Lesson 10 Commandment 9

[0:00] All right, so obviously we're going to talk about the ninth commandment, which is the short-term or shortcut way of saying it, don't lie. That's typically what we think of when we think of this.

[0:13] So I wanted to ask you a question. There's a lot of studies that psychologists try to do about lying, and there's several from over the years that I've looked at and stuff.

[0:24] But what do you think is the average number of lies that a person tells in a day? In one day, how many lies?

[0:36] White lies are... Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Yeah. We had no lie lie. So how many in a day do you think a person tells?

[0:50] Five. Okay, I got five. How many? Fifteen. Fifteen? Okay. Six years. Ten? Twenty-five. Twenty-five? All right.

[1:00] If you're talking about political, it's probably 250. Oh, yeah, okay. If it's political, 250. Okay, yeah. Now, let me tell you what it is.

[1:13] It's two times a day. Two? According to these studies. They're lying. Well, that was going to be my point.

[1:24] How do you think these studies are conducted? You've got to do self-report. You have to do a self-report. So depending upon what a lie is, right?

[1:38] Depending upon what frequency is. Depending upon whether or not the person's honest as they report. There's all kinds of things that can do that. Even people, when they're anonymously answering something, will begin to feel guilty and sometimes will under-report something in order to not make themselves feel as guilty.

[1:59] But we'll just take their word for it. Okay? Just for grins. Taking their two lies a day as the average. They lined people out based upon how many lies they told as to who was an honest person and who was a prolific liar.

[2:16] And this is their assessment. An honest person only tells no more than two lies a day. An honest person tells no more than two lies a day.

[2:27] That's what blows my mind. Three to five lies are an intermediate liar. I don't know really what intermediate liar is. But a prolific liar is someone who tells six or more lies in a day.

[2:41] Intermediate every now and then. I guess. Half truth. Half something. Well, you can tell two lies a day and be an honest person. Judge Judy says the teenager, their lips are moving their lines.

[2:53] Oh, well. She's lying today. Now, why do you think people lie? What are some big picture ideas about maybe why somebody might tell a lie?

[3:04] I think a lot of times you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. Right. You don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. You don't want to say something that would, yeah, absolutely. What's another reason?

[3:15] You got caught doing something you don't want to admit. Okay. You're trying to. She cheated. Maybe avoiding some sort of bad circumstance. Right. That's right. All right. What's another possibility?

[3:26] Ego. Ego? Okay. And by that, what do you mean? They tell a lie to cover up something that they don't want everybody else to know.

[3:38] Okay. Okay. So they've got something about themselves that they don't really want people to get into. You know, it's interesting to me that just off the cuff, you came up with those three because the group last night, they came up with those same three.

[3:53] This study had like nine different categories. And as they did it, three rows to the top. Guess which three? Guess two? All true.

[4:03] All true reasons. We don't want to hurt anybody. Secretive reasons. I want to hide my personal information, things about me I don't want people to know. Right? Avoidance reasons.

[4:15] Avoiding being judged. Avoiding being caught. Avoiding going to work. Matter of fact, avoiding going to work. Do you know how many different excuses people who avoid work use when they lie to avoid work?

[4:30] They have about seven different excuses that they use. Let's see. Yeah. They're trying to grow up again. Do you know, now this is a study that was done pretty recently and probably about five years ago.

[4:45] There was a study when I was doing this before back in the mid-90s. And that study also did a thing trying to figure out what are the most common phrases that are used to tell lies.

[5:01] Do you know what the number one most common phrase that they said was used to tell lies? I'm fine. I'm fine.

[5:13] I'm fine. Another one was, nice to see you. Sorry I missed your call. I'm stuck in traffic. Our server was down.

[5:29] Now, do you know what the server is? This is not your waiter or waitress. The train was delayed. I'll call you back in a few minutes. That tastes delicious. And the one that blows my mind.

[5:45] Of course I love you. That's a lie. That's a lie. Oh, yeah. I know one that's not on there.

[5:57] What's that? Does this pair of pants make my butt look big? No, that's not a lie. That's a question that probably shouldn't be asked.

[6:07] But that's a whole other thing. The response to that might be a lie. So this is the commandment from Exodus 20, verse 16. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

[6:21] You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. And I want to talk about the meaning of this just for a brief second. It says bear false witness. When you hear the terms bear false witness, what context do you hear that in?

[6:39] What kind of social situation? What? Courtroom and legal. Exactly. That's where this particular commandment originates. Okay? It originates in courtroom type settings.

