| Matt 5:34-37 - 7th February 2010
Andrew Lim
I want for us to imagine for a minute
a community in which everyone is expected to lie as a matter of fact
a community in which lies and deception
is the default setting of the way that community operates
Imagine a society / in which absolutely no one can be trusted
to speak the truth or to keep his word
- everyone is expected to lie as a matter of fact
- every teacher cannot be trusted to impart truth
- every preacher is a moral fraud
- every doctor is not morally obligated to be honest
- every parent are expected to lie to their children
as the normal thing to do
We squirm / even thinking of it
If such a society materialises
we’d all go stark staring mad
we’d end up plundering and killing
You wouldn’t survive a week without losing your marbles!
For without mutual trust / a community cannot hope to survive
Truth speaking protects and nourishes a community
Lies tear down a friendship / a family / a community / a nation
Truthfulness is the invisible moral fibre
that holds people together in a community
If we can longer assume / that people talking to us
are speaking the truth / we cannot live with them in trust
In fact if we can no longer trust one another to speak the truth
we have lost a large part of what it means to be human
Without mutual trust / a community is reduced to a pack
Society would degenerated into a gang
Life / as a whole / would become brutalized
No community can survive without basic mutual trust
There will be total anarchy / it would be hell on earth
Incidentally / that / is what hell will be like
C.S. Lewis in his usual perceptive way
says that finally when hell is instantiated
its capital city would be called "Pandemonium"
The fact of the matter is that in reality
there has never been such a society in human history
Even in the most primitive of tribes
people cherish truth-speaking over deception
But all that said / it remains true
that truthfulness is a rare commodity in our time
We live in a world in which
- advertisers lie to sell their products
- politicians lie to get votes
- traders misrepresent their goods to make a quick profit
- unscrupulous lawyers twist the truth / confuse the defence
- and today / there are many out there today who simply dismiss the idea
that there is such a thing as an absolute truth
But in a sense it is not quite right
to say that truthfulness is a rare commodity in our time
Truthfulness has always been a rare commodity among human people
And God does not hide the fact from us that even people in the Bible
were tempted to be untrue / and have been untrue
just like anyone else
Adam lied and shifted the blame on to Eve
Eve lied about her own responsibility
Abraham lied about Sarah’s true identity
Lot lied about his daughters being virgins
Jacob lied to his father Isaac
Laban lied to Jacob and substituted Leah for Rachel
David lied to the High Priest
to try to prevent Saul’s helpers from catching him
Saul lied about David / to turn everyone against David
Solomon lied to his mother about Adonijah
Achan lied about the stolen goods
Amaziah lied about what Amos truly prophesied
Peter lied about not having known our Lord
Judas lied with a kiss
The Jewish Leaders lied to the Roman authorities
that Jesus claimed to be King
Annanais and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit
- you could go on
Lying is the oldest game in human history
And there probably isn’t a single one of us in this room
who has never lied once in his or her lifetime
The human heart is deceptive by nature
Jer. 17:9 / “The heart is deceitful above all things / desperately sick
who can understand it?”
But in spite of the reality that people generally will lie
and misrepresent the truth
that fact remains that no society will communally consent
to accept lies as the default setting of its mode of operation
Every one / every community will to this day insist
that people speak the truth and live truthfully
Why is it so?
