I must admit that I'm tempted to not preach this morning and just let Wes and Liz keep singing songs and Wes preaching homilies in between the songs.
!
Our text for today will be Matthew chapter 5 verses 33 through 37.
And this text falls within what is most often called the Sermon on the Mount.
We've been in for quite some months now.
And across our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we've considered two prominent themes.
So two large frameworks that I think are important for us to have on our minds as we venture into any smaller part of this great sermon.
The first is human flourishing.
What does it look like to live well as a citizen of God's kingdom?
What does it mean to be a good citizen of this good kingdom?
And we see that the human flourishing that Jesus teaches is not the same as the flourishing that the world would teach us.
Jesus says at the very outset of the sermon,
Blessed are those who are poor in spirit and who mourn and who are meek and who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
who are merciful, pure peacemakers,
and those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.
It's the ones that Jesus calls flourishing.
He steps into a world turned upside down by all of the self-sitterness and self-promotion of His day and ours
and turns it again right side up.
So that's the first theme.
The second theme is the theme of whole person righteousness.
And that would be to say that we are meant to be holy and blameless before God in all senses
and that we are flourishing when we're doing this thing.
These themes don't, they interact quite often in the text.
Jesus has taught us that citizens of His kingdom are keepers of the law.
Not that they gain their citizen by the keeping of the law,
but that they have been granted citizenship by the mercy of God.
And that this keeping of the law evidences their citizenship.
God's people, the citizens of His kingdom, should be zealous to please their king,
to walk in His ways.
And this law keeping, this righteousness, is not merely meant to be an outward working,
but an inward one as well.
Both the actions, but the intentions, the feelings, the emotions.
What we hope to see accomplished by the actions.
Every bit of our being is meant to be leveraged in service to God.
And this is what Jesus means when He says in Matthew 5 and verse 20,
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
The listeners of His day would have been shocked by this.
The scribes and the Pharisees seemed to have it all figured out.
They were the most outwardly righteous.
They seemed to be following God.
But He then begins to press this point by using a series of phrases,
beginning in Matthew 5, verses 21 and 22.
You'll note at the beginning of 21,
You have heard that it was said to those of old.
And then the beginning of verse 22,
But I say to you.
He's taking these common teachings, the rabbinical teachings of the day,
these standards by which people would have looked at the scribes and the Pharisees
and called them holy,
and He's correcting them.
He's showing how they don't actually get to the point.
This whole person righteousness that's required of us by God.
And He does this six times to the end of chapter 5.
And what He's doing is bringing about this correction of common misinterpretations
of the law in His day.
And we are apt to these same errors.
We may not pick them up as rabbinical teachings,
but we may pick them up in other forms in our day.
This morning's text is the fourth in this series
and concerns the making and keeping of promises.
Human societies depend upon truthfulness.
It would suggest that they will both rise and fall
based on the degree of truth that is contained within said society.
We certainly live in a day that it is very difficult to know
what the truth is and who is telling the truth.
It is difficult to trust much of anything that you read or hear any longer.
And if you try to delve down and figure out what the truth is,
I find I often get much more confused.
The state that we find our society in
should not be the case amongst followers of Jesus Christ.
Citizens of the kingdom of heaven
are to be characterized by truthfulness.
Truth ushered us into the kingdom.
And so we are to be lovers of the truth.
On your bulletin, you'll find a Richard Sibbes quote
who was a 16th century Puritan.
I love this.
He said, when we come to be religious,
and by that he means converted to God,
not the way we think of outwardly religious.
When we come to be religious,
we lose not our pleasure, but translate it.
Before we fed on common notions,
but now we live on holy truths.
We should be lovers of the truth as God's people.
And so this morning we will look at our text
simply and briefly to that end.
Before I read the text, beloved,
let me remind you that this is God's word to us.
It was written for his glory and our good.
And as such, we would all do well to listen to it
in order to believe its promises and obey its commands.
So Matthew chapter 5, and I begin reading in verse 33.
Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old,
you shall not swear falsely,
but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But I say to you,
do not take an oath at all,
either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,
or by the earth, for it is his footstool,
or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
And do not take an oath by your head,
for you cannot make one hair white or black.
