Spirit means for us to understand today and I pray
these things in Jesus name, Amen.
My name's Eric, I'm one of the
pastors here. Glad to be here with you today.
We are, as I said, in the book of Matthew.
And so if you have a Bible, pull up your Bibles to the book of
Matthew chapter 5. If you don't have one, we have
free Bibles at the welcome table and we would love to give you a
Bible to be able to follow along, take to take home.
And so today, as I said, we're in the book of Matthew.
And before we get into that, I just want to read to you some
interesting things about oaths 'cause we are in verses 33
through 37 and it's all about oaths.
Jesus does a teaching on what oaths are and whether we should
take them or not. And I've titled the message,
Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil because oaths are really
about being honest and keeping your word.
And so, interestingly, I was looking up some history about
people who've lied underoath. When you think about oaths, you
probably think about a witness in court having to put their
hand on the Bible saying swear to tell the whole truth and
nothing but the truth. So help me God.
That is an oath. And lying underoath is called or
perjury is a serious federal felony that can carry several
consequences, including fines and imprisonment for up to five
years. Now, here are some some of the
most notable in the past times that people have lied underoath.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was accused of perjury and
obstruction of justice during a sexual harassment lawsuit by
filed by Paula Jones. The core of the scandal centered
on his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
I'm sure many of you remember this.
The lie was that during a grand jury investigation, Clinton
denied Underoath that he had a sexual relationship with
Lewinsky. The consequences?
Though he was impeached by the House of Representatives, he was
acquitted by the Senate. He was also held in contempt of
court for giving intentionally false testimony in the Jones
case, received a five year suspension of his law license,
and paid a fine. Mark Fuhrman was a Los Angeles
Police Department detective and key witness in 1995 murder trial
of OJ Simpson. The lie Fuhrman testified
underoath that he had never used a racial slur in the past
decade. The discovery was that the
defense witness later produced a tape recordings of Fuhrman using
racial slurs more than 40 times. So his consequence was that he
he pled no contest and it ended his career in law law
enforcement. Another one, Bernie Madoff, a
former chairman of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, ran the largest
Ponzi scheme in history. The lie In 2005, Madoff
repeatedly lied underoath to the Securities and Exchange
Commission, misleading investigators about his
fraudulent investment strategy. The consequence was that he was
convicted of perjury in 2009 and he was, he was sentenced up to
150 years in prison for other numerous offenses in including
perjury. So I read all that to you to
bring up the past, to drudge it up.
All of us went through that as Americans watching the news
probably, but also to get into your mind this feeling, OK,
people are taking oaths and oaths are serious thing, right?
So what is an oath? I want to get into that.
Well, first let's let's read our verses about what Jesus has to
say, and then we'll dig into this concept of what oaths are.
Matthew chapter 533 through 37. Again, you have heard that it
was said to those of old, You shall not swear falsely, but
shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven,
for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his
footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great
King. And do not take an oath by your
head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
Let what you say be simply yes or no.
Anything more than this comes from evil.
So what is an oath? An oath is a formally affirmed
statement or promise accepted as an equivalent of an appeal to a
deity or to a revered person or thing.
So sometimes people swear, I guess if they don't believe in
God, they would swear to some other God or some other deity
that they're telling the truth, right?
The biblical definition is a solemn, binding promise, the
truth of which are affirmed by appeal to God as witness, right?
So when people say God is my witness or I swear to God or
hand on the Bible, these are oaths under the witness of God,
basically saying if I don't keep this, May God strike me dead or
judge me. So God himself makes oaths to
individuals in the Bible. We're going to look at that.
But Scripture makes clear the oaths should be made wisely and
not broken because they are serious.
So let's get to our first verse. As we break this down.
I've got three kind of key points.
The first is we're going to find out what an oath is, and we kind
of get a little bit of that in verse 33.
But I want to give you the context as well, so I'll read it
again. Again, you have heard that it
was said to those of old, You shall not swear falsely, but
shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
So he says again, why? Because we're in this place in
the book of Matthew called the Sermon on the Mount, where he is
preaching to his disciples. He's teaching them what it means
to be a follower of Jesus living in the Kingdom of God under God
as ultimate authority. And the Jewish people, some of
the Pharisees, the religious leaders are standing around
listening. They're they're within earshot.
