Don't Believe the Hype
Notes
Transcript
Big Idea: Integrity isn’t just what you do with your words it is a lifestyle. Do not swear frivolously by anything but live in such a way that your words that your life and the consistency of your character speak for themselves.
Talk about why we aren’t doing the divorce section right now.
Introduction (me): Do Christmas bonus thing…tell why I went from heckling the guys saying it wasn’t a good idea to realizing why it actually wasn’t a good idea. There isn’t some invisible line around truth where if we only cross it so far its actually harmless.
We: Do the deep fake thing and the real danger being we can’t tell what truth is anymore from the connected show.
Talk about what this has caused in our society.
Nothing can be taken at face value anymore.
We find ourselves always reaching below what is said to try and decipher what is actually meant or what the motives behind the statement are.
It is no longer truth that we measure our political candidates and leadership by it is the amount of lies propagated by the other side of the isle. I wan’t you to just think about that statement for a few seconds. Both sides have been caught in so many half-truths, conveniently-left-out details, and outright lies that truth can no longer be the standard by which we measure our leadership by so that now, every campaign, every move of legislation is an aggressive and mud-slinging smear campaign designed to inflict maximum damage on the opposing side. It’s never just about what is best for the people but is instead why what the other side is the worst. It may just sound like semantics but that is a fundamentally different approach than what our nations forefathers intended and I don’t have to tell you why it has been incredibly damaging to our country.
The results of this is that a wide range of baseless conspiracy theories, so-called fake news, and accusations…things that used to be on the fringe and unacceptable for proper society, have now become mainstream. This isn’t because these things have become any more real than they were when they were unacceptable....but because we live in a culture and day when we can’t tell truth from lies anymore.
This move away from truth isn’t just some distant phenomenon in the halls of our capitols or the classrooms of our universities or over issues of social, moral, or economical progress. It is actually ingrained in every aspect of our society and is perhaps best seen in our social media. I talk about this enough that I don’t have to point out the dangers in constantly putting out a curated version of yourself and your life.
I know this all too well, and yet as i sat there writing this sermon this week, I found myself needing to put my phone out of view so its black lifeless screen would stop beckoning me to light it up as though it were an unlit cigarette for a hit of dopamine. Its the promise that as I scroll the infinite mindless void of half truths and curated lies that I will somehow find satisfaction.
I wish I could say it was just out there…right like this is just the worlds problem and luckily for us in the Church…we’ve got this problem beat.
Here is the bottom line…
I’ve talked for like five minutes about this stuff and its already starting to stress some of you out. It stresses me out. Worst of all…we all know all of this. I haven’t given you any new information. No…the stressful part is in trying to figure out how we are going to fix this incredibly serious issue and dig our way out of this mess. The problem that our society is facing is in putting their faith in any solution because none can be trusted to be unbiased or inherently true.
This is actually an incredibly complex issue and at its root it is related to our tendency to put spin on our words, twist the truth to make ourselves look better, and increase hype to try and win people to our side or to make a point. Although each individual action may seem fairly benign…like the Christmas bonus story… when you multiply the effects of that by seven billion people doing it multiple times a day, it is no wonder that our world is where it is today in regards to actually knowing truth.
Luckily, this is the very issue that Jesus is going to address in this section of his Sermon on the Mount.
Do Jesus is inaugurating a new Kingdom Bit...
Jesus essentially calls us all icebergs. Do you know what I mean by that? Its that we have this part of ourselves that we portray to the rest of the world…that part that is above water and is actually a pretty small part of ourselves and yet there is this whole other side of us that exists hidden under the surface. Beneath our words and representation of ourselves…beneath the carefully curated image of our life that we often put out on social media. And what lies under the surface is massive and can be quite damaging to others when the truth is finally revealed and they run aground of our half-truths, distorted realities, hypocrisy, or inconsistencies.
And so, here is how Jesus goes right for the heart level issue behind this tendency to create a new people committed to a higher standard of truth.
GOD:
“Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.’
Now…up to this point, Jesus has laid down a single Old Testament command and then laid his teaching alongside of it. But in this teaching, Jesus has actually blended several Old Testament teachings together in one statement. Here are a few of the passages Jesus is drawing off of to remind His followers about telling the truth:
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
‘You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.
‘You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the Lord.
So in our culture, swearing has to do with using foul language. And so when we superimpose our understanding of what swearing is over these verses, we typically walk away thinking we shouldn’t add curse words before or after the name of God. Now, that’s true we shouldn’t do that and there are in fact plenty of passages in the Bible that teach that, that is not at all what is happening here. That’s not what the third commandment is about.
Here is the idea:
Do stolen donkey bit…
The idea is that you have invoked God’s name as this higher authority that will testify to your truthfulness. Invoking God’s name is a power move essentially stating that God would stand by as a faithful witness to your statement or actions.
And instantly, many of you feel no more connected with this verse than when we started right. I mean we just don’t do this outside of maybe saying “I swear to God.” Here is the verse…don’t do that. There is actually something much deeper going on here in these commands.
The point of not taking God’s name in vein is about not taking God’s holiness, uniqueness, and goodness and associating it with your own distortion of the truth. And so what happens when God’s goodness gets associated with my crookedness is that it defiles it.
I think we see two things from this concept that Jesus is teaching.
First:
This is about abusing God’s reputation.
Do we ever do this? Have Christians ever been known to claim one thing about their commitment and devotion to God and His way of living with their words and then proceed to do something completely different with their lives? I think the short and obvious answer to that question is yes.
