To Tell The Truth
Carl
have one thing in common that I have noticed -- a marked dishonesty when it
comes to the Holy Scriptures. They have to lie, misrepresent and use all
sorts of deception to try to support their antiBiblical stances. However
it's really no surprise since the source of all their antiBiblical stances
is the father of all lies, Satan. God abhors dishonesty and He abhors those
dishonest tactics used to try to bolster unBiblical teachings. He warned us
as Christians to watch out for those who teach falsely and to reject utterly
those false teachings. He told us to study the Holy Scriptures so we would
be able to discern the counterfeit from the legitimate. And when we rightly
do, it makes the heretics, false teachers and haters of God angry. I mean
spitting mad angry. And that's because they can't handle the truth of God.
Danny Hall's sermon has to do with the topic of honesty, something that is
impossible for the antiBiblical crowd to exhibit. I urge my Christian
brethren to read this Biblically-based article.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
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TO TELL THE TRUTH
by Danny Hall
As I have been studying the Sermon on the Mount, I have been amazed at how
absolutely applicable it is to our contemporary society. It is as if Jesus
were looking down the corridor of time right to where we live when he was
speaking about these things. As the saying goes, the more things change, the
more they stay the same. Cultures and circumstances may change, but the
sinfulness of the human heart has never changed.
All kinds of things point to the fact that dishonesty is rampant in our
society. Here are a few examples:
Last week four men connected with BALCO Laboratories here in the Bay Area
were indicted for designing and distributing performance-enhancing steroids
to athletes. The most famous of their alleged clients was Barry Bonds,
although nothing has been proven about him personally. Performance-enhancing
drugs are intended for one thing: to enable athletes to cheat, to give them
an edge over their competitors. There is much money to be made both by those
selling the steroids and by the athletes who use them, as their statistics
go up and their value increases.
We are in the middle of the Martha Stewart trial, which is again about
cheating the system.
Recently there was a huge scandal at Saratoga High School about some
students' breaking in using some high-tech gizmos to steal answers to tests.
As we approach tax season it is a standard joke that people are not always
exactly honest on their income tax returns.
This is an election year, so we will be bombarded by promises and
accusations, a lot of truths and half-truths and no truth at all, all mixed
together in a frenzy of campaigning by candidates to get elected.
Besides all these big examples, there is the proverbial little white lie
that all of us every now and then reserve the right to use. Many times
across my career as a pastor, the question has come up, particularly with
other pastors, "How many people attend your church?" We pastors use
"ministerial math" and evangelistic crusade estimates to answer that
question. Somehow we are driven to present our church as being a little
better than the other guy's. And sometimes you are trapped; you don't even
know how to avoid the little white lie. Any of us who are husbands know what
it is like to have to answer the question, "Does this make me look fat?"
Part of our problem is that we have grown very comfortable with the shading
of the truth. We assume that everyone has an agenda through which they
filter truth. We call it spinning the truth in order to make it suit their
purposes, and that is somehow supposed to make it acceptable. We live in a
culture that really is characterized by dishonesty.
But this is nothing new. We're going to look at a passage that focuses on
similar issues that Jesus confronted in his day. Matthew 5:33-37:
Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, "You shall not make false
vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord." 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. But let your statement be, "Yes, yes" or "No, no";
anything beyond these is of evil.
God values honesty
In order to understand what Jesus is talking about, we need to look at the
Old-Testament antecedents. The term "false vows" means perjury, deliberately
lying when others expect you to fulfill an oath. The term "fulfill your
vows" literally means to fence or box yourself in, to put a boundary around
yourself. So when you make an oath, you fence yourself in to tell the truth.
Oath-making has a lot of background in the Old-Testament Law. Leviticus
19:12 says, "You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the
name of your God; I am the Lord ." Numbers 30:2 says, "If a man makes a vow
to the Lord , or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he
shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out
of his mouth." Deuteronomy 23:21-23 says, "When you make a vow to the L ord
your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for it would be sin in you, and the
L ord your God will surely require it of you. However, if you refrain from
vowing, it would not be sin in you. You shall be careful to perform what
goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to the L ord
your God, what you have promised." These Old-Testament antecedents to the
teaching of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day all point to the fact
that God puts value on telling the truth.
The author of Hebrews reflects back on some of the Old-Testament oaths and
gives us some more insight into this matter. "For when God made the promise
to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,
saying, 'I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.' And so,
having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one
greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an
end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the
heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an
oath...." (Hebrews 6:13-17.)
To summarize, because of the human propensity to lie, God allowed oaths in
his name to add weight to a person's word in grave situations, to give a
sense of greater accountability for their word. Even God himself sometimes
made oaths, not because he ever lied, but to accentuate the gravity of the
situation. There are some things that need to transcend the normal human
tendency to deceive or to fudge the truth, and so oath-taking in the name of
the Lord was allowed among the people of Israel. Underneath that was God's
desire for us to be people of integrity, to fulfill our word.
