The Law and Oaths

Matthew 5:33-37

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BODY

a. The Law concerning Oaths (5:33)

b. Jesus concerning Oaths (5:34-37)

a. The Law concerning Oaths (5:33)

i. Initially, I didn’t understand the importance of this passage. But as I started to study more and more, I realized what Jesus was saying and the importance of it.

ii. Jesus again goes back to the Law of Moses in Leviticus 19:12, Numbers 30:2, and Deuteronomy 23:21. Each of these antithesis that Jesus proclaims here goes back to the Law of Moses or even back to the Ten Commandments, and Jesus provides a deeper understanding of the case law.

iii. Here it is nothing different. Jesus starts verse 33 by again using the same formula that they have heard the ancients were told. He is referring to the Jews that left Egypt and now Moses was reading and explaining the Laws to them. So Jesus repeats what God said through Moses.

iv. At this point, the pharisees understood what Jesus was quoting. Afterall, they were the most righteous people during Jesus’s time. They knew everything regarding the Laws, that they were able to make exceptions to these laws.

v. But we have to understand the Old Testament Laws to fully understand what Jesus was saying. Verse 33 says You shall not make false vows. Important here to understand that we should not make false vows. It’s not saying we shall not make vows at all. That is a misunderstanding. God is not saying that we shouldn’t make vows at all. Afterall, in our marriages, we make vows. We are making promises, but more importantly, when we make vows, we are making vows to God. This is the point that Jesus was speaking of. He’s not saying you couldn’t make vows period. But rather, you can make vows, but, then He follows verse 33 by saying you shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.

vi. That is the most important part of this idea of making vows. When you make a vow, and you bring God into this vow, you had better keep it. I think this goes perfectly within the context of a marriage. Remember last week, we spoke about marriage and divorce in Matthew 19:1-9. The pharisees ask Jesus, in Matthew 19:7, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce?” Jesus, why are you saying differently than what Moses did? Jesus responds and tells them the answer in 19:8 and responds by saying because of the hardness of your heart, Moses allowed you to divorce but it was not like this from the beginning.

vii. Again, Jesus confirms that He was not condoning divorce and there were no exceptions, but what did the people do? They found ways to persuade Moses and they didn’t listen to what God had wanted from them. So with that in mind, It makes sense what Jesus says in verse 33.

viii. Why? Because a marriage is a vow and when you make a vow, especially within marriage, your commitment is not simply to just your spouse, but also before God. So the stress here that Jesus is laying is, if you make a vow before God, you better keep it. You shouldn’t divorce your wife but rather, you should work with every fiber of your body to make your marriage work. It was not the way God had intended from the beginning, even though you made exceptions to God’s intention.

ix. There were three case laws, and Numbers 30:2 and Deuteronomy 23:21 are similar because they both deal with vows but Leviticus 19:2 is different.

1. Numbers 30:2 “If a man makes a vow to the LORD, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.”

2. Deuteronomy 23:21 “When you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for it would be sin in you, and the LORD your God will surely require it of you.”

3. Leviticus 19:12 ‘You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the LORD.”

a. The confusion comes from the fact that in Leviticus 19:12, it speaks about swearing falsely in God’s name. So the question becomes, what does swearing falsely in God’s name mean? What does it have to do with oaths and vows?

4. Matthew 26:69-75; In this section of Scripture, it deals with Peter being confronted by people where Peter was being confirmed as Jesus’s followers. There, the people accuse him and say that we saw you with Jesus. Verse 70 has Peter denying them and saying I don’t know what you are talking about.

5. The second accusation comes in verse 71 where a girl says this man was with Jesus of Nazareth. Verse 72, Peter denied it with an oath and says I don’t know this man.

6. Verse 73, another bystander comes up and says to Peter, Surely you are one of them, the way you talk gives you away.

7. Verse 74, Peter responds by cursing and swearing that I don’t know this man.

8. When you read this section, you see this idea of oath in verse 72 and cursing and swearing which connects the case laws together. This isn’t profanity, dirty talk, filthy, obscene language. He is saying, “God is my witness. May God curse me. I swear to God I don’t know what he’s doing.”

9. When we think about this, this is what the case laws were referring to. When you make a vow, and you swear the oath, you are saying as God is my witness, I will fulfill this. This is why the Old Testament laws dealt with fulfilling their vows to the Lord.

10. But what was the loophole? The loophole that the Jews had discerned is that you only do this when you make a vow to the Lord. When you make a vow to the Lord, you must keep it. But if it doesn’t deal with the Lord, if you are making a vow to another person, then you can break it.

x. We might think this is bad and wrong. But it happens in our society as well. When people go to court, they take an oath to say that they will tell the truth. When we think about that, they are making an oath because they are saying that they will tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

xi. But what about after the courtroom? In general, most people are okay with the concept of lying. We see it everywhere in our society where most people believe that sometimes the end justifies the means.

xii. We have concepts like white lies and we think in certain instances, lying is acceptable. And this is the problem with this system that the Jews had created. Only when you make vows to God, that’s the only time you have to tell the truth. You must tell the truth when you are making a commitment before God. But if you are not making an oath to God, then it’s acceptable that you don’t have to.