Let what you say be simply yes or no.
Anything more than this comes from evil.
We must first look at the misrepresentation of the law
that Jesus is correcting.
We need to understand the negative command found here
in order to understand the positive.
What is Jesus saying we ought not to do
in order for us to understand what it is we are to do?
And so you see in verse 33,
Jesus again with this phrasing,
you have heard it said to those of old.
This was their statement.
You shall not swear falsely,
but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
This rabbinical teaching was an amalgamation
of a number of Old Testament texts.
It's not a direct citation from any Old Testament text.
They likely had in mind texts like Exodus 20,
and verse 7,
you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless
who takes his name in vain.
So you shouldn't make a promise on the name of God
and then not keep the promise.
This would be an infraction of Exodus 20,
and verse 7.
They also may have had in mind texts like Deuteronomy 6,
it is the Lord your God you shall fear,
Him you shall serve,
and by His name you shall swear.
Or Leviticus 19, 12,
you shall not swear by my name falsely,
and so profane the name of your God.
I am the Lord.
So now on the surface,
this seems very satisfactory.
This idea of you shall not swear falsely,
but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But there were two very common
and very unsatisfactory practices
in the oath-taking of Jesus' day.
And we have to do a little work to understand that.
If we simply come to the text,
we're not his primary audience.
We're the wonderful beneficiaries
as a secondary audience,
but he's speaking to a people.
He's speaking to a culture
and practice of the day.
So there's these two very common
and two very unsatisfactory practices
in the oath-taking of his day.
Number one was frivolous swearing.
Oath-making.
I don't mean cursing.
I mean oath-making when I say swearing.
Frivolous swearing.
People would make an oath
for almost anything at all.
So insignificant statements
were placed on the same level
as very serious statements.
If you should ever be called
to testify in a court of law,
you will be asked to swear
to tell the truth,
the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth.
This is a very serious matter.
You've been called as a witness
and your testimony may free
or imprison someone.
This is a weighty matter.
But at times,
many people in our day
will make a trivial statement
and then follow it with something like,
I swear,
or I swear to God.
That's the kind of frivolous activity
that was happening in his day.
The application of oath-taking
to things that didn't deserve
the weight of oath-taking.
This is this frivolous swearing
that I'm referring to.
James Montgomery Boyce,
who was a 20th century Presbyterian minister,
in his commentary on this text,
said this,
it was exactly as if a servant
who lived in the household
of an honorable state official
should go around talking about
the honorable house,
the honorable chair,
the honorable mop,
the honorable dishpan,
and so forth.
His speech would then have
much less meaning
when he called
the Lord of the house,
Your Honor.
So this was a prevalent thing
in the day,
but the more serious abuse
of oath-taking of the day,
which Jesus more poignantly addresses
in this text,
was evasive swearing.
Evasive swearing.
People were afraid
to make an oath
in the name of the Lord
because they were either
telling less than the truth,
they were out and out lying,
and they didn't want to take
an oath in the name of the Lord,
fearing judgment,
or they were afraid
that they would be unable
to keep their promise,
or had no intention
of keeping their promise at all.
So, they developed the habit
of swearing on something lesser,
like heaven, the earth,
Jerusalem, or their own heads.
They'd swear on their own life.
And these oaths
were not considered binding.
So you could take an oath,
but in a lesser thing
than God Himself,
and you could get out of it.
It wasn't really an oath at all
in that case.
Jesus speaks to this
in Matthew chapter 23.
This is the chapter
where all the woes
to the scribes
are contained within.
And He says,
beginning in verse 16,
Woe to you blind guides
who say,
if anyone swears by the temple,
it is nothing.
But if anyone swears by the gold
of the temple,
he is bound by his oath.
So these are these laws
they put in place.
Jesus says,
you blind fools,
for which is greater,
the gold or the temple
that has made the gold sacred?
And you say,
if anyone swears by the altar,
it is nothing.
But if anyone swears by the gift
that is on the altar,
he is bound by his oath.
You blind men,
for which is greater,
the gift or the altar
that makes the gift sacred?
So whoever swears by the altar
swears by it
and by everything on it.
And whoever swears by the temple
swears by it
and by him who dwells in it.