But there was a problem that Jesus addresses in Matthew 5.
Jesus challenges cultural dishonesty
The Old-Testament instructions had been stretched into an elaborate system
of loopholes in the requirement to keep one's word. Notice this little
series of oaths he refers to: by heaven, by earth, by the city of Jerusalem,
even by their own head. A series of gradations of oaths had developed. They
could be more serious with some oaths and less serious with others. They had
taken the Old Testament allowances about swearing by God and his word and
twisted them. For instance, Leviticus 19:12 says not to swear falsely by the
Lord's name, but they took that to mean that they could swear falsely by
something other than the Lord's name. Numbers 30:2 says that if someone
makes an oath to God they must keep it, but they took that to mean that they
could renege on those made to anyone other than God. They could leave
themselves an out.
So people were managing the truth, if you will, coloring their relationships
with one another with varying levels of commitment to fulfill their promises
and vows. The result was a culture of deceit. Peter himself fell victim to
this temptation later in the gospel of Matthew. Having walked with Jesus
throughout his earthly ministry, Peter was fearful as Jesus was taken to
trial. Matthew 26:69-74 tells the story of Peter's denials of Jesus:
"Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant-girl came to
him and said, 'You too were with Jesus the Galilean.' But he denied it
before them all, saying, 'I do not know what you are talking about.' When he
had gone out to the gateway, another servant-girl saw him and said to those
who were there, 'This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.' And again he denied
it with an oath, 'I do not know the man.' A little later the bystanders came
up and said to Peter, 'Surely you too are one of them; for even the way you
talk gives you away.' Then he began to curse and swear, 'I do not know the
man!'"
The word "swear" here is not the word for profanity; it is a strong word for
oath-taking. Reflecting the spirit of his culture, Peter invoked the regular
habit of swearing by something other than the name of God to try to lend
weight to his words, even in the moment when he knew in his heart that he
was deceiving. And of course, immediately after that, the rooster crowed and
Peter went and wept bitterly, for the prophecy that Jesus had given him came
true. He realized the deceitfulness in his heart and how he had abandoned
his Lord.
So what is Jesus' command in the midst of this elaborate system of deceit?
"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." What he is
saying is, whatever you swear on, everything in this creation is connected
to God, and it is silly to think that somehow you can make an oath by
something less than the name of God and then not keep it. So his command is
simply to stop it.
Now, how far do we take this? Based on the whole teaching of Scripture, it
seems unlikely that Jesus means to prohibit ever making any sort of oath or
vow in any place at any time, the way some have applied it. The Jehovah's
Witnesses refuse to take an oath when they testify in court and refuse to
say the Pledge of Allegiance, interpreting those things as violations of
this command. In Matthew 23:16 Jesus addresses the Pharisees and scribes and
takes up this same subject up again: "Woe to you, blind guides, who say,
'Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the
gold of the temple is obligated.'" He doesn't say, "Never make an oath." He
just says, "Let your words represent the truth."
What he is basically telling us is to break free from a system that
cultivates dishonesty and hypocrisy, to practice integrity in all things.
Notice the final way he says it: "But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or
'No, no.'" This is an emphatic way of saying, "Whatever comes out of your
mouth, let it be truthful. Do not hide behind even culturally accepted ways
of shading the truth." As followers of God, we are to step out of that
normal tendency. We are to be men and women of integrity who speak the truth
clearly to one another.
"Anything beyond these is of evil." This can also be translated, "of the
evil one." Satan is the father of lies, and from the very beginning, it has
been his strategy to deceive people, to distort God's word. The initial
temptation of Adam and Eve was based on a distortion of God's word, and out
of that he has continued to lie, twist the truth, and promote lying and
twisting of the truth. It is in this satanic stream of deception that you
and I live, but God calls us as his people to be committed to integrity,
through his grace and the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.
What does it mean to be people of integrity? Let me share three
implications.
Dishonesty assaults community
First, we must value what God values. This same point has come up in each of
the practical examples that Jesus has been giving us. First he dealt with
the issue of murder in 5:21-26 and told us that the whole idea is that God
values each and every human life, body and soul and spirit, and when we
speak cruelly or angrily or in a demeaning way, we are assaulting the soul
of one for whom Christ died and whom he loves unconditionally (Discovery
Paper 4905). Then in 5:27-32 we saw that adultery is an assault on something
else God values: marriage, and the picture of intimacy with God that it
represents (Discovery Paper 4906).
Now we see that dishonesty is assaulting community, which God values
greatly. Relationships cannot grow in a climate of dishonesty. Imagine
living in Jesus' day, in that highly regulated religious society. The
scribes and Pharisees had laid down these layers of minute applications of
the Law, exhorted people to follow them, and condemned those who did not.
