People of Their Word

The Sermon on the Mount and the Fourth Antithesis on Oaths

Well this morning we continue on in our study in the Sermon on the Mount and as we press forward in this section where we're dealing with the antitheses, in other words, these statements where Jesus lays down either a direct quotation or perhaps a reference point to the law and specifically traditions surrounding the law, and then he creates this sort of jarring contrast, this antithesis, and certainly this would have provoked the response of the hearers.

Jesus, as we've seen, is challenging all those that were hearing his message, this gospel of the kingdom, about what it means to follow him, what it means to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus. And so we're continuing on with the fourth antithesis now and that takes us from verse 33 through verse 37.

We're going to try to do it all this morning, Lord willing. Jesus says, Well, as we consider this passage, we have to remember two things about our larger context. First, Jesus did not come to destroy the law.

It's very important, it's easily forgotten once you get past verses 20 and 21. You jump into the antitheses and you think, oh, he's doing something entirely different, doing something entirely new. He's abrogating, he's turning over, he's getting rid of the law.

Remember the frame, remember the prelude to these antitheses. I have not come to destroy the law or the prophets. I have not come to destroy, but rather to fulfill. Not one jot, not one tittle passes from the law until all has been accomplished.

That's the first thing we remember. Secondly, Jesus teaches that his followers must have an exceeding righteousness. Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom.

So you must have an exceeding righteousness. Remember those two contextual frames as we work through a rather debated passage like we have this morning. In this fourth antithesis, Jesus sets this command in reference.

He says, Again, you've heard it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord. Now that's not a direct quote, as we've seen him quote directly from the law, but it is a summary of several places in the Old Testament where something along these lines is said.

Exodus 20, verse 7, Leviticus 19, 12, perhaps the foremost, Numbers 32, Deuteronomy 23, 21 and following. Of course, the idea of taking an oath or making a vow of swearing to God was something not just commonplace to God's people of old, but to really all the people of old.

Every ancient populace had some aspect of swearing or vowing by their gods. People in the ancient world would often invoke God as a witness to the statements or the covenants that they would make. The Hebrews were not unique in this sense by any stretch.

But in a jarring contrast, Jesus says, I say to you, do not swear at all. That's what would elicit the response. That's the striking statement. I say to you, do not swear at all. Now, on the face of it, some traditions have taken that at face value.

They say simply, there's no room for swearing, no room for vows, no room for oaths. As I hope I can demonstrate this morning, that simply doesn't pass muster scripturally. Scripture not only allows, but actually calls for oaths to be made.

So we have to establish that, but we don't want to pull the teeth out of what Jesus is saying. Again, these striking antithetical statements. I'm gonna say something that's gonna wake you up, splash cold water on your face, and get you to understand something about the exceeding righteousness of my kingdom.

And what he's doing is essentially, he's dismantling the traditions of the scribes and the Pharisees. Remember, your righteousness has to exceed theirs. And one of the things that the scribes and the Pharisees, these experts in the law had done, was developed various rules, various ways in which the veracity, the truthfulness of a statement could be somewhat dodged.

In other words, there was a way of taking an oath, depending on what you swore by, that was not as binding as if you swore by the name of the Lord. You could swear by other things associated with the Lord, and in that way your oath, your statement, was not as binding.

That was what they essentially argued. This was, in fact, this wasn't something they shot from the hip. There's a whole tractate, a Shabuot, that's devoted to basically, here's how you can understand the nature of oaths.

So the Pharisees, as Robert Gonzalez points out, they took the Old Testament command, do not swear falsely, perform your oaths to the Lord, but they shifted the emphasis away from the integrity of the oath that you've made to the Lord to that phrase, to the Lord.

In other words, if the Old Testament command is, you shall perform the oaths you make to the Lord, then they were like, huh, what about oaths you don't make to the Lord? You see the emphasis has shifted.

This is what Jesus is dismantling. What about an oath you make to the temple? What about an oath you make to the altar, right? What if we don't make an oath to the Lord? We're still making an oath, but now it's a little fuzzy, it's a little dodgy, it's a little more flexible.

No longer is there an emphasis upon keeping the oath that you've made, fulfilling the promise that you've stated, now it's simply the mechanism of what or whom you've sworn by. Now this is a lot more clear, if you don't see it clearly from Matthew 5, you see it very clearly from Matthew 23.

In Matthew 23, again the sort of counterbalance to the series of blessings that we saw in Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, in Matthew 23 you have a series of woes, a series of curses, and within that Jesus is rebuking the scribes and the Pharisees.

