Honest to God ... and Everyone Else!

Why tell the truth? Because it is the character of God. Why tell the truth? Because we as his children represent him. Why tell the truth? Because the Lord that we represent as ambassadors is the way and he is the what? The truth. The gospel we deliver is the truth because our God cannot tell a lie. Hebrews 6 18.

His fingers are never crossed behind his back. And how important is that? To you and me. What if God could change his mind or break his promises? Can you imagine the terrible implications that would have for us as Christians? If God doesn't keep his word, we're doomed. In many ways, the Bible is a book of promises. Is God honest? Does God tell the truth? Well, of course God is honest. And one of the things he expects from us is that we are honest as well. Just as Christianity depends on God's integrity, our Christian testimony depends on our integrity. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, we're looking at this in a lesson called Honest to God and Everyone Else. One of the epidemics facing our country is an epidemic of character and honesty.

According to some poll figures I read recently, 43% lie about their jobs, 69% lie to their spouses, 73% lie to their siblings, 75% admitted lying to their friends, and 86% admitted lying regularly to their parents. The news media recorded and repeated a rather interesting prayer delivered by the chaplain as the Kansas State Senate was opening. You've heard of some of these prayers.

They've become well known. This is a little different. I hadn't heard this one. This one, by a believing chaplain as the Senate was about to open, prayed, Father, help us to know who is telling the truth. One side tells us one thing and the other just the opposite. And if neither side is telling the truth, we'd like to know that too. And if each side is telling half the truth, give us the wisdom to put the right halves together.

In Jesus' name, amen. A twin sister of dishonesty or lying is cheating, which according to one report is absolutely rampant in the workforce and on the campuses, high tech offenses. This article said uses information from the internet, allows the potential for information to be used from the internet without proper attribution.

You can buy term papers from online paper mills and share answers and coursework via email. Another sibling of dishonesty and cheating is stealing. They're all related. According to one study by the American Management Association, US businesses annually lose over $10 billion to employee theft, another $4 billion to embezzlement. In fact, the US Department of Commerce estimates that at least one third, I found this startling, one third of all businesses that fail to survive in America can be traced back to employee crime.

One third. Of course, part of the challenge today in running a business is hiring people who have actually told the truth on their resume, right? And in their interview. Ladies and gentlemen, your faith does not automatically guarantee that you will tell the truth. And you've probably discovered it as a follower of Jesus Christ that it's a lifetime of rejecting the sin nature, which is that fallen part of our flesh we will not be done with as Paul said, who will deliver me from this body of death, the inclination to sin, that which aligns itself so readily to the father of lies. John 844, whenever he speaks a lie, John tells us he is speaking his native tongue.

He's fluent in deception. The apostle James, no doubt, reflected on his boyhood as he was raised along with his siblings, the oldest being his half brother, the Lord Jesus. Gospel of Matthew records the names of four of the half brothers of our Lord, born to him after Mary delivered Jesus to fulfill prophecy, of course, that Jesus would be born of a virgin.

Mary and Joseph had at least six more children, and so that was one busy household. All these kids grew up with their half brother Jesus, and only later I imagine James would have reflected on the fact that he had never heard Jesus ever tell a lie. Well, in his closing comments, James is issuing this dramatic call to nothing less than honesty, and your endurance and mine is going to depend on it. Dishonesty will sideline you. Dishonesty will sidetrack you. Dishonesty will discredit your testimony of Christ and for him. Now, honesty will not make your life any easier.

It may make it tougher, but it will make you deeper. It will make your conscience cleaner. It will make your word more reliable. Your promise is more dependable, and you will honor and please Christ all the more. Now, if you've turned already to the letter by James, we find ourselves at chapter 5 and verse 12.

We'll cover this verse today, and it seems to me that James sort of pulls the cart off the path for a moment and specifically drives home this necessary ingredient to spiritual endurance, to staying the course which is being honest to God and everybody else. He writes in verse 12, but above all, my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but your yes is to be yes and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment. You find in this verse something that you're supposed to do, something you're not supposed to do, followed by a warning.

Now, first, the negative command. He says, above all, my brethren, do not swear. Now, you might think that James is saying, don't use filthy language or four-letter words as soon as you learn them.

