SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God, Matthew 5, verse 33.
SPEAKER_01: I know the reference in the screen is a little bit different, but Matthew 5, verse 33.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: But I say to you, don't take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it's the throne of God, or by the earth, for it's his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it's the city of the great king.
SPEAKER_01: Don't take an oath by your head, for you can't make one hair white or black.
SPEAKER_01: Amen or amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let what you say simply be yes or no.
SPEAKER_01: Anything more than that comes from evil.
SPEAKER_01: There is no doubt that in our world, truth is under attack.
SPEAKER_01: In our world, in our culture, the ninth commandment is kind of the front lines of the culture wars.
SPEAKER_01: Does truth matter?
SPEAKER_01: This has been a battle that has been brewing both inside and outside of the church for decades.
SPEAKER_01: Go back 30 years ago, you know, there was a debate over what truth is.
SPEAKER_01: You go back 15 years ago, you have relativism, that there can be truth for you and truth for me.
SPEAKER_01: You know, 25 years ago, there was like this quest for truth.
SPEAKER_01: We might debate on the outcome, but there was no doubt that people were in pursuit of truth and that truth mattered.
SPEAKER_01: There was just debate about epistemology, how you can discover it.
SPEAKER_01: 15 years ago, full-blown relativism, right?
SPEAKER_01: What's true for you might not be true for me.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is negotiable.
SPEAKER_01: That is all given way today.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the postmodern society of the post-truth society is gone now.
SPEAKER_01: Now at college campuses, you don't hear like that might be true for you, but not true for me.
SPEAKER_01: That's over.
SPEAKER_01: What you hear today is that truth itself is offensive.
SPEAKER_01: Forget truth being relative.
SPEAKER_01: You know, 20 years ago, witnessing to a college student, you might hear a college student say, Oh, Christianity might be true for you and not true for me, and you'd respond, like, no, if it's true, it's what truth means.
SPEAKER_01: That's gone away.
SPEAKER_01: You know, now the battle is is truth morally good or is it wicked?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if Christianity is true, whatever it's dangerous and bad and immoral is the pushback, which is an attack on truth itself.
SPEAKER_01: And this is why I say the Ninth Commandment is the front line of the culture war, because in comes Christians that may be well-meaning, but their approach to that battle is to water down truth and dilute the truth and try to make truth less offensive.
SPEAKER_01: But you understand the battle is not over the quantity of truth, it's over the nature of truth.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about saying we can give you less truth and it'll be less offensive.
SPEAKER_01: There's there's no middle ground with that.
SPEAKER_01: When truth itself is under attack, truth itself is where Christians need to take a stand.
SPEAKER_01: I said the last 25, 30 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: If you zoom out even further, you'll see this has been the centuries in the making conflict.
SPEAKER_01: You look at you know philosophy in the 1800s.
SPEAKER_01: Philosophy in the 1800s was all about the quest for truth, but truth without God.
SPEAKER_01: And this gave rise to what the modern sciences are.
SPEAKER_01: This idea that you can encounter truth detached from God.
SPEAKER_01: Take God out of psychology, take God out of sociology, take God out of the social sciences, but also take God out of the physical sciences or the actual sciences, no offense meant to sociologists.
SPEAKER_01: Take God out of the sciences, and that enables you to encounter truth in a more immediate plane.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was all of the sciences in the 1800s, which of course gives rise to evolution and gives rise to so much else that is wicked, but that was the at least the battle in the 1800s was over that.
SPEAKER_01: Let's find truth absent God.
SPEAKER_01: In the 1900s, that switches.
SPEAKER_01: In the 1900s, it's like you can find God, you don't need truth.
SPEAKER_01: Search for God, you can have your God, that's relativism.
SPEAKER_01: You can have your God over there and that God over there, and what works for you might work for you, but it is disconnected from the concept of truth.
SPEAKER_01: That is not sustainable.
SPEAKER_01: Neither of those approaches are sustainable.
SPEAKER_01: If you look for God without truth, or you look for truth without God, both of those roads dead end.
SPEAKER_01: The New Testament is filled with military language about this.
SPEAKER_01: We're called soldiers of Christ, we're supposed to take thoughts captive.
SPEAKER_01: The spiritual gift gives us spiritual armor you put on.
SPEAKER_01: The breastplate of truth, the helmet of righteousness, the sword of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are all military things because we are supposed to go to war in this world.
SPEAKER_01: We are not fighting flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_01: We are fighting powers and principalities.
SPEAKER_01: We're fighting worldviews and systems.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, make sure that you don't get held captive by philosophies that are vain and empty.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's they're trying to take you captive.
SPEAKER_01: You fight back against them so you don't get taken captive.
SPEAKER_01: You take your thoughts captive for the glory of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's the war.