This is Matthew 23, beginning in verse 16, and he says, Woe to you blind guides who say whoever swears by the temple, it's nothing. This is exactly what Jesus is addressing in Matthew 5, 32 and following.

Woe to you blind guides who say whoever swears by the temple, it's nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he's obligated to perform it. Fools and blind, which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold, and whoever swears by the altar, it's nothing.

You take an oath by the altar in their mind, well it's not really that binding, you can be released from it, you can break your promise, but if you swear by the gift that's on the altar, you're obligated to perform it.

Again, fools and blind, which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift. Therefore, he who swears by the altar, swears by it and all things on it. You see what Jesus is saying? There's no way of escaping the association, the ultimate reference point of God himself.

What is it that makes the altar holy? What is it that renders the gift on the altar holy? It's the fact that it's all devoted to the worship of God, and so it's inescapable, Jesus is saying. He who swears by the altar, swears by it and all things on it.

He who swears by the temple, swears by it and the one who dwells in it, and he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. It's exactly parallel to what Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5.

There is no escaping the oath, the vow, the promise, the commitment when you invoke God's name, you're bound to it. But he goes even further than that. In saying, let your yes be your yes, he's saying you cannot have this fickle, careless, endless way of only allowing things to be true when you invoke God's name.

That is a form of taking God's name in vain. If you're the kind of person that has to say, I swear, I swear, I promise. If you're the boy who cried wolf, as it were, Jesus is saying you're no follower of mine.

My people know how to let their yes be their yes and their no be their no. They don't have to invoke God's name when they really mean something, they're mindful of everything that they say because they know they're held accountable to everything that they say.

The blind guides that had been leading God's people astray had found a way to make their truth claims fuzzy, foggy, non-binding. Well, I didn't technically swear. Well, okay, I did swear, but I swore by the altar.

This is not how God would have his people operate. Jesus says that his followers won't appeal to lesser things to assert their honesty and somehow leave the door open for change. This is the result of living in a sort of godless society, right, that you need all sorts of lawyers and all sorts of litigation and you need an endless series of footnotes to sign the most basic contract.

Some of you in this room grew up when business was done on a handshake and as surely as you shook a man's hand, it was your word and your word was your bond and you would never have to go to the courts to settle things.

Well, those days are gone, gone. In an increasingly darkened society, we expect that words are meaningless and even in some ways oaths become meaningless. It's only about evidence and litigation at that point.

This is all a result of departing from God's law. So Jesus says in this, again, striking, attention-grabbing way, do not swear. Do not make an oath. Now again, a superficial reading that cuts off all other biblical references will say, well, if we're gonna follow Jesus and we simply have to let that verse stand and Christians are never to make oaths or vows.

But as we see, in fact, an aspect of keeping the third commandment of not taking the Lord's name in vain is that when we invoke His name, we do it reverently, we do it humbly, we do it sincerely. And so there's a positive aspect to actually invoking God's name.

I'm going to demonstrate that in a moment. Calvin, in his commentary, very helpfully says we cannot divide this rather provocative statement, do not swear at all, from what follows. It's qualified by the various statements that follow.

Do not swear at all, neither by heaven nor by the earth nor by Jerusalem nor by your own head. And it's all qualifying what Jesus is saying about not swearing, as though you can claim these lesser things as reference points devoid from God.

He's saying there's nothing that you can swear that's greater than yourself, which doesn't have ultimate reference to God, and therefore you cannot swear in a way that's non-binding, that's somehow less serious.

Everything you say is serious. Everything you say, everything you promise, God is a witness to and holds you to account. That's what Jesus is saying. So he says you can't swear by heaven as a circumlocution away from God, as a way of navigating away from your oath, not by heaven.

Why? Because that's God's throne. Well, you can't swear by the earth, as sure as that woodshed is, as sure as the creek don't rise. You can't swear by earth. Why? That's God's footstool. You see what he's going from throne to footstool.

He's saying all of creation is inhabited by God. There's nothing you can swear by within it that somehow escapes your commitment before Him. Don't swear by Jerusalem, it's the city of the great King. I think our translation is right to capitalize the K of King there.

It's a reference from Psalm 48, verse 2, and the city of the great King speaking in a large part of the the Holy One that dwells within her palaces. Then he says not by your own head. Why? You can't even change your hair color, right?

That doesn't mean you can order, you know, hair club for men and say, no, actually I can. The point is God is sovereign even over the hairs of your head. You can't prematurely age yourself, nor can you rewind into days of youth.