Don't do that. No, that's not what James is referring to here, although a Christian, by the way, shouldn't use filthy language. He's referring here to making an oath, making a vow with an oath.

Now, the Jewish audience to whom James was writing would have immediately understood what he meant. Many of us don't have a clue. We have to take just a few minutes and track back to the Old Testament system of swearing oaths to understand what he meant to them so that we can correctly apply what he means to us. To not do so could lead us into confusion. In fact, the misinterpretation of this verse has led the Anabaptists, some of them before us, then onto the Moravians and Quakers, to interpret this to mean that you should never make a vow or swear an oath, which would include wedding vows or an oath of commitment when you enter the ministry, an ordination oath or vow, or the swearing of an oath to tell the truth as you appear in court. This text in James 5, along with Jesus's own words and commands, and Matthew 5, which James actually quotes some of, are used then by the Moravians, the Quakers, and others prohibiting anyone from making an oath of any kind.

Well, for the purpose of our study, let me define it very quickly. An oath, in biblical terms, is a promise whereby someone calls on God to serve as witness to the truthfulness of their vow. All you have to do is just take a brief look through the Old Testament, even the New Testament, to discover that we ought to ask a few questions about whether or not you should or shouldn't ever do that. You go back to Abraham and Isaac, who took oaths in business transactions. In fact, they took them with unbelievers, swearing their fidelity to keep their promise and calling God to be their witness, Genesis 21 and 26. Joshua records an oath given to Rahab by the two Israelite spies as they vowed to protect her, chapter 2. David swore an oath to Jonathan of his faithfulness to him in 1 Samuel 20. The Apostle Paul made a vow to God in Acts chapter 18. The Apostle Paul, in fact, adopted the language of a Jewish oath of truthfulness when he wrote to the Corinthians, and he called on God as his witness that he was indeed telling the Corinthian church the truth, 2 Corinthians chapter 11. You go back again to the Old Testament and you discover times when God actually required his people to deliver an oath.

For instance, in the case of a man who is watching cattle and one of them goes missing, and he would be accused of having taken it, killed it, and eaten it. And so he would deliver an oath calling God as his witness to come to his defense as an innocent man, Exodus chapter 22. Also, the oath of a married woman suspected of infidelity, she was required, if innocent, to take an oath of her faithfulness calling God as her witness, Numbers chapter 5. In Luke chapter 1 verse 73, we read that God himself swore an oath to Abraham. He calls upon himself and his own fidelity and faithfulness in the keeping of the promise to Abraham. And God also swore oaths to David as well as to the people of Israel.

In fact, he just studied the idea. In the Old Testament, there's an awful lot of it. God not only endorsed the making of oaths, but he expected them to be kept, and that's where James is going to take us.

That's the issue with James. Whenever they are aligned to the will and purpose of God, they are to be kept. Certainly, obviously, we're not to keep a sinful promise or a sinful oath. Maybe if you've known the Lord and his word for any length of time, you're immediately thinking of Jephthah in that chapter 11 in Judges where you have that classic illustration of a king. He's battling and he's promising God that if you'll make me victorious, I will give you the first thing that comes running out of my yard to greet me when I return home.

However, when he returned home, the first thing running out to meet him wasn't his favorite dog. It was his daughter, and I believe correctly interpreted meant that he kept her unmarried and virgin for the rest of her life, a passage we still refer to as the foolish vow of Jephthah. Now, I give you that quick survey, all that to say that James is not forbidding the making of promises, vows, or oaths in the name of God.

In fact, you'll notice that your English translation correctly has a comma after this phrase instead of a period. You notice he's saying, my brethren do not swear, don't stop there, do not swear by heaven or by earth or with another or any other oath. This is a helpful clue to what James is after. You see, by the time of the New Testament, the giving of an oath, the making of a vow had actually developed into a rather complicated system of deceit and dishonesty. The rabbis had been teaching for hundreds of years, several hundred years before James ever wrote this letter, that an oath or a vow was not binding if it omitted the name of God. In other words, if you made an oath or a vow by your own life or by the life of another, the Jews might even say, by my own beard, by my clothing, by the comfort of Jerusalem, well, that was all wonderful but not really binding. There was a little loophole in there and you weren't necessarily bound to keep it because you didn't include the name of God. Do we do that kind of thing? No.