SPEAKER_01: It's a war that is over truth.
SPEAKER_01: In the postmodern world, it was, you know, what is truth.
SPEAKER_01: But in the post-postmodern world, if that is even an expression, it's that truth itself is problematic.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is hostile.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is called everything from privilege to power to whatever.
SPEAKER_01: I could choose a thousand examples from the news this week to give you about this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm choosing just one.
SPEAKER_01: And as I read this, I just want you to think like how insane this would have been even ten years ago.
SPEAKER_01: When I'm about to read this from Newsweek, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: Mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture?
SPEAKER_01: I mean just and is used to marginalize people?
SPEAKER_01: Math.
SPEAKER_01: Like if you said that again about sociology or psychology, I'm with you.
SPEAKER_01: But math?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, talk about the example of sciences that should be relatively neutral.
SPEAKER_01: Math.
SPEAKER_01: And it's been appropriated by Western culture to stigmatize people?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just on a basic level, is that even true?
SPEAKER_01: Like, who invented math?
SPEAKER_01: It it wasn't Europeans, spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_01: What's that all about?
SPEAKER_01: It's this idea and math, if you're going to war against truth, you recognize that math is the enemy.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's one thing where, you know, rounding doesn't work, it's in physics, you know?
SPEAKER_01: If your enemy is truth, then math is the front line.
SPEAKER_01: And of course that plays out all over, all over.
SPEAKER_01: Every concept of education, every concept in our culture is at war against truth.
SPEAKER_01: Convictions used to be a virtue.
SPEAKER_01: In our culture, strong convictions are signs of a weak and insecure person.
SPEAKER_01: Today, truth is evil.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, the statement that truth is evil is itself a truth claim.
SPEAKER_01: It would unravel, but that level of dialogue is not happening.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, truth and God are inseparable.
SPEAKER_01: When it comes to a definition of truth, here's my best definition of truth.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is something that corresponds to the nature and the character and the will and the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what truth is.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is something that corresponds to who God is.
SPEAKER_01: If you sever truth from God, now you are at out sea.
SPEAKER_01: Now you're fighting over even a definition of truth that nobody can agree on because you threw God overboard.
SPEAKER_01: Ditto, if you throw truth overboard, you're not going to encounter God.
SPEAKER_01: They are, it's, their definitions are tied to each other.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is something that corresponds to God.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, people are important in this world, but God is the most important as he defines truth.
SPEAKER_01: Someone does not get to define his or her own truth.
SPEAKER_01: Something can't be true for you and not for the other person, because God is the Lord of all.
SPEAKER_01: And listen carefully to this.
SPEAKER_01: Someone who denies truth will end up denying God.
SPEAKER_01: Conversely, or the corollary, someone who denies God will end up denying truth.
SPEAKER_01: It's not sustainable to live a life that says, I don't believe in the God of the Bible, but I'm going to spend my life on a quest for truth.
SPEAKER_01: Because you will end up denying truth.
SPEAKER_01: There's no better example of this in the Bible than Pilate.
SPEAKER_01: Pilate was an educated man.
SPEAKER_01: He was thoughtful.
SPEAKER_01: He's brought Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He knows the charges against Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He knows the charges against Jesus are false.
SPEAKER_01: He's not falling for this.
SPEAKER_01: But he's interviewing Jesus and he realizes this guy's not a threat.
SPEAKER_01: This guy's, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't, he's he's got convictions about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus might convict Pilate, but Pilate doesn't have the courage to stand on his convictions.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to send Jesus to be executed.
SPEAKER_01: So what does Pilate have to do first before he can have Christ unjustly and illegitimately executed?
SPEAKER_01: He has to assuage his own conscience.
SPEAKER_01: And so Pilate says, What is truth anyway?
SPEAKER_01: I mean that was his that was his words.
SPEAKER_01: What do you even mean by truth, Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Who can know?
SPEAKER_01: Like throwing up your hands, who can know what truth is?
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Pilate knows what truth is.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of thing you say before you do something completely irrational and against God.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to deny God, you got to deny truth.
SPEAKER_01: You want to deny truth, you'll end up denying God.
SPEAKER_01: In contrast with those modern worldviews, you encounter the Lord of truth teaching about truth in the passage that I read for you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus structures his teaching about truth around kind of the trellis here of promises, teaching about promises.
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an outline concerning promises here.
SPEAKER_01: We'll fill in three points underneath it.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus teaches about promises, and he begins here by telling you, don't fake your promises.
SPEAKER_01: Don't make false promises.
SPEAKER_01: Don't say things that are not true.
SPEAKER_01: That's the most basic way to explain what Jesus is saying here.
SPEAKER_01: Don't say something that is not true.
SPEAKER_01: Again, Jesus says, You have heard that it was said to those of old.
