"A People of Integrity" Matthew 5:33-37

Big Idea: Matthew 5:33-37 “”

Passage Reading: 33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

Teaching:

According to Researcher, Brandon Gaille, the average American will generally lie upwards of three times in a 10 minute conversation with someone. Gaille also noted that men were more inclined to lie to their partner, boss, or other men with upwards of 6 lies a day whereas women told on average 3 lies a day to their partner, boss, or other women. We should not be shocked at this for if we were truly honest with ourselves we each would admit that we have engaged in deception numerous times in our lives. Lying isn’t necessarily a learned trait as many of you know well if you have been around young children. Even from the very earliest of ages children lie to avoid embarrassment or punishment or even for no apparent reason. The Psalmist writes in Psalm 58:3, “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.” Lest you think that the psalmist is referencing someone else other than you, we are told that we are all wicked at birth. There is no good in us and we are rebels against God and his will even from the womb. We know this as King David writes in Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” So the truth is, in our sinfulness we are all liars and have repeatedly broken the 9th Commandment which says, ““You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”, which translates out to, “you should not lie”. However, this is not God’s desire for his people. God himself abhors deceit. In Proverbs 12:22 it says, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord”. The Psalmist writes in Psalm 101:7, “No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.” John writes in the book of Revelation the ultimate punishment for those who lie. He writes in Revelation 21:8, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur”. As we turn our attention to our text this morning you may be asking why I have spent the intro of my sermon on lying while our text is dealing with vows and oaths. Well it’s because the two subjects are inseparably linked. Vows and oaths were instituted by God for the use of forcing a person to not only speak the truth but live out that truth in their lives. Look with me at verse 33 of Matthew 5, Jesus says, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ Here in verse 33, Jesus is referring to not just one specific command but in fact three commands. The first is located in Leviticus 19:12 that says, “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” Then in Numbers 30:2 it is written, “If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.” Finally in Deuteronomy 23:21, where it says, ““If you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin.” So as Jesus speaks to the people here in Matthew 5:33, they would have been very aware that to swear and oath or to make a vow based upon the unfailing and most holy character of God was to be upheld lest you fall into sin for not doing what you swore to do. God knows that people are liars and struggle to tell the truth, even those in the faith. So God allowed for the use of oaths and vows, bound up in his holy name, to be used to certify that the statements being said by a person to another were indeed true and trustworthy. Yet, as people often do, the Israelite people found loopholes in order to continue in their deceit while not breaking God’s command of not swearing falsely on his name. Growing up my brother and I knew that we were never to swear anything in the name of God, especially if it wasn’t true. So he and I, as sinful little children, devised other ways to swear to a truth that didn’t use God’s name. I’m sure some of you have done the same. We used to swear on our mother’s grave, even though she wasn’t dead. We would swear on our own lives. etc. We did this because we knew that you could only swear in God’s name if everything you were saying was true and if you were willing to stay true to what you had sworn. However, if I swore on my life, then I could mix in a lie with truth and if my brother or whomever bought it then I could feel as if I could get away with my deceit. This is exactly the mentality that the people listening to Jesus had. They knew they shouldn’t swear on God’s name about something that wasn’t completely true so instead they swore on lesser things, yet still things of importance, thinking that they could get someone to believe their testimony, even though it may be riddled with deceit. Jesus says in Matthew 5:34-36, “But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.” The people of Jesus’s time believed that as long as they didn’t swear an oath or vow in the name of God, then they were not obligated to keep their oath or vow if they based it on something like their own head or Jerusalem or even on the earth. They felt as if they had found a loophole in God’s command however the truth is that they didn’t find a loophole but rather it shows that they did not understand God’s original commands to begin with. Oftentimes the bible speaks to us from a place of silence. What I mean by this is that not everything that we need to know is directly spoken about within the pages of Holy Scripture. However, apparent silence does not imply divine consent. God has given us a clear enough picture to understand what it is that he desires and what it is that he hates. The Rabbi’s had been teaching the people that you only have to be truthful in an oath or vow if it is predicated upon the name of God since that is all that is explicitly taught in the command. However, the Rabbi’s missed the true interpretation of God’s command. While indeed God offers his name as the basis for a vow or oath which is what we see clearly in Scripture, he doesn’t allow for an oath or vow to be taken apart from his name. There is no allowance for such a thing, especially when there is an intent to be deceptive. This is, however, what had been taught and accepted as a normal practice among not only the common people of Jesus’s time but by the religious leaders as well. They felt that they could deceive and renege on oaths and vows as long as they were not sworn in God’s name. By doing this, the culture of that day had come to embrace the practice of lying, very much the same way our culture today embraces lying as something that is not only allowed but often celebrated. Television, movies, CEO’s, politicians, the news, and even pastors have bought into the currency of deceit in which people are left trying to determine if what is being seen or heard is true or is it deception. Lying isn’t a victimless act. Lying hurts people, it erodes the people's trust in our institutions, it breaks up marriages, it takes away people's freedom, it leads to unjust wars with countless innocent people killed. Lying is a way in which Satan, the father of lies, seeks to destroy humanity. Jesus finishes out this section of his teaching with verse 37 in which he says, “ Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” Many have taken Jesus’s words here to mean that we are no longer to make oaths or vows in the name of God thus abolishing God’s commands to only take oaths and vows in His name only. Yet, Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Therefore, Jesus isn’t abolishing the ability to make oaths and vows in the name of God but rather correcting the people's propensity to lie to each other as they swore oaths and vows on lesser things than the name of God. In other words, Jesus here is speaking to the true meaning of the commands of God, which is that we are to be honest with one another in all situations and circumstances. The 2nd London Baptist confession of 1689 in Chapter 23:2 says in reference to lawful oaths and solemn vows, “The name of God only is that by