James 5:12

James 5:12 “12 But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”

As we have studied the book of James there to me has been so many one liners that have a ton of meeting. Including this one. What should define us as Christians is the way we talk, and the way we back up our lives with the way we talk. We should walk the talk.

Truth is what defines is what should make Christians stick out, but sadly truth is looked at differently for different people. One of the reasons I wanted to just cover this verse tonight was the the fact that there was so much truth in my study that I wanted to show you.

This is the first piece…

A popular culprit is the relativistic subjectivism of our day. With so many liars defending and excusing themselves with clichés like "What's true for you is not necessarily the same for me," or the specious appeal to the supreme court of self, "My opinion is as good as yours!" truth suffers.

One of the rich and famous, Ernest Hemingway was an inveterate liar who lied about everything including his childhood, his athletic prowess, his military exploits, his liaisons, so that he was, as one of his wives called him, "the biggest liar since Munchausen." With this being too typical today, how can we expect our society as a whole to be any differ-ent? If our gods be mendacious frauds, how can we be otherwise? But the main reason there is a crisis in truth is that we are, in fact, congenital liars.

And we should know that because of Romans 3:13 “13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.””

Its in our sinful nature to be liars.

George MacDonald, the great writer and preacher, candidly wrote to his father on December 6, 1878, "I always try—I think I do- to be truthful. All the same I tell a great many lies. His candidness says what we all must say in moments of honesty, Our situation is exacerbated by the calculated seas of deception that food back and forth over our culture through its media, so that we sometimes scarcely know what truth is. Many Christians today traffic in untruth And some, tragically, do not even know it

So James is calling us to be truthful. I am sure James is taking from his brother on the meaning of this verse..

Matthew 5:33–37 “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.”

I mentioned this back when I preached this text but Oaths were looked at differently in the Old Testament times then they are now.

First, they were encouraged. Deuteronomy 10:20 reads, "You shall fear the LorD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear." Not only were godly people encouraged to make vows, they were admonished to do so—in God's name! God even taught through the prophet Jeremiah that swearing in God's name was a sign of spiritual vitality: "And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, 'As the LorD lives, even as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people" (Jeremiah 12:16).

Secondly, making a vow and not keeping it was discouraged. Moses' writings repeatedly emphasized this: "You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LorD* (Leviticus 19:12). "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" (Numbers 30:2). "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" (Deuteronomy 2321).

In the Old Testament vows were assumed to be part of a committed life.

But once made, they were not to be broken under any circumstances.

The problem was, by New Testament times traditional, Biblical teaching had come under amazing abuse. For example, some rabbis had begun to teach that an oath was not binding if it omitted God's name or did not imply it. Therefore, if you swore by your own life or someone else's life or the life of the king (as Abner did in 1 Samuel 17:55) or by your health (Psalm 15:4) or by some object, but avoided mentioning or alluding to the name of God, you were not bound. The Mishnah devotes one whole section called Shebuoth (oaths") to an elaborate discussion of when oaths are binding and when they are not. In effect, the swearing of oaths had degenerated to a system that indicated when a man could lie and when not.

The results were disgraceful. There was an undying epidemic of frivolous swearing. Oaths were continually mingled with everyday speech: "By your life" -"By my beard"- "May I never see the comfort of Israel if.." There was a trivialization of everyday language and a devaluation of integrity. Evasive swearing became a fine art. The height of accomplishment was, while lying, to convince another you were telling the truth by bringing some person or eminent object into reference. For instance, one rabbi taught that if one swore by Jerusalem one was not bound, but if one swore toward Jerusalem it was binding - evidently because that in some way implied the Divine Name.' All of this produced a moral schizophrenia: "I'm really not lying, but I'm also not telling the truth." The use of oaths was like children's "I had my fingers crossed!"

Jesus and James rule out making vows using any references to people or objects as backup, The reason for this is, God stands behind everything. The entire creation is God's, and you and I cannot call up a part of it without ultimately referring to him.

All oath-taking that calls into witness people or items of God's created order actually calls God's name as witness, and it is a grievous sin to do so. If there is anything in our speech that even approaches swearing by something else, we must drop it at once.

Even in my study I was reminded that

Oath-taking is popular because people are liars. It's that simple. Dr. Helmut Thielicke, the scholar and pastor who resisted compromising his integrity during the Hitler era, put it like this:

Whenever I utter the formula "I swear by God," I am really saying, "Now I'm going to mark off an area of absolute truth and put walls around it to cut it off from the muddy floods of untruthfulness and irresponsibility that ordinarily overruns my speech." In fact, I am saying even more than this.

I am saying that people are expecting me to lie from the start. And just because they are counting on my lying I have to bring up these big guns of oaths and words of honor.®

Jesus and James are telling us we must never use "big guns" like "on my mother's grave" or "as God is my witness." Everyday speech and pulpit speech and courtroom speech are all to be the same—radically true!

So can we make oaths?

What are the implications of this radical teaching for our lives? Are we never to take personal oaths? What about the public oaths we are asked to take in court? Some for example, the Reformation's Anabaptists and later the Morvians and Quakers-have taken this as a prohibition against takina oaths in any circumstance. George Fox, the uncompromising founder of the Quakers, gave this famous rejoinder to the judges at Lancaster who sentenced him to prison for refusing to swear over a Bible that he was telling the truth:

Today because of George Fox's courage you do not have to lay your hand on a Bible in a court of law and swear you are telling the truth "so help me

God." You may simply affirm that you are telling the truth.

