No Bearing False Witness Exodus 20:16

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1 No Bearing False Witness Exodus 20:16 In my very first church in Emporia, Va. where I originally served as a Minister of Youth and Children I began to notice an unusual phenomenon. At least to me it was unusual. I noticed how all the girls were going steady with boys. It didn t matter what age the girls were,... 13, 15, 17 years old. They wouldn t just date around and meet lots of guys; they went steady with a guy or they didn t see a guy at all. It was all or nothing. I asked Jeannie, one of the girls in my youth group, Why do you girls always go steady with boys. Can t you date more than one? She replied, In this town, if you re going to date you have to go steady, or everyone will say you re sleeping around. In this small town you either went steady with a boy or you were, well, you know Recently, a teacher in a small Christian school in another town, told me about an experience that disrupted her life. She was the sponsor for an afterschool cheerleading squad and was giving instructions to the girls in the gym one afternoon. One of the girls was talking out loud and distracting everyone one else. The teacher called her down and told her to be quiet. The girl was embarrassed by the reprimand and decided to dismiss the teacher with a wave of the hand. Sitting on the front row, the teacher grabbed the girls hand and said, Don t brush me off. You can leave if you can t listen. That evening the girl told her parents the teacher slapped her in the face in front of the other students. Naturally, they called the principal, who called the teacher into his office. The teacher told her side of the story and asked to speak with the parents with whom she had been friends for 20 years. The teacher and the parents met along with the student. The student admitted she fabricated the story, the parents apologized to the teacher, and all was well. Except all wasn t well. The principle was concerned word would get out into the community that teachers hit students without any formal reprimand. He decided to suspend the teacher, and have her come to the board of trustees meeting to defend her actions publically. The teacher had taught at the school for 20 years with a flawless record. She had worked for low pay and spent many hours after school tutoring students, coaching cheerleaders, and chaperoning school events. She was devastated and thought she might lose her job just when her oldest daughter was beginning her first year of college. She met with the board, but they had no basis for judgment since the student and the parents were now on the teacher s side. Nevertheless the damage was done. Trust between teacher and administration had been broken, and the bond in the community had been compromised. It happens all the time. Bearing false witness against a neighbor, a teacher, a friend, a colleague leads to the breakdown of community. It is true in the local community and it s true in the international community. After 781 days in an Iranian prison, hitchhikers Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, finally landed safely on U.S. soil. Another hiker, Sarah Shourd, had been released earlier. The Iranian government accused them of spying; the hikers said they merely got lost. Bauer was beaten while in prison; they both were roughed up periodically. They often heard other prisoners in cells nearby who were yelling out in pain as they were being beaten. Their families wrote them letters everyday but the two Americans constantly denied reading them for long intervals. Eventually, they were told falsely that their families had abandoned

2 them. Solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives, Fattal said. We lived in a world of lies and false hope. Bearing false witness against two 29 year old hitchhikers soon escalated into an international crisis. Only the lure of large amounts of money and extraordinary diplomatic effort averted a larger crisis. It s almost always the same. What starts out as a small lie, grows into something bigger than anyone imagined. The mischief done in the human community by false statements against neighbor is mind-numbing. No wonder that James, the brother of Jesus, compared the tongue to a torch that is carried into a dry forest, where it ignites fires and quickly rages out of control. And no wonder that God gave this commandment to his people: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. The Original Commandment No doubt the commandment was primarily a check against official testimony in the Jewish courts of law. In fact, this commandment has more detailed expansion in the laws of Moses as recorded in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy than any other commandment. Early Israel was governed by local judges and patriarchs, who had no other legal handbook than the Law of Moses. So you get explanations such as, Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death (Ex23:7). Israel took great aims to insure the accused received a fair trial. The Deuteronomic code had this protection for the accused: On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness (Deut 17:6). Evil had to be purged from the nation of Israel, but it was to be done judiciously and with great care given to honest witnesses. Those who bore false witness undermined the entire judicial system. In fact, the early Jewish law was so determined to ensure justice that it punished false witnesses with the crime they were accusing others of. Listen to what Deut. 19:19 says about the testimony of witnesses: If the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother, then do to him as he intended to do to his brother. If other words, if you gave false witness in a capital offense, your punishment would be capital punishment. All of this was to protect the community. A dishonest judicial system is a major impediment to a happy, well-ordered society. False witness undermined the entire sense of community. There can be no community when people are spreading false rumors against one another. It s akin to the 8 th Commandment in that sense, You shall not steal. To bear false witness against your neighbor is to steal their reputation and their good name. Bearing false witness is another form of theft. False Witness Continues Unfortunately, the business of bearing false witness has not diminished with time. Throughout our nation lying in the courtroom has become a giant obstacle in the dispensing of justice. Harvard Law School s Alan Dershowitz recently said, "On the basis of my academic and professional experience, I believe that no felony is committed more frequently in this country than [crimes within] the genre of perjury and false statements. A recent survey of more than 50 U.S. state and federal judges, as well as lawyers and academics, conducted by the ABA Journal, found that most of the judges interviewed said that increasingly "lawyers appearing before them are bending the truth, not telling the whole truth, or just plain lying." It s bad enough when bearing false witness against neighbor is flooding the court system in our nation. It s worse when it penetrates into the life of the church. When I was the pastor of a church in Spruce Pine, NC I developed a friendship with Larry Greene, a local pastor in the

