Speaking Truthfully

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Transcript:

We’re on the ninth commandment, close to the end of the series here, and this is a commandment that is often stated incorrectly in Exodus chapter 20, if you haven’t already turned there, Exodus chapter 20. This is a commandment that’s often stated incorrectly. As a matter of fact, last week I was sitting at the table, I think at breakfast, talking with the kids and the subject of the Ten Commandments came up.

And before you think, well, I can’t relate to the pastor’s family at all, let me put your mind at ease about that. Yes, the subjects like the Ten Commandments do come up at the breakfast table. But in this case, the Ten Commandments came up right after I had just gotten on to them for bathroom humor and right before a big debate about some superheroes that I’ve never heard of.

So it’s just one of many things that gets thrown around. I’m just grateful that God’s word is there in the mix, and it’s something they have questions about. But something was said about the commandments, and one of the kids said, well, you know, the Ten Commandments say don’t lie.

And I said, do they say that? Well, yeah, that’s one of the commandments. It says don’t lie.

I said, is it really? And then they start getting that look like, okay, Daddy’s using that tone of voice. I’m guessing I’m wrong here.

I said, that’s not what it actually says. I said, which commandment are you talking about? And I think it was Benjamin stopped and thought for a minute.

He said, is it nine? I said, yeah, that’s the one I thought you were talking about. I said, it does not actually say thou shalt not lie.

What it says, which we see here in Exodus chapter 20, verse 16, it’s related to that. But what it actually says is you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Now, we bear false witness by lying, but this isn’t a commandment just about lying in general. It’s a very specific commandment about not bearing false witness against your neighbor.

So to understand what this commandment means, beyond just don’t lie, we need to take it apart a little bit and look at the pieces of it and ask ourselves some questions. And the first thing we want to understand is when the Bible tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbor, who’s our neighbor? Who are they talking about?

Is it just our literal neighbor, or is there something broader there? Is it my literal people who live next door, or is there a broader meaning to it? Now, the Hebrew word that they use there for neighbor is reah.

which refers to any kind of associate. Anybody that you’re associated with is your neighbor. And we see that too, even though it’s not written in Hebrew, we see that when Jesus talks about loving your neighbor.

You know, the man came and asked Jesus, well, who is my neighbor then? Because he wanted to justify himself and say, well, I’ve loved my neighbor. I’ve demonstrated love toward the people that I actually like, toward the people that I’ve surrounded myself with.

And he told him the story of the good Samaritan. Y’all are familiar with that story. The Levite didn’t have time to help.

The priest didn’t have time to help. It was the Samaritan who helped the Jewish man who had been beaten and left on the road to Jericho, if memory serves. And Jesus said, out of these three, who acted like a neighbor to this man?

Was it his two fellow Jews who should have helped him and just passed on by? Or was it the guy who should have been an enemy to him by virtue of being a Samaritan, but he’s the one who came along and picked him up and put him on his own animal, put himself at risk to take care of this man, bandaged him up, carried him off to an inn where he could be cared for and where he could recuperate, and paid for his care there. And Jesus said, which one is your neighbor?

And one of the things that Jesus is trying to convey to us in that story is that anybody who needs help, anybody who is vulnerable, anybody that we have the opportunity and the occasion to do good to, is our neighbor. It’s not just the literal people who live next door to us. It’s not just the people that are in our families.

It’s not just the people we willingly associate with as friends. It’s anybody in need, anybody vulnerable that we have the opportunity and the occasion to do good to. Well, the same thing is intended by this word.

It’s anybody, any kind of associate, any kind of person that we associate with willingly or unwillingly. So it’s anybody that we associate with, not just literal neighbors, but also family members, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers, folks, even enemies are included in that rea. So what this is, the Bible is putting this obligation, the law is putting this obligation on us toward everybody we come in contact with and saying, do not bear false witness against them.

A way we might clarify the scope of this in words that we understand today would be to say, you shall not bear false witness against another. Because who’s another? Any other person.

So don’t bear false witness against another. So we need to ask ourselves too, what is false witness? Okay, false witness in the context here given in the Bible means to testify against someone.

