Matthew 5:33-37 | As Good as Your Word

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

I invite you this morning to take your Bible if you have one in whatever form you have it and open it to Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

If you are visiting with us or otherwise forgot your Bible this morning, you can find it on page 810 in the Bible in the Pew Rack in front of you.

Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

We've been gradually working our way through Matthew's gospel, focusing in the last several weeks on the Sermon on the Mount.

This morning we find ourselves at verse 33.

Matthew chapter 5 and verse 33.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible, read Matthew 5, 33 through 37 if you'd like to follow along.

This is Jesus speaking, the Lord Himself, the King giving us direction, giving us His own word.

He says, 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.

Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning asking for your help.

It's probably safe to say that all of us have had problems with our mouths this week.

Perhaps it's voicing anger.

Perhaps it's lying.

Perhaps it's committing to something and not following through.

Maybe it's taking your name in vain.

I I there's so many ways that we can struggle with our mouths.

So we come to you as people who have demonstrated that we can't do this on our own.

So we ask for your cleansing, for your forgiveness this morning to be to be made right before you.

We also come with eyes that sometimes don't see what you have to say to us, with ears that sometimes don't hear what you want us to hear.

So give us eyes to see, give us ears to hear, give us hearts to understand and to be changed by the work of your spirit.

Just this last week, there was one one of your sons who worked as a translator of these scriptures whose life was taken in your service.

Because he believed in everyone hearing and having the word of God in their hands.

Lord, may we value your word so supremely and come to understand your faithfulness to your word.

Amen.

Have any of you heard of jawbone credit?

Just curious.

Anybody?

Jawbone credit.

No?

No Western history fans?

Oh, come on.

Okay, that's okay.

I'm the strange one.

I'll accept it.

It's not the first time.

Jawbone credit was a common system of offering credit in the days when hunters and trappers first came into the Dakotas and other Western territories.

For example, there is a record dating to 1878, where a merchant selling goods in Bozeman, Montana, offered jawbone credit to trapper Andrew Garcia.

With nothing but the trapper's word to pay the debt, the merchant gave Garcia$300 worth of supplies for a hunting and trapping expedition.

Now, that may not seem like that much, but remember it's 1878.

So if you if you bring that up to today's dollars with inflation, that would be about$9,000.

So giving$9,000 worth of supplies with nothing but the trapper's word to return and pay his debt with hides and pelts from his expedition.

Well, unfortunately, while Andrew Garcia was away pursuing his animals, his hides, his pelts, hostile Indian tribes had moved into the area around Bozeman, making it almost impossible for travelers to get through.

As winter came, the conditions went from bad to worse and made it almost deadly to return to Bozeman.

Fellow trappers told Andrew Garcia to forget about returning to Bozeman, but he refused to listen.

So risking his life and through a series of harrowing experiences, he returned with hides and pelts to pay his debt.

He was extended credit on nothing but trust.

And he kept his word.

For some reason, my mortgage company doesn't believe the same about me.

I don't know what that says about me, but now we usually can't put much stock in verbal promises these days, can we?

Many people make pledges but fail to keep them.

Contracts are signed and then neglected or broken.

Agreements are reached and handshakes given to no avail.

People who are in trouble with the law may make commitments to receive clemency and then forget the vows they made.

Many of us make vows, promises.

We take an oath or something similar and fail to keep our word.

Even when we take great steps to ensure truthfulness and honesty, the result is often anything but faithfulness to our word, isn't it?

You know what I'm thankful for?

I'm thankful that God keeps his word.

If he didn't, we would have no basis for hope.

We've just sung that he will hold us fast.

If God does not keep his word, how can we have any hope in that truth?

In the life of Jesus, we see that reality in flesh and bone.

Jesus came to fulfill all that God had promised and all that God had declared.

And Jesus, the scriptures tell us, all of God's promises are yes.

God keeps his word.

Now, as we've seen in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls everyone who hears his word to come to him.

