Don't Be a Liar

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Exodus 20:16.

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Exodus 20, verse 16 says, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
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Proverbs 18, 21 says, death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
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God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it?
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Or has he spoken, and will he not establish it? The title of today's sermon is Don't Be a
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Liar. As we went through 1 Samuel, there were several tricky sermons, and where David is in really dangerous situations.
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As he goes to the Philistines at Gath, he lies to Achish and acts like he's crazy, and the scripture does not scold him for this.
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Later on in the chapter, he is making war on the enemies of God. He's carrying out the ban that was given to Joshua back in the book of Joshua, and he was going back to the
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Philistine king and telling the king that he was destroying the people of Judah in the south of Israel.
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He was demonstrably lying, and yet he's not scolded. And so it started a question in my mind, because if you haven't noticed, we live in a culture that exalts in lying.
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I was listening to a podcast this week that was one of the scariest things I've ever heard by a guy who was literally in the ministry of truth in the censorship bureau of the
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American government, and he was talking about the CIA ops that have been run for the last 50 years in America.
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And the question that you come away with after listening to something like that is, what in the world is happening here, and has anything
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I've ever heard in my life been true, as it regards our country? And here in the church, it should not be so.
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And so an idea was formed, and this sermon kind of took several different directions. I was joking to my dad, as easy as the last sermon
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I did on Thanksgiving was for me to write, it's been compounded. This has been probably the hardest sermon I've written here.
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It went in a place where I didn't think it was gonna go. I was hoping to have a simple little thing of explaining when it's okay to use deception, and I think we went in a different direction from that.
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There's remnants of it left. And let's suffice it to say, God's word is, it requires wisdom to handle.
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And the command seems simple enough. This is one of 10 that God, with his own hand, wrote on the tablets for his people.
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God is not a bureaucrat. God is not a managerial elite who gives us 53 ,000 rules to follow.
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He gives us 10, and we can't do it because we're in utter rebellion against him. And this question of what is deceit, what is wrong with our words, when is it wrong to lie, it seems very simple in the verse.
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You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You notice there is a qualifier. So does that mean that therefore, if someone is not my neighbor, that we can go lie to whoever we want anytime we want?
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No, not exactly. But if we start asking questions like that, we start to sound like the Pharisees asking who is my neighbor?
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One thing that we do for sure know is that our neighbor is our Christian brothers, for sure.
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We know that our neighbor is our family. We also know that there are times, there are times when with wisdom, we can deceive righteously.
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And so that's where we start. And this is gonna be kind of a weird sermon because here's what's gonna happen. I'll kind of give you the outline. We're gonna do, hopefully, hopefully about 10 minutes here of kind of seminary nerd stuff, all right?
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Sorry about that. There's some curiosities. But you'll like that when we get to the second half because the second half is
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I'm gonna rear back and try to punch you in the nose as hard as I can about truth, okay?
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And talk about how we are all filthy, dirty little liars. Me, first and foremost.
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So, seminary part first. We'll call this the fun part, okay? The fun part. There are times for righteous or wise deceit.
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The Bible never promotes, excuses, or condones lying. And God never lies.
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Lying is when we are intentionally trying to hide the truth of God's wisdom and God's word.
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We are trying to hide what is good. We are trying to deceive and turn people towards evil for our own benefit.
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Never for the benefit of the kingdom. Always for our own benefit. And always to save our own skin. That is not really ever promoted.
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So you would ask right away, well, wasn't David trying to save his own skin when he was being crazy in front of Achish?
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And I would say, David was anointed the king of Israel. He was the hope of the people of Israel. And he was using means to get out.
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And he wrote a psalm that tells us that his heart was trusting in the Lord and the Lord provided a means for him to escape.
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And so David was prayerfully and righteously executing deceit. We are not to be a people that lie, but there are times, and it helps us.
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This came really late in the week. The word that's used in the ninth commandment that I just read is the word shakwer, which always means deceitful speech, always.
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Every time it's used, it's condemned. That is the kind of speech that we should absolutely stay away from. But there is a different word that's used in Hebrew that's called sefon, and that means to hide, to hide.
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And that is often used to show the use of obfuscation, obscuring or deceit to protect the righteous from the wicked.
