Telling the Truth (Part 1 of 2)

Telling the truth is about a lot more than not telling a lie. Some people will attempt to deceive others by hedging the truth, or redefining language, or being evasive.

That's just as dishonest as telling a blatant lie. Today on Truth for Life, we'll find out what Jesus meant when he called his followers to be truth tellers. Alistair Begg starts today in Matthew chapter 5, but the focus of our study will be in the book of James, in chapter 5. Father, we thank you for the words of the song which we want to be the prayer of our hearts, that you will open to us the bread of life, that we might meet with Christ, who is the very Word of truth, and that our lives may be changed as a result of our encounter with you by the Holy Spirit through your Word, the Bible. And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. I invite you to turn with me to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 5 and verse 33. Jesus is addressing the people that he has called to him in what we refer to routinely as the Sermon on the Mount. Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the LORD. But I tell you, do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is God's throne, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.

Simply let your yes be yes, and your no, no. Everything beyond this comes from the evil one. And then to James, and to chapter 5, and to verse 12, which is our text for this morning. James 5 verse 12. Above all, my brothers, or my brothers and sisters, do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else.

Let your yes be yes, and your no, no, or you will be condemned. James has had a tremendous amount to say concerning the tongue in the course of these five short chapters. In fact, there is more emphasis on this than on, I think, any other subject that he has given time to. He began the letter, as some of us will recall, by emphasizing the importance of trials producing perseverance or patience. And he said then that if you lack patience, you should ask for help, and if you were lacking in wisdom, that God would supply that in answer to your prayers.

And now as he comes to the end of his letter, it's almost as though he is recapitulating. He comes back around again with the emphasis on the importance of patience in verses 7 through 12, and then from verse 13 to the end back to the issue of prayer. So he began with patience and prayer, and he now ends with patience and prayer.

The twelfth verse, I think, follows fairly logically from verses 7 to 11. The followers of Jesus were to be those who were waiting patiently on the return of Jesus. The oppression, the injustice that was around them—that would be a cause of pressure to them—was not to be the occasion for them to take matters into their own hands.

And that was the emphasis of the section that we dealt with last time. Be patient, brothers, until the Lord's coming. And it's almost as though he recognizes that one of the manifestations of impatience in times of stress or affliction, especially if the followers of Jesus managed not to take the law into their own hands, would be to take the law, as it were, into their own mouths. That having managed to restrain ourselves, to control ourselves, not to engage people in a physical way, it is distinctly possible that by the abuse and misuse of our mouths, we would actually manifest the very impatience that James has warned against. And certainly the temptation of taking the Lord's name in vain, of employing God or that which is associated with God as a mechanism for our own ends. What James is calling his readers to is three things, I think—or two things, with a third by way of emphasis. First of all, to say no to duplicity, and then obviously to say yes to integrity, and then to do so in recognition of the gravity that attaches itself to both issues. And if you keep those words in mind—duplicity, integrity, and gravity—then you will be able with me to navigate your way through this study this morning. To be guilty of duplicity is just to be deceitful.

It's to employ language or life in a way that deceives or at least intends to deceive. And James recognizes that that kind of double-dealing must not be entertained by those who profess to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. After all, in chapter 1 and in verse 18, he had written to these people that they should rest in the awareness of God's goodness to them, because he has given them birth, and the instrument that he has used in bringing them to birth is the Word of truth.

And his intention in bringing them to birth is that they in turn might be a kind of firstfruits of all that God has created. Therefore, it is inconceivable that those who have been brought to faith by the Word of truth—the gospel embodied in Christ himself—should then become those who play fast and loose with the truth. It is imperative that the followers of Jesus who is the way and the truth and the life should themselves be truth-tellers. And this, of course, is particularly important in an era where truth itself is arguably up for grabs.

It was, in a very different way from what is ours to deal with, but there are distinct similarities, as we will see as we go along. Jesus, when he was interviewed by Pilate, said to Pilate very straightforwardly, For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. I've come to bear witness to the truth. And so, James, echoing again, as we've said before, the words of Jesus' brother, leads us to a very straightforward understanding of this call to unequivocal truth-telling. Now, maybe you'll be helped by turning again to Matthew 5, before we come back to James 5, where Jesus, in the words that we read earlier, reinforces the Old Testament demand for a person taking an oath to be true to the oath that they've taken. Jesus is essentially quoting from Leviticus chapter 19. Long ago it was said to the people, Do not break your oath, but keep the oath you have made to the LORD. And then, in this instance, as in the matter of adultery before and the matter of murder before that, Jesus turns, as it were, the screws on his listeners, and he takes the demands of the law up a notch, or in some ways in a notch.