God is the one who controls your days, and therefore to Him you give ultimate account. So the law, as we see, Jesus has not come to destroy the law. The law not only permits, but actually in various ways encourages, if not requires, oaths to be made.

What is forbidden are irreverent oaths, that is taking the Lord's name in vain. False oaths, oaths you had no intention of keeping, oaths you recognized even as you were making them you're not going to be able to fulfill.

In this way, God's name is profaned. We have many examples of these godly oaths, the positive examples abound throughout Scripture. From the very beginning we see that God's people are those who invoked God's name as a way of showing their honesty, their integrity, their commitment.

Abraham swore to Abimelech that he would not deal falsely with him. Isaac swore the same thing. Jacob swore to Laban. Joseph swore to his father. From the very beginning of the Bible you see oaths are taken invoking God's name, and that's seen as a way of showing reverence to God, a way of declaring and perhaps emboldening the commitment that you've made, a way of almost striking reverence and fear into your commitment.

I've asked God to so judge me in the commitment I've made. That sort of causes you to stand up straight, not to deviate, not to take for granted. We go from Genesis, we can just look at Paul in a series of examples.

I'll just give you a few. He's often invoking God's name. Romans 1, for God is my witness whom I serve. Without ceasing I make mention of you always. He's invoking God's witness to the veracity of what he's saying.

2nd Corinthians 1, moreover I call God as witness against my soul that to spare you I came no more to Corinth. He's saying God can judge my very soul. I'm telling you that this is true. Philippians 1 .8, God is my witness how greatly I long for you with the affection of Jesus Christ.

As Paul being flippant? Is Paul being profane? No, this is a right way for Paul to speak. He doesn't do it irreverently, he doesn't do it casually. When he's trying to make a profound point he says as surely as God lives, as surely as God is my witness, what I'm saying to you is true.

So you see the idea of swearing, of solemnly calling upon God as a witness to the truth of what is being said. Now why is this necessary? Didn't Jesus just say let your yes be your yes? Why can't Paul let his yes be his yes?

Well it's because of sin that there is such a things as as oaths and vows among human beings. Because we're sinful, because we have as it were a twisting nature within us as sinners, we are prone to twist our words, twist the truth, twist to manipulate the situation depending on how we're looking at ourselves or looking at others.

We will lie out of fear, lie out of jealousy, lie out of ambition. We learn how to exonerate ourselves with little white lies, little slight manipulations. If it's not what you don't say, it's how you slightly adjust what you do say.

And this is why, because of our own fallenness, an oath or a vow is often required and you're invoking God's name. Say, you know, in a world that is warped and dark and full of deceit, I invoke God as my witness that what I'm saying is true.

So we're willing in that sense to suffer the judgment of the Lord when we break our vow, break our commitment. And this is something that we are not to take lightly. Even if no man sees that we've broken our commitment, the Lord has been called as witness and He will hold us accountable.

That's the whole idea. And so again, this is all downstream from the third commandment, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. We're not to take the name of the Lord in vain and this requires a certain way of fearing God by reverencing His name, which means we never invoke it casually.

There was some... I was doing a little background reading this week and, of course, there were some who would argue that the Qumran community, the community that developed the Dead Sea Scrolls, that they were also against any forms of oaths, but one of the documents we read, the CD 15, it seems that they did actually take oaths when they entered into the community, but what they refused to do was ever write or verbalize the name of God.

Such was their reverence for the name of God, right? And so you see the idea, again, of if you dare to invoke the name of God, that comes with a certain gravitas, a certain weight of fearfulness. I'm now being witnessed by God, He will avenge as a witness.

Now, of course, that's true among human beings, among sinners, who can trust anyone, right? In this world, people, it's like, I trust you as far as I can throw you, I don't trust anyone. Sometimes, you know, you go to the breakfast diner, you meet some old-timer and, you know, they think they're giving sage advice, never trust anyone but yourself, follow your gut, and you're going, I don't know, it's not a good way to navigate life.

At some level, you have to try to show charity and trust toward people, it's really the only way you can navigate this life, but it's certainly true you will get used, abused, and burned, and this is why, as sinful human beings, we are to use our words very wisely and carefully, and when we invoke God's name as a way of emphasizing truth, a way of stamping veracity, we do so very fearfully, but what about that at the divine level?

If that's the human level, what about when God makes an oath? When God makes a vow, it's certainly not because He twists the truth, certainly not because of His sinful lack, we would say when God makes an oath, it's out of His gracious condescension to us.