And so this is a famous sermon where Jesus is contending with
the false teachings of the Pharisees and the religious
leaders of Judaism. And he's saying, you've heard
that it was said. And this is called the
antitheses of Jesus. There's six of them.
We're in the fourth one. You've heard that it was so said
and he quotes an Old Testament verse which actually Mike read
to us before the sermon in in Leviticus, and there's some
others which is in Leviticus 1912.
You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name
of your God. I am the Lord.
So Jesus is saying, you've heard that it was said and at first
glance it's not wrong, but they were taking this out of context.
You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what
you've sworn. The Pharisees were famous for
only looking at the letter of the law or the the only the most
literal interpretation of an Old Testament command.
And they were missing out on all the the spirit of what it meant,
the heart of the matter. And so they they took pains not
to swear to God, right. You've heard people say you
probably shouldn't do that because it's a sin if you say I
swear to God, but you're lying. You're thinning not to just some
person, but you're sinning against a holy God.
You're calling God to witness against you.
And so I think morally we all understand that, although in our
culture, I think it's a normal thing, it's kind of been watered
down and everybody says it now or just takes the Lord's name in
vain often like it's just some other word.
But the Pharisees, the Jewish people, were actually very
moral, very religious people who were serious about not taking
the Lord's name in vain, which is another commandment of the 10
commandments, but also not swearing things falsely because
of these commandments. They wanted to follow the law to
a tee. So again, they were right in the
sense that we shouldn't do that. We shouldn't be taking oaths
haphazardly calling God on us to witness against us.
And so this is found in Numbers chapter 30 and Deuteronomy
chapter 23. Also it says if a man vows A vow
to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he
shall not break his word. He shall do all that proceeds
out of his mouth. Where if you make a vow to the
Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the
Lord your God will surely require it of you and you will
be guilty of sin. So is it wrong to take oaths?
Because Jesus later in verse 34 of Matthew chapter 5 says, I say
to you, you shouldn't take oaths at all.
And then it goes on to share. And that will be in our second
point, which which what I'm going to get to is what all that
meant that he was talking about in verse 34.
But when he says you shall not take oaths at all, does that
mean that taking oaths are wrong?
No, you can't come to that conclusion.
Why? Because God even swore oaths in
the Bible to to promise his covenants with people.
One in particular I would think about is in this ceremonial oath
in Genesis chapter 15. If you didn't know, the book of
Genesis, you know, has a lot to say about creation and kind of
the first humans all the way up to Chapter 11, the flood and
everything. But then when we get to chapter
12 in Genesis, it zeroes in on God's favor on this one man
named Abraham. And this one man, he wants to
make a promise with him. He makes a covenant with him
whom later becomes, you know, the nation of Israel that we
know in the Old Testament. But but God makes a covenant of
blessing to Abraham that it says all the nations on earth will be
blessed through your seed, through your offspring.
Many nations will come out and they will be blessed.
And I'm going to bless them and favor them and, and, and from
them my name will be declared in all the earth, which that is
fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
Just so you know, that covenant is fulfilled when Jesus comes to
earth. Jesus comes from the bloodline
of Abraham all the way through. But that promise that he makes
with Abraham, he does this ceremonial ritual like an oath,
taking an oath. And in an oath, you have to
swear on something greater than yourself, since there's nothing
where no one greater than God. God swears by himself in this
oath. And in chapter 15, he tells
Abraham to take some animals and split them in half.
And he splits these animals down the middle and lays them on one
side and the other. And this was an ancient ceremony
where two people entering into a covenant or a contract would do
this. They would walk down the aisle
basically of these two split, these split animals and and
they're both agreeing to keep each side of their covenant.
And they would say, if I don't keep up my end of this covenant
or this contract, may may the what's happened to these animals
happen to me? OK, so in chapter 15 what we see
is Abraham falls asleep after he had split these two animals or
these animals in half to do this ceremony.
