The Thief comes...

 Read John 10:10-11

The thief comes for 3 purposes, to steal, to kill, and to destroy.

Stealing is easy to understand. You have something I want so I take it from you. The thief wants to take away from what you have.

What do you have? Life. You have life and the thief wants to take it away.

The thief can’t touch your eternal life.  That is 100% the gift of God. So, what is at risk? Abundant life!

The thief wants to kill you. That’s pretty straightforward. The thief doesn’t want to win your soul. Your soul is a trophy to the thief. The thief wants to kill you and mount your head on the wall.

That should about wrap up what the thief wants, but it doesn’t.  The thief wants more than to steal from you. The thief wants more than to kill you—you would think that would be enough.

The thief wants to destroy you. Killing you is not enough.  The thief wants your very existence removed from the universe.

The thief wants you—the image of God—removed from existence.

The thief is against life, life abundant, and life eternal.

The thief is against all things that are of God and he longs to destroy us. The thief is not your friend. But just who is this thief?

Most would say that it’s Satan or the Devil.  This is certainly his line of work and he surely has his hand in it, but if we read carefully, it appears that Jesus is talking more about the religious leaders and not the angel who was cast out of heaven.

If you jumped over to Matthew 23, you would find a whole bunch of those woe unto you Pharisee statements.  It’s not that much different here.

The priests, scribes, and Pharisees were supposed to have been the shepherds of Israel. They were to have cared for God’s sheep.  They lost focus. They got distracted.

By what?

Rules without relationships. These religious leaders knew the rules backward and forwards but did not grasp the importance of our relationship with God and with each other.

Regulations without righteousness.  Sometimes, they just checked the block.

Self-importance. Sometimes the perceived importance of their title blinded them to the fact that the greater the title, the greater the service should be.

Knowledge without understanding. They just didn’t get it.

Knowing all of God’s words and not knowing his heart. They knew the limits but didn’t know love.

They failed to understand that God’s words give life.

Jesus has told us that if these divine rules are to amount to anything, we must put them into practice. Our lives must produce fruit. We must blossom. We must produce.

We must live to the full. God’s directions and directives are not to restrict our lives but to enable them to be lived to the fullest extent, and in so doing bring glory to God.

To fully live, we must reach beyond ourselves. We must confront our comfort zones. We must grow.

To live to the full, we must grow.

We must grow.

Those who would lead us in another direction are thieves, whether teacher, preacher, self-proclaimed person of God, or Satan himself.  The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.

If you are leading people away from abundant life, you are a thief.

You may sound knowledgeable.

You may deem yourself important.

You may have rank and status among those of the world or those in your religious hierarchy or those following you for whatever reason, but if you are leading people away from God—a God who has made himself known to us as a God of life and a God of love—then you are a thief.

If you value rules over relationships, you might just be a thief.

We have read this scripture before and most of the time, we might think, be on the lookout for the thief.

Today, I tell you, don’t be a thief.

Don’t take away from the abundant life that God has in store for us.

Don’t destroy that which God has intended for good.

Today, I personalize this text to say to us:  DON’T BE A THIEF.

 Don’t lead others down the wrong path.

Don’t turn away from life.

Don’t second guess God.

Put God’s words into practice.

·       That might mean more prayer.

·       That might mean more suffering.

·       It might mean more giving.

·       It might mean more peace that goes beyond what we can comprehend.

·       It will absolutely mean living this life as fully as we can.  Jesus didn’t come just so we could check the not going to hell box. He came so that we can really live and life means fullness.

This is just for the preacher, right?

We are all a Royal Priesthood. We are all leaders. We all set the example for the world. People should see our example and what we do should bring glory to God.

Let us experience life and joy and peace and the very presence of God. He died for us. We live for him.

He wants us to know the fullness of life not shrink back from it.

Be on the lookout for those who would steal and kill and destroy. They are working against us.

Be on the lookout that we do not become the thief.

Be on the lookout for life—the fullness of life—that Jesus wants us to know.

Be on the lookout.

Amen.