Thus Sayeth The Lord - Do Not Bear False Witness

In this message on the Ninth Commandment, Chris explores the deeper meaning behind "You shall not bear false witness," showing how God calls His people not only to avoid lying but to protect one another's integrity. Through Scripture, stories, and personal experiences, he challenges us to practice honesty, resist gossip, and honor our neighbors with truth. 

Transcript

 Good evening. For those of you I don't know, like Sam said, my name is Chris. I'm one of the ministers over at Green Tree here in Rolla. My family and I have lived in Rolla since 2004. We moved here, just letting a little bit about me. I have three boys, probably most of you in this room are around one of their ages. Our oldest just graduated from college. He lives down in the Joplin area. He's a youth minister down there and our middle one goes to school in Springfield. And our youngest just left to go to school down in Joplin. And so we have officially entered into that land of empty nesters. Are any of you, show of hands, are any of you the youngest in your family? When you left, did you do that thing to your parents where they became empty nesters? Yeah, be nice to them. They might call too much or text too much or worry about too much, be nice to them. Because it's a weird transition for us when we get to that point in our lives. When there's just two of you in the house and you're not sure what to do. Because you used to always do this stuff with a bunch of kids. It's good. It's what's supposed to happen. That's kind of where we're at this point in our lives. And I guess I'll say what all old people say is someday it'll happen to you too. And then you'll understand what I'm saying. Sam asked me to come and talk to you tonight about this ninth commandment of the 10, if you want to look next to this chapter 20 and kind of skim ahead, see what that ninth command is. I want to tell you a story. You may know this story. I actually thought everybody knew this story. I was talking to Shandi's husband Ben and much to my shock, he didn't know this story. Ben is a little younger than I am. You might think he's a little old, but I was surprised that he hadn't heard this story. It was a story we were told when I was kids. When I was a kid at Glendale Elementary School and our teachers would tell us stories about different heroes that we were supposed to copy and emulate in this world. And one of the people that they would tell us stories about was George Washington, father of our country. And they told us this story about when George was six years old and his father bought him a gift. He bought him an axe, a hatchet. Do you mind know this story? Okay. Well, make fun of Ben next time you see him because Ben didn't know this story. Again, I was shocked that he hadn't heard this story. And as the story goes, dad gives George this hatchet and George as a playful little boy is out messing around with his hatchet and he chops down his father's cherry tree and his father is upset. He's mad. He loves this tree. And he asks, "Who chopped down my cherry tree?" And George Washington famously said, "I cannot tell why I chopped down your cherry tree." So impressed by the young boy's honesty, George's dad wasn't mad. He thought his boy was worth more than the cherry tree and it was this great story that they told us as kids to instill in us values like honesty, integrity, tell the truth. And it was quite the shock when I got a little bit older and I learned something. You know what I learned? That story's not true. They don't think that ever happened. It's a myth. Somebody made it up about George Washington and it's kind of ironic, isn't it? That the story that they told us as kids to teach us about the value of honesty and truthfulness -- that story was a lie. The ninth commandment was to say, "Yeah, you should not bear false witness against thy neighbor. It does not say thou shalt not lie." I mean, that would be direct, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Is there a difference? What is the difference between simple lying and very false witness against your neighbor? I want to take you to Proverbs chapter 6. I want to read a list there. There are a list of seven things that God does not like. It actually says that these things are detestable to Him. It begins in verse 16 of Proverbs chapter 6. It says, "There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to Him. The first is haughty eyes. The second, a lying tongue, seems relevant to our discussion. Tonight, God thinks a lying tongue is a detestable thing." Tell the truth. But He goes on. He says, "Hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies." What's the difference between a false witness who pours out lies and a lying? A tongue. That sounds a little redundant, doesn't it? And then it ends with a person who stirs up conflict in the community. What is the difference between a lying tongue? I mean, I think that one's kind of self-explanatory. Anytime you lie, that's a lying tongue. But a false witness who pours out lies, that seems to be maybe a little more specific. The old nickel and a coin argument, you know, is a nickel a coin? Well, yeah, nickel's a coin, is a coin a nickel? Not necessarily. You understand? There's a broader category there that includes other things. And I think this false witness thing is a specific kind of lie within the category of lies. And the nickel and coin analogy, the false witness, would be the nickel and lying in general, would be all coins. And we go back to the ninth commandment. It says, "Faults testimony," a shot, not give, "Faults testimony," or bear, "Faults witness against your neighbor." It's that same kind of language, a little different than just a plain old lying tongue. Now, making no mistake about