Deuteronomy 24:8-16 - To Tell the Truth

Introduction

The ninth commandment says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” (Deut. 5:20).

To bear false witness is to speak falsely (i.e., to lie) to the detriment of others.

What we see in our passage tonight is several ways to break that ninth commandment and, thus, several warnings against breaking that ninth commandment.

Let’s read Deuteronomy 24:8-16…

[READING - Deuteronomy 24:8-16]

Deuteronomy 24:8–16 NASB95

8 “Be careful against an infection of leprosy, that you diligently observe and do according to all that the Levitical priests teach you; as I have commanded them, so you shall be careful to do. 9 “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt. 10 “When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not enter his house to take his pledge. 11 “You shall remain outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. 12 “If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep with his pledge. 13 “When the sun goes down you shall surely return the pledge to him, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be righteousness for you before the Lord your God. 14 “You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns. 15 “You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it become sin in you. 16 “Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.

[PRAYER]

[TS] Let’s see how the Joshua and Caleb generation of Israelites would have understood these words and then we’ll think about how this all applies to us today.

Let’s start with vv. 8-9—Tell the Truth About Leprosy.

Exposition

#1: The Truth About Leprosy (Deut. 24:8-9)

Deuteronomy 24:8–9 NASB95

8 “Be careful against an infection of leprosy, that you diligently observe and do according to all that the Levitical priests teach you; as I have commanded them, so you shall be careful to do. 9 “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt.

Leprosy was an umbrella term for infectious skin diseases that would easily spread throughout the Israelite community if not properly handled.

Leviticus 13 says that if someone noticed a potentially leprous spot, it had to be brought to the priests for examination.

If the spot was determined leprous, the person would be pronounced unclean, which meant isolation from the community.

Even if the spot was just potentially leprous, the person would enter a period of isolation and examination—the whole thing a major life interruption to say the least.

Therefore, we can understand how one would be tempted to lie in order to avoid the hassle of a being examined and reexamined only to be eventually removed the community.

But here’s the instruction from Deuteronomy 24:8—be diligent to observe and do everything the Levitical priests teach concerning leprosy. In fact, this instruction is emphasized by its repetition in v. 8—diligently observe and do, you shall be careful to do.

The first step in being careful to do all that the Levitical priests taught concerning leprosy was telling the truth about a potential case of leprosy.

Now, verse 9 is a warning against disobeying v. 8. If the Israelites rebel against Levitical authority concerning leprosy by lying about potential or actual cases of leprosy, then they would suffer the same fate as Miriam, the sister of Moses, when the Israelites came out of Egypt.

Miriam grumbled against the authority of Moses in Numbers 12. There’s more to the story, but the short of it is that the result of her rebellion was leprosy sent from God.

If the people of God lie to the Levitical priests about leprosy, they too will be left leprous.

#2: The Truth About Pledges (Deut. 24:10-13)

Deuteronomy 24:10–13 NASB95

10 “When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not enter his house to take his pledge. 11 “You shall remain outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. 12 “If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep with his pledge. 13 “When the sun goes down you shall surely return the pledge to him, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be righteousness for you before the Lord your God.

There are two parts to the law here.

The first part prevents a lender from entering a borrowers home and choosing for himself what to take as collateral or pledge of repayment.

The one borrowing was poor, but his dignity must still be protected. That included the sanctity of the borrower’s home.

The second part refers to the cloak or outer garment that a poor man might give as collateral on a loan. He would have been a very poor man if all he could offer as collateral was his cloak.

That being the case, the cloak must be returned to the poor man so that he could have some warmth as he slept through the night.

The poor man would bless such a lender.

But what about the loan? Should the cloak be returned even if the loan hadn’t been repaid? YES!

God would count it as a righteous act, something infinitely more valuable than repayment of the loan.

And the lender would have to trust that his poor brother was obedient to the night commandment as well.

With or without a pledge of repayment, the poor brother had given his word to repay the loan.

In order to not be a false witness, the poor brother would repay it.

The lender in Israel would have to truth the truthfulness of his poor brother’s word.

#3: The Truth About Wages (Deut. 24:14-15)

Deuteronomy 24:14–15 NASB95

14 “You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns. 15 “You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it become sin in you.

A day-laborer would expect to be paid at the end of the day. The one hiring the day-laborer would understand this and essentially be giving his word that he would pay the worker at the end of the day.

That being so, the Israelite who hired the day-laborer couldn’t refuse to pay him at the end of the day.

Verse 15 says that the poor laborer had set his heart, his soul on that paycheck. If he didn’t receive, he would cry out to the Lord against the one who hired him, and bearing false witness regarding wages—lying about paying the laborer at the end of the day—would be sin before the Lord.

#4: The Truth About Sin and Punishment (Deut. 24:16)

Deuteronomy 24:16 NASB95

16 “Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.

Bearing false witness in this case either leads to fathers paying the price for the sins of their sons or sons paying the price for the sins of their fathers.