SPEAKER_01: You shall not swear falsely.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has repeatedly through the Sermon on the Mount contrasted what he's saying with what has been said of those of old.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you remember, so far, it'll be different next week, but so far, everything Jesus attributes to those of old has been, in fact, a true biblical statement.
SPEAKER_01: Those of old said, Don't commit adultery, don't murder.
SPEAKER_01: Hear, don't lie.
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
SPEAKER_01: That's true biblical ethics.
SPEAKER_01: Don't commit murder, don't commit adultery, and don't lie.
SPEAKER_01: What was said of old is in fact true.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to circle back to the small subpoint next week, but I just want to comment on it now.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine the authority a person must have to dismiss the Old Testament as something old.
SPEAKER_01: Like imagine if you're the Jews there and you encounter Jesus who refers to the Torah as something that was said a long time ago, but he's got new revelation for you.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is kind of the this is the heart of dispensationalism, for lack of a better word, right here, where Jesus says, here's teaching that's gone for a period of time.
SPEAKER_01: We'll call it the Old Testament, and I've got something new that's going to start a new ethic into the world.
SPEAKER_01: That would just flabbergast the Jews to hear that.
SPEAKER_01: But that's the way Jesus speaks.
SPEAKER_01: We'll circle back to that point next week.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, You've heard of it said of those of old, you shall not swear falsely.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's no exact Old Testament quotation that hits this identically.
SPEAKER_01: This appears to be an amalgamation of several Old Testament passages that get pretty close to this.
SPEAKER_01: Leviticus 19, 12, you shall not swear by my name falsely.
SPEAKER_01: If you do, you profane the name of your God.
SPEAKER_01: I am Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: I'll put this example on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: This might be the closest one, Deuteronomy 23, verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: If you make a vow to Yahweh your God, don't delay in fulfilling it, for Yahweh your God will surely require it of you.
SPEAKER_01: You will be guilty of sin.
SPEAKER_01: The same thing was in Ecclesiastes 5.
SPEAKER_01: We read that at our scripture reading today.
SPEAKER_01: Just think about this verse real quick.
SPEAKER_01: If you make a vow, do it, is the point of this verse.
SPEAKER_01: Don't make a vow that you're gonna, you know, hey, I promise you I'll bring you your jacket, and then you go and you watch a TV show.
SPEAKER_01: You go and you have a soda, you go and you take a nap.
SPEAKER_01: No, if you if you make a vow you're gonna do something, why don't you get up and go do it?
SPEAKER_01: That's this verse.
SPEAKER_01: This is the basic premise of truth telling.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here in the scripture is where the third commandment and the ninth commandment come together.
SPEAKER_01: The third commandment says, don't take the name of Yahweh in vain, and we've talked about this before.
SPEAKER_01: The word take in the Old Testament, there is a word for lift up or to wave like a banner over you, is basically don't call yourself a follower of Jesus and lead an empty life.
SPEAKER_01: That's the third commandment.
SPEAKER_01: Don't put the name Yahweh on your house and then don't worship him in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Or and I've said this before, but don't put a Jesus fish in your car and drive like the devil.
SPEAKER_01: That's the third commandment.
SPEAKER_01: That mixes here with the ninth commandment of don't bear false witness against your neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: The phrase bear false witness, it is a legal phrase.
SPEAKER_01: It's a specific phrase in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: It has a context of a courtroom environment, just like in English.
SPEAKER_01: Have you heard the phrase, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
SPEAKER_01: So help you, God, you'd immediately associate it with the courtroom.
SPEAKER_01: Don't bear false witness.
SPEAKER_01: That phrase bearing witness is a legal terminology.
SPEAKER_01: Don't testify against your neighbor in an immoral way where you say something that's not true.
SPEAKER_01: The two of them merge in the Israelite society.
SPEAKER_01: You call yourself a follower of Yahweh, then speak the truth because God is truth.
SPEAKER_01: It's the most basic tenet of a godly society is truth-telling.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the mark of justice in society.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you want a just society, tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing when you study the Old Testament and you're looking into justice and loving the poor and showing mercy to the needy and caring for the widows and orphans, how often those commands are connected to truth-telling.
SPEAKER_01: And that's because a basic way of exploiting the poor is to lie, is to say something is yours when in fact belongs to them.
SPEAKER_01: I think of Naboth's vineyard, for example.
SPEAKER_01: The wealthy people, the queen, wanted to steal Naboth's vineyard.
SPEAKER_01: Not even because she was coveting the vineyard, she didn't need a better place to grow her carrots.
SPEAKER_01: She had all kinds of other motives at play, described in 1 Kings 21.
SPEAKER_01: But she steals his vineyard by lying about him and getting others to lie about him and putting him to death.