[6:51] You're not to bear false witness. There's a whole lot talked about in the law of God that you're not supposed to apply on equal measures. Right? You're not supposed to take a scale and weigh it a certain amount.

[7:05] You have to have equal justice is what the Bible calls for. And in that, if you bring forth false information about someone and they're convicted, that's a guilty before God kind of a thing.

[7:20] Right? That's a sin. And so that's where it stems from. Now, the other thing is that bear false witness, the word bear kind of feels like the idea of carrying weight.

[7:34] But the word actually means to give an answer. And so this is very specifically a sin concerning our mouths. Now, not only our mouths, but primarily our mouths.

[7:47] Right? And that is that we break this commandment with our mouths. And that's the key to this. It is to give a false answer.

[7:59] So he's telling us, do not give false answers. Do not give false answers. Now, the context of this being in the courtroom is not bound to just the courtroom.

[8:12] And Leviticus helps us with this. Chapter 19, verse 11 says, you shall not steal. You shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another.

[8:23] So he gives us an expansion of this, that it's not just the courtroom that this is supposed to be followed. It's supposed to be followed even in our daily lives with one another.

[8:35] We're not to lie to one another. That's just not the way we're supposed to live. We're supposed to tell the truth to one another. And so, really, now we need to get to the heart of this. What is he trying to do with this?

[8:47] We know that the commandment is forbidding certain things, lying, deception. But what is it telling us to do positively? Well, it's telling us to uphold the truth.

[9:00] Right? And I'm going to look at three things about the truth that we're supposed to uphold. One is that we're supposed to uphold the truth by what we say.

[9:11] We're supposed to uphold the truth by what we say. This is a word-centered type of sin. So what we say has to be truth.

[9:23] We can't shade the truth. We can't manipulate the truth. We can't hide the truth with our words. Because when we do, we disobey this command. Now, let me ask you, what would it mean to shade the truth?

[9:38] That's where the little white lie comes in. Let's give us an example of one. I'm sure you all have some. No, I'm just kidding. Can you give me an example?

[9:51] One that bothers me is when I read a news account. Something happened without evidence. There actually is evidence. It bothers me a lot.

[10:01] Okay. Okay. Great. That's a shading of the truth, right? Okay. What's another example? Creative bookkeeping. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. You can't give me a figure here and there.

[10:13] Gotcha. Don't tell a part of the story. Withholding. To me, that's a lie. You withhold information in your mind. Right. So you don't tell the whole story. Partial truth. That's right.

[10:24] That's right. That's right. And even taking and applying a particular kind of truth to a situation that's not meant to be applied that way is the same kind of a thing.

[10:35] I think about when Satan tempted Jesus and Satan tells Jesus, you know, that the angels, if you cast yourself down from here, the angels will bear you up lest you dash your foot. But when he stated a truth from scripture, but it's not meant to be applied to that situation.

[10:49] And so, again, it's deception. It's not upholding the truth. And that's really the key is we have to go like, am I upholding the truth here? Am I telling what is true? So I used to love to watch Matlock.

[11:02] Matlock. And my favorite part of Matlock was at the end when the liar was on the stand and he got them to confess the truth. I just love that.

[11:13] You know, there was something about that that was so satisfying. And so we want to be people who don't hide the truth, shade the truth, or manipulate the truth. We want to tell the truth and uphold the truth with our mouths because the mouth is a dangerous thing.

[11:28] So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.

[11:40] And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. Your tongue is a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life and set on fire by hell.

[11:59] This is what the tongue is according to James. Because the tongue, like the rudder of a ship, directs the whole course of your life. And if what you're speaking, if what you're speaking is truth and right and honoring of God, then that directs your life.

[12:18] But if it's not, you know, one of the worst things that I've seen happen with the tongue, let's just back up kind of real high here from the tongue, is we were at this church that had fellowships all the time because we had this big gymnasium and you could go in and they would set up the tables.

[12:36] And invariably, every time we had a fellowship, there were several people who would be walking through complaining about how things were set up and how the logistics of things.

[12:47] And they were just what I call breathing death. The Proverbs tell us that their life and death is in the power of the tongue. Meaning that we have a tendency to affirm and build up or we have a tendency to destroy and tear down.

[13:02] And what we want to be as Christians as we speak is we want to be people who build up. And that means that telling the truth is a part of that building up process. And we have to tell the truth in love.

[13:14] And we can talk about that in a little bit. But the point is, is that we want to uphold the truth with what we say. Secondly, we want to uphold the truth by our silence.

[13:25] We want to uphold the truth by our silence. We cannot use our silence as a means of escaping telling the truth. We cannot use our silence as a means of escaping telling the truth.

