March 19 Sermon: Speaking the Truth

A few years back, I discovered a television show. It's British. I'm not sure how I came across it. I don't know if it was on a streaming service for free someplace, and I watched it. But the name of the show was Would I lie to you? Now, I'll explain the premise of the show here in just a second, but I'm going to tell you I liked it so much I actually went out and found some DVDs of it and ordered them because I just found this show to be rather humorous. Now, the premise of the game is that there are two teams and there's one British celebrity from each side who's on the show every week, and then each team has two different celebrities with it, and they pull a card and they read it. Now, that card they're reading is a statement about themselves. Now, that statement might be true or it might be a lie. They sometimes have to read off these things that are relatively absurd, and then they have to defend it. 

They have to come up with stories that defend this statement that they have read. Now, obviously, they start this off, and it can become even a little bit more bizarre because not only have they read something bizarre, they have something slip out of their mouths that doesn't make any sense. But because it allegedly happened to them, they have to defend it. It keeps on snowballing. What amazes me more so than just the humor that comes out of it, but what amazes me most about it is that even in the most absurd cases, you'll get to the point where the other team has to determine whether or not what this person is saying is a lie or whether it's the truth. No matter how absurd it is, there's always somebody on the other side going, I don't know, I think it might be true. Lies are powerful. Lies are something that we struggle sometimes to show discernment about why, because we want to assume that people are telling the truth. We want to assume that people are being forthcoming with us. Sometimes we will believe some of the most absurd things just because we want to trust people. 

But you know what? The history that we have with people lying to us and our knowledge and our belief on human nature tells us that that's probably not a pretty safe path. We know that people are totally depraved, people deceive, people are liars. You know what? We don't have to be taught this, do we? You've heard me say many times, when you become a parent, you learn that there is an observable theological truth, and that is original sin. We don't have to be taught to be rebellious. We don't have to be taught to lie. I have an example. Our nephew, when he was pretty little, still in diapers, my wife's sister was changing his diaper in the living room, and they normally kept wipes in multiple spots in the house. She realized while she was changing the diaper that they didn't have wipes in the living room. So she got up quick and went to get some wipes. Pretty soon she's met by her son, our nephew, who takes her by the hand. Well, he had had an accident on the floor. As soon as this had happened, he went and sought her out. He grabbed her by the hand. 

Dude is pretty little here, okay? He's pretty little, grabs her by the hand, takes her, gets to where the incident took place, looks up at her and says dog. Now, he gets better. Don't stop laughing yet. They didn't have a dog. He did not need to be taught to deceive. He had self-interest in mind and realized that telling a falsehood was probably the best path for Him to get out of whatever he had done. Now, he was really little. I can't imagine why he thought that he would get in trouble for this. But regardless, that bit of self-preservation came out in Him. As we land at the ninth commandment today, we have another commandment in the second table of the law that we don't have any problem acknowledging that it's a bad thing to do. We aren't going to go, Maybe lying is okay. We acknowledge that just like murder, adultery, stealing, lying, bearing false witness is a bad thing. You don't need to be a Christian. You don't need to have a Judeo-Christian ethic to have a conviction that it's wrong to deceive others. Now, of course, now, the level of conviction that we have based upon the severity is a sliding scale. 

We're loose with this one. That's where the phrase little white lie comes from. We think there's a sliding scale. Big corporations deceiving people to fraud investors out of money, big deal. That's why that lie is terrible. Even maybe any type of scam, right? I mean, really isn't any type of scam is trying to separate us from our money or to get people to follow them or whatever. But we acknowledge that these type of things are most clearly wrong, but that sliding scale comes into effect. We're upset with the big things, but we don't get too worked up about the little ones. That scale slides pretty quick, doesn't it? Based upon how much it benefits us. We would acknowledge that lying to get money or something big, that definitely is a problem. But we will let the scale slide pretty quick if it's just something little, if it isn't a big deal, and especially if we don't think that it doesn't harm anyone. But despite those facts and those convictions, I think, that we often have about this or that lie isn't a big deal, the ninth commandment doesn't come with a sliding scale. It's very clear cut. 