He internalizes that which has been kept from an external point of view in the lawkeeping of the old covenant. And so, as in the matter of adultery, where he says, You've heard that it was said, Don't commit adultery, but I tell you about looking at people lustfully and in the same way you've heard that you should not murder, and that is true, but I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. And now, in this matter of oaths, you've heard that it was said to the people, Don't break your oath, but keep the oath you've made to the LORD, but I tell you, do not swear at all. So, they were to make oaths and keep them, and now Jesus says, I would rather that you just didn't make any oaths at all. I don't want you swearing by heaven. After all, it's God's throne, or by earth, it's his footstool, or by Jerusalem, because it's the city of the great King, and don't bring your head into it.

You can't change the color of your hair by making oaths, and frankly, why don't you just say yes and mean it, and say no and mean it too? Now, what we need to understand is what Jesus is addressing in this, because we understand quite clearly what is being said, but we always need to understand the framework in which Jesus makes his statements. And for this, we can stay in Matthew and go to chapter 23. And in chapter 23, Jesus addresses the religious hucksters. He addresses people who are using pious language as a mechanism for trying to make themselves appear different from what they are—either to appear more holy or to use it as a mechanism for allowing them to weasel out of promises that they've made because of the nature of the oaths that they're taking.

It becomes clear as you follow along from Matthew 23. "'Woe to you, blind guides'"—Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law—"'you say'"—now, in this you say, it's not that he's saying you say to yourselves as much as you are the guides, and when you give guidance, this is what you say. So, in your role as a guide, you say, if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he's bound by his oath.

You blind fools, which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred. You also say, if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift on it, he's bound by his oath.

You blind men, which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred. Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it.

Now, what is Jesus tackling? Well, he's tackling the use of frivolous oath-taking, of the employing of terminology—for example, heaven, earth, Jerusalem, the temple, the altar—in such a way that divorces the use of that language from the use of the name of God himself. And what these guides were saying was this. You can make oaths by the temple, by Jerusalem, and so on, and as long as you don't invoke the name of God, then these oaths are of no account. You don't have to abide by them, and no one really needs to pay any attention to what you're saying.

However, it's good if they think that they're supposed to, because that will allow you to be duplicitous in the exercise of your duties. So, Jesus takes them on. He says, You can't play that game. Because the reason that Jerusalem is holy is because of its association as the city of the great King. The reason that heaven is holy is because it's where God lives. The reason the earth is holy is because it is his footstool. Now, if this all seems very far away to us, perhaps we just need to go back into our childhood, onto the playground, where in making promises to our friends at play, we told them that we didn't have to keep a promise because we had crossed our fingers. Right?

No, I don't have to do that. I crossed my fingers. Well, I didn't see you cross your fingers.

Well, I crossed my fingers behind my back. So now we've become a double liar. One, we didn't cross our fingers.

Two, we said we did it behind our back. And all because we're trying to weasel out of allowing our yes to be a yes or our no to be a no. In our affirmations, we employ another mechanism. Instead of just saying, This is what I believe, or this is the truth, we affirm it by saying, Cross my heart and hope to die.

Right? What do we say? You can't trust my word. The only way you can trust my word is if I affirm it in this way, but of course, you would be probably wise not to pay a particular amount of attention to my affirmations, since, of course, I always may have my fingers crossed behind my back. Now, the Pharisees have become expert at finger-crossing, and Jesus will have none of their subtlety. They're not allowed to divorce God from heaven or from the holiness of the temple or the altar, because all of it is tied to God. Therefore, Jesus says, No frivolous fooling around with swearing by any of these things. You're supposed to make an oath and keep it. I'm saying to you, Just don't make an oath at all. Just say yes or no. Just say what you mean and mean what you say. That's what I want my followers to be marked by. Okay?

Straightforward. And James picks up on it, comes towards the end of his letter, and he says, I want you to understand this. Well, let me anticipate a question that always comes when addressing these verses, and that is, Do these words demand that we should not take an oath in a court of law?

Right? And people ask this all the time. Well, if Jesus says, Do not take an oath at all, that sounds pretty categorical. And it does, I admit that to you. What I'm about to say, I say in light of my understanding of that. Those of you who've been around for a while know that we've said it is important for us to take the Bible in its literal genre and context, but not to apply it in a way that we would regard as being wooden—wooden—that it would have no flexibility to it at all.

Let me say this. That plenty of people brighter than me and more godly than I believe that Jesus' statement here and the echo in James chapter 5 categorically say that a Christian should never take an oath or swear an oath or put his hand on the Bible in a court of law. And in the Reformation, the Anabaptists got themselves in deep water over this very issue.

