MEAN WHAT YOU SAY (Leviticus 19:11-12; Matthew 5:33-37)

Transcription

1 MEAN WHAT YOU SAY (Leviticus 19:11-12; Matthew 5:33-37) INTRODUCTION: Jesus has a very short and pointed word for us this morning. He says But let your word 'yes' be 'yes,' and your 'no' be 'no.' Anything more than this is from the evil one. (HCSV) This is a simple command. Jesus wants you to be honest in your talk by telling the truth and keeping your word. Don t be deceitful in your speech. Don t promise to do something you know that you are not going to do. Sometimes we put it this way, Mean what you say and say what you mean Jesus said it this way, Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Now most of the passage is about making and breaking oaths. Why did Jesus use making and breaking oaths as the background for his emphasis on speaking the plain truth? What was it about oaths, especially in Jesus day that led Him to just say, Let you yes be yes, and your no, be no. What is an oath anyway? An oath is asking God to be witness to the truthfulness of your statement and/or your intentions of doing something. It is calling upon God as a witness to what I am saying. It is like the oath we use in a court proceeding, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. So help me God. It is calling upon God to be the witness to the truthfulness of my words. And what is implied is that if I am lying, let God judge me. Let s look at the context to see Jesus was getting at. WHAT S WRONG WITH OATHS? Jesus starts out by contrasting his teaching with the teaching of the rabbis of his day on the subject of oaths. Matthew 5:33 HCSB Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, You must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord. Although this is not a direct quote from the Old Testament, the OT did teach this. It wasn t wrong to make an oath to the Lord and if you did don t break it. Numbers 30:2 makes this clear. February 27, 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 1

2 Numbers 30:2 HCSB When a man makes a vow to the LORD or swears an oath to put himself under an obligation, he must not break his word; he must do whatever he has promised. Another instruction in the Law of Moses about oaths is in Leviticus 19:12: Leviticus 19:12 HCSB You must not swear falsely by My name, profaning the name of your God; I am Yahweh. The issue was if you did swear an oath in the Lord s name, you are bound to be honest and sincere about it. To swear falsely by the Lord s name was a form of lying and if you are lying in your heart and you are calling on God to be a witness to it, this is bad! God will judge you. Indeed, the Bible says that God hates lying lips! Proverbs 12:22 HCSB Lying lips are detestable to the LORD, but faithful people are His delight. So Jesus says verse 34, just don t take oaths at all, if you can t be truthful. Does this mean we are never to make an oath that we are telling the truth? No. The Bible doesn t prohibit all oaths as some today believe. Some Christians won t make an oath in a court of law and some go to the extreme of not saying the Pledge of Allegiance. This is because they believe that Jesus forbids all oaths. But this is not the point that Jesus is making. There are times when making an oath is proper. The Apostle Paul used the formula of an oath at times when he would say God is my witness, that what I am saying is true as he does in Galatians 1:20. Jesus responded to the high priest who put Jesus under an oath when he asked him if He was the Messiah. (Matthew 26:63-64 NKJV) And the high priest answered and said to Him, "I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!" 64 Jesus said to him, "It is as you said. God himself swore an oath when He gave Abraham is promises: Hebrews 6:13 HCSB For when God made a promise to Abraham, since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself. Now what was Jesus saying when he said, I tell you, don t take an oath at all and let your yes be yes and your no be no? Jesus was speaking against a practice of the Pharisees who were being deceitful in their speech related to oaths. The Pharisees were great sticklers for keeping the law in an external fashion. They knew that they could not keep all their oaths, so they had a way of getting around Leviticus 19:12, which forbade them from swearing falsely by God s name. They said that if you use something in place of God s Name in your oath, then you could get out of it or even be deceitful about it. They substituted February 27, 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 2

3 things like heaven, or by the earth, or by Jerusalem, or by their own head. This way they thought that they didn t violate Leviticus 19:12 by swearing falsely by God s name. But Jesus didn t accept this deceitfulness and argued this way: Matthew 5:34-37 HCSB But I tell you, don't take an oath at all: either by heaven, because it is God's throne; (35) or by the earth, because it is His footstool; or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. (36) Neither should you swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. Just let your word yes be yes and your no be no. Even if you swear by things like heaven, earth, Jerusalem or your head, it doesn t get you out of your obligation to be truthful and sincere by your words. God is related to all of these things. God is over all these things. God is over you. God sees and hears every word you say, therefore be truthful in what you say. God listens to our words. In another place Jesus warned us about how we use our words. He said, Matthew 12:36 HCSB I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak. Jesus says that we are to be careful that we use our words to tell the truth. Be careful that we do not use our words to lie and try to manipulate God or others. Lying is lying. Therefore let your word 'yes' be 'yes and your 'no' be 'no.' Anything more than this is from the evil one. If we lie or are deceitful in our words, we are falling into the hands of the Evil One, that is Satan. It is not without cause that Satan is called the Father of Lies. He lied in the beginning with Eve when he said, You shall not surely die. The problem in Jesus day was that the rabbis were using religious oaths to manipulate others and to say less than true statements. Do we do similar things today with our words and promises? THE PROBLEM TODAY IS THE SAME I believe that some of us do. Just consider the words and promises of many politicians. If there is anyone who uses insincere promises to manipulate people, it is a politician. It is like the old saying, How do you tell when a politician is lying? When you see his lips moving! Now, this may be a little unfair to our politicians, but it does have an element of truth in it. February 27, 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 3

