Do Not Lie to One Another

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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February 7, 2022

00:28: And I'm going to begin in verse 1, but we're going to focus on verse 6, I mean 9, I'm sorry.
00:39: Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
00:47: And set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.
00:50: For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
00:54: And when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
01:00: Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, which amounts to idolatry.
01:11: For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.
01:17: And in them you also once walked when you were living in them.
01:21: But now you also, putting them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abuse of speech from your mouth.
01:30: And do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old man and itself and its evil practices and put on the new self, who is being renewed to the true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.
01:45: A renewal of which there is no distinction between Greek or Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all and in all.
01:58: All right, we're going to focus on verse 9 where it says, And it's interesting how when Paul begins in verse 5, he says, And then he goes on down and he lists the sins of the tongue.
02:24: He says slander, abusive speech, don't let them come out of your mouth.
02:29: And then he gives an imperative, it is, do not lie.
02:34: And it is hot.
02:46: What is a lie? All right, what else? What else is a lie? Is that dark enough for y'all to see back there? Do I need to make it bigger and bolder? This is a clear pen.
03:17: What else can we define a lie as? Half-truth.
03:23: Half-truth? What else? Omission of truth.
03:41: Whoever said these, y'all got to define them, so be prepared.
03:48: All right.
03:51: What else? Deception.
03:57: What else? Deception.
03:59: Who said that? My husband.
04:02: That is actually where I would have started.
04:05: That's a very wise man.
04:11: I have just told a half-truth.
04:17: Deception.
04:18: All right, what else? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? It's a sin.
04:32: What is? It's lying.
04:34: Is this a sin? Yes.
04:36: Are you sure? Yes.
04:38: Are you ready to defend that position? Is all deception wrong? All right, nobody wants to answer that yet, so we'll go through these and then.
05:03: Is every non-truth a lie? No.
05:08: Who said that? No, because you have the instance of Rahab in the Old Testament.
05:11: That's what I was thinking about.
05:13: Rahab? She lied, and we're going to talk about that, though.
05:17: What made the distinction between the lie is going to be these two things.
05:25: The intent, just keep this in mind.
05:28: Man, that is just not working.
05:30: The intent of the one speaking, okay? The intent of the one speaking, and then the expectation of the one that hears.
05:46: That's what's going to determine if this is a lie and how bad of a whopper it can be.
05:54: So, is every non-truth a lie? We'll just take Rahab.
05:58: Did she lie to them? Yes.
06:00: Okay, so what she told was a non-truth, therefore it's a lie.
06:05: But is every non-truth a lie? Me and Sybil take the kids to the zoo, and she says, that's a rhinoceros.
06:16: And I say, no, that's a duck-billed platypus.
06:21: I really thought it was a duck-billed platypus, okay? I was wrong.
06:27: It was a non-truth, but did I lie to my kid? No, I did not.
06:32: So, not every non-truth is a lie.
06:39: Ignorance.
06:39: What's that? I just said ignorance.
06:42: If you speak something in ignorance, ignorance meaning not just in stupidity, but actually lack of knowledge.
06:47: That's actually what ignorance means.
06:49: It's just lack of knowledge.
06:50: We speak in something, and we do it in such a way that we don't know, and we're speaking.
06:54: You're saying something just in error.
06:58: When he was doing what he was doing.
07:00: Yeah.
07:02: Half-truth.
07:03: Is a half-truth a lie? There's intention to deceive there.
07:13: What would be the one we can think of pretty recently in our study in Genesis? Half-truth.
07:20: She's my sister.
07:33: Is what he said true about her being his sister? Yes.
07:38: But what was his intent? To deceive.
07:43: To deceive him.
07:46: So, now we're looking, okay, why did he say what he said? I'm going to get dizzy.
07:52: Why did he say what he said? His intent was to deceive his hearer, and the expectation of his hearer was to be deceived.
08:04: Therefore, what Abraham did was wrong.
08:08: Okay? What Abraham did was wrong.