I believe that God placed this desire in the human heart
so that we would survive and not end up eating each other up
I believe God plants this desire for truth in the human heart
so that in seeking the truth / we may find Him
Truth and lies are as distinct as chalk and cheese
One is from God / the other from Satan
God / by His very nature is truth
In a sense / God cannot be truthful / He is truth personified
- God is called “the God of truth”
- The Holy Spirit is called the "Spirit of Truth"
- Jesus Himself said: “I am the Truth”
- And of God’s Word / John say: “Your word is truth”
Truth is founded on the character of God Himself
The Book of Numbers tells us that God cannot lie / 23:19
There is nothing more contrary to God's nature than a lie
And the surest way to be like God is to speak the truth
When Pythagoras was asked what people would have to do
to be like God he answered: “when they speak the truth”
The Psalmist says that the godly person
is “he that speaks truth in his heart” (15:2)
On the other hand / everything that is not truthful / is from the Devil
Of the devil / Jesus says in John 8:44
“There is no truth in him
When he lies / he speaks his native language”
The fuller version goes this way:
“You belong to your father / the devil /not holding to the truth
for there is no truth in him
When he lies / he speaks his native language
for he is a liar and the father of lies”
Lewis Smedes / in his book Mere Morality says
“All lies / in the biblical view / are the vomit of the Devil
he spews deceit over the cosmos” / John 8:44
Both Ephesians and Colossians tell us
that falsehood is a demonic obscenity / of the age of darkness
(Eph 4:25 / Col 3:9,10)
The book of Proverbs tells us / that lying lips
are an abomination unto the Lord” / Pr 12:22
The LB puts it this way:
“God delights in those who keep their promises
and abhors those who don't”
And God tells us in His Word
that anything deceptive / is a sin that provokes Him to judgement
Paul puts slanderers with murderers in the same category
and he said / neither of them shall inherit the kingdom of God
Jesus said: “On judgement day / you must give an account
for every idle word you speak.
This is partly the reason why Jerome said:
“Consider your every word an oath”
The ninth commandment puts it very simply: “You should not lie”
But God is not only a God of truth
He expects us to speak the truth when we speak
And the Word of God says to us this morning
“Let your “Yes” be “Yes” / and you “No” be “No”
In other words / “Be credible”
“Say what you mean and mean what you say / No more / no less”
Now if Christ is the truth / and if He is the Head of the Church
then we / here at Christ Sanctuary
should be first of all a people of sincerity and truth
The church / of all communities has got to be a place
where truth-speaking is highly prized
And I deeply desire for us to be truth-speaking people
As children of God / we should take our words seriously
On account of my words alone / I should be credible / believable
People should be able to take me on my word alone
If I have to hype up what I've said / with all sorts of props
something is not right within me
When I speak / I must not only say what I think today
but I must be able to stake my own life on it for tomorrow
All right / Let me switch track here
If God desires truth-speaking
- how have we not been truthful?
- how have we not let our “yes” be yes / and our “no” be no?
First / We run the danger of being untruthful
when we make some suggestive remarks
And sometimes suggestive remarks
speak louder than words directly spoken
Sometimes people say something like:
“If there is nothing between them
why does she jump to his defence all the time?
Nothing is said blatantly there / but the hint is right there
A suggestive remark may not be a downright lie
but a seed of destruction has been sown all the same
Second / we may be untruthful by keeping silent when we ought to speak up
If you witness a murder and you keep that knowledge to yourself
you’re lying in the sense of not letting the truth come out
There is such a things as the lie of silence
The lie of silence is committed
when we withhold information that should be made known
Leviticus 5:1 – If a person has seen / or learned about something
and does not speak up in a public enquiry
he will be held responsible
It may be true that the easiest way to avoid trouble
is to do nothing / or say nothing
By remaining silent the martyrs could have avoided martyrdom
All they needed to do / was simply nothing
but this is the very silence / that they refused
In the same light / to let a story you know isn’t true go unchallenged
amounts to telling a lie
Third / we become untruthful when we indulge in flattery
Just as you can tell a lie against someone / you can tell a lie for someone
When you flatter someone / you are lying for her
You tell her what she is not
And by that / you’ve lied to her / even if you’ve lied for her