To come to him to be made right with God.

All of us who struggle with being faithful to our word, with keeping our word, he says, Come to me, seek my righteousness, hunger and thirst for what I have to give to you.

Because God says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 20, that we have to have a rightness with God, a righteousness that far exceeds anything of the standard religious person.

Matthew 5:20

The only way that people could be right with God is if they had a righteousness that far exceeded that of the scribes and the Pharisees.

And the only way that can happen is if we come to Jesus, hungering and thirsting for his righteousness.

And now in our passage for today in verse 33 through verse 37, we see that one of the evidences of that kind of greater righteousness in our lives is that our word actually means something.

By the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, within us, Jesus' righteousness is evident in our speech and in our faithfulness to what we say.

You have heard that it was said, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.

We live in a time in which we have grown accustomed to lying.

And we're not surprised when somebody lies or somebody doesn't keep their word.

How much of what comes out of the mouths of politicians do we believe?

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

It's likely to not be true, or at least not the whole truth.

We can't even trust those whose work is to report facts to us.

In our own lives, we too often think that white lies, at least so-called white lies, are okay.

Sadly, the current standard is that speaking something less than the truth and keeping your word is normal.

But God says, if you make a vow, if you commit to say something, then keep it.

Jesus is referring here to some Old Testament passages, most likely three of them that are brought together and summarized.

We'll talk about those three here in a moment.

Now, this is a time period in which oaths or vows were very common, maybe not exactly like today.

They would take far more vows or make a commitment in a vow or an oath much more often than we would today.

But in essence, what Jesus is addressing here is agreeing to do something, saying that you will do something, and calling on something or someone greater than you, of greater value than you, to support what you have to say, so that someone would trust what you have to say.

In other words, I'm not trustworthy enough.

My word is not good enough, so I'm gonna have to call on something greater to give value to what I have to say.

Where does that come from?

Well, several Old Testament passages.

First, Leviticus chapter 19, verse 12, where God said to his people, You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God, for I am Yahweh, I'm the living one.

Leviticus 19:12

See, God established some boundaries for vows, for making an oath.

To make a vow established on God based on his power, based on his character, was allowed.

God said, You can do that.

But he sets some parameters.

He starts to describe how that should happen or what should take place, what should not take place.

And he says here, beware if you do that, beware not keeping your word.

Beware calling on God to support what you have to say and then not being faithful to your word.

It goes a step further in our next passage, Numbers chapter 30.

Numbers 30 · chapter mention

Verse 2, it says, if a man vows a vow to Yahweh or swears an oath to bind himself by pledge, he shall not break his word.

He shall do all that proceeds out of his mouth.

God says, My people need to do what they say.

Especially if you make a vow.

If you say by God's power, I'm going to do this, or by God's will I'm going to do that, then do it.

Let's take it a step further in Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 21.

Deuteronomy 23:21

If you make a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not delay in fulfilling it.

Now he adds another parameter to it.

It's not just do what you have to say, it's do it on time.

Don't procrastinate.

I don't know about you, but I'm I'm I'm not very good at that.

I tend to procrastinate.

You shall not delay in fulfilling it, for Yahweh your God will surely require it of you.

And you will be guilty of sin.

Let me let me ask a question.

You don't have to raise your hand here.

How many of you have have said you're going to do something and then not done it?

You don't have to raise your hand.

You are guilty of sin.

That's the place where we start, friends.

We are guilty of sin.

See, an oath was to be kept, and it was generally understood to be the end of the matter.

If you made an oath or a vow, it was okay, that's good, that's done.

We can trust everything that you have to say.

It was a statement signifying the absolute truthfulness of something and your faithfulness to follow through on it.

It was going to be done, it was going to be accomplished, and so God begins to regulate those vows, those oaths, and tell us how to do it.

Well, what then happened?

Those are Old Testament passages.

There's a lot of time that transpired from those statements by Moses all the way to the time of Jesus and even further to today.