And Genesis 1517 says when the sun had gone down and it was
dark, behold a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed
between these pieces. Now what's going on there is
that God is swearing by himself. That is God, that smoking
firepot is, is an image of, of God, much like the, the burning
Bush in, in, in Exodus that came to Moses and, and, and said,
take your sandals off for you on holy ground.
God appeared in fire. And so in this ceremony, God is
taking an oath by himself. We know that through the rest of
Scripture, understanding that God is swearing by himself and
taking an oath. And there's several other places
in the Bible where God does this.
This is beautiful. By the way, Did you know that
that that ceremony is where we get the tradition of husband and
wife, you know, walking down the aisle in a marriage ceremony,
which by the way, is an oath or a vow.
When you get married, what do you say?
You're you're calling God as witness and you're saying till
death do us part. I promise this.
I promise that right. And again, in our culture, we've
kind of made that less of a priority or we don't think it's
as important as it is. And I just did 2 sermons on
adultery and and divorce last week talking about those things.
But now three weeks of marriage sermons, you know, not that this
is going to be about marriage, but evidently the Holy Spirit
does want us to really place marriage in its proper place of
of prominence to God. It's important to him in in
Hebrews 613, after Abraham was about to OfferUp his son on the
altar, and then God saved him and replaced him.
The the the New Testament author of Hebrews says, For when God
made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater whom to
swear by, he swore by himself, saying, surely I will bless you
and multiply you. This is the same covenant that
God continues to reaffirm through the Old Testament with
an oath by himself to himself, even this thing called the
Melchizedek priesthood, which Jesus himself holds, and no one
else can hold this office. I'll explain that to you in a
moment. The same thing is said about
this. It says, and it was not without
an O or and it was not without an oath, for those who formerly
became priests were made such without an oath, but this one
was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him, the
Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.
You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
So that Melchizedek priesthood that the Hebrew author ascribes
now to Jesus is saying that the Lord has sworn that Jesus holds
this office forever. Now again in the Old Testament,
when a a priest couldn't hold the an office forever and they
they had to be replaced. Why?
Because those priests would die, and so that somebody else had to
take the place in Jesus's case, in the Melchizedek Priesthood
case, Jesus can't die and will always hold the office of
Melchizedek Priesthood. Therefore, when an oath is taken
to say that someone else is taking this new priesthood
called the Melchizedek Priesthood, that is a false oath
and a lie. I'm telling you that now.
That's just an application to us.
But the bigger point here is that God makes oaths by himself
in the Bible. Oaths are not wrong and they're
very serious also, and so we should take them seriously.
All oaths should be done under God, and one should be afraid to
do this in a false manner. Deuteronomy 613 Again, it is
Lord your God. You shall fear, Him you shall
serve, and by his name you shall swear.
So in a sense, there's almost commands to take oaths in the
Old Testament, including God himself taking them.
Humans took oaths under God for covenants, contracts, promises.
In Genesis chapter 24, Abraham and his servant Abraham wanted
to find a wife for his son Isaac and and he said to his servant,
go find go help him find a wife or go go out and find him one.
But do not take them from the Canaanites.
Take a, a wife from the Canaanites, swear to me under
God, make an oath or a pact with me that you'll go to my own
people, back to my own land to find a wife for him.
And what did they do to carry out this oath?
It's kind of weird or interesting.
Maybe you've heard it before, but they, they each put a hand
under each other's thigh. It was like this symbol of, of
OK, I'm, I'm swearing to this oath.
We find many things like that in Scripture.
And so where would oaths be appropriate for us today?
Again, I talked about marriage vows, the president, when the
president is sworn into office, that certainly should be before
God, Underoath, right? As long as we try to remain a
nation with Christian values, I'm always going to vote for the
president that leans more that direction than the other way.
But I certainly want him to stand before God, not just the
people, because I think we've proven in our own, our own even
government that it's corrupt. And you can't always.
Like in Bill Clinton's case, it took a lot to try to impeach
him, and the Senate still saved him.
So I would feel a lot safer if my president is not just under
the under the accountability of the people in their votes, but
under God and his accountability.
So that's an appropriate thing when the president swears on the
Bible and is sworn into office, witnesses underoath in court.