This / of course / doesn’t mean we cannot complement someone
- if anything / we don’t complement enough
But a flattery is not the same as a compliment
A complement is an expression of something that is true
A flattery is an embellishment / something not true
We say something nice about the person
because we know he will be happy to hear it
but what we say / isn’t true
So when we flatter someone / we lie / and do not speak the truth
This is why writing a false testimonial is a form of lying
To write a false testimonial of character
when we know a person to be unworthy of the testimonial
is to generate a lie
Quite often / as a pastor
I’ve been asked to give a testimonial / reference to someone
Its strange in our secular age / but it’s still been believed
that a testimonial from a minister of religion is of some value
To tell the truth I have to give an honest reference
A reference ought to be honest
You can be a false witness for someone
by covering something up
as well as against someone by exaggerating the false
Fourth / We can be untruthful when we gossip
Gossips are known for their exaggerations and inaccuracies
Gossiping is simply speaking ill about someone behind their backs
George MacDonald: “Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait
for the death of the creature / It devours”
Pascal said:
“If everyone in the world knew what everyone said about the other
there would not be left four friends in the world”
There's not one of us here this morning / who would be happy
to have everything we’ve said about someone else told to them
Now / that is a sobering thought
We become untruthful when we can so easily pass on a rumour
without checking if it is true
Will Rogers' advice to us is:
that you need to live in such a way that you would not be ashamed
to sell the family parrot to the town gossip
Fifth / we become untrue we lie when we slander some one
To slander is to report the things concerning our neighbours / unjustly
How many of us have had sleepless nights of turning and tossing
because someone falsely and unjustly accuse us
of something that is untrue
The psalmist shakes his head and weeps / saying:
“They laid on my charge / things that I knew not” (35:11)
The Word of God refers to slandering as it is:
“a smiting with the tongue”
In Jeremiah the wicked people conspired and said
“Come / and let us smite him / with the tongue” (18:18)
Slandering is one way you can inflict wounds on a man
without touching him.
Augustine: “The tongue inflicts greater wound than the sword”
A Japanese proverb:
“The tongue is 6 inches long / but it can kill a man 6 feet tall."
There is a little jingle:
“Sticks and stones may hurt my bones
but calling me names don't hurt at all”
If ever there was a lie / of course it hurts
But why do we do it? Why do we slander our brother / sister?
It is a tragedy that although we belong to the redeemed community
we are still so prone to slandering one another
One chief reason is jealousy
When someone has gone a little further than us
in life / in status / in achievement / instead of rejoicing with them
we think it virtuous to talk bad of them
It must serve our own pride to be talking ill of other people
It takes the sting out of our own failures
if we can rub off the glitter from someone else’s crown
So at the back of much slander / is jealousy
But where did we get it from? From the Devil
The devil's name in Greek is “diabolos” / which means slanderer
James / the brother of the Lord Jesus
said more about the damage that can be caused by the tongue
than any other of the other biblical writers
except perhaps for Solomon the writer of the Proverbs
Why is this the case?
Because James the Lord's brother
had used his own tongue to slander Jesus in his earlier life
We’re told at one point in the gospel story
that James said to others about Jesus his own brother,
“he's beside himself” / “he’s mad / he’s out of His mind”
And James in later years could have bitten out his tongue
rather than to have said / all that he had said about Jesus
All of us have things we’ve said / which we regret bitterly and deeply
Do we slander / here with the four walls of Christ Sanctuary?
Sixth / and in some ways this is the most serious lie we can tell
and that is this: we may even be untruthful to ourselves / lie to ourselves
There is perhaps nothing more difficult to do in life
than to be totally honest / totally truthful with ourselves
We are prone to rationalizing our behaviour and our motives
and yet condemning the same thing in others
We measure other people by a standard that we don’t apply to ourselves
But when we do that / we are lying to ourselves
The old adage says: “To thine own self be true”
The thing about lying to yourself is a most dangerous thing to do
There is a psychological phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance”
Its a psychological term describing the mental state
in which two incompatible or contradictory ideas
are both held to be true.