08:12: Is the omission of truth a lie? I know we probably told our kids that, haven't we? Can we go back to the intent? It goes back to the intent.
08:27: What's the intent? Information for self-gain.
08:30: Sure.
08:31: So, just the omission of truth does not mean there's always a lie.
08:40: The word is pseudeste, or pseudomai, and it means false, pseudo, right? False speaking.
08:47: So, are we speaking in such a way that we're trying to deceive that person to make either ourself look better and them look worse? It always goes back to this here, the intent and expectation.
09:02: What was the intent? When we think of, we could use the instance for Rahab, and if you all want to turn there, we could read that, or just recall the story.
09:15: It's not, the narrative is not told in order.
09:20: She puts them up on the roof, then it goes back to what has happened.
09:24: Y'all remember that.
09:26: It says, oh, she hit them up on the roof, then it goes back to the narrative of her talking about the people knocking on the door, where they at.
09:34: She knew that the Lord had already given them the city and that she was safe, right? Everybody remember the story? The actual, real narrative.
09:48: She still, after knowing that the city had been given into their hands, she put them up on the roof, they had already given her safety, she lied to save her life.
10:01: That was lack of trusting in the Lord of what they had already revealed to her.
10:05: I think it's in Joshua chapter 2 or 3.
10:10: Go look at it.
10:37: Hey, is the spies deception? We can even go that far.
10:43: Did they send spies? Did Joshua send spies into Canaan? What are spies? Is that not a form of deception? They were deceiving them.
11:00: They were coming into a land to spy on them.
11:02: This is a huge rubric that deception is not always wrong.
11:08: It always goes back to the intent and the expectation.
11:12: Matter of fact, you're really going to have some major issues when you look at Joshua and he says you go into AI and you set an ambush and you trick them to think you're going this way, and then you go in and you kill them all.
11:23: God told them to do that.
11:26: So it's all in war.
11:28: There's a time for deception.
11:31: But in dealing with one another, which is what this is talking about, we're not to lie to one another.
11:38: Go ahead.
11:39: I'm sorry.
11:41: You still have to deal with the issue of the midwives because the midwives, you can say that they lied.
11:50: You're talking about the midwives at the time when Moses was born? Right.
11:53: Okay.
11:53: Then you look at it and what it says that God dealt well with the midwives.
11:57: But did God deal well with them because they preserved life or because they lied? Sure.
12:13: Sure, and there's a lot of like in Rahab's case and in the midwife's case.
12:21: What bothers you and I when we read those is the scripture's morally neutral on what happened.
12:28: I don't know if you ever noticed that.
12:29: They don't say whether it was right or wrong because that's not the point of the story or the narrative.
12:35: The point was that God used the midwives, in particular the case that Andy's talking about, God used the midwives to preserve whose life? The deliverer of Israel.
12:48: Now, he didn't say that, hey, it was okay for them to lie.
12:51: He didn't say that.
12:52: But that's not the point of the narrative.
12:54: Neither was the point of the narrative of the lack of faith in Rahab after she was given safety.
13:00: She lies to spare her life.
13:02: Look, her life was already spared.
13:05: But she lied.
13:07: Look, man, a great act of faith and immediately goes into a great act of unbelief that this person in Rahab was going to have her life taken if they found out that the spies were inside her home.
13:26: Deception is often used, and we can say, in David and in Joshua.
13:34: And it was sanctioned by God, but under the rubric of war.
13:39: And it goes back to the intent.
13:41: The intent under the rubric of war was to deceive your enemy.
13:48: Did the enemy expect at some point for them to try to be deceived? Okay.
13:55: But they knew that, hey, in this, what we're doing, there's going to be some deception and back and forth.
14:02: But in dealing with lying to one another is rooted in the Old Testament of not bearing false witness.
14:11: Okay? Do not lie in the New Testament is rooted in the fact that under the Mosaic law, we are not to bear false witness.
14:21: Anybody remember what the not bearing false witness meant? Had to do with being in the court of law.