I think what these verses show us is that this is an incredibly huge deal. As image bearers of God whom he has trusted to carry His image, goodness, and mission into the world, have followers of Jesus ever claimed one thing about their relationship with Christ and then gone on to live in a way completely inconsistent with how Jesus has called us to live?
I have said this quite often…but…the rest of the world is going to do what they are going to do. For people who have made who Jesus is and the good news of his kingdom and his way of life true for them, why would they ever care about living by Jesus’ radical kingdom principles?
What kills me, though, is when believers in Jesus use the Bible or the name of Jesus to add legitimacy to actions or attitudes that are completely inconsistent with God’s word and with loving their neighbor. I don’t have to walk us back through history to see the horrors that have been wrought in the name of God perpetrating actions that are completely inconsistent with how God has called us to live.
When we do this, we not only hurt other people and our own reputation but we hurt the reputation of God. In a study of over 2,000 people who came to faith as adults, do you want to know what the first barrier those people who came to faith said they had to get over before actually putting their trust in Jesus? It was the barrier of mistrust in God. When pressed a little further, do you know how they developed that mistrust? It wasn’t because they had seriously studied their Bibles and come away with issues in God’s character that caused them to mistrust God. Their mistrust in God was caused by the inconsistencies in his followers life between what they claimed to believe and how they actually lived.
So:
Practice what you preach
Second:
This is about not trivializing God’s name.
That is to say that we wouldn’t frivolously commit to a truth or reality that we can’t support.
We have a culture of non-committal that is staggering. Do the funny memes bit...
Do the pinky swear bit...
How many four fingered car salesmen do you think we would have today if we still did this? Oh really…is it really J.D. Power and Assoc. number one rated safety SUV? (looks at pinky missing)
You may laugh at that…but only if you’ve never been in a situation where you really needed someone to come through on something they’ve said only for them to flake.
Don’t overextend your reach
Do the practical explanation that I fall prey to this thing often. People will often feel more valued if you are just honest with them…explain.
Follow through on your commitments
Explain both of those...
Are you guys with me? Nobody has fallen asleep on their couch or anything?
The reality is that none of that was probably new teaching. Maybe some of it was but for the most part, we probably have at least heard those concepts before.
But, just as he has done the previous two weeks, Jesus takes it a step farther for His people and goes after the root that causes us to do these things. Here is what he says:
“But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,
or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
“Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
Do the Pharisees bit about swearing on other things...
The essence of swearing that Jesus targets here is about invoking something or someone else…especially God…to make your words seem more significant and weighty. The aim is to impress others. But:
The reality is that we are having to bring some outside source into our conversation to give our words and testimony a legitimacy that they would not have on their own.
This is a device of manipulation that is meant to override the judgement of others in order to possess them for our purposes.
At its root, this is manipulation…in our culture, we would call this spin.
We manipulate others through our words in a thousand different ways too:
We minimize or even leave out certain details of the truth entirely to promote a reality consistent with our needs. A half truth is a whole lie.
We twist or exaggerate certain details to make the story sound better. The size of the fish goes down with every extra fisherman in the boat.
We raise a red herring. This is huge in our culture…especially with the media. That is to say, we will raise some secondary issue that may even be closely related to the topic at hand and draw off of its truth or lie in order to distract or confuse the issue truly at hand.
Our political scene has become one giant straw man fallacy. This is where we will attack the legitimacy of another person to draw away from their words or give legitimacy to our own argument.
We will deal in allegory or metaphor instead of speaking directly about an issue. No allegory or metaphor is perfect and we will draw off of their imperfections or inconsistencies to add legitimacy to our own words.
Name dropping.
Re-inventing yourself…link to military town.
We will overemphasize some aspects of the truth often adding “facts” or “statistics” to lend credibility to our words. Did you know that 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot…
This is spin. And Jesus says its evil in verse 37. He doesn’t just superfluously make that statement. He’s actually making a very real statement about the source of that kind of representing yourself. Instead of loving others and honoring them with truthfulness the intent is to get ones way by verbal manipulation of the thoughts and of the choices of others.
Here is why Jesus says that is evil: It is evil because…well…who does that sound like? That sounds like satan the father of lies and manipulation.
Explain why idolatry is such a big deal...
YOU:
And so, here is the solution that Jesus gives all of us as individuals.
“But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil.
Here is what Jesus is saying. This is the whole main idea for today. Are you ready for it...
The weight of our words is not measured by the number of them but by the life that is backing them up.
Explain how this is advocating for an entire life of integrity, honesty, follow-through, and openness such that our words can be taken at face value because we live a life that consistently backs them up.
Here is the really difficult thing about this topic.
We can look at teachings like this and think that Jesus is primarily asking us for behaviour modification. Right…like just do better. Don’t lie. Easy enough right?
The problems is that to do what Jesus is asking of us takes an entire life makeover.
There is no behavior modification without heart transformation.
Give the Gospel and why we have to return to this ever single day.
Can you think of a bigger obstacle for a community of people who are moving towards healthy and whole loving relationships than this sort of verbal spin? I mean…how can we have community we are all peddling a false image of ourselves. Nobody really knows anyone in this type of community.
This is just the problems within the church…
How could our community be different if every single one of us lived out this ethic?
Give Adrian Rodgers story.
Do the ‘Only God can see what could have been’ bit…about why it is important we live this ethic out at all times.