Yes and No
Download MP3If you would, I invite you to open your bibles to James chapter 5, and also Matthew chapter 5 as well. James 5 and Matthew 5. As it just so happens to work out, if you have been going through our bible reading plan, you would have read what we're gonna be reading in Matthew 5 for today's reading. Begin reading in Matthew 5 I mean, James 5 verse 12. But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.
Joel Brooks:Now Matthew 533. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but you 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 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.
Joel Brooks:Anything more than this comes from evil. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would come and you would speak to us in this moment that we would clearly hear from you. Lord, we have heard a lot of words this week. We have had a lot thrown at us this week, but there is nothing more important than sitting before you and listening to you speak to us.
Joel Brooks:Your words are true. Your words bring life, and we need life. So, Lord, now I pray that in this moment, my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. Just a few years back earlier from writing this letter, James had a very, vivid experience, something that I'm sure he he did not wish to repeat or something he he would not have liked to witness again. But he was gathered with the apostles and a couple from the church came before him. And the couple gave a very generous gift to the church, laid it at the apostle's feet, and Peter asked the husband, is this all the money that you got from selling the property? Because that is what Ananias, the husband had said.
Joel Brooks:Yes. This is everything that we got, and it is all to the church. And James got to witness Ananias fall to the floor and drop dead in a moment. And then he got to witness his wife come in and Peter asked the same thing. He said, is this the amount you sold the property for?
Joel Brooks:And is this everything you've given to the church? And she said, yes. He said the very feet who dragged your husband outside of this door are about to drag yours, and she dropped dead and was dragged out of the room. I'm sure that that forever was etched in James's mind of the importance of telling the truth in the community of God. What's so interesting about that story, is that there were a lot worse sins done in the Bible, a lot worse sins that the New Testament church was doing.
Joel Brooks:And in Corinth alone, you have, you know, people getting drunk at communion. You have, somebody is sleeping with his father's wife. You have, people eating food that has been sacrificed to idols. You, you, you have lots of sin in the church, but nobody has ever struck dead from those sins. It's just here when 2 church members give a generous gift and they lie about it, they are struck dead.
Joel Brooks:And James is thinking from that moment is like truth in the church is essential. For the community of God to really be the community of God, we can't hold back from one another. We have to speak truth to one another. Otherwise, it destroys the very fabric of who we are. And up to that point in the church, John or Jesus' prayer in John 17 was being fulfilled that the church was being 1.
Joel Brooks:Then he had Ananias and Sapphira come and shatter that with a lie. And now James is coming to this point in his letter, and he is saying, hey. Before I'm about to wrap up this letter, I need to tell you something. Do not lie. He begins this section by saying, above all my brothers, do not swear.
Joel Brooks:And now most commentators here are gonna tell you that, he's not saying that this truth I'm about to tell you is more important than all the others. This is a way of saying kind of one final thing or before I forget, let me let me remind you of this. And so before he closes his letter in James, he wants to make sure he talks about the integrity of God's people. And you might think that he's exaggerating in his letter when he writes that we have to tell the truth or, or we're going to fall under condemnation. But he's not.
Joel Brooks:He's for when he has seen instant judgment, but also he's just realizing this is how the community of god that really believes Jesus is the messiah and he is our king. This is how we are to live. Now, lying has been around, you know, since the dawn of time. We've seen a whole lot of it in this past election season. Thank goodness it is over.
Joel Brooks:I mean, fair share of lies on both parties. I find it interesting that in every year during election season, it's always about the economy. Every, each candidate is always talking about the economy, and they're kind of bending facts to to tell how they're the ones who could really get the economy going. What I find interesting actually is the word economy because most people don't know where that word comes from. The word economy was actually first used in the monasteries way way back in the Middle Ages.
Joel Brooks:It was used by monks to describe someone who handled their household well. It was described it was used to describe people who had family devotions. And so this is how the reformers use the word. This is how the Puritans would later use the word. A man who had good economics was somebody who prayed with his children, prayed with his wife, taught them to love and to fear the Lord, managed his household well.