This was supposed to be a unified culture of the people of God,
distinguished by love and forgiveness and glory and worship of God. Yet they
had evolved into this system of rules and regulations that permitted the
shading of the truth. Where is the sense of community in that? A lack of
openness and honesty is a direct assault on community. Community cannot
flourish where dishonesty reigns. Nothing hinders relationships more. So the
major implication of this passage is that you and I cannot live in
fellowship with one another as the people of God in a society or a group or
a church body that is characterized by shading of the truth, something less
than full openness in our relationships with each other.
A second implication of being people of integrity is that it falls to us to
demonstrate to this world the heart of God for community. Living in the
fractured society that ours is, part of being salt and light in this world
is to demonstrate that there is a better way than living for ourselves. One
of the ways we can demonstrate to our world the beauty of who Christ is and
his heart for people is learning to openly and honestly live with one
another, loving each other unconditionally, being vulnerable with each
other, cultivating honesty in our relationships with each other. The world
is hungry for this kind of community, and that is our calling as the
followers of Jesus.
A third implication is that nurturing honesty in the body of Christ requires
four things: grace, humility, vulnerability, and forgiveness.
It is unfortunate that churches throughout the history of Christianity have
been characterized less by a spirit of grace toward one another than by a
spirit of condemnation. When we come together with other Christians, there
are huge areas of our experience that we hide, because we are afraid that if
we are open and honest, what we reveal will somehow be used against us. The
lack of grace in the church continues to cultivate the felt need for
dishonesty.
To encourage honesty requires humility. I cannot walk into the fellowship of
this body or any group of people with a sense of arrogance or pride that
somehow I am better than the rest, or a sense that I have to present myself
that way.
We have to let ourselves become vulnerable. As long as I walk into this
community covered with layers of self-protection, wearing a mask of strength
that I don't really have, I contribute to the spirit of dishonesty and
detract from community. Now the reason we don't let ourselves become
vulnerable, as I said, is fear. Is it not tragic that one of the places in
our society where people feel least free to be totally honest is the church?
We can't open ourselves up and say, "These are all the things that are wrong
with me. I need the grace and love and strength of the community of faith."
Finally, we're going to hurt each other and fail each other. Even through
God's grace and the power of his Spirit, we are still in the process of
growing. We have not arrived. So we have to humbly and graciously forgive
one another.
There are a couple of superficial ways that we Christians consistently fail
to be honest. One is the way that we answer a common question, and the other
is a flippant statement that we often make. When we are asked, "How are you
doing?" we answer, "Fine." Perhaps with somebody we really trust we will
crack open a little bit: "It's been a tough week. You know how it goes." The
flippant statement we consistently make when we hear someone share a problem
is, "I'll pray for you." These are subtle ways of lying, but they permeate
the community. What would happen if we shared with each other how we are
really doing? What would happen if, when we said we would pray for each
other, we really did that? These are just two very simple things that are
part of the everyday course of relationships even in the body of Christ. If
we could alter these two things, maybe it would be a step toward true
community--true honesty, true vulnerability, taking off the masks, being
open with each other, demonstrating the beauty of the truth to a world that
is plagued by dishonesty. It is time for us as the people of God to
absolutely commit ourselves to each other.
Now, certainly people come from different backgrounds and have different
needs and preferences. There is not a simple solution to this. But to follow
Christ, to have his heart, we have to be committed to honesty in all things,
and we need to pray for God's healing, for the grace through his Spirit to
move toward that kind of honesty and vulnerability.
I invite you to join with me in prayer and reflection on God's call to us to
be a community of honest people who love each other unconditionally. Here
are some areas in our own community that we need to open up to the Lord
about:
To begin, what are the ways that you yourself shade the truth? How could you
be hindering relationships and growth because of your lack of honesty and
openness?
The last few months have been hard at our church. A lot of difficult
decisions have been made, and as a result people have been hurt, accusations
have been made, and there has been some real strain on the fellowship here.
Pray about your own attitude toward the body, toward our leaders, toward
those who might see things differently from you. How have we violated the
spirit of community? How would God bring healing, repentance, and
forgiveness into our body?
There are people in our body who are hurting in a lot of different ways. A
number of our people have been out of work for some time. Some of our people
are homeless. These are things that just rattle right down to the core of a
person's sense of dignity. How have we as a church created a climate in
which people who are hurting can't be honest about their struggles? Pray
that God would give you an open heart to hear, or if you are one who is
hurting, to share the burdens of your heart.
There are people all around us in our community who need to know of the Lord
Jesus. How are we as a community of faith demonstrating God's love by the
way we are living in love with each other as we are in love with the Lord?
With the opening of the movie The Passion of the Christ , we are coming into
a season in which many predict the name of Jesus is really going to be
debated in our society. With each passing day the controversy surrounding it
rises. People all around us are going to be thinking about Jesus. Are we
prepared to talk about who he is? Are we prepared to demonstrate the power
of his sacrificial love through the way we love each other? Spend a few
moments praying about the impact of our church and the kind of people we
are, that we would lift up the name of Jesus and be able to answer the
questions about him that people are going to be asking.
Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE
("NASB"). © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by
The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
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