Liar, Liar

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Well, I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11.
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Since January of 2011, we have been examining the text of Hebrews 11 and looking at the lives of some of the most recognizable Old Testament saints.
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We've seen the depth of their faith, which demonstrated in various ways, showed their commitment to the one true God of Scripture.
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From Enoch to Moses, we have seen what it looks like to live a life of genuine faith.
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And today we are continuing with this chapter, yet we are not going to be focusing only on the faith of the person which is discussed, but also upon one of the most controversial subjects in the arena of Christian ethics.
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We are going this morning to be talking about a person, a woman named Rahab.
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Many of you are familiar with Rahab and her story.
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Many of us learned about Rahab when we were young.
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And in Sunday school, we learn of the stories of the Old Testament.
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And of course, we know that Rahab lived in the city of Jericho during the time when it was taken by the Hebrews.
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And when the spies came from Israel to Jericho, she went to great personal risk to help them and to hide them from the leaders of the city.
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It was for this act of brave faith that she is commended in the text.
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And in fact, she is not only commended just this one time in the book of Hebrews, she is also commended in James chapter 2 and verse 25 for the very same act of faith.
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So two New Testament writers use her as an example of faith to us as believers today.
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Yet Rahab's story is not without controversy.
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There is a serious ethical question which often arises when the subject of Rahab is brought up.
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And it is not the ethical question of her occupation as a harlot, because as we're all aware, harlotry is a sin.
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And the common belief is that after her conversion, she would have abandoned that pagan lifestyle.
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But again, that's not the ethical question.
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That's something we all would agree.
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Hey, that's a sin.
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That was a sinful lifestyle.
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The question about Rahab is not about her lifestyle, but it is or rather not about her occupation, but it is about instead her action in regarding the saving of the spies.
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Because that is the part that she is commended for twice in the New Testament.
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She's commended for actually going through with saving the spies.
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But you see, in the protection of the spies, she was forced to conceal them.
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She was forced to tell a lie.
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And this has led to a hotly contested debate in the history of theology.
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And that is the question, is it ever righteous to hide the truth? And that's the question, that's the ethical dilemma that Rahab's life poses to us.
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So that's what we're going to deal with this morning.
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That was our introduction.
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Let's stand to read the text together.
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We're again in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 31.
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It says, By faith, Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
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Father, we thank you that you have brought us together around the word today.
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And we thank you, O Lord, for opportunities for growth such as this, that we can examine our hearts on certain issues.
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And Lord, we pray that we would come out better for having done so.
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We pray, O Lord, that you would keep me from error as the mouthpiece this morning.
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I pray that your spirit would teach and Lord God, that your word would reign supreme.
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Father, I do pray that you would open the hearts of the people to the truth and protect them from error.
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Lord God, that all would be in accordance with your will, with your will and with your word.
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All this we ask in Jesus name.
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One of the most difficult subjects to teach on in all of Christian theology is the subject of Christian ethics.
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The reason is that for every absolute that we give in regard to ethics, someone is bound to come up with something that they would consider to be an exception to the rule.
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For instance, let's just throw out the subject of abortion.
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Most Christians appal the practice of abortion and rightfully so do we appal the act of abortion.
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Abortion on demand is the great holocaust of our day where thousands of babies every day are being murdered in the womb.
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Yes, we stand appalled at that.
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Yet when pushed to consider certain ethical dilemmas like the possibility of a mother dying prior to the birth because of difficulties in the pregnancy and the idea of trading one life for another, that often produces a conundrum that people begin to have to deal with.
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An ethical dilemma arises.
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Now, for some of you, there's no ethical dilemma there.
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You say, well, let God be God and God is sovereign.
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And, you know, but still, again, you see how where something that often is very easy to say it is or it isn't, and it's cut and it's dry when introduced some form of difficulty, introducing something into the situation causes us to have to step back and re evaluate where we stand.
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The same is true with any subject under the broad umbrella, which is considered a Christian ethics.
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Last year, I when I was finishing up the adult Sunday school class, the last part of the year, we looked at different subjects.
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We looked at biblical economics.
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We looked at divorce and remarriage.
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We looked at all these things.
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And almost every subject, there was different perspectives on that subject.
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There were different views on that particular issue.
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And I will say this.
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There are so many different views on different topics.
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It is difficult sometimes to find what the Bible actually teaches on something.
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And I would say that no subject is so fraught with difficulty as is the subject of lying and telling the truth.