Joel Brooks:And that became later well, that's the kind of person you can do business with. That's the kind of person you can trust. That's the person when they shake your hand and they say, I'm going to do this, you knew that their yes would be yes and their no would be no. And it later came to be used just to describe finances, which is just so interesting because, you know, how far have we come with use of that word? When you think of Wall Street, when you think of banks, when you think of stores and advertisements, do you think of when you hear the word economics and you think of them, do you think truth?
Joel Brooks:Typically, we think no people are lying, lying, lying, trying to get us, trying to sell us something we don't even need. James says no. We gotta be different than the world. We have to live lives of the utmost integrity. Our yes has to be yes, and our no has to be no.
Joel Brooks:Now when James tells us that we are not to swear either by heaven or by earth, but to let our yes be yes and our no be no. He's really summarizing what Jesus had said at the Sermon on the Mount, what we just read in Matthew 5. Now I don't believe James or Jesus is actually prohibiting Christians from ever taking a vow, because vows are all in the Bible. Vows are actually all in the New Testament. Paul is gonna take vows after this.
Joel Brooks:I mean, he's gonna say things like, as god is my witness, he's gonna say this, as god is my witness, I am not lying to you, and he's gonna say some things. Paul will will later take vows. And in the Old Testament, the people of God were actually commanded to take vows. In Deuteronomy 10, the Lord tells the people that they are, you must swear by my name that you will hold fast to me. And so I don't think James or Jesus here is speaking against all vows.
Joel Brooks:But what they are addressing is something that was happening during this time, during the New Testament, in which the biblical teaching of taking vows or oaths was being greatly abused. For instance, a lot of oaths were binding and a lot of oaths were seen as not being binding. So if you swore by, you know, I swear by my my mother's life that I'm telling you the truth, that actually wasn't that binding. But if you swore by my mother's life on the name of the Lord, that could be considered a little more binding. And actually, there there's a whole huge section in the Mishnah, which was the, the teachings to the Jews at this time that dealt with what oaths were binding and what oaths were not binding, depending on what you happen to swear by.
Joel Brooks:And usually it resulted in this, the closer you came to swearing on the temple and the inner parts within the temple, the more binding your oath was. So if you just swore by Jerusalem that I'm telling you the truth, people are like, Yeah, whatever. You're probably lying. If you say, Well, I swear by the temple gates, maybe. Well, I swear by the temple itself.
Joel Brooks:All right, we're batting 500 here. I'm not sure, you know? And it's like, I swear by the altar, possibly telling the truth. But as he got closer and closer and closer, that is, what's considered a more binding oath. And so Jesus alludes to this later in Matthew, Matthew 23, when he says to the scribes and Pharisees, woe to you, blind guides who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it's nothing, but if anybody swears by the gold of the temple, he's bound by such an oath.
Joel Brooks:You blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that made the gold sacred? 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. Whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it. Saying here, hey, there's there's no degrees of truthfulness depending on what you swear on or what or what you don't swear on because because God's in all of this.
Joel Brooks:Alright? This is the same thing he is saying in chapter 5. Look closely at those words in Matthew 5. Look at verse 34. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
Joel Brooks:He's saying, listen, there's no difference. If you swear by Jerusalem or you swear by heaven or you swear by earth because God's present in all of those places. He's everywhere. He's just as present in Jerusalem, just the outside of the cities as he is in the inner temple, as he is on the altar, as he is in Galilee, he is present everywhere. And then in verse 36, he says, don't even swear by your own head.
Joel Brooks:Because he says, you know what? You can't you're not even in control of your own life. It's not your life to take or to lose. You can't even change your hair color. God's sovereign over your own life.
Joel Brooks:So don't swear by your own head. Don't swear by different objects because realize God is everywhere. It is just as binding, no matter what you swear on. So I don't believe that James or Jesus is saying that if you know, you were dragged into court and they gave you a Bible and you're to swear on it to tell the truth and nothing but the truth that you're not supposed to do that. What they are saying is it should make no difference if you put your hand on the Bible and swore or not Because your yes should always be yes.