As our confession uses a language, it's a way to console us, to give us a consolation of the hope that we can have in His Word. All of His words are true, it's what we open the service with, the Word of the Lord is proven, right?

He is faithful to His Word, but He often will engage in a vow or swear by Himself as a way of saying, surely, surely, surely what I'm telling you is true, surely, surely, surely what I have said will come to pass.

He's doing it as a way of coming down to our level and saying, listen, listen, this is not something to take lightly, I really, really, really mean what I say. We see that even in Jesus' own ministry when He says, verily, verily, surely, surely, surely, saying everything He says is true, but you really need to see the weight of what I'm about to say.

So the oaths of God, we find this frequent formula throughout Scripture, could point to dozens of examples. As I live, as surely as I live, says the Lord. God will often have that as a way that He introduces some promise or some declaration.

Just as I have spoken, as I live, so I will do this. God swears, for example, not to send another flood in Genesis 9, that's a vow that God had made. He swore that in His wrath He would never flood the earth again.

For He swears to send a Redeemer through the prophets. He has promised a seed that is coming, His promise, a seed of David that will be enthroned, and we see that He stayed true to that vow. It's one of the things we celebrate as we close out the year.

We see His promise that He will not leave His seed in Sheol, but He will raise Him, as it were, up from the dead. Psalm 16, quoted in Acts 2, He won't allow His Holy One to see corruption, a promise fulfilled at the resurrection.

And perhaps the greatest example of all, just when we think about vows or swearing, taking it to the formality of a covenant, and of course the great covenant God made with Abraham. And as He's reminding him of the covenant, which was promised in Genesis 12, as it were, executed or cut in Genesis 15, then in Genesis 17 it was drawn back to in Genesis 22.

We have the same promise reaffirmed, and He says, by Myself I have sworn. This is Genesis 22, and God says, by Myself I have sworn. Because you've done this thing and not withheld your son, your only son, blessing I will bless you, multiplying I will multiply your seed, like the stars of the heavens, like the sand on the seashore.

The writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 6 takes this as an example. We would use this as a positive understanding of why we are to take oaths and vows as believers. That's the point that the writer of Hebrews is making, but he's connecting it to God Himself in this understanding of God's condescension to us, that we could have comfort in His promise.

He says this, Hebrews 6 beginning in verse 13, when God made a promise to Abraham because he could swear by no one greater. Who's God going to swear by? Human beings, the scribes and the Pharisees, they wanted to swear by the gold in the temple, or by the temple, or by heaven.

Ultimately, they're trying to get away from the fearful thing, swearing by God's name. What about when God makes an oath? Who's He going to swear by? There's no one greater than God, so He has to swear by Himself.

That's the point. When God made a promise to Abraham, He could swear by no one greater, so He swore by Himself, saying this, surely blessing I will bless you, multiplying I will multiply you. That's exactly what we just read from Genesis 22, but look at how the writer of Hebrews handles this, and so, after he, that is Abraham, had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.

In other words, he's saying you believers need to patiently endure so that you will obtain. Four, men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. That's a positive understanding of the way that we are to use oaths as believers.

He's saying we all swear by something greater than ourselves, and we use these oaths as a way of saying here's what will be done. To our own ruin or loss, here's what will be done, and he's saying, well, God did that Himself.

He swore by Himself that He would fulfill the promise made to Abraham, and therefore Abraham could walk confidently, even when that promise was nowhere in sight. No wonder he could drag the son he had waited decades of his life for to the very height of the place where he would plunge the knife into him on the altar, and as the writer of Hebrews says, it was because by faith he understood God had promised this son to me, and so if he calls me to kill him, he will resurrect him because God has promised me this son.

Such was Abraham's faith. Why was Abraham able to patiently endure? Why was Abraham able to walk by that faith? It's because of the promise of God being sure. God swore by Himself, and Abraham understood that, and so he says, and here's an explanation of the way God uses oaths, how we are to use oaths, thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability, in other words, His counsel cannot change, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it's impossible for God to lie, we would have strong consolation, strong comfort, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.

What a marvelous passage, and so instructive for how we are to understand oaths and vows. We, if we want to make our commitment, our promise more abundant, more emphatic, will swear by the name of the Lord, and by doing that, we offer to the one we're swearing to, committing to, a strong consolation.

That's how we use oaths and vows. You can see it's a weighty, fearful thing. So Jesus is not revoking oaths at all, not formally or fully. God Himself makes oaths, as does His people, as we saw from Paul.