It doesn't tell us that it's okay to stretch the truth a little bit if it benefits us. It's very clear. It says, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. A few more words than the last few commandments that we have had, but we know what it means. Now, we might stumble a little bit over, You shall not bear false witness. We don't really talk that way. We know that it means you shall not lie when we stop and we think about it, but that is what is in the original text. You shall not bear false witness. There is a legal sense to this that this is something that you must not do. You must not say something about someone that is not true in a legal sense. But we know. We know that it applies beyond that. We know that this is not just about you or I getting on the stand and saying things about somebody in a legal trial. To bear false witness, period, means to lie. As I've said, it's clear that we know that this is wrong, and we know the depth of the consequences of violating the ninth commandment, don't we? 

We might think that our lies or our deception are just for a moment, that it just is happening in that instant. But lies rarely only last for a moment, do they? They rarely are just for that minute or that second where we're uttering this falsehood. The consequences of our deception go on. They go on beyond the moment, and it usually affects us and the person that we're lying to. It isn't just about us. It isn't just about the other person. It's both of us are affected by this lie. Even if it's benefiting us, this can have an effect on us. When we think about the other person, maybe we're the one being lied to, think about this. Have you ever believed a lie that was told to you and you believed it long term? It dramatically affected how you made decisions about things, whether that was business or in your family. You heard some falsehood and you believed it and it got baked down into you and it affected you long term. I'm sure that's happened. We've all had that. I know that I've heard things that I've been taught and I found out it wasn't true. 

I was like, Gee, how many times have I made a decision in my life based upon this bad information? That happens. We know that happens. Really, isn't this the nature of every scam? To get us not only to believe something in the moment, but to believe it so deeply that we do something about it, that we change the way we do things based upon this. Now, the worst part of this is when you realize, or the worst part about it personally, is when you realize that you have been deceived. What happens? The feeling is really overwhelming. You have an extreme sense of betrayal and in where you got this information from, you feel like a fool. But as I said, the consequences of violating this command against lying, against bearing false witness, isn't just about the person who's been lied to. There are deep consequences for the person who is telling the falsehood as well. Because I'm guessing, I'm pretty confident in this, each one of us at some point in our lives has told a lie that we had to live into, that we had to keep going, that we had to remember long term, and then what can happen to us? 

Well, this seems like a good idea in the moment. Then we realize that the lie that we decided to tell was going to require that it would keep going. We have to remember all these details. We have to remember the story that we fabricated, and we maybe even have to craft new details to match those falsehoods. Then what happens to us? We start to live into that lie. Have you ever told a lie and told it so many times that you actually started to believe it yourself that you actually essentially altered history, your personal history with the falsehood that you told, and then you started to believe it yourself? That's perhaps the most dangerous thing that can happen to us. We begin to believe our own lies. We don't even know if we're telling the truth anymore. We live into these falsehoods, and it alters us. It changes us. We believe these lies that we've told even ourselves. What I'm driving at here is we know deeply the consequences of lying. We know how it affects people. We know how it affects us. What I want us to do here is I want us to consider for a moment beyond that, beyond the ramifications of it, because we can understand why this command is a good thing. 

It protects others and it protects us. But there's more to it than just the benefit for us. This is a command that's deeply baked into, or the reason for it is deeply baked into the nature of God. That reason is that God is truth. God is truth. God wants us to not bear false witness because He is truth. When He speaks, it is true. This only makes sense, right? He is God. He creates by His Word, when He says something, it is true. But it goes beyond that too, because God keeps His promises. He speaks, it is true, and He is not going to change. He is going to keep it. We've seen this as we look at the Old Testament. God speaks a word of promise to His people. We can go back all the way, almost to the beginning, immediately after the fall. God says, I will bring the one who will crush the head of the serpent. He proclaims the gospel right there in Genesis 3:15, and what does God do? God shapes history in such a way that He brings about His Messiah as He has promised. God is truth, and so when He speaks, it is true, and He ordains that it comes to pass. 

God Himself is truth. He does not lie. This is fantastic news for you and I, because the word of truth that He speaks is the gospel. He says that in Christ our sins are forgiven, that we have the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that we have eternal life. If He speaks that, it is true because God is truth. Again, he ordains it to pass that what he has spoken of His people comes to pass. This is good news for us that God is truth. It means that we can trust Him. It means we can trust His Word. It means we can trust the salvation that He has spoken over us. Now, not only is it important for us to understand that God is truth, it's also really important that you and I understand the antithesis, that we understand the opposite. Because if God is truth, there is a liar. We see Jesus spelling this out for us very clearly in John 8. Now, we know this passage. This is really well-known. Jesus says, You are of the Father, the Devil, and your will is to do your Father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in Him. 

