People of Their Word

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 5:33-37

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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.
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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
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Lord Jesus. And so we're continuing on with the fourth antithesis now, and that takes us from verse 33 through verse 37.
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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.
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First, Jesus did not come to destroy the law. It's very important, that's easily forgotten once you get past verses 20 and 21.
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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.
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Remember the frame, remember the prelude to these antitheses. I have not come to destroy the law or the prophets.
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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.
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That's the first thing we remember. Secondly, Jesus teaches that his followers must have an exceeding righteousness.
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Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom.
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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.
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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
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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
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Old Testament where something along these lines is said. Exodus 20, verse 7. Leviticus 19, 12, perhaps the foremost.
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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.
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Every ancient populace had some aspect of swearing or vowing by their gods.
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People in the ancient world would often invoke God as a witness to the statements or the covenants that they would make.
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The Hebrews were not unique in this sense by any stretch. But in a jarring contrast, Jesus says,
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I say to you, do not swear at all. That's what would elicit the response.
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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.
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They say simply, there's no room for swearing, no room for vows, no room for oaths. As I hope
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I can demonstrate this morning, that simply doesn't pass muster scripturally. Scripture not only allows, but actually calls for oaths to be made.
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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.
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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.
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And what he's doing is essentially, he's dismantling the traditions of the Scribes and the Pharisees.
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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.
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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
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Lord. You could swear by other things associated with the Lord, and in that way your oath, your statement, was not as binding.
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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
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Shabuot, that's devoted to basically, here's how you can understand the nature of oaths.
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So the Pharisees, as Robert Gonzalez points out, they took the Old Testament command, do not swear falsely, perform your oaths to the
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Lord, but they shifted the emphasis away from the integrity of the oath that you've made to the
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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
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Lord, then they were like, huh, what about oaths you don't make to the Lord? You see the emphasis has shifted.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In Matthew 23, again the sort of counterbalance to the series of blessings that we saw in Matthew 5, the
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Beatitudes, in Matthew 23 you have a series of woes, a series of curses, and within that Jesus is rebuking the scribes and the
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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.
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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.
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Fools and blind, which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whoever swears by the altar, it's nothing.
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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.
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Again, fools and blind, which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?
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Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and all things on it. Do you see what Jesus is saying?
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There's no way of escaping the association, the ultimate reference point of God himself.
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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,
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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.
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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
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Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5. There is no escaping the oath, the vow, the promise, the commitment when you invoke
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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
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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,
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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.
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My people know how to let their yes be their yes and their no be their no. They don't have to invoke
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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.
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The blind guides that had been leading God's people astray had found a way to make their truth claims fuzzy, foggy, non -binding.
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Well, I didn't technically swear. Well, okay, I did swear, but I swore by the altar. This is not how
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It's only about evidence and litigation at that point. This is all a result of departing from God's law.
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So Jesus says in this, again, striking, attention -grabbing way, do not swear, do not make an oath.
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Now again, a superficial reading that cuts off all other biblical references will say, well, if we're gonna follow
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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
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Lord's name in vain is that when we invoke His name, we do it reverently, we do it humbly, we do it sincerely.
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And so there's a positive aspect to actually invoking God's name. I'm going to demonstrate that in a moment.
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Calvin in his commentary very helpfully says we cannot divide this rather provocative statement, do not swear at all, from what follows.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Everything you say is serious. Everything you say, everything you promise, God is a witness to and holds you to account.
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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.
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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.
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You can't swear by earth. Why? That's God's footstool. You see what he's going from throne to footstool.
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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.
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Don't swear by Jerusalem, it's the city of the great King. I think our translation is right to capitalize the
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K of King there. It's a reference from Psalm 48, verse 2, and the city of the great
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King speaking in a large part of the the Holy One that dwells within her palaces.
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Then he says not by your own head. Why? You can't even change your hair color.
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That doesn't mean you can order, you know, hair club for men and say, no actually I can.
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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.
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God is the one who controls your days and therefore to him you give ultimate account. So the law, as we see,
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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.
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What is forbidden are irreverent oaths, that is taking the Lord's name in vain. False oaths, oaths you had no intention of keeping.