it, God doesn't want you to lie, period. It says that in Proverbs 6. He hates that, you know, so we can't lie, period. But it seems like this ninth commandment is designated towards a specific kind of lie. That maybe is a little more serious than just a regular old lie. Like, if we're talking about the sin cupcake that is lying, this would be like the icing on the cupcake. It would make it a little extra bad. Not good, as in the case of most icing, this would make it bad. But it would kind of add to the level of offense. And I think, when I think of false testimony, or bearing false witness, that sounds like a certain arena in this world, a certain environment, a certain setting, what do you think of when you hear that, a false witness, somebody bearing false witness, false testimony, court, yeah. I think what God is getting after with the Israelites in these 10 commandments is this system has to work. And for this system to work, you have to tell the truth about each other. And notice it says false witness against who, your neighbor. And when we go into the New Testament, who's the Jesus, say, your neighbor is? Pretty much everybody, right? There is no like just the guy next door. It's pretty much everybody. You better be careful what you say about each other. And lying bad enough as it is, when you add a legal element to your lie, when you make your lies about someone else, you've sunk even lower. You've sunk even lower. You really ought not do that to one another. You know, it's one thing, if George, that story had been true and he lied to his father and said, I didn't chop down the cherry tree, but it would be an extra level of Ick to it if he had blamed it on his brother, wouldn't it? Do you understand where I'm going? Against your neighbor, like when you lie against someone else, how do we do that? How do we bear false witness? Wasn't that long ago, I saw a story come across my Facebook feed and it had some pictures to it, and the pictures were gross. And I'm still immature enough that I was drawn to that, you know, these gross pictures. And what the pictures were, it said it was from the World Sunburn Championships. Does anybody seen this story that's been spread? Yeah, you can imagine, like there were people, they showed them out there on this beach with like, just be red skin and like bubbles building like where they had gotten, you know, blisters from being out in the sun and it just looked awful and it's like, why on earth would anybody compete in such a thing, it really was like evidence that, man, we're really, maybe some people are beyond hope, right, that they would participate in that. And so just because I thought it was funny, I thought I was, ugh, just such an eye catcher, I hit the little share button and I shared it and somebody commented a little later, hey, this is fake, this isn't true, these are AI-generated photos. And pardon me, said, well, thank goodness, I really had lost hope in humanity when I saw this. But the other part of me said, well, I better hurry up and delete that because I don't want to share things that aren't true. And you could say that's funny and that's harmless because I didn't, you know, it was made up, it wasn't really about anybody. How many times do we hear things about somebody? And it gets shared, maybe on social media, maybe in the hallways, maybe in the dorms, you know, I heard that so and so. Or, I mean, the way people are wired in this world today, it's not that we've done our research to find out if it's true, we want to believe that it's true because we don't like the people that it's about and so we share it. And we haven't done our research and you know what that is? When it turns out to be not true, that's false witness against your neighbor. You're documenting it, you're putting a stamp on it, sharing it, it's against someone else. And that grieves, God, when we do that to one another. I think of another element not to say that against your neighbor part of it, but the kind of the false witness, the legal ease, you know, I've had different jobs not here, but before I came here when we had to sign contracts. And I remember I was debating like whether or not to sign another contract for a year because we had to do this on a yearly basis. And the comment was said to me, well, I guess no big deal if you sign it and you don't actually stay for the whole remainder that people break those all the time. That really, like you're giving your word, you're putting your signature on it. I mean, Jesus talks about that, doesn't he let your guest be us, you know, we know like I'm not really supposed to give my word to that extent, but if I do, I better mean it. You know, and this idea of giving false witness, I also think back to when I was in college, it wasn't that long ago that I was your old age. But before I talk about what happened in college, I won't talk about when I was in high school. How many of you in high school had your semester end before Christmas break? Did your semester end before Christmas break, like in high school, just like it is in college, you finished up, you took finals, went home, Christmas break, and then you came back, started a new break. My high school wasn't that way. We took finals like two weeks after we got back from Christmas break. And if you think that sounds terrible, it was. Because you know what we had over Christmas break? Homework. And lots of it, because teachers would feel like, man, you got two weeks to get it done. And I remember my freshman year, my English teacher, Mrs. Stone, decided it was a good idea for us to read the book, Ivan Ho. Anybody in school have to read Ivan Ho? Anybody? If so, could you tell me what it's about? Because I don't know. I was supposed to, but I don't. We always got to watch the movies after we did