which men ought to swear; and therein it is to be 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, and to be abhorred;3 yet as in matter of weight and moment, for confirmation of truth, and ending all strife, an oath is warranted by the word of God;4 so a lawful oath being imposed by lawful authority in such matters, ought to be taken.” (End Quote) Therefore oaths and vows are not to be abandoned but rather should be done in reverence for and in the name of God alone. So while I do not see in verse 37, Christ abolishing lawful oaths and vows made in His name, I do see a general call to truthfulness and integrity for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. I remember growing up my dad used to tell me that “a man’s word is his bond”. In other words a man was only as good as his ability to be truthful to his word in speech and action. Oh how we have fallen from that way of thinking not only in the culture but in the church as well. Before I move on, I want to consider for a moment what is considered a lie? According to the Webster dictionary, lying is defined as, “not telling the truth”. St. Augustine of Hippo said it this way, “ A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.” Notice in both definitions, one being from a secular dictionary and one being from a theologian, neither definitions have varying degrees of shades of lying. Therefore we must understand that every false statement, with the intention to deceive, is a lie that is an abomination to the Lord and harmful to others. Dr. John MacArthur says it this way, “Truth has no degrees or shades. A half truth is a whole lie, and a white lie is really black.” Untruthfulness of any kind is deception which is not to be modeled in the lives of those of us who are called by His name. Church, even white lies are deceptive and can harm people. I know that many people tell white lies to avoid embarrassment or to avoid conflict, yet by telling even a little white lie you are not only damaging your relationship with others but you're also damaging your relationship with God. We have been conditioned to think that deception in the form of a white lie is justified if the end justifies the means. In other words, we have been taught that a white lie is ok if it results in a perceived good. But I ask you, who determines what is good? Is it us or is it God? A sales person who stretches the truth in order to make a sale may see the white lie as being good since he or she will receive the commission from the sale. However, the one that was deceived into buying the product wouldn’t have the same perception of good coming from the white lie from the sales person. Therefore the perceived good is subjective to a person's perception. This is where we must look at absolutes. If God is the absolute arbitrator of what is bad and what is good, then we need not to invent our own perceived views but rather seek after His view on the matter. For his view is the only one that counts. So let’s stop and consider how God feels about the subject as I read to you Proverbs 6:16-19, “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, 19 a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.” Now notice that there are seven things here that God hates and two of the seven deal with lying. He said a “lying tongue and a false witness that breathes out lies”. I also want to point out from these verses that there is no exception clause, even for little white lies. Some of you may be thinking, well I don’t really tell lies, yet I know for a fact that many of you have lied to my face and recently. According to statistics, the number one white lie that is present in the church is this, when asked how you are doing whether it be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, the answer received is, “I’m doing fine or All is good”. Now, I’m not saying that those two statements can’t be true, however they usually are not and they are used as a way of avoiding embarrassment and/or accountability. Men, you are far more conditioned to give this answer than women are as many of you believe that by opening up about the realities in your life, you will somehow be viewed as weak. However, in the church this is not so. Weakness is a member of the body of Christ trying to go it alone without the help, support, nourishment of the rest of the body. In fact, his strength is displayed when we are in our weakness. Lastly, a lie is not just something that we tell others but it can also be something that we tell ourselves. Compromise in the areas of doctrine and values is one type of expression of self deceit. For example, if you know that God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman, yet you go to a gay wedding, you are lying to yourself and in reality to others, about what it is that you truly believe. You are compromising your doctrine and your values in order to appear to appease the beliefs of another. This is no less a lie than any other type of lie and I might dare say that it is actually a more damaging type of lie as it eventually erodes what we as a society hold as truth. Someone once stated, “The greatest danger facing the United States is not a military lag but a slump in personal and public integrity.” America will not collapse because our military is weak, we will collapse because our integrity is. The same goes for the church. The reason that the church has lost its voice here in the west isn’t because the culture began to see our message as irrelevant but rather because the church began to see her own message as irrelevant and thus compromised. When the church began to lose its integrity then we became useless as a beacon of truth for the culture outside of our walls. So, Jesus in verse 37 of our text this morning is calling you and I to be people of truth and integrity. He is calling for our word to be our bond. He is telling you and I that we are to not only speak the truth but fulfill the truth in our actions. This again is where so many in the church have faltered. We have become a people who hate commitments. I recall many years ago when I was a youth pastor and I would spend days planning an event for our youth. I would have them sign-up and get permission slips from their parents and send out reminder after reminder. Then when the event came around, if something more interesting was going on, I would lose half of the youth that signed up. They were uncommitted. Yet, it’s not just youth in the church that act this way. Frankly, it’s some of you. You sign a covenant with our church when you become a member that says you need to be in attendance in the spiritual care structures that we as a church provide for you, which include our Lord’s Day worship but also men’s and women’s fellowship and bible study. Yet, some of you don’t attend these care structures even though you signed a covenant (a vow) that you would. Additionally, you are called to give of your time and your finances for the building up of his Kingdom, yet some of you don’t. Now, I’m not saying any of this to wag my finger at you, for I have been guilty of these very things myself. Rather, I bring this up in hopes that the Holy Spirit will convict you to be people of integrity both in what you say but also in what you do. I also tell you this so that God may use what is said here to bring comprehension to you about His word. God does not ever want blind obedience but instead wants you to understand what it is that he wants and why he wants it, so that we may joyfully walk in obedience to Him aided by the Holy Spirit that dwells in all true believers. Church, I implore you to be obedient to God in all things but especially to the command here to be truthful. If we are to represent the God of truth then we should be people of truth, lest we defame His name and integrity.

Let’s pray