Oath Keeping

Have you ever found a loop hole in something?

I found one person who found a loop hole on a papa johns coupon that let him have free pizza for years

Some of us remember the show extreme couponers where they would go to the store and would buy hundreds of dollars worth of grocerys and somehow through coupons they would get the total down to a few dollars

But probably one of the greatest loopholes on record is a mn named Mickey Barreto.

And Mickey one day heard about a weird housing law in New York City that made it so if you are an occupant of a building built before 1969 you can demand aa 6 month lease.

And so Mickey decided that he would stay at a historical hotel in Down town Manhattan, for $200

And in the morning he asked the front desk for a lease, and got kicked out

So Mickey went to court where the court rejected his claim, but he then appealed it through the state supreme court,

And long story short what ended up happening is because of this law Mickey was aloud to live in this building in Downtown Manhattan completely free for 5 years.

And what actually made Mickey move out was he thought he found another loop hole where he could claim that the building was his, and he began to chaarge money for others staying at the hotel.

But it turns out this loophole was actually illeagle and e wwas arreested.

But you know we love finding loop holes don’t we?

And really today we are going talking about a loophole that the Israelite people found in one of God’s laws about telling the truth.

Because if you have been with us we have been looking at this message that Jesus gives called the sermon on the mount

And the past few weeks Jesus follows this pattern where he gives the law that they haave been told, and he doesn’t tell us forget about this law, but he actually says there is something deeper.

So we saw him do this with murder

Last week we saw Him do it with Adultry and Divorce

And this week we are in Matthew 5:33-37 and we are going to be looking at this idea of Oaths and vows

And so we will just start in verse 33. It says:

Matthew 5:33 NIV

33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’

So I have to give a little bit of context to this because if you were an Israelite you knew that this verse was referring to two specific laws when He used the words “Oath” and “Vows”

Because an Oath was a promise that you made to someone else using God’s name.

And so this law was in place because say we are in Biblical times and I ask Debbie, can I barrow your donkey,

And she says no because I do not trust you, but then I go, you know what I swear on my God, that I will bring it back

That adds some weight doesn’t it, and if I do not bring back Debbies donkey, it also drags God’s name through the mud.

And so the law here was you better keep these promises that you make on God’s name.

But then in the second half of this Jesus brings up vows, and a vow was actually a promise you would make to God.

So throughout the BIble you would see people go “God if you give us this land, we will follow you”

And so Jesus in this first verse goes you heard it said that you should keep these oaaths you maake to other people and keep these vows that you have made to God, and he begins to make the shift.

Because He doesn’t go lets throw these out the window, but he goes we need to the root of the issue.

And so look at verses 34-36. because this is where Jesus makes the shift. He says:

Matthew 5:34–36 NIV

34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 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 swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.

So Jesus says do not make any oaths at all,

And Jesus is not saying lets just start lying but he is actually bringing some attention to the loop hole in this law that I mentioned.

Because hundreds of years before Jesus preached this sermon, a tradition formed where the people stopped saying God’s name because they viewed His name as to Holy to say

And so what happened with this law is people adjusted it where they stopped swearing on God, and began to swear on other things that were associated with Him

So people began to swear on heaven, or the sky, or on the earth, or the temple, and all of these things.

And the issue here is that they would then view this as a loophole where Debbie comes to ask me about her donkey, and I go “Well Debbie, I didn’t swear on God, I swore on the sky”

So this is my donkey now.

And so what happened is if you were around it became trickey, because there were all these different weights of things you could swear on, and this law that was meant to keep people truthful, they were now using it to lie.

And sso lets look at this last verse and then I want to flush all of this out and get to what this looks like practically.

Verse 37 and this is what Jesus sums it all up as. He says:

Matthew 5:37 NIV

37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

So Jesus brings this all together and goes “let your yes be yes, and your no be no”

basically lets stop worrying on what we are swearing on just make it a lot more simple.

And there are 3 things I want us to get out of what we talked about. and you can write these down if your a note taker.