[13:43] But balance that with, it doesn't mean I have to divulge every thought in my head. Because not every thought in my head is good and godly. Right?

[13:54] So I'm going to try to thread the needle with this. Okay? Let me give you the example that I was thinking about. When I was a kid, we lived on this property.

[14:07] There were six acres of land here. My friend and his brother lived here. And then there was another piece of property here that was all fenced off with a sign that says, Do not trespass.

[14:19] And my dad said, Don't you ever go on that piece of property. So, we went on that piece of property. So it was my brother and my friend and his brother.

[14:30] The four of us had gone on to the piece of property. It was, it had a gate in the middle of it. And the gate, there was a road, kind of a little driveway that went past and went to the back.

[14:40] But you couldn't see anything because everything was so grown up in this piece of property. Not a lot of trees, but a lot of bushes and a lot of weeds. And I mean it. The weeds were as tall as I was.

[14:51] Of course, I was a little bit shorter. But the point is, is that we got on there. And as we got on there, we found that there was a little house in the back. And when we found the house, we found a locked door.

[15:02] And we were doing all we could to try to get that locked door open because it was locked and it needed to be open. But we get off of the property because we hear my dad coming.

[15:15] Because we can hear my dad's truck from where we are. And we hear his truck start up. So we run out of the back of the property, run through the woods and come back in on my friend's property.

[15:26] And then run up to the front because my dad's yelling for us. It's time for us to come home or whatnot. And he sees us running and he looks at us. And here's my older brother standing there and me. And he looks at us and says, did y'all just get on that property?

[15:37] I told you not to. And my brother says, no, dad. We didn't do that. We were doing blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what he was saying. And then he looks over at me. I go. What my silence did was confirm a lie.

[15:58] And that's what we're really after here with saying this. That we don't want to let our silence be something that confirms a lie. But we want our silence, if we're going to be silent, to confirm truth.

[16:09] We want truth to be upheld. As a matter of fact, Leviticus chapter 5 verse 1 says, if anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity.

[16:27] You know information that can exonerate this person? By God's standards, you are required to go tell that. You know, you have... The interesting word, adjuration.

[16:38] Adjuration. Yeah. Public adjuration would be basically a public plea calling for people to come forward if you have information. You know.

[16:49] We're not supposed to let our silence cause untruth and lies to proliferate. We're supposed to make sure that the truth is what gets told.

[17:00] And then I want us to talk just briefly then about a third idea that we need to uphold the truth for the glory of God. This is going to help us understand a little bit about why this is so important.

[17:11] Because think about this. Why is it so bad to lie? I know that God has said don't.

[17:23] And that should be enough for a lot of people. But there are reasons that God says don't. I want you to think about this scenario. Okay. This is a made up scenario. So just work with me here.

[17:34] Okay. There's a known serial killer on the loose. He knocks on the door and asks you if your family is at home. Lying to him and saying no saves your family's life.

[17:48] Telling the truth to him puts your family at risk. What do you do? You put out the gun. No, no, no, no.

[18:00] In this particular scenario, all you can do is answer yes or no. I'm really going to restrict you because I want. We'll get to that answer in just a second though. No.

[18:12] No. You'll lie and say my family's not home. Now I think all of us would say no. But is that right? Yes.

[18:22] No. No. I believe lying hurts people. You know. But it can also not hurt.

[18:34] I mean you can protect. Yeah. It's a action thing. Okay. It's a technique. Well how do you know it's a lot of things? Well there's a lot of things about this scenario that we just don't know the answers to.

[18:48] We're just sort of putting it here and I'm going to come back to that in a second. Okay. Let me put this one to you. A little kid about three or four years old is telling stories of things that they did when they were bigger.

[19:03] Ever heard little kids do this? When I was bigger I killed a snake. My little brother when he was about four years old used to say those kinds of things all the time.

[19:15] Is he lying? Is that something that needs to be corrected? Should it be laughed at? It's imagination. It's imagination. Where did he get that trick though?

[19:27] When I was bigger. What's the first sin that most children learn to do? Do they have to be taught how to do that? No.

[19:39] No. But what I'm after. Okay I'm putting all these scenarios out there for you. What I'm after is to get to the point of saying why is it wrong to lie? That's what I want to know.

[19:51] Look at Genesis chapter 3. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman did God actually say you should not eat of any tree in the garden?

[20:02] And that should be enough for us but we'll just keep going. And the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said you shall not eat from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.

[20:15] God is very clear. Eat from this tree and you will die. Okay. That's God's word right? What does Satan say? But the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die.