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This word is used directly with what Moses' mother did to save Moses from the evil decree of Pharaoh to destroy all the
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Hebrew sons. This word is used with the Hebrew midwives just a couple of chapters later, where they would not reveal to Pharaoh that the boys were born so that they could be executed.
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It was used with Rahab and Jericho as she lied to the people of Jericho to protect the spies and to bring safety to herself.
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It's also used with Obadiah when he hides prophets from evil Jezebel. So there is a place carved out, and there's some really obvious ones.
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When is it okay to deceive? It's okay to deceive when wicked people are trying to destroy the righteous.
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We don't have to lay over and tell our enemies that our brothers are hiding in the basement.
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We don't have to do that. You can tell them there's nobody in the house. That is a clear use of sefon.
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That is a situation where it's righteous hiding. Well, let's start with the weirdest one. When is it okay to deceive?
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When's okay? So we should be more thinking, but we are often unthinking, and we use social situations where our consciences are not convicted by using deceit all the time.
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So you go over to somebody's house, and they say, would you like a coffee?
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And you're like, no, no, thanks, I'm fine. But you really would like a coffee.
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This is what I'm going to make a category of that is inconsequential social situations.
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You do not have to repent before God unless your conscience is smitten by that. You do not have to repent before God to come to the table if you told your neighbor that you did not need a coffee when, in fact, you actually wanted a coffee, but what you really wanted to do was, no, you don't have to go to the trouble.
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And this was one of my first brushes with these types of deceitful situations is
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I married a half Persian lady, and the first time that I went over to her family, it was actually at her grandmother's house, and there was a huge meal.
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And obviously, if you know me well, you know that I ingratiated myself to them immediately by eating a lot of food.
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And they were very happy with me because I loved their food, and I ate a lot of it, it's delicious. But then I was introduced to this concept because when
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I'd eaten seconds, and indeed kind of thirds, the grandma asked me, would you like some more?
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Do you want some more? And I said, no, I think I'm good. Are you sure you don't want some more? No, I think
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I'm good. Really? You really should have some more. And I said, no, I'm good. And I think it was
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Kelsey's dad, Sid, who said, Josh, this is called tarofing, tarofing.
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So it's a Persian word, it's a Farsi word that means just what I described. And it's polite in Persian culture to say, no,
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I don't want any, a few times before you actually take it. And so are all the
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Persians gluttonous, lazy liars because of tarofing?
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My answer is no, no. And I look to Christ here. So in Luke 24, look, this one,
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I'm gonna tell you. In this section, I'm already going long, I gotta be fast. But in this section, this really just gave me fits this week.
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Okay, Luke 24, 27 through 29. The setting is that Jesus is going with his disciples and he's talking to them about how all of Moses and the prophets revealed him.
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Man, I wish I had been there. Here's what it says. Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.
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And they approached the village where they were going and he acted as though he were going further.
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But they urged him saying, stay with us for it is getting toward evening and the day is now nearly over.
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So he went in to stay with them. So what do we do with that? The God of all creation who knows everything knows that he's going to be invited into the house to dine with the disciples, but he acts like he's gonna keep walking to go further.
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And so we know a few things. We know Jesus did not sin. We know Jesus is not a liar. We know that he's not a man that he can't lie like God.
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He is Yahweh, he is the incarnate son of God. And in this situation, he acts like he's gonna keep walking on knowing full well that he's not going to keep walking on and the disciples invite him in.
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So what do we do with that? And I think the answer is this. There are times where we can just relax.
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Truly, we can relax, okay? If somebody offers you a Mountain Dew and you really want it, but you don't want them to go, you can say no thank you on the
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Mountain Dew. You can even say it three times. Maybe a fourth you should consider just getting the Mountain Dew. Maybe they want you to have it.
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Either way, we play games. We use sarcasm with wisdom. We tell jokes.
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And so we are not held to the brush that every single word that you have to say has to be exactly the truth at all times.
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There are inconsequential social situations. Use that in your home and enjoy yourself. I can do it,
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Alana will kill me later, but there is a point where there was some ribbing on the golf course involving Brady that involved things were not,
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I hope they weren't exactly true coming from Cooper, but they were very funny. And if they were true,
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I'm very concerned, but I don't think they were, and I don't think that Cooper was lying and using wicked deceit in that situation.