So what happened?

By the time that Jesus speaks these words in the Sermon on the Mount, virtually any kind of oath or vow was acceptable.

As long as it was not false and the person intended to fulfill it.

You can make a vow based on anything.

But in practice, there was sort of a hierarchy of vows.

So the more serious that you were, the higher up the chain you went, the higher up the ladder you went.

And the very top was being swearing on God Himself.

A little bit later in Matthew, we'll hear Jesus talk about swearing on the gold that covered the temple.

Because we really don't want to go so far as to swear on the temple itself.

Let's swear on the siding, not the house.

But oaths to the Lord or invoking God were the most serious.

And those had to be kept at all costs.

Scholar Craig Keener says breaking an oath was dangerous.

For in all societies, oaths contained curses that deities would avenge if the person who swore by them broke the oath.

Let me give you an example of this.

It's a powerful example in Genesis chapter 31.

Genesis 31 · chapter mention

If you're familiar with Jacob, that scoundrel, Jacob, the guy who cheated everybody out of everything he could get out of them.

Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel.

Those wives were sisters.

He took them away from their home.

Their father chased after him.

They come together and they have some issues.

They have some discussions about what are we going to do.

Verse 43 of Genesis 31.

Laban says to Jacob, These daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine.

But what can I do this day?

For these are my daughters or their children whom they have borne.

Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I, and let it be a witness between you and me.

So he took a stone and set it up as a pillar, and he said, Hey, let's gather stones.

They took stones, they made a heap, and there they ate by the heap.

Laban called it Jagar Sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galid, which means this is a pile that's a witness to us.

They called it Mizpah, for he said, May Yahweh watch between you and me when we are out of one another's sight.

If you oppress my daughters, or if you take wives besides my daughters, although no one is with us, see, God is witness between you and me.

This heap is a witness, this pillar is a witness, I will not pass over this heap to you, you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me to do harm.

May God watch over us and judge between us.

In other words, it said, May God strike you dead if you break this vow.

May God Himself be the judge if you don't do what you commit to do today.

It was a very serious deal.

But by the time of Jesus, you could make an oath, an agreement, a covenant, establish a vow based on something that was that was less than God.

So the gold of the temple.

Maybe the altar.

Maybe the earth.

Maybe your own life.

But Jesus says, don't take an oath at all, either by heaven, because that's where God's throne is, by the earth, for it's his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it's the city of the great king.

Do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

My wife cut my hair last night, and there was a lot of white in it.

See Leviticus 19, 12, where God said, You shall not swear by my name falsely, was reinterpreted.

It was reinterpreted to mean that swearing falsely by God's name was unacceptable.

But you know, if you swore by your own life and didn't fulfill that, yeah, that's okay.

If you swear by a building, by your home, yeah, that that's okay because it's not it's not God.

See, the further from God your standard of taking an oath was, the less dangerous it became, or it was thought to be.

And so God's standard of absolute perfect truthfulness and faithfulness to your word was lowered.

You could still maintain your righteousness with God, the Pharisees believed, by avoiding making a vow on God.

Instead, just make it on something that was less than God.

But Jesus says, listen, you're forgetting that God is sovereign and everything belongs to him.

So if you swear on your own life, remember your life belongs to him.

You swear on a building, it belongs to him.

Whatever you swear on, you're actually putting God in that system.

You can't get away from it.

You can't avoid making a vow on God by something else.

So what happened is by the time of Jesus, there was a system developed that, oh, here's these different things that you could base a vow or an oath on.

The further you get from God, the safer you are if you break it.

Well, that then developed a system of deception and dishonesty.

Because if God's not going to strike me dead, I don't have to do what I said then.

I don't have to worry about it.

As long as my vow or my oath isn't established on God Himself, I can get away with it.

And that's our trend today.

Several years ago, I read a newspaper article that was describing uh a decision being considered by the government of Sweden for considering uh making it unnecessary for individuals in court to swear on the Bible.

