We'll go ahead and dive right into it. Exodus 20, like we have done every single week of the series, we'll read straight through to the commandment that we will be looking at here today. And so, verse 1, and God spake all these words saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Now, remember, this is just a few months after their deliverance and salvation from being enslaved there in Egypt. They were enslaved for over 400 years, and now God delivered them out of Egypt through his mighty hand, and now he calls Moses up to Mount Sinai, and Moses is on Mount Sinai just a few months after they were delivered from Egypt. And God is going to give him what I would call the moral law, if you would, the moral law. And we know that we are under, through a relationship with Jesus, you are under grace, you are not under the law. But God's moral law still exists, and it is still something that you and I should apply in our everyday life.
In fact, following Jesus, he tells us in the New Testament that much of the law, he actually raises the standard just a little bit on how we as followers of Jesus should live our life. And so, Exodus chapter 20 is where we find God's moral law for how you and I should live in our each and every daily lives. And so, here it is: verse 3. The first commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Verse 4, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
So don't have any other gods, don't have any idols. Verse 7: the third commandment: thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. And then the next one, verse 8: remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it shalt thou not do any work, thou Nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. The next one, parents' favorite commandment, is in verse 12: Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth. Verse 13, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal. And then finally, where we are going to be in our time this morning is in verse 16, Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Against thy neighbor. In other words, don't lie. Can we pray together and then we'll dive right into it? Father, Lord, you are good. Lord, you are holy.
Lord, you are righteous. Lord, you are just. Lord, you are true. And as we look at this commandment here today, Father, we really want to value truth. The way that you value truth.
In fact, it is who you are. You are truth. And in you is no lie at all. And Father, we're grateful for that. And because of that, we as Christians should follow after your truth, but also be truthful in how we live our life.
God, in the few moments that we have, I pray, Lord, that you would speak to every heart that is in this place. That you would convict us where we need to be convicted. Father, that you would encourage us where we need to be encouraged, that you would challenge us where we need to be challenged. Lord, open up our eyes to be able to see some maybe places in our life that we need to be more conformed into your Son's image. God, help us to be focused and help us in the few moments that we have to examine our hearts today to see if there be any wicked thing in us, Father.
And Lord, ultimately, that you would give us the courage to ask you for forgiveness and to blot those things out of our hearts here this morning. God, speak to our hearts. We love you. We're going to give you the praise and honor for all things because you're worthy of it. For it's in your name we pray.
And all God's people said. Amen and amen. David Markowitz, a professor of communication at Michigan State University. He recently, in the last several years, conducted a survey about lying. And here were some of the results.
And there were a lot of them. I just kind of took some of the ones that I thought were interesting. First of all, people lie on average between one to two times per day.
Some other surveys, if you were to go online and find other surveys that have been conducted, some of them, the people that they polled, their survey would be up to three to four times per day. The study that David Markowitz did found that lying is a common behavior in people's life. The number one reason people lie, according to his research, is to escape punishment. or consequences for something that they have done. What he found was 90% of those that he polled had died on if they were on a dating website.
I thought that was interesting. 40% admitted to lying on their resume. Statistically, what he found was that men lie more than women, which I think that's a lie in and of itself. The the point I'm making is that lying is a, unfortunately, a normal behavior. Of a lot of people, and many of them even being followers of Christ.
And as we come to verse 16 of this, the ninth commandment: thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. We find that what God's command is trying to tell us is that we must be. Truthful. In fact, if you look up the word here that says bear false witness, it literally means things that are untrue. It's being deceitful.
Don't say things that are wrong. And ultimately, don't lie against your neighbor.
Now, as we come to this commandment, I get that many of us think the big lies that some people might get kind of deep into, but there's a lot of little lies or fibs or whatever you want to identify or call them that many of us struggle from time to time. I was thinking about ways that we kind of allow lying in our society, even as Christians. Here's some ways that we, I think, can break this. Just some practical things. How about when you make something up?
to get you out of a jam. You ever been there? I know I have. You know, you get stopped by a police officer for speeding. And the first thing out of your mouth, I had no idea the speed limit was this.
And you knew that you really did. You're just trying to kind of weasel yourself out of a jam that you are in. And sometimes we do those things, and that would make us guilty of the ninth commandment. Or, how about this one? When you intentionally, and young people, you can listen up on this one because I've been here as well.