anybody else do that in high school. You'd watch the movie after you read the book. I was genuinely curious when we got to the time to watch the movie because I had no idea what we had just read. I didn't understand it. I was a good student, but English was my subject that I was not good at. And it was the reading. I was not a fast reader. I could not keep up. And we would read. And over Christmas break, Mrs. Stone said, I want you guys to read Ivan Ho. He was like, well, how many check? All of it. I wanted to enjoy my break. And so I was Christmas singing. And I was new year'sing. And we got to where there was just a couple days left in break. And I realized I'm not read any of this book. And I better get started. And so I'm starting to read. And I'm not understanding it. I can't really read that fast. And anybody ever do the start reading a little faster. You start reading a little faster. You skim. You skim. You get it. You get it. And I, I mean, I busted. I worked as hard as I could. This like a 500 page book. I maybe skimmed up to about page 200. And we had to go back to school. And there was a real, sure fire way that the teachers found out whether or not we had done the reading or not. You know how that was? They gave us a test. They gave us a test over the book. I even know who that was a bad, that was a bad day for me. Like I still have trauma over that test. I didn't know the names. I didn't understand a word. It couldn't even have been multiple choice. It was like filling the blank. Like I got no shot. When I went to college, we had to read even more than we did in high school. And that was my biggest struggle in college was to keep up with all the reading. And every semester, every semester, I told myself, self, this is the year you're going to get ahead. And by ever say things like that, you know what those promises mean, don't you? I would tell myself, this is the year I'm going to get ahead. I'm going to, I'm going to stay on top of my reading. I'm going to get all of it done two or three days into the semester I was behind. And, and I just couldn't keep up with the reading. I was a good student, but I had a hard time keeping up with all the stuff we're supposed to read for every class. And, and our college professors were a little different than Mrs. Stone was who gave us a quiz like every single day over what we read. In college, they didn't give us quizzes over the books that we were assigned to read. They did something even dirty here. Do you know what, do you know what our professors would do? They would give us a form. And on our honor, we had to say how much we read. And, and you knew, it was clearly marked on there, what percentage of year grade that would be. Hmm, that was tough. Now, the, the easy solution is what? Be responsible, do all the reading, right? Then it's not a moral conundrum. But when you're not a fast reader, you don't get done. When the end of the semester comes and you are doing that skim thing that you were doing during Ivanhoe, and you haven't read it all, you've skimmed just to get to about 70% of the reading for the semester. And you know that if you had an A minus, you're probably looking at a B. Or if you had a B, you might get a C. Man, that was, that was dirty pool for our professors to test us like that. And every year, I'd be tempted. And I knew people that did, I knew people that lied. And I will confess you, it was tempting. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. And, and, and I put down, you know, I read this, and I remember once I had a church history class. And, and the professor in there, his name was Dr. Ray. And he was awesome. And I love church history. And I did really well at it. But I, I didn't finish the reading. Man, that stuff was hard. I mean, we're reading like ancient documents from like the second century. And it's written in a different language, it's been translated in English. I couldn't follow that at all. And, and I tried. And I couldn't get it. And I got to where I'm skimming at the end of the semester. And I get to about my 60 or 70% and I filled that out, put that down. And, and you know what he did? He called me. This was before cell phones. He called me at my apartment. And he said, Chris. Yeah. He said, this is Dr. Ray. And I was like, oh, like it took me a second. I wouldn't expect my professor to call me at my, my apartment. And he said, hey, I've just been working on semester grades. And I need to talk to you about something. Yeah. He goes, what's your reading report? He said, did you really only read that much? I said, well, I mean, yeah. I mean, what would he have thought? If I said, oh, no, no, wait, I was wrong. I really read like 95%. I mean, he wouldn't believe that. And, and, and he asked me again, are you sure? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Like, why would I, why would I have read it all and told you I didn't? Like, that makes no sense. And, and he said, well, you know, you were one of the best students this year. And you did all so good on the test. And you're not going to get an A because you're reading report. And that's the only reason. And I said, well, you know, I, I'm kind of used to that. Said, it's happened to me before. And he goes, are you sure that you didn't read more than that? And I said, no, I, I didn't. I don't know what to tell you. And, and he was okay. And he, he hung up. And I all phone. I told my roommate. And he said, who was that? I said, it was, you know, it was my professor. And I told him what was in. And he said, you are such an idiot. And I said, what? And he goes, he was wanting you to like bargain with him. Like, tell him you'll read it in the next week or two. I didn't think of that. I said, I should have had you on the call. But, but understand, like, when it comes