SPEAKER_01: Lies and deception connect to the exploitation of the poor.
SPEAKER_01: This is all over the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Zechariah 8, verse 16 is a great example of this, but there's many other verses like this.
SPEAKER_01: Zechariah 8, verse 16, God says, These are the things that you shall do.
SPEAKER_01: You shall speak the truth to one another.
SPEAKER_01: Render in your gates judgment that is true and make for peace.
SPEAKER_01: Don't devise evil in your hearts against one another.
SPEAKER_01: Don't love a false oath.
SPEAKER_01: These things I hate, declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see how he connects justice for the poor with truth telling?
SPEAKER_01: This is true in society.
SPEAKER_01: If you want a society that functions, it needs to value truth.
SPEAKER_01: This is far fetched in our world because our world has so much so many other sources of evidence.
SPEAKER_01: And I read a biography of a Supreme Court justice recently, and he lamented in there how much witness testimony has been degraded over the years.
SPEAKER_01: Like it used to be a key part of a prosecution was having witnesses that said, Yeah, I saw that guy do it, and they got to be found guilty.
SPEAKER_01: But now you've got juries and everything that have grown up watching CSI.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, Yeah, there's 10 witnesses that say that they saw the guy do it, but where's the DNA evidence, huh?
SPEAKER_01: Run that Snickers wrapper for DNA, and the prosecutor's like, he's shoplifted to Snickers.
SPEAKER_01: We're not doing DNA analysis.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I can't vote guilty unless there's DNA.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way our society works.
SPEAKER_01: We want to see the film.
SPEAKER_01: If the guy's not on camera, can't prove it.
SPEAKER_01: Go back to the Jewish society, there's no DNA evidence, there's no security camera footage.
SPEAKER_01: People were tried and convicted, or tried and acquitted based entirely on witness testimony.
SPEAKER_01: You want a society that functions well, you gotta tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Lies are an attack on that kind of society.
SPEAKER_01: It's true today, maybe not in trials, it's true today with taxes.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we laugh at the Seattle public schools saying math is an attack on, you know, privilege or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: When you lie on your taxes, you're playing right into that worldview.
SPEAKER_01: When you cheat on your taxes, you're you're not giving money to the government for the kind of things the government uses on, which you might say is totally wasteful.
SPEAKER_01: You know, taxation is theft, you know?
SPEAKER_01: But that's not up to you.
SPEAKER_01: Withholding your taxes is deception.
SPEAKER_01: It is lying, it is robbing society of justice.
SPEAKER_01: This is true in every area of life, not just courts and not just taxes.
SPEAKER_01: It's true in your speech.
SPEAKER_01: When you lie in your speech, you're attacking the nature and the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: Even little white lies, even little exaggerations, even at the personal level.
SPEAKER_01: When you lie, you're elevating yourself over God.
SPEAKER_01: You might think you're lying about something totally inconsequential.
SPEAKER_01: You're just telling an exaggeration that makes yourself look slightly better than you are.
SPEAKER_01: You're telling something that's just not quite true.
SPEAKER_01: But that is going to war against Providence.
SPEAKER_01: Providence is the one that gave you the family you have, providence gave you the skills you have, providence gave you the outcome of whatever event you're lying about.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you place somebody in checkers and you lose and you tell all your friends you won.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter, it's checkers.
SPEAKER_01: But you're lying about providence, which is another way of saying you're attacking God.
SPEAKER_01: You're not happy with what God providentially gave you.
SPEAKER_01: Every truth corresponds to God and his nature and his providence, so every lie is an attack on God and his holiness.
SPEAKER_01: And even white lies.
SPEAKER_01: If you've been lied about, if people have lied to you or lied about you, you recognize how harmful and ruinous it can be.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we have a saying, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if people have lied about you, you recognize that's not really true.
SPEAKER_01: People spread lies about you and it does hurt you.
SPEAKER_01: And what can you do?
SPEAKER_01: You want to defend yourself, but if somebody's lying, they're not interested in the truth, right?
SPEAKER_01: Somebody's lying about you, you can't be like, oh no, here's the actual truth.
SPEAKER_01: They don't care about the truth.
SPEAKER_01: They're lying about you, remember?
SPEAKER_01: And so all you can do is trust yourself to God and say, God knows the truth, He'll vindicate me.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where godliness is on full display.
SPEAKER_01: Like, can you trust yourself to the Lord when people are lying about you?
SPEAKER_01: This is why the Ninth Commandment and the Third Commandment are so tied together.
SPEAKER_01: Do you speak the truth?
SPEAKER_01: Do you trust Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: Do you trust God?
SPEAKER_01: Or do you lead an empty life that is filled with deception?
