Truth-Promoters: For God's sake, stop Satan's lies on Your Lips!

Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

What we have seen so far int he 10 commandments is God’s desire for us to live our lives in community and individually, both in how we worship and whow we work with and treat each other - reflecting His character! Incredible vision of honouring God and each other in various relationships - leadership and following; of valuing and promoting the life and name of eacho ther, and of God, of prpmoting the work, property, giving of others, and making sure that we don’t make our work or our recreation #1 in our lives but God’s great work and our rest in Him. Seen how relationship maximizers’s don’t take in lust, but give in love and protect abnd uphold and treasure purity; movement from inward attidue to outward action. And the second to last beore getting to one that summaizes them all, is the concerned with the most potentn outward external influence we have on people - our words, our speech. From innerward honour, both those who lead those who follow; to hands that give life don’t take it, to how use our bodies and otehrs with purity, to money and welath in our hands, to now plain and simple how we use words!

Key Truth: Tenacious protectors and zealous promoters of truth, speak for God’s glory and their neighbour’s good!

A. This is Not Just a Simple “Moralistic” Command not to Lie

IN same way we saw 5th commandment is about all relationships, and wrongful killing involved more than just physical killing, and adultery goes beyond to fornication, to lust, that stealing is also about greedy haording or miserly withholding , so too when God wants you to reflect His character tot he world by using words the way he uses words, the first thing we must see is that this is not a sipmle command just to avoid lies. If the focus is just on you or me, individually keeping moralistically and pharisiaclly in the clear - didn’t technically give untrue information - mroal smuggness with both God and our neighbour out of the picture!

ie. Jody Baxter - old no good dog - “Words were true but my intentions were as crooked as the Osk. River. What are you going to do with Hebrew midwives, technically lied to Pharaoh but were saving babies livesin… what are you going to do with Rahab - spies went go in a hurry - commened by God . Or how about Corrie Ten Boom. What are you going to do when you have information that someone else is going to misuse, house burglarized, where are the rest of your kids… is it bearing false witness to withold this truth, God’s law of course hass a moral command, but wemust not interpret thse maroalisitically with a focus on the individual and not first of all Godand our neighbour!

The very words in and in are instructive here. In untrue, in - insincere speaking to the decietful purpose that breeds the lie. Do you see that when a lie is sinfully told, what is going on is that heart is being governed by a base afgfection: tThere is a sin behind the sin, idol of teh heart, - fear of being found out, fraud, not lvoing the truth but loving a lie for accpetance popularlity, Even more in your mind yo don’t love the truth, you aren’t exerciseing that truth and embracing it, you are beingh carried away by a lie before the words ever getto your lips.

You don’t always have and know all truth,, even when you do have truth, you don don’t need to share it with all all the time. What bearing fase witness is sabout is taht when you are required to testifying that you don’t speak, lie agianst teh tutgth, and even in every day life tath our testmiony to the trtuth is gfor God’s glory and our neighbours good!

We are to be like God with the truth and not like Satan. In fact as one writer put it this commandment about our words is a uniwue one. You break the other commandments and you become like an animal dead to God savage to neighbour; not relfecting the image of God! But you break this commandment about words and tistiing the truth - you become like the devil.!

That’s what is at stake with this commandment:

A. This is Not Just a Simple “Moralistic” Command not to Lie B. This is Spriitual & Moral Command to Reflect God and not Satan in all your Words!

Consider first how God is the God of truth:

Rom. 3:4

). God the Son is true. The Bible says that he “came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (

John 1:14

), “nor was any deceit in his mouth” (

Isa. 53:9

), for he is truth personified. Jesus said, “I am the truth” (

John 14:6

) and “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (

John 18:37

). God the Holy Spirit is also true. In fact, the Bible calls him “the Spirit of truth” (

1 John 4:6

). If God is true — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — then he must be true to his word. And so he is. Everything that God has ever said — including every word on every page of the Bible — is absolutely, unmistakably, and entirely true. Therefore, we can always take God at his word: “Your word is truth” (

John 17:17a

).