to school, when it comes to your workplace, when you sign your name, when you put it in writing, that means something. And if it's not true, that's false witness. And, and, and it is one thing to give false witness just to help yourself. That's, that's not good. But if you give false witness that hurts someone else, again, we're, we're climbing a ladder. Maybe it'd be better to say we're descending a staircase. Worse, worse, worse. Don't do that. Honesty, integrity. No things matter. I mentioned, you know, I'm married with three boys. My wife and I next month will be our 25th wedding anniversary. And, yesterday, I went to, well, thank you. I appreciate that very much. Yesterday, I went to work on my surprise gift for my wife on the, on our anniversary. I'm still in a little bit of sticker shock from that experience. What I decided to get her, I was like, wow, I didn't know it was going to be that, but I've already committed. And so, she better enjoy that. Next month, I kid about that part, kind of. I really am a little bit in shock, you know, when I did that. But it's exciting. It's a big time for us. And I think back to when we were dating. And we were not yet engaged. But I think we got engaged maybe like a month after this story happened. And so, we were pretty serious. You know, you understand the phase I'm talking about in a relationship. Like, you know, you're probably kind of, this is it, but you haven't officially said this is the one yet. You just haven't put like a stamp on it, the ring on it, but it's, it's close. And so, that's where we were in our relationship. It was serious enough that she decided that it would be nice for us to go out to Nebraska where her parents lived so that I could meet them and spend the week with them. She asked me what I thought of that idea and it sounds great. I was really nervous. I mean, I liked her and I wanted them to like me. I mean, does anybody enjoy meeting the future in-laws? That's always an awkward experience. You enjoyed that? I know your father in law. I'm not sure. I believe that, but um. But we were, we were out and we had gone to this thing. She was, she lived out in Western Nebraska and we had done some different stuff and she was kind of showing me where she grew up. And we had plans that night. We were supposed to have dinner at her parent's house with some other people and it was kind of a big deal and it was important for me. I'm, I'm kind of a stickler about being on time for things and it was important to me to be on time when to make a good impression. Didn't want upset her parents because I thought they're not going to blame their sweet daughter if we're not out there going to blame me. And, and so we're driving along. She's driving because she knows the area and we're on the highway. She goes 65 centimeters an hour and a deer ran across the front of her car and she's like, oh, look, you know, and she looks to kind of follow this deer and as she looks to follow this deer, a second deer runs into the side of her car and it would not be accurate to say that my wife hit the deer. It would be more accurate to say the deer hit my wife. The dent was in the side of the car like how dumb is that animal that it runs into the side of a moving vehicle. But that's what happened. And, and it really frazzled her. I mean, it might frazzle you if a deer runs into the side of your car on 65 miles an hour and she comes to a stop and she pulls over on the shoulder. And, and the car ran fine. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I was not traumatized by a dead deer. My wife was. And, and she asked me to get out of the car and to go check on the deer. And I thought to myself, I'm pretty sure I know how that deer is. But she wanted me to go check on it. I did not want to do this. I said we got to go see your parents. The stuff happens all the time. I mean, how many people haven't seen a dead deer on the side of the road? It's not that big a deal. We're just then the herd. It's a good thing. And she wants me to go back there and check on it. And then I said, well, are you at least going to like back up the car? I mean, think how long it takes to slow down to a stop when you're going 65 or 70 miles an hour. It was like a half mile back. And I said, well, you at least back up so I don't have to walk the whole way. She said, no, no, I don't. We don't have time. I think this will make it take longer. Just go look at the deer. So I'm not in a great mood. And I get out of the car and I walk a half mile. I don't know. And sure enough, I see in the ditch. There's Bambi laying dead, you know, tongue out of his mouth on the side of the road. And I thought, oh great, we're never going to get out of here. We're going to be late. We're supposed to go see your parents. This is ridiculous. I've already dedicated more time and my life to this situation than I ever wanted to. So I began my trek back to our vehicle. My wife to be still has not backed up to come and get me. She makes me walk the five miles back to the car, whatever it was. And I'm not in the best mood. And I get in the car and she asks me the million dollar question. She says, is it dead? And I looked the love of my life right in the eye and said, nope, let's go eat. And she surprised me when she said this because I thought, you know, I guessed what she wanted to hear. And I thought she wanted to know that deer was okay, that she hadn't killed it. Do you know what she wanted to know? Her next question was, you mean it's suffering? She wanted to know it was a good clean kill. That she had put it out of its misery. See, that's a problem when you don't just tell the truth and you guess what other people want to hear. Sometimes you guess wrong. And that's where I was. I'd started digging myself down in a little bit of a