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Alright. Well, if you guys have your Bibles, let's go ahead and pull those out this morning. If you don't already have it out, or just uh turn on your smartphone and open up your Bible app. I heard somebody the other day say that uh they grew up in a church where their pastor would always say it. He loved the sound of Bible pages turning. It was one of the sweetest sounds to his ears. And now he says, I love the glow of all the faces in the room. So basically we have chin transitioned people. Uh but if you have a hard copy of the Bible, a paper copy, uh pull that out. Uh there's also some around the seats uh that you might be sitting in if you need one. And if you don't own a Bible, you can download it from uh online. The Bible app is a free app. It's a great resource. There's great reading plans there. But also uh we have some in the seats around you. If you need one of those, feel free to take it as a gift from us to you. Okay. So before we jump straight into the text, uh I just want to remind you of a couple things. First off, if you did not get a worship guide when you came in the door, uh you can lift your hand, and we actually have uh some ushers at the back. Charlie's back there. He would love to hand you one if you need to take notes or want the reading plan for the week or even know how to get connected. There's a few few hands there. Okay. Um secondly, if you happen to be on the left side of the uh rows, if you would reach down, there's a black pad there, just to call the connection pad. We just use that as a way to know who's with us. Um, and so that's for both regular attenders uh and visitors, guests, and so just fill that out. That just keeps us in the loop on uh who's with us on a weekly basis, and we can follow up with those of you who uh who are new, uh not to like stalk you or anything like that, but just to simply say, hey, thanks for being our guest. And also if you happen to be a guest, just so I don't forget, on your way out today at the connection point, my left, your right, uh, we have a small gift for you just to say thanks for being our guest today. Okay? Now, we live in a world uh that is filled with deception, filled with lies, right? You agree? Okay, good deal. Uh we live in a world uh of fake news, we live in a world of scandal, we live in a world of a place where uh people tell lies, they bend the truth, they twist the truth, they embellish the truth, they exaggerate, they do all these things. And I'm saying they, I mean we, right? Because this morning, the truth of the matter is, and as we go through this message today, um we don't have to deflect the reality that as human beings, we naturally struggle with being truthful, a hundred percent honest all the time. Amen? Amen just means I agree, okay? And one pastor once said, you either say amen or ouch. So you can choose which one, right? But that's it, that's the truth. This morning, we are all by nature deceivers. And it's easy to see in other people's lives, it's harder to see in our own. Here at Point Community Church, we don't try to put on any kind of masks or play any games. We all have issues. And if you stick around, if you're a guest and you stick around us very long, you're gonna discover we have issues, okay? Um, but we know that in Christ, God is making us new, he's helping us address those issues, and and one of those issues is dishonesty, struggling with telling the truth, being truthful with others, however you want to say that. And we struggle with that. And in the text this morning, we're gonna hit this head on, but I was thinking even this week, it's funny to me uh as I think about the different ways this shows up in my own life. Okay, now um one of the things that happens is uh I grew up playing athletics and and and did all kinds of different sports. And and one of the things that we've noticed is that my athletic buddies uh that grew up playing sports, as they get older, uh their 40 times continue to drop. Um and and their weight, their their bench press maxes continue to increase. And and their uh their what their team actually succeeded in or did accomplish continues to be bigger than what it actually was. And and they have people uh on their teams who were way better than what they actually were. And why is that? You know, because we get to talking as a group of guys and we start to just, you know, we kind of just drop that 40 time a little bit. Yeah, they might have ran like a 4'7, but now they ran a 4'5, you know, when they were in high school, right? It's just this is the nature some of you guys don't even know what I'm talking about. That's okay. Um that that's for that crowd, okay? And so I'm a fisherman by nature, and I can't tell you, you know, we always joke about the fisherman stories, like he was he was this big, right? Um, and we talk about how big the fish were, because we have this desire to embellish, to exaggerate. Um, there's different ways that that comes out. Telling uh someone or something about something that you recently purchased, I know none of y'all ever do this, but sometimes you get buyer's guilt, and then you you paid something for an item, maybe it was a vehicle, maybe it was a house, maybe it's even a piece of clothing, and then somebody asks you about it and you feel a little bit embarrassed, and so instead of telling the truth, you know, it's like it might have been 20% off, and you're like, oh, but it was 30% off, you know. And like we just kind of add a little 10% extra to it, or it might have been $25, oh man, it was $19.99. It was awesome. Uh, and so we