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He was commenting on Brady's looks and it got weird. Second situation, second situation, and I can go fast here because we already have covered it and we know it.
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And that is that in war, in war, we do not have to tell our enemies where we're gonna go.
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And we don't have to tell them what we're about to do. Even if they ask us directly, we can look them in the face and tell them a lie.
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Yes, we can, because they are trying to kill us and they are trying to win a war, and so we can use tactics.
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We know that from Rahab and Jericho. We know it from David in 1 Samuel. We know it from an instance in 2
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Chronicles 20. They begin singing for joy. Yahweh set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah.
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The Lord himself was setting ambushes. That means there was trickery involved, and so there is use for righteous deceit in times of war.
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Another one is in times of safety, where safety is needed. This is the Hebrew midwives.
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This is 1 Samuel 16, which should have given us a little bit of a hard time in the text where the Lord tells
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Samuel to go to Bethlehem and to anoint a new king while there is a sitting king on the throne.
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And Samuel rightly says, well, they're not gonna like that. Saul's not gonna like that very much. What do I do?
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And the Lord tells him, well, tell them you've come to offer sacrifices. That's from the mouth of the
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Lord himself. So in order to hide, that's that siphon, right? We don't have to just give ourselves to the enemy for them to lay us low and slaughter us.
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That is not a turn -the -other -cheek situation. That is a using biblical wisdom. Now, there's one here, this is number four, okay?
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So when deceit is used. Now, this one's not for us, but this is to help us understand the character of God. Sometimes God uses deceit,
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I know, you should perk up. God uses deceit as warnings and judgment against his enemies.
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So let me let the word of God speak for you here. First Kings 22, 23, now therefore, behold, the
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Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all of these your prophets, and the
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Lord has proclaimed disaster against you. The Lord put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of these prophets.
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There's so much there, and there's so much I want to do there, but I'm gonna suffice it to say this. All of the evil and the good spirits in the world, all are under the control of Yahweh, and he directs them according to his purposes, and he ordains them, and they cannot do otherwise, and they are yet accountable for their actions.
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And we saw this over and over in 1 Samuel, with the evil spirit coming to Saul, and we see it in 1 Kings, that the
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Lord deceives those who would speak against him. And he puts stupidity into their mouths and into their minds.
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Maybe even more explicit, Ezekiel 14, for anyone in the house of Israel or the sojourners who sojourn in Israel, who separates himself from me, sets up his idols in his heart, puts right before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity, and then comes to the prophet to inquire of me for himself.
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I, Yahweh, will be brought to answer him in my own person. I will set my face against that man and make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from among my people, so you will know that I am
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Yahweh. But if the prophet is enticed to speak a word, it is I, Yahweh, who have enticed that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from among my people
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Israel. They will bear the punishment of their iniquity as the iniquity of the inquirer is.
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So the iniquity of the prophet will be in order that the house of Israel may no longer wander from me and no longer defile themselves in all of their transgressions.
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Thus they will be my people, and I shall be their God, declares Lord Yahweh. Did you catch that?
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If you rebel against the Lord, he has counted your iniquity against you, and you will not be among his people.
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And if you go to a holy man to get a different word from that, and that holy man soothes you in your sin and your iniquity, understand that it is the
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Lord who has put that word in that so -called holy man's mouth so that he can burn in hell just like the son of rebellion and the son of perdition that came to ask him for an oracle.
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But Josh, that's the Old Testament. Do we not see this in live action today?
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As the so -called pastors who are accumulators of wealth and ease and who stand behind pulpits and soothe people in their sins day by day are even more sons of hell than the people whose ears they tickle every single
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Sunday. It never changed, and it's never going to change until Christ comes back, that there are gonna be people who use the name of God to speak words that are on behalf of God, that God knows full well, and God has put those words in their mouth so that they would burn also.
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James says, not many of you should be teachers. It's passages like this that really bring that to fruition and that frankly scare me to death because I stand here and I look, and if you think that's
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Old Testament, look at 2 Thessalonians 2. For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false in order that they may all be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness.
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Why do we find ourself in this state, in the country, in this state, in the church?
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Does the word of God not see it crystal clearly? God has sent spirits of delusion on those who would speak for him and those who would speak and promote wickedness on his behalf, and we should call those men and women out.
