Matthew 5:33-37, October 20, 2024

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We continue in the book of Matthew today, we're in Matthew chapter 5 and we'll be looking at verses 33 through 37.
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And it's ironic as we pray for our politicians that I reflect on the fact that I think it's difficult to overstate how embedded in our culture the idea of lying has become.
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There's some areas where we take lying or untruthfulness just as a given.
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We say, oh, that's just the way it is. It's a fact of life. I mean, I think it's funny. But speaking of those politicians, we've reached the point where we just expect that politicians, no matter what level it is they serve and no matter what party they identify with, we take for granted that they will promise things and then not actually do them.
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Because that's just what you have to do when you campaign. You have to tell the people what they want to hear.
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Because in some ways, a lot of us are suckers for what we want to hear. But we also recognize while lying is part of our culture, we also recognize in other areas that there is a need for an absolute standard of truth, particularly someplace like our justice system.
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Before you testify, you typically swear an oath. It's not necessarily a Bible anymore, but you still swear an oath.
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And that's supposed to be a fail -safe against dishonesty. And that's supposed to be a fail -safe against dishonesty in your testimony. Because we recognize that if people aren't held to an absolute standard of truth, again, this is one of those places in our society where it's not okay for me to have my truth and you to have your truth.
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We have to have one truth there because if we don't, it's basically just a joke. There's no point in even pursuing anything.
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And of course, speaking of absolute truth, that same government that is populated by liars and people who make promises that they don't keep to obtain their office, they want to make darn sure that you're truthful when you're dealing with them.
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You have to sign all kinds of things under penalty of perjury, especially when you do your taxes or if you sign any kind of document that the government has given you.
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Now, the theologian Augustine famously said this, all truth is God's truth.
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And indeed, we view scripture as the foundation for truth. For example, Psalm 119, 160 says, the sum of your word is truth and every one of your righteous judgments is everlasting.
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But despite this, dishonesty and untruthfulness still pervade our culture.
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And we talked about some things that are a little bit bigger with politics, but now
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I'm not even talking about high profile things like that. Just even in our mundane, everyday life, there's dishonesty and untruthfulness, even if it's unintentional.
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So just as an example of the effects of this, there was a time, we'll strip out some of the details because frankly,
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I don't really remember them that well, but there was a time when I was trying to make an appointment with someone. So we exchanged emails, we went back and forth, we set a date, we set a time in the future for this appointment.
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It was probably a couple of weeks down the road. So when the date of that appointment arrived and I showed up and I waited for this person,
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I think this was probably when I was in insurance. So maybe they didn't want to be sold anything. But anyway, when the date arrived, that person didn't show up.
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So I waited for a little while, and then I got really frustrated, and then I left, and then
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I reached out to see what happened. And you know what they said to me? They said, well, you didn't confirm.
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And I said, but we sent emails back and forth, and we set a date, and we set a time. And they were like, yeah, but you didn't confirm.
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And this kind of approach has only gotten more prominent. I mean, think about the last doctor's appointment you had, right?
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They send you a text, they send you an email, and they call you on the telephone to make sure that you confirm that you're going to show up for this appointment.
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And sometimes they do it several times in the weeks leading up to that doctor's appointment. And it's because people now see these commitments, even small commitments.
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I know they're not like earth -shattering commitments, but people even see these things as something that can be just disregarded if something else happens.
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And it's just become so common that people take it for granted, especially if you meet with a lot of people, you probably find this.
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So I know some of you probably remember my friend, Nick, the pastor that came and baptized me. Well, we meet virtually on a weekly basis just to talk about stuff, to learn about different stuff together, and just, again, discuss things of God.
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So we do this every week. But he's really busy. So I saw his calendar one time, and sometimes he has to move our appointments.
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So the last time this happened was a couple of weeks ago, and he said, hey, I can't make it at 1 .30.
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Are you able to meet at 3? And I texted him back, and I said, yes, in fact, that time is actually better for me.
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So then we got to the day, we got to the time, and we got on the call together, and he was so apologetic.