When you intentionally only give half of the truth because you know that the entire truth may get you into trouble. In other words, you go out for the evening and your parents are like, What do you have planned for tonight?
Well, you got several things planned, but you only give them the ones that they're not going to be mad about, so you kind of leave out something. Or better yet, you know that your parents don't want you hanging out with somebody, so they say, Hey, you're going over to a friend's house. Who's going to be there? And you only list the ones that you know your parents don't have a problem with, but you stay away from that. Only giving half of the truth intentionally to try to stay out of trouble.
Or how about this one? When we exaggerate or intentionally stretch The truth. Like, think of the fisherman stories, right? Man, I caught something, it was this big, right? Or golfers, you know, you kind of landed one so close to the pen, and you know it was not that close to the pen, and you kind of say that it was something you exaggerate or intentionally stretch the truth to inflate.
Who you really Uh R. How about this one when we tell lies to avoid owning up to what we have done or not done? Right, have you ever made excuses for something that you were responsible for, and you know the excuse was not really true? It's like at work, you didn't get something done that you were responsible for, and your first response is: man, it's just been a busy, busy time, you know, and you kind of deep down know, like, it's really not been a busy time. You just kind of failed at whatever you were told or said to have done.
And so, you kind of make up a lie, in other words, to try to get you to avoid owning up to what you have. Have done. The list could go on and on, but I want you to understand that many of us don't come to this commandment and think, wow, you've nailed this one, you've got it all together. You don't make these huge, elaborate lies when people ask where you've been. You don't kind of say, Oh, I've been here when you haven't, and things like that.
But we lie many times in different ways each and every day that we That we live.
So I know that the question that I had when I was studying this was: Is there ever a time when you can lie? Is there ever a good time for you to lie? And there's a couple of passages, and then we'll kind of get into the practical application of this, but there's a couple of passages in scripture that I think bring this into question. Is it okay? One of them would be found at the beginning of the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 1 and Exodus chapter number 2.
It's when the Hebrew midwives lied about the babies because Egypt. Specifically, they wanted all of the male babies to die, and so they lied about the babies. And then a second passage that I found was Rahab. You remember when the spies showed up to Rahab's house and she lied, saying she hadn't seen them and they weren't there. And somehow, you know, through that lie, God awarded her during that and actually put her in the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter number 11.
So, is there a time to lie? I think that, you know, from what I have found is that the people of God throughout scripture are required to be truthful in every situation, except when the situation could result in. in the death of innocent people. And that's what you've seen throughout this. And so I don't know every case in life if it's ever okay to lie, but I think that scripture would say that there are some certain situations that you can find, the two that I just mentioned, where if innocent people are going to lose their life as a result, that it might be.
Okay, but for most of us, that is not the case with how we use our. our lives during the day. It's not innocent people at stake. For you and for me. And a lot of times we exaggerate, we stretch the truth, we say little fibs to try to get us out of certain things and out of trouble that we are.
In and deserve, and so we choose to lie.
Well, each of these last several commandments we've been seeing from verse 13 on, they are negative commandments. And when we come to a negative commandment, it always has a... A positive spin, something positive that our Lord was trying to encourage us to do. And so we found that in verse 13, when he said, Thou shalt not kill. The positive spin to that is because we shouldn't kill, we should value life.
We should value all life. In verse 14, when he said, Thou shalt not commit adultery. The positive spin to that is we should value the marriage relationship, which should lead us to not want to commit adultery. When we come to verse 15. We shouldn't steal.
What's the positive spend? We should value the right that people have to possess. Their own things and property and possessions and things like that. That's the positive spin.
So, as we come to this, we should not bear false witness against thy neighbor. We should not lie. What's the positive spin? What's God trying to tell us positively here from verse number 16? Here's what it is: we should value truth.
And we should value others. We should value truth. And we should value Others. In other words, when you look at verse 16, I think this is what God is trying to tell us. Um excuse me.
The ninth commandment. Forbids. Distorting the truth. In a way that damages the reputation of your neighbor. When he commands his people to not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
What he is saying is that the ninth commandment is really forbidding you and I to distort the truth in a way that damages the reputation or character of your neighbor. This commandment is a call to truthfulness. It's a call to truthfulness. That's what he's saying. Don't give a false witness.