We read some examples of that. Again, God is a God of justice,
and God has established, even in imperfect, corrupt governments,
still a way to carry out justice and.
That's why you see it's still happening in our courtrooms
today that people swear on the Bible.
Did you know that baptism is an oath?
Actually, we did a teaching on this many, many months ago that
baptism, when you get baptized, yes, it is a symbolism, but
that's what oaths are, right? Like a symbolism of what we
believe and A and a commitment or a covenant relationship.
And so when someone goes into the water and comes up, they're
saying, I commit my life to following Jesus.
And I believe that when I go into the water and come up, that
symbolizes my death and resurrection with Jesus Christ
in his death and resurrection. And now I'm going to follow him.
I'm going to publicly declare it in front of all people and I'm
going to follow him. Baptism is an oath that we take
in the eyes under the accountability and the witness
of God. We're calling God to witness.
That's why we take it seriously here at church about baptism.
It's not just something some Willy nilly thing where it's
like, you know, everybody's doing it or you know, I, I want
to do this because I feel like it.
It's we've got to understand all that it means that we're doing
before we actually go into the waters of baptism.
Now, it doesn't mean you have to know everything and be a
theologian about it, but you should certainly understand what
it means that you're doing. So again, oaths aren't the wrong
thing at all, but they are unnecessary outside of official
use. And I think that's the heart of
what we're getting at. And so my next point is this.
Oaths are oftentimes made in everyday life with the intention
to deceive. Let's read the verse.
But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven,
for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his
footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great
King. And do not take an oath by your
head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
So what's going on here is that the Pharisees, as I mentioned
before, we're famous for being legalist, meaning looking only
at the literal OK, I shouldn't swear falsely under God or call
call to witness God on an oath. So what they were doing because
they're they're legalists or lawyers are great at looking for
loopholes. How can I get out of sinning
against God but still take oaths and do things that I want to do
in an in a deceptive manner? Because what they were doing was
they were instead of swearing to God and making a promise to
someone under God, it was I'll take an oath by heaven.
I'm not quite saying God right. You see the heart behind that
where it's like, I'll swear by the throne.
It's not quite swearing to God, but I'll swear by the throne.
And then they would, if they didn't fulfill their contract
or, or, or or commitment to the person, they would just say,
well, that's too bad for you, but at least I didn't sin
against God by the earth. They would swear by the earth or
swear by Jerusalem deceiving people, right?
Because in a sense you're thinking this person is a holy
religious person. They wouldn't swear on these
holy things that God has made and not keep up their oath,
right? Even by your own head.
And and so that here the, the principle here is, is that
swearing by God or anything he created is the same thing
because God alone is sovereign who created the heavens, who,
who where his throne exists. He created the earth, the city
of Jerusalem, even created our heads.
He created our whole beings, right.
And so to swear by any of these things, thinking you're getting
away with something. Technically Jesus is saying,
Nope, you're not getting away with this one.
You're still guilty by taking these false, false OS to deceive
people. Now we probably don't do this.
I mean, maybe some of you guys say that.
I swear to God, I hope you don't or if if you have been this
whole time, This is why we have the word of God.
It's for our sanctification. It's for our becoming holier and
holier learning to how to please God with our lives rather than
do what we think is right. So there's no condemnation.
Why? Because I could probably say
with very with assurance and confidence that we've all sinned
and broken this very thing that Jesus is talking about swear
swearing by something and not and then not holding up our end
of the bargain. When we were kids, we used to do
fingers behind the back, right? Fingers crossed behind the back.
You ever do? That seems so innocent, right?
That's just the beginning of the training for these little
centers, you know, And then we grow up and we start breaking
all of our promises, fingers behind the back, or have you
ever said, I swear on my mother's grave?
That's that would be terrible, right?
People done it actually. So we were watching, you know,
we were binging Survivor for a long time.
And if you've ever watched Survivor, the whole name of the
game is deception. And several times someone who's
either sworn on their kids or sworn on their whole family or
their wife and then gone against it.
And actually, there's a few, few of the people who will never
outlive their bad reputation now because they were so deceptive
to try to win the game that they would actually swear on their
family to try to get to someone to believe them.