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We should call them out. God has revealed truth to everyone. Romans 1 is explicit about that.
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We have no excuse, and in rejection of truth, the ultimate end of hard -hearted rejection is that God obscures his revelation unto judgment of those who have rejected him.
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You don't get smarter when you reject God. You get stupider and more ignorant day by day by day.
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There is only one way out, and it's there, is that we look to truth. Did you see it?
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They will be my people and I shall be their God, says Yahweh. That is the promise to the church. People who do not believe the truth but take pleasure in wickedness are going to grow in their stupidity one degree to the next, and God puts that spirit of deceit there.
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God entices into their own wickedness, and it is hard for us to understand that because then
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God judges them for that which he enticed them into. We know this. It's clear, and this is one area of deceit that is off -limits to us.
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We cannot deceive people to entice them into evil because we do not know the hearts of men. We don't operate in the same arena as God, and so what we do is we preach a clear gospel with no obfuscation, with no muddying, with no nuance, because that is the only chance of a life that pierces the dark of man's stupidity and man's pride that rattles to the core and opens the prison doors into the salvation that we enjoy through Christ, and I would say this.
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With all of these deceits, look, we live in a world and we live in a culture where we are going to be up against this.
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You're gonna be in a job and you're gonna be asked to put something in your email tagline that's going to be deceit. If we want truly to take back institutions, and we see it happening right now as there's tumult, there's tumult in the government as the machine rages against people who are gonna be put into certain offices, and we start to understand that there has to be a guile at times to enter into these institutions and start putting the pesticide of the light into the dark places.
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You're probably not gonna be able to get in there wearing Jesus on your sleeve, and so there is an element of wisdom and cunning and shrewdness that has to be used, and let me caution you because this is where we start to turn.
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I wanna caution you that we have to have discernment. These are the stakes. Proverbs 10, when there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who holds back his lips has insight.
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The tongue of the righteous is as choice silver. The heart of the wicked is worth little.
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The lips of the righteous feed many, but ignorant fools die for lack of a heart of wisdom.
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Proverbs 13, three, the one who guards his mouth keeps his soul. The one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.
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If that's not warning enough, Jesus says in Matthew 12, I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
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But I thought we were condemned or justified by our faith in Christ. Yes, obviously, but do you know the only way to have words that don't condemn you is to have a heart that's regenerate that loves
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Christ, because the heart that's regenerate and loves Christ, we know that out of that heart, out of the abundance of that heart comes the words of your mouth, and may the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be pleasing to God, and the only way that they can be pleasing is if we hide his law deep within our heart and we meditate it and we become like a tree firmly planted by streams of water whose leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does he prospers, but the wicked are not so, because the wicked are tossed about by every wind of false doctrine, they are enticed by their passions and by their pleasures, and they are darkened in stupidity, and they are dullards not understanding the light of the gospel and not understanding the open rebellion that they have against their creator.
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It is a dangerous thing to have evil meditations in your heart, and if you are a liar, it is because you have cursed evil meditations in your heart, and as a
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Christian, there is an answer for that, and that answer is repent today. We see a church that is ravaged by disunity, and we are on the verge here of what we hope is a good division, a godly division, and friends, there's only gonna be one way that that division is gonna be godly, there's only gonna be one way.
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Paul gives us the answer in Ephesians 4, 13 through 15, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, so that we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, that is
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Christ. If we want to plant churches here, if we want to divide the body, if we want to take beloved people that are going to leave, that are gonna go across town, and we're not going to see those people every single
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Sunday, we're not gonna be singing together, hearing their voices with ours, we're gonna be on a different mission than what we have to understand is
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Paul's message to us is very simple, we have to grow up, we have to grow up.
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We have to understand that we have unity in the faith because there's one faith that binds us.
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Notice that nowhere in there, nowhere in there is there room for our pride and our satisfaction and our ingenuity in being able to do what we have done, but instead understanding that we are given a stature which belongs to fullness in Christ, and our stature is weak until we behold him face to face and are transformed from one degree to another into the likeness of his son.
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We speak the truth in love. We speak the truth in love.
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And when we do that, we are going to grow up into all aspects of him.
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So where does unity come from? Number one, unity in the church, it comes from maturity.