4 But it is not only politicians who have a problem with being honest and truthful, it is all of us. Paul Harvey told a story of some young men who were late to class. Four high school boys were late to their morning classes one day. They entered the classroom and solemnly told their teacher they were detained due to a flat tire. The sympathetic teacher smiled and told them it was too bad they were late because they had missed a test that morning. But she was willing to let them make it up. She gave them each a piece of paper and a pencil and sent them to four corners of the room. Then she told them they would pass if they could answer just one question: Which tire was flat??? The problem of lying goes deeper than just with school children. In a 1996 study a psychologist at the University of Virginia and her colleagues had 147 people between the ages of 18 and 71 keep a diary of all the falsehoods they told over the course of a week. Most people, she found, lie once or twice a day almost as often as they got a snack from the refrigerator or brush their teeth. I would say that most of us at times may have as much a problem as the people of Jesus day with being fully truthful and faithful in our promises. We need to let our yes be yes and our no be no. We are to be truthful in all things. Dr. Laura Schlesinger says, We have moved very far away from the age when a man s word was his bond to a society in which people are more accepting than ever of exaggerations, falsifications, fabrications, misstatements, misrepresentations, gloss-overs, quibbles, concoctions, equivocations, shuffles, prevarications, trims and truth colored and varnished. (The Ten Commandments, p ) The Message version of the Bible puts an up-to-day slant to Jesus words in Matthew 5:33-37: "And don't say anything you don't mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, 'I'll pray for you,' and never doing it, or saying, 'God be with you,' and not meaning it. You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech February 27, 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 4

5 sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say 'yes' and 'no.' When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong. On the another level, we all make serious vows that we need to keep. For example, when we get married we make a promise to love and cherish until death do us part. How serious are people today, when they make that vow before God? Do we have a tendency to rationalize away our commitment? When you trusted in Jesus as your Lord and Savior you promised Him to live for Him and put Him first in your life. Do you still put Him first in all things? Do we have a tendency to rationalize away our commitment when other things get in our way? You make a vow when you joined the church to be faithful to worship, to support the Lord s work through your giving, and in serving the Lord through the ministries of the church. Did you really mean this? How has your faithfulness been? We have a tendency to rationalize away our always being faithful to our promises. CONCLUSION We all fall short of living up to God s standard for how we use our words at times. Who among us can say that they never tell a lie, or a half-truth, or that we have always kept all our promises to someone? There is a story about Diogenes, a Greek who lived about 400 years before Christ. He made himself a nuisance and most unwelcome to most people in Athens by trudging about barefoot without wearing a proper outer robe. He was best known for carrying a lantern during daylight hours, thrusting the lantern in the face of people "I am looking for an honest man." It is reported that he never found the man." God's Holy Spirit is going about looking for an honest man or woman. The Holy Spirit looks into our heart for honesty and truthfulness. He is putting the light of his word before us and saying "I am looking for followers who will commit themselves to the truth and not practice deceit." Jesus said, Let your yes be yes and your no no and mean it! I m glad that Jesus reminds us of this, because it tells me that this is how Jesus is. His yes is yes and His no is no. When He promises to do something, He does it. When He promises to forgive me, His yes is yes. When He promises me that there is no condemnation to the one who trust in Him, His no is a no. When February 27, 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 5

6 He tells me that He is with me always. His yes is yes. When He tells me He will strengthen me day by day in my walk with Him. His yes is yes. I am glad that Jesus tells me to be truthful in all I say because I want to be like Jesus. Jesus is the Truth. He is the Truth, the Way, and the Life. I want to come to Jesus as my Truth and commit my way to Him, my words to Him, my life to Him. Do you feel that way also? Would you like to commit yourself to Jesus as your Truth, your Way to heaven and your way to live? Would you like to recommit your vow to Jesus to follow Him and trust in Him? If you do, then you will be like Jesus, who is always truthful and eminently trustworthy. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Amen? Amen! February 27, 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 6