14:28: Didn't have to do with, hey, Andy caught a fish this big.
14:34: I see, I told you.
14:37: And he wrestled it to the shoreline for four hours.
14:42: You see, that's not what it's talking about.
14:45: It's talking about bearing false witness, lying against someone in such a way to either cause harm to them or their character.
14:54: You can go back and look in Deuteronomy chapter 19.
14:57: If I, if me and Keith got together and lied about Andy in such a way that Andy had to pay restitution or something had to happen to Andy under the Mosaic law, and they found out that me and Keith were wrong, what we were trying to do to him was to be done to us.
15:12: So, and under the Mosaic law, if we were lying saying that so-and-so did something worthy of death, and they found out after an investigation that it was wrong, you know who got put to death? The liar.
15:26: The liar did.
15:27: Go back and read Deuteronomy 19.
15:30: Go back and read it.
15:32: So, not every lie, not every non-truth is a lie.
15:37: Not every half-truth is a lie, because sometimes we're ignorant of things, but it goes back to the intent.
15:45: It's my intent to tell half the truth, to deceive the person to make myself look better and them look worse.
15:53: Now, the omission of truth.
15:55: We deal with the omission of truth.
15:58: Is that a lie? Why did we...
16:03: What are you doing squinting at me? You said it.
16:08: Go ahead.
16:09: Were you going to say something? He said, no, no.
16:13: Omit.
16:16: Well, what if you have lack of truth? What if you're limited in your knowledge, and you find out...
16:23: Go ahead.
16:27: And you beat them all for lying to you.
16:31: Beat them like a red-headed stepchild.
16:36: Say there's something that's dangerous.
16:40: We're going into an ice storm right now while we're traveling.
16:43: We don't need to describe to them that if we spin off and go down in this ditch, we're probably going to die out here.
16:51: We just say, things are kind of icy right now.
16:55: Let's pray.
16:56: So, there's additional information that we could give to the kids, but is it to their benefit to know these things? It's not needed at that point.
17:04: At that juncture.
17:06: At that juncture, it may not be necessary for them to know, but his intent was not to deceive.
17:11: His intent was to protect.
17:13: To not scare.
17:15: Not to go, oh, yeah, let me give them the expectation that the little squirrely line in the road means, oh, no, the Grim Reaper's just beyond the road.
17:24: The sign.
17:25: That's not what you were saying.
17:27: You're saying my intent is to let them know just enough.
17:29: Let them know that, hey, this could be dangerous.
17:31: Dad's going to take care of you.
17:32: You don't have to let them know all the stuff.
17:35: But in Paul's case, back to Colossians, the intent that he is dealing with was the intent to deceive.
17:45: Pages are sticking together.
17:49: And it's to harm one another.
17:52: And it's backed up, I could say, with abusive speech.
17:56: Is lying to deceive someone abusive speech? It's a form of it.
18:01: Sure.
18:04: Certainly.
18:04: We could all say this.
18:06: Is slander a form of lying? Yeah? No? Yeah.
18:15: You're talking bad about someone.
18:17: Can gossip be a form of lying? Yes, ma'am.
18:22: What's that? If you know truth about someone, it doesn't always need to be spoken.
18:27: That would be admission of truth.
18:29: Because you're not wanting to gossip about that person.
18:33: Yeah.
18:34: Clarify that for a second.
18:35: So, you know the background on someone.
18:39: Yes, ma'am.
18:40: And you're speaking with another person.
18:42: And they say, they're talking about this person.
18:44: They're saying positive things.
18:45: You know truth that would be more negative.
18:49: And it's not necessary.
18:51: You can omit that truth.
18:52: You don't have to tell that person because it would be gossip.
18:55: It could be.
18:56: But if your intention is to cause harm to that person's character or to cause harm to that person's reputation or to elevate, put yourself on a teeter-totter.
19:11: I'm going to make myself look better so that they look debased.
19:14: What's the intent? That is the intent.