Its a tension experienced by most normal people
when one of their beliefs is out of harmony with another
Most people try to be consistent in their beliefs
But sometimes one of our beliefs conflict with another belief
There is a discrepancy between beliefs
The result is a feeling of discomfort / a dissonance
hence the term “cognitive dissonance”
there is dissonance in your cognitive faculty
when there should have been a consonance
And people will usually talk themselves out of the dissonance
People who suffer from cognitive dissonance talk heaps to themselves
A person who spend too more money than she can afford on a new car
will go on talking to herself that the new vehicle
is much less likely to break down / and therefore safer
This belief may or may not be true
but talking to herself this way helps to reduce the dissonance
and makes her feel better
Take another example / A woman who highly values financial security
finds herself in a relationship with a man
who’s totally irresponsible financially
The conflict is apparent / the dissonance is obvious
To reduce this disturbing dissonance
she either breaks up the relationship
or compromises on her intense emphasis on financial security
It sounds simple / but most people live
with some levels of cognitive dissonance quite unresolved
while all that time talking to themselves
but never quite able to resolve their problems
The crucial point I want to make is this
A person can be absolutely truthful in one area of life
while at the same time / being openly untruthful in another
Example – Money in the KFC box
* This is why there are pastors
who can watch hard-core porn on a Saturday night
and preach a passionate sermon on holiness
the very next morning
* This is why you can look godly in church
and be mean and unkind to your mum and dad at home
There are words you speak to yourself
to try to reduce the dissonance
But the reality is that you are lying to yourself!
And lying to yourself is a most dangerous thing to do
And if the Spirit of God is convicting you
over one or two areas in your life
where you are lying to yourself
you need to find forgiveness and healing
I want for Christ Sanctuary
to be a community where truth-speaking is held in highest esteem
And to be practical / I want to share an acronym with you
I’ve found CHORD to be extremely helpful
Let us in this church / when we speak to each other / or of one another
Let us speak the truth in love
Clearly / Honestly / Openly / Respectfully / Directly
Even if by speaking I will hurt / embarrassed / upset / annoyed
One day / there came into this sad and deceptive world
for the first time / a man who always spoke the truth
His name was Jesus
When he came into this world / the truth that was in Him
confronted all the lies He saw around Him
He would look into a man's life / and describe that life inside out
He would look at a group of people / and He would say:
“You snakes!! You are of your Father the devil"
He would look at the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and perceiving who they truly were / He would say:
“You brood of vipers / Who warned you to flee
from the wrath that's to come?”
And what He said was always the truth
Never ever was there one who spoke all the truth / all the time
And He never ever said a thing false about himself
He didn't put Himself down through false modesty
When Thomas knelt down and worshipped Him
He didn't say: "O no!! Don't do that!!"
Neither did He shy away from proclaiming Who He truly was
When he said: “I am the Truth”
it was utterly offensive to His hearers / but He owned up to it
When He told the good people / that they were good
there was not a trace of flattery in His words
When he told the Canaanite woman: “Your faith is great”
her faith was great
And when He told bad people / that they were bad
there was there any trace of false accusation in His words
If he called a man a fox / which he once did
that man was a fox / cunning and crafty
If he called you a precious person you are a precious person
The Bible says: No cunning is found in Him
No treachery / no craft / no deceit is found in His mouth
And Christ can be depended on / to mean what He says
If He were here this morning
and He tells you that he will do such and such a thing
you can live with the complete expectation
that He will do it
He made claims to himself that were incredible claims
but they were the truth:
“He who has seen me has seen God”
“Before Abraham was I am”
When they could handle Him no more
they hastily set up a kangaroo court / and put Him up on trial
And at the trial of Jesus
the confrontation between truth and falsehood
came to a cosmic crescendo
But it was a mockery of a trial
- they lied against Him
- they pitted false witnesses against Him and hastily lynched Him
And today the most treacherous lie you can tell
is when you say to yourself / I do not need Jesus
It was precisely for this kind of a cover-up /that He was crucified
Scripture tells us
that there is only one sin which cannot be forgiven
and that's the sin of rejecting the true witness of the Holy Spirit
that Jesus is God
You can deny that truth
But your denial of Christ is the greatest lie you can ever tell
And for that / God will send you to hell
___________________________________________________________
|