hole. So I thought to myself, self? How do you get out of this? So I did what any young self-respecting good man would do. I lied to her again. When she asked if it's suffering, I said, no, it was out there playing in the field. I said that other deer that had ran across. I said, I think they reunited and I saw them running together and playing. And she looks at me like, how on earth is that possible? Do you know how fast I was going when that deer hit us? Yeah, let's go eat. I said, let's go eat a lot. She kept wanting to ask more questions and I dug and I dug and I liked her a lot in that story. It's a long time ago. And finally, I got so flummox, I was so fresh, I just wanted to go eat with her parents. I said, fine, it's dead. D, and I did, I spelled it. D, A, D. Are you happy? And do you know what my girlfriend at the time, my soon-to-be bride, said to me when I finally told her the truth? She said, she had the audacity to ask me, are you being serious? Now why would she ask me that? Why would she ask that? You can say it about me. Why does she ask that? Because I was a liar. I had lied to her several times already in that story. I had a credibility problem. I had a credibility problem. And you know, it's a terrible thing. When we're not honest, when we don't tell the truth, when we lie, we give false testimony. When we lie to hurt others, all that thing is really bad. And one of the things that's really bad about it, people can't trust us. And you know, it really didn't feel good when the girl that I thought I was going to marry, and I did marry, it really didn't feel good when that person didn't trust me. But you know what? There's an even bigger consequence when you lie. There's a scripture. There's a few scriptures that keep me awake at night, that haunt me a little bit. You ever find a scripture that does that to you? Like, ooh, that sounds serious. One of those is Isaiah chapter 52 verse 5. In that verse Isaiah, God is speaking through him to the people of Judah who are in exile. Babylonians have exiled them, and the way people's worldview worked back then was you went to war with your army against another country in their army, and you had your God, and they had their God. And whoever won, well, that's who's God was the biggest and the strongest. And when God punished Judah and allowed them to go into exile, what do you think the Babylonians thought of Israel's God? They mocked him. They fun of him. And Isaiah chapter 52 verse 5, God lays this charge against the people of Judah. He says, all day long, my name is constantly blasphemed. They're making fun of me. They think I'm a joke, and it's your fault. That's rough, isn't it? And Paul in Romans chapter 2, he quotes that verse, he references that verse Isaiah chapter 52, he's talking to a church that is split along this racial divide, this Jude Gentile thing. In chapter 1, he's talking to the Gentiles. And you know, we do conflict resolution, it will different now. Like, if I see two people fight, it's like, you're good, you're good. Let's all get together. Paul, you all stink. You all stink. Stop, stop acting like you don't. And in chapter 1, he tells the Gentiles, you stink. Chapter 2, he tells the Jews, you stink. And in chapter 3, we have that great verse. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Jew and Gentile, there is no difference. You all stink. And one of the things that he levels at the Jewish contingent of that church in Romans chapter 2, is he quotes this verse from Isaiah chapter 52, and he says, all day long, God's name is blaspheme among the Gentiles because of you. Yikes. That people would think less and say things about the Almighty because of me. I don't want that. Do you want that? You know, it is a terrible thing. When we aren't honest enough, when we aren't straight shooter enough, when we don't have enough integrity that people don't trust us, but it is a far, far greater tragedy when they don't trust God because of us. John chapter 14, Jesus talking to his disciples, said, I am the way and the truth and the life. Now, it would have been perfectly accurate for Jesus to say, I tell the truth. That's not what he said. He said, I am the truth. It's his essence. It is his core being. It is his character. So much so that in Hebrews chapter 6, we are told it is impossible. It is impossible for God to lie. He's that honest. He's that truthful. And you contrast that with John chapter 8, when Jesus says about the devil, he is a liar and he is the father of all lies. And when he lies, he speaks his native language. I am the way, the truth and the life. He is the liar and the father of lies. Whose language are we going to speak? Who will we represent with our words? You see, these rules are not just about your integrity. They're not just about your reputation. They're also about his. I'm not always sure why. That Jesus Christ has state his reputation on us, on us. We get to bear his name. We're supposed to go out and speak his language and his language is the truth. Who do you work for? Who do you work for? Again, it is a terrible thing. A terrible thing if they don't trust us. But how much worse if they don't trust God because of us? Now, shall not bear false goodness. The truth matters because the God that we serve is the truth. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for forgiving us and we confess. We don't always get it right. I mean, I've tried to be transparent about it. I haven't always told the truth in my life. Sometimes I've got it right. Sometimes I've got it wrong and we thank you for second chances. But Father, may we get it right because we want to witness for you. We want to represent you. We want people to see your Son in us. And they can only see Him in us if we're people of truth. So Jesus may my pray, Amen.