And whoever swears by heaven
swears by the throne of God
and by him who sits
upon it.
The Pharisees,
in an effort to carefully
keep the law,
so often lost sight
of the spirit
of that law
and became far too concerned
about the letter of it.
People lived,
as many do today,
as if any part of their life
could ever be separated
from the presence of God.
And this is simply not so.
So this was the misrepresentation
of the law that Jesus is correcting.
It appears on the surface
to be so good.
If you make an oath,
keep it.
But this was the practice
that was going on
in the day
to try to avoid
the biblical way
in which oaths are meant
to be made
and kept.
So he's correcting them.
This frivolous
and this evasive swearing.
One minimizing the truth
and the other avoiding it
altogether.
And he does so
with the following statement.
We've read already.
Verse 34,
Now there are many,
even today,
that believe that Jesus here
is abolishing
the practice of oath-taking
completely.
He is entirely doing away
with it altogether.
There are those
who refuse to make promises
with any degree
of gravitas
who do not hold
that one should take
an oath in a court of law
or that doctors,
police officers,
military personnel,
judges,
our elected officials,
and so forth
should be sworn in
to their prospective offices.
They all take oaths
when they do this
to upkeep
particular promises
of that office.
I am not one
of those people
and I will show you why
from the two testaments.
So what I'm doing here
is I'm debunking
the idea,
I hope,
that we ought not ever
take an oath
that Jesus' word,
but I say you do not
take an oath at all,
has to be placed
in its proper context
and in the larger context
of Scripture
to understand
what it is
he's combating
specifically
in the Sermon on the Mount.
So let me show you
from the two testaments
briefly.
So first in the Old Testament,
I read it to you already,
but in Leviticus 19.12,
God gives instruction
for the taking of oaths.
He tells us
in this particular case
how not to take an oath.
So there's a positive
implication as well.
He says,
you shall not swear
by my name falsely
and so profane
the name of your God.
I am the Lord.
So the inverse of that
would be to say,
you should swear
by my name truthfully.
If you make an oath,
you should keep said oath.
Many Old Testament saints
made oaths.
Abraham swore by God's name
in Genesis chapter 14,
verse 22,
and verse 23
as he interacts
with the king of Sodom.
He says,
I have lifted my hand
to the Lord,
God most high,
possessor of heaven and earth,
that I would not take
a thread
or a sandal strap
or anything that is yours,
lest you should say,
I have made Abram rich.
He's saying,
I have lifted my hand,
I have made a promise
in God's name,
in His presence,
with Him as the witness
of the promise
that I'm making to you.
And he affirms this
to the king of Sodom
by telling him this very thing.
Another example,
amongst many,
David and Jonathan
covenanted together
in the name of the Lord
in 1 Samuel chapter 20
and verse 16.
And Jonathan made a covenant
with the house of David,
saying,
May the Lord take vengeance
on David's enemies.
Right?
He calls God,
right,
to uphold the covenant
that they make together
in that case.
So those are just two
of the many Old Testament examples
I could provide.
But more importantly,
I want to look at the New Testament
on the matter.
Right?
So those who would say
that Jesus has come
and He's put away the practice,
right?
So there's a practice
we've established.
And I want to show you
that the practice continues on
in the New Testament as well
and spend a bit more time there.
So in the New Testament,
and I think the highest example
we may have here,
earthly example,
Jesus swore an oath
when He was on trial
before Caiaphas
in Matthew chapter 26.
This is verse 63 and verse 64.
It says,
But Jesus remained silent.
And the high priest said to Him,
I adjure you by the living God.
Tell us if you are the Christ,
the Son of God.
And here he's doing,
he's appealing to God Himself,
right?
Before God,
in the name of God,
speak the truth.
And what does Jesus say in response?
You have said so.
He doesn't say to Him,
right?
Well, I'll tell you,
but I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to swear
on the name of God
that I am in fact
the Son of God.
But when He says it,
He says,
You have said so.
He affirms the very thing
that Caiaphas is asking Him to do.
Further,
Paul swore oaths.
And we don't pick these up often,
but this is what he's doing.
Romans chapter 9 and verse 1.
He says,
I am speaking the truth in Christ.
I am not lying.
