Matthew 5:33-37, The King’s Righteousness: On Oaths

Introduction

Good morning! If you have a Bible, please open it with me to Matthew 5. We’re continuing on our verse by verse march through Matthew’s gospel. We’re in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount––a sermon that is well known and yet it is so often misunderstood. We’re picking up where we left off. So, this morning we will be looking at Matthew 5:33-37. You’ll find our passage on page 810 of the pew Bible underneath the seats in front of you. I will first read the passage and then we’ll pray and ask the LORD to bless our time together in His Word.

READ MATTHEW 5:33-37

PRAY

I have said on several occasions in different settings that I believe knowing God is perhaps the most practical thing in life. There is nothing more practical than knowing God. That might seem a strange thing to some of you, so let me explain what I mean. Think about it, God created us that we would know Him and in knowing Him love Him and worship Him. That we would glorify Him and make much of Him in every facet of our lives. We are to be entirely God centered and oriented in our lives.

To that end, God created us His image. He intends for us, as His imagebearers, to be His representatives in the world He created. That we would bear, in some way, His character and be a further display of who He is and what He is like. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so too human beings are to be a reflection of God’s glory in the world. That all creation would no more of who God is as His likeness is seen and reflected in us.

The Fall in Genesis 3 did not sway Him from that purpose. It distorted it, yes. Made it harder because of our sin nature, yes. But that purpose still remains. Hence His plan of redemption as He renews that image in us by grace through faith. To the point where one day, when we see Him we shall be like Him. Totally redeemed. A new creation. Living to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.

What does that have to do with the passage we just read and are studying this morning? Everything. In a day and age where salvation is too often reduced to mere fire insurance, we need to be reminded that God is after far more than a decision that gives us a heavenly ticket. He wants us, our very lives, in total surrendered commitment to living for Him and His glory. To be remade in His image by grace through faith and the power of His Spirit at work in us.

And so, week after week, we devote ourselves to His ordinary means of grace in the reading and preaching of His Word to that end. That we would be sanctified and grow all the more in our likeness to Him as He intends. Being encouraged in the ways we’re progressing. Being confronted in the areas we still fall short and have a need for further growth, so that we in turn would increasingly grow in our likeness to Him over the course of our lives.

Our passage this morning is part of a challenging stretch where the LORD Jesus is teaching concerning His righteousness and how it is to be displayed in the lives of His people. He did not come to abolish the Law. He came to fulfill it and produce His righteousness in the lives of His people. So that, as we are continually being remade in His image, we would be more like Him and more faithfully represent Him in the world He created.

What we see this morning provides a great example of what I’ve been saying to this point this morning about knowing God being practical in this regard. God’s people know that God is faithful and true. His Word is certain and sure. He can be trusted without any hesitation or fear that His Word or His promises will fail. His Word can’t fail because of His very nature and character. As such, He expects His people to demonstrate the same kind of faithfulness and commitment to truth in their own speech and conduct.

MAIN POINT––Be faithful and true to your word, like your Father in Heaven.

The Law

As we begin walking through this passage, it is important for us to remember the immediate context of Jesus’ words. We need to reiterate that Jesus is not correcting or doing away with the Law. The interpretive key for us to understand this reality is of course found just a little earlier in the text––a passage we looked at several weeks ago. In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus clearly states that He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. From that, he has been working through a series of antitheses––”you have heard it said, but I say to you”

With each antithesis, or topic, He addresses, there is a corresponding teaching in the OT. For instance, there were clear laws against murder, adultery, etc. But what had happened is there teaching had become distorted under the scribes and Pharisees. And so, what we find is that Jesus is not correcting or doing away with the Law teaching and expectation. Rather, He is correcting the wrong interpretation of the Law which the scribes and Pharisees had given.

In various ways they had developed work arounds that enabled them to squirm away from the true intent of the Law. Work arounds that made them look righteous on the outside. They looked and sounded like they were upholding the Law. But ultimately, Jesus exposes that the Pharisees so-called “righteousness” was nothing more than a house of cards. It couldn’t hold up under the pervasive all-seeing and all-knowing gaze of God the Son Incarnate––the LORD Jesus Christ. He could see right through their externalities and see the rotted core beneath it all.