Joel Brooks:Your no should always be no because you are always in the presence of god. You're always taking an oath. Most of the oaths that we tend to take are usually because there is a lack of truthfulness in our lives. Maybe some of you say this or slip into saying this at times like, no, I'm telling you the truth about this. And then you say something.
Joel Brooks:Now now that this is this is the honest to God truth, and then you speak. And the moment we as Christians say that what we're saying is, hey, I want you to know everything else I say is suspect, that I have different levels of truth. But really, my whole life should fall under suspicion. So we don't need to say things like, you know, on my mother's grave, I promise you or make pinky promises or cross my heart, hope to die, stick a noodle in my eye. You know, really, it should not matter.
Joel Brooks:We speak truth at all times. Now I'll say before I was, studying through this text, I thought I was really good at telling the truth. Something I prided myself on so foolishly. I can remember my dad sitting me down when I was a small boy and, we had we had this heart to heart talk and he said, Joel, you're going to do some stupid things as you get older. You're going to make some mistakes.
Joel Brooks:You're going to you're going to disobey me. And, and when you do those things, you'll be punished. We're gonna deal with them. And he said, look at me. Here's one thing, though, you will never ever do.
Joel Brooks:You will never lie to me ever. He said, I'm not saying if you tell me the truth, you're not gonna get in trouble. You very well might get in trouble, but you will never lie to me. And I remember him saying that and I was scared to death and I can't ever remember a time of lying to my dad. Even if it meant I knew I was going to get in horrific trouble.
Joel Brooks:He was like this one person I can't lie to my father. And so I had thought, you know, that I was doing pretty, pretty well in the whole telling truth department. And so I really started digging in. And I started realizing how untruthful at times I can be. Here's some common things that I think maybe a lot of us struggle with, things that we lie about.
Joel Brooks:For starters, at church, we say yes to many things. That's what the word amen means. All right? Amen simply means let it be, or we agree, or yes. And so when we cry out amen, which most of you don't have to worry about, I think you all kind of like, you know, the silent inward cry.
Joel Brooks:You know, feel free if you ever wanna let out the outward cry. But if you cry out amen, like to a truth you hear in a sermon or to a scripture read or just something that's declared in a song. And then you leave the doors and you go home, is that truth still a yes to you? Or is it now a no? So when you say things like, Amen, God, you are all that I need.
Joel Brooks:And is it still a yes? Or do you begin needing so many other things? Has your yes turned to a no? When you say, Yes, Lord, you have you have forgiven me of my sins. I'm a child of yours.
Joel Brooks:Does that turn into no when you get home, when you you all of a sudden come overcome by guilt and by shame? Or when you say, Yes, God, you're sovereign. You are good over everything. Does it turn to know when a tragedy hits and you forget it all? What happens to your amens that are here in public?
Joel Brooks:What happens to them when you get in private? Do they turn into a no? Are you a different person on the Internet than you are in person? You know, are your Facebook statuses, your little tweets, are those honest things, you know, truly revealing about who you are or, do they deceive others? Parents, how often have you said this?
Joel Brooks:We're leaving in 2 minutes. Okay? 2 minutes. Just give me 2 minutes. Alright.
Joel Brooks:That's kinda like, you know, a a 1000 years is as a day to the Lord. I mean, the 2 minutes for a parent, for a child is is it could be hours. It our children are looking at us and they're trying to learn. Are we going to stick to our word when we say things like that? What do we say when we say, Hey, give 2 minutes.
Joel Brooks:We're gonna leave in 2 minutes and it's really 30 minutes later. Do you ever tell people that you haven't had the chance to respond to their email or that you didn't get their message? Sorry, I just didn't get a message when in fact you had or in fact you read through the email real quick, but you just didn't want to reply. You ever not get a joke, but laugh anyway? That's a lie.
Joel Brooks:You want people to think that you got it. And so so you want to put that forward there. You don't you don't want to be left out. I found that one of the most common and damaging lies within the church is this, and I hear this a lot. People will come up to me and they'll say, you know, I I really believe that the Lord is telling me to do this.