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This is an area where even the most conservative minds in Christian theology often disagree.
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Now, let me begin by saying that it is without a doubt that the God of the Bible is the God of truth.
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He is a God of goodness.
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He is a God of righteousness.
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And Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
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The Ten Commandments says you shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
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God expects his people to adhere to a certain standard of truth, the standard of truth, which is him.
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That being said, an ethical dilemma is often brought up when we deal with certain situations in the form of the following question.
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Is it ever permissible to hide the truth? Is it ever righteous to lie? Now, almost immediately in our hearts, we say, no, never, absolutely not.
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But you see, that's what makes the story of Rahab so compelling.
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That's what makes the story of Rahab so interesting and so difficult, because when we come to the story of Rahab, you come to a person who in the midst of an act of righteousness was forced to lie.
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Telling the truth and the permissibility of lying have been the perennial issues of concern for both Christian ethicists and for the individual Christian facing ethical dilemmas for centuries.
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For instance, if a killer inquires about the whereabouts of his next potential victim, is a Christian permitted to not tell the truth, to say that they are somewhere else where they are not in the attempt to save a life? Is it ever acceptable to lie to achieve a greater good? May a Christian falsify documents in order to smuggle Bibles into a closed country? And if we say no, will we not remember the life of William Tyndale, one of the great reformers who was called, in fact, God's smuggler, because he went about getting the gospel, the Bibles into the hands of people who could not have them under the law? Certainly having to falsify documents in order to do so.
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One I thought about this week, and I again, I must admit, in preparing the sermon, I came with many conundrums in my own heart.
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One of the things that came to my mind was there are many missionary groups right now who go into countries not as missionaries, but they go into countries under the guise of teaching English.
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We're only going to teach English, but they're missionary groups sponsored by churches.
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And somebody says, well, that's fine.
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They actually are teaching English.
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And I said, yes, but consider this.
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Imagine a Muslim group was coming to America to tutor math.
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But we knew they were also sharing their Muslim faith and inspiring people to become Muslims.
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We would say they're not just tutoring math.
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And thus they're being deceptive.
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Would we not hold them to a standard that we are not holding ourselves to? Again, the conundrum, the difficulty rises when we begin to consider it from that perspective.
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So we can see that this ethical question is not as easy to flesh out as we might immediately think it is, and it's not as easy as just to shout no or yes.
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So this morning, I want to look at what the scripture says on the subject of the truth.
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I want to look at the subject of what the Christian is to be known for.
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And I want us to answer the question, what does God expect of us? So let's look at scripture together in regard to this subject.
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There are certain obvious things that the Bible teaches.
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The Bible clearly teaches the sanctity of the truth.
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That's the first point.
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The Bible clearly teaches the sanctity of the truth.
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Titus chapter one and verse two says that God never lies and his people are to imitate him by being people of the truth.
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John chapter 18 and verse 37.
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John 14, 6, Jesus is described, as I said already, as the truth.
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We often think of Jesus the way the truth and the life you forget the middle part often because that's the part of what Jesus is.
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He is the truth.
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And one of the evidences of human depravity, most of us being reform minded understand what we call total depravity.
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What is one of the evidences of total depravity? That the people exchange the truth of God for a lie.
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Romans chapter one.
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So we understand there is a certain there's a certain value that the truth has.
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There's a certain sanctity that the truth has that supersedes all other things.
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That the truth is what we stand on.
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One of the things that I often talk about when I talk about someone coming to faith, as I say, we can't just have faith in faith.
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We must have faith in the truth.
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We must believe the truth.
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And that's part of what faith is.
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If we simply have faith in faith, that's nothing.
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And that's what a lot of these TV preachers that always say, well, if you just have faith and you send your thousand dollars, it'll become a million dollars.
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And it's not all that.
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It's not about having faith in faith.
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It's about having faith in the truth, the truth that God exists, the truth that God created all things, the truth that God is sovereign over all things, the truth that God sent his son into the world to die, to be the propitiation for the sins of his people.
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That's the truth.
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And that's what we believe.
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And the truth is what holds it all together.
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You remember when Paul is talking about the armor of God and he says we have the helmet of salvation, we have the breastplate of righteousness, we have our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace and we have the belt of what? Of truth.
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Why is the belt truth? Because it was the belt that held everything together, the belt holds everything on.