Don't give a false testimony against your neighbor. And so the commandment that we see here really has two focal points. It's about truth and it's about others. And so I want you to understand that those two in this commandment are completely connected: that you should not bear false witness against your neighbor. And so truth and others are both in here.
And so the focal point of this is that as followers of Christ, as Christians, We should try to use our tongue in a way that edifies truth. and edifies your neighbor. That edifies truth and edifies one. Another. The idea here is to never say something that will ruin the reputation or character of another person.
And by the way, we've all been there, right? We all know somebody who their character was ruined because of what somebody might have said, and possibly not even true. And so the point that our Lord is making here is that we, as followers of Christ, must value truth and value others. And here's why. Because God is a God of truth.
Our God is a God of truth. He values truth. He is truth. And so for us as his followers, we must also value. Truth as well.
Look at some passages, and I'll just kind of go through these because these were just a few of the ones as I wanted to show you that our God is truth, and as His followers, we should be people of truth. And so, what we find here is that God is true. Psalms 5:6, thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing or lying in Psalm 5, 6. Proverbs 6, verse 16 and 17 says, These things doth the Lord hate. Yea, seven are an abomination unto him, a proud look, and the second one was a lying tongue.
The Lord hates lying. Proverbs 12, 22, lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. In other words, a lying tongue is disgusting in the sight of God. Ephesians 1.13, the gospel is referred to as the word of truth. 1 John 3:19, Christians are referred to as those who belong to the truth.
John 17, 17, God's word is defined. as truth. Jesus said in John 14:6, I am the way, the truth. And the life. In John sixteen, thirteen, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of truth.
And that Spirit of truth is said to guide us as his followers into all truth. Matthew 5:37 says, Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, and anything more than this. comes from the evil one, which is Satan. John 8:44, Jesus calls Satan the father of lies, and in him is no truth whatsoever. The point that I'm making is this: that God is a God of truth, and from cover to cover in your Bible.
You will see that he values truth. He values truth. And so we as his followers should value truth. In other words, what he's saying throughout scripture is that when you. are truthful.
You align yourself with the character of God. But when you lie And when you choose to distort the truth or when you choose to exaggerate the truth, when you choose to try to say little fibs and lies to get you out of certain things, what happens is you identify with the father of lies himself. Which is the devil. And that's what we see from cover to cover. God is truth, and so we as His followers.
must speak words Yeah. of truth. Words of blessing. Words of honesty. Words that honor God in all things.
So as we come to this, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. We must be truthful. We must be truthful, and we, as his followers, must value truth. And value. Others.
So, how do we apply this? Like, when you come to a, you know, a text like this, what does this look like? And what does this look like in our everyday life? And I try to be as practical as we possibly can to give us some key takeaways so that we can leave here and actually focus in on certain things. And so, how do we apply this?
If you take notes, this might help you, but just three things: two that are things we don't do, and then one is what we should do. The first one, in the way that we apply the ninth commandment. is that we don't need to gossip. We don't need to To gossip. Listen, I'll tell you this, and you know, church people can be the worst at this.
You know, we feel like we're doing really good on a lot of the other commandments, but we can be terrible with this one. With this. And I'm going to show you that gossip is a way that we break the nine commandment, that we violate the nine commandments. And so gossip is speaking about somebody. That is not present.
in a way that negatively represents them. You ever been in a conversation like that? How many of you are guilty of this at some point in your life? Raise your hand. Come on now.
All right, if you didn't raise your hand, you just broke and violated the ninth commandment right here in church. You see, we all are guilty of this idea of gossip. And Christians do it all the time. I mean, in conversations all the time, we negatively represent people's character. When they're not there.
We negatively represent or question or judge. Their motives. When they're not there. We regularly question or judge their parenting skills, their work ethic, and everything about them when they are not present. We do it all of the time.
And the ninth commandment is really forbidding. This type of behavior. And if that's you, then shame on us. And let me encourage you, you can find forgiveness from that today. The Bible says that if we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, including something like gossip.
And the worst thing about it is, in church, I think the reason why we struggle with this so mightily in church. Is because of a couple of things. We justify our behavior with gossip, with ways like this. Like, I'm just going to give a prayer request. Right?