It means to testify against someone else, accusing them of some transgression when we know they are not guilty. Something when we know they’re not guilty, but we say it anyway. This is when we make up lies about people to accuse them of things that they haven’t done.

or accuse them of not doing things that they have done. We know it’s a lie, and we say it anyway. This is not a commandment against saying bad things about people necessarily that are true.

There are other scriptures that call us to be cautious about that as well. But in this case, it’s saying don’t make up lies about people around you. So what we need to understand, just because I said, well, the commandment doesn’t say don’t lie.

The Bible is not a pro-lying document, just because that’s not the literal meaning of one of the Ten Commandments. It’s not that the Bible is a pro-lying document. The Bible is pretty clear that it’s a sin to lie.

In Colossians chapter 3, it tells us, Do not lie one to another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. He said when we lie, what we’re doing is acting like the old self from before we were saved, before we were in Christ, whereas lying is something that we should have put aside when we put on Christ and when we were renewed in him. As the Holy Spirit conforms us to be more like Jesus Christ, one of the things that should fall by the wayside, not to be picked up again, is that lying.

So the Bible is very much against lying. As a matter of fact, it says that lying is one of the things that God cannot do. And as I’ve explained to you multiple times, the moral law is an expression of God’s holiness.

So when God says this is right, it’s because that extends from his nature. When God says it’s right to be truthful, God says that because God is by nature truthful. When God says it’s right to be faithful to your spouse or any other commitment, really, it’s because God is by nature faithful.

When God says it’s good to be generous, it’s because God is by nature generous. And on the opposite side of that, when God says it’s wrong to lie, that’s not just some rule God made up so that he could spoil our fun. It’s because lying is contrary to God’s nature.

He is truthful, therefore truthfulness is good, and the opposite of it is wrong. When God says, don’t go out and murder, it’s because God is a God who, by nature, loves life. So there are all sorts of things.

All these moral laws stem from who God is. And if he tells us, be holy as I am holy, in other words, right and wrong, when we should try to follow what’s right and do what’s right. Our conception of right and wrong and our pattern of right in our lives are supposed to reflect His holiness.

And again, one of the things we are expressly told God cannot do is that God cannot lie. So the Bible is very much against us lying as a matter of course. It’s just that in this instance, it wasn’t a commandment about lying in general. That’s covered elsewhere, but it was a big enough thing that God said, you don’t need to lie about other people.

And we’re going to see why this was such a big deal. This commandment is more than just don’t lie. It points to how lying can destroy other people’s lives, especially how lying about other people can destroy their lives. Because what we need to understand about the culture that these commandments were given to originally, And I believe God’s moral law applies today just as much as it ever did.

When I start talking about the culture it was given to, don’t think I mean that it was just for them. God’s moral law has not changed. There are things that are part of the ceremonial law, the civil law, the sacrifices and things like that that have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The moral law is still in place not as a way for us to be saved, but as something that we should aspire to, something we should try as Christians to live up to in order to reflect the holiness of our Father.

But when we try to understand why this command was given, we need to look at it in context of the world they lived in and need to understand one very important difference between their world and ours. They lived in a world before forensic science. And yet they lived in a world where God had tasked them with keeping law and order, punishing crime, and protecting the innocent.

They had to have a way to be able to deal with crimes. They had to have a way to be able to deal with infractions and protect people and determine guilt and innocence. And when you can’t, we just take it for granted right now.

You want to figure out who committed a crime. Well, then you call in the guys in white coats, and they can do all sorts of amazing things. I watch these documentaries from time to time about them investigating crimes, and it’s just fascinating to me.

As a matter of fact, I’ve watched so many lately, it might start to worry Charla, but I told her, we have daughters right now, and I want to know how the criminal mind works to protect those daughters. anyway you call in the guys in the white coats and they can find fingerprints and folks 200 years ago they didn’t realize fingerprints were unique and were not able to necessarily to identify those DNA you go back to the 1970s and they really didn’t have the capabilities that we have now as a matter of fact sometime this week we’ll be going to visit a geneticist in Oklahoma City about Carly Jo’s issue and they want to look at some things and see what might have caused the defect. And I told him, you know, I had a genetic screening run with my second child when he was stillborn.

