be a little bit complicated. It's not complicated. It's still pretty simple. God's law is simple. God's law is right. You know, would to God we could get back to a system like this. And you know, I'm preaching these things just so that you could you can get the right perspective on this. As a Bible believing Christian, what's right in our society and what's not right. If there's anything that can be done about it, then we ought to be trying to improve things on God's side and on the side of the Bible. Let's borrow that word of prayer. Dear Lord, we love you. We thank you so much for all the wisdom and truth that we can learn from your words. God, I pray that you would please just increase our knowledge, help us to be able to discern right from wrong. And Lord, I pray that you'd help us as a church to grow and help us to reach more people and to be able to reach the hearts and the minds of the people of our state and of our community with the gospel and with your word. Lord, that we know how powerful your word is and I pray that you'd please help us as your servants to go out and preach the word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.