tend to like tweak the truth because we don't want people to know what we actually paid, or we want it sound a little bit better, maybe to search uh to kind of you know help our own conscience with that uh purchase uh that we have. So some of you guys maybe resonate with that, have experienced that, have done that, right? Maybe this week. Um example three, uh, just it's it's crazy how sometimes I like I love statistics, but one thing I've noticed is that with statistics we'll inflate them, right? So it might have been like, well, there's 70% of the people do this, and just because you're trying to make a point, it's like, well, 75% of the people do this, right? Or maybe it was uh you were in a in a place and there was a there was a large group of people there, and maybe there was 2,000, and you're saying, yeah, like there's 5,000 people there. You know, we we find ways to inflate things to make a point to drive a home, uh what we want people to see or perceive about us or about situations or circumstances, and we're really no different than every other human being that's walked on the planet, okay? Maybe in ways we've gotten complicated or more complex in how we actually embellish the truth. I mean, people on Facebook and social media, they say things all the time and twist and kind of put things out there that aren't fully true. Sometimes we withhold parts of the story to make a point. You guys know that not telling the whole truth is really a form of deception, right? And so we do that and we have that in us. And in Matthew chapter 5, verse 33, as we continue on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, uh, Jesus gets to this section. It's now the fourth block where he says, You have heard it said, dot, dot, dot. And this one today, we've covered so far, uh, we've we've worked our way through um the issue of anger or murder. Even if we talked about that, we've talked about uh sexual purity, we talked about marriage and divorce, and today we're talking about truthfulness. Okay? Now, I want to make sure you remember that as we talk about these topics, these behavioral issues, the Sermon on the Mount is not just this message from Jesus that was designed to uh to just to just help people conform to a pattern of behaviors and just to be good people. Now, don't get me wrong, if if we actually lived the way that the Sermon on the Mount lays out, I mean, we would be awesome people. But what he's saying is that this is actually the normative way for the people of God's kingdom. Christ came to preach the kingdom. He came to inaugurate the fact that he is king over all and that his people follow him. They obey him, they they live like him. We should hopefully, as Christians, if you are a Christian, and I don't assume that every person in this room is a Christian. In fact, if you're not a Christian, if you're not a Christ follower, a child of God, however you want to say that, if you've never put your trust in Jesus, I'm glad you're here. You're welcome here. It's a safe place to wrestle with questions. In fact, we would hope that if you hear something that you struggle with or don't really like, like, come talk to us. We'd love to sit down and talk. Not to argue, but to talk it out. Because the truth is, is we're all in process and we live in a culture that's very biblically illiterate. Many people who talk about the Bible and make great claims about the Bible but have never actually read it. People who make claims about what Christianity is based on what the churches do or don't do. Hey, and listen, if you gauge Christianity just by what you see in Christians, you're gonna be sorely disappointed because we're not perfect people, right? But we are called to be kingdom people, and hopefully, over the course of our lives, increasingly our lives look more and more like what Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount. And specifically the very first thing that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, which is blessed are the poor in spirit. We're gonna keep coming back to that because this is the key to the whole Sermon on the Mount. If you don't think that you need God, if you think you are all fine and dandy without God, you're never gonna actually be able to live the way that Christ has called us to live, because that is the starting point to say, I'm spiritually bankrupt, I need God. I need God to rescue me, I need him to save me, I need him to help me. Or I'm gonna be stuck as an angry, right, impure, frustrated, lying person the rest of my life. But in Christ, that is not who we have to be. It's not as that's not who we are, in fact. So, let me read these this section of scripture from Matthew chapter 5 to you. And here's what it says: Verse 33. Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, you must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord. But I tell you, don't take an oath at all, either by heaven, because it is God's throne, or by the earth, because it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great king. Neither should you swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. But let your word yes be yes, and your no be no. Anything more than this is from the evil one. Now I want to dig into this text, but the question as we dig into this text is are we liars? Do we deceive? And why do we do that, right? Now we're gonna come back to that in a minute. But he's Jesus starts his section here by saying, Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, you must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord. Um Jesus did not say, and we've mentioned this previously, he