This is seen all the more with Jesus’ instructions here regarding the taking of oaths. So, our pattern will be much the same as what we have been doing. We want to see where Jesus is getting the subject of the Law from and understand its original intention. Then we’ll seek to understand the distortion which the Pharisees had implemented in their teaching. And finally seek to understand Jesus’ application of the Law for His people today who are to live for Him and His glory as His representatives in the world.

Look again at verse 33 with me––

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.’

Here, Jesus is referring to the practice of taking oaths. Closely related to this is instances where a person makes a vow or pledge. In fact, the words have similar origins and are often used almost interchangeably. What is an oath? An oath is simply a way of bolstering someone’s confidence in the truth of your words. In taking an oath, an individual would swear by something or someone. In doing so, they were calling that something or someone as a witness against them. So that if they failed to keep their oath that someone would bring retribution upon them.

In this instance, there is not one Law in particular that Jesus has in mind. There’s not just one chapter and verse we could go to. Rather, this would be a summary of various laws and practices legislated under the Old Covenant. A quick survey of a few instances we find in the Old Testament will help us understand the true purpose and intent of God’s instructions for His people regarding oaths.

Exodus 20:7–– “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

The third commandment would have been the foundation of God’s instruction regarding oaths, as we’ll see in a moment. We often think of this commandment as merely restricting a vain use of the LORD’s name in flippant ways. Using it as a form of vulgar speech. That is part of it, certainly. We dare not use the LORD’s name in vulgar ways. But the law intended far more than that. It also forbids us from using the LORD’s name to make a vow, or promise, we have no intention of keeping. Hence, the further laws that unpack this idea like…

Leviticus 19:12–– “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.”

Notice, the law is not against swearing by God’s name. It is against swearing falsely in the LORD’s name. To do so would be to bring reproach upon the name of the LORD, which is to be regarded as holy. God’s name is not to be taken lightly or treated as trivial. In fact, WHEN a person made an oath, two things were expected.

For one thing, the vow was to be kept. Numbers 30:2–– “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.”

Secondly, the people were instructed that when they did swear an oath it was to be done in the LORD’s name and only in His name. Deuteronomy 6:13–– “It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name shall you swear.”

So what we can see, clearly, is there was no absolute prohibition of swearing oaths. There was clear instruction for how they were to be done as well as instructions against breaking those oaths when they were taken. Furthermore, though oaths could be taken and even should be taken under certain circumstances, they were never to be taken lightly. Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 5 speak to this where he says,

Eccl. 5:2-6–– “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few…When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake…

We have a rather gruesome example of a rash oath given by Jephthah in Judges 11. He was one of the Judges in Israel’s history, before the kings, whom God used to deliver His people from their enemies. In Jephthah’s case he made a vow to the LORD that if God granted him success he would offer as a burnt offering the first thing that came out of his door to greet him.

The LORD granted him favor, and much to his shame it was his own daughter that came out first to greet him in victory. And the rest of the account there tells us that Jephthah kept his vow and supposedly sacrificed his daughter. A vow he should have never made and violated other clear commands against human sacrifice. A rash oat that led to further anguish and greater sin.

In sum, three things are clear from the OT instructions regarding oaths:

They were not to be taken lightly. Only in solemn circumstances.

When swearing an oath, they were to be sworn in the LORD’s name only.

Keeping one’s oath was not only expected, but expected to be fulfilled promptly.

That sets us up to understand the distorted teachings of the Pharisees, which Jesus is correcting here in His words.

The Pharisaical Distortion

By the time Jesus had come on the scene, the OT teaching on oaths had gotten far away from what the law intended. Courtesy of the Pharisees, as I’ve already mentioned. The Pharisees had interpreted and distorted the Laws concerning oaths in such a way that only certain oaths were binding. What they had done is created an entire casuistry of rules that determined what oaths were binding and which ones were not.

So for the Pharisees, honoring your word in oaths was subject to the nature of your oath. It all depended on the formula of your words. They had many creative rules and workarounds in their writings to justify all kinds of reasons for not honoring their word. We see this laid out plainly for us in Jesus’ rebuke of them in Matthew 23:16-22. Perhaps you want to flip over there to see it as I read it to you.