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Oaths you recognize even as you are making them you're not going to be able to fulfill. In this way God's name is profaned.
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We have many examples of these godly oaths, the positive examples abound throughout
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Scripture. From the very beginning we see that God's people are those who invoke God's name as a way of showing their honesty, their integrity, their commitment.
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Abraham swore to Abimelech that he would not deal falsely with him. Isaac swore the same thing.
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Jacob swore to Laban. Joseph swore to his father. From the very beginning of the Bible you see oaths are taken invoking
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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.
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You know, 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.
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We go from Genesis, we can just look at Paul in a series of examples.
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I'll just give you a few. He's often invoking God's name. Romans 1, for God is my witness whom
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I serve. Without ceasing I make mention of you always. He's invoking God's witness to the veracity of what he's saying.
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2nd Corinthians 1, moreover, I call God as witness against my soul that to spare you
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I came no more to Corinth. He's saying God can judge my very soul, I'm telling you that this is true.
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Philippians 1 .8, God is my witness how greatly I long for you with the affection of Jesus Christ.
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Is Paul being flippant? Is Paul being profane? No, this is a right way for Paul to speak.
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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
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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.
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Now why is this necessary? Didn't Jesus just say, let your yes be your yes? Why can't
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Paul let his yes be his yes? Well it's because of sin that there is such a thing as oaths and vows among human beings.
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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.
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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.
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If it's not what you don't say, it's how you slightly adjust what you do say.
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And this is why, because of our own fallenness, an oath or a vow is often required, and you're invoking
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God's name. Say, you know, in a world that is warped and dark and full of deceit,
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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
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Lord when we break our vow, break our commitment, and this is something that we are not to take lightly.
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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.
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And so again, this is all downstream from the third commandment, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
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We're not to take the name of the Lord in vain, and this requires a certain way of fearing God by reverencing
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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
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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
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CD15, 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.
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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.
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I'm now being witnessed by God, He will avenge as a witness.
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Now of course that's true among human beings, among sinners, who can trust anyone, right?
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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, you know, they think they're giving sage advice, never trust anyone but yourself, follow your gut, and you're going,
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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.
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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
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God's name as a way of emphasizing truth, a way of stamping veracity, we do so very fearfully.
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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.
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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.
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All of His words are true. It's what we open the service with. The Word of the Lord is proven, right?
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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
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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.
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I really, really, really mean what I say. We see that even in Jesus' own ministry when
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He says, verily, verily, surely, surely, surely, saying everything He says is true, but you really need to see the weight of what
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I'm about to say. So the oaths of God, we find this frequent formula throughout
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Scripture. I could point to dozens of examples. As I live, as surely as I live, says the
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Lord. God will often have that as a way that He introduces some promise or some declaration.
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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.
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That's a vow that God had made. He swore that in His wrath He would never flood the earth again.
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For He swears to send a Redeemer through the prophets. He has promised a seed that is coming.
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He has promised a seed of David that will be enthroned, and we see that He stayed true to that vow.
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It's one of the things we celebrate as we close out the year. We see His promise that He will not leave
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His seed in Sheol, but He will raise Him, as it were, up from the dead. Psalm 16, quoted in Acts 2,
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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.
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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, and then in Genesis 17 it was drawn back to.
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In Genesis 22, we have the same promise reaffirmed, and He says, by Myself I have sworn.
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This is Genesis 22, and God says, by Myself I have sworn. Because you've done this thing and not withheld your
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He says this, Hebrews 6, beginning in verse 13, when God made a promise to Abraham because He could swear by no one greater.
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Who's God going to swear by? Human beings, the scribes and the
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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And so, after he, that is Abraham, had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
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In other words, he's saying you believers need to patiently endure so that you will obtain. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute.
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There's a positive understanding of the way that we are to use oaths as believers. He's saying that we all swear by something greater than ourselves, and we use these oaths as a way of saying, here's what will be done.
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To our own ruin or loss, here's what will be done. And he's saying, well, God did that Himself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Such was Abraham's faith. Why was Abraham able to patiently endure? Why was Abraham able to walk by that faith?