Yes. We learned early on as children that if you made a promise to your friend, if your hand was behind your back and your what were crossed, your fingers were crossed, you didn't have to keep it because I had my fingers crossed, but if you did a little pinky swear, now that was serious, you had to keep that. Now let me tell you something, the Jews had developed a system almost as silly as that. As long as you made the vow by heaven or earth, the city of Jerusalem, your beard, whatever, you could break it. In fact, the Mishnah, the Jewish commentary on customs and traditions that dated, that actually recorded several centuries prior to James, these customs and traditions recorded for us in the third century, has an entire chapter on the making of, an entire section on the making of oaths. Elaborate instructions are given on when oaths are binding and when they're really not. When vows and promises with an oath meant you got to keep them and when you really didn't have to, there would be little loopholes there. Evasive swearing had become a fine art and you think of our own country, how far we've gone from a handshake to pages and pages and pages and pages.

Just sign for a house and you'll get a cramp signing all those pages to try to keep us from finding a loophole in our promise to pay a mortgage company what we said we'd pay. See, what mattered though to this culture and what they tended to focus on is that you didn't mention the name of God. I'll take you back to the text in a moment, but let me explain a little further. You see, they were taught that if God's name was not used in the oath, that God had nothing to do with the transaction. You had not brought God into the transaction.

And so now go back. James writes, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. In other words, don't fall into that custom of swearing an oath by heaven or earth, which you then think you don't have to keep.

Why not? Because of what the believer already knows to be true. If you bring God's name into the promise or not, he's listening. If you swear by heaven, guess who's there? If you swear by earth, guess who owns it? If you swear by your beard, who allowed you to grow it? You swear to the comfort of Jerusalem?

Whose city is that? In other words, you can't keep God out of any transaction or any promise whether you mention his name or not. What James is effectively saying is not when you can or can't make an oath. Can you do it in court?

Can you do it at an altar? His point is be honest. Is it possible to add all kinds of sincere, even religious sounding language to cover our tracks as we run away from the truth? If you're a person of honesty, James is about to explain we don't need to add anything to give our words weight. Let it be a matter of character.

That's exactly what he's asking us to adopt. Look at the positive command. There again in verse 12. Your yes is to be yes and your no implied is to be no.

Now he's actually much more passionate. I just said it rather quietly, but James is pounding the pulpit. Let your yes be yes. Let your no mean no! Exclamation point. Don't cut corners.

Don't find loopholes. Don't bring in religious jargon to add weight to something you know you're not gonna keep. One Greek scholar said that James' language here in this phrase indicates that this is to be the mark of every believer's duty. It's to be a sense of duty. In other words, the world out there lies like a rug, we say.

It's their native language. They're bound by the devil who is fluent in fibbing. Don't be like them, James is saying. Let your speech reflect the simplicity of honesty. Don't let your yes mean, well maybe, if things turn out okay, if I feel up to it. Don't let your yes mean anything other than yes. Don't let your no mean, well I could be bought. I could cut some corners if. I could change my no to perhaps.

Let it mean no. He ends with this warning. Would you notice the last phrase? He says so that you may not fall under judgment. That's a nice way of saying so that you won't get into trouble with God. James isn't saying that oaths and vows are sinful and there aren't times that you can't give them. He's saying you add an oath to your promise.

You vow and then lie. You are effectively in real trouble because you've added piety to your hypocrisy and there isn't anything that received more scathing words than that from our Lord. You've added religious jargon to dishonest living. Perhaps even today at some point in time in these three services we've held this morning there have been people that have come in and they've said an amen or maybe let's sing a little louder.

All the while knowing that this worship service is an attempt to masquerade what only you know is a pattern. Maybe it's a growing pattern of dishonesty. Your latest tax return comes to mind. The last term paper wasn't yours.

Your resume is one of those that has at least one lie about your salary, your background, your experience, your title. You hope they don't contact or call back. You're wondering if if those marriage vows were all that binding. You're wondering if there's a loophole in that business contract.

I see it. I can manipulate that and I can get out of what has become for me a difficult or an uncomfortable situation. Listen to the warning of James for the believer to cover your tracks is to not only run away from the truth but walk into the discipline of the Lord. It is potentially to waste a life.

It is to live an unrewardable life that meets the displeasure of God. That's what James is saying. He's delivering this warning, would you notice, not to the world. Look back again.