16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ 19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. 22 And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

We’ll unpack this passage a bit more when we get to that point in our study of Matthew. But what I want you to observe is how absurd their teaching and reasoning had become. How they used it to skirt the edges around their promises. They had created an entire system that enabled them to lawfully, in their own reasoning, get out of their agreements. For instance, if you swore by the temple, it was nothing. The promise was null and void. But if you swore by the gold of the temple, you were bound. That was the logic of their reasoning.

It was their Pharisaical way of crossing their fingers behind their back while they made a promise to someone. It was their way of hiding minute details in the fine print of their contracts, so to speak. The kind of fine print nobody takes the time to read, buried deep in lengthy contracts filled with legal jargon beyond the comprehension of your average person. That’s what they had done. That’s the kind of system they had constructed. And Jesus will have none of it.

Jesus exposed them for what they were really doing. They were swearing frivolous oaths and swearing by any and everything except God’s name. All so they could sound good and pious and righteous and noble. But ultimately it was all a scheme for them to get out of their promises. They used the letter of the law––not swearing by the LORD’s name––to excuse themselves from the spirit of the law which required them to be men of integrity who honored their word. Their man-made system was nothing more than a mask to cover their lying and deceitful hearts.

King Jesus’ Faithful People

So what is Jesus’ expectation for His people? Let’s look again at the remainder of His teaching in Matthew 5:34-37––

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.

There’s a bit of parallel between Jesus’ words here and what we saw a moment ago with our glance at Matthew 23 and his direct confrontation with the Pharisees. Follow his logic with me. He teaches not to take an oath “either by heaven” because it is the throne of God. Nor “by the earth” because that is God’s footstool. Nor “by Jerusalem” because it is the city of the great King. Nor should you even take an oath by your own head. What’s the logic Jesus is presenting? What’s the point?

Whereas the Pharisees used swearing by anything and everything except the LORD as a means to get out of honoring their oaths, Jesus’ logic is this. No matter what you swear by, it all belongs to God! Since everything ultimately belongs to God, there is nothing you can swear an oath by that alleviates your need to honor your word. Jesus’ point is to not swear like that (the way the Pharisees did).

No matter what they swore by it was under God and they were accountable to keep their word. Everything we do and everything we say is done in the presence of God. Therefore we should act and speak in light of that reality. The reality that God is there. He knows all, sees all, and hears all. Ultimately, we can never escape God’s presence and awareness of our actions, or thoughts, or––in this case––our words. On the day of judgment, people will have to give an account for every careless word we speak (Matt. 12:36).

Before I go any further on that point, there is most certainly a question before us that we must answer. Is Jesus forbidding all taking of oaths? I mean in verse 34, before the series of logical statements, he says “do not take an oath at all.” And this in fact is the prooftext used by an entire stream of Protestant Christians––the Anabaptists––that they use to forbid any kind of oath taking.

You’ll find this belief among the Amish and Mennonites, who are the descendants of this movement. So, the practice stemming from this is to not take any oaths at all. Not even under a legal setting. And if it weren’t for their belief and practice of Pacifism, they wouldn’t take oaths of office for the military or other similar oaths. This is where they base their beliefs on that. And this is an important point when it comes to how we read and interpret the Bible correctly.

You can justify all sorts of things when you simply rely on prooftexting. But the problem with prooftexting, where we make just one verse mean something beyond what it says or contrary to other portions of Scripture, we wind up in error every time. Either becoming overly permissive in areas we should be more restrictive. Or becoming overly restrictive and binding consciences where God never intended us to be bound. That is why we need the whole counsel of God. Every piece of God’s Word. We must allow the whole Bible to speak and interpret itself.

When we do that, it becomes clear that Jesus is not making an absolute prohibition against all forms of oath taking. We know that because there are instances, not just in the OT as we saw, of permissible oath taking. But we also find it in the New Testament.

Jesus testified under oath during His trial in Matthew 26. As he stood before the counsel he had remained silent throughout their questioning. That is until the high priest said this––“I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” To which Jesus didn’t say, “sorry, I spoke earlier against taking oaths or swearing under oath.” No, he answered his question, under oath, to affirm His identity. (Matthew 26:63)

God Himself swears an oath by His own name. We find a clear New Testament instance of this in Hebrews 6:13-18––13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, 14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” 15 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

Certainly, in knowing that God is holy and righteous, we can reason that it is not wrong for God to swear an oath by Himself. Nor should we suppose that God swore an oath because of any propensity in Him to lie or be unfaithful and thereby keep Himself accountable. Rathat, it was for our own hard heartedness and our propensity to unbelief and doubt in the goodness of His character and truth of His Word. God wants us to know that He is faithful and true.