3 community. He was born in the community, went off to college, and then followed a call from God to seminary. He returned to the community and became the pastor of his home church, where his Mom had been the VBS director and his dad had been a deacon and pillar of the church. Things are different in mountain life. Graduation from a seminary made you suspect. There were 36 Baptist churches in the Mitchell County Association and only 3 of those churches had seminary preachers, as we were called. We were a blatant minority. For 7 years Larry served as a wonderful pastor for his congregation. He wasn t a dynamic preacher, but he was loving toward the people and had a real sense of integrity. These were the days when the SBC controversy was filtering down into local congregations, and some of the hardcore Baptist preachers wanted to purge the association of what they considered liberalism. They gave some of Larry s deacons a list of things that liberals didn t believe and since Larry was a seminary graduate and didn t support the takeover of the SBC he was branded a liberal by those other pastors. The list included among other things that: He didn t believe the Bible, He didn t believe the first 11 chapters of Genesis He didn t believe Revelation was inspired He didn t believe in the virgin birth. Larry thought there was no way his deacons would believe such malicious propaganda. They hadn t heard anything like that during his 7 years of preaching. But some deacons bought the lie. And eventually rumors were spreading around the community like wild-fire that Larry was a liberal that didn t believe the Bible. Larry was forced to fight for his ministry or resign. But Larry was no fighter. He was a pastor. He resigned. He could ve fought them and won (I certainly would ve fought!), but it just seemed so ludicrous, to think his church could do something like that after 7 years of faithful service. Larry ended up leaving the ministry and going to local oil business to work a desk job. Bearing false witness. It gets into the churches doesn t it? It s in the schools, in the courtrooms. It runs through the streets like the exhaust coming out of an old car. It pollutes the air for everyone. Anything in its trail is gasping for the air of truth. The poison of malicious words robs the community of the purity God intended. It doesn t take much experience in the world to realize one of the most well-known false myths is Sticks and stones may break my bones, but word can never hurt me. Words can hurt. They can wound the heart. They can destroy self-esteem. They can suffocate confidence. They can sever the ties that bind people together. When former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson died in 2006, the New York Times published a long obituary, noting his sensitive spirit. He was not the blustering, bragging boxer that is so stereotypical today. He was quoted in the obituary saying, You can hit me and I won t think much of it, but you can say something to me and hurt me very much. Patterson had felt the sting of many sticks and stones during his career, but not hurt him like words meant to cut him down to size. A Neighborhood Commandment The 9 th Commandment addresses the harm done to the individual, and consequently to the entire community because of malicious speech. You see, the validity of the commandment centers on the effect of the neighbor. We re not talking about a little white lie to cover up some

4 misdeed. The commandment isn t focused on dealing with every falsehood spoken, though it certainly isn t promoting false speech. The emphasis is the effect on the neighbor, the impact on the community. For when false witness proliferates in the community there can be no peace and security. When everyone is suspicious of what others are saying behind their backs there is no hope for true intimacy. The Gospel Into this world of lies and deceit, Jesus came full of grace and truth. He spoke the truth and he was the truth. If he ever spoke words that were cutting and at times he did they were always judiciously true. He made the startling and wonderfully true claim, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Yet, the workers of evil -- those who broke this 9 th commandment -- managed to bring the light of the world into the darkness of unjustified murder. False accusations, unsubstantiated rumors were maliciously spread by the enemies of Jesus. He was brought to trial on a collection of lies and fabrications. Pilate, the Roman governor, was caught in the middle. The Jewish leaders couldn t execute the death penalty. They needed the Romans for that. Mark s Gospel tells us, Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for false testimony against Jesus so they might put him to death (Mk 14:55). What irony. These self-righteous upholders of the law were trying to find people willing to break the 9 th commandment, so they could break the 6 th commandment. Pilate asked, What has he done? Never mind, they said. If he weren t such a dangerous fellow we wouldn t be brining him to you. That s not enough to hold him on, said Pilate. You ll have to produce some evidence. So they accused Jesus of being a seditionist and plotting to the overthrown the government. He says he the king of the Jews, they barked. Are you the king of the Jews? Pilate asked Jesus when they were alone in council chambers. Do you say this of your own accord, asked Jesus, or did others say it to you about me. Do you hear what Jesus was asking Pilate? He was asking Do you know this to be fact, or is this just gossip you have heard. Jesus was supposed to be on trial, but it was the malicious tongues of the Jewish leaders who were on trial. My kingship is not of this world, Jesus said. Then you really are a king? asked Pilate. You say that I am a king, said Jesus. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice. And poor Pilate, caught up in his own world of petty politics and still straining to get his mind around the truth standing before him asked, And what is the truth? What is truth? It is a question that philosophers in universities and philosophers at coffee shops ask every day. It s an important question, but it will never answer the deepest longings of the human spirit. The primary question that Jesus answered is Who is truth? The Lord of all truth was standing before Pilate, the Lord whose kingdom is poised against all evil and all falsehood and all lying and all gossip. If Pilate had been on a search for truth rather than a search for job security he might have fallen on his knees to worship the true and living God standing before him. But he didn t get it. Many people don t. He let truth be crucified and

5 he went down in the history of infamy as one of the saddest figures of all time. As followers of Christ we are asked, once again, to go beyond the letter of the law and embrace the fulfillment of the law as taught by Jesus. Therefore, we are called not simply to avoid false witness against our neighbor. Our call is to speak truth for the edification of our neighbor. Our words are not merely to bypass falsehood. They are to lift up truth spoken in love. The Apostle Paul put it like this: Therefore each of you must put off falsehood for we are all members of one body (Eph 4:25). Did you hear that? Our community is so organically unified that our words edify or crucify the entire community whenever we speak. We have the power to speak words of love and encouragement and we have the power to tear down and humiliate. Our new relationship of love and community is to prevail over every temptation to speak falsely about other persons. In place of falsehood, we bring words of truth grounded in love. When we do that we really are walking in the kingdom of truth and light.