did not say, it is written. Because he's summarizing the Old Testament passages that speak to this. And in fact, throughout the Old Testament, specifically in the law, we find that what Jesus is saying here is accurate. Like in Deuteronomy chapter 22, you can go and read, and it says, Don't make an oath. If you do make an oath, keep your oath. God, keep your oath. If you make an oath, keep follow through, even if it's hard, right? There's proverbs about this. It's talking about people keeping their word, following through. We ought to be people of follow-through. I'm just gonna be real honest this morning. As a dad, I have failed at this a lot. But my kids, I come home and they say, Hey dad, can we do this? And I'm like, sure. And I just say that flippantly. And then the end of the day happens and we don't. And my kids are like, Hey, dad, you said we were gonna do blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, uh, I did, didn't I? Um, sorry. And so I end up finding myself saying things sometimes like, sure, or yep, or and I tend to be a yes person that moves to no. Some of you guys are no people that have to be moved to yes, but I'm kind of a yes person that moves to no because I want to be, you know, I want to be uh like fun and exciting, and and I want people to be happy, so which we'll come back to in a minute. And so I'll say yes, but then not follow through. That's not keeping an oath, right? It's not keeping keeping my my word. But even more than that, Jesus gets into this in his second verse here that we'll talk about. But before we get there, what were these oaths anyway? Why was Jesus talking about these oaths? Well, remember that part of the crowd that was listening to Jesus' teaching were these Pharisees, these religious leaders. And what they had gotten really, really good at is they'd gotten really good at making these elaborate worded commitments or statements or declarations that looked and sound really impressive, but they were truthfully like just hollow in terms of the actual follow-through and what they stood for, because these guys were all about the impression and how that they could paint a picture of their image that they wanted uh people around them to see. They were forms of words designed to impress. They weren't indications that the person swearing uh the oath had any power over the things that the oath actually mentioned. It was using swear words to impress, so to produce acceptance of things in relation to the oath, when in fact this was relationally uh not true. It was, it was they were phonies. They were trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the people that they were uh making these oaths in front of. And not only that, but notice that Jesus gives these four different things. If you kind of heard that when I was reading through it, where he tends to he's speaking about four different things that they swear, they swore by. And why? Because they had levels of truthfulness. So, and not there, there's certain things that, well, this is like important, so we want to be like truthful to this degree, or this degree, or this degree, or this degree. And we still have that in the world today, right? People say things like, I swear to God. They'll say things like that, I swear on my mom's grave. I swear, I mean, this they say random things, like trying to intensify that they're actually telling the truth. But Jesus' words to us, as we see here, are you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. Just tell the truth. And if people are in the kingdom of God, if people as Christ followers, we can tell the truth. And we're gonna keep talking about why this morning we can tell the truth. It's interesting to me that um we see throughout the scripture different pictures of people who struggle to follow through and to tell the truth and to do what they were said, or or uh even uh people who um you know embellish the truth or exaggerate the truth. We're not, again, alone in this. They're all through the Bible. I mean, even Abraham, Father Abraham had many sons, right? Some of you guys know the song. He's he's this huge figure in the Old Testament, and he's considered the father of the Jewish nation. God chooses him, sets him apart. And did you guys know that when his family they went into a particular area, a geography, and the leaders there took his wife, and they asked, Is this your wife? And he said, No, it's my sister. And he even told his wife to tell him she was his sister. Okay? So even the guy who we look to and say, This guy is so important in the Bible. He was chosen by God to be God's father to a nation that was going to bless all the earth, and yet he lied. He deceived. Jacob, just a few generations away, was known as a deceiver, right? We could go through the entire Bible. David deceived over his issue with Bathsheba. He was the greatest king. He was he was a king after God's own heart, yes, yet he deceived. Peter, who said he would never deny Christ three times. He would never deny Christ anyway. Jesus said he would deny him three times. And he did, and every time he denied him, it's least to the third particular one when he said, I don't know him, it says that he swore. I promise, you know, I don't know this man. So here's Christians, here's here's these guys wouldn't have been called Christians, but these are followers of God, men in the Bible who we look up to, and yet they struggle with deception. The list goes on and on. But the truth of the matter is that we know that these oaths that these uh Pharisees had created were just these elaborate schemes to cover up the