So the old tradition would be replaced, they said, by a binding statement based on an individual's honor and reason.

That's what the article said.

According to this source, a strong argument for the proposed change was that placing your hand on a Bible no longer means very much to a great number of citizens.

And those who do hold it in honor are confident that they would speak the truth and nothing but the truth anyway.

So we do away with standards of upholding our word.

Just this week, Allison and I stood before a judge to finalize our adoption of our daughter.

And we had to raise our hands and swear to tell the truth.

No Bible.

So it's just on us.

Well, who's there to believe us?

Who's there to say that we're keeping our word?

So Jesus steps into this situation and he says, Listen, stop with the vows.

Stop with the oaths and be people of your word.

Just do what you say.

Speak the truth and do what you say you're going to do.

He said, Vows and oaths are serious things that because they all relate back to God, it doesn't matter what you're vowing on because God owns it all.

Everything belongs to Him, so you can't get away from the serious nature of an oath.

Making a vow or taking an oath on something less than God implies that it's somehow outside of God's domain.

Everything that God has is here, but my vow is over here.

Jesus said, uh-uh, sorry.

Everything belongs to God, therefore everything is serious in nature.

He's sovereign over all of it.

Nothing is outside of his domain.

So when Jesus tells us, you know, don't take an oath at all, he's telling us to keep our word.

What comes out of our mouths ought to be trustworthy.

People ought to know that we're going to do what we say we're going to do.

I'm sure many husbands would understand the man who went into a florist shop asking for some potted chrysanthemums.

The florist said, I'm sorry, sir, but we're out of chrysanthemums.

How about some geraniums?

No, no, that won't do, he said.

I promised my wife I would water the chrysanthemums while she was gone.

Been there, guys?

Such simple things, and we still struggle to be faithful to our word, don't we?

Everything that pertains to God is sacred and seriousness and serious.

Heaven is God's, the earth is God's, Jerusalem is God's, even your very life is God's, your hair belongs to Him.

That makes every statement that we make a reflection of God.

Don't miss that statement.

Everything we say is a reflection on God.

If we keep our word, it reflects the faithfulness of God.

If you don't keep your word, it reflects how little you are like your God.

But this is nothing new.

Scriptures had spoken of this sort of thing over and over and over again.

Several of them are found in the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs chapter 4, verse 24.

Proverbs 4:24

Proverbs speaks of straightness versus crookedness.

Mike referenced earlier Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6, that talks about a crooked or a straight way.

Proverbs 3:5

Solomon says, put away crooked speech.

Devious talk, but put that all away from you.

Far, far away from you.

He said, that's not the way of wisdom.

That's not the way of following your God.

A little bit later in Proverbs chapter 6, verse 12, he says, A worthless person, a wicked person is the one that goes about with crooked speech.

Proverbs 6:12

Convicting question, perhaps, to just to consider your own life and how you go about in communicating with people.

We might be very truthful and honest and forthright with our speech when we're with other Christians or when we're in church.

What about at work?

What about at work?

Are you known as someone who's faithful to your word even if it hurts?

Are you known as a person whose every word is trustworthy, is honest, is faithful?

Or are you a worthless person?

That's Solomon, not me.

Proverbs 19.

Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than the one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.

Yikes.

If we are less than honest, less than faithful, less than true with our speech, we're foolish.

We're foolish.

Of course, the New Testament picks up on this in various ways.

Colossians chapter 4, verse 6, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer a person.

Colossians 4:6

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29.

Ephesians 4:29

Skipped one.

Oh.

Guess I forgot it.

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only that which is good and acceptable for building up as it fits the occasion, to give grace to those who hear.

Ephesians 4:29

James chapter 5, but above all, this is James, by the way, if you want a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, read James.

James 5 · chapter mention

James over and over and over and over again refers back to the Sermon on the Mount.

And here it's almost a direct quote from the words of Jesus.

Above all, do not swear, either by the heavens above or the earth beneath, or by any other oath.