They had us do a genetic screening there at OU. I said, the results may still be here if y’all want to pull those in as well. And she said, when would that have been?

I said, 2009. So 10 years ago. And she said, oh no, that wouldn’t even come close to what we can do now.

I said, really? She said, in the last 10 years, it has progressed like you wouldn’t believe. So we take for granted that there’s all this scientific evidence and everything that can solve a crime.

They did not have that in that day. I didn’t think we were coming to talk about forensics tonight. It’s important to understand because in a world like that, in a world like that, the testimony of witnesses becomes extremely important.

Now today, eyewitnesses are still important, but today, eyewitnesses are often secondary because eyewitnesses can misremember things. Eyewitnesses can lie. Forensics don’t lie.

But in their day, they didn’t have forensics. All they had were eyewitnesses. And you’d be surprised how much there is in the Old Testament, in the law that deals with their court proceedings and how to determine guilt and innocence and how to treat someone who’s been accused of a crime.

There’s a lot that the Bible has to say about that, because that was important, especially under the law, especially under the law, where some of these crimes were considered so egregious and they were punished so harshly. The one thing you did not want to do was to have an innocent person accused and convicted of a crime. And yet we all know what human nature is like.

We all know how people can start to use the legal system to their advantage. Told you the story about the neighbor who got mad at me and decided to call animal control and say my dog was aggressive. And animal control came out and checked it out and realized that’s not true.

They made up a story about what the dog had supposedly done and called it in. You know what, we’re mad at him and we’ll get back at him and we’ll just game the system. My kids have discovered this.

In the last two weeks, we’ve started noticing, and I’ve mentioned this on Wednesday night, I think. Both of the older kids are doing it, and I’m sure Charlie will do it once he figures out how the older two kids will do something and then lie and say the other one did it. And I know all kids go through that, blaming their sibling.

But this is not where Benjamin does something that he wants to do and doesn’t want to get in trouble for it, so he blames his sister. This is where Benjamin goes and does something that he wouldn’t have done otherwise and that Madeline would have, and stages the whole crime scene just for the purpose of getting her in trouble. And Madeline does the same thing to Benjamin.

And they’ve both done it to Charlie. And my goodness, I’m just glad that I am married to CSI Seminole, Oklahoma. I don’t even want to hear about this stuff anymore, but she just wakes up in the morning and lives and breathes investigating what they’re doing and who did what.

She’s the one who figured out, wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Charlie’s not even capable of reaching that. Or, wait a minute, I went into the bathroom right after Madeline did and didn’t see a mess in there, and then Benjamin came out and said, she’s the one that started putting two and two together.

They’re making up stuff about each other just to try to get each other in trouble. What would there be to stop somebody in the ancient world? Because people haven’t changed.

People have been rotten since the Garden of Eden, And I say that even being a people, okay? If there’s anything good in me, it’s the Holy Spirit of God. It’s what Jesus has done.

Human nature, yes, we’re good and nice on the outside. You get down to the core of who we are. Human nature has been rotten since the Garden of Eden.

And what’s to stop somebody 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, from saying, you know what, I really don’t, I don’t like the look of my neighbor’s stupid face. and yet somebody’s cattle got stolen, I’m going to say I saw him do it. I’m just tired of looking at him.

Well, in a world where all you have is eyewitness testimony, that would be a very powerful thing. That would be a very powerful temptation as well. And it’s something that could potentially ruin somebody’s life if it’s not caught.

Same thing in my home. That could be very disruptive because I never want to punish the wrong child for their crimes. As a matter of fact, it drives Charla crazy, but if we can’t figure out who it was, we’ve got to let them go.

Some of you may disagree with me, but I don’t go for this whole, well, they’re all just going to be punished. I don’t want to punish somebody for something they haven’t done. That could be a powerful temptation, and it could ruin somebody’s life, and that’s why I’ve instituted the rule that if you frame your sibling for something, whatever the punishment is, they would have gotten you get double.