The core principal is that everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.

Let’s say that a son committed a crime but a father decided to lie and take the blame for his sons crime.

That would break this law.

Let’s say that a son committed a crime and decided to set his father up to take the fall.

That would break this law.

Let’s say that a father commited a crime and decided to set his son up to take the fall.

That would break this law.

Let’s say that a legal system decided to punish people today for the sins of their ancestors yesterday.

That would break this law.

There is no place for bearing false witness here.

Everyone must tell the truth, take responsibility for their sins, and pay the price.

Illustration

The game show To Tell the Truth has been on and off the air for decades. It’s gone through revisions, but the basic premise has remained the same.

Contestants are introduced to three people: two are impostors and one is the real deal—the truth-teller.

Contestants ask questions of the three people. The two impostors lie, and the truth-teller tells the truth. Then the contestants try to guess which of the three is the real person.

This world that we are living in can feel like a real life version of that game show.

There are twice as many liars as there are truth-tellers, and it can be really hard to tell who’s telling the truth and who’s bearing false witness.

While we would all like to have a perfect, internal lie detector in our brains that alerted us every time someone lied, it’s more important that we as followers of Jesus be truth-tellers ourselves.

[TS] As followers of Jesus then, let us consider a few questions related to the truth…

Application

Q: As followers of Jesus, do we understand who determines truth?

One of the biggest problems in our world today is that human beings think they determine truth. Of course, we Christians know that God determines truth—or at least we should know that.

It seems to me that many professing Christians often determine truth the same way the world does, by looking within themselves.

But this is precisely what Deuteronomy 24 warned against.

God’s people weren’t to look within their own desires to determine how they should respond to leprosy.

God had told them the truth, and they were to obey it.

God’s people weren’t to consider their fleshy wants when it came to paying laborers, securing collateral for loans, or taking responsibility for crimes.

God had told them the truth about such things, and they were to obey it.

Likewise, God has given us His truth in the entirety of His Word, and we are to obey it.

[TS] But here’s another question…

Q: As followers of Jesus, do we understand why we should tell the truth?

Here are just a few reasons in addition to the fact that God commands it.

We should tell the truth because the truth has set us free.

It is the truth of the Gospel that has set us free from the lies of Satan. That ought to be reason enough for us to commit to being truth-tellers.

We should tell the truth because Jesus, our Savior, is the truth.

Jesus Himself said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Because Jesus is truth, we honor Him every time we tell the truth.

We should tell the truth because God commands us to tell the truth.

Not only do we have the command to tell the truth in the Ten Commandments, but we have it in the NT as well.

Ephesians 4:15 says that we should speak the truth in love.

Ephesians 4:25 says we should lay aside falsehood and speak truth each one of us with our neighbor.

And as Ephesians 4:25 says, we should tell the truth because truth is good for our neighbors.

Did you notice that every potential lie in Deuteronomy 24 would have been bad for the liar’s neighbor?

If the man with possible leprosy doesn’t tell the truth about it, it could spread throughout his community.

His lie would harm his neighbor.

If the Israelite lender doesn’t trust the word of the borrower, then maybe the borrower has to sleep in the cold.

Not taking his neighbor’s word as true would harm his neighbor.

If the one hiring doesn’t follow through on his word and pay the day-laborer that day, then the laborer has do without.

Once again a lie harms a neighbor.

If men don’t take responsibility for their own sins but instead cast blame on others, well… it’s easy to see how such a thing would harm neighbors and even a whole society.

[TS] We tell the truth because God’s Word says, “Love your neighbor,” and the truth is good for our neighbors.

Q: But as followers of Jesus, do we understand what might stop us from telling the truth?

Pride might stop us.

When we think we know better than God, we might lie rather than tell the truth; we might disobey rather than obey the truth.

Fear might stop us.

When we think we might have to pay a price for telling the truth or obeying the truth, we might do the opposite.

There might be many things that stop us from telling the truth but I think most of them fall into those two categories—pride and fear.

The antidote to those things is Jesus who teaches us to be humbly submissive to the truth and to be courageously obedient to it.

Conclusion

[ILLUS] At the end of September, Bro. Andrew, a dutch brother in Christ who smuggled Bibles into communist countries during the Cold War, died at the age of 94.

Interestingly, when Brother Andrew smuggled Bibles into those countries closed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he decided that he would not lie.

Instead he would trust the Lord to blind the eyes of the border guards as he carried God’s Word to souls in need of Jesus.

Would it have been wrong for Brother Andrew to lie about the Bibles he was smuggling in?

That’s like asking if it was wrong for Rahab to lie about the Israelite spies.

It’s like asking if it was wrong for people to lie about hiding Jewish people from the Nazis.

Even if wrong, God used those lies for good, but I think there is something very noble, very trusting-in-God, something very courageously obedient in Brother Andrews’s approach.

It was an approach that did not bear false witness.

It was an approach that loved neighbor by telling neighbors the truth.