SPEAKER_01: If you love the truth, you're not going to bear the name of Yahweh in vain.
SPEAKER_01: The Ninth Commandment specifically bars false witness against your neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: We play all kinds of games with this, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: We're like, who really is my neighbor after all?
SPEAKER_01: Was I actually sworn in when I lied?
SPEAKER_01: Come on.
SPEAKER_01: This is in all of our speech.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we tell stories with tones that cast guilt in other people.
SPEAKER_01: We summarize long conversations in a way that makes us look good and everybody we're talking to look dumb.
SPEAKER_01: People are compulsive exaggerators.
SPEAKER_01: That's just the nature of communication.
SPEAKER_01: We lie and we exaggerate.
SPEAKER_01: What a contrast with God.
SPEAKER_01: God swears by himself.
SPEAKER_01: I think a parent of a newborn, they don't sleep much, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's funny to listen to them talk.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the husband will be like, Oh, I didn't get more than four hours of sleep last night.
SPEAKER_01: And the wife will be like, Oh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I was awake all last night and I saw you snoring a lot.
SPEAKER_01: Like, well, how could you have been awake when I saw you sleeping more?
SPEAKER_01: And the back and forth exaggerating who is up the most.
SPEAKER_01: And it's so it's it's it's like a newborn ritual, you know.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way we communicate.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, don't lie.
SPEAKER_01: Let what you say be true.
SPEAKER_01: So the first point don't fake your promises.
SPEAKER_01: Your word should be true.
SPEAKER_01: The ninth commandment compels you to speak the truth, and this is the key point, because you love the truth.
SPEAKER_01: So don't fake your promises.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, not just don't fake your promises, but secondly, don't inflate your promises.
SPEAKER_01: Don't fake them and don't inflate them.
SPEAKER_01: This is verse 34.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, I say to you, don't take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it's the throne of God, or by the earth, for it's his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it's the city of the great king.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a lot of important things happening in this verse, namely the prepositions by Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, this is the preposition by, don't make an oath by Jerusalem, and then not keep it, because you stand guilty of breaking your oath.
SPEAKER_01: Why the list of things here were people really swearing by the earth or really swearing by heaven or by Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_01: Um why does Jesus drill down on this?
SPEAKER_01: Well, understand, Jesus is talking to the Jews here, specifically a rebuke to the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Israel, who had really figured out a way to monetize their own religious hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_01: That's the bottom line with these people.
SPEAKER_01: They had a religion that really hinged on their own ethics and their own work and their own output.
SPEAKER_01: They also believed that if you swore by Yahweh's name, you were condemned.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're in a works righteousness system and you have what, to use more modern language, would be a mortal sin, and you're predisposed to commit that mortal sin, you have to figure out a way out of your condemnation.
SPEAKER_01: Like if you lie by nature, and we are all liars by nature, Genesis 6 says, that every thought of man's heart is only evil continually.
SPEAKER_01: The heart of mankind, Jeremiah says, is is altogether deceitful.
SPEAKER_01: Deceitful word there for lying.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's those are our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: So if you have a deceitful heart and you have a religion that basically teaches that if you lie by God's name, you're condemned, you have to figure out how you can just operate without standing condemned all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And so what they had constructed is a very complex system that I would call loopholes.
SPEAKER_01: Let me put the screen, uh, the verse back up on the screen again.
SPEAKER_01: If you make a vow to Yahweh, and I just talked about this verse for a little bit and focused on that means you're supposed to tell the truth, but the Jews are studying this verse and say, aha, I spy in here a prepositional phrase.
SPEAKER_01: If you make a vow to Yahweh and you break it, you're in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: But what if you make a vow towards Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: What if you made a vow around him?
SPEAKER_00: In nearby, amongst, betwixt, through overunder.
SPEAKER_01: What if you made a vow not by Yahweh, but what if you made a vow by Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_01: What if you made a vow by the temple?
SPEAKER_01: Then you break the vow, do you stand condemned?
SPEAKER_01: And you might say, well, why don't you just tell the truth all the time?
SPEAKER_01: Have you met a person before?
SPEAKER_01: That's not sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: You you're in a world where you have to vow.
SPEAKER_01: You have to say, no, this is the truth.
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes you say things that don't come to be.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's this massive case law, and some good commentaries just give pages and pages of examples of case law from the life of Christ or the centuries before Christ that regulate these kind of things.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm talking down to the little nuances here.
SPEAKER_01: Like they said, you cannot swear to the temple because the temple is so associated with Yahweh that any vow to the temple would be the same thing as vowing to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: But if you swore by the temple, that's enough like, you know, an ambiguity about which direction you're pointing that it might not be connected to God's name.
SPEAKER_01: But what if you swore by the gold on the temple?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the gold locates this to the temple.