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He said, I'm so sorry, does this time still work? I forgot to confirm it with you. And I said,
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Nick, I texted you back. I said that it was better. And he said, I know, I know, but I didn't confirm it with you.
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And this has become one of my pet peeves in my life now all of a sudden. And I said, Nick, we're adults.
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I answered you. We don't have to go back and forth three or four times. But apparently, that's where we are today in our society.
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And again, he meets with a lot of people, so I can only imagine that people do this to him all the time. If he didn't confirm, they don't show up.
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Now, I hope it's not the case with you all, but I guess we have to accept the fact that sometimes people say that they're going to do stuff even when they have absolutely no intention of actually doing it, or they make appointments that they have no intention of actually keeping.
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We make an appointment just to make sure we got that slot, even if we decide that there's no way we're actually going to do that.
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And we can certainly be charitable, and we can say that sometimes they may have intended to fulfill that obligation, but some other kind of important circumstance changed, and they weren't able to make it, or they forgot and forgot to say something.
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And we can always, we can extend grace in those circumstances, of course. Again, things happen.
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Not everybody is perfect ever, but we should be mindful of the things that we say and do and commit to.
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And that's what today's passage is dealing with. So, if you have a
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Bible, let's turn in your Bible to Matthew chapter 5 again, and we're looking at verses 33 through 37.
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Matthew 5, 33 through 37. Starting in verse 33, it says,
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So, as you see, we're still following that same pattern that Jesus has been using to teach in the last several sets of verses.
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And we're still looking at the issue of fulfilling the letter of the law versus fulfilling the spirit of the law.
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So, again, these are the same issues that Jesus continues to have. These are the same issues that he's addressing with the scribes and the
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Pharisees in this situation. And once again, what he's doing is he's highlighting the perversion of an
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Old Testament teaching, and he's providing a course correction for all the people that are here to hear him.
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And he's providing this correction according to what God's intention was with the law, because as we've said with many of these other passages, the
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Pharisees were sort of picking and choosing, or shaping, or selectively taking things in order to have it mean what they wanted to mean.
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So, what we want to look at today in these set of verses is the teaching that Jesus is referencing, how the
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Pharisees had perverted the teaching, the truth behind the teaching, and how it should apply to us today.
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So, that's kind of four different areas that we're looking at. And we'll also take a brief look in here at how these verses have been misinterpreted in a modern context.
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So, as we dive into the original teaching, looking at verse 33, again, you have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the
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Lord. Now, in some of our earlier examples, Jesus was going back to the Ten Commandments, but that's not the case here.
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So, what is most likely is that this teaching, this general principle that he's sharing is a composite of several different Old Testament scriptural verses, a composite of several different verses about oaths.
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So, I'm going to give you five examples, five verses that are very likely what he is referring to here.
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The first is Leviticus 19 .12. Leviticus 19 .12.
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That says, you shall not swear falsely by my name so as to profane the name of your
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God. I am Yahweh. The second one is Numbers 32, chapter 30, verse 2.
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If a man makes a vow to Yahweh or swears an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his words.
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He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. Next, we have
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Deuteronomy 23 .21. When you make a vow to Yahweh your
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God, you shall not delay to pay it. For Yahweh your God will surely require it of you and it will be a sin in you.
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Psalm 50 .14. Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the
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Most High. And then the last one we'll look at is Zechariah 8 .17. Also, let none of you devise evil in your heart against another and do not love false oaths for all these are what
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I hate, declares Yahweh. So we have a series of verses. Again, not just one commandment that we're looking at, but a series of verses because this issue of vows, this issue of oaths is something that popped up a number of times in the
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Old Testament. And what we see here is pretty clear. It's pretty simple. You shouldn't make false vows.
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When you say that you're going to do something, you should do it. And nobody really argues this.
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The Pharisees aren't even going to argue this. The larger premise is something that pretty much everyone accepts because we all want people to do what they say they're going to do.
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We all especially want other people to do what they say they're going to do when it comes to us.