19:17: It all goes back to the intent of the heart.
19:18: Why do you think God says this? He will judge the thoughts and the intents of the heart.
19:23: Hey, you and me at times can say things that we think is done in good motive.
19:27: Is that not true? And then about three days later when we start reflecting on what was said and done, we might go, you know what? I was a jerk.
19:36: You know, or what I said was not true.
19:41: Now I have to go back and apologize to that person for lying, misleading.
19:46: I mean, I would say our most easiest way of lying is to mislead someone.
19:52: And that goes back to the intent.
19:54: What is my intent? Is my intent to mislead this person or to be truthful? What does the word of God say? In Ephesians chapter 4.
20:03: Speak the truth in love.
20:07: Can you lie in love? Just think about it.
20:16: Or Sybil, did that gallon of milk really cost $100? How was it $100? I didn't want to, you know, put it back.
20:26: The truth will set you free, sister.
20:32: So, Sybil.
20:34: Yes, sir.
20:36: So, Sybil comes up to you and they say, how do I look? I was already told I better tell her what I think.
20:46: Don't you let me go out the house looking cray-cray.
20:50: At the same time, it's like self-preservation.
21:00: Really, that's a consideration.
21:03: It has to go back to intent of the heart.
21:06: That's where it all proceeds from.
21:08: The lies come from the heart.
21:11: So when you think about that, I'm not sticking my head in the lion's mouth.
21:16: If my wife asks me how she looks, I'm telling her she's beautiful.
21:20: Well, it's usually the other way around.
21:23: I'm not going to lie.
21:27: See, she's being obedient.
21:29: Do not lie.
21:33: So it has to go back to the intent.
21:34: What is the intent? Is our intent to deceive our brother? In this particular case, we're dealing with inside the local assembly, within the Christian community.
21:43: Is our intent to deceive brother or sister? Is there any time we should deceive our brother or sister? Is there any time? I say no.
21:54: Why would we want to deceive our brother and sister? Certainly, if someone is walking in a way that's not consistent with the Word of God, we should not go in and tell them, hey, I know you're struggling.
22:05: You're going to get through this.
22:06: No, no, you need to give them, hey, this is dangerous in the road in which you're going.
22:11: The Bible says if you keep going down the road that you're going, the steps that you're taking lead to unbelief.
22:17: Unbelief leads to apostasy.
22:19: Apostasy leads to utter destruction.
22:22: Okay, that would, did you raise your hand? No.
22:25: Oh, oh.
22:28: She's scared to now.
22:29: Yeah.
22:31: So that's why there's never a time that we should deceive.
22:35: And if we do have information that can protect our brother and sister in Christ, we need to tell.
22:42: We need to tell for whatever it is.
22:44: Could somebody, let's say some guy comes in, well, I can speak specifically.
22:50: And since that church that some of y'all know I was at, that I left, could no longer serve in good conscience.
22:56: I was always the default person for three or four years, you know, ongoing, wasn't it? That this person wound up taking another position at another church.
23:06: You know who they called? Me.
23:10: And finally, my wife had enough of it.
23:12: And I was thankful that she did.
23:13: And she called one of those people and says, y'all need to call them, warn the church about that man.
23:19: Quit calling my husband.
23:22: But they knew once that I was contacted, I had a, in my conscience, they needed to know that this, they need to be warned that this man is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
23:31: So there is a part of that where we should, if we know something about someone and they, and they're a danger to the body of Christ, sure.
23:39: They need to know.
23:41: That's a time not to omit the truth.
23:46: It's a time to let people know.
23:53: It says, do not lie to one another.
23:55: That means we can lie to people outside the body.
24:01: Does it? Everybody scared to answer that one? No.
24:07: Yes, ma'am.
24:08: The thing I keep thinking of is that age old Jews during the Holocaust.
24:16: And a lot of Christians, he Jews and told the soldiers, whatever, no, there was no one there.
24:25: And that was, you know, that's called a righteous act.
24:28: Sure.