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It's because of the promise of God being sure. God swore by Himself, and Abraham understood that.
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And so he says, and here's an explanation of the way God uses oaths, how we are to use oaths.
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Thus, God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability, in other words,
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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.
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What a marvelous passage, and so instructive for how we are to understand oaths and vows.
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We, if we want to make our commitment, our promise more abundant, more emphatic, will swear by the name of the
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Lord, and by doing that we offer to the one we're swearing to, committing to, a strong consolation.
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That's how we use oaths and vows. You can see it's a weighty, fearful thing.
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So Jesus is not revoking oaths at all, not formally or fully. God Himself makes oaths, as does
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His people, as we saw from Paul. It's false and frivolous oaths in view, and Jesus calls for a radical integrity of speech.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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He actually abides by it. Matthew 26, beginning in verse 62, this is heading into His trial.
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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?
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What is it that these men are testifying to you? And Jesus kept silent. And so the high priest answered and said,
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I put you under oath by the living God. Tell us if you're the Christ, the Son of God.
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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.
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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.
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And then it's off to Golgotha as a result of that statement. So Jesus Himself understands the usefulness of the oath.
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He allows the whole kangaroo court to pass by when it finally gets down to the binding point.
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Are you the Christ? Are you the Christ? What have you said of yourself? I put you under oath by the living
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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
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Christian groups, largely Anabaptist groups, Quakers among them, that have rejected the idea of taking oaths or vows.
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They forbade that. In fact, that's still...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
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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.
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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
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Third Commandment. What is forbidden is the profane or casual appeal to God's name.
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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.
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First, in 23 .1, we read a lawful oath is a part of religious worship. That's a stunning statement.
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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
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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?
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We're saying, I commit this to you. Is that not an aspect of our worship, having
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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 a bore.
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This is a matter of wait and moment for confirmation of truth, for ending all strife. An oath is warranted by the
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Word of God, and so a lawful oath being imposed by a lawful authority in all such matters ought to be taken.
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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.
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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
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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
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Savoy and the Westminster. We only have five paragraphs. Savoy had six, Westminster had seven. No controversy or disagreement,
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I think they were just trying to be a little more clear and concise. Paragraph three, whosoever takes an oath warranted by the
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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.
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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,
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I'm gonna 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.
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Now what do you think about our land today, in these very ways? Do you see people following through on the things that they have committed to?
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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.
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Our land is mourning. Our land is mourning as a result of this. The third commandment, the positive aspect of taking the
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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?
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No wonder our land is mourning. Where is 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?
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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.
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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.
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You're so abstracted God's presence, God's justice, that it's nothing for you to say, I swear by God, I'm telling the truth,
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I swear by God. And therefore, as I think Manton's right to say, there's nothing that more wearies the patience of God.
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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.
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We have these oaths to uphold the Constitution, to defend it. I was watching a video of our
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Vice President swearing in the Senators elect and of course they raise their right hand and they make this pledge,
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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.
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If you feel as I feel, you have people raising their right hand saying they're going to defend the
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Constitution that essentially they are the gravest enemies of. I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
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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
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I'm about to enter, so help me God. And they invoke God's name, is it any wonder that our land is mourning?
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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.
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Wilhelmus Albronckho is a Dutch reformed theologian, has this tremendous set called the Christians Reasonable Service and he deals in a section on the
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Third Commandment with the way that magistrates are evasive to the oaths that they make.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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It's not the office for you. Or another argument, well we're all weak, we all sin in many different ways.
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And the answer is, well, you cannot allow this understanding of daily weaknesses to somehow hollow out the oath that you've made.
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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.
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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.
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Do you see what Abraham is saying? When you put your right hand up in this context and you say so help me
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God, you've said God please judge me and hold me accountable. If I don't do what
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I've committed to, please let me bear the consequences of that. Show yourself to be righteous and just.
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Well a society that respects the oath is a society that will be stable and fruitful. Another Dutch theologian a few centuries later,
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Joachim Dumas, he says in this kind of society people still recoil from lying, they expend energy in taking their office of their calling seriously.
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I have an oath to fulfill, I made a vow, I made a pledge, God is my witness,
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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.