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Telling the truth is a sign of maturity. Did you know that? Lies come naturally to little children.
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I saw a story on the internet today, we've all seen it as parents of the boy who had Oreo smears around his lips, and the dad comes in and says, have you been eating the
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Oreos off the counter? No dad, what's that on your face? I don't know, is that Oreos on your face?
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I don't think so, I don't know how they got there. And we look and we laugh at that, but we understand that the natural instinct of man is to break the ninth commandment, because we have no fear of God, and because we understand from a very early age that we would like very much to serve number one, which is ourselves.
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And so we lie, and telling the truth is a sign of maturity, because telling the truth is difficult, and mature people do difficult things.
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That's how we grow in maturity, is by doing difficult things. It is difficult to understand that telling the truth can cost you.
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It can cost you your job, it can cost you friendships that you didn't need anyway, and it can cost you all kinds of disagreement, and it can bring conflict into your life.
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But understand, that conflict is a precursor of what was going to happen anyway in a much worse case if you did not tell the truth in the first place.
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You have to tell the truth. So unity derives from maturity in the church. Unity derives from the core faith.
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Here's the core faith, guys. This is what binds all of us as Christians. Christ is Lord. Christ is
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Lord. He is the King. There is one baptism that we cling to, whether our Presbyterian brothers through Paedo -baptism or us through Credo -baptism, guess what?
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It is one baptism in the faith of our Lord, and that is the core that brings us all together, because we have one faith, and that one faith, there is no possibility for salvation and righteousness outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And I think the biggest thing, I think the biggest core that brings us unity is the belief in the promises of God who cannot lie.
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Really, if you were asking me, boil down to Christian life, I think I would say it's that. Christian life is believing in God.
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It's believing what he says and understanding who he is so that we will do what he says because of who he is and because of what he's made us.
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Number three, unity derives from dividing from the bad guys. Now, I hope none of that's going on here, but we know it will happen, right?
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False doctrine has to be treated severely. Now, understand what I just said. On the one side,
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I just said we should hold to the core of the faith and that we should get along and we should treat each other as brothers who hold the core of the faith, but guess what?
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If someone is spreading false doctrine, if they are interfering with the gospel of Jesus Christ, they should be treated severely.
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We just read about it in Galatians last year. What happens when you start messing with the gospel?
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Paul tells you you're cut off from the covenant, right? You're out. So discernment is watching and praying, conversing and testing.
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No more celebrity pastors. Let's chop that stuff off at the knees. You know what let's do?
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Let's listen to our pastors and get involved in their lives so that you know what they're doing and you know who they are.
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There is accountability in being with each other and knowing what's going on. There's accountability in seeing the family and seeing the methods and the tactics of what's going on in the home.
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False doctrine will always lead to sinful actions over time. Understand that.
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And it goes both ways, right? Bad actions will always lead to false doctrine over time.
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Right? They are corrupting influences and they work in both directions. There are men who preach a true gospel whose lives are a train wreck.
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And guess what? The train wreck's coming to the doctrine too. Because those two things can't live together.
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Unrepentant men are always dividers. Unrepentant men are dividers that have to be divided from.
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Because unrepentant men are stubborn donkeys that we can't be in fellowship with. Guess what guys?
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What's core to the faith is not your opinions on World War II. It's really not. It's not core to the faith.
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What is core to the faith is that Jesus is Lord. And what we have to understand is that the big deal is when we get caught in our sin and we don't repent.
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You can't deal with someone like that. And that's why we have status, that's why we have church discipline, that's why we have eldership, is we're trying to keep this stuff in line and understand that these are the dangers to unity.
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Think about this. Think about a world where your yes is yes and your no is a no. And that derives from godly character.
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And you use language that builds up and edifies over time. Did you know that cutting sometimes edifies? You gotta cut away the poison and the dead stuff to let the living grow back.
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And so it is with friends, especially male friends, that we cut each other often. And it helps.
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Because faithful are the wounds of a friend and profuse are the kisses of an enemy. The enemy is gonna kiss you all the time.
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Say, you are the greatest. You are so amazing. I almost feel like my face is alight from hearing your words today.
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That's an enemy. That's an enemy. And a friend says, I mean, you probably need to do a better job with your wife.