24:29: I don't, that's never happened to me.
24:31: I can't say what I would do in that situation.
24:33: And I'm not gonna have to stand before God and answer for what they did.
24:36: I don't know what I would do.
24:37: Well, that's why it comes up, because we don't know what's going to happen either.
24:43: And we don't know forever.
24:45: Can you be in that position? You know, I mean, sometimes things seem like they're closer.
24:50: Sure.
24:50: And I know that.
24:51: And Jesus said, he'll give you what to do on that day.
24:55: Yep.
24:56: Lee.
24:56: That's situation ethics.
24:58: And that can be a rationale for lying, but you couldn't.
25:03: There is a third thing you could say when the Nazis come.
25:07: Yeah, I've got a whole attic full of them.
25:11: That might work.
25:12: Anybody remember the fourth century church father Athanasius? Anybody remember him? He's actually the one who was at the council of Nicaea going against Arius during the Arian Controversy.
25:25: Anybody remember all that? The Arian Controversy.
25:29: The deity of Christ.
25:30: Oh boy.
25:32: Roll the wind up on me.
25:33: Go ahead.
25:36: Athanasius, and it was Athanasius against the world is really how it was coined.
25:42: Athanasius was looked, he was exiled five times.
25:46: And out of 17 out of five of those five times he was exiled by the Roman Empire.
25:50: He spent 17 years in exile.
25:52: Well, they ran some people looking for Athanasius ran up.
25:57: His pursuers ran up to Athanasius.
25:59: And has anybody seen Athanasius? And he said, if you look a little closer, he might be near.
26:10: Now, was Athanasius lying? No, he did not.
26:17: I mean, you got to remember that was a time when they didn't have wanted people in the back of milk cartons.
26:22: You can't go into the post office and see pictures of these people.
26:25: And they didn't walk around with sketches or on their phones of wanted men.
26:29: And Athanasius said, no, if you look a little closer, you might find him.
26:34: Now, was it a preservation? Yeah.
26:37: But did he lie to them? No.
26:42: He used a type of speech.
26:44: Anybody know what equivocation is? Yeah, it's when you use ambiguous speech to not reveal truth.
26:51: And that's what he did.
26:52: Smart guy.
26:55: So, to answer the question or to deal with the subject of the Nazis and all that, I don't know what I would do.
27:02: I've never been in that position.
27:03: I hope I'm never in that position.
27:05: But I know that I trust in the Lord and what He would do on that day.
27:07: He'd give me the words to speak.
27:10: Anybody else have something to say about that? Sure.
27:22: It's game on.
27:24: Yeah.
27:47: And to me, it's fine.
27:51: That's me.
27:53: You have to think about the other side of it.
27:56: A man breaks into your house and asks where your wife is, you're not ever going to say, oh, she's over there.
28:02: She's in the next room over there.
28:04: You know what I'm saying? I'd be like, hey, Sybil, cook the guy some dinner.
28:08: I'm not here.
28:09: I don't think you have to give truth to an evil person.
28:14: Okay.
28:14: I mean, if you know they're evil, obviously the person knocking at the door looking for Andy.
28:19: We don't even have to speak to them, to answer your question.
28:22: We don't even have to speak to them in such a way.
28:30: Yes, sir.
28:32: I would say, though, that the moral ethic of preserving life supersedes the moral aspect of deception.
28:40: In cases like the midwives, Rahab, and the stuff about preserving life, because you were saying Rahab was trying to preserve her life, but I also think that if those men had come in, if the pursuers had come in, they would have taken the two men, obviously, that had become the spy.
28:55: Be careful taking the moral high road.
28:57: Just let you know.
28:58: Be careful.
28:59: Potentially into their lives.
29:01: Yes.
29:01: Just be careful making a moral distinction on what's righter or what's wronger.
29:09: Okay.
29:10: Just be careful, because now what happens, and I'm not saying this is what you did, but that's a study Bible Sunday school answer to that very thing.
29:20: Don't mean that as a...