When He lies, He speaks out of His own character, for He is a liar and the Father of lies. If God is truth, Satan is a liar. If God is our heavenly Father, Satan who speaks truth, Satan is the Father of lies. We know this. We know this from the story that got us in this whole mess to begin with. You go back to the fall and Satan was deceiving. He was a liar. It's important for us to remember that his deception came in the form of a question, right? How he deceived Eve, it was, did God really say? I guess we could paraphrase that, couldn't we? I didn't think of this till now, but we could paraphrase that into, is God truth or not? Those are the words that Satan has spoken. Is God truth or not? Did God really say? Notice what Jesus has to say about this deception, about this deceiver. He was a murderer from the beginning. Death came into the world through this deception. Notice that Jesus also says He does not stand in the truth. The reason for this is that there isn't any truth in Him. Now, this is an important thing for us to hear because the world comes to you and I with the same lie that the serpent spoke to Eve, right? 

Did God really say? Is God truth? That's the lie that the world comes to us. That's the question that the world asks. We are so easily tempted by this question, and it's important that we realize that it's rooted in the lie, the lie of the liar that God is not truth, that God is not reliable. Again, we can see the opposites that work here, the antithesis here. God is truth, Satan lies. Who are we going to believe? Are we going to believe the truth or the lie? We see that this lying is once again native to his character. Just as I said God's character was to be truth. The native character in Satan is to lie. Notice what it says. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character. You know that I was raised only speaking English. So when I open my mouth, what am I going to speak? Ladies that on the youth trip, pig lighting doesn't count. No. When I speak, what am I going to say? When I open my mouth, I'm going to speak English. That's what I'm going to speak. When Satan speaks his native language, what comes out of him is lies, and we know it. 

We know it, yet we tend to believe it, but we shouldn't because this is what we are deceived by. We're deceived by someone who doesn't care about us, the Father of lies. Think about that phrase. That means that he is the patriarch of untruth, that from him, all lies flow. Just as a father, his offspring comes from him, and he raises them, that's a good thing, right? Satan is a father who creates lies and they expand. All lies are his offspring. This is important for us to understand that this is why truth matters. This is why we want to be people who speak the truth. We see this contrast. God is truth. Satan is a liar. We get from this that this commandment, this ninth commandment, is not arbitrary. It isn't without reason. It isn't just God trying to keep us from having fun or from trying to keep us from getting in trouble. This commandment is rooted in God's character. This is important. If we are going to be like Him, if we are going to be holy, we want to speak truth because our God is truth. We want to live as He has called us to do so we can bring glory to His name. 

With these truths in mind, this all about the nature of lies, how they can affect others and affect us, and the fact that God is truth and Satan is a liar. We come to these commandments and we consider how we can apply this commandment to our lives today. Once again, we're going to drop in our applications on these three categories. Just a quick review. The three uses the law, the first use to keep the world from being overwhelmed with chaos or a curb. The second one is a mirror. In other words, the law accuses us and shows us our sin and shows us our need for a savior, most importantly. Lastly, it shows us how to live a holy life. That's the third use of the law. It's a map for us so that we can know how to live. For the first use, we're seeing once again, just like the previous three commandments we've looked at, just how simple it is to understand the first use here. This is important for society. Truth matters in the at large, not just in our personal lives. Truth matters. It really does. When falsehood is allowed to run rampant, people are harmed, and not just emotionally. 

It isn't just about, Oh, it's too bad that so-and-so is lied to. People are harmed when untruth is allowed to run without consequence. A lack of concern for the truth can do all kinds of harm. Imagine if there was not an expectation of truthfulness and if there was no threat of consequence in the world for giving false witness in court. Imagine if you could just say whatever you wanted, if there was no concern about lying in a legal trial, how easy would it be for the law to be used as a weapon against the innocent, against people that we didn't like? Now, of course, we know that this already occurs. This happens in culture. But in our courts, there is an expectation of truthfulness in witnessing, and there is punishment for perjuring yourself. Imagine if those guardrails were taken down and were completely removed, what effect would that have not only in legal matters, but in the culture as a whole. As an application for this commandment, for us on the first use of the law, we want to seek truth. Not only do we want to seek truth, we want to advocate for truth. 