truth, to cover up what's really going on. And Jesus doesn't want this to impact or influence the people that he's speaking to. Now, that being said, Jesus says in the next verse, he says, I tell you, don't take an oath at all, either by heaven, because it is God's throne, or by the earth, because it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great king. Now, I'm gonna ask a weird question here, but does this mean that Jesus is saying that no person should ever take an oath, should ever swear? Some people believe that literally that's what he means. Now, I think that's interesting because the apostle Paul later on, both in Galatians and in Romans, in his letters, basically does this. So was he sinning at the time? I think what we note here is that what's happening in Jesus' teaching is that he's talking about what's under the surface, what's the undercurrent, what is actually at the heart level, and and what what's going on in terms of deception and truthfulness in the mind and the heart of those people who were making these oaths, who were taking these oaths? Because if Paul did this and if previous passages of scripture we have this, and in fact, if the Old Testament even says make oaths, is Jesus saying that no longer that's okay? I think the point is not so much the oath, but the condition of the heart of the person making the oath. Are you with me? And so in our lives, we shouldn't, as I said earlier, shouldn't have to swear, but if we are gonna make an oath, if we are gonna make a promise, if we are gonna make a commitment, if it's gonna be some sort of formal thing, then we need to understand that we are called to be truthful and honest and and forthright and follow through. No, in this passage, Jesus specifically gives three and then a fourth in the next verse that we haven't reread yet. But he gives four examples of things that they had were swearing on, and he gives a reason why you shouldn't swear on those things. So he says, Don't take an oath, either by heaven, because it is God's throne, or by earth, because it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great king. Neither should you swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. What is Jesus actually doing? Well, what he's doing is he's exposing just how silly it is to make an oath that's not true before a God who sees everything and knows everything. Where is God? He's everywhere. What does God know? Everything. Now, some of you are not convinced of that yet. That's okay. But the Bible teaches us that there is nothing hidden from God's sight. In fact, Hebrews chapter 4 says those very words, the exact words. It says, nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. And in fact, when he's saying, quoting from the Psalms here, Jesus is teaching, quoted from the Psalms, that the heaven is his throne room and the earth is his footstool, he's literally saying, God is everywhere. He is He is all present all the time. So for these Pharisees making these oaths to try to hide their deception, to try to paint a picture of what really wasn't true, is silliness because God is fully aware. He knows. He knows their hearts, he knows their motives, and he already knows what lies and deceptions they're actually trying to paint and what they're trying to do. Now, when we think about this, it's a reminder for us today that just as those Pharisees, it was foolish and silly for them to think that God didn't know. For us today in our lives, it's foolish and it's silly to think that God doesn't know when we are untruthful. Now, I gave some illustrations like exaggerating your 40 time or how big the fish you caught, or how good the sale really was. But in our hearts, have we practiced deception, have we practiced lying to the point that we've gotten really good at it? All the while forgetting that nothing is hidden from God's sight. Nothing is hidden from the eyes of Him to whom He must give an account. Anybody feel like you're like heart race a little bit, blood temperature, blood blood pressure a little up? Like, we should feel a level of conviction because we as a human race are very, very good at lying and very good at deceiving. Very good at painting pictures with words that aren't fully true. And Jesus says to us today this is not kingdom living. Lying and deceiving is not kingdom living, it's not the way we were called to live and to act and to interact and to speak. Some of us in this room, we've been telling lies so long and so much that we actually believe the lot the lies we've told. Have you ever been there? I know people, actually, I know myself. And I know that there are places and there are things that, and in ways that I have told lies to the degree that I began to actually believe the very lies that I've told. I've been dealing with some situations in my life personally with other people that are super sad for me because those people have told themselves and others lies to the degree that they believe them now, and the pain and the heartache and the destruction coming from their lives is brutal. I know married couples who've mar been married for years. Years and their spouse has lied to them for years about things. And that stuff finally comes to the surface, and their whole marriage crumbles because they feel like there cannot be trust because they've told such great lies to one another. Jesus' words in verse 37 to us are let your word be yes and yes and your no be no. Anything more from more than this is from the what? The evil one. What is Jesus saying? Well, I'm telling you what he's saying, and I don't think it should come as a surprise, but he's