[20:29] For God knows that when you eat your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. Satan is telling the first lie.

[20:42] God said you will surely die. Satan says you will not surely die. Then Satan disparages God saying that God told a lie.

[20:53] God told you this but that's not true. In other words he's attacking God's character. God always tells the truth and to have a lie is to disparage God's character.

[21:08] Because God does not lie. Matter of fact Titus tells us that in hope of eternal life which God who never lies. God never ever lies.

[21:20] God never lies. Or Hebrews 6.18. By two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. He doesn't just not do it but it's impossible for him to do it.

[21:34] Think about that. It's not impossible for me to tell a lie. What would you have to be in order for it to be impossible for you to tell a lie? Because they seem so prolific in our lives right?

[21:47] James tells us kind of why that every good and gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights. With whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

[22:01] In other words the reason God doesn't lie is because there's nothing there's no darkness in him at all. There's no variation. There's no shadow. There's no change. He is truth.

[22:11] He's going to tell the truth. It's impossible for him to tell a lie. Numbers 23.19 tells us that God is not man that he should lie or the son of man that he should change his mind.

[22:24] God does not lie. God cannot lie because God's very nature is truth. I am the way and the truth and the life.

[22:37] His very nature is truth. When we tell a lie we are violating God's nature. We are violating God's character.

[22:50] We are going against God in such a way that it goes right against his very person when we tell a lie. I'll let that sit for a second.

[23:04] It definitely doesn't bring you glory to God. But let's go back to your example. Not yet. Not yet. We're going to come back to it though. I promise.

[23:16] Because what we need to do is we need to take this one more step. We need to say what are the motivations for following this command. What motivations could there be in scripture for us to do what he's telling us.

[23:29] So let me give you a couple of things. When we lie it's an abomination to God. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. What is the word abomination?

[23:43] It's not a creature that throws snowballs. Abomination. Do you know this word? The word means hatred. It's abominable.

[23:54] There are not a lot of things in scripture that are said to be an abomination to the Lord. And so far some of the things that we've looked at have not used this term.

[24:08] But for this, for lying, it's an abomination. God hates lying lips. Now, does he just hate the lips? No, the lips stand for the whole person that's lying.

[24:22] It's your mouth. It's the words. It's the breath. It's the thoughts. It's the heart. I just want you to feel the weight of that. Don't explain it away. Right?

[24:33] There's a part of us that would say, well, it's not right for hate. Right? Because we've bought into what the culture says rather than what the Bible says. Because you could find places in the Bible that talks about God hating.

[24:46] Psalm 5, Psalm 11. God hates the liar. Now, why should we obey this commandment?

[24:59] Because God hates the liar. But here's the second half of that proverb. But those who act faithfully or those who live in truth are his delight. So, we definitely want to be people who tell the truth because we want to be on the side with the Lord that is the delight and not the hate.

[25:23] Another reason we should tell the truth is because we're acting like God. In John 8, verse 44, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. And he says, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

[25:39] And 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.

[25:50] In other words, as the Pharisees are lying, they're just lying in connection to the character of their father. That is their father, the devil. So, the opposite is true for us as well. As we tell the truth, we're telling the truth out of the nature of the character of our father.

[26:07] So, when we... You're contagious. When we tell the truth, we are acting like God.

[26:19] We are acting so much like God when we tell the truth. We also are doing what Jesus came to do. The law was given through Moses and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

[26:34] When he came into this world, he came to speak the truth. So, when we speak the truth, we're doing what it is that Jesus did. Or, when we tell the truth, we're honoring the Holy Spirit.

[26:48] How many of you know the story of Ananias and Sapphira? Right? The whole church, there in the beginning of Acts, a lot of people were being convicted in their heart that people who didn't have anything needed something.

[27:00] So, they would sell some of their belongings. They would take the money and give it to the poor. Ananias and Sapphira, this husband and wife, they had some property. They sold it. They sold it for a certain amount.

[27:12] They decided to give less of that to those who were in need. But then they said that the whole of the proceeds was the amount that they were giving. In other words, they had some they were keeping back, which was fine for them to do.

[27:28] But they said that they were giving everything that they had gotten. And listen to what happens. Peter said, Now, this passage is important for a couple reasons.

[27:58] Number one, it tells us that the Holy Spirit is God. Right? So, if you ever want to know, is the Holy Spirit God? Yes. It tells you right there. The Holy Spirit is God. But also, their lie was a dishonoring to the Holy Spirit.

[28:12] And the very next thing that happens is that both Ananias, the husband, and his wife, Sapphira, God strikes them dead. He strikes them dead.