I admire George Fox and his followers, but I do not think they are correct.

The contexts of Jesus' original teachings argue against this understanding because Jesus' examples of oath-taking abuses come from everyday common speech. Even more decisive is the fact that Jesus honored the official oath put upon him by Caiaphas before the Sanhedrin by answering, as recorded in Matthew 26:63, 64a: "But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, 'I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.' Jesus said to him, "You have said so.""

In addition to Jesus' clear example we have the repeated examples of Paul swearing that he was telling the truth: "But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth" (2 Corinthians 1:23). "For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.." (Romans 1:9, 10a).

Paul would never have called God a witness that he was telling the truth if he thought it was wrong.

How does this translate into life? Oath-taking is permitted, but it is not encouraged. In civil life, as in a courtroom, oath-taking is permitted. And when one is put under oath, he or she is not sinning against Christ's teaching. Also, on rare occasions such a practice may be necessary, as it was for Paul. This said, oaths are not to be a part of everyday conversation. Christians simply should not need such devices. They should be known to be people of truth.

Radical Call

We live in a world of lies… We are routinely lied to by the media. Even more telling. rational argument is regularly abandoned to convince us of a product's good.

Drink a certain beer and you will become a broad-shouldered hombre who radiates such powerful élan that your "tune" jams the radios in the convertibles of beautiful women as they pass by. We daily drown in a sea of hyperbole, so that words hardly have meaning.

And the truth is, we are all affected! We all find it difficult to be truthful.

Listen to George MacDonald's admission in full:

I always try—1 think I do to be truthful. All the same I tell a great many petty lies, e. g. things that mean one thing to myself though another to other people. But I do not think lightly of it. Where I am more often wrong is in tacitly pretending I hear things which I do not, especially jokes and good stories, the point of which I always miss; but, seeing every one laugh, 1 laugh too, for the sake of not looking a fool. My respect for the world's opinion is my greatest stumbling-block, I fear...

One commentator said.. We often embellish the truth, sometimes without even realizing it: profits become greater, one's strengths grow, our humility increases, all in the tell-ing. We sometimes frighten ourselves at how easily we fall to this. But the greatest tragedy is when we shrug our shoulders and go on, for after all, to bend an aphorism, "to lie is human."

It is not easy to be a totally truthful person today, but it is necessary for the church and the world. The story of Ananias and Sapphira shocks us because they suffered death for such a "small" infraction: in giving to the church they misrepresented what percentage they gave of their just profits.

"Why death? After all, they did give-which is more than many people do!" The answer is, the church cannot prosper with deception among its members.

Deception wounds the Body of Christ and is a sin against God. This is why Peter cried to Ananias and Sapphira at the moment of their deaths, "You have not lied to man but to God" (Acts 5:4b). Thus, radical truthfulness is one of the greatest needs of the church today. The church needs people who not only refrain from blatant lying, but represent themselves and others as they really are. Paul says truthfulness is necessary for growth in the church:

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ" (Ephesians 4:15). We are to be literally truthing in love— speaking and doing truth to each other. How the church needs this!

Listen to this.. This great need in the church is directly linked to the needs of our lost world, for the world longs for liberation from dishonesty. Sure, it cultivates deception and promotes it, but deep down inside its people long to escape the pretense. People will eagerly embrace believers who model the honesty and integrity for which they long.

Thielicke said in his native Germany, "The avoidance of one small fib... may be a stronger confession of faith than a whole 'Christían philosophy' championed in lengthy, forceful discussion." A truthful spirit is a great evangelistic tool. I have known people who were drawn to Christ because they saw this quality in a church or individual. Truthfulness will be, for some, as tantalizing as a cool drink in the desert.

What can we do to promote radical truthfulness a no that is truly a no and a yes that is truly a yes—in our lives? One man gave me these points..

As we have already mentioned, we must be sensitized to the horror of deception in the Body of Christ. Its being a heinous sin is substantiated by the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira. The heart, as well as the mind, must not only accept this truth but welcome it.

We must remember that for Jesus words are sacramental-an outward sign of an inward condition. Jesus said, "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34; cf. Mark 7:14-23). A continually truthful spirit will produce an increasing veracity of speech.

We must understand that we will be judged by the words we say—every word: "I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matthew 12:36, 37). Our human words are freighted with eternity.

By the fullness of the Spirit, we must appropriate the life of Christ in us so that his words become our words, and so we will speak the truth, for Jesus never lied, and "there was no deceit in his mouth" (Isaiah 53:9).

We must feed on the Word of God. Jesus' prayer for us is, "Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth" (John 17:17). When we discipline ourselves to feed on the Word, we will fill ourselves with truth, progressively producing what God desires-"truth in the inward being" (Psalm 51:6a).

It is from carelessness as much as intentional lying that so much falsehood abounds. So we must be careful about what we say. If it is not true, we ought to correct ourselves. If we have been giving the wrong impres-sion, straighten it out.

As usual, James has minced no words: "But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your "yes' be yes and your 'no' be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation."

Lord, help us to be radically truthful!