The Ninth Commandment

We tell stories to help shape our values and our morals. For 2,500 years, parents have been teaching their children Aesop's fables to help them understand the importance of telling the truth, of being honest. I was raised on stories that taught me that telling the truth was always right. These were warning fables, warning folklore. For instance, the boy that cried wolf. There's the boy who's over the sheep and he keeps coming into town and crying wolf, but there is no wolf and eventually people just stopped trusting him. And when there was a wolf and he needed help, they did not come to his aid. There was a story of George Washington. Maybe he cut down a cherry tree and when asked about it, he said, I cannot tell a lie. These were stories taught to us as children to teach us the importance of morality and truth telling. Sadly, I think our culture is more shaped by another president's account, the 42nd president instead of the first. When Bill Clinton was asked if he had a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, he said no. And then he had the audacity when called to equivocate on the word is trying to continue a lie to get out of Islam. We talked about a few weeks ago that the family is a fabric of society and the family is the way the family goes, all society will go. And the most important thing about a family is that it's built up by people who can trust one another. It's interesting, there's a great philosopher. He wasn't a Christian, but Christians actually quoted him often. His name was Cicero. He was before Christ and he had a great treatise on friendship. And one of the striking things about his philosophy of friendship was that friendship can really only happen between two virtuous people. You cannot be friends with someone who's a man or a woman of vice. It takes two virtuous people and the best, the most essential virtue, the most essential virtue is telling the truth. You can't have friendship with someone who doesn't tell the truth because friendship is trusting someone else. How much more should we as a church, not just friends, but we're brothers and sisters confessing that we believe in the God of truth, the God who has given his message of truth, we must build our relationship on the truth, the truth as it's been delivered to us from God. Our message this morning is this. God has called us to be his people committed to his truth in our beliefs and our words. God has called us to be his people committed to his truth in our beliefs and our words. We're studying the Ten Commandments. If you're new with us, we're in Exodus 20. We've been studying the book of Exodus. We've seen that God took his people out of slavery. God delivered them with his mighty right arm. He's now carried them through the wilderness. He's establishing them to be his nation, his holy people, so that when he puts them in the promised land, they will act like his people. And the Ten Commandments are the most essential truths of God for how his people are supposed to act. And we're now to the command, you shall not lie. We must tell the truth. Last week, we I hope we were all convinced were thieves in need of confessing our our stealing and we see that God is the God who gives life to thieves. This morning, we'll see that we are all liars and we need to trust the God of truth. I want to first walk through the different ways we lie. We lie to others about ourselves. We lie to others about ourselves. And this takes place with our exaggerations and our embellishments. We want people to think more of us than there really is. We leave out details that may make folks think differently about us. So we boast a little bit and embellish on the good parts. And we leave out the things we don't want people to know. Secondly, we lie to others about others. This is slander. We lie to others about other folks, so we we tell lies about others to our friends to to make others look bad. We also lie to others about God. We'll see this explicitly in first John, we lie to others about God when we profess Christ and we do not live according to that, we lie to others. We're supposed to be witnesses of God and who he is with our actions, with our words. We lie to others about God when we are not faithful in that. We don't just lie to others, we lie to ourselves. I actually think we probably lie to ourselves more than we lie to other people. This is how we lie to ourselves. First, we lie to ourselves about ourselves. We typically think we're better than we really are. We typically think more of ourselves than we really should. And this comes out when we think, I deserve better. I deserve better than I have. If you deserve better than you have, God would give you better than you have. But we lie to ourselves. We constantly think we deserve better than what we truly have. We also can think too low of ourselves. We can beat ourselves up unnecessarily. So we lie to ourselves about us. We also lie to ourselves about others. Have you ever looked at someone and said, I'm not going to say hello to them? Have you ever seen someone walk in the room and try to figure out a way to avoid them? You're lying to yourself about them saying they are not worthy of even my greeting. You're lying to yourself about them that they're not worthy of honor. And recognition. Finally, we lie to ourselves about God. This is a dangerous one. It's easy to start thinking there's no way God could love me. We can even say God cannot love me. We can lie to ourselves about God and thinking that we've sinned so much that he could not love us. It's a lie. The other extreme is lying to ourselves about God by saying, God doesn't mind if I do this little sin. God doesn't mind if I do this, surely. He's so busy and so worried about all the other great sinners in the world. He won't mind if I entertain this particular sin. We're all liars, and then this is just scratching the surface of the lies. As we have done with the last few commandments, The sermon we broke up based upon four questions. The first question, what does this command mean? So we'll just look at the command in itself. You shall not lie or you should not bear false witness against your neighbor. Secondly, we'll look at the rationale. We'll ask a bigger question. Why is this command here? Why is this command so important? What is lying and why is it in these commandments? Next, we'll ask how did Christ fulfill this command? And then we'll ask, how does this command apply to us today as God's new covenant people? So our first question, what does this command mean? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Now, this is actually not just saying you should not lie. It's a very specific kind of line. The context here will be a court. Someone has been brought before the elders of Israel and a charge has been brought to them. And Moses, this commandment is saying, you shall not bear false witness against them. You shall not come and lie about what you know. So they either make this person guilty or innocent. So the context is that there's no policeman in this, this, this, this, this, these people. They're not that organized yet. They just have elders and then they have their neighbors, and it's a big community watch. And so if your neighbor brought something against your other neighbor, they would ask you to come and testify. And this is simply saying you go and you tell the truth because your neighbor deserves a fair trial. The goal here is a just trial. It's truth. It's truth telling because your neighbor deserves justice. Now, before we move on and ask the rationale, that's a simple command. We're going to get bigger in terms of the bigger picture of lying. But I want to start with a simple application. When we lie, we lose the trust of others. It's actually easy, I think, to forgive a lie. The hard part is trusting that person again. That's why lying is so dangerous and so destructive. If someone lies to you, to forgive them for the lie, that's one thing. But to then entrust yourself to them. Children, hear this. Setting a pattern of lying is dangerous for your own well-being. First, because you become paranoid about what people will find out about your lying. Secondly, it distorts your reality. It's exhausting to try to keep up with all the lies to make sure you don't get caught. More so, you're slowly losing trust. You're slowly destroying your reputation. Children learn to lie quickly because they know if they confess to doing something wrong, there's consequences. And so they begin to try to figure out ways of avoiding those consequences. The consequences you would get for whatever you've done wrong is much better than losing your parents' trust. Be committed to tell the truth and seek the respect of others. The second big question. What is the rationale or the bigger picture of this command? It's interesting, we don't actually have to go that far out of context to think about the bigger picture of life. We have to go to the third command. You shall not take the Lord's name in vain. This is a command that's really focused on making promises to others. If you make a promise and you are a child of Yahweh, you are carrying the name of Yahweh in that promise. It's a seal on the promise. And so when you lie, you're taking the Lord's name in vain. We already see that lying is important or telling the truth is important. Lying is destructive because you you muddy God's name when you lie. Let me read a few other verses, Psalm five, verses four to six, for you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful should not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. Beginning in Proverbs 6, verse 16. Proverbs 6, verse 16. There are six things that the Lord hates. Seven that are an abomination to him. haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil. A false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among the brothers. One other verse, Proverbs 12, 22. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. But those who act faithfully are his delight. The most basic element here, God hates lies. God hates liars because God is a God of truth. He has given us his truth and he expects us to reflect him. As image bearers, we are to reflect God. And if he is a God of truth, we are to be people of truth. To truly understand the power and evil of a lie, we need to go to Genesis 3. You can go to the front of your Bible. If you don't have a Bible, there are Bibles there in the pew in front of you. This is the temptation of Adam and Eve, and it begins with a lie. The serpent shows up and he asks a question first. Notice how he gets in their mind before stating the bold-faced lie. He simply asks a question. Did he say that you cannot eat of any tree in the garden? Now, God didn't say you couldn't eat of any tree in the garden. He said you can eat anything you want. Everything's yours except one tree. But Satan here, he begins by asking a question and flipping and twisting the truth here. Truth here. Did he say you cannot eat of any tree in the garden? He's getting them to already question the goodness of God. He's already put in their mind the question, is God Good. Are his instructions worthy to be followed? Eve answers and Satan then becomes more bold in his deception. Surely you will not die. Surely you will not die. You will become like God's. If you read it. Here the lie gets bold. I mean, he's very clear. He is now telling them something against what God has said. The first lie in humanity came from outside, but I believe that Adam and Eve are culpable for this lie. I believe they themselves are culpable of lying here in this lie because they believe it. See, when we hear truth, when we hear statements, when we hear words, we have to say to ourselves, I believe that to be true or false. And when they heard this lie, they weighed it. They weighed Satan and his words, and they weighed God and his words, and they said, I'm doubting God. And what this person is saying, what this deceiver is saying is true. They're comfortable