And so you go to somebody and you say, hey, this person, man, their marriage is bad. And it is falling apart. But we need to pray for them. Right? And what we do a lot of times is we say things in ways that negatively represent somebody, and half the time we know nothing about what we're talking about anyway.
And what we are doing is, we are bearing false witness a lot of times with that. And we try to justify it by saying, oh, I'm just asking for prayer. It's none of our business anyway, half the time. And what we do in the church is we constantly justify those things. And some of us justify our gossip by saying this: well, what I'm saying is true.
You ever heard that?
Somebody says, Hey, we shouldn't be gossiping.
Well, it's not gossip as long as what I am passing along is. is factual. and truthful. And here's what I'll tell you. This was something that I read this week that is really good that I thought when it came to this, like, oh man, what I'm saying is true.
And here's the question you need to ask yourself. Is what you're passing along actually necessary? Think about it. You're hanging out with friends on a Friday night. You're just kind of doing whatever, playing cards or playing games or something, and some issue comes up with somebody that you work with, or somebody that, you know, maybe your kids and a friend of theirs or whatever, or somebody at church.
And next thing you know, you're having a conversation. That person's not even there, and you're negatively representing that person. You are guilty of gossip, and you are guilty of violating the Ninth Commandment. And here's what I'm telling you. We're all guilty of this.
Most of the time, people share negative or bad news with somebody else in order to try to make themselves look better. You ever been around people like that? They try to tear down everybody else to try to elevate themselves, to make them come out of the story as the hero or something like that. No. Gossip is sin, and it is one way that we break.
The ninth commandment, when we negatively represent or we negatively try to damage somebody's character and reputation when they are not there. You know what's interesting is that If you would never talk about somebody when they're not there, a lot of us would have not as much to say. You ever realize that? Like, I've been around people that all they do is talk about everybody else. in a negative way.
And I'm thinking, if you took that out of your vocabulary, would you have anything else left to even say? Gossip is wrong. In fact, Proverbs chapter 20. In verse 19, There's a verse about this. Here's what it says.
He that goeth about is a tail-bearer. Revealeth secrets. In other words, this is the gossip, right? And here's what Solomon was saying. And the book of Proverbs was written really as a father to a son, very practical.
And here's what he says: He goes on to say, Therefore, meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips. In other words, the application, Proverbs, the most practical book, especially in the Old Testament, but probably throughout all of Scripture. Here's the practical application here. Metal not. With the gossip.
Meddle not with the gossip. Stay away from those that gossip. Stay away from the person that always wants to talk about somebody else. It says, meddle not with them. Stay away from them.
You see, gossip is a way that we break the ninth commandment. And you know what I think is is just true? Is this that when you are silent with gossipers because you don't want to make things awkward or whatever, so you just kind of silently, you might not chime in, but you just silently listen and let this person just kind of talk about whoever. I think we become guilty. And almost as bad as the gossiper.
him or herself. And so, what I'm going to tell you is this: here's a practical thing you should do: if you're around somebody that always gossips and talks about everybody else when they're not there in a negative way. When they start saying something, just respond to them. Hey, that sounds like gossip to me. I don't want to hear this.
And here's what I'll tell you, the gospel is not going to be coming back to you a whole lot. But we have to be willing as followers of Christ to stand up to gossipers, and here's why. is because we serve a God. who values truth. and values others.
Who values truth and values others. And if we are going to follow him, And we are going to take up this moral law into our life and allow the Holy Spirit to lead in and out and through us. We must be willing to stand against sins such as gossip. Also, the second point. Practical application is don't slander.
Don't slander.
Now, there's a lot of similarities between slander and gossip because a lot of gossipers like to slander. in their gossip. And so 1 Peter 2:1 says this, wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies and all evil speakings, what he's saying is this. Lay aside all slander. That's the word deceit.
of any kind. Lay aside all slander of any kind. You say, What is slander then? Here's what slander is: it's evil. And malicious speech.
intended to damage somebody else's reputation or character. That's what it is. And so slander. is assuming the worst in people. It's acting as if you know every person's motive.
Well, I know that why they did this was because they don't like me. Do you really know that? Or are you just. Assuming and slandering their reputation by believing the absolute worst in somebody else. This is judging their motives of why they did or why they didn't do something.