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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.
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He's made an oath, he won't become a tyrant. An oath bound physician will be committed to healing patients.
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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.
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An oath bound officer, an officer of the law, a military serviceman, they'll serve for the preservation of the state, right?
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They have an oath to fulfill. An oath bound property assessor will actually give an accurate estimate of property value.
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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.
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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.
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Again, I say it's no wonder that our land mourns. Jesus says, let your yes be your yes and your no, no.
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Whatever is more than this is from the evil one. Some translations will simply say, whatever is more than this is evil.
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It's a possible translation. I think it's less likely. I think we're right to understand this is from the evil one.
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A point for at least someone in the room, it is an articular noun here, and we do have in verse 39 the evil doer.
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It's the same exact construction in Greek. And also remember what Jesus says in John 8 44, the evil one is the father of lies.
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When you're intentionally duplicitous, intentionally deceitful, you are of the evil one.
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You are showing yourself to be the product of the father of lies. Let your yes be your yes and your no, no.
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As Manton says, if men were more serious and sincere, their would would be equivalent to an oath. Their very affirmation would be like swearing.
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If we take these things to heart, how rarely we would make oaths and vows. How rarely you'd say, no, I really, really, really mean it.
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I know I said that and it fell through, but this time I really, really mean it. Jesus says, we should so let our yes and our no be that the integrity of our life makes it rare and almost unnecessary for us to have to appeal to God's name.
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Now, this had a huge impact on the early church. In fact, this teaching is entirely repeated by James.
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In James 5 12, he says, above all, my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any oath.
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Let your yes be your yes and your no, no, lest you fall into judgment. So James is taking this teaching from Jesus and he says, it's a priority for the church.
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Above all, my brethren, have integrity in the way that you speak, in the way that you conduct your life.
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James is very concerned about that, isn't he? The role of the power of the tongue in chapter 3. Not being double -minded and unstable in our ways of having wholeness, integrity.
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Of course, this is a part of the kingdom call. This is the exceeding righteousness. Who lives like this in the world?
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Don't over commit yourself, you know. If you frame it like this, you'll be able to get ahead. If you frame it like this, maybe you won't have to operate in this way.
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The world operates in a duplicitous way. Something less sincere, something less than fully present with full integrity.
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And so the world's values make it very hard for Christians to submit to Christ's values. But this is a kingdom ethic.
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We face the difficulties and this is what James is getting at. We're to be doers of the word. That means our words matter, our tongue matters.
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This is part of showing that our faith is bearing fruits in our lives and it's not empty. If our speech is so untrustworthy that we have to constantly appeal to God, have to constantly make it emphatic or appeal to it, could it be that we have not truly embraced the gospel?
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If we're not able to let our yes be our yes and our no be our no, if we're entirely disregarded, could it be that we have not understood nor embraced the gospel?
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James says that the tongue is a world of iniquity. And so the issue here, the main driving issue of what
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Jesus has to say, think back to the first few antitheses, right? If anger is ultimately what leads to murder, if lust is ultimately what leads to adultery, if selfishness and the sort of, you know, self -imposed hardness is what ultimately leads to divorce, then this deceitfulness, this maliciousness, is ultimately what leads us to find ways to be less truthful, less than truthful.
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Jesus is not addressing whether or not we should take an oath, he's saying whether or not we are truthful. Are we honest?
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What a word that is, honest. What a good aspiration to live to.
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He was an honest man, honest in all of his dealings. He had integrity.
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She was an honest woman. She didn't speak out of two sides of her mouth, as I think women are prone to do.
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They can talk with all sort of malice and sort of condescend and bitterness about someone and then five minutes later, hey, how are you?
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And give a hug. No. Honest, sincere, with integrity. Letting your yes be your yes and your no be your no.
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An oath will not be a constant necessity for an honest person.
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An appeal to something to show that you really mean it will not be a way of life for someone who lives with integrity.
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In other words, to make the point clear, people of the word must be people of their word.
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People of God's word must be people that are committed to the things that they say. This is all about integrity of speech, and so the question as we move to application is, do you have integrity in your speech?