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I'm noticing things, right? Kind of blowing up in anger. Brother, I think you need to watch that, okay?
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Those are the relationships that last over time. All right, so let's get real mean now.
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How do we break the ninth commandment? These are the threats to the unity at Covenant Baptist Church.
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They're threats to the unity of Grace Covenant Reformed Baptist Church. They're threats to the unity of every church.
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How do we break the ninth commandment? Well, the first way we do it is we bear false witness about ourselves.
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We like to exaggerate. We like to exaggerate. We exaggerate our successes, we exaggerate our experiences, and we try to make people think something about ourselves that is not the truth.
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That is always self -serving. There is no quarter for that in Scripture. It's really funny.
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In an old sitcom called Arrested Development, there's a character who's absolutely ridiculous whose name is
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Job, and he spells it G -O -B. And he, at one point, is doing a company party, and he keeps talking about how expensive his suit is.
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He says, you know, like I want all of you guys touching my $6 ,000 suit. And then eventually it's $4 ,000 pants.
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The idea is he is trying to give an impression that he's greater than he is by exaggerating about his stuff.
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Little kids do that all the time, right? They do it all the time. But for us as adults, this can get into our vocabulary and we can exaggerate.
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How did you shoot on the golf course? Maybe a little four strokes better than it actually was. That's an exaggeration.
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I really wanted to do better, and so therefore in my mind and in my words, I did do better. Closely related to exaggeration is the undue praise that we gain from fitting in.
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Oh yeah, I've seen that, I heard that, I've been there. And let me tell you a story that's very sad because I remember this, and the fact that I remember it is crazy.
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So as a four -year -old at First Baptist Church at Prairie Grove, I was in a
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Sunday school class, and it was pretty light duty. I think we were doing a craft and we were sitting around a table, and there was several four and five -year -olds and four -year -old boys, and at one point, one of them had been on a vacation to Hawaii, all right?
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And I said, oh yeah, I've been there too. It was great. The kernel of truth in this lie is that I did have an uncle who lived in Hawaii, and he did send me some chocolate -covered macadamia nuts that were delicious, but I'd never been there.
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I'd never been there. And why do I remember to this day, why do I remember a stupid story like that?
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Because I remember now, out of the mouth of a young child, that I was a disgrace to my
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Lord, and that I lied to those boys. Don't let that be the only kind of story that a pastor ever tells, talking about his sins, repentance.
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We are natural liars. Natural liars. We don't have to think about it.
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It comes up to us without any effort at all. Just say you haven't read the book.
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Just say, no, I haven't been there. I would love for you to tell me about it more. You don't have to, you're gonna get exposed anyway, and then the other person is going to know that you would lie about something so foolish.
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Calvin said about lying that lying is one of the most grievous sins because it always multiplies, and it grows in bunches.
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Because when we lie, we have to lie to cover the lie, and then we have to lie to cover that lie, and then we don't keep track.
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And what it actually does to us is, in our lies, we think we're puffing ourselves up and giving ourselves credit, but what we're really doing is destroying ourselves and making ourselves look ridiculous because eventually our lies catch up, and we are just a liar.
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Lying is battery acid to relationships. It is corrosive. It is a corroding force because lying hates the other person because what it does, as a
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Christian especially, is when we lie in our relationships, what we do is we shift the balance of the conversation to the one being lied to, and they're thinking in their head, this is my brother.
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I don't know if that's true. It must be. He wouldn't lie to me. And do you see the trust?
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Do you see the foundation that's starting to crack with that kind of activity? Because once you're lying and once you're known to be a liar, you're never believed again, and yet it's always a pressure to try to believe.
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The small thing you would lie about reveals that you would most certainly lie when the stakes are great. We like to tell ourselves all the time that if they came and busted in my door and told me to deny my
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Lord, I would die before I would do that, and yet we won't tell somebody we didn't watch the movie they're talking about.
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The small amount of pressure that it takes to jump over that threshold shows the wickedness and the corruption of our heart.
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Don't let it be that way. Even more grievous, we have false piety and false humility.
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I read my Bible every day for an hour. Is another way of saying when it's not true, I thank
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God that I'm not like this tax collector that's you, posting
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Instagram pictures of a boiling hot cup of coffee with an open Bible when you haven't touched the word in two weeks.