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So what was going on here that Jesus was addressing? Now, earlier,
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I gave a few examples of how we've grown used to people not keeping their word, but what was going on with the
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Pharisees was just another level of this. They took these concepts and just ran with them beyond anything a lot of people might actually be able to conceive of.
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In fact, they built up an entire system around this idea of oaths, an entire set of rules about when an oath is binding and when an oath is not binding, which again, if you think about that, that's kind of mind -blowing that you make an oath that you didn't actually mean.
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So D .A. Carson says this. By Jesus's time, the Jews had built up an entire legalistic system around the
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Old Testament teaching. In the Jewish code of law called the Mishnah, there is one whole tractate given over to the question of oaths, including detailed consideration of when they are binding and when they are not.
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For example, one rabbi says that if you swear by Jerusalem, you are not bound by your vow.
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But if you swear toward Jerusalem, then you are bound by your vow.
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The swearing of oaths thus degenerates into terrible rules which let you know when you can get away with lying and when you can't.
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These oaths no longer foster truthfulness but weaken the cause of truth and promote deceit.
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And if this isn't the very essence of following the letter of the law but not following the spirit of the law, then
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I don't know what is. And in fact, it might even go beyond that. If there's a level beyond simply following the letter and not the spirit, then this is probably what it was.
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So what they're doing, again, is they're parsing statements or they're dividing up statements and they're drilling down into individual words and giving them different meanings in order to justify making an oath that didn't actually apply to the situation.
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But it even goes a little deeper than that. I mean, if nothing else, a lot of us can probably appreciate the level of creativity that it takes and the level of thought and detail that goes into coming up with a system like this.
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And this also gets more specifically into some of the things that Jesus notes. Now, another commentator,
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Craig Keener, said, To protect the sanctity of the divine name against inadvertent oath -breaking, common
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Jewish practice introduced kinayim, surrogate objects by which to swear.
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So what this means is that to make sure that they didn't actually swear a vow in the name of God or in the name of Yahweh and then not keep it, thus exposing themselves to judgment, they started figuring out ways to swear oaths to things that were less than God or that they felt like were less than God.
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Because then to break that oath wouldn't be quite as serious of an issue as breaking an oath that you had made in the name of Yahweh.
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So obviously, to their credit, they did take seriously the idea of God's name and they did take seriously the idea of making an oath that they intended to break in the name of God.
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So they used what they assumed were things of lesser consequence in order to do this because they didn't want to offend
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God. And this is the very essence of taking the Lord's name in vain, to swear something to God and then to not do it.
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Now, Keener continues, The further removed the oath was from the actual name of God, the less danger they faced for violating it.
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In their own minds, of course. Thus, people swore by heaven and earth, by Jerusalem, by one's head, by God's throne and by the temple service.
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So these are all things that oaths could be sworn to. And this led to the point in this system where some rabbis had the job of arbitrating these oaths.
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So they were essentially judges and they would listen to the words or read the words and they would figure out whether the terms used meant the oath was binding or whether the terms used meant the oath was not binding.
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So now, put yourself in this context, put yourself in this world where you are not where you can't even read the language that this stuff is based on.
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So again, if you recall from a few weeks ago, because of the Babylonian captivity, the
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Jews at this time didn't speak Hebrew. They spoke Aramaic, so they couldn't read the Holy Scriptures.
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Only the scribes and Pharisees could. So they interpreted it for them. So now you're in a situation where you can't actually read the law that you're supposed to be abiding by.
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And you're trying to interact with the people that are interpreting it, or you're trying to conduct business with them or with someone else.
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And somebody tells you they'll do something. And by all normal understanding, by a straightforward reading of what's going on, you feel like they have a commitment to you.
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They're going to buy something from you or sell something to you or do something for you. And then whatever it was, it doesn't happen.
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And then worse, they come back to you and they say, well, that's not, we didn't promise you that. Now, I don't have personal experience in this area, but it kind of reminds me what the political world seems to be about.
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A lot of doublespeak, a lot of words that don't mean what you think that they mean, a lot of nuance.
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And it was, it was a low trust society because you had to familiarize yourself with all those nuances and what all the different words meant or what the different oaths meant.