SPEAKER_01: There's only one temple with gold in it, so the ambiguity is gone.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're trying to keep up here, you cannot swear to God and break the vow.
SPEAKER_01: You can swear by the temple and break the vow and not be condemned unless you put gold on top of the temple.
SPEAKER_01: Or what about the altar?
SPEAKER_01: Can you swear to the altar?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: The altar is where the high priest goes, and he but once a year, I mean it's a very holy place.
SPEAKER_01: But if you swore by the altar, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: But what if you swore by the sacrifice that is put on the altar?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Lotove, that's bad.
SPEAKER_01: By the sacrifice on the altar?
SPEAKER_01: No, because that locates it again right to the middle of the altar.
SPEAKER_01: So no.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus talks about this at the end of his ministry, Matthew 23.
SPEAKER_01: He circles back to this.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You guys, you're doing this.
SPEAKER_01: You're swearing by the temple, but not to the temple.
SPEAKER_01: And then you try to say, by the sacrifice on the altar.
SPEAKER_01: It's just total word games.
SPEAKER_01: You can imagine people doing this, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Invest with me, and I'll get you a 15% return.
SPEAKER_01: And the person's like, ah, I don't know about that.
SPEAKER_01: You know, really?
SPEAKER_01: Can you like?
SPEAKER_01: I promise I can.
SPEAKER_01: Why would I believe your promise?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I promise by the temple, and I promise by the city of Jerusalem, and I promise by the steps of the temple, and I promise by my grandmother's grave at the base of the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And I love my grandmother.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, that's starting to sound a little bit believable.
SPEAKER_01: It's inflating your vows.
SPEAKER_01: Inflating your vows.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus pierces through this and says, don't talk like that.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: Don't make an oath at all by heaven, for it's the throne of God.
SPEAKER_00: God rules never say, I swear by heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Who do you think owns heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Don't swear by earth.
SPEAKER_00: Because God rules over everything on earth.
SPEAKER_00: You say, I swear by the hills by the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God owns the hills by the temple as much as he owns the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Do you get that?
SPEAKER_01: You can't start to dislocate things on the earth from God to justify your vain vows.
SPEAKER_01: He owns it all.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews, by the way, you might find this interesting.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews had even developed phrases because of the Third Commandment, you weren't allowed to say Yahweh's name.
SPEAKER_01: So if you can't say Yahweh's name, how could you swear by his name anyway?
SPEAKER_01: Well, they developed substitutionary phrases.
SPEAKER_01: Like you could swear by Olifdalit, the A D in Hebrew, because those are the first two letters for the word Adonai, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You could swear by Yod He, that would stand in the place of swearing by Yahweh, because you couldn't say the name Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: So if you swore by Yod He and you broke the vow, you're condemned.
SPEAKER_01: If you swore just by Yod and you break it, you're not condemned.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, this whole system.
SPEAKER_01: And you understand that sometimes you make a sin, sometimes you make a vow and you can't keep it for reasons that are outside of your control.
SPEAKER_01: Like I promise, I'm gonna go to your birthday tomorrow, your birthday party tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: And you say, Are you really?
SPEAKER_01: And I say, I promise I'll be there.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm driving on my way there and I get in a car accident.
SPEAKER_01: Car total.
SPEAKER_01: I can't get there.
SPEAKER_01: It's not my fault.
SPEAKER_01: But I broke my vow.
SPEAKER_01: So there was a whole school of thought in Judaism that you should only swear by things that you're in control of.
SPEAKER_01: It's a fun intellectual exercise.
SPEAKER_01: Make a list of things you're in control of.
SPEAKER_01: What's number one on your list?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the head stood in for the most obvious thing you're in control of.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in control of anything in this world, it's your head.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where Jesus goes in the next verse, verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, don't even bother with the whole head thing.
SPEAKER_01: You can't make a single head on your hair white or black.
SPEAKER_01: You can't even control a hair growth on your head.
SPEAKER_01: Hot shot.
SPEAKER_01: And the Jews, by the way, had it opposite of Americans.
SPEAKER_01: Americans are like, I want to make my hair black, not gray.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews valued wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: They pursued the gray head.
SPEAKER_01: And it was this saying in Israel that you can't make your hair gray.
SPEAKER_01: It meant you can't speed up wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you want to get wiser?
SPEAKER_01: Put it back in the oven for a few years.
SPEAKER_01: There's no microwave for wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: Like it just takes time.
SPEAKER_01: You can't speed up.
SPEAKER_01: And Americans reverse it.
SPEAKER_01: We're like, I don't want the gray hair.
SPEAKER_01: Get it away.
SPEAKER_01: But the point still stands.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews can't make themselves wiser without time, and Americans can't make themselves younger with time.
SPEAKER_01: You're not in control of your head.