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It's false piety. It's ridiculous. Let's hit a little harder.
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This is stuff I see. I've seen it in my own life. Broken commitments. Yeah, I'll be there.
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You can count on me. Oops, something came up. Now look, sometimes things come up and we know that, right?
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We understand that. I think Cooper had just such an instance, right? The semi comes with all the dumpsters.
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You gotta get the dumpsters off. It's the way it happens. But when we are known for breaking our commitments, when we're known for being flaky, when we're known for saying, oh yeah,
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I'll be there and we don't show up, what you are known for being is a liar. So stop being a liar.
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Stop being a liar. Honor your commitments or, as the Proverbs said, don't say anything at all.
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Don't say anything at all. We lie to avoid consequences and if we're called on it, we lie more.
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And I urge you to break the cycle. Last one, this one will be somewhat humorous if it's not so terrible. And I'm gonna use a humorous example, but I don't want you to get lost in that.
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That's the double sin of using God's name to invoke cover for our actions. This is a stereotypical teenage boy that says
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God told me that we need to break up so I can focus on my godliness. Not only is that a lie, that's taking the
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Lord's name in vain and it shows a vapid, wicked heart. Don't be that way. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
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Let's round the corner. How do we lie to bear false witness about others? Well, we tell slanderous lies.
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We destroy someone else death by verbiage. Have a care. When you tell lies about another person to destroy them, the
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Bible says that you're digging a pit that you yourself are going to fall into. Proverbs 12, 13 says the snare of an evil man is in the transgression of his lips, but the righteous man will come out from distress.
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Ascribing sins to others, either with public lies or in a stealth campaign of whispering, is ridiculous evil behavior that recalls more
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Satan type deception than it does Christian brotherhood. We should tell each other our concerns to our face.
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We should not engage in whisper campaigns and we should certainly never tell lies to destroy another person. Let's talk about the sweet dessert of breaking the ninth commandment.
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Gossip. Oh man, it's sweet because it gives us, it's a social elixir.
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Got nothing to talk about? Well, let's focus on somebody that we don't like. Now we got hours of enlightening conversation.
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No, but what it does is it tears people down and it's even worse because sometimes we double dip in our false piety and we say, let's pray for this person and how they're cheating on their wife, lying to everyone and are really just a terrible person.
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Let's pray that God would fix them. You know, it's better oftentimes to cover our friends and to pray for them privately and to deal with them face to face.
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Gossip destroys churches. It destroys churches. And let's not mistake it.
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What it's intended to do is to elevate yourself and it's to cause recreation at another person's expense and it's evil, wicked behavior and I've engaged in it and I've heard in it,
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I've heard it, which means that I've engaged it through hearing it and we need to be bold enough to say, we need to stop doing that gossip and it's a sin against our
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Lord. The literal meaning of the ninth commandment is false testimony and we do this too.
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That's what I heard also. I heard you were there. I saw that you were there. This is knowingly using untruths to progress an argument, either explicitly or implicitly.
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Sometimes we misspeak, sometimes we misspeak, but when we're caught in our misspeaking, we should change the record and reflect the truth.
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We should be people that are not dying with the ship of our failed argument by clinging on to things that are not true, but instead let the argument go and be holy, be holy.
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Tell the truth. Last two. We tell lies to manipulate other people.
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We try to steer them emotionally. These would be things like, I am so hurt that you would do that.
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I'm so hurt that you said that. And what we try to do is grab people's heartstrings to make them go along with what we want and that is bearing false witness.
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It is using our brothers and sisters. Flattery is another way that we do this, that we manipulate through flattery.
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What we try to do is we gain a privileged position that corrupts the soul. It corrupts the soul of the flatterer and it corrupts the soul of the one getting the flattery.
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Let's not flatter each other. Let's tell the truth. Let's tell the truth. Finally, there are lies that betray a fear of man.
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And I think these are the ones that are most common in our friendships. We try to go along to get along or we omit the truth in necessary situations.
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We know something bad just happened and we know we should say something about it, but we don't because we don't want the fight or we don't want the argument.
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Or sometimes we shape and we angle the situation to make it more palatable. This is one that I must confess that my wife and I talked about a couple of weeks ago.