That's what we're talking about here.
That's what the Pharisees were doing.
I mean, and isn't that what life is like?
So they say in the game of Survivor, it's a microcosm of
the reality of, you know, this world that we live in.
Not that I'm promoting that, nor do I believe in their, you know,
ideologies or politics at all. But in some sense, you get a
small group of people together, you throw them on an island.
It really does show you how sinful people are.
OK, it's kind of like marriage. You take two sinners together,
you put them together for a long enough time and then they have
kids and you, you start to realize, man, we're all messed
up, you know, but but it really just shows us that in the game
of life, we think we're we, we need to deceive people to get by
right to gain, to gain money, right to to make a name for
ourselves in a career. How many people have lied, lied
in the application process, you know, or, or lie to get ahead,
say that you have some experience that you don't really
have, right. Lying people to get ahead is
really our world. We all do it.
We've done it at some point in time.
And what we need to understand is that we're not just being
deceptive to people and God's like, oh, at least they're not
swearing to me. No, because you know, the, the,
the, the 10 commandments or the greatest commandments are summed
up in love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength
and love your neighbor as yourself.
You're not loving God or your neighbor when you lie to people,
when you when you're twisting the truth a little bit,
embellishing the truth or omitting the truth, right.
Some different types of lying is just outright lying to get away
with something. You did something wrong and you
don't want to fess up to it to experience the consequences.
So you just outright lie or you did something you should have
told somebody but you didn't. That's called the lie of
omission. Leaving the truth out a half
truth is telling part of the truth, but not telling the whole
truth. Embellishing is, hey, I caught a
fish that was 1 foot or 12 inches, but it was really 19.
Like I'm telling people 19 inches, right?
We think we make fun of that. It is a joke.
It is funny, right? Why, why is it that we have to
try to look good in front of other people?
So we just puff it up a little bit Because we're sinners at
heart. I mean, there's all kinds of
things wrong with us. We're, we're insecure, we don't
trust God. We don't trust God that if we
just tell the truth, that he'll bless us, that he'll bless our
career, that he's actually really in control and he
actually wants his people to tell the truth.
And if we would just follow him, he would he'll take care of us.
Says that we can lie to people for the greater good to get a
get our religion to have more influence.
Like if we're trying to accomplish something for God in
the name of God, it's OK to lie to people.
I mean, that's just totally antithetical to God, who is all
true and there are no lies in him.
And if we are Christians, then we're supposed to try to be like
God and he we don't do it on our own.
He helps us to get there, but our goal is to be like Christ.
Christ never lied. He never had to water things
down or embellish. He never had to over exaggerate.
He never had to lie to get his. He died.
He was being questioned in a
court of law and he could have easily lied there and lied to
people. OK, maybe I'm not who I say I
am, but because he is only full of the truth and he cannot lie,
he had to tell the truth when they asked him Underoath.
Basically they said I adjure you by the living God, are you the
Christ, the Son of the living God?
And he said yes, you have said so.
And he knew that when he answered that, that he would be
taken to the cross and he would be brutally beaten along the
way. He didn't have to lie to
accomplish his mission. And if we're Christians, we
don't have to do that either. Exodus 20, where the 10
commandments are, I believe that this it's all about lying.
But but three of the 10 commandments actually handle
this. It's the second, the 8th and the
9th. The 2nd is you shall not take
the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold
him guiltless. Who takes his name in vain?
If I swear by God's name to people and then do it
haphazardly or lying, I've broken the second commandment.
That's not just about saying his name as a swear word, it's also
using his name in a false way. Here's the 8th commandment.
You shall not steal. Well, a lot of stealing has to
do with lying. When you lie, let's say lie on
your taxes, you know, when you lie in a business transaction,
what? What else are you doing?
You're stealing, 9th Commandment.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
That's lying. You're lying about someone in
order to get out of some trouble or to get them into some
trouble. Again, this is all about lying,
and we should not be liars as Christians, not to win a game,
not to get ahead, not to make ourselves look better, not to
gain money, not even to protect ourselves.
Colossians 39 says do not lie to one another, seeing that you
have put off the old self with its practices and have put on
the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the
image of its creator. So that's my my final point is
this that Christians should be known for telling the truth.