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The belt is where you hold your sword, you hold your shield, your breastplate is held in place, you are girded by the truth.
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So there is a certain sanctity which the truth has, which supersedes all other things.
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God never lies.
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And at the same time, lying is condemned where we find that truth is sanctified in scripture.
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We also find lying is condemned in scripture.
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Proverbs chapter 12 and verse 22 says lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.
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Often hear that word abomination when discussing homosexuals, because people will say, well, yes, homosexuality is an abomination.
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Abomination is something that smells bad.
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That's where we get the word abominable, the abominable snowman.
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You know why they called him that? Because every time they'd find these big, huge tracks out in the woods, they'd also be accompanied by a terrible smell.
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So they called him the abominable or the smelly snowman.
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Well, most people don't know that that's where the word comes from.
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Well, that same word is used in the Old Testament when it talks about an abomination.
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It is something that turns God's stomach.
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So we talk about homosexuality.
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We often push that word abomination out there.
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That's what it is.
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It's something that turns God's stomach.
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It's unnatural.
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Well, here the text also says lying turns God's stomach.
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It is an abomination to God to be known as a liar.
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The Bible says in John 8, 44, that the devil is a liar and the father of lies, which means that lies proceed from him.
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Paul tells us in Colossians 3, 9, do not lie to one another.
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He also commands us, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth to his neighbor.
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We read that for our opening text this morning.
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And Paul goes on to say that believers should be speaking the truth in love.
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Ephesians 4 and 15.
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And at the final judgment, the Bible says in Revelation 21, 8, that accompanying those who will see the lake of fire and be in the lake of fire are all liars.
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So there we have it.
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Not only does the Bible exalt truth, the Bible condemns lies.
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At the same time, however, Scripture records incidences that seem to approve of certain examples of lying.
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We've already talked about Rahab, but let's look at another example.
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You remember a few weeks ago we looked at Exodus chapter one and you remember what the Pharaoh commanded in Exodus chapter one? Pharaoh commanded what? That the midwives kill all of the children, the firstborn or not the firstborn, that's the Passover, to kill the male children of the Israelites.
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That every time they had a male child, that the midwives were responsible to see to it that the lives of those children were snuffed out.
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But yet the text tells us in Exodus chapter one in verse 17, that the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded, but let the male children live.
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And then it goes on to say in verse 20, it says, when asked why they did not kill the male babies, they said to Pharaoh this.
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They said, because the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.
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See, what they were saying was this.
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We're not making it in time.
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We hear they're having a baby.
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We go to help them.
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And by that time, they're so those Hebrew women, man, they have the baby and they grab them and go.
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That's sort of that, but that's the lie they're telling a false truth.
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They're saying we can't get there in time.
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And these Israelite women, it's just boom, boom, get it and go.
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But they use that as the way to keep Pharaoh from knowing what was going on.
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The midwives claim that the birth happened so quickly they could not get to the women's in time.
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And they couldn't make it appear as if the child had been stillborn, which that was likely part of the ruse.
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And again, this is at best a half truth, and I've heard many of you say this and I've said it myself, a half truth is what a whole lot.
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And the explanation that they let the male children live suggests that they were lying to the king.
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But at the beginning and the ending of the narrative, it says that the midwives feared God.
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They were doing what they were doing because they feared God more than the king, sort of like when Peter and John were taken before the Sanhedrin and they were told not to preach in the name of Jesus Christ.
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And they said, look, we fear God more than that.
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We fear him more than you.
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So we're going to continue worshiping and following God.
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And again, going back to the life of Rahab, the prostitute, which is the main text for today.
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When she hid the two Hebrew spies in Joshua chapter two, Joshua sent two men to evaluate the situation in Jericho, Rahab took them to the rooftop where she hid them under stalks of flax.
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When a messenger from the king insisted that Rahab turned the men over to the authorities, she replied this.
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This was her exact words from the text, verses four and five from Joshua chapter two.
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It says, true, the men came to me, but I do not know where they were, where they were from, lie number one.
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And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out, lie number two, because they were still there.
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They were hidden under the flax.
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I do not know where the men went, lie number three.
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She knew right where they were.
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So it's not as if it could be it could be construed as a half-truth, as a whole lie thing.
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This is straight up three lies in a row.
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She knew exactly where they were.
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She knew they hadn't gone out.
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She knew right where they were hiding.
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But yet in the midst of doing this, she saved their life and is later commended for having done so.