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I feel the internal pressure, right? I'm gonna be gone. Like it may be a good thing.
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I'm gonna go work at the other property or something like that. And the question gets asked, how long do you think you're gonna be gone?
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And I feel the instant pressure and the pressure is to minimize the amount of time, right?
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And to say, oh, I'll probably be gone for two or three hours when it's really gonna be five or six hours.
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I can't describe that as being anything besides a fear of man. And it's disrespectful to my wife.
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And it's disrespectful to the hearer. And most importantly, it's a sin against God. We are not to shape and angle situations for our benefit and to the detriment of the person who is our brother or our sister.
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We have to be people of the truth. We have to tell the truth. If we don't know, we say we don't know and then we'll keep it posted.
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And if we do know, we don't shave it down. When are you gonna be home? 15 minutes, eh, like an hour.
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Let's not do that. Because what it does, look, I saw the fruits of my life. What it does is anytime that question's asked, my wife doesn't believe my answer.
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And I can tell you this, that lies grow in clusters. That the smallest thing like that, if not checked, if not repented of, becomes a man who stands in the pulpit and he'll lie about anything.
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We have to repent. So there's good news. And I wanted it here. When we look at the law, which this is the ninth commandment, and we look at the law, and it was given in such a way that the people would not climb onto the mountain.
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God was there, right? God was on Sinai and there was a thunderous cloud and the people were instructed, you don't cross this line or you will die and any cattle will die.
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And Moses received the law and he came down off of the mountain and the people could not behold his face because the glory of the
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Lord was on his face and the law was so glorious and God's presence was so glorious that they couldn't look on it.
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And they said, cover your face, we're gonna die. We can't look at you. God's going to kill us.
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Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, he says, therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness.
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This is the hope of the new covenant and the hope of the gospel. We are not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face so the sons of Israel would not look intently at the consequence of what was being brought to an end.
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But their minds were hardened for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because it is brought to an end in Christ.
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But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart. Did you know that Christ has pierced the veil?
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There is no veil on Christ. There's so much symbolic stuff. You remember how the veil tore, the curtain ripped apart.
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There is no veil over the face of Christ when we behold him in heaven. Jesus did not come to earth with a veil over his face, but with angels singing glory in the highest in the heavens.
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There was a star, the signs of the planets and the celestial bodies were being twisted around to show the coming of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And today we have the good news. And so if you're a liar, if you're a liar, there is good news.
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And if you want to follow the title of my sermon, which is don't be a liar, the good news is this. The good news is you don't have to be a liar.
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But the bad news is you can't do this by willpower. Not gonna lie anymore. That's not gonna last, okay?
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What has to happen is your heart has to be changed. And it gets changed. It gets changed by being afraid, but it also gets changed by understanding that we can tell the truth and we can trust in God because he is for us.
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We all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the entire body as well.
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If you want to live a holy life, control your mouth. How do you control your mouth? Well, let's look.
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This is our hope for today. 2 Corinthians 5, 14. For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all and therefore all died.
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And he died for all so that they who live would no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.
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Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him in this way no longer.
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away.
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Behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
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Lies bring zero reconciliation. Reconciliation comes from the truth. And brothers and sisters, we are new creations in Christ.
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We no longer live for the dead body. We no longer live according and regarding one another in the flesh.
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When we lie to one another, we regard each other in the flesh because we think, I have to be okay.
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I have to stay okay. But when we're in Christ, we look at one another in Christ and we've all died.
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And if we've all died and been born again and raised to life, let me ask you, what are you afraid of?
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Is the reaction of your friend, your wife, your coworker, your boss, your pastor, anyone else in your life, is the reaction of them to the truth something to be afraid of?
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No, no. The God who saved you will sustain you.
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And the God who saved you will give you a tongue whose wisdom is like silver and who builds up and builds the house and exhorts and encourages and rebukes.
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And guess what you will be known as then? You'll be known as a man who is able to be self -controlled, a man who is noble and honorable and wise.
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Basically all the characteristics of Philippians 4, 8, that'll be you. And the reason why is because when we're asked, why are you the way you are?
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And the answer will be because I don't regard anyone according to the flesh. God has given me the ministry of reconciliation.
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My mouth builds up because my mouth flows with the overflow of a heart that has been changed by Christ himself.