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But what it came down to is that these people in this society, or if you were in this society, couldn't take anyone at their word.
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And that's bad enough in and of itself, but what made the situation even worse is that they claim that the teachings were based on God's holy word.
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They claim that the idea that you could say that you were going to do something, but because you use the certain word instead of another one meant that you didn't have to do it.
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And God's okay with that. In God's name, they were doing this, even if they didn't use God's name.
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And obviously there's no way that this is aligned with the spirit of the law, the spirit of the teaching, but a crafty enough person could construct a defense of how it aligns to the letter of the law.
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And that's the only thing that the Pharisees cared about. Could they judge this to be in alignment with the letter of the law, the literal meaning of the words?
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And so we arrive at this situation that Jesus finds himself in, a situation where people are being taken advantage of, where the religious leaders are taking advantage of people using what they are claiming to be scripture.
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Obviously a situation that's in need of a drastic correction. And so we see that.
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We see in verses 34 through 36 how he addresses some of those specific issues that we talked about.
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But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
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Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Now, before we get there, before we look a little closer at that, we do need to answer a question that has caused confusion in some areas of Christianity and some
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Christians in the past. And it's that first part in verse 34 where Jesus said, but I say to you, make no oath at all.
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Now, what this has done is it has led Christians who have taken that phrase, and if you look at it, that's only part of the phrase, but they've taken that part of the phrase to mean that under no circumstance ever should a
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Christian take an oath of any kind. And this has led people to do stuff like refuse to take an oath in court, refuse to take an oath of office.
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So you can't serve in politics, you can't serve in the military, you have to take an oath of office. But Jesus said, don't take any oaths.
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But is that what Jesus meant by that? Now, I'm sure you can guess,
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I'm gonna say no, that's ridiculous, for at least two reasons.
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Now, yes, it's absolutely ridiculous to assume that Jesus meant to never, ever take an oath ever in your life, ever for any circumstance, in any situation, for any reason.
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And it's difficult to say which one of these two reasons is more obvious, because I think they're both pretty self -evident.
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But first is that oaths appear constantly in Scripture. There are oaths throughout the
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Bible, Old and New Testament. In fact, one of the things that ties the entire storyline of Scripture together is the idea of covenants.
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There are several covenants that God has made with different people. Abrahamic Covenant, Mosaic Covenant, Noahic Covenant, Davidic Covenant, New Covenant.
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All of these covenants were promises from God. They're oaths from God.
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We see God himself make oaths in Scripture. One example of this is
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Genesis 22, 16 through 18, Genesis 22, 16 through 18.
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He's taking an oath with Abraham here. I should have marked this a little better.
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So he says, and said, by myself I have sworn, declares Yahweh, because you have done this thing and have not spared your son, your only one.
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Indeed, I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore.
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And your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have listened to my voice.
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But in verse 16 is that key phrase, by myself I have sworn. And those are the words of God.
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So we see God making oaths. It extends into the
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New Testament as well. Jesus himself makes oaths in different places. But we can sum this up as a general principle, what we see in Hebrews 6, 16.
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That verse says this, for men swear by one greater than themselves and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute.
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For men swear by one greater than themselves and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute.
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So clearly this can't be a definitive command that was intended to eliminate the concept of oaths from the lives of Christians forever, from that day to the end of eternity.
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And second, this is also self -evident if you simply continue to read.
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But the construction of the sentence, and this is why I go on and on and on about context, reading the whole verse, reading the verses around other verses.
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Because if you don't, and if you take half a verse, you can make it say something that it doesn't say.
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And people do this all the time in so many different areas. So simply reading on the rest of the sentence should tell you that he's referring to specific types of oaths.
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Hendrickson says this, does this mean now that by saying, do not take any oath at all,
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Jesus forbids even those oaths that are made in court? Does he teach that the entire realm of human relations, that there is no room for the solemn invocation of the name of God and substantiation of an important affirmation or promise?
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Not at all. Such a view would be contrary to the teaching of scripture. Then he goes on to say, what we have here in Matthew 5, 33 through 37, is the condemnation of the flippant, profane, uncalled for, and often hypocritical oath used in order to make an impression and to spice daily conversation.