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So again, we are we are faced with an ethical situation.
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We're faced with a dilemma, aren't we? We're faced with a text that tells us certainly truth is to be commended and lies are to be condemned.
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Some people take a very simple answer to this and they say, well, God was only commending her for her faith.
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He was not commending her for the lie.
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And it may just be as simple as that.
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That may just be the answer.
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Some theologians have taken it that way.
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They've said, well, God did commend her for faith, but he never commended the lie.
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And that's just the answer.
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And if that's the answer that you find in your heart, that's what satisfies you.
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That's fine.
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However, yet I think we would be well served to look at some of the great teachers of history on this subject and learn from them, for instance, several notable Christian theologians, including Augustine.
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Some of you know why I'm smiling about that.
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Augustine, John Wesley, John Calvin and John Murray.
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Have taught that have taught this position, they have said that all all lying, all deliberate lying, which would include Rahab, because, of course, she told a deliberate lie.
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All deliberate lying is never permissible at any time for any reason.
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And Augustine argued in his essay on lying, that was the title of the essay, that telling a lie had the effect of eroding confidence in the truth and therefore weaken the Christian faith.
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Like every good theologian, however, Augustine defined his terms.
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He said, now, listen, you have to know what a lie is.
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A lie is a deliberate distortion or hiding or misrepresentation of the truth.
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And he even went as far and I can't imagine in the fourth century people have always been people.
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I love the fact that in his essay on lying, he said a joke is not a lie.
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It doesn't seem like that should even matter, especially in the fourth century.
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I mean, you know, but I guess there's always been comedians.
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I don't know.
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But he said, you know, and this is an example of a modern day.
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He said, if I if I stood in front of you and I said a horse walked into a library.
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You know, I'm not lying.
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I'm telling you a joke.
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That's the setup to tell you something.
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He said, and there is a certain tone, there's a certain language that comes with that type of talking.
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It's amazing.
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Fourth century writer Augustine had that had the foresight to say, listen, there is a certain type of speech.
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It's not lying because I'm not intentionally distorting the truth.
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I'm telling you something to make you laugh.
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But he made that point.
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But according to Augustine, lying is seriously affirming as truth, something that someone knows to be false.
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Let me say it again.
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It is seriously affirming as truth, something someone knows to be false.
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And Augustine stated explicitly that one should never, ever lie, agreeing with the scriptures.
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The Bible tells us that lying is sin.
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He argued that it would ultimately undermine the gospel by destroying all certainty that one is telling the truth.
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If one cannot be trusted to speak truthfully about some things, how can one be believed if he comes to matters as important as the resurrection of Christ? I thought that was quite insightful.
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If you are known as a person who doesn't tell the truth, if you're known as a person who's been caught in a lie, why would someone trust you with such valuable information as the fact that Jesus rose from the dead? So it comes to an issue of personal, individual integrity and credibility.
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And Augustine also observed that lying is a web that entangles a person.
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One lie requires another lie and another lie.
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And we all know this.
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You know, we probably as children have been involved with that ourselves, maybe even as adults.
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We we say one thing that's not true and then you've got to cover it up with another thing and you've got to cover it up with another thing because and you have to have a fantastic memory to be a good liar because you're always having to lie again to cover it up.
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And Augustine observed that.
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But the difficulty with Augustine's position is that he believed that one should not ever lie, even to prevent a violent assault or to save a life.
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This is why there are some theologians who have taken a different stand.
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Again, Augustine said, not ever, even in saving a life, should one ever utter anything but absolute truth, a different position was taken by my favorite theologian of the ancient era, and that is Martin Luther.
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Well, not the ancient era, the Reformation era.
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Martin Luther took a bit of a different position.
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Martin Luther said that while Christians should be known for their commitment to the sanctity of truth, there are exceptions to the rule against lying, particularly the act of performing a greater service of good.
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He became known and there's actually a movement that is known as hierarchical ism.
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Hierarchical ism says this, they would argue that lying may be appropriate in cases where telling the truth conflicts with obeying a higher commandment of God.
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For instance, if you were saving the life of a person, life is that ultimate sanctity thing, that life is is something that you should always work towards saving.
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And if that meant hiding the truth, then so be it.
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He would have certainly agreed with William Tyndale, who had to hide the truth to disseminate the scripture.
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And this is not here's the thing, though, before you immediately just disagree with Martin Luther.