of lying because they've lied to themselves. They bought the lie. They chose to agree with Satan. And they chose to disregard what God Almighty, their Creator, had said. They weren't forced to eat that apple. It was cunning. It was clever. It was deceptive. He's a powerful agent of deception. But they themselves had to believe it and then lie to themselves that this was true. Now, if you were here last week, I've now said that there are a couple of lying. If you were here last week, I said there were also a couple of stealing. They stole fruit from God. And I want to make sure that some people aren't saying, but is it stealing or is it lying? What did they do first? They did both. The question we shouldn't ask isn't what sin am I culpable of? It's actually how many times in my life am I culpable of all of these sins? In every action, we break multiple commands. Let me give you an example. If a married man commits adultery, first, it's pretty obvious that he's broken the command, do not commit adultery. Further, he had to commit the command against coveting, which we'll get to next week. He had to covet the woman before he committed adultery with her. Next, he had to break the command we're looking at today, lying. He made vows, he made promises to his wife. He's now broken those, so he's a liar. He's robbing his neighbor's rights, so he's a thief. He's taking the Lord's name in vain because he made a promise to that woman in the name of the Lord that he would be monogamous and committed to her. He's probably not honoring his parents. And he's not worshiping God alone. In that one act, you could actually say this man is guilty of every single commandment. That's who we are. That's what we're saying, I am evil, born in sin. It's not how many of the commands we've broken, how often do we break all of them throughout our day? Let's return to the fundamental truth. And that is that God is truth and he is trustworthy. Adam and Eve are pressed in. They are told a lie and they have God's word and they have the lie and they chose foolishly. The most basic theological lesson is that God is truth. God is truth first because he alone keeps his word. He alone is actually able to keep his promises. Let's go back to that the newlywed when we were Well, those of us who have been married for a while or married for a day, in fact, we make promises on our wedding day. Raise your hand if you've kept any of those promises fully, completely and perfectly. Well, good. No one's a liar in that context. No, no one raised their hand in case you didn't look back, but you make these promises and we want to keep those promises. We want to love our wives. We want to love our husbands, but we're not able to. We're simply not able to keep our promises because we're sinners. God alone is able to keep his word. He alone is always faithful to every word he says. Secondly, God alone knows all truth because God alone speaks truth. He is the one who's declared everything that is. He has declared everything that is good. He knows what is true. He has declared what is true. He himself is the truth. It's the perversion of those things that are lies. We take God's good truth and we twist it. We pervert it. So our most basic problem is that we deny God because we love the lie. We love sin. Romans 1.25 explains our most basic problem. For they, or we can say we, exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than creator who is blessed forever. Amen. That's us. That takes us all the way back to Adam. That is a great summary statement of what happened in the garden when Satan tempted Adam and Eve. They gave up God's truth. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. It describes us. We forsake God's goodness for a lie. We refuse him and his right, righteous instructions. We believe the lie. Friends, we hear this morning, I hope, a call to truth. We are called to love the truth. God has spoken and we must learn to love the truth because we naturally love the lie. By our nature, by our sinful inclination, we are prone to love the lie. That means we must learn to love the truth. That means we must hear the truth regularly. We must be in his truth regularly. We must pursue his truth and let it test us. Here's the here's something scary that I'm tempted to do. When we look at God's word, sometimes we don't understand something. Sometimes it seems so bold and even sometimes harsh, and I want to think, well, how can we soften this? How can I make reason based on what I think is true of God's word? What I'm doing when I do that is I'm judging God's word, and that's not the way it's supposed to be. We don't stand over God's word and say that can't be true or that can't be the way it is. No, God's word stands over us. It is a judge of us. It must test us. It must refine what we believe, what we think, how we live. We don't judge it. We have no ground to stand upon to tell it, to tell God what is right or just or true. Secondly, we see the power of words. God created this world with a spoken word. God revealed Jesus Christ as the word became flesh. We realize the power of words. We know how much power, how much power words have over us. We must realize that the power of our words can sway people must realize the power of our words can be destructive or can be encouraging. We must learn to use our words wisely. Let us ask our third question. God is truth, that is why lying is sinful, is a summary of the second question. Let's move to our third question. How did Christ fulfill the command? How did Christ fulfill this command? First, let's turn to Revelation 1-5. We're going to look at a few texts here. That's on page 1028 if you're using a pew Bible. Revelation 1-5. John says, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness. The firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on the earth. Those last two descriptions. It shows the absolute authority Jesus has. As the risen king of kings, he has authority over any other earthly authority. He has all authority because he is the true king, the king of the truth. It declares he's the faithful witness. This really stands out because he's a faithful witness in a world that's full of liars. That's where we live. We live in a world full of liars, and here we see Jesus Christ, the one who tells us the truth. He alone is perfectly truthful and always tells the truth. We lie and we bear false witness. Christ tells the truth. This is important because of the context of revelation. Look at the very first verse. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He's a faithful witness in this book that is disclosing God's glory. He's a faithful witness in the midst of this book that's unraveling, it's revealing what God is saying, this is what's going to happen. It declares and discloses the mystery. It tells us that sinners who persist in sin, they will suffer the wrath of God. Sinners who persist in sin, sinners who continue in sin and do not turn from their sin, they will suffer forever in hell the wrath of God. Secondly, It tells us that sinners who believe, they will be adorned as the bride of Christ. Every blemish will be washed away. We will be forgiven by His blood and we will live forever, praising and glorifying the name of Jesus Christ. It shows us that there are two ways to live. Revelation 22 verse 14 actually lays this out very clearly. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life, that they may enter the city by the gates. But outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers and idolaters, everyone who loves and practices falsehood. Everyone who continues to love the lie and practice the lie, they will be outside of the city gates where Jesus' name is being praised by those who have been saved by him and confessed him. Let's go to John 1, beginning in verse 14, that's on page 886, if you're using a pew Bible. John 1, 1 through 14. Getting back to the power of the Word. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He who comes before me, He who comes after me, ranks before me, because He was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. Here he's the word, he is the true declaration and he's contrasted with Moses. Now what John is not saying is that Moses was telling a lie. Now, as we've been looking at how Christ fulfills the law, I propose that what that means is that the law anticipates Christ fulfills. The law and everything Moses wrote, everything in the Old Testament is pointing forward. It's anticipating the truth, capital T, that will come, grace that will come fully and finally and efficiently in Jesus Christ. The contrast is interesting because it says Moses, and it says no one's ever seen God. The thing that strikes me most about Moses is he he hid his eyes from God when God first revealed himself. And then after walking and talking with God for some time, he he had the boldness. God, let me see your glory. And God says, you cannot see my glory. That's what's so important here is that no one's ever seen God. Except. Except the God himself who came down and took on flesh. Jesus is the son of God. He is the one who's revealed him perfectly in all of his beauty and his glory and his truth. We can see God when we see Jesus Christ, because he's the son of God. He's from the bosom of God. He's from the right side of God. He is essential. He is in his essence God and he reveals him perfectly. That's why it's important to see the truth. So then we recognize the lie. Another passage we won't look at, but it's Hebrews one. Declares God spoke to our fathers by the prophets and these last days he's spoken to us by a son is saying the same thing John is saying in John one. Everything that was partial is now fulfilled. Everything that was partial in Revelation is now complete because God himself has come and spoken to us. It's not just a man, it's God who became man. What is it that Jesus says? What is it that Jesus said that's so important? The first thing Jesus tells us is that the first importance, I believe, of what Jesus is revealing is who God is. Jesus wants us to know who God truly is. God is holy. He's perfectly righteous. God is just. He judges sinners with justice. He is faithful. He loves us out of his great love. He abhors the haughty and the self-righteous. God reveals who God is. He also reveals who we are. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. He came to save sinners. And this is important, because if we don't acknowledge that we're sinners in need of saving, we we miss we miss Jesus. We don't we don't see who he truly is and what he's revealing. We we don't trust him. We must recognize how offensive we are to God and how far removed we are from God in our rebellion. That's what Jesus teaches concern the reconciliation. of sinners with God is so important. Let's go back to that concept of the faithful witness. He's the faithful witness, John tells us in Revelation 1 5. When we die, we will stand before God and he will be the just judge and we will be silent. We will not be able to speak a word in our defense because it'll be clear to us because it is clear to God how offensive we have lived our lives in rebellion to him. There will be no witness. on our behalf, unless we believe in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus Christ and his death for you and his forgiveness of sins and his resurrection, he comes in and he becomes a faithful witness. He comes in and he tells the father, Father, yes, this one sinned greatly, but the punishment of his sins was put on me when I died on the cross. Therefore, let him into the gates. Let him into our home. Let him in spotless, without blemish. He's the faithful witness that when we believe in him, he testifies on our behalf. But friend, if you don't believe in Jesus, there is no one who will testify. You will suffer the consequences of your own sin. Our last question. What does this command mean for us today? First, lying makes us enemies with God. Lying makes us enemies with God. John 8, 44. Jesus says to