My conscience bears me witness
in the Holy Spirit.
He's appealing to God
as the witness of His truthfulness.
And in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 23,
I think more emphatically here,
he says,
But I call God to witness against me.
It was to spare you
that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.
So again,
appealing to making a promise.
I'm speaking the truth
and God will bear me witness
for this truth
that I am speaking.
Most importantly to the case I'm making,
the writer of Hebrews tells us
that God Himself
swore an oath
to His people.
And this is Hebrews chapter 6.
And I'd like for you to turn
and look at this with me.
Beginning in verse 13.
Verse 13.
The writer of Hebrews
is writing at this point
to give his readers
a confidence in the promises of God.
A confidence that remains
for us today.
It was certainly active for them
and is still active for us.
And he bases that confidence
in an oath
made by God Himself.
If we think that oaths
are no longer allowable,
I would tend to think
that oaths are broken in that case
and we cannot have this kind of confidence.
So he writes,
beginning in verse 13,
For when God made a promise to Abraham,
since he had no one greater
by whom to swear,
he swore by himself,
saying,
Surely I will bless you
and multiply you.
And thus Abraham,
having patiently waited,
obtained the promise.
For people swear by something
greater than themselves,
and in all their disputes,
an oath
is final
for confirmation.
So when God desired
to show more convincingly
to the heirs
of the promise
the unchangeable character
of His purpose,
He guaranteed it
with an oath.
He made a promise.
He swore by Himself.
God,
who cannot change
and cannot lie,
swore an oath.
And it is a blessed oath,
right,
that all the nations of the world
will be blessed
in Jesus Christ,
the seed of Abraham.
So Jesus is not telling us
that we cannot make
large,
weighty promises.
Jesus is warning against
the type of promise making
that was so prevalent
in His day
and
in ours.
And He works through
unraveling their logic
of swearing on a
lesser thing,
doesn't He?
He says the lesser thing
really belongs to God
anyway,
right?
Heaven is the throne of God,
earth is His footstool,
Jerusalem is His city,
and you can't even
control your head.
I am also the God
of your life.
So swearing on anything lesser
is to swear
by God Himself.
Jesus will not allow anyone
to play games
and cheat the rules.
He sees the motivations
and purposes
of our hearts,
this whole person
righteousness,
right?
All of our lives
ought to be lived
quorum Deo,
that is,
in the presence
of God.
Jesus is saying
don't make frivolous
or evasive
promises.
When you make
weighty promises,
they should be made
as a people
who love
and walk
in the truth.
And we do make
these sort
of weighty promises.
I would not want
to do away
with these kinds
of promises
that we make.
As examples,
we do so
in our marriage vows.
We agree
that God
is presiding
over our marriage.
We are making
promises
to each other,
big promises
to each other.
We are making
an oath
as we covenant
together in
marriage.
And,
we have done
so as a covenant
community.
Those of you
who are members
of our church
and those who
aren't,
come on,
get on the process.
But,
we have made
weighty promises
to one another
and we've done
so,
we've taken
this oath,
we've sworn
by God.
Listen to
the conclusion
of our membership
covenant.
Those of you
who remember
signed this.
It reads,
I enter into
this covenant
together with
Christ Family
Church under
the common
goal of
obedience to
glorification of
and joyful
satisfaction in
Jesus Christ
because I believe
and assert with
the rest of the
body that we
need one of
those help
to do so.
As believers
and disciples
of Jesus,
we have entered
into a covenant
relationship with
God who revealed
himself in
Jesus Christ.
The blessings
and promises
of this covenant
have been freely
extended and given
to us.
Therefore,
out of wonder,
love,
thanksgiving,
and reverence,
we hereby accept
and take up
these covenant
responsibilities
which accompany
said privileges
together as a
covenant family.
This is our
reasonable service
and we should
do nothing
less.
God help us
all.
We rely on
his grace alone
and hold fast
to his promise
that there is now
no condemnation
for those who
are in Christ
Jesus.
May his
grace provide
for all
that he
commands.
We have
made weighty
promises.
We have
taken an
oath to
one another
and I'll
leave out the
details of what
that covenant
says but to
walk in truth
together,
to pursue
Christ together,
to take the
gospel to the
nations together
is the summary
of those
promises that
we made in
the name
of God.