And if they’ve already been punished for it, You get that too, so triple. So, you know, for some things, I’m telling Benjamin, you know, Madeline would have gotten five spankings for that because it’s something she’s really been talked to about. Are you prepared to get 15 spankings?

Please don’t think I’m a mean person. I don’t want to give him 15 spankings, and I haven’t yet. It’s just, it’s a deterrent, okay?

I’m hoping I never have to press that nuclear button. But once I instituted that and said there’s going to be a consequence here, guess what slowed down around my house? And guess who started thinking twice about whether or not they were going to set their sibling up just for fun?

And that’s basically what God did in the Old Testament law. He said if somebody is found to have borne false witness, if they testified falsely against somebody, they’re going to get an even greater penalty because this is so destructive. You can easily, with lies, you can easily destroy the life of an innocent person.

So this commandment, God could have said, don’t lie. And he did elsewhere. But this was so important that God put it in the Ten Commandments.

This made his top ten list to say, don’t lie about other people, because God wanted to protect innocent people. That was important enough that God put it in the top ten things for us not to make up lies about innocent people and destroy their lives. So he told them in Deuteronomy chapter 19.

I said that this was explained and dealt with in the Old Testament law. In Deuteronomy chapter 19, God said, One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established.

If a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, then both men in the controversy shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who serve in those days, and the judges shall make careful inquiry. And indeed, if the witness is a false witness who has testified falsely against his brother, then shall you do to him as he thought to have done to his brother. So you shall put away the evil from among you, and those who remain shall hear and fear, And hereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you.

Your eye shall not pity. Life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. And I know that phrase, eye for an eye, gets a bad rap.

Oh, is it Gandhi who said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind? Folks, the Bible never taught us an eye for an eye in the sense of personal revenge. But God’s Old Testament law very clearly lays it out for judicial process, a careful deliberation of facts, a fair trial, and punishment for those who would try to lie and destroy the lives of innocent people.

God said, you know, go to trial with at least two witnesses. He said, if somebody stands up and says, I saw Greg steal those cattle, and Greg said, I did not steal those cattle, then both of you are called into the priest’s office. And there they make a careful investigation.

And you’re going to think twice about making a false accusation because you know if they decide you’re not telling the truth, there’s going to be a consequence for you. And Jesus dealt with this in the New Testament. Jesus said, For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.

These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. He said that in Matthew 15, verses 19 and 20. He’d been talking to the Pharisees.

They were upset because his disciples didn’t wash their hands before they ate, which is gross, but they had raised it to the level of a salvation issue, that they were defiled now because they had eaten with dirty hands, and Jesus said it’s not what goes in, but it’s what comes out that defiles a person. And one of the things that he lists, the evil that lurks in the human heart that comes out through the mouth is false witness and false accusation. That’s why in the New Testament, we’re told do not, in 1 Timothy chapter 5, do not receive an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses.

So talking about the people in the church, do not destroy a man’s ministry over what one person says. okay I I saw this uh a lady a lady in the church decided that one of the deacons was having an affair with one of the ladies she corners me says they’re having an affair I knew they weren’t I I and not that I was playing favorites but I spent time regularly with the deacon and his wife and and this woman and her husband all together we were all for I knew there was nothing going on But she cornered me and asked me about it. Okay, this is a horrendous accusation to make.

And I called the deacon aside. I called him to come in early on Wednesday night. And I said, I have to ask you this, and please don’t be mad at me.

I hate asking you this. I already know what the answer is, and please know that I believe you. But are you having an affair with so-and-so?

and he just about passed out at the accusation. He said no, and he got angry, as any of us would. Fast forward that a few weeks, somebody’s still running their mouth over here, and eventually word gets back.

There’s a huge confrontation on a Sunday night after church dragging in all these people that didn’t need to be involved and didn’t want to be involved but got dragged in anyway as witnesses but didn’t have anything to add. So there was an accusation against the leader of the church just because somebody thought she had seen something. Because he was a hugger.

I’m not a hugger, but I know people who are. And he didn’t just hug this woman. He hugged everybody.