xiii. Psalm 15 deals with a righteous person. It helps us understand what righteousness is and speaking truth is. Then in verse 4, it says that this person swears to his own hurt and does not change. What does this mean? He does not put out his money at interest. Right there, it gives us the context that a person who swears to his own hurt and does not change means, that if you let someone borrow money from you, you don’t charge them interest. Why? Because you have made a promise to that person that you wouldn’t charge them interest even though it takes a long time to pay them off or even if you can’t pay me back, I won’t charge you interest.

b. Jesus concerning Oaths (5:34-37)

i. Verse 34, Jesus responds to the issue at hand. People at the time were making promises and oaths to one another and breaking them. But when they came before God, they were clean. It sounds a lot like us. In our society, we think that we have to tell the truth when we are in court, if we ever go to court, but outside of that, it’s acceptable to lie.

ii. The point that God is addressing here in dealing with vows is the topic of honesty and truthfulness. What Jesus is calling Christians to is on the topic of honesty and truthfulness. This is why in verse 34, Jesus says don’t make any oaths either by heaven or on earth or in Jerusalem or even by your head. What is Jesus actually speaking about in verse 34-36? Jesus is saying that all oaths and promises are not to you or others, but God is sovereign over all oaths. Oaths are not based off of location of where you are.

iii. You shouldn’t make promises in church and think because I am at church, I have to keep my promise and if you’re not at church, you don’t have to keep your promises. Jesus is saying no, don’t make any oaths and think there are exceptions. But rather, verse 37, Jesus says let your yes be yes and your no be no. That is the same thing that James 5:12 speaks about.

iv. So what is Jesus speaking about? A follower of Jesus Christ who loves Christ and lives for righteousness must exceed in righteousness than the pharisees. Christians are not called to live outwardly righteous, but inwardly righteous and eventually our behavior will outwardly become visible. Therefore, what Jesus is stressing here is that we must first understand that our righteousness is inward and also, when we say yes, it means yes and when we say no, it means no. We should not be indecisive. Rather, we should be firm and gracious and kind in our answers.

v. Now I want to close with a final practical example that needs to be addressed and that deals with forgiveness in marriage. Because the context of what Jesus has been talking about recently in the sermon on the mount has been about reconciliation, adultery, and divorce, my question was, what do these things have in common? Well we can see that reconciliation is the cause of these things. When we don’t reconcile with one another, it can lead to dissatisfaction and adultery and eventually divorce.

vi. I am not saying all instances of divorce starts from this, but I can say with confidence that in many marriages, a lack of reconciliation is one of the major causes of divorce. When we can’t talk with our spouses and don’t agree with them and there is a lack of communication because both parties don’t have patience for each other, this leads to adultery and divorce because people start to think that they should find someone who loves them and someone who appreciates them.

vii. So with my mind in that understanding, I thought about the topic of forgiveness. I had spoke about reconciliation and the idea of forgiveness but I feel like I didn’t do justice with that because I was reminded by my own shortcomings my misunderstanding of forgiveness.

viii. What do I mean by that? If I were to ask you what is forgiveness, what would you say? Most people say forgiveness is when you absorb someone’s wrongdoing and you turn your cheek and you give the benefit of the doubt to that person. For the most part, I believe most people will land there and there could be some differences, but it is mostly semantics. Again, some people would say it’s something a little different and there will be varying degrees in definition, but the majority of people here will agree that this definition suffices. I say that because I also land there and that’s where I made a grave mistake.

ix. Where is the mistake? The definition of what forgiveness actually is. When we look at the cross and we say that our sins were forgiven, what does it mean? It doesn’t mean that God absorbs our wrongdoing and turns his cheek. No, it means something completely different. It means that Christ doesn’t hold our sins to us, that He cancels the debt that is owed. Right? When we say we are forgiven, it means that we don’t owe anyone or anything for the sins we committed because Christ forgave us. He took those sins on His own self and cancels the debt that was owed. He took His own life to pay off our debt.

x. That is the definition of forgiveness. When we say that we forgive others, what we are saying is, you don’t owe me for anything because I forgive the debt that is owed to me. I think people will understand up to this point. But what part do we not understand? Even when we forgive others, we still feel bad after we forgive them. Why? Because to some extent, we want to make the other person feel bad about what they did. We want them to taste a little bit of our pain and even after we apologize to one another, we still feel sad and upset and we don’t return to normal. While I understand that this is what makes us human, because we can’t just turn a switch and feel better, I believe it indicates in us that we don’t fully understand forgiveness.

xi. Let me give you an example. Someone takes your computer and drops it. It breaks and they tell you that they are sorry and that they will pay for the damage or buy you a new one. We think that’s fair. Yes I forgive you for breaking my computer but at least you will pay for it and then we are even. The unfortunate part is, that is not forgiveness. Forgiveness means that this person is not required to pay for anything. Why? Because when I say I forgive you, it means I have canceled your debt. Yes I understand you have done wrong in breaking my computer, but because I love you and I forgive you, you don’t owe me anything. I have cancelled your debt.

xii. The reason our marriages fail is because we don’t understand this very definition of forgiveness. We think that if someone did something wrong to us, they are supposed to pay me back and until they pay me back, I am mad or sad at them. That’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness is something we do for our spouse because we love them. We don’t expect anything for them to repay us for what how they have wronged us. Rather, we absorb it and we cancel out their debt. That’s true forgiveness.

xiii. This is the oath that we have made when we decided to get married. When Jesus tells us, let your yes be yes and your no be no, this is what He has called us to. When we forgive others, we should forgive others not say we forgive and do something different.

3. CONCLUSION