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Remember, he's not taking a cavalier attitude towards deception.
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He's not just being cavalier.
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He's holding that one is sometimes faced with a conflicting moral absolute.
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And it takes the situation seriously.
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It takes a serious thought on a part of the person that's entering into the situation to try to find the solution that fully expresses the idea and priorities of God.
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Thus, from the hierarchical perspective, someone who tries to smuggle Bibles into another country probably believes that the Great Commission to bring the gospel to the world would supersede the atheistic law, which says they shouldn't.
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And thus, they believe that the law of God trumps the law of men, and they would agree with Acts chapter five, twenty nine, which says we should obey God and not men or rather than men.
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Yet at the same time, the hierarchical position can be argued against.
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For those who take the hierarchical position, there are those who go the opposite side and say, what about Christ? The Bible says that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet was without sin.
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Right.
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If it is true that there are decisions that we have to make that would force us to sin to accomplish a greater good, that wouldn't it be logical to deduce that at some point Jesus had to sin to accomplish a greater good? And since he did not ever sin to accomplish a greater good, then really we don't ever have to either.
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There's always another way.
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Again, it's difficult, isn't it? Right.
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Where you think I'm going one direction, I go the other.
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Make you think.
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Furthermore, the absolute position in the hierarchical position are not the only ones that have been proposed.
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German theologian Helmut Teichlich, I believe is how you say his name, maintain that an individual or group may forfeit their right to the truth.
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For instance, imagine a hostage is holding a group of people captive and the police are trying to get the hostage taker to come out and they promise him money and a car and a boat and a helicopter, anything it takes to get him out with no intention of giving it to him.
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Has he has he forfeited his right to the truth by holding people hostage? In war, there is something that is called mutual distrust.
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If you capture a prisoner from another side of the line, it is understood he is not going to tell you the truth and neither will you tell him the truth.
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Does that change the rules? So you see that the subject has not been without its share of opinions, it's not been without its share of thought, and it is simplistic to simply say yay or nay.
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We must look at the situation in its full orbed position or its full orbed situation.
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As a result, rather than commending or condemning Rahab and her situation of telling a lie to save a life, perhaps we would be better served to simply reiterate the standard of truth to which we have all been called as believers.
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So this morning, as way of application of the sermon, what I want to do is I want to give you two applications.
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I want to give you two lifestyles, two things that you ought to think about as a believer that ought to mark you.
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Number one, if you're taking notes, this would be very good time to write this down.
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Number one, Christians should never be marked by deceptive behavior.
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I think that's obvious.
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We've examined if deceit is ever allowed for a purpose of saving life or doing a greater good by looking at the scripture and also the positions of godly men of history.
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But one thing none of them have disagreed on and neither can we find any disagreement in the text is that is that we are to be known not for deception.
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It is obvious that we should not be marked by deceptive behavior or lies.
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One of the most obvious passages in regard to this, and I do want you to open your Bibles here and look at this with me, is Matthew chapter five.
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Anytime someone wants to talk with me about the subject of lying, I always go to Matthew chapter five.
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Matthew five thirty three.
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The subject here isn't really lying and telling the truth.
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The subject here is giving oaths.
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But I want you to hear what it says about the giving of the oath.
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Matthew chapter five, verse thirty three says Jesus is in the middle of his sermon on the Mount.
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He says again, you have heard it said to those of old.
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You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
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You see, there was this tradition that started in the Old Testament that you had to swear by God for the truth.
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But I say to you, remember, this is often what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount.
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He would say, you you've heard this, but I say to you this.
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He says, but I say to you, do not take an oath at all.
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And we're not talking this morning about whether or not we should when we go into a court, raise our hand.
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That's not the issue here.
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We could talk about that another time.
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But I want you to note why you are not to take an oath at all.
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He says, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven for it is the throne of God or by earth for it is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king.
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And the point there is you didn't make the earth.
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You didn't make the heaven.
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You didn't make Jerusalem.
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It ain't yours to swear by.
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OK, you didn't create it.
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So how can you swear by it? And then he goes on to say, and do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
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You didn't even make the hair on your head.
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You didn't make it black and you didn't make it white or salt and pepper.
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You didn't make it.
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And then he says this, let what you say be simply yes and no.
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Anything else more than this comes from evil.
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The point of the text is this.
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When someone asks you and you answer yes, they should be able to trust your yes.
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And when somebody asks you and you answer no, they should be able to trust your no.
