LAW HOMILY: )The Language Of Hell)

The Ninth Commandment and the Duty to Obey God

Every week we look at the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to his people. We want to understand what his statutes are, his ordinances, his standards, and his commandments so that we can obey him, not to earn anything because that's already been earned for us on the hill called Calvary by Jesus Christ, but now as people who are saved to obey him.

So today we're in the ninth commandment. This is what it says. Verse 15 of Exodus chapter 20. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Now last week we saw that the law told us that we shall not steal and we saw that theft is not only about silver, gold, barns, and ledgers, but it's also about siphoning away your neighbor's courage, joy, and dignity with corrosive words and behavior.

This week, the law strikes at the same wound, but with sharper steel. You shall not bear false witness. Now if the eighth commandment protects your neighbor's estate, the ninth guards his name. And in scripture, a man's name is more precious than his gold.

Ecclesiastes 7 .1 says a good name is better than fine perfume. In the ancient world, perfume was not a common thing. It was very costly. It was reserved for kings and weddings. And yet Solomon says that your neighbor's reputation is worth more than that.

To rob him of it, whether by lies or insinuations or cowardly suggestions that let others assume the worst is not a small sin. It is vandalism against his soul. In Hebrew, witness, ched, carries legal ramifications.

The courtroom is in view. To slander or to stay silent when truth would defend a brother or sister is to act like Cain when he shrugged, am I my brother's keeper? But the ninth commandment answers, yes, you are.

And if you let his name bleed in the streets while you look the other way, then his blood or her blood is on your hands. Revelation calls Satan the accuser of the brethren. Chapter 12, verse 10. Every time that we disparage a neighbor, every time that you salt conversation with suspicion, every time you leave out just enough truth for reputation to rot, you are speaking in the fluency of hell.

Whispered rumors in that way are not harmless. They are hellish. They echo the serpent's strategy in Eden where a single twisted word collapsed the cosmos. When Satan said, did God really say? Make no mistake, cowardly silence is no refuge in this way.

Leviticus 5 .1 condemns the man who refuses to speak when testimony is required. He's condemned for letting his brother's name to be dragged through the mud without defense. And the way that it talks about it is to commit perjury by omission.

It's to stand with the mob like they stood against Christ and to say, whatever you did not do for one of these or the least of these, you did it for me and whatever you did in opposition to that, you did against me.

I want you to imagine for a second that your house was on fire. You know the family is inside, but you fear embarrassment, so you keep quiet. They perish and your silence becomes complicity. That's what we're talking about in this commandment.

To not bear false witness is also to refuse to speak harm, slander, gossip, but it's also to refuse to remain quiet when you could come to the aid of your brother. In this way, silence is like gasoline.

Husband, when you dismiss your wife's strengths in front of others with a joke, you chip away at her name and her reputation. Wives, when you recount your husband's faults to a friend, instead of him, you strip him of his dignity.

Parents, when you label your children lazy or difficult, you etch their identity in corrosive acid. Children, when you mock your parents behind their back, you mock God who gave them authority over you.

And Christians, when you cut down your brother or your sister with gossip, dressed up as concern, you are not defending truth or being a paragon of righteousness. You are playing the stenographer to Satan.

Universal Guilt Under the Ninth Commandment

And if the law ended here, all of our tongues would stand condemned for who among us has not sinned in harming another's reputation. Out of retribution or out of justice or out of some sort of vigilante response because they heard us first.

All of us have cut others down with tongue lashings that were not authored by the spirit of God. All of us have lied about another person. All of us have refused to speak when we could have spoken to bring aid.

All of us have violated the ninth commandment. Therefore, all of us need forgiveness and a savior. So brothers and sisters, let us right now go to the throne of grace and ask the Lord to forgive us of our sins and ask the Lord to help us to live according to his righteousness.

Prayer for Forgiveness, Courage, and Rest in Christ

So let's pray. Lord God, one of the most frequent sins that we commit is the deification of our opinions and preferences. And we use our opinions and our preferences as the hammer by which we beat our brother and sister.

Opinions are not bad and our preferences are not inherently wrong, but when we use them as justification for false witness and murder, then our hearts are fully corrupt. And Lord, we ask for your grace and your forgiveness.

Lord, I pray that you would help us. Help us to recall those times where we have done this. Maybe it's even today. And Lord, would you help us to have full confidence that we cannot forgive ourselves and that we cannot manage ourselves and that we cannot save ourselves, but that our only hope will come from laying these sins down at the foot of the cross because there is a perfect savior and it is you, Jesus.

Help us to have the courage to lay these things down. Help us to have the courage not to pick them back up again and help us to have the courage to rest in your perfect sufficiency that we may kill sin, that we may live in righteousness.

For the glory of your name, it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.