[28:23] They're Christians in the church trying to appear very, very generous, lying about what it is that they're giving.

[28:36] Now, that doesn't seem like a big deal. And when you think on the scale of lies, you know, there's, you look at that. Because me, I could rationalize just about every lie.

[28:47] You know what I'm saying? And there's a way to kind of rationalize it. But you look at this lie, it's like, who did that hurt? A lot of people got money anyway.

[29:00] It just made them look better. And yet God struck them. It wasn't giving glory to God. It was training themselves. That's right.

[29:11] But, you know, other people did the same thing. You know, in similar ways. The head didn't make it right. It was because other people did it. No. It gave an example for other people to say, well, they did it.

[29:23] Why can't we do it? Jack, would you touch that AC to turn it off just a little, turn it up just a little bit? It's over there. No, no. It's over there by the bathrooms. Thank you. Okay.

[29:35] So let's just pause there. We are going to come back and visit some of these things. But you've got to feel the weight of this. Because I think sometimes what happens, because we, there are some things that I will say here in a little bit that are going to sound a little contradictory.

[29:48] Because there's, we all had the knee-jerk reaction. I would absolutely tell this guy, no. My family's not home. And there's a reason that we had that knee-jerk reaction.

[30:01] But I think that if we, if we let ourselves just run too quickly to, to go and like this exception, this exception, this exception. And we don't feel the weight of this command. Then we don't really understand how we have broken this command.

[30:16] And then, then we're left without the hope of the gospel. Because unless you understand yourself as a sinner, what good is the gospel? Right? So let me, let's, let's dive into the, the application of these things.

[30:31] Thinking about light, map, and mirror. Right? Those same three things again. And as we think about the light, what we've talked about is that we see God's character in this commandment because he is truth himself.

[30:46] But what is truth? How would you define truth?

[31:06] That's a good question, isn't it? It's a question that Pilate asked Jesus. Pilate says, what is truth? Jesus didn't answer him. It is. I am no way. Truth.

[31:18] And the light. Mm-hmm. That's, yeah. But what is truth? Not a lie. Oh, okay. Not a lie. It's not an eloquent way to say it, but the way things really are.

[31:31] That's actually a very eloquent way of saying it. That's a very, so truth is what corresponds to reality. It's the way things are. You know, if I tell you that I've got unicorns in the basement of my house.

[31:46] Whoa. You don't have a basement to start with. That's right. That does not correspond to reality at all. Right? It's not a blast on. Whoa, that digging was. Yeah, right?

[31:57] When we say things that are true, we're saying that these things correspond with reality. This is the way things are. God is the greatest reality.

[32:07] Sometimes people's perception of what's true is, you know, you could ask two different people. We saw the same thing. What really happened or what's true? And we both have different stories.

[32:20] So sometimes truth is even, who decides that that's the real truth? Well, so you're running into the problem of perspective.

[32:31] Right? And what happens is that, you know, if we all stand on different sides of an elephant and we're blind and we reach up and we touch the elephant and we try to describe what is that elephant like, your perspective is going to make it so that you describe that elephant from a particular way.

[32:50] It's a nice, big, wide, kind of solid thing. It's got this little, scrawny, you know, fluffy thing on the end. I don't know, it feels very large and snake-like.

[33:00] Right? Right? Here's the problem with that. The problem with that is that we tend to use an illustration like that and we think to ourselves, that means truth is relative.

[33:11] And it's like, no, because I'm the storyteller. I know it's an elephant. And so in an accident that happens, none of us will know the full truth, but it doesn't mean that there's not one truth to that.

[33:24] There is one truth to that and God knows what it was. We can only guess at what all happened in that because we're all on different sides of that and we bring that together to have a kind of maybe close to the truth.

[33:37] But God knows the truth about everything because God is reality. So you can apply that then to all things. Because people use what you're talking about to talk about how every religion has a little bit of the truth or every religion has a little bit of a lie in it and untruth in it.

[33:53] And the only way to know that is to actually be God himself. How can you know that without knowing all truth? Well, the only person who knows all truth is God.

[34:06] Because he is truth himself. He is reality himself. So when we tell a lie, what we're doing is we're saying something contrary to reality.

[34:21] God is seen glorious in this because he is reality. So let's think then for a moment about some of the things that we've talked about.

[34:32] The illustration of the serial killer coming to your house. Now here's what, I'm going to tell you what I think about that whole thing and then we'll jump back into it. That's the kind of question that people who don't believe in God like to try to trap Christians with.

[34:48] It's a question that's very similar to do you still beat your wife? Only on Monday. Yeah. Exactly. Because it's like Jack said.