And they were countercultural, they were counter civil jurisdictions, and they made a royal circus of the event because they were unwilling to bow on this or bend on this matter. I don't gainsay that in any way, but I don't actually believe that that's the case. So, for example, if you get called for jury duty, as far as I'm concerned, James 5 or Matthew 5 does not preclude our willingness or our ability to make, in a civil context, an affirmation concerning the truthfulness of the words that are about to come out of our mouths. The fact of the matter is, we shouldn't have to, but it's not a problem to affirm it in a context such as that. You may disagree with me, but I think that what Jesus is addressing here is the misuse of swearing and oath-taking in everyday conversational life, in the common interchange of life, so that people are employing mechanisms either to appear to be something they're not or to disavow something that they have already affirmed.

And Jesus is saying, I don't want you to be doing that. I want you just to say yes and yes and no and no. I don't believe that what is addressed is the notion of official or specialized oath-taking in a court of law. It's not a main thing. It's not a plain thing. You're sensible people.

Judge for yourselves and do as you choose. What is absolutely without question is that the positive side of this transcends culture and time and everything—namely, that if to say no to duplicity in relationship to oath-taking calls in question the civil litigation aspect of it, the call to absolute integrity is mitigated by nothing. So, the call that is issued is, first of all, to say no to duplicity, and secondly, to say yes to integrity. Verbal integrity is what's involved here—truth-telling from the very core of our being.

Remember, in Psalm 15, the psalmist asks, Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary and who may live on your holy hill? Answer, he whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart. Epicenter truthfulness.

Core truthfulness. In contrast to the description, again, in the Psalms, Psalm 55, the psalmist says, My companion attacks his friends. He violates his covenant. Listen to this. His speech is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart.

Okay? So the divorce is between the words that are spoken and the heart from which those words proceed. And the call is a call to unconditional truthfulness. Christian believers, by God's enabling, in obedience to God's Word, are to distance themselves from all duplicitous, deceitful use of language. The use of language classically characterized during the discussions that surrounded the Monica Lewinsky hearings vis-à-vis the issues of the White House. And at that point in our culture, we suddenly realized that the notions of truth and truthtelling were moving significantly from that which was based upon an understanding of objective truth. And the inference was that nothing actually in the use of language really means what it says and says what it means. The only way that we can determine meaning is by inference and by context and by every other thing, so that the plain meaning of issues is flushed. The same is true in universities, where professors have fun with this kind of thing, and they tell their students, you know, that there is no real objective truth to which we can refer.

But if they get overcharged on their BP bill, then they'll have a question of truth real fast on the phone with the headquarters. Hey, it wasn't ninety-seven, it was seventy-three! To which the person might legitimately reply, But Professor, what's ninety-three to you?

It's seventy-three to me, you know. Or vice versa. It's clever stuff. But when push comes to shove, it's silliness. None of that high-sounding, high-minded stuff works in the radiology department, works in the issues of oncology, works in the matters of air traffic control, works where people understand that that which is true needs to be defined in terms of objective truthfulness. We're learning how we can say no to duplicity and yes to integrity. On Truth for Life with Alistair Begg will hear the conclusion of the message tomorrow. I hope the teaching you here on Truth for Life challenges you to take a break from your daily routine to reflect on God's Word. This very practical study in the book of James is a great way to reassess your beliefs and your behavior in light of God's perfect truth, his sovereign care, and the promise of Christ's return.

I hope you're finding it helpful. And as you study God's Word on your own or as a leader of a Bible study if you participate in one, let me tell you about a book we're recommending called Sowable Word. This is a fairly new release that teaches ordinary people how we can be highly effective in leading a group Bible study. As you read the book, you'll learn everything from how to prepare for a Christ-centered study, how to create your own questions, to lead lively discussions. In fact, the book gives very specific guidance for how to generate meaningful questions that compel individuals to think deeply about the theme of the text as they meditate on key teaching and apply scripture to everyday life.

It's a very practical book. It lays out step-by-step instructions to help your group get the most out of their study of God's Word. Ask for your copy of Sowable Word today when you donate to support the Bible Teaching Ministry of Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate or you can call us at 888-588-7884. And if you're already a seasoned Bible study leader, maybe it's time you helped others learn how to lead. Sowable Word is an excellent book to help you walk new leaders through the training process. And if you request Sowable Word with your donation and you'd like to purchase extra copies for your church or your study group, you'll find them in our online store.

They're available for purchase at our cost while supplies last at truthforlife.org slash store. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening today. Little white lies are often considered harmless, but are they? Tomorrow we'll find out the answer. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.