And it was innocent. She got mad at me for straightening this out. And months later, she started spreading rumors about me.

Not about an affair, but started spreading rumors about me. For one, she started telling people in the church that I didn’t actually do my job. I just downloaded sermons off the internet.

I said, if I downloaded other people’s sermons off the internet, my preaching would be a whole lot better. So let’s not go there. And she made ministry very difficult for me.

As a matter of fact, she had people that knew me in that church, believed some of the things she said. And thankfully, eventually some of them decided to come to me and talk to me and got those things straightened out. They said, man, we just, we shouldn’t have believed it, but we did, and it just gave us bad feelings towards you.

What she was doing was undermining my ability to pastor that church. There’s a reason why the Apostle Paul told people not to receive accusations against leaders of the church without two or three witnesses. Now, I want to be very careful in how we approach that.

We hear a lot nowadays about child abuse in churches.

and folks that’s not something we will ever sweep under the rug as long as I’m pastor here if somebody makes an accusation we will report it to the authorities as we’re required to do but as far as we’re going to sit around and discuss it and gossip about it and we don’t need to be talking about each other without two witnesses and then we deal with things as a church okay but I just want to be very careful he’s not giving us there a an out to violate the law okay and especially when several churches unfortunately have swept those things under the rug which is just a disgusting thing to do I want to make it very clear that that’s that’s not I don’t believe that’s what the bible’s teaching and that’s certainly not uh sweeping things like that under the rug is certainly not something I’m in favor of but when we’re just talking about lying and accusations and you know I saw greg dipping into the money and I saw I saw ken out at the bar Or, you know, we’re not supposed to accuse each other without multiple witnesses because it can destroy a life, it can destroy a ministry, it can destroy a church.

As a matter of fact, the ones that we see practicing this false witness type of behavior in the New Testament are not people that we would want to emulate. They’re not the ones that we want to follow as examples. It was done to Jesus.

We see in Mark chapter 14, it says, starting in verse 55, Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimonies did not agree. Then some rose up and bore false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

But not even then did their testimony agree. They made up lies about Jesus. He did not say that in three days he would destroy the temple made with hands and raise up another one made without hands.

He said they would destroy the temple of his body, and then in three days he would raise up a temple not made with human hands. They misunderstood, they mischaracterized, and they lied. And then Luke chapter 23, another instance, and they began to accuse him, saying, we found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ, a king.

So we see accusations that were false in both cases. One set about the tearing down of the temple that was designed to get him in trouble with the Jewish authorities. One set of accusations about his relations with Rome and not paying taxes that were designed to get him in trouble with the Gentile authorities.

And the problem was they couldn’t find corroborating witnesses with either accusation. Their witnesses did not agree with one another. They were clearly false, and yet the people bought into false accusations anyway.

So we as Christians need to be reminded to be careful about the way that we talk about one another. We need to be careful that we don’t gossip and slander one another, that we don’t make accusations or repeat accusations as a matter of false witness. And by the way, as I’m saying this, please don’t think that I’m calling anybody out.

I don’t know of this happening here. And that’s my favorite time to talk about the things we’re not supposed to do, is when they’re not already going on. It’s a lot easier to talk about things before they become a problem.

I’m not calling anybody out because I don’t know of any instance of this going on. But it’s a reminder from God’s Word that we are called on to be careful about the way we talk about each other. Because the things we say have an incredible amount of impact on somebody else’s life, on somebody else’s reputation, and on the reputation of the church and the kingdom of God.

If there are genuine accusations, you know, we need to deal with those things, and we need to not take those things lightly. But at the same time, we need to be careful about what accusations we make, what things we say. And again, I’m not talking about sweeping anything under the rug that’s illegal. I’m talking about idle gossip, petty things.

Well, you know, you know what kind of words Julie says when she’s not around here. And I just made that up. What Julie says when she’s not around here is probably about the same as what she says when she’s here.

We’re just called on not to accuse one another falsely. And it all goes back to Jesus telling us to treat others the way we would want to be treated. And to be careful, as James says, of the power of the tongue, because a little fire kindles a whole lot of destruction.