Here's what Jesus goes on to say in verse 37.
Let what you say be simply yes or no.
Anything more than this comes from evil.
When we're asked a question about if we did this or that or
if we if we will do this or that, just tell the truth and
say yes or no. It shouldn't be that hard,
right? Why is it so hard to tell the
truth? I believe we need to be a people
that's more direct in our relationships.
Often times we're more passive aggressive and we have this
people pleasing mentality. So when someone asks us to do
something and we know we don't really want to do it and we're
going to hold bitterness in our hearts or something, we say yes
because we don't want to offend them or we want to.
Maybe even with good intentions. We want to carry something out,
but we need to be honest with people in our relationship.
I mean, this is about loving other people.
Now we need to learn how to say yes and no like nicely, you
know, Proverbs says a harsh answer, you know, or a soft
answer turns away wrath. So there's some wisdom in this.
Again, we can't, we're not going to just be literalist legalist
here and be like, no or yes, you know, like that's the heart of
this is being honest, being truthful.
And so, you know, sometimes we might have good intentions and
we say, yeah, I'll come help you move or yeah, I'll come do that
or yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll carry out that, that project.
Or you tell your boss, yes, right.
When you're really like, no, I hate this guy.
I don't want to do this. He is.
I can't believe he's even asking me, you know, like that's I'm
telling you, I'm, I'm in your head right now.
I know that's what you're thinking.
I've been there. By the way, I want you to know
I'm a Sinner with you. But this is who we are and this
is what needs to change is what God, the Holy Spirit is saying
to us. This is what Jesus is saying to
us. We need to be a people that if
we make commitments, then we should follow through with
those, right? And so here's where I'm going to
get out. The people, who are they?
They always use the excuse I'm unorganized.
Why can I talk to those people? Because I've used that excuse
several times in my own life. OK, you make a commitment.
You told someone, yes, I'll do this or that.
And then when that time comes around, no action has happened,
right? And and the reality is is
there's and then you say, oh, I just forgot.
Like, what are you telling the other person?
What you said to me was not important and my own words of
commitment were not important. That's what you're telling the
person. And I know, I know that I have
offended my own wife in that I have, I've done that to people
before. I'm trying to grow as a pastor,
you know, when all these requests come my way or
whatever. And there's a lot of people and,
and yes, sometimes pastors use this excuse, which they
shouldn't is we're just so busy. Everybody's busy, but we've got
to be a people. I'm in this with you.
We're all together here. We've got to be a people that
can start holding their commitments.
And that means then if I'm an unorganized person, but I commit
to something, then I better hurry and write it down.
I better put it on a calendar or something and make sure that I'm
going to keep my word. Why?
Because it's not just about the importance between me and that
person, which I'm called to do. But if you love God, then
keeping our commitments and not not keeping our commitments,
then to other people can also be sinful.
Doing what we say we're going to do is called integrity.
But then yes, the opposite side is true.
Also, like I said, like don't people tell.
Don't tell people yes or no if in your heart you're going to be
mad at them for answering yes or no when you really didn't
actually want to do the thing. You've got to be honest to
people. Here's where I'm going to be
really challenging to all of us liars.
We need to stop being like the devil.
Why? John 844 says you are your of
the He's talking to the Pharisees.
You are. This is Jesus, you're of your
father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.
He was the murderer from the beginning and does not stand in
the truth because there is no truth in him.
When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a
liar and the father of lies. Where did untruthfulness come
from? And deception come from?
Satan himself. And he's continuing to do that.
He's a pro, he's the professional, he's the father of
lies. Second Thessalonians 29 talks
about he will use deception to deceive people even into
believing false things. It says the coming of the
lawless 1 is is by the activity of Satan with all power and
false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those
who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so
be saved. Satan is actively using false
teaching, lies and deception to go against God's people.
We should not be switching sides then.
This is what the Christian life looks like.
If there was a line here, we would be like constantly jumping
over this line. You know, I'm on Satan's side,
God's side, Satan's side, God's side.
