9th Commandment - Exodus 20:16
[28th June 2009]
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour
This commandment is about lying. It is about truthfulness. It is about the power of words and in particular the power of words in God’s sight. Words matter in God’s sight whether we like it or not. Words matter.
Mt 12: 36 “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."
This commandment was important because a false witness in a legal case could send someone to the gallows and this horror of false witness remains in our own strong laws against perjury – lying in a court of law. But this commandment is God’s way to make us think about the way we talk. Not just in the law court but in our every day conversation.
Words are very powerful. Words can destroy reputations. They can scar, wound and haunt a person for years. They can be very cruel. The children’s rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is a lie. It is manifestly untrue in human experience – and almost certainly in the experience of people in this room.
Jesus says that Satan is the father of lies. His lies are first recorded in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s lying tricked Adam and Even, Gen 3
“1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Not only did Satan lie but Eve then lied back to Satan!
Lies continue to haunt humanity. The lies of a cheating husband to his wife; the lies of an addict to get their next fix; the lies of a fraudster. Indeed lying is so much part of human culture we almost seem to expect politicians and salesmen to lie to further their activities.
In Moses’ commentary on 9th commandment in Ex 23:1-3, this commandment is expanded into warnings about not spreading false reports – rumours and gossip; not giving false testimony in legal cases; not siding with majority opinion; not unjustly showing favouritism to the poor. The ends do not justify the means as far as lying is concerned.
False testimony can include gossip: those juicy morsels which are 95% true but which are told in such a way that conveys untruth.
In Colossians ch3v8ff, Christians are told by Paul that lying was part of their old life, which is to be left behind.
8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
Most of the time we need to talk less. If we talked less we would come away from fewer conversations wishing we had not said stuff. However there are times when we do need to speak up. Our silence can in fact be a type of lie. There are times when we need to make a stand for God. When God’s morality or the truth of the glorious gospel is challenged. Our silence in such circumstances is not ‘discretion’ but is often a blanket for cowardice.
Some of the greatest lies Christians tell are those we sing on Sundays: when the words of our worship choruses do not match up with reality in our lives; or when the words of sermons are manifestly untrue. The destiny of the false prophet is not pretty. Or that testimony that is embellished for effect – not realising that most people actually identify better with your true though rather unexciting life story, rather than your exciting half true version. Lies get us into terrible scrapes, one lie leads to another, like those of the man who falsely bragging to David that he had killed David’s enemy King Saul in battle, but was executed for doing something he didn’t actually do..
I do not want to be a pulpit-scold this morning. I want to tell the truth. Lying is bad. It is significant that the first major breach in the holiness of the newly established apostolic church was the lie told by Ananias and Sapphira as they boasted falsely to Peter about giving all of the funds from the sale of a field and they were slain by God for it.
Lying is bad - but looking at it more positively – the truth is good. God’s word is true. We can utterly rely on it. God’s creation is true. The whole universe hangs together on laws of mathematics, physics and chemistry which are true. If we are God’s people we do not need to lie. We belong to this Creator God who is wholly true in his personality and in his actions.
Christians are people who deal in the truth. The word of God is true. Our message in whatever Christian ministry is true and must be true. The truthfulness of our message has to be reflected in the truthfulness of our own character. Mt 12:33 "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognised by its fruit. 34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
We as Christians have a huge advantage in this matter. We do not need to lie or be deceptive in our propagation of the gospel. It is fundamentally true. It is about a person who is truth personified. As Jesus said, “I am the Way the Truth and the Life”. If ever we need to lie or deceive in our ministry we have failed before we even start. We do not need to lie to get visas. We do not need to lie to do our work. God – the God of truth will build his church. He does not need our untruths, half truths our white lies to build his church.
The great privilege we have is the example sof Jesus Christ left for us in the true word of God. Peter was able to say after spending 3 years with him, “He committed no sin. No deceit was found on his lips.” In Jesus’ own commentary on this 9th commandment in the Sermon on the Mount, he encourages us to speak plainly. Matt 5:37 “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil one”. Keep it simple, keep it true.
In conclusion, some true words of encouragement: Jesus spoke true words of redemption and hope to the dying thief who had probably spent a lifetime lying. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” To you who are trapped in lies: there is hope and forgiveness in the true words of Jesus found in Jn 15:3, “You are already made clean by the word I have spoken to you.”
The survival of Paul’s words to the Colossians in ch 3 means that they are relevant to us all, even if we do not consider ourselves to be in anyway untruthful people: Col 3:9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.