SPEAKER_01: It's an American promise.
SPEAKER_01: Little kids in the playground.
SPEAKER_01: I saw Superman last night.
SPEAKER_01: He flew by my window.
SPEAKER_01: No, you didn't.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_01: I promise.
SPEAKER_01: Cross my heart and hope to.
SPEAKER_01: You hope to die?
SPEAKER_01: That's terrible.
SPEAKER_01: But by the way, you hope to die.
SPEAKER_01: Let's just tease that out a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Who is in control of your life?
SPEAKER_01: God appoints the day you're born.
SPEAKER_01: God appoints the day you die.
SPEAKER_01: So don't make a promise by your own death as if you control even that.
SPEAKER_01: That's Jesus' point here.
SPEAKER_01: You don't control anything.
SPEAKER_01: You are a subject of God.
SPEAKER_01: So don't inflate your vows in order to persuade people that you're really, really telling the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, just try telling the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where he goes next.
SPEAKER_01: He says, first of all, don't fake your promises.
SPEAKER_01: Don't inflate your promises.
SPEAKER_01: And thirdly, how about this?
SPEAKER_01: Don't even make your promises.
SPEAKER_01: Let's just go back to not promising things.
SPEAKER_01: Let's just speak the truth all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 37, let what you say simply be yes or no.
SPEAKER_01: Anything more than that comes from evil.
SPEAKER_01: That's just a really good principle in life.
SPEAKER_01: It is better to let your yes be yes and your no be no than it is to try to persuade everybody that this time you really, really, really, really mean it.
SPEAKER_01: I remember, and I've I've shared this with you a few years ago.
SPEAKER_01: I remember as a parent when this epiphany happens, and you know the scene at the park where it's yeah, all the kids are in the playground and it's time to go, and it's, I know you're not parent, you're parenting for God's approval, not for the approval of men, right?
SPEAKER_01: Except like on playground time when you're calling your little kids to go home with you, and you're like, you want to be the parent that's like, okay, kids, let's go.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, yes, mama, yes, daddy, I'm coming.
SPEAKER_01: And not the parent who's like, okay, kids, let's go.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: How dare you tell me to go never?
SPEAKER_01: It's like, yikes.
SPEAKER_01: So I remember this exact scene.
SPEAKER_01: We were at the Blue Mont Park in Arlington, the little blue train slide there, you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: And I tell the kids, let's go.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we've been going to that park kind of daily for a while, and my oldest said, Can we come back tomorrow?
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, seems reasonable.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Do you promise?
SPEAKER_01: Now there are other parents around listening to this.
SPEAKER_01: Do you promise?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Yeah, I promise.
SPEAKER_01: Wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Do I promise?
SPEAKER_01: Is my word not my bond?
SPEAKER_01: Do you not trust me?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not promising anything.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not, and I'm not saying every time your kid says this, you want to get all like morbid on it and be like, you don't even know if you're gonna be alive tomorrow, son.
SPEAKER_01: But there's still a pretty good principle there somewhere that you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, as much as I'm in control of things, yes.
SPEAKER_01: My yes is my yes, and my no is my no.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I got for you.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the Essenes were a sect of Jews that lived out in the Judean wilderness during Jesus' lifetime, and they had a reputation for never vowing.
SPEAKER_01: And some Roman historians note that ironically, the word of an Essene was more valued over the word of a Pharisee, because the Pharisees would fill their speech with, I promise you by my robe and the tassel on my robe and the gold on the street over there, by that guy's sacrifice that might look at an altar, I promise you.
SPEAKER_01: And the Essenes were like, Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Which one would you rather negotiate with?
SPEAKER_01: Who would you rather believe?
SPEAKER_01: And this too is not new information.
SPEAKER_01: This also comes from the Old Testament, the same passage I put on the screen a few times now, but just go to the next verse, Deuteronomy 23, verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: If you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin.
SPEAKER_01: If you just keep your mouth shut, you won't be lying.
SPEAKER_01: You also won't be a good politician, but you shall be careful to do what is past your lips.
SPEAKER_01: And here's a very great principle.
SPEAKER_01: You've voluntarily vowed to Yahweh your God.
SPEAKER_01: You promised it with your own mouth.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's making you swear anything.
SPEAKER_01: Now, from this, don't deduce that Jesus doesn't want Christians to take vows.
SPEAKER_01: There's been, you know, denominations and people that before have said, you know, if you're a Christian, you shouldn't be sworn in in a court of law, for example, or you know, you shouldn't need your forms notarized, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: But that's just not the way the world works.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Jesus himself in Matthew 26 is going to be sworn in at his own trial.
SPEAKER_01: The high priest is going to be going to say, I adjure you, I make you make this vow.