[35:00] Jack said, I'll get my gun. It's like the question that they ask Jesus. It says, should we pay taxes or not? It's an either or some game that they're trying to play with us.

[35:10] And Jesus is going like, there's actually more ways to skin a cat than just the two that you've given me. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Render to God the things that are God's. Because the Christian life doesn't get boiled down to two opposite poles of things that we have to choose from that the world decides we have to choose from.

[35:34] So in a moment that you know that there's a serial killer loose, you have the responsibility to uphold the sixth commandment to protect life. And so to come to the door with your gun, to keep your door locked, to call the police, to do all kinds of other things to protect that life is available to us.

[35:53] So we don't have to play that game. Does that make sense? But I do think that in this, if we are going to play the game, I do think that to say no would be the right thing.

[36:04] Because otherwise we would be violating the sixth commandment if we said yes. We would not be protecting our families. So which does the Lord want us to do in that case? That's just what I think.

[36:18] Now, you can disagree with me if you want to. But the point is, is that God is reality. And he's not trying to put us in these weird ethical dilemmas that we have to live in.

[36:31] Right? Because most of the time we don't have those kinds of ethical dilemmas. Most of the time somebody looks at us and says, hey, does this make me look fat? And then we're kind of going like, uh, I don't know how to answer that.

[36:47] So that's the light. When any time somebody says something that is not true with reality, they are violating God's very nature. His very nature is truth.

[36:58] As a map, then, we have passages like this that says, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

[37:11] This is speaking to the church. This is to us. We're members of one another. And as we speak truth or lies, it impacts us. Michelle and I have been playing some frisbee golf lately.

[37:25] And so I've got my frisbee in. And I don't know if you know this, but there are ways to throw a frisbee that you can throw it a long way. Right? And I've been throwing my frisbee, but just getting only like 50, 75 feet out of it, maybe 100 if I really chunk my arm.

[37:38] But that's not how you do it. So I'm watching videos. How do you do this? Right? You know, there's all this twisting motion and shoulder back and shoulder forward and all these kinds of things. So she's gone.

[37:49] I'm in the backyard and I'm throwing the frisbee trying to practice these things. And like I twisted my ankle. I spun too much. And it hurt.

[38:02] And because my ankle was hurt, I'm limping. Right? And what does that do? It starts hurting my hips. Because what happens to one member affects another.

[38:14] When we lie to one another, what happens to that member affects the rest of the members. And so we're not supposed to lie. We're supposed to speak the truth to one another.

[38:24] Right? That's what he says in Colossians. Do not lie to one another seeing that you've put off the old self with his practices. I'm preaching that verse Sunday, so I'm not going to talk much more about it. But... What do we do when we know someone is lying?

[38:49] Well... Like... Yeah, let me come back to that question in a second. What we're supposed to do is we're supposed to tell the truth. Now let's talk about staying silent for just a second.

[39:02] Because this is where we get into these questions like, you know, how does my haircut look? You know, this typically ends up being a husband-wife kind of thing.

[39:13] How's my haircut look? Does this... Does this... Is this dress flattering upon me? Is it not? And the thing is, is that silence is one of those things where it's like, wait a minute.

[39:25] I don't want to cover the truth with silence. I want to uphold the truth with silence. However, not everything that's going through my head ought to be said. There are some times that things pop into our head that are vicious, evil, and wrong.

[39:41] Because they were born out of anger. They were born out of selfishness. And giving vent to those things is not what we should do. We should filter ourselves.

[39:53] And not say those things. You know? Maybe it's not in the situation between a husband and a wife. But, you know, it could be with a kid. You know? There are many times that my kids did something really dumb and stupid.

[40:06] And I kind of wanted to say, are you just an idiot? And that popped into my head. But I knew that if I said that, that can be very damaging to them.

[40:16] And it came from a place of frustration and anger in my heart. So you filter that out and you don't say it. You stay silent. Why? Because that's not necessarily reality. Is it reality that your kid's an idiot?

[40:28] No, it's not reality that my kid's an idiot. The reality is, is that they're undisciplined, untrained. And that's my fault. So while I still need to discipline them, that means I've got work to do.

[40:39] Because we're in this situation. So staying silent is not a bad thing. And I don't want you to feel as though you've got to give full vent to whatever it is you're thinking. That's not the case.

[40:50] Because it would not give grace to them. Right. Right. And that's where I'm headed. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

[41:06] We need to look at our words and our silence and say, how can I use both to build people up? How can I use both to help encourage people?