the Pharisees, you are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. When we lie, we're imaging the devil, not God. When we tell the truth, we're reflecting God. When we're telling a lie, we're reflecting the devil. When we lie, we are continuing the propaganda and the purposes of Satan himself, the murderer. When we lie, we're sharing the news of Satan. We're just like him when we lie, because this is what we're doing when we lie. We're telling people, trust us when I'm actually untrustworthy. That's what Satan was saying in the garden. Hey, trust me, you can have that tree. I've got you covered. He's trying to get them to trust him when he is completely untrustworthy. When we tell lies, we're drawing people's attention to us when we do not have their best intention. Finally, regarding the enemy of God, when we lie, we're like Satan because we're using people rather than loving them. When you tell them the truth, you're respecting them. You see them as worthy of your love and your respect. You tell them the truth. When you lie, you're using them for some other end. Going to skip a section here. Let's go to Ephesians 4. What I skipped was 1 John 1. And let me just summarize that. If we confess Jesus as our Savior and we do not practice what Jesus taught, it says we're liars. What we believe, what we say we believe must match how we live. The other way he tells us we're liars, if we say there is no sin in us, we make him to be a liar. And he's speaking there of Jesus. If we say we are not sinners, then we are saying that Jesus is a liar. And the rationale there, the argument, Jesus came to save sinners. He came to save us as sinners. And we're saying we're not sinners. We're denying Jesus and what he said. Let's look to Ephesians 4, beginning of verse 15. We continue to go to Ephesians 4 because here, I believe Paul is giving us the new covenant commandments, the law of Christ. Beginning of verse 15, rather speaking the truth and love We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which is equipped when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They're darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart, they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learn Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. To put off your old self, which belongs to your former of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirits of your mind. and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, the very first command, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one body. Now, what's guiding this is the command. We are to grow in every way. As a body, we're supposed to be growing in knowledge of God and knowledge of his love and love for one another. And the only way we can grow is if we are speaking. That is the instrument. That's the means by which we grow as a body. Speaking the truth and love. Let's drop down there to verse 25. Having put away falsehood because that's the old man. The old man lied. The old nature lied. We put that away when we believe in Christ. We repent of our sins. We commit to being truthful. We're brothers and sisters, we're one body, just as only friends can be friends with virtuous people. We must be the body of Christ, the brothers and sisters, by reflecting his truth, speaking truth and love. You know, trying to think in different ways, how do we still lie to one another? One is by not keeping our word, not letting our yes be yes and our no, no, as we continue to study James, that will come out. One way we lie to one another is if we tell one another we're going to pray for one another and then do not do so. If we're going to make the promise to pray for another, we must keep that promise. One of the ways that I find so counter gospel. Is if somebody comes up and they ask and they tell you, I've sinned against you. They confess their sins to you. One of the ways we can lie, counter gospel, is to simply say, that's all right. No problem. If someone gets the courage in the gospel to actually say, I sinned against you and we do not say with absolute boldness, you're forgiven. We're lying to them. We're telling them their sins. OK, first of all, that's a lie. We're also lying to ourselves. We do this out of a self-righteousness that does not want to show people we're weak. If we say we forgive you, I forgive you. What we're saying is that you actually do have influence and power over me. Yes, what you did against me hurt me. I need to hear your forgiveness. I need I need to hear your confession. I need to forgive you. So the gospel community, we have to talk about our sin. We have to confess our sin. We have to forgive one another of our sin. If someone actually gets the courage in the gospel to confess sin, don't say that's all right. Say, I forgive you. When others confess sins, boldly declare you are forgiven in Jesus Christ. Our last application comes from Acts one. This is the last words of Jesus before he ascends into the clouds. It is not for you to know times or seasons that the father is fixed by his own authority, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. We must recognize our calling. is to be telling the truth and is to be telling the truth about God. We are called to be witnesses of God's truth with our words and our deeds, proclaiming the gospel until he comes. Let's go to Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you that you are a God of truth. That you help us to see the lies and the darkness that so easily sway us. We thank you for speaking clearly in your word. We thank you for giving us your truth. Help us to submit to it, to love it, to learn it. Help us to walk according to your word. Or help us to see you as you are. Help us to know you in your truth. Father, forgive us for our lives. Forgive us for denying you, for denying your word, for lying to one another. Teach us to walk in your truth. We praise you, our great God, that your word is what saves us from our lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.