Jesus is
telling the
listeners of
his day
and us
this morning
that when
we take
oaths,
the people
that we
are making
promises to
should be
able to
believe what
we have
said because
our lives
are characterized
by the truth.
To make this
point further,
Jesus goes on
to say,
let what you
say be
simply yes
or no.
Anything more
than this
comes from
evil.
I believe
here that
Jesus is
speaking to
our everyday
interactions with
one another,
with our
spouses,
our employers,
our employees,
your pastor.
If you
say that
you will
do something,
your life
should back
the answer
of yes.
You should
be
trustworthy,
a person
that can
be trusted
as honest.
If you
are asked
a question,
you should
give no
reason for
anyone to
doubt your
answer.
Our lives
would be
characterized
in this
way.
In the
original
language,
Jesus
actually
says,
let what
you say
be simply
yes,
or no,
no.
Your
translation
may in
fact render
it this
way.
It's a
little more
faithful if
it does
on this
particular
verse.
This
redundancy
in Jesus'
speech is
much like
his teaching
that begins
with truly,
truly,
I say
to you.
It places
emphasis on
the weightiness
of what was
said.
This was
common
practice.
You repeat
a word.
We really
are supposed
to pay
attention to
this word
that has
repetition
with it.
It adds
a weightiness
to it.
Our
yeses
and our
nos
should hold
value in
the minds
of our
listeners.
We as
American
English
speakers don't
need to go
around saying
yes,
and no,
no.
The point
being,
I think
why the
ESV
translators
just said
yes and
no,
is because
we're
supposed to
say yes
and it
carries
that weight.
It carries
the truly,
truly weight
behind it.
People would
hear us
and believe
us as
followers of
Jesus Christ.
As lovers
of the truth,
those who have
been redeemed
by our faith
in it,
we should be
speakers of
the truth.
We are
children of
God and
God cannot
lie.
Titus
chapter 1
verse 2,
we are
not
children of
Satan.
In John
chapter 8
verse 44,
Jesus accuses
the religious
leaders of
his day by
saying,
you are
of your
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.
This should
not be us.
And in
Matthew 12
verse 34,
he says again
this indictment,
you brood of
vipers,
how can you
speak good
when you are
evil?
For out of
the abundance
of the heart
the mouth
speaks.
Good trees
produce good
fruit.
Apples don't
grow on
pear trees.
Apples don't
grow on,
right?
I have now
been recorded
singing and
that's frightening.
No
nana's come,
it only
grows plums.
Your heart
is where
the words
of your
mouth
grow.
Your mouth
is where
the words
of your
heart
go.
Jesus
change
our
hearts
to bear
good
fruit.
Citizens
of his
kingdom,
that was
entirely
unplanned
by the
way,
citizens
of God's
kingdom
will be
truth
speakers.
This
qualifies
us.
And again,
we are not
citizens because
we speak
truth,
but because
we are
citizens.
We're
desirous
for this.
We hunger
and thirst
for this.
We long
for God's
spirit to
work in
us this
righteousness
that seeks
truth at
all cost.
May we
be a
people set
apart for
the praise
of God
in all
that we
do.
May we
be characterized
as followers
of the
truth by
being speakers
of the
truth in
all things
to all
peoples
for the
glory of
God.
I want
to leave
you with
one last
reading.
This is
from 1
John
chapter 1
and this
is verses
5
through 10.
John
writes,
this is the
message we
have heard
from him
and proclaimed
to you,
that God
is light
and in
him is
no darkness
at all.
If we
say we
have fellowship
with him
while we
walk in
darkness,
we lie
and do
not practice
the truth.
But if we
walk in
the light
as he
is in
the light,
we have
fellowship
with one
another and
the blood
of Jesus
his son
cleanses
us from
all sin.
If we
say we
have no
sin,
we deceive
ourselves
and the
truth
is not
in us.
If we
confess
our sins,
he is
faithful
and just
to forgive
us our
sins
and to
cleanse us
from all
unrighteousness.
If we
say we
have not
sinned,
we make
him a
liar and
his word
is not
in us.
Let's pray
together.