[41:18] How can I use both of these to uphold the truth and encourage others? So maybe somebody asks you the very question you don't want to be asked.

[41:28] They ask you your opinion about something, about themselves, and we have a tendency to lie, to not hurt somebody's feelings. What do we do in that kind of situation? Well, I think you only have a couple of options, but I think the first thing is that if this is somebody that you know, then you need to be making deposits into the bank of their life with good, strong encouragement and affirmation.

[41:55] Really encouraging them for them to know that you think of them well. Because if you have to speak the truth that hurts their feelings, taking a deposit out of that bank after you've deposited a bunch, withdrawing that is a lot easier.

[42:12] But if you're not encouraging and affirming and lifting up, and then you have to withdraw by telling the truth, then it hurts a lot more. Does that make sense? So we've got to have that relationship with one another where we're encouraging and affirming one another and telling one another the things that we think are true and that are good about them so that we can then withdraw sometimes when we have to tell them the truth.

[42:34] And I think that goes to somebody who's telling us a lie. You know, if we know for sure this person is telling us a bald-faced lie, then are we pouring into them first to be able to say something to them?

[42:47] But secondly, if we know it and we can prove it, then we are then bound to church discipline as Christians. If it's a Christian, right, we're bound to church discipline.

[42:58] If your brother sins against you, go show him his sin. To show him his sin means you've got to be pointed to the scripture that shows what the sin is. And then you have to say, no, did you do that?

[43:10] And when they're convinced, then you say, you know, let me help you. Let me help you. Go ahead. I had to have a life that included gathering evidence quite a bit.

[43:23] Whether it's blood splatter or finger-dicts, those kind of things. And when you go before a jury and a judge, I've always wanted to be an opposite. But when they ask me my opinion, I would have to say, I don't have an opinion.

[43:40] I have these facts. It's about the only thing I can do right here. And it gets you out of a lot of trouble. Right. Right. Yeah. Now, again, having another career where I would ask quite a bit about what my opinion and what...

[43:56] Because I always try to make sure I have the evidence or the activity with me type stuff. But it doesn't feel good to be in that kind of a situation. There's some times when I will. I won't say anything.

[44:07] Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if I'm going to hell for that or not. You have to do what you have to do and be truthful. Yeah. It's not about the best thing you can do. You know, I think when we go back to the big picture of upholding truth.

[44:22] Yeah. Upholding truth for the glory of God. There's a lot of situations that we could get into. Because like you go back to the whole serial killer thing. You know, like there's no need for him to know anything about that.

[44:36] You know? But just because somebody asks me for information doesn't mean that I have to give them that information. I'm not trying to lie. I'm not trying to deceive them. I don't want them to be deceived.

[44:48] But it's just like I'm just not going to give that. You know? We were at this camp one time and they had this great answer for a lot of things we would ask them. So what are we doing the rest of this day?

[44:58] I choose not to tell you. I choose not to tell you. I use that with my kids a lot. Right? But the other thing... That's a business. Yeah. I choose not to tell you. It's not going to happen right now.

[45:09] But here's the other thing. There's not just about us. It's also about helping one another. And so one of the things that I... I missed it with my first two. But I got it with my last three.

[45:20] I tried very hard to never do. Is to never ask them a question that would put them in the place of being tempted to lie. You know? The proverbial kid with chocolate on his mouth coming in eating a cookie.

[45:32] And you're going like, did you eat my cookie? Well, you've just given them an opportunity and a temptation to lie. Because he's going to go like, no. He doesn't know he's got chocolate on his face. But I don't want...

[45:43] I don't want to reinforce the lying. So I don't ask questions that I already know the answer to. I ask, why did you eat the cookies?

[45:57] I have a problem. I don't know all the time. But most of the time, when somebody asks you something like, is your friend coming at home?

[46:09] My first reaction is, why? Why are you asking? I tend to ask instead of answer. That's okay.

[46:21] And it's not a problem. It's just that I need to get out of that habit. Because maybe I should. No, no, I...

[46:31] Not at all. Because when somebody wants to know personal information about you, I do not think it is wrong at all to ask the person, why do you need to know?

[46:44] What is this? It is perfectly fine to do that. Because that's... You're not lying. You're not trying to escape. And you're not trying to push down the truth. You're trying to understand why a person is asking you a question.

[46:56] Then once they answer that question, then at that point, you've got to decide, okay, is this something I need to tell them or not? That... I think that we understand and know the things that we ought to be doing with this.

[47:11] But I've wanted to press just how terrible it is to lie before God. Because without that, we just sort of skate by with little bitty things that happen every now and then.