saying that anytime we are deceptive, anytime we are not telling the truth, it is straight from the pit of hell. Because the prince of liars, the one who's the best at it at all, above all, is Satan himself, the devil. Isn't it interesting that you go back to the Garden of Eden, and what does Satan do with Adam and Eve? Specifically Eve, who we get that part of the story, but Adam had to have been standing right there, right? Because he gets the apple pretty quick, or whatever the fruit was. We just say apple, whatever the fruit was from the tree. And he deceives them. He deceives them into believing a lie about God. That God doesn't really care about them. God doesn't really love them. God's plan and his rule is not good for them. And they believe it. Listen, this is Jesus' words for some of you who were here with us last year when we were working through the book of John. John chapter 8, verse 44. Now, this is Jesus speaking to those same Pharisees. Alright? And here's what he says. You are of your father, the devil. I bet that made him feel good, right? And you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him. Who is there no truth in? Satan. I should not come as a surprise, but let me just remind you that Satan is a liar and there is no truth in him. In fact, he goes on to say, when he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature because he is a liar and the father of liars. Now, have you guys noticed? We talk about this somewhat often, but have you noticed that you don't have to teach a little child to lie? I could tell you that with each one of our kids, there was a moment, an instant, when they were pretty young, but they could already start to talk or at least communicate somewhat effectively, and they would get into something they weren't supposed to get into. For one in particular, they found some fingernail polish one time. And you know, you find them, you discover them, and they've made a huge mess, and it's on them, and it's on stuff, and you say, So uh, did you do this? And what's the answer? No. You see, in the human heart, we are bent towards deception, towards lying. Now we're gonna talk about why in just a second, but it is in us because we are influenced by the Father of lies. And our flesh as a human being, from the time you were born, is corrupt. That's why you don't have to teach people to sin. It's the normal operating system of the human heart is to sin. To reject God's rule and to do what we want to do, to reject God's way and his plan for our lives and purpose for our lives and to do our plan and our purpose, right? That's normal. And lying is a piece of that. That being said, if we are going to deal with lying in our lives, if we're gonna deal with deception, if we're gonna deal with what's really going on, if we're really gonna become people, that when they hear us say yes, we know they they go, oh, that means yes. Or we say no, that means no, then we have to understand the influence that has shaped much of our lives and is infecting even the church. Yes, I know some of you guys maybe came in this morning skeptical of the local church, and I don't blame you because we've actually practiced being deceptive with one another to a terrible degree. Like many times we come in, and one of the first things we get asked is, How are you doing? And our response is good or fine. Now that might sound simple and silly, but the truth is that a lot of the times that's not the correct answer. And the truth is today, if you're a human being, you have a pulse, you have a heartbeat, and you're in this room, not everything in your life is okay. In fact, we know because we live in a world that is cursed and there is a real enemy, that while we can say, as children of God, we are blessed, and we can say that we have been blessed beyond what we deserve. I've heard some people say that when you ask them to say, I'm blessed beyond what we deserve. I think that's a Dave Ramseyism that kind of has gotten out there. But I know here's what I can tell you. We still are all dealing with hardship and struggle, doubts and fears, confusion, guilt, shame, right? Because that's the human experience. Now, hopefully we understand there's an appropriate time and place to have some of those conversations. And, you know, uh, you don't want to be the person that every time they ask you, uh, how are you doing? And then you just went like blah, you know. It's like, here you go. Here's what's really going on. I'm gonna list off all the sins I'm struggling with right now in this moment and how many. No, that's not that's not what we're saying, okay? But here's the deal. We've got to learn how to stop putting up the facade, playing the game, and be honest about where we really are. Being truthful to who we really are, what's really going on in our lives. We have to practice telling the truth instead of practicing being deceptive and lying. I already said this once, I'll say it again. If you practice lying, you can and will get good at it. And your human nature feeds into that. But as we practice telling the truth, we can actually experience joy and freedom and being released from some of the things that we are actually bound to. Specifically, when you ask the question, why do we lie? I want to give you two primary reasons. Circumstantially, there might be a lot of reasons. I just want to give you two quick ones, okay? There's more that we could discuss this morning, but two reasons. The first reason that we typically struggle with lying is because we have a desire to impress people or to keep them from being unhappy with us. Anybody feel that