Just keep your word.

Let your yes be yes and your no no.

Because if you don't, you're going to fall under condemnation.

Truth has no degrees.

Half truth is a lie.

So-called white lie is a sin.

All untruthfulness, all unfaithfulness to our word is a reflection of the darkness of sin.

Do you remember what the apostle John told us about that?

He said, God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

Not even the smallest shade is found in God.

Our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees.

We can have no amount of darkness, no amount of shade in us that prompts us to be untruthful or unfaithful to what we have to say.

If our standard is the culture in which we live, then we're in trouble.

If the standard in our culture is something less than the truth, then we have to work to reflect Jesus, not our culture.

Jesus expects perfect truthfulness and complete faithfulness to our word.

We must be people of our word.

I don't know if this is true or not, but came across one time something that was called a Turkish proverb.

A true word needs no oath.

That's what Jesus teaches us here.

And it really is quite simple.

Those who are part of his kingdom, those who going back to the Beatitudes at the beginning of chapter 5, who are poor in spirit, who are meek, who are hungering for righteousness, who are merciful, who are peacemakers, etc., are going to be people of the truth.

They don't need to swear by something or someone greater to substantiate their word.

So why is it so hard for us to be people of our word?

Well, I read of a communication consultant one time who held workshops on this subject so that people could learn to be faithful to their word, I guess.

She said that people are afraid that honesty in speech will cost them friendship.

That upholding their word will cost them love or respect.

And so they either keep their lips zippered or they say something other than what they mean.

Other factors that impede straight talk are shyness.

Maybe a lack of self-worth, a fear of displaying ignorance, fear of criticism, a fear of hurting someone's feelings.

And Christians aren't immune to that problem, by the way.

Jesus says, speak the truth in love.

Have you ever tried that?

It's not so easy.

It's not so easy to be truthful and express love and encouragement and grace and compassion at the same time.

Being honest with a person may hurt.

Christians have some particular speech issues.

We have our own white lies.

We have our own broken commitments, unwholesome speech, destructive speech, gossiping speech.

You know, a big one today involves social media.

I can't tell you how many times a Christian has shared something with me on social media that is untrue.

That's just false.

A conspiracy theory or gossip.

And they share it because they believe it.

They've bought into it.

But in the end, what we do, what we end up doing is perpetuating falsehood.

Is that what God wants us to do?

I would suggest to you that even in our social media, God expects us to be people of our word.

There are even bigger issues.

Again, I won't ask you to raise your hand.

How many of us have said, I'll pray for you?

And then by the time you turn around, you've forgotten what you were going to pray about and never done it.

Right?

We've done it.

How many of us have committed to read the Bible in a year?

And verbalized that.

And then not followed through.

You know, there's a reason that James said the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

He says it's a restless evil full of deadly poison.

According to the world population counter, there are around 7.8 billion people on this planet right now.

That means there are 7.8 billion fires burning as we speak.

7.8 billion deadly poisons.

That's our tongues.

That's our speech.

And the vast majority of those people believe that they're right with God.

But Jesus comes along and says, My followers have to have a greater righteousness.

See, as God's spirit begins to work within us, those fires are gradually put out.

The poisons are slowly neutralized, not by our own efforts, but by the power of Christ's righteousness at work within us.

And then when we come to Him, having that new righteousness found in Christ, there comes with a new recognition.

There's a knowledge that how we speak matters to our Lord.

And so as he works, we work to watch our tongues.

And it becomes our duty, as the psalmist said in Psalm 39, he said, I will guard my ways that I might not sin with my tongue.

I will guard my mouth with a muzzle.

He said, it's such an issue that I might have to muzzle myself.

Anyone who requires, emphasis on the word, requires, the use of an oath or a vow to establish his word follows Satan.

They have a righteousness that leads right to hell.

But those those who have the righteousness of Christ, who are people of their word, speaking truth, show that they are citizens of the Lord's kingdom.