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It should not be as many people that I'm sure we've all dealt with in the world where somebody says yes and then you have to guess whether or not that's the right answer.
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Or if somebody tells you no and you have to guess whether or not that is the right answer.
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If you tell someone, yes, I will do this thing, then you ought to do that thing.
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You shouldn't have to say, I swear it.
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You shouldn't have to hook pinkies together or or do whatever the other crazy things are people do to make promises.
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Your word itself should be a promise.
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I will means I will or I won't means I won't.
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And it comes down to integrity.
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For if we cannot be trusted with such a simple thing as that, how can we be trusted with such an awesome thing as the truth of the resurrection? That's the first thing we are not to be marked by deceptive behavior.
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The second thing, Christians should be marked by charitable truthfulness, charitable truthfulness.
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Now, what does that mean? I put the word charitable in there because I could have just said Christians would be marked by truthfulness.
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And that's true.
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And I could have left it at that.
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I had to add the adjective, though.
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I had to give it a descriptive word because charitable truthfulness is this, we should never use truthfulness as a reason to gossip.
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Or to be hurtful or to mind business that is not ours, because I know many people who would say something they ought not and then when challenged on it, well, hey, I was just telling the truth.
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How many of you have seen that? If you somebody says something they ought not, well, hey, I was just telling the truth, man.
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And we're supposed to be people of the truth.
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Likewise, there will be conditions under which it is appropriate to tell someone less than you know or believe.
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For instance, if you walk up to someone and say your dress makes you look ugly, you know what? They need to know that.
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That may be exactly what you think, that may be exactly what you believe.
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Tell them less than you know and believe.
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That was a terrible sermon.
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Keep it to yourself.
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It's you know, it is that way sometimes we we don't always have to tell everyone everything to be truthful and we are to be charitable, loving with the truth.
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That does not mean we hold back.
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If someone needs to be confronted, charitable truth, charitable truthfulness does not mean that we never confront evil.
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We must we must confront evil.
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We must confront sin if someone is sinning and we have the opportunity to encourage them towards righteousness.
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And that's another thing.
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The whole reason to confront somebody is never to condemn them.
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We confront them to encourage them towards righteousness, to build them up.
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Their whole the whole idea of church discipline is not so that we can kick people out.
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The whole idea of church discipline is so that we can keep people from falling away, because that's what happens when sin enters a life.
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It begins to erode away everything that's working in their life and they begin to fall away.
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Yes, ultimately, there comes a time where the church has to separate from certain individuals because they do become a danger to the church.
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But yet at the same time, that's not the goal.
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The goal is building them up.
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Charitable truthfulness, words that are destructive, even if truthful, should be tempted or excuse me, tempered with grace and love before they are spoken.
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Remember when Peter said about defending the gospel.
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He said, always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within you.
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But do it with gentleness and respect.
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Even when we're talking to unbelievers, because that's who we'd be defending the truth of the gospel to.
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We are to do it in love, as the scripture says, because we don't know if God may open their hearts to repent.
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So we always temper the truth with charity and love.
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That way we are known as believers by love.
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And we are known as faithful believers by the love of God and the love of God's people.
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Beloved, this subject is not an easy one, particularly when we begin to look at all of the various situational issues which could be proposed and are seen in scripture.
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Yet in the end, the old adage does ring true.
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Scripture teaches honesty is the best policy.
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That way people can trust us with everything that we say.
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If we remain honest in our dealings and hold to truthfulness in our speech, we can be confident that we are fulfilling the word of God.
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And we mustn't use situations like the situation with Rahab or the midwives of Egypt to try to make us find loopholes in the truth.
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Rather, we should simply say that we should make our yes be yes and our no be no.
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Will times arise where that will be utterly difficult? Possibly.
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But yet we are still to be known by the truth and it does provide a very practical benefit to the believer.
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As Mark Twain said, if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
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Father, thank you for this opportunity to be in your word and to be discussing this very important subject, the truth.
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And Lord God, we do pray that we would be encouraged to be people of the truth.
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We know, oh Lord, that the subject of ethics can be very difficult.
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As oftentimes exceptions and things are thrown in and we have to consider situations, but yet at the same time, we know one thing for certain.
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You are a God of truth and lies do not proceed from your mouth.
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So, Lord, help us to be your mouthpieces.
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Help us to be those who speak the truth and love as ambassadors of you.
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We pray this in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.