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Over against that evil, Jesus commends simple truthfulness in thought, word, and deed.
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So we can be clear that this verse is not an absolute prohibition on oaths at all, but rather it's a prohibition on something else.
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So what Jesus is doing is he's highlighting just the absurd idea that swearing an oath by something else, whether it's heaven, earth,
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Jerusalem, your own head, by swearing to or by something lesser is somehow more allowable.
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Because you see, as Jesus points out here, that concept is ridiculous because there's literally nothing that the individual can swear to that's not in God's control.
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God is sovereign over everything. As Jesus said, heaven is his throne.
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The earth is his footstool. Jerusalem is the city of the king, and we're his slaves.
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We're his property. God is sovereign over us all.
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So by invoking any one of those things to make an oath, or even worse, to make a false oath that you're not gonna keep, is still taking the
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Lord's name in vain. It's still blaspheming the name of God. And just because you can build an argument that can make it seem like it's not the same thing, that doesn't mean that it doesn't still violate the spirit of the law.
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That kind of oath is still a violation of God's word.
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And that includes on your own head. You can't swear by yourself because you don't have control over all that's going on or is going to happen in your life.
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And then he closes this section in verse 37 with what's basically a timeless principle, something that we can all, like, you can take this home.
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You can cross -stitch this and hang it on your wall and live by it. Let your statement be yes, yes, or no, no.
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Anything beyond that is of the evil one. And if you do happen to cross -stitch this, make sure you leave the part about the evil one in there just as a reminder.
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Because what he's telling us is to be honest. He's telling us to say what we mean, to mean what we say.
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And we see this concept also in James 5 .12, which is basically a quote of this.
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It's talking about exactly the same thing. James 5 .12 says, but above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.
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Now, going back to Jesus' statement, he is also telling us that to do other than this is to lie.
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To do anything less than this is to lie. And we see that in the statement that anything beyond yes, yes, and no, no is of the evil one.
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And in John 8 .44, Jesus calls the devil the father of lies. So again, that's how he's saying that lying is of the evil one.
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Doing this is of the evil one. So how do we apply this to ourselves?
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On the surface, this set of verses is a little bit of a puzzle, at least some part of it, because just the idea of taking vows or taking oaths is not something that we come across in our everyday life.
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It's sort of, some of that is a little bit archaic in the terminology. But nevertheless, we do have vows and oaths in our lives.
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I mean, think about one of the most common vows that a lot of us take these days are marriage vows.
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We addressed marriage quite a bit last week, but those vows are very serious.
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We swear those before God and other people. And of course, there are various oaths we can take.
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You know, the two that immediately come to mind are an oath in court or an oath to join the military or another kind of similar organization.
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But that's almost beside the point, because what this comes down to for us today is probably four things.
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Here's what we can take away from these verses. When we think about the idea of oaths or of being truthful, number one is this is a heart issue.
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Because when you get right down to it, the only reason that you would want to make a statement that actually meant something other than what you said is because you're intentionally trying to deceive someone.
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And the reason that the Pharisees and the scribes were able to justify interpreting
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God's word in this way is because in their hearts, they were more focused on what they wanted, what they wanted to accomplish, what they wanted to obtain, what they wanted to do, and they were far less focused on honoring
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God. And this takes us back to the sixth beatitude.
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Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And again, lying, especially intentionally lying, is a heart issue.
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If Jesus tells us that anything beyond yes, yes, and no, no is of the evil one, we have to think what is going on in our heart when we intentionally tell someone something that's not true.
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One can't claim a pure heart while also invoking the name of God or his creation with the intent of deceiving someone else.
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This is not something that the Christian should be capable of doing or justifying in good conscience.
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Number two is that Christians should be known for honesty. While there are times for vows or oaths that are necessary or even required in the course of your life as a
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Christian, in the course of your day -to -day life, these types of oaths and vows, even if they are legally mandated and you have to take them and you do take them, as a
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Christian, they shouldn't be necessary for people to believe that you're word is good.