It's false and frivolous oaths in view, and Jesus calls for a radical integrity of speech. He's saying you should let your words be few in a way, let your oaths be very few, let what you vow be very rare, live as if your yes is your yes.

If you have to make it abundant or emphatic, that is a fearful thing. So you have a whole life, a whole way of conducting yourself, a whole way of speaking that is noted by integrity. Just to make the last point before we move on, Jesus Himself is put under oath in Matthew 26, and He doesn't rebuke that, He actually abides by it.

Matthew 26, beginning in verse 62, this is heading into His trial. Of course He's remaining silent. The high priest is getting very frustrated with the Lord. The high priest arose and said, do you answer nothing?

What is it that these men are testifying to you? And Jesus kept silent. And so the high priest answered and said, I put you under oath by the Living God. Tell us if you're the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus does not say, let your yes be your yes.

You should never invoke God's name. He replies, it is as you said. He had been silent the whole time, and when the high priest invokes his oath by reference to God, Jesus responds, it is as you said. And then it's off to Golgotha as a result of that statement.

So Jesus Himself understands the usefulness of the oath. He allows the whole kangaroo court to pass by when it finally gets down to the binding point. Are you the Christ? Are you the Christ? You know, what have you said of yourself?

I put you under oath by the Living God. Are you the Christ? And Jesus says, it is so. Well, historically, in the 17th century, around the time our confession, the confession our church holds to, was drafted, they were responding to several Christian groups, largely Anabaptist groups, Quakers among them, that had rejected the idea of taking oaths or vows.

They forbade that. In fact, that's still. And so we have sort of legal avenues where an oath can be avoided or a vow can be avoided for religious purposes, and it's largely because of this Anabaptist influence.

They were taking Matthew 5, 32 through 37 at face value, but they devoided that of the larger context and the positive examples we have in Scripture. So when our confession dealt with this issue, they wrote a chapter, chapter 23, to clarify that there is a lawful use of making oaths and vows, that Christians are to do this fearfully, reverently, and rarely, and yet it is something that is a positive aspect of the Third Commandment.

What is forbidden is the profane or casual appeal to God's name. So let me just, I'm not going to dive too deep into our confession, but I want to draw out a couple points that I think are easily forgotten.

First, in 23 .1, we read, a lawful oath is a part of religious worship. That's a stunning statement. How many of you realize that the times that you invoke God to be a witness to your commitment is actually an aspect of you worshiping him?

Essentially, that's what we mean by a statement of faith. What do we do several times a year when we're taking a covenant and we stand across from each other and we're reciting it? We're saying, I commit this to you.

Is that not an aspect of our worship, having God as a present witness to the commitments that we're making? Can we make that with a sincere heart, not a perfectly pure heart? We recognize the challenges even as we say it, but are we sincere?

Lord, help me to fulfill this. This is an aspect of our worship. We're calling God as a witness to the words that we're speaking. We're calling God to adjudicate us according to the things that we are vowing, the things that we are committing.

And so this is a part of religious worship. Another thing, and this is from paragraph two, the name of God only is that by which men ought to swear, and it's used with all holy fear and reverence. Therefore, to swear vainly or rashly by that glorious and dreadful name or to swear at all by any other thing is sinful, to be abhorred.

This is a matter of wait and moment for confirmation of truth, for ending all strife. An oath is warranted by the Word of God, and so a lawful oath being imposed by a lawful authority in all such matters ought to be taken.

Now again, notice the stand the confession is taking. They're not gritting their teeth and saying, I guess it's okay to make an oath. They're saying believers should make oaths. Again, rarely, reverently, fearfully, but in a situation where a confirmation of truth is necessary and doubt is granted, or if there's strife that needs to be ended, an oath is warranted, an oath is put forth by the Word of God.

And then lastly, it goes on for a few more paragraphs, and by the way, our confession pared down and summarized and made a little more concise the Savoy and the Westminster. We only have five paragraphs.

Savoy had six, Westminster had seven. No controversy or disagreement, I think they were just trying to be a little more clear and concise. Paragraph three, whosoever takes an oath warranted by the Word of God, right, they're saying there are rash, sinful, foolish oaths and vows, but where there is one that is a right opportunity, a right circumstance to make an oath, the party ought to duly consider the weight of the solemnity of the act, and therein avow nothing but what he knows to be true.

For by rash, false, and vain oaths the Lord is provoked, and for this our land mourns. Now that's a reference to Hosea 4, where God says because of all the way that false oaths have been made, people swearing falsely by my name, I'm going to drag you away from this land.