SPEAKER_01: Are you the Savior?
SPEAKER_01: Are you the Christ?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus does not respond by saying, No, I don't take vows.
SPEAKER_01: He responds by saying, You have said so yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I am the Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And then ironically, the high priest says, What more evidence do we need?
SPEAKER_01: He made Jesus swear to tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus told the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And the high priest says, now that we've heard the truth, let's kill him.
SPEAKER_01: You recognize it's not about truth.
SPEAKER_01: The point, though, is that Jesus took the oath.
SPEAKER_01: He got sworn into trial.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a world where you need to get forms notarized at the bank.
SPEAKER_01: If you go, if you're called to testify in a trial, and they say, you know, do you swear to tell the truth to the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
SPEAKER_01: So help be God, don't say, I'm actually a Christian, so I refuse to swear to tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't play right, you know.
SPEAKER_01: No, you can take a vow at a courtroom to tell the truth and then tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: But live a life of integrity so that your yes is your yes, and your no is your no.
SPEAKER_01: The main takeaway from all of this is that if you love the truth, you will love God.
SPEAKER_01: And if you love God, you will love the truth.
SPEAKER_01: This is why Jesus can say a few times in his ministry that if you've seen the Father, you've seen him.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, No one comes to the Father except through me.
SPEAKER_01: He says in John 14, verse 6, I am the way and I am the truth.
SPEAKER_01: So if you know God, you know truth.
SPEAKER_01: And if you do not know Jesus, you cannot know God or truth.
SPEAKER_01: John 8, verse 31, Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, If you abide in my word, you are my disciples.
SPEAKER_01: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
SPEAKER_01: Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
SPEAKER_01: The war of truth is the war of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Peter, when when Jesus was inside the courtroom and the high priest said, Do you swear to tell the truth?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, You've called me the Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's just as you said, Outside somebody else was taking an oath.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know this?
SPEAKER_01: Outside Peter was in the courtyard.
SPEAKER_01: And the little girl said, Do you know Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Peter said, No.
SPEAKER_01: And the girl said, You're speaking like you have a Galilean accent.
SPEAKER_01: You're not hiding it very well.
SPEAKER_01: You obviously know everybody from Galilee knows Jesus at this point.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta know him.
SPEAKER_01: And Peter remember says, I swear to you, I don't even know him.
SPEAKER_01: And others start gathering around.
SPEAKER_01: And Peter, it says, invokes a curse on himself and swears an oath that he doesn't even know who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: It's so sad.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, Jesus goes to his death, betrayed.
SPEAKER_01: Pilate says, What is truth?
SPEAKER_01: Nails him to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus bears the penalty for Peter's sin.
SPEAKER_01: He bears the penalty for our sin.
SPEAKER_01: He forgives us of our sin.
SPEAKER_01: So we don't need to live in the world where we say, I need to make the vow this way and not that way, so if I break it, I I don't lose my salvation.
SPEAKER_01: That's the world where so much of this comes out of.
SPEAKER_01: If I make the wrong vow, I forfeit eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: Now our eternal life is secure through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who forgives us of our sins.
SPEAKER_01: Having been nailed to the cross for the sins of lying, the sins of bearing false witness, Jesus bears all those sins in his own body.
SPEAKER_01: Peter went away and wept bitterly.
SPEAKER_01: But of course, after his resurrection, Jesus calls Peter himself, hugs him, loves him, restores him, commissions him, and sends him.
SPEAKER_01: We have lying lips, like Isaiah says.
SPEAKER_01: God takes the coal, cleanses our lips through the death of Christ, and sends us into the world to preach the good news to others.
SPEAKER_01: God, we're grateful that you have forgiven us of our sins and you've caused us to draw near to you.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we know that to love you is to love truth, and to love truth is to love you.
SPEAKER_01: We do live in a world that plays word games.
SPEAKER_01: We don't want to play those games.
SPEAKER_01: We want to be known as those who have the truth.
SPEAKER_01: It's such a scarce commodity in our world.
SPEAKER_01: It is supply and demand.
SPEAKER_01: The world has precious little truth.
SPEAKER_01: We we have a corner on the market as Christians.
SPEAKER_01: We're so thankful for that.
SPEAKER_01: Help us be bold ambassadors, truth tellers.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thankful for my friends that are here today that I know as truth tellers.
SPEAKER_01: I'm thankful for people in our congregation that I know are truth tellers that I can trust them.
SPEAKER_01: We're thankful for the forgiveness that comes to us through Christ when we fail to tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Not because of any kind of virtue and truth, but rather because you are the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And we love you, and we want to speak about you, and we want to speak things that are in accordance with your word and your will and your beauty.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we want to live, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: By your grace, we have to do so.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of Christ we pray.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.
SPEAKER_01: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_01: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.