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As Ecclesiastes 5 says, it's better not to vow than to vow and not pay. God's in heaven, therefore we on earth are to let our words be few.
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God is held accountable to us in a certain way, as we're held accountable to him. We're invoking his name.
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We're putting his reputation on the line, as it were. No wonder he's an avenger of our commitments.
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How many times, I used to watch episodes of cops, and every time a car is about to be searched, what does the innocent until proven guilty party always say?
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I swear. I swear off. I swear on my mom's life. I swear on my mom's life. There's nothing in that trunk.
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There's nothing in that backpack. You don't need to open that, right? And does the cop for a moment go, well, if you swear.
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Well, I didn't realize you're gonna swear on your mom's life. Well, we're clearly done here. You're free to go, right?
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No, it's like, they're just unzipping and pulling out
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Ziploc bags of who -knows -what, right? It's because the vow, the oath, the invocation, it doesn't mean anything.
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It doesn't mean anything. A Christian is not that way. A Christian is not that way.
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Do we have integrity in our speech? Does this mean, not in the big things, but are we about pruning even little white lies, flattering lies?
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Let me tell you, there's no such thing as a little white lie. A lie is a lie is a lie. This is what it means to have integrity of speech.
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We don't speak with a curled mouth. We don't have a political gloss, a politician's gloss over our words.
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We don't sprinkle and pepper and flatter those things which put us in the best light or so denigrate and and stain others that they're put in a negative cast, a negative light.
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This is to use our mouth, this world of iniquity, in ways that actually tear down rather than build up.
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This is to have that brackish, salty water that pours out of our speech rather than what is pure and wholesome and life -giving.
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Now a big part of that, you recognize, is even just how we view one another. Part of that is how others make us feel.
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We'll be prone to lie or project or manipulate or say something a little less or more than where we actually are.
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Others is how we view other people. Sometimes we view people as too far below us and so we speak very casually about them.
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We speak very dismissively about them. They're not on our level. They're not on our par. They're down there somewhere, not up here where I am.
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Well, that can bring all sorts of sinful speech. In other ways, sometimes we put people a little too high, put them on a pedestal.
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We're trying to speak in a way to sort of gain their appreciation, gain their attention. This is all an obstacle to letting your yes be your yes and your no be your no, to speak with integrity, to speak with purity.
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It means you have to have a right view of your neighbor, framed by a right view of God. Another aspect of this is, if we're answering the question, do you have integrity with your words, is are you more concerned with integrity or comfort?
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In Psalm 15, this is a major concern for the psalmist because the worshiper is ascending the holy place where God dwells, the one who has pure speech, pure words.
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And so the psalmist asks the question, Lord, who can abide in your holy place? Who can actually make it to your tabernacle and stay there and not be punted away because of their infirmity?
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And so he answers the question, Lord, who can abide in your holy hill? Verse two, he who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth from his heart.
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And Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart. Jesus says that the overflow of the heart comes forth from our mouths. If you're pure in heart, you'll have a purity of speech.
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Verse four, he who swears to his own hurt and does not change. I made a commitment. This is ruinous to me, but I made a commitment.
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This is a total loss for me, but I gave my word. This is someone who is worthy of dwelling in the holy hill.
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This is someone who understands Jesus saying, let your yes be your yes. Do we play fast and loose with our commitments, either to God or to one another?
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How often do we make a weak and we're not trembling reverently when we're making that commitment?
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That's a problem. Are you training yourself to have this sort of calcified lack of repentance because you never follow through on the commitments you make to God or toward others?
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It ought to be when you're committing yourself to God, when you're saying, here's how it's going to be, you should do that with some sense of weight, with some sense of trembling, to swear at your own hurt.
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This is getting closer to what it means to have the integrity that God has. In Joshua 9, we have a good example of this.
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Remember, Joshua's been given the command to put all the peoples of Canaan under the ban, that is to, as it were, purge this picture of God's dwelling place, this
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Eden now stained and invaded by sin and all things abominable in God's sight, and Joshua, as it were, enters the land and purges that realm of anything that would affect
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God's holy purpose, and the Gibeonites come and they disguise themselves as if they came from a long way of way.