29:22: Okay.
29:23: Well, this was morally wrong, but this is morally better.
29:27: Well, now you're tiptoeing into the realm of relativism, which you go, okay, well, that was wrong for them.
29:34: That may not be wrong for me.
29:36: This is the moral standard.
29:38: God says we're to preserve life.
29:41: Well, you know, that's not always the case, because God said you go in and kill every one of a man, woman, boy, and girl.
29:46: What you going to do with that? You got to answer that question.
29:51: When God said man, woman, boy, girl, infant.
29:57: So be careful.
29:58: Don't take it as rebuke.
29:59: Just be careful.
30:00: You have to be careful what you're going to say, what's moral and what's not.
30:05: God has declared what moral is, and that's the reflection of his character, and he has deemed what's right and wrong, not you and I.
30:14: So Spurgeon said if he had to choose between two equals, he chooses neither.
30:19: He would choose neither? Yeah.
30:21: That's a good way of putting it.
30:23: Thanks, Andy.
30:24: Thanks, Spurgeon.
30:28: Now you're lying.
30:31: We have to be careful in looking for, well, this is more moral than that.
30:37: We have to be careful doing that, because then we go down the road of going, well, that person.
30:44: What's that? Sure.
30:46: It's called relativism.
30:48: Then right doesn't become right.
30:51: It can become just ethically supported by society.
30:58: That's off the charts today.
30:59: Sure.
31:01: Yeah, sure.
31:02: Sorry, Steven, if you don't take it.
31:05: No, it was good.
31:05: It was good.
31:07: Yeah.
31:08: Anybody else before we move? I've got a question to ask.
31:15: When I was working, sometimes I was next in charge of things that would happen at work, and I'd just get home and sit down, and the phone rings, and Shirley answers it, and when she says, yes, I know it's for me.
31:34: I'd get up, run outside, and then I'd tell her, tell her I'm not at house.
31:41: Is that a lie? What? I said I'm not home.
31:51: She said, he's not inside.
31:54: He's my sister.
31:56: What's your intent, and what was the expectation? There's a lot that can be said about deception, lying.
32:08: We certainly couldn't do all of it today because there is a form of what we would say lying that we would say is okay.
32:21: I mean, we say, we give jokes.
32:24: Look, I'm painting sometimes, and there'll be little kids running around the house, and the kids come, hey, what are you doing? I'll say I'm parachuting, okay, or I'll give them something crazy.
32:34: I'm horseback riding.
32:36: Did I tell them a non-truth? Yeah.
32:39: Did I lie to them? No, it's in humor.
32:43: That would be like, and also, we use it in hyperbolic language.
32:47: When Jesus said, if your right eye offends you, pluck it out, was Jesus lying, or was Jesus speaking in such a way to develop a point of using radical methods to rid the sin in your life? Was Jesus lying? I don't think anybody here is going to say that.
33:06: No, he was using, he didn't mean literally, poke out your eye.
33:12: So, we have things like hyperbolic language.
33:16: It's called jokial lying.
33:18: That's kind of the theological term because we joke in telling untruth.
33:24: What about a person like, we'll just take Keith, for instance, when we're out there doing a fishing hole, and he does some, you know, I presume doing a magic trick with his hands.
33:31: He's deceiving people with their eyes.
33:34: Okay, is he lying to them? No, it is intense to get them to start thinking that their heart's deceitful, above all things, it's desperately wicked.
33:43: If I can deceive you very quickly with my hands, then how easily can your heart deceive you and lead you astray? So, once again.
33:52: What's the intent of the person speaking? And what's the expectation and the response to the person that they're speaking? It should always, if you're, like I said, once again, if it's to debase them and elevate yourself, to bring elevation to someone else's reputation, character, and to debase somebody else's, for the purpose of defaming someone, it's lying, and it's deceptive, and it's wrong.
34:28: And we've got five minutes for...
34:30: So, when you think about it, in light of all these one-anothers, so the yellow and white, all these one-anothers, the real consideration to me is that we are seeking to build one another up.