First, When we are following God, we need to be trustworthy and geniune people.

And I know this is a really simple point, but the truth is, it is really easy to get caught up is little white lies or even big ones.

And I think a lot of us have these thoughts well its not like I am lying about this huge thing and it makes my life way easier.

But here is the thing because when you follow God you should be the most genuine and trustworthy person

Imagine you have something in your house that needed fixed and so you are looking to hire someone.

And so I say you should hire me. And I start saying how I know exactly what I am doing and that I fix stuff all the time, and I am basically a contractor.

And I finish the project and you are looking how everything is attached and the nails kind of look like this and it has duct-tape on it.

And you paid me a few thousand dollars to do everything.

Well all of the sudden you pretty upset right?

And your mad at me, you might even go wow he represents that church kind of. I don’t want to go there.

And heres what I want us to get because my fear for the church is that the people who should be the most genuine, truthful people, to encounter are giving this to the world (a ducktape version)

And this looks bad on us, but it also reflects badly on the God we serve.

And lets go a little deeper because the second part of this is that you might be here and go I am good because I don’t swear on God (I learned that as a kid that you do not do that)

But something that I think we catch ourselves doing is whhere we use or barrow Gods authority to accomplish our own will.

Dallas Willard wrote in a book called the divine conspiracy saying this:

“The essence of swearing oaths that Jesus targets here is about invoking something or someone else especially God, to make your words seem more significant and more weighty. The aim is to impress others with your seriousness or your piety so that you get what you want. Its a device of manipulation designed to override the judgement or input of others in order to posses them for our purposes. Its manipulation or as we say in our culture “spin” and Jesus says its evil. instead of loving and honoring others with truthfulness, the intent is to get ones way by verbal manipulation of the the thoughts and choices other others.”

So essentially Dallas Willard is saying whether we swear on God or not, what we have the tendancy of doing is barrowing weightiness of Gods authority to accomplish our own will.

So we might use religious language (which is not a bad thing), but we are using it in a way that furthers what we want.

This could be me saying I am God’s annointed person you do what I say and thats manipulation right?

I don’t know if you have ever heard someone say the phrase “you know God told me to tell you that you need to do this”

I believe God can tell us things, but you better be pretty sure about it if you use God’s name,

Because essentially what happens is we are doing the same thing where we are using God’s authority to accomplish our own goal.

And let me get to the last thing I want us to get, because at the very end of this passage we read “let you yes be yes and your no be no” and then it says “anything beyond this is from the evil one”

You know a lot of scholars believe that as Jesus preaches this sermon their are actually ways in the wording that would make people recall Genesis 3 which was the fall of man where Sin entered the world.

And here there is some correlation between the word evil one and the serpant in the garden of Eden.

And if you remember God gave this command that they could eat from any tree in the garden other then the tree in the middle of the garden.

But the serpant comes to Eve and it twist the words that God said and says

“Did God really say you must not eat from any of the trees in the garden”

And it is this small subtle twist that ends up causing so much damage and destruction.

And I think wrapping it all together, maybe your someone here who twist things and to be honest your pretty good at it,

maybe your someone who you have seen it blow up in your face,

Maybe your someone who catches yourself borrowing from the authority of God,

This is an issue that has been around since the fall of man, but something that is amazing is after this happens and Adam and Eve take a bite of the fruit, God has a solution only a few verses later.

Because God searches for Adam and Eve, even as they are running and he clothes them, and He begins to tell them how this will impact them and the world, and we do not have a ton of time to get in this,

but in verse 15 of Genesis chapter 3 God already hints that He will send Jesus to come and die on the cross.

And this morning as we get ready to close I think sometimes we get this mind set of we can do this on our own,

but the message that God gave from Genesis, to the passage we were in today, to our lives is the solution is not somthing we can do, but it is what God has done.

And so we are going to close by recieving communion, and the beauty of this meal is its not about us doing something, but its about us receiving something.

And aall we have to do is abide in what we are recieving.

What does it look like to abide fully in what God is calling you to do.

Will you pray with me?