Why? Because every time we sin, we're
basically siding with Satan. I know that's harsh and, and I'm
let me just say, we're never going to stop sinning this side
of heaven, but we should be diligent about trying to sin
less. And, and how do we do that?
We don't do it in our own power. We do it in the power of the
Holy Spirit. Whom God gives us by faith in
Jesus Christ at the moment of faith and after that, then we
also have a command to walk by the Spirit and all the sin lists
lying is in there. And how do we fight against the
the passions of the flesh? We use the power of the Holy
Spirit. We walk by Him and do the things
that are going to feed our soul, reading the Word and prayer and
gathering with other people who aren't liars and don't take the
Lord's name in vain. People that tell you show you
what it's like to to share the truth no matter what the
consequence, even we need to take it seriously.
Psalm 51 says in verse 6, behold, you delight in truth in
the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
God is teaching us wisdom through his Holy Spirit in our
new hearts that He's given us and He delights in and when we
follow that truth that He's implanted in US.
James, the brother of Jesus actually echoes the words many
years later after Jesus ascends to heaven and James writes his
book and here's how serious he says, he says, but above all my
brothers like this is like the the last chapter of his book.
He he lists all these things and he says, but above all, my
brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any by
any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no so that
you may not fall under condemnation.
It's a big deal. We shouldn't be swearing by
things. We should be telling the truth.
We should be known for being direct truth tellers like a
Jesus. You've been with us in this
series. It's probably been pretty
intense because what we thought about Jesus might be different
than what we read in the in the gospels.
Like he's a direct guy. I wouldn't say he's a people
pleaser, but I also wouldn't say that he's mean or rude.
He is the perfect man who is loving, gracious and kind but
tells the truth every time. And that's what we should be
aspiring to. This is a foreign concept to our
world. But you know who needs to hear
the truth? It's our world.
We should not be affirming things that we don't agree with
morally to keep peace either when we just don't say something
about something. Right now I do think that we
need to be clicked to quick, to quick to listen, quick to hear
and I'm getting the the quote wrong, right.
Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
We shouldn't just say whatever we feel comes to our mouth about
something that we react to. But at the same time, when we
have people around us that are living in sin and God provides
the opportune time to tell the truth, tell the truth when it's
the time to tell to stick up for Jesus.
Stick up for Jesus no matter what the consequences.
We've seen that recently, like even even in our brother Charlie
Kirk. He was known for telling the
truth. And while he's not a perfect man
and sometimes it might across came across then in different
ways because he's not Jesus. What I would say that I feel
envy or honor towards the man for was that he was direct and
telling the truth about Jesus and he talked about sin.
Now we can have grace, we can let things go, and if we're
humble, we can realize that a lot of us have a lot of sin and
shouldn't be casting stones at everybody.
This doesn't mean we get to go out and be jerks because you and
I are so sinful. How are we going to call
everybody else out? Jesus said take the the plank
out of your own eye before you remove the speck out of your
brother's eye. We've got to be humble.
But it is the truth that saves and changes hearts.
It's not capitulating to the culture around us, affirming
things that shouldn't be affirmed just so that we can
maybe win some influence or not get persecuted because of our
faith. We shouldn't be lying underoath.
We shouldn't be making promises that we can't keep.
We need to be honest with ourselves and others.
Do you want to commit to this without thing?
Say yes or no. Be known as the truth teller,
but do it in love because the consequences of lying are are
many. If you're a Christian and you
feel guilty about it, you feel shame, you feel misery
sometimes. So just tell the truth, When you
lie, you hurt relationships, people can't trust you anymore.
And what we've seen is sometimes lying puts you in prison.
And for those who are not believers in Christ for the
forgiveness of their sins, lying puts you in hell.
So what we need to do is be truth tellers and the most
important truth that we all agree upon is the person and
work of Jesus Christ who came and died for all of us liars in
the room and all the ones out of the room that believe and trust
in Him. And by God's grace, we will go
on to tell the truth more and more until we meet him in
heaven. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your truth.
We thank you for your words. Thank you for forgiving A Sinner
like me, like us here today, who have told many lies in our
lifetime. Convict us, Lord, help us to be
cleansed from all of the spots and stains.