[47:25] I think probably the worst thing in our lives is the little white lies. I think that's probably the worst thing in our lives. We often... We're not faced with the difficulty of the serial killer.

[47:37] Or, you know, somebody who's doing like a police officer investigations. We're not facing those things. We're facing the things where somebody says to us, how are you doing? Fine.

[47:49] Do you ever get a story on the tip of your tongue? I was always told. You must have told a little while. Mom? Huh. I've got a story about them in my time. Yeah, I don't think that those go together.

[48:01] But that's okay. Well... I just don't believe... I just don't understand. Why did I answer the question correctly?

[48:12] Or truthfully? What's... Why do you have to lie about it? Okay, I've got an example. Somebody's really proud of their first child and they're so immersed in the love.

[48:23] And they said, Is my baby cute? And it's the ugliest baby you've ever seen. Okay. What I say is, Oh, he looks so cute in that outfit.

[48:34] That way you're not saying this is a virgin. They're so precious. But you can't hurt those people. This is their... That's right. This is their...

[48:44] So don't answer their question directly. He looks gorgeous in that outfit. Where did you find that? Redirect the conversation. I think it's good to have some answers like that.

[48:56] Because I would say they're precious. They're precious. Right? Because that's the truth. And they are precious. But I think that we should work towards not asking each other questions that put us in that place.

[49:14] Right. We should love one another enough not to do that to each other. You know? If I come up to you and say, Was that a good sermon? Like, that just puts you in a bad place.

[49:25] You know? I shouldn't do that. You know? When I was a kid, Man, I was lying all the time. I really was.

[49:36] You're a bad kid. Now he's a troubled middle child. I think all of us are this bad. I'm just willing to admit it. Because I feel like I've got nothing to lose. And I kind of came under conviction about it.

[49:53] Because, you know, my dad was really strong about you don't ever lie to me. Because if you lie, that's what my dad did. And you probably know what I'm going to say. You broke a law or rule and then you lied about it.

[50:07] You were punished twice. Right? And so I began to try very hard once I got to junior high, high school to stop doing that.

[50:18] Because I was telling all kinds of crazy things. And I just was like, you know, people would ask me things. And I finally got to where I would start with this. If I heard myself saying something untrue, I would stop and say, Wait a minute.

[50:31] Actually, the truth is. Or, no, that was a lie. Let me tell you the truth. And I just started making myself do that. And now all of that came from a pharisaical mindset.

[50:43] Right? I mean, yes, it's good and right. But it didn't come because I wanted Christ to be glorified. Which still made it sin. Right? So that's what I think about in this last verse.

[50:57] Because this is at the end. Revelation 21. Right? But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars.

[51:11] Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Just to push this home one more time. Second death.

[51:24] If you're a part of the second death, it means you have no first resurrection. Which means that you're not a Christian. Which means that you've never been saved. None of us.

[51:36] None of us. Are innocent. Of this commandment. And that's why Christ died upon the cross.

[51:49] To pay the penalty for our lives. And not just the ones that we've told in the past. But all the ones that are still yet to come.

[52:00] He has paid the price for all of them. But if we can't understand what it is we deserve. We can't appreciate what it is we have.

[52:11] That we have forgiveness and cleansing in Christ. That covers us. And that's where these commandments need to come.

[52:21] Every single time. When we see our behavior. We remember the commandments. And we go. Ugh. Ugh. What's wrong with me? Why am I doing this? Don't navel gaze and think about how bad you are.

[52:33] But immediately. As soon as you go like. Man I violated Christ. I've gone against God. As soon as that thought hits your mind. Then make a beeline to the cross. Make a beeline to the cross.

[52:45] And see there upon the cross. Christ crucified. Bloodshed for your sin. And then thank him heartily. That he has purchased forgiveness for you.

[52:59] See him resurrected. And go. And it's done. It's done. Because that's the whole. That's one of the main points. To looking at the law.

[53:10] Is to remind ourselves. Of what Christ has done for us. Because that's where we have to live. Let's pray. Father thank you.

[53:20] For the privilege of looking at your word today. And I pray that you would. Take the things that we've talked about. I pray you would convict us of the things. Of where we break this commandment.

[53:31] And I pray you would help us to run to you. And what Christ has done for us in the cross. Help us to be godly people. And Lord help us. Help us to live in the grace that you give us.

[53:44] Because there are some things and situations. We just don't even know how to handle. And we haven't even faced them yet. But we don't want to do anything that dishonors you. And so we pray that your spirit.

[53:56] Would empower us to live in such a way. That honors you. With our mouths. Speaking the truth. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[54:06] Amen. Amen.