LAW HOMILY: Lying To Yourself

Every week we go through the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to his people and we go

Through the Ten Commandments every week One at a time. So we're on a ten -week rotation today

We're going to be in the ninth Commandment because we want to understand what God has to say to us and how we are to live according to his commands

We don't cut off 75 % of the Bible and say that it's irrelevant to us.

We believe that through the Spirit of God now it is relevant to us Now the command we're going to be looking at is you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor and for most of us this command conjures up images of courtroom scenes

Gossip slander. We imagine a false accuser pointed a crooked finger

Deliberately destroying someone's reputation and character and certainly the commandment forbids such acts of wickedness

But the Westminster larger catechism Refuses to let us off so easily question 145 defines the sins forbidden in this command as Anything that prejudice the truth and the good name of our neighbors as well as our own

Did you catch that as well as our own we can bear false witness by lying about ourselves

You can bear false witness not only against your neighbor but against you Which means that self deception and strategic self

Presentation are not morally neutral actions. They are Violations of the truth before the face of God this morning

I want to look at a few primary ways that we break the ninth commandment by lying about ourselves and what follows

I Think may be uncomfortable for all of us But it's necessary because the gospel only makes sense to those who are honest about who they are

Jesus came for the sick not for the well So the first way that we do this is by self exoneration the art of blame shifting

The refusal to tell the truth about our own sin. We deny the wrongdoing outright

We're too sophisticated for that instead. We minimize it. We reframe it We excuse it and we relocate the blame to someone else.

I remember Johnny Carson once said that I Hate the one who cuts me off in traffic, but when it's me doing it, it's a good reason

That instinct lives in every single one of our human hearts we tell partial truths about ourselves and then we rename our vices as Virtues and then we rename someone else's vices as great evils

We speak about our failures and we say things like I'm just being honest when we're actually being cruel

I Have high standards when we're actually being controlling I was protecting myself when we actually are retaliating in a sinful way

This catechism condemns undue silence in a just cause

Applied inwardly this indicates that practice silence that we maintain towards our own guilt is guilt

God requires truth in the innermost parts of our being and self -exoneration is a lie whispered in the sanctuary of the heart and It must not be we must have an honest weight and measure with the sins that we commit and not just blame shift on to Others that's the first the second way we lie about ourself is self aggrandizement the testimony of our own inflated virtue

Exaggerating our righteousness or our competence or our spiritual maturity I posted this week that anytime

I see someone bragging Unnecessarily, I immediately think to myself that person's insecure

After years of seeing it, it's likely true This catechism forbids that kind of vain glory undue commending of ourselves proud boasting and the things that we accomplish the curated version of ourself that is more impressive than the way that God sees us more faithful than the way that Christ would view us more

Indispensable than reality would warrant we're testifying falsely about a creature that God knows exhaustively and it's sin

The third is false humility the deception of self -denigration

Equally sinful and even far more deceptive is false humility The catechism concern for truth means that lying is about ourself is just as sinful as puffing it up in others

Self denigration can be a kind of sophisticated dishonesty. It can be designed to Elicit from other people empathy and yet it's lying about ourself.

Oh, I could never do that. I'm not as gifted as you when we do that and we

Denigrate the gifts that the Lord God has placed inside of us in order to have a kind of false humility.

We're lying About ourselves How many times have you done something with the

Lord's help that was that was actually good and you can't receive the compliment and you? denigrate yourself unnecessarily in order to have a kind of false humility

CS Lewis once said that arrogance and Self -hatred are the same exact sin because they're both focused on yourself

The way to be truly humble is to think of yourself less not to think less of yourself

So when we say things to denigrate who we are We might be lying

About the God who made us now. Listen, I'm a thoroughgoing Calvinist. I believe in total depravity

So in some sense you're worse than you could ever imagine. I get it. So am I But if the

Lord God has gifted you and if the Lord God has given you something that he expects for you to use in the

Service of building his kingdom Don't excuse it and don't lie about it and don't downplay it say thank you.

God is good The next one is Selective disclosure.

This is a lie about ourself because we tell only the truth that helps us the catechism condensed speaking the truth unreasonably or maliciously to a wrong end

We tell just enough truth to sound honest But not enough to actually be faithful the facts may be technically accurate, but the overall picture is false this appears in Confessions that avoid the cost or admitting to being a little impatient when we were actually being cruel you're softening the blow when you do this and you're trying to avoid the

Consequences while maintaining a veneer of apology and humility The next one is self -victimization

Rewriting the moral ledger in your favor It means portraying ourselves as the primary victim in a situation when we are actually the guilty party in the moral contributor the catechism forbids

Misconstruing intentions and words and actions including our own we retell events

Maximizing our suffering minimizing our sin we frame ourselves as misunderstood rather than disobedient

The sixth is self -ignorance The ninth commandment is violated not only by speaking falsehoods, but by refusing to pursue the truth

This catechism condense neglecting such things as are of good report including neglecting honest self -examination when we refuse

Accountability when we avoid reflection when we resist correction when we insulate ourself from voices that might tell us hard truth

It's not a neutral behavior we're choosing ignorance and living in ignorance, which is living in a lie number eights hypocrisy

When we are not merely being inconsistent But we're performing falsehood deliberately constructing our own identity in such a way that benefits us, but is untrue

We're wearing a false face There's so many different ways that we participate in lies.

There's so many ways in which we lie about ourself And this is not an exhaustive list

But what I want us to do for a moment is to ask ourself. Where have I lied? About me wherever I lied about my sin

Where have I said this isn't it that big of a deal when it is where have I made someone else? The enemy and made myself the hero in my story.

Where have I lied about the giftedness that God has given me where have I spoken falsehood about the one that Jesus died for to redeem and Wherever that hits let us pray.

Let us confess our sin and let us receive Jesus's forgiveness together. Amen Lord every sin that we could ever commit

Finds its way to the Ten Commandments somehow Not bearing false witness we often think about an external

Pointed sin that points at how we talk about others and we rarely consider how it affects the way we talk about ourselves whether it's in Self -aggrandizement making ourselves seem better than what we really are or whether it's in self denigration making ourselves seem worse for some sort of Attempt at seeming humble

Lord, I pray that you would make us people of the truth and people of the truth soberly speaking when it comes to even ourselves

And Lord, would you help us to have a right and honest view of ourselves? Would you help us

Lord to have the courage to be honest about ourselves? And would you help us Lord when the tendency comes for us to lie?

about ourselves and about our sin and about our shortcomings or even about our accomplishments that Were predestined before the foundation of the world as Ephesians 2 10 says for us to do in the

Lord Help us even if we try to soften those things in order to seem

Humble Lord help us to repent help us to repent of any error in any falsehood as it comes to the way that we describe ourselves and Lord we rest in the fact that we are forgiven because Christ Jesus has died

Was buried and was raised to secure that forgiveness. He's the only one who obeyed

So Lord help us now who've been filled with his spirit To Daily repent of these shortcomings and these failures and to turn and rest in you and it's in Jesus name.