Joel Brooks:But, really, it's not the lord. They're just doing what they wanna do, And they're kind of using some spiritual language to make themselves feel better. A number I know a number of people who say this a lot of times. They go, the Lord so clearly told me that I was supposed to do this. He so clearly told me I was supposed to buy this car or so clearly told me I was supposed to take this job.
Joel Brooks:Clearly told me I was supposed to move over here. Clearly told me I was supposed to date this person. And they're always saying that the Lord is so clearly speaking to them. And I wanna be like, really? Because he rarely speaks to me so clearly.
Joel Brooks:And I think a lot of times Christians just want to use a spiritual language. They want to lie, so they they make themselves feel spiritually superior than everybody else. People used to ask me all the time after I planted this church, they're like, well, tell us about, you know, when the Lord called you to, to start Redeemer. I'm like, well, gosh, you know, I I kind of had a hunch. Like, well, no, like, where, you know, where's the clarity in the call?
Joel Brooks:When did he, like, speak to you to do this? I was like, well, we kind of saw a need, kind of a maybe direction in that way. And so we we when I prayed about it and we we took a step of faith and did it. So there was no, like, voice. There was no clarity.
Joel Brooks:I was like, no, there was just faith. And I think when we consistently tell people how clearly we're always hearing the Lord, what we're doing is we're damaging their faith so much because they might not be hearing clearly. Now we can at times hear clearly, clearly from the Lord. You you see that in the New Testament. There might be a time when we're in a worship service, you know, and God says, Hey, set aside Paul, Barnabas.
Joel Brooks:You're sending them on the mission field. And, like, Got it. Clear as day. But there might be some other things about, am I supposed to take this job? Am I supposed to give to this person?
Joel Brooks:What kind of car am I supposed to get? You don't know. You might feel an inkling of the spirit leading this way. Don't lie about it. Don't put yourselves out there as being so much spiritually superior than others.
Joel Brooks:Another common lie by Christian sounds like this. Well, I know I told you this, but the Lord is now leading me in a different direction. I know I told you that that I would teach children's church, you know, or I I would go on this mission trip or that I would take this job. I know I told you I would do that, but I really feel like the Lord is now leading me over here. And usually that leading you over here is something a lot more cool and exciting than what you were going to do.
Joel Brooks:Let me just tell you right off that God doesn't do that. Alright? This is what the Lord is leading you to do. Let your yes be yes and your no no. Otherwise, you completely blow your witness.
Joel Brooks:Alright? This is what happens when we lie to people. When we lie to people, we treat them as something less than human. We treat them as an object, an object for our own personal gain. And when we lie to someone, we remove their dignity from them.
Joel Brooks:This is what Satan wants to do to us. He wants to use us for his own personal gain. He wants to rob us of the dignity of being created in the image of God, and so he lies to us. Satan is the father of lies. So anytime we say things like, you know, the Lord wants me to do this, when actually we said we're going to do this, we're not resembling our Heavenly Father.
Joel Brooks:We're resembling the father of lies Blows our witness. I could give more examples, but you all are looking really depressed. All right. So we'll, we'll move on. Why do we lie?
Joel Brooks:What's the driving impulse of this? There are a lot of reasons. I'm going to kind of list these reasons under the large heading of this hiding. Lying is a way of hiding. We might high hide because of fear.
Joel Brooks:We might hide because of pride, but but we are hiding. When Ananias and Sapphira lied about the amount of money they gave, What they were doing is trying to hide. They didn't want people to see them for who they really were. You know, Barnabas, good old Barnabas just came in and laid down all the proceeds of his land. And they're like, wow, Barnabas is an amazing guy.
Joel Brooks:They wanted to be looked at like that, but they weren't. So they had to hide themselves behind a lie. When you laugh at a joke that you don't understand, you're hiding. You don't wanna be exposed to somebody stupid enough who didn't get the joke. So you hide behind a lie.