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They're all tattered clothing, they, you know, sprinkle the dust on their face, they all play the part really well, we come from a far land, we don't dwell anywhere close to you, let's make some peace treaties to make sure that you don't do anything to us.
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And so Joshua makes a treaty with the Gibeonites, it was a foolish treaty to make, they didn't realize actually they were dwellers within the land, but this is the conclusion they come to.
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We've sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel, now therefore we cannot touch them.
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This will do, we'll let them live, lest the wrath be upon us because of the oath that we swore to them.
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Can you imagine a United States senator thinking in that way? Wrath will be upon me because of the oath that I swore.
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I said, so help me God, God is my witness. I had my left hand on the Bible when I said that. God's gonna pour out wrath on me if I don't fulfill my oath.
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Can you imagine a senator thinking that way? That was the way that Joshua and the leaders of Israel thought at that moment in time.
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Fear of the Lord's name, reverence for his name, reverence for the fact that he is a righteous judge, and though he is patient and long -suffering, his justice will be meted out.
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Where does this fear of the Lord come from? For a Christian, the fear of the Lord begins with an adoration of the
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Lord. The more you adore the Lord and in all the ways he's unlike us entirely, you begin to fear his name.
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You begin to fear his presence. So Jesus points to the origin of lies. He says, anything more than this comes from the evil one, the father of lies.
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James points us to the fact that God is a judge standing at the door. He says, lest you fall into judgment.
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Throughout the prophets, this is a constant reminder. The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
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Isn't that what the third commandment says? But we read that and our defense mechanism goes, well he doesn't really mean that.
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I mean, who really lives like that? But God really means that. Ezekiel 17 asks the question rhetorically, can a man break the covenant and be delivered?
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You see the emphasis there? You can't expect deliverance when you've broken the covenant, not short of repentance and mercy being shown.
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The Lord says, and I will come near to you in judgment, I will be a swift witness against false swearers,
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Malachi 3. And so the whole idea of being true to our word means being true even at loss, being true even in a painful way, having integrity to our commitment.
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For some that may be just a pain for a season, for some that may be pain for a decade, but if you have integrity, you understand what
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Jesus is saying, you follow through because you've invoked the holy name of the living God.
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It is better, as Abrakel says, to be poor and beg for bread than to be guilty of perjury and have abundance.
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For every idle word Jesus says that men will speak, they'll give an account in the day of judgment, for by your words you'll be justified and by your words you'll be condemned.
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God's not concerned about where he's going to gather up evidence for those that have resisted him and rebelled against him.
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He knows by your words you'll be justified, by your own words you'll be condemned, but the
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Lord has called us to integrity. He promises in Jeremiah 4 that as a result of his mercy he's going to bring them back into the land and he says, you will swear in that day the
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Lord lives, but you'll swear it in truth. The beautiful picture he's saying, you know, I never intended for you to not invoke my name in those particularly important occasions.
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The problem is you take it rashly, you do it foolishly, you do it without sincerity. When I actually show you mercy in that day, you'll come on the land and you'll swear as the
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Lord lives, you'll mean it in truth and in righteousness and in justice to the nations. This is what
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God is after. He's called us to this integrity. Well how do we get that kind of integrity? At the base of all of this it's because God is the one who's faithful to his word.
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That's why Christians are to be faithful to their words. That's the whole point. People of the word must be people of their words.
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That's because God is a God of his word. God is a God who swears by himself and at his own loss he fulfills what he has promised.
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This is what Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 1. God is faithful. Therefore our word to you was not yes and no.
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We weren't duplicitous, we weren't speaking out of both sides of our mouth. Why? God is faithful. For the
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Son of God, Jesus Christ preached among you by us was not yes and no. In him it was yes.
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All the promises of God in him are yes and in him amen. Paul sees himself in his ministry as a reflection of the integrity of God.
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How could we be duplicitous among you? God is the one who's always abided by his promise. Will we not be faithful to the same?
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And so people of the word are people of their word. We let our yes be our yes. Why? God is immutable.
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God is unchangeable. Therefore our words, our commitments should be seen as immutable, unchangeable. We let our yes be our yes because we trust in God's provision and protection.