This begins with us. This begins in our business transactions. This begins in our relationships. I mentioned last week with the eighth commandment, but it really applies here as well with business transactions. Most of the theft in our culture, in our world, doesn't happen at the end of a gun, does it? Not in polite society. No, it's not at the end of a gun where people have theft have from them. It happens with falsehood that schemes ways to separate people from their money. We want to make sure that we are advocating for integrity in these transactions. We want to make sure that we are doing the same. We need to live our lives with integrity and expect that same integrity from others as well. For the second use of the law, once again, I don't think this is a commandment that I have to do too much work on. I don't have to convince you too much that you violated this command. We have all spread falsehood, and we know where this violation of this commandment in our lives happens. It happens in our hearts. It happens in our minds. We don't desire truth like we ought, and so we scheme in our heads to fabricate a reality that isn't rooted in the truth, but instead what happens? 

We want to become little gods ourselves, don't we? We want to try and create a new reality that is centered on us and centered on our truth. Instead of God being truth, we believe that we are truth. We want to create our own reality. We don't trust what God has ordained. We don't trust what God has said should come to pass. We want to ordain our creation into being. We find that we have not only violated the commandment that tells us not to bear false witness, but we also violate the first commandment because we set ourselves in the place of God. The application for this commandment in light of this truth, is to start by being honest with ourselves about our lies. What lies have so permeated our lives that we forget that they're lies, that we have started to believe ourselves? Where are there areas like this in our lives where it's made its way into our everyday life? May God, through His Holy Spirit and through His Word, reveal to us where we have compromised in this way. May the truth of God's Word help us to understand the importance of truth, and may we humbly be a people who seeks truth in all things. 

This, as usual, naturally leads us to our third use of the law here. As I mentioned, this commandment is rooted in the idea that God is truth. To the contrary, Satan is the father of lies. In looking at the second use of the law, we understand our need for forgiveness, and the truth is that the God of truth comes to us with His word of truth to let us know of the forgiveness that we have in Christ because of our falsehood. That truth comes to us. We understand that we deserve the wrath of God for our lies and for following the one who was a liar from the beginning. But God, the Son, came as the way, the truth, and the life for us to set us free from the lies of the devil. Because of this amazing forgiveness we have, we know the truth of who God is. From this good news of our salvation then, we desire to serve God for the blessings that He has bestowed upon us, that forgiveness that we have in Christ, knowing that the truth is that we are the forgiven people of God. We desire to live a life to the glory of God. 

This commandment blesses us with opportunity in a very good way because we can be a people who rapidly pursue truth in our lives. In a world dominated by lies, the truth will be a beacon and will give us the opportunity to share the gospel. When we act with integrity, it is going to stand out in our world. In the midst of lies, the truth will always stand out. But at the same time, the truth isn't always welcomed because as the saying goes, the truth hurts. The truth hurts. This is where we have the opportunity to show grace. This is where we have the opportunity to acknowledge that you and I are sinners who need this forgiveness because we have spoken falsehood. We can speak that truth just as God spoke that truth. We can tell others that we are liars, but the God of truth came to us and He spoke to us a word of truth, a truth that God in Christ was reconciling us to himself. He speaks truth, and He calls us to reject the lie. He calls us to acknowledge the truth that we're sinners and stop believing the lie that we're just fine on our own. 

He calls us to turn from the lies of the one who is the father of lies, and our truth, the Father of truth, God who is truth, calls us to believe the truth of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus that He used to bring this word of truth that He is creating a people for Himself. We understand that we're called to live these lives of holiness in response to what God has done for us. We know that this means that we're to emulate the character and the nature of God, and I think there's no greater spot for us to begin to emulate the character and nature of God than to approach our life with this commandment in mind, that we want to desire to be people of truth because our God is truth. This approach can help us to keep God in front of us at all times. Our focus can be that we desire to tell the truth not just because God calls us to do it or because it'll keep us out of trouble, but because we know that God is truth, and when we speak truth, we reflect the nature of the one who saved us. 

May we be deliberate to act in truth, to speak in truth because God has spoken, and that word is a word of truth that we have salvation, and that he himself brings the words of life to his people.

This message was delivered on March 19, 2023 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.