Christians, we should lay that aside. And so, just a couple of practical applications. How do we stay away from violating the ninth commandment? Don't gossip. You know, we need to be a church.
That doesn't gossip. I don't want Union Grove to be a church known for gossipers. That when we're out in our community or when we're together or when you're with your friends on a Friday night and you just can't stop talking about everybody else and things like that, listen, no. We must be a church that speaks truth and values truth and values other people.
So don't gossip, don't slander, and then number three. A way that we can practically apply the ninth commandment. Speak words. that protect our neighbor's good name rather than words that tear down. their good name.
In Proverbs 22, 1. It says this, a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. You see, the ninth commandment is way more than just Don't lie. It's way more than just don't lie. It is really about when it says, don't bear false witness.
Don't speak lies, but then we forget sometimes that this is a direct commandment that involves lies about one another. About our neighbor. And so when we see this. Here it says, don't bear false witness against your neighbor. The ninth commandment is so much more than just don't lie.
It's about respecting and protecting the good name of those around us. It's about caring for one another. in in your name and valuing your name. as much as we value our own name. Think about it.
You value your own name, right? You would be so discouraged if you found out that people, maybe even in our church or people you work with or people you go to school with, was negatively talking about your name to somebody else when you weren't there. How many of you that would make you upset? Raise your hand, okay? All of us, there's not a person in here that would not be upset if you found out that other people were really talking negatively about your name.
To somebody else. All of us would be upset with that. Because, why would we be upset? Because we value our names. Every single one of us, we value our reputation.
Every single one of us, we value our character. We value what other people think of us. And so we value our name. And so, what the Ninth Commandment is really challenging us to do is to respect and uphold the integrity of one another's name. Just like you do your own.
So, in other words, if you would be upset when other people are talking about your name. And all of us would be. Then it should upset all of us when somebody else is talking about somebody else's name. And that's a way that we can apply the ninth commandment. It is taking seriously every single one of the names around us, the people sitting by you, the people you work with, the people you go to school with, and definitely the ones you go to church with, and protecting the integrity of each one of our names.
That's what the ninth commandment is all about. Don't bear false witness against thy neighbor. Don't speak lies against your neighbor. Don't try to say things that possibly are not true to hurt and damage the reputation and character of your neighbor. Value truth.
and values. Others.
We can use our speech to protect and encourage the names of others rather than tearing down the names of others. And here's why. Is because, and this is what we see throughout scripture, when we see God and His character and how He is truth. And there is no truth in the enemy whatsoever. Here's what we see.
When we choose to speak. Positive and encouraging words. About our neighbor's name. We identify with the God of truth.
So, when you choose to speak positively, when you choose to tear down gossips around you, when you choose to speak up to those who slander around you, when you choose to speak up to when somebody comes up to you and says, Hey, did you hear about so-and-so? Or hey, did you see what so-and-so did? And you start judging or talking bad about them, when you choose to stand up to that. And only speak truth and positive and encouraging things about the names of one another. You identify with the God of truth, the God who values truth and the God who values others.
So much that he put it in these ten commandments, these ten words of God to his people, you identify with him. But here's the negative. When you choose to gossip, when you choose to slander. About your neighbor's name. You identify with the father of lies.
One of the best ways that you can identify with God and show the world and those around you that you're a follower of Jesus? It's when you choose to value truth. and when you choose to value others. When you choose to not gossip, When you choose to not destroy the reputation and character of those around you, when you choose to speak encouraging words about the names of those around you, guess what? You identify with the God of truth.
The God who is all truth. And I don't know about you, but that's who I want to identify with. That's who I want to identify with each and every day. I want the people around me to know that I belong to the God of truth. But I wonder if if like people were polled around you with how you talk, how much we gossip, how much we slander, how much we destroy people's names around us.
I wonder if we better identify by our tongues with the God And the father. of lies. Satan. I don't know about you, but I want to identify with God. I want to identify with the God of truth.
And if we're going to do that, then what we have to do is don't gossip. Don't slander.
And we must use our speech to speak words that protect the good name of those around us instead of destroying. the names of those around us.
So watch your mouth, don't bear false witness against our neighbor, and rather use our words to protect the names of those around us.