before? Experience that? I'm gonna call that the approval idolatry. It's an approval idol. One of the reasons why we don't want to tell the people, people around us the truth about what's really going on in our lives is because we're fearful that they will reject us. We're fearful that they'll think less of us. We're fearful that they won't see us in the way that we want to be seen. Now, social media has done some weird stuff to our world, right? We're all narcissists already. Okay, let's just go ahead and admit that. We all are narcissists. And social media just gives us a platform for our narcissism. But here's the thing we paint a picture and we call this image management, or we paint a picture of what's going on in our lives, and we want people to see us in a particular way and to like us in a particular way. In fact, some people they actually post really bad stuff or hard stuff because they want to be seen through that light. And some people post all good stuff and everything's great, and they're always eating good food, and they're always on great vacations, and their spouse and them are always getting along because they want to be seen through that light. And their children never misbehave, you know? Like, what planet are you on? But here's the thing we all have a perception we want people to have of us, and so we paint pictures and we image manage. And in our lives, we get this idolatry of approval of others controlling us. Like keeping us from being honest, keeping us from being vulnerable. When we're in our life group, for some of you guys, many of you are in a life group, and one, and if you're not in a life group, if you're not in a smaller community of believers, like let me just say to you, you need to be. It's easy in this room to put up a wall or to kind of keep people at bay and to not really let them know the real you. But you're not going to grow spiritually until you get into communion with people who know your warts, who know your issues, who know your struggles, who know your sin. Some people say, Well, I just don't want that. That feels way too uncomfortable. Yes, it's uncomfortable, but it brings great health to your life, spiritually, freedom, joy, peace. Because you don't have to keep playing the game. And God's grace gives us the freedom to be honest and real and vulnerable, to actually say what's really going on. I think God's like, hey, when are you guys going to get over yourselves? When are you going to stop playing the game? I know, I see it. And truthfully, what's crazy is when people actually decide to stop lying, stop deceiving, and be honest, they find out pretty fast that they're not the only one in that boat. I've seen it time and time again in community. When people drop that and they say, here's what's really going on. Somebody says, Hey, me too. Hey, me too. Hey, I got that issue. It's like, it's like it's contagious to be honest and vulnerable and real, isn't it? But we've got to get beyond this approval idol. This is when we put our trust functionally, we put our trust in people's approval of us in order to have the security and worth that we think we are lacking. And as long as we are doing that, we continue to do that, we will find ourselves missing out on what God's kingdom has brought for us. It's funny how as a married couple, um, and maybe you even you've experienced this with a long-term friend, somebody who knows you really well. They maybe were a roommate, they've been around you long enough to hear you tell the same stories multiple times. You know what I'm talking about? Like some of you in this room, you're like, if they tell that story one more time, I'm gonna have to like punch somebody, right? You've been there. My my my wife, my poor wife, she's had to hear me tell the same stories multiple times, some of them hundreds of times. We've been married for almost 20 years, and it's like to think about that like we've had a lot of life together. Some of you have been married longer, and so you've heard those same stories. You're like, oh, here they go. And what's crazy is, if we're honest, is that we not just tell the stories, but sometimes those stories start to change a little bit. Just a little, you know, we've got a little, throw a little pizzazz in there, get a little extra extra little this or a little bit of that, and we begin to like tweak those stories and begin to embellish those stories, exaggerate those stories, right? And so that can happen sometimes because we again, and our spouse knows that, or um, I know that y'all have probably never had this happen, but you take a phone call, and somebody on the other end is asking a question, and you can kind of hear it, and they say, Well, have you started working on that? And you're like, Sure I have, yeah. And your spouse is like, You haven't done anything. You haven't done anything, you had even, but I thought about it, right? That's what you tell yourself anyway. Here's the point like people that are close to you, they're gonna see these things in your life, the inconsistencies and discrepancies. So, you know, what do we do? We have to go after the idols of the heart. We have to go deeper than the behavior. You can't just say, stop lying. We tried that with our kids, it doesn't work. You can intimidate them only for so long, right? As a parent, punishment discipline is helpful to curb behavior, but the heart has to be dealt with. And in human beings, whether you're two or you're 82, you have a heart issue, and you need to be set free from the way you worship people's approval, or you're gonna keep lying to keep up the face, to keep up