Who's he writing to? The brethren. The brethren. Stop the art of deception. Brethren, be honest. This is a call to honesty. It's a challenge to back up what we say by who we are and what we do. From the littlest thing like I'll pray for you to I'm gonna show up on time to I'll keep those vows to I'll honor that contract. Why?

Because whether you bring God's name in it or not, honesty should be the reflection of the character of his children. A few years ago I asked a business owner in our church how he was doing. He told me that they were having a challenging time. These were challenging days. He had one major competitor in the field. It was a large company, well established, and going up against it was like a David against a Goliath. He was always coming in or often coming in second place to the larger company. He told me about something that had just happened recently. He said that one client wanted to sign a large contract, had heard about him, and liked what he had heard. Actually, the president of the company called him and said, you know what, I want you to get to work. We're not even gonna bid it out.

I know we got a competitor there in your region and they're bigger or whatever, but I want you to get the work. So I'll send you the contract, but listen, I want you to know we need the first shipment by such-and-such a date. Can you promise me that you can meet that deadline? And this brother in Christ knew that with his smaller staff of employees he would need at least another two weeks to fill that order. He wouldn't be able to meet that date. He told me the temptation was there to say yes, and then of course later he could say, well I had this problem and that delay and I'll be able to get it to you in two weeks. And that would fit well within the current of our culture, but the Spirit of God convicted him and he told the president, he said, you know, I hate to say this, but I need to say this, even though I'm gonna lose this contract.

I can't meet that deadline, but I know that other company can. Isn't it great that that man's business though began to take off after that and flourish? No. He went bankrupt a year later and lost much of what he had. But let me tell you, that brother in Christ has since passed away. Do you think for a moment that he now regrets that incident? Can you imagine how deep his joy is in being able to be examined by the Lord for that in his life which is profitable and see that incident where he told the truth?

Can you imagine his joy compared to the contract and the blessing of Christ who commends him? Why tell the truth? Because it is the character of God. Why tell the truth? Because we as his children represent him. Why tell the truth? Because the Lord that we represent as ambassadors is the way and he is the what?

The truth. The gospel we deliver is the truth because our God cannot tell a lie. Hebrews 6 18.

His fingers are never crossed behind his back. And how important is that to you and me? How important, how critical is it to us that he keeps his promises? You know somebody once said that the Bible is not so much a book of answers as it is a book of promises. And how many of the promises from God do we expect God to keep?

Every one of them. Our lives depend on it. Our eternity is hinged upon his oath, his covenant to us. John Phillips, and I close with this, the British expositor and author in his commentary on James, which I've enjoyed reading. John is now with the Lord as well. He said this, and I quote, there was a time in English history when honor was prized as the highest virtue. A man who broke his word was considered the lowest form of cad.

A common saying in lands where the flag of the empire was displayed used to be, quote, it is the word of an Englishman, end quote. Phillips went on to refer to David Livingstone, the British missionary pioneer to Africa a century plus ago, a fearless evangelist who took the gospel into the interior of Africa before any other missions, agencies, or missionaries. That's a great biography by the way to read. Attacked at one point by a lion which left him somewhat disabled, malaria, coming close to dying many, many times. He would write in his diary how at every crisis he would retreat back to the promise of Jesus Christ in his favorite verse, Matthew 28 20, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. He wrote in his diary next to, on one occasion, that verse that he scribbled in.

He was facing a crisis and a difficulty. And he wrote in the verse, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And then he marked beside that in his diary, and that is the word of a gentleman of the most sacred honor. And then he wrote, that's an end of it.

In other words, the struggle that he was feeling and sensing the loneliness perhaps of whatever it was, Jesus Christ promised me he would never leave me and it is the word of a gentleman of the most sacred honor. He will not break his promise, and that's an end of it. He will keep his word.

You know what James is saying? We belong to him. Let's do the same. Let's keep our word as well. For those of us who desire to live as Christ demands, this is a challenging reminder.

We're called to reflect God's honesty by being honest ourselves. I hope you'll commit to that today. Thanks for listening. We have other resources designed to equip and encourage you. And you can learn more about those at wisdomonline.org. If this ministry is a blessing to you, we'd love to hear about that. Write to us at Wisdom International, PO Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. Please join us again next time for more wisdom for the heart.