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Abraham had to learn the hard way how to do that, right? And Sarah was usually on the chopping block as a result of his own fear of man.
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But eventually he learned when he made a pact and he made an oath he kept to that even at his loss he would keep to that. He learned
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God will provide, God will protect. The only way we can actually have integrity in our speech is if we're walking by faith in the provision and protection of God.
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It was something that Abraham sorely lacked. Even though he had great faith leave Ur of the Chaldees and come into Canaan, he didn't have enough faith to protect his own wife.
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You almost want to grab him by the robe and say don't you think God will protect you? He's the one that's promised you this whole land.
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That's what the fear of man does to us and all of a sudden we get foggy with our words. We get dodgy with our commitments.
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We're not trusting in God to provide and protect. Joseph lands in a dungeon because of the integrity of his speech.
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God doesn't say it'll all go well with you when you have integrity in the in the interim, in the immediate.
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He says it will go well with you eternally if you have integrity in your speech. We can let our yes be our yes even at a loss because we know
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God will repay. Maybe we will end up in a dungeon here or there in a day, who knows?
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But we trust that God sees and as we're true to our word, true to our speech, true to our commitments, we trust that God will repay in due time if not in this world then in the next.
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We would rather suffer for the word than break the word. This is what it means to follow our yes.
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And again, to follow your yes, to let your yes be your yes, even at loss, is to be Christlike, isn't it?
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To let your words be true, even at your ruin, is to be Christlike. This is really a great angle on the gospel as we come to a close.
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We open the service with considering how God is the one who has pure speech. Pure speech.
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How pure? Like silver refined in the furnace of the earth sevenfold.
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Pure. There's no imperfection, no dross to consume. Pure words.
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Pure commitments. The words of the Lord are pure words.
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And what does the psalmist say in Psalm 12, 7? The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried in the furnace of the earth, purified sevenfold.
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You will keep them, O Lord. Pure words. You'll preserve them from this generation forever.
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You see this, for example, in Hebrews 10. We already looked at Hebrews 6. This idea of God having a will,
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God committing himself to something, and even at his own ruin following through on it. In Hebrews 10, we have
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Psalm 40, 6 through 8, being taken into Hebrews 10. Therefore, when he came into this world, it says,
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Christ, the writer of Hebrews says, sacrifice an offering you did not desire. This is from Psalm 40. A body you've prepared for me.
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Burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come.
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In the volume of the book it's written of me to do your will, O God. Now listen to how the writer of Hebrews explains this.
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You see what the psalmist is doing. He's looking at all that God had commanded them to adopt, this whole sacrificial system that we see from the very beginning of the promise in Genesis 3 .15,
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when God clothed the first men and women in skins of animals. Sacrifice an offering, he said, well this is what you've commanded, but this isn't what you've desired.
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This isn't your ultimate will. This isn't ultimately what you promised. This isn't ultimately what you've sought to bring about.
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It's not gonna be this perpetual sacrifice of blood from animals that can cleanse anything. Sacrifice an offering you didn't desire.
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A body you've prepared for me. Burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure in them.
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Why did you command them then? For what he did have pleasure in. It pleased him to crush him. Behold, I've come.
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In the volume of the scroll it's written of me to do your will. Listen to the writer of Hebrews. Previously saying, sacrifice an offering, burnt offerings, offerings for sin you didn't desire, which are offered according to the law, he said, behold, this is
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Christ said, behold, I've come to do your will. Here's the promise you've made.
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Here's the will you've committed yourself to. Here's the vow you gave to man and woman. He takes away the first so he can establish the second.
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By that will, by that promise we could say, by that vow, by that yes, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
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Can you imagine what it was like for Jesus as a boy to begin rehearsing Psalm 40 as he grew in wisdom and stature among men?
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And when we read past that and he read at that and recognized himself within it, a body you've prepared for me.
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And I have come to do your will. And you realize that our speech must be pure as God's speech is pure because God is the
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God who keeps his word. God makes a vow and he fulfills it at his loss.
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And so he prepares a body for his son, haunting the scenery we saw in Hebrews 6 of Genesis 22 there on Mount Moriah with Abraham about to plunge the dagger into the beloved one.