the image. And the approval is there. We all want it. And I want you to know that in Christ we can't have it. We can have the approval that we need, and we're gonna come back to that as well. But the other issue is not just to impress people or to keep them from being unhappy with us, it's to avoid accountability or responsibility. Now, when I was a kid, my mom, she loved having candles around our house. Some of you maybe have told this story to before. My wife is like, this is one of those stories. And we had candles around our house, and we had those Yankee candles, I think that's what they're called. I think I called them Yankee Doodle candles earlier. But uh the Yankee candles, they're like really strong-smelling candles, right? And and she would light those, and you know, this is just what we do as kids, I think adults actually. In fact, somebody came to our house the other night and did the same thing. Stick our fingers in the candle and like dip pull it out, and then you got like the wax finger. It's like why is that mesmerizing? I don't know. My mom said, do not put your finger in the candle anymore. So what do we do? Put our fingers in the candle, stuck them in in one of her nice Yankee candles she'd just gotten. It had been burning for a little while, so it was nice and deep. Stuck it in there. Of course, it was hot, and the the the the wick got a little bit close, burned my finger. I yanked it out. When I did, I not only slung wax, I knocked the candle off on the floor. Wax went everywhere in the kitchen floor. So what did I do? I went to my mom and I owned it, right? No, I went to my toy room and I like like to our room into my toy closet and hid. Like, I'm not coming out. I'm gonna go and hide. And of course, she walks in the kitchen, she's like, what in the world is this? She comes to track me down. Do you know anything about this candle? I don't know what you're talking about, mom. Because I'm still trying to get the wax off my finger, you know. I have no idea. I don't want there to be any evidence, right? But sure enough, she was able to get it out of me, and of course, I paid the consequences for that. But here's the thing, I tell you that silly story because the truth is people try to avoid the truth, avoid reality, because they don't want to be accountable. They don't want to be responsible. This is an idol of control, it's an idol of independence, whatever you want to call it. But the bottom line is that many of us in our lives we we look to avoid our accountability to others, which is exactly why, as I said earlier, churches many times are places where people can be very fake. Can be very plastic, not honest, not vulnerable, not real, because we're afraid to be accountable. Hey, listen, can we stop that? I mean, seriously, can we stop being fake? Can we stop playing that game? Thankfully, I'm around some people that I feel like we're we're increasingly like learning how not to do that. And it's a process, it's like a detox, if you will, because we practice deception so much that we've got to unlearn it. But here's the thing what will set us free, what will begin to really help our hearts be set free, is Christ Himself. When we lie, we're putting our hope and our trust in something other than God for our security and our value, our forgiveness. And when we don't find ourselves convinced that we have Christ's approval, we will try to gain it from others and so we'll lie. When we don't receive forgiveness from God, when we don't acknowledge that we have it in Christ, then we will seek to avoid accountability from others and be able to actually embrace and acknowledge and confess and repent of sin in our lives. I mean, I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to that wish they had come clean much sooner, but they haven't for years because they didn't want to have to deal with the issues, the accountability that they were gonna have to face, the consequences. There's a pastor here in Austin, and uh I recently was hearing a story about him, and uh I know I know the guy decently well, but at one point in his journey, uh he was confronted with the fact that he had been withholding some information about a crime he'd committed. He was already uh becoming a minister, he was already leading some people, he was discipling others, and he realized that God was saying he needed to deal with that. And so what did he do? He trusted God and he went and turned himself in and told him what he'd done. He got thrown into prison for a year for it. Now, people around him were saying, That's crazy, why did you do that? You didn't have to do that. And he said, I was tired of walking with the weight of being untruthful, of hiding, of deceiving, and I wanted to walk the rest of my days on planet Earth free from that deception. Now, I I don't know your story, I don't know your issues, I don't know where you're struggling. I know that for many lust is a problem. I know that many greed is a problem. I know that for many there's just ways that you have deceived, maybe even the people that are closest to you, about who you really are, what you've really done. That's something that you and the Holy Spirit have to work out today and the practical applications, but what I can say is that there's freedom on the other side of confession. That's why James 5.16 he says, confess your sins once to another and pray for one another that you might be healed. When you drag that stuff out of the darkness, you see, isn't it interesting that we've said this before, that the kingdom of God is light and life and truth. Kingdom of darkness is dark, it's deception, it's death. And we've been called to walk in the kingdom of light. And some of you today, you need to come clean. Some of you today, God may be calling you to actually get honest with your spouse, get honest with a friend, get honest with a person who's in this room, and say, I need to get clean. I need to get honest about this. Some of us just need to simply stop telling the lies that we tell ourselves and others on a regular basis. In John chapter 8, Jesus says these things. It's in the same section I was talking earlier about when he tells us that Satan is the father of lies. It says, as he was saying these things, many believed in him. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, if you continue in my word, you really are my disciples. If we actually believe Jesus, we will obey his word. And if we do that, that's how we really reveal to the world that we're not just like fans of Jesus, but we're actually followers of Jesus. And he says, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. How many of you want to be free? There is a price associated with being free, but I can tell you right now the price is worth it. The price is worth it. To let the facade down, stop playing the game, and to actually walk into the light where you can be healed, where you can be free from the guilt and the shame that is plaguing your heart, the fear that is plaguing your heart. When we transfer our trust from these functional saviors of approval and independence and control, and we trust, we we transfer that trust over to Jesus, and we say, Jesus, you're enough. When we do that, God will meet us there. In fact, his word says that God gives grace to the humble. You and I don't have to continue to play the game. We can be honest before our God. And he is a gracious and merciful Savior. In Christ, we don't have to lie. We don't have to exaggerate, we don't have to embellish, we don't have to twist truth, we don't have to image manage. We can be honest and know that Christ is enough. He loves us. In fact, it's because of his love he's calling us today to be honest. I think church would be a very different place if we actually started to walk in the truth. Now we're all a work in progress. What I do when I go back and tell my kid today that we're gonna do something that I don't fall through on. What I do when I'm telling a story and I embellish again, my prayer is that quicker and quicker I will acknowledge it, confess it, and turn from it. Let me pray for us. God, I pray today against the deception. I would say the ultimate deception that goes all the way back to the garden, that you're not good, that you don't love us, and that even in this conversation about lying, that that actually that there's a better way to deal with our lying than what you did to deal with it, which is Jesus, you gave your life to deal with our sin that is offensive to you. And you are the one who can bring freedom and hope and new life to us, God. So I just pray this morning for this body, this group of people in this room, my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, my guests, God, I pray that this morning you would just remind us again of your goodness and your grace, and you'd call us into the light. God, it's it is not natural for us to tell the truth. But it is supernatural, and for those of us who are in Christ, we increasingly do it. Not to avoid scandal or consequences, but because we're free in you. Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for even the work you're doing now. And I just pray us in your name. Amen. My prayer today is that you would walk out of this room with a clear conscience. A clear conscience will come as you acknowledge, confess. And I'm not talking about sins that you've already confessed to God and already dealt with. I'm talking about anything that might there, might be in your heart today that you haven't dealt with yet. Anything that you haven't let God free you from, help you with. So I don't know what your next step is. I've got some ideas, but here's one thing we're going to do today. We're going to take communion together, we do each week, and we invite you to go to the table, but don't go there if you know in your heart there's a lie or there's a deception that you need to deal with. Deal with that first. And as we go to the table, we remember there's grace. We remember there's forgiveness. We remember that there is love, a loving Father who's waiting for us to get to come clean. We don't have to prove ourselves to him because he already knows. We just come to him in faith and humility and ask him to heal us. Also invite you, uh, if you need prayer today, we'll have some prayer team in the back of the room. If there's something you want to share, like we're not here to condemn you. We're here to help you and support you and encourage you, and we'd love to do that. If you need healing, physical healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing, if you need a word from the Lord, uh that just you're seeking wisdom or counsel, like we would love to pray for you and see if God has something to say to you today. We'll be at the back of the room, my right, your left, and we're available there. Don't be ashamed, don't be afraid. That's what the enemy wants to put on you. We're all in need of God's grace, okay? Um, so we want to invite you to do that today. And these guys are going to sing. If you want to sing, you can sing. If you want to sit, you can sit. If you want to stand, you can stand. Just whatever is appropriate in responding to God and His work today in your life, okay? Let's do that together now.