34:46: And if we're seeking to build one another up, then all these things should be things that we constantly work on and work at.
34:55: Because if we don't, then we're just no different.
34:58: And that's what he says, even in Colossians, he says, we was something, and now we're something else.
35:06: And we ought to put more and more, even as he uses the term, put off the old man and put on the new man.
35:13: So, as you think about it, as a whole, within the body of Christ, all these things are to an end of building one another up, glorifying God, and adding, if you will, to the community of believers.
35:28: I'm talking about within the confines of the local church.
35:30: Sure, yeah, and if we're putting off the old man, and actually, that's in the present tense.
35:36: We're putting off the old man.
35:38: The Greek understanding of it is basically unzipping a suit and dropping it to the floor, stepping over here, stepping in another suit, and zipping up that new suit.
35:51: So, you're taking off the old man, and you're putting on the new.
35:55: If I'm taking off the old man, which was characterized by lying, deception, deceit, slander, abusive speech, immorality, sexual immorality, perverse desires, all of those things, then why would I, if I'm putting off those things, why would I want to lie to my brother and sister in Christ? Why? I should have no desire to do that.
36:22: You realize, I don't know how close y'all have been to someone and have the trust violated.
36:28: I'm talking about just on a friend relationship.
36:31: Have someone lie to you in a grievous way.
36:35: That right there, I would rather somebody punch me.
36:39: That punch, it'll feel better in a day or two.
36:42: Blackout, I'll go away, straighten your nose out, taste blood for a few days, it'll be over.
36:50: Man, once that heart has been cut through deception or lying and the trustworthiness is gone, that hurts for a long time.
37:00: That hurts for a long time.
37:02: Yes, sir? If you lie, you're showing respect to the father of lies.
37:08: That's a good way of looking at it.
37:09: Sure.
37:10: Yeah.
37:11: And when you tell the truth, you're acting consistent with God's character.
37:17: We're acting consistent with God's character.
37:20: All right.
37:22: Three minutes.
37:24: Isn't it interesting, I've always told my boys this growing up and try to give them the example of, you don't have to teach somebody to lie.
37:35: No, you don't.
37:36: It's there.
37:37: You have to fight against that.
37:39: Yeah, I didn't have to tell the kids, hey, when I come in here and I ask who did that, now, if you tell me a big whopper, you're going to get away with it.
37:46: No, they did it on their own.
37:49: I mean, scripture's clear.
37:50: It's not anything that you have to instill in somebody.
37:52: It says, out of the womb, men come speaking lies.
37:56: So when we've been regenerated, we've been converted.
37:59: Our desire is to no longer deceive and lie.
38:03: It's to speak the truth and love.
38:05: That's what our desire should be.
38:07: And if you don't have a desire to speak the truth and love and you don't have a desire for the truth, huge question mark in front of your salvation.
38:15: I'm not talking about struggle.
38:17: I'm talking about if there's no desire for the truth.
38:21: Because Jesus said, no, shut up.
38:23: Jesus said, when I leave, I'm going to send somebody.
38:26: It is expedient that I go away.
38:28: And when I go away, I'm going to send someone just like me.
38:33: And he's not going to be with you.
38:35: He's going to be in you.
38:37: And he will lead you and guide you into all truth.
38:43: So if the Spirit of God lives within you, you shouldn't be a liar.
38:47: You should be a truth teller.
38:49: Let's pray.
38:51: Father God, thank you so much for your word.
38:54: Thank you that you have came and with the power of the regeneration of the Spirit, Father, you have quickened our dead spirits and you have given us new life and that you have given us an understanding of your word, Father, that leads us and guides us to all truth.
39:10: Father, I pray today that you would be with us in our time of corporate worship.
39:13: I pray that you would be with Keith and that you would give him strength and that you would send forth your Spirit, Father, anointing his words that we would be more conformed into the image of your blessed Son.
39:25: In Christ's name, amen.