Lastly, the apostle Paul writing under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, made vows and swore oaths:

Romans 1:9––9 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…

2 Corinthians 1:23––23 But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.

So, we can rest assured that Jesus' prohibition here is not an absolute prohibition. You can in good conscience swear an oath if you’re ever called in for legal proceedings that require you to testify under oath. You can in good conscience swear an oath of office, young people, if you grow up to join the military or get elected to political office of some kind. Jesus’ words here do not preclude you from doing any of those things.

The prohibition is against our careless words and needless swearing. Think of times where you’ve been in a situation where you want the person your speaking with to believe what you’re saying––statements like “I swear to God” (which makes me shudder every time I hear it). But not just that. There’s that saying, more common when you were younger probably––”cross my heart and hope to die; stick a needle in my eye.” Or saying things like, “I swear on (you name it).” All for the most mundane and trivial of reasons.

The point is that, in your day to day speech and ordinary ways of life, you are to be the kind of person whose word is your bond. The kind of person whose character and integrity are never in question. As Jesus puts it in verse 37, our yes is to be yes and our no is to mean no. Christians are to be the kind of people who say what they mean and mean what they say. When we speak; when we make a promise; you can take it to the bank. Our word is reliable. Be the kind of person that is dependable and can be counted on. That’s the point.

This of course has a wide array of applications. There’s all sorts of life situations and occasions where we rightly and solemnly make vows––our marriage vows being one. I find it interesting how this follows Jesus’ words on divorce. Marriage is one occasion where we make a solemn vow before God and others that we will be devoted to our spouse no matter what, til death do us part. A vow that is far too often broken not just in the world, but among professing Christians.

But the applications go far beyond even the occasions for solemn vows. Are you a truth teller? When you tell a story about something you did or something that happened, is it a fair representation? Or is a little drama added? A little hyperbole or exaggeration to make it more engaging. We always laugh and joke about that one friend who embellishes his stories a bit. The fish just keeps getting bigger and bigger every time the story is told, right?

How about something a little more serious. The way we talk about one another. Our tendency to speak about someone else’s actions or conduct from our perspective and assumptions. And that person is not around to defend themselves or set the record straight. A sin the Bible calls gossip. Or, in its worst form, outright slander––a total misrepresentation of what they actually said or did. Our words, loved ones, when not kept in check under the reign of Christ and His Spirit at work in us are a deadly poison. A blaze that can set the whole world on fire.

Jesus would have us know that His people, born of the Spirit, will model the faithful moral character of their heavenly Father. Just as God is faithful and true in all that He says according to His character and nature, so too are His people. We are to be a people who are known as faithful and true, like our Father in heaven. Like our King, the LORD Jesus Christ, who bought us with His precious blood.

Conclusion

Jesus' words here expose our sinful hearts. I once heard the late John MacArthur put it this way–– “What you say is often a thermometer of the heart” This is true for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Christian––when our words do not accord with the truth we must recognize that we are out of step with Christ and who He calls us to be as His representatives in the world. He is the way, the TRUTH, and the life. He calls His people, the citizens of His heavenly kingdom, to be as committed to truth as He is. When we are out of step or when our lack of truthfulness gets exposed, the answer is to confess it and repent. Make a clean break. Tell the truth. We are to be like our Father in heaven. A Father of Truth. We represent the God of truth. Live like it.

Non Christians you must reckon with all the ways you fall short in the truthfulness of your words. All the ways that you fall short of God’s righteous standards as the source and being of all that is good and true. And in reckoning with that, do not despair. Heed this call of Christ to you. Turn from your sin of lying and deceitfulness and to Christ in faith. Cast yourself upon Him and His mercy. He can and will cleanse you from a life of lying and hiding in the shadows. You can walk in the light, just as He is in the light. You can be free from all the misery of running from lie after lie and all the stress that comes with covering your tracks and keeping up appearances. A life that must be exhausting. Aren’t you tired? Come to Him and He will give you rest.

Loved ones––Be faithful and true to your word, like your Father in Heaven.