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And God's saying, stop, that's something that I will do to my son. And you realize that in this body prepared for him, even prior to that, there had been this yes to all that God had committed himself to.
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This plan to actually save a fallen man and woman and bring them to himself where they could dwell and bask in his glory evermore, never to be stained or polluted by sin, never be taken away from his presence again.
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And to that plan of redemption the Lord Jesus says yes. He doesn't say yes and then no.
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Yes, I've come to do your will. And in the fullness of time, he so denies himself the glories to which he is accorded, that he condescends to enter into flesh and be born among the cattle and among the sinful men and women of the earth.
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And to that haunting sight, I very much agree with the the
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Orthodox emphasis on the significance of the Incarnation. Even the Puritans could say it wasn't much for Jesus to be in the flesh and descend to the tree when we consider him in his infinite glory descending into the likeness of sinful flesh.
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It's the beginning of descending into hell, the hellscape of fallen humanity. And peering at that commitment of the
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Lord God, Jesus' response is simply yes. Then he walks through this whole life, the king of glory, with angels, hosts, endless hosts.
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You see interstellar telescopes trying to find the borders of galaxies, and it's so immense that they simply can't.
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And you find that at some level even astronomers, as scientific as they seek to be, have to devolve into poetry, because they just can't contain it all.
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The neutral scientifically attuned mind must become doxological when you're peering into the endless glories of the heavens.
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And that's representative, as it were, of the whole glorious host all bowing down in endless worship, hiding their faces in endless worship to the
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Son of God. And when the Father says to him, walk among sinners that will spite you, lie about you, mock you, refuse you, despise you, persecute you, walk among them, love them, teach them my ways, prepare yourself to die for them.
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And to this the Son of God says, yes. And the mockery and the humiliation comes to the high point when they press thorns into his forehead, and they flay open his back with a cattail whip, and they begin to laugh as they bow down and say, let's worship the
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King, as they hoist him up upon the cursed tree. And to that Jesus says, yes.
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And in the agony of death, his own way of saying yes is to say, it is finished.
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Because God is the God who keeps his yes, his yes. And this is why Christ is the yes and amen of God.
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And that is why Christians must be the ones who let their yes be their yes, and their no be their no.
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If Christ is the yes and amen of all that he promises, then may it never be that we speak out of two sides of our mouth, that we don't have integrity of speech and conduct.
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If God is immutable, unchangeable to his ruin, to his loss, to the death of his beloved
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Son, that he might be glorified, that his name might be revered, then it cannot be any other for the
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Christian. We too fulfill our words. We too keep our promises and vows. People of the word must be people of their word, amen?
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Let's pray. Father, help us to be doers not only of your word, but Lord, doers of our words.
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Give us that integrity, Lord, that befits a Christian. We lament to see a land that is mourning because of people taking their oaths, taking their words lightly.
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We know that judgment begins in the house of God, Lord, because fearing your name begins in this house. Fearing your name begins in this worship.
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We recognize, Lord, that we are the light for this darkened world, and if we would conduct ourselves with integrity of speech, letting our yes be our yes and our no be our no, we know that you will use us as salt and light in this land, and we long to see revivals and days when our land will no longer mourn because of false oaths and insincere commitments.
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Let that begin with each one of us in the commitments we already have made before you, the way we've not done it with trembling, not done it fearfully or even sincerely.
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Lord, forgive us and show us mercy and help us by your spirit to be more like you, full of pure speech, men and women of integrity that keep to their own loss what they've committed.
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Let us be wise then and temperate, not be men who have a blast of words with no substance, nor men that refuse to speak because they fear no sincerity or ability, but may we be men emboldened by your spirit to speak wisely, speak boldly, speak truthfully.
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Bless us as a church, Lord. We pray that you would convict us of the things in our life, Lord, the ways that we have profaned your name and give us that reverence for your holiness.
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Help us to remember that if you have kept your own promise and not withholding your own son, that we can trust you and find comfort in everything you've promised to us, including the fact that you will sanctify us as your people.
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And you will carry on this work that you've begun. And so we trust you even in these things as we pray in your name.