Joel Brooks:And when you lie about not reading somebody's email or not having enough time to respond to them? You're hiding your real self because, hey, who really wants to say, actually it's because I'm a lazy, selfish person who just didn't wanna respond to you. I mean, really, do you wanna say that? No. So so you don't want them to see that, so you hide behind a lie.
Joel Brooks:Lying is nothing more than fig leaves. Just as Adam and Eve, after they sinned, they tried to cover themselves and hide themselves. That's what we do with our lies. Because the thought of being exposed before somebody else to where they can see who we really are just makes us shutter. And so when we lie, it shows that we believe in that moment, I need to make up my own identity instead of resting in the identity that God gives me.
Joel Brooks:Now, how can we break through? Jesus gives us a hint of this in Matthew 5. Matthew 5, when he says that we shall perform to the Lord what we have sworn. It's an interesting phrase, perform to the Lord. What you have sworn.
Joel Brooks:Your niv says, keep the oaths that you have made. Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made. And this is how we normally talk about speaking the truth, we talk about keeping your word. And so that's why the NIV translates it that way. But the ESV translate it, performing to the Lord.
Joel Brooks:And the reason there's such different translations there is because it's a, it's a nuanced word. It's a hard, harder word to translate. It really means pay. You are to pay your word. You are to pay your oath.
Joel Brooks:And the idea is this, If you tell the truth, it's going to cost you. That's what paying your oath means. Telling the truth will be a sacrifice because you're gonna come out of hiding. You're gonna expose yourself. People are gonna see the wrongs you've done.
Joel Brooks:They're gonna see the shameful ways you've acted. They're gonna see you for who you are. So it's costly. But this is also where we find our strength to tell the truth if we look at Jesus, Because Jesus spoke the truth, and it cost him in a far more ultimate fashion. And when Jesus was on trial before Pilate, he said these words, for this purpose, I was born.
Joel Brooks:For this purpose, I've come into the world to bear witness to the truth, in which Pilate says, what's truth sends them off to be killed. When Jesus is before the high priest in Matthew 26, the high priest says, I adjure you by the living god. Tell us, if you the if you are the Christ, the son of god. So Jesus is asked to take an oath. I adjure you by the living God.
Joel Brooks:This is the highest oath you could take. Tell me if you are the messiah, the son of God. Jesus says yes, And you'll see me coming in power. And so they send Jesus off to be crucified. The truth costs Jesus his life.
Joel Brooks:But he's not, he's it's not just his truth that's costing him his life. It's our lack of truth because that's what he's taking on. It's all of our deceit actually is being put on him that that is costing him his life. He is paying the full cost for our deceit when he speaks the truth and it takes his life. You know what?
Joel Brooks:When we really believe the gospel, we no longer have to fear being exposed. Picture Jesus exposed on the cross. He was exposed for us. Alright? Jesus knows we are far worse than than than we even know.
Joel Brooks:You think you're bad. You don't know the half of it. He knows your sins and a1000 more. And Jesus says, I see them and I love you anyway. And I have taken all that shame and I have put it on the cross.
Joel Brooks:You don't have to try to hide it from me. I see it. And if you don't have to hide it before your creator, you don't have to hide it before others. You also don't have to fear not being accepted or fear being rejected because you know what? In Christ, we're 100% accepted.
Joel Brooks:You don't have to lie to be accepted. You don't have to hide anymore. Not when we look at Jesus and see him stripped down, exposed on the cross because he spoke the truth. Pray with me. Lord, I pray that the truth would indeed set us free.
Joel Brooks:There's some people here who have been hiding for so long, telling things that they think are just white lies, and they've been telling them so long that they've been hiding their true selves for so long. They don't even know who they are. Lord, through your spirit, free them of that. Lord, for those of us who feel the need to lie so others might think we are better than we really are. God, just strip that down.
Joel Brooks:You know who we are. You accept us. You took our shame, and you nailed it to the cross. May our identity rest in that. God make us a truthful people because you are a truthful god.
Joel Brooks:May the way that we just speak truth to one another be a reflection of you in this world. And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