The land, the beasts in the land, the fields themselves will mourn because you have not held to the commitments when you've appealed to my name. Now what do you think about our land today, in these very ways?

You see people following through on the things that they have committed to, even when we pin them with a legal, you know, barrage, when we have 18 large footnotes where we can nail them in civil courts, people still won't follow through.

Our land is mourning. Our land is mourning as a result of this. The third commandment, the positive aspect of taking the Lord's name in vain means we make oaths by appealing to God with all reverence and fear, but how can we abide by the third commandment if we don't have a fear of God?

No wonder our land is mourning. Where's the fear of God that would cause people to think very clearly about what they're stating and what they're agreeing to, what they're committing to? As Thomas Manton, the Puritan, said about sinful oaths, there is no sin that more wearies the patience of God because there is no sin that more banishes the fear of God.

To take God's name casually, to invoke him as a witness as if he's not really a witness, he's not really present, he won't really judge. You're so abstracted God's presence, God's justice, that it's nothing for you to say, oh I swear by God, I'm telling the truth, I swear by God.

And therefore, as I think Manton's right to say, there's nothing that more wearies the patience of God. There's no fear before their eyes. Think of this as our brother alluded to, we have, of course, oaths that have been taken even this past week, an oath that will be taken in a couple weeks.

We have these oaths to to uphold the Constitution, to defend it. I was watching a video of of our Vice President swearing in the Senators-elect and of course they raise their right hand and they make this pledge, I solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.

That's the first part. If you feel as I feel, you have people raising their right hand, saying they're going to defend the Constitution that essentially they are the gravest enemies of. I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I'm about to enter, so help me God. And they invoke God's name, is it any wonder that our land is mourning?

When they say God is my witness, I'll be faithful to this pledge. And then they proceed to spend decades in their office doing everything but being faithful to that pledge. Wilhelmus Albronckho is a Dutch Reformed theologian, has this tremendous set called the Christian's Reasonable Service, and he deals in a section on the Third Commandment with the way that magistrates are evasive to the oaths that they make.

I just want to highlight this just as a case in point. One of the evasive arguments is, well, the oaths are defined in such a way that really no one could be true to them. This is almost an impossible requirement.

And Albronckho in part responds, well, it's true that you could never fulfill a commitment or a vow as much as you would like because the limits of your own mortality, because of the limits of your own sanctification, but if you know it to be impossible entirely or impossible absolutely, you should not desire the office to begin with.

And if you've taken the oath, you should resign immediately. If you say, I have no intention of being able to do this, who could do this? It's not the office for you. Or another argument, well, we're all weak, we all sin in many different ways.

And the answer is, well, you cannot allow this understanding of daily weaknesses to somehow hollow out the oath that you've made. Transgression has been committed knowingly and willingly. You've willfully sinned to say, there's no way I'll be able to fulfill the oath that I've made.

You've taken God as a witness to your very own rebellion. And he says this, the transgression has been committed knowingly and willingly, and by reason of the oath, there's a solemn burden upon you for punishment, a punishment which you yourself sought from the righteousness of God.

Do you see what Albronckho is saying? When you put your right hand up in this context and you say, so help me God, you said, God, please judge me and hold me accountable. If I don't do what I've committed to, please let me bear the consequences of that.

Show yourself to be righteous and just. Well, a society that respects the oath is a society that will be stable and fruitful. Another Dutch theologian a few centuries later, Joachim Dumas, he says, in this kind of society, people still recoil from lying.

They expend energy in taking their office or their calling seriously. I have an oath to fulfill. I made a vow. I made a pledge. God is my witness. God's going to judge me if I don't do this, or if I do this wrongly or deceitfully.

He says a society that respects the oath won't be easily disrupted. When a monarch is oath-bound, in other words, bound by the commitment he's made to his subjects, his administration will not exercise tyranny.

He's made an oath. He won't become a tyrant. An oath-bound physician will be committed to healing patients. We're living in days where that Hippocratic oath means less and less and less. Now you have cosmetic butchers rather than physicians that are about healing or restoring the body.

An oath-bound officer, an officer of the law, a military serviceman, they'll serve for the preservation of the state, right? They have an oath to fulfill. An oath-bound property assessor will actually give an accurate estimate of property value.

By means of an oath in court, witnesses will be restrained from declaring someone to be innocent when they're guilty or declaring someone to be guilty when they're innocent. By means of the oath, we're placed before the very face of God, and if there's any reverence for him, a society will dwell in peace.