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Think about that. As a Christian, you should be able to be taken at your word.
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Your word should be taken at face value. But you already know if people believe what you say.
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If you have to spend a bunch of extra words swearing, oh no, I swear to whatever,
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I swear on my mother's grave, I swear on whatever it is that people swear on that I will do this.
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If you have to do that, you've already gone wrong somewhere.
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You already have a reputation and people already know that you're not good for your word. Or you have a reputation for not following through.
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An example of this is anybody that you can think of that's constantly late.
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If everybody knows you as someone who is never on time, you're already not keeping your word because you say you're going to be somewhere at a certain time, but everybody knows you're not going to be.
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I'm not naming any names, but we all know somebody that's like that. Osborne says this, any statement of a citizen of the kingdom should be self -authenticating and should be true at the core.
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And then Jesus prays this in John 17, 17, sanctify them by the truth.
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Your word is truth. So for the Christian, for us, as we strive to be more holy, as we strive to be more sanctified, as we strive to be more like Christ, being known for truthfulness, being known for honesty is part of that.
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No Christian should be content that they are known for anything other than keeping their word.
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And then number three, this is an issue of God's glory and God's sovereignty.
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But beyond that, it's an issue of how you view these things.
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It's an issue of how you view God's glory and God's sovereignty. Because remember, everything that you say, no matter how you view it, no matter how many people hear it, if it's only one person, if it's not even another person, anything you say is still said before God.
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God knows your heart. God knows the intentions of your heart. And that can be good or bad for you, depending on what the situation is.
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And I would argue that you can still deceive someone or lead them astray, even if unintentionally, even if you have good intentions.
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And that's a whole different issue of itself. You can teach people stuff with the best of intentions, but if you lead them astray, that's still a problem.
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But doing that as a Christian, going back to the idea of doing it intentionally too, doing that as a
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Christian, it brings repute on the name of God and on His glory.
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And this is because you're doing all these things. You're doing everything that you do in your life as an ambassador of God's kingdom, whether you like it or not, if you claim to be a
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Christian. And particularly when you're dealing with people that aren't Christians, when you're dealing with people that are unbelievers, if you have a reputation for being unreliable or even worse, if you have a reputation for being untrustworthy or dishonest, then you can lead them to believe that all
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Christians are like that. Whether it's true or not, your representation might give them a false idea about what
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Christians are like. So the biggest takeaway that we have for today is that as Christians, we need to live our lives in truth.
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And what does that mean? It means being honest in the way you deal with people. It means following through on your promises, following through on your commitments, being places when you say you're gonna be there.
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And most of all, it means not lying. Psalm 51 6 says, behold, you delight in truth in the innermost being.
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And finally, it comes down to doing what Jesus and James say, to let your yes be yes and your no be no, because anything beyond that is of the evil one.
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Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, as you've taught us, your word is truth.
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You are truth. And we know that everything that you've said and everything that you've given us is true.
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It doesn't matter how we interpret it. It doesn't matter how we can twist things to make them say what we want them to.
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If it's not exactly according to your word, it's not the truth. And I pray that as we go about our daily lives, as we go about dealing with others, as we go about interacting with society at large, that we would keep your truth in the forefront of our mind, that we would strive to deal honestly, that we would strive to deal fairly and allow the
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Holy Spirit to convict us of those times when we're not doing it. To convict us of those times when we realize that we haven't done what we said that we should do or that we've been dishonest with someone, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
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At the same time, God, we thank you for the grace and the mercy that you've shown. Most of all, we thank you that we have the opportunity for repentance in these situations,
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Lord. As all sins are against you, we can repent of the things that we've done, turn to you and be forgiven, thanks to the work of Jesus on the cross.
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God, continue to soften our hearts, continue to open our eyes, open our minds to the truth of your word.
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Show us the many places that we fall short and grant us the gift of repentance.
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God, thank you again for your grace and your mercy and your son. We love you and we pray all these things in the name of Jesus, amen.
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Amen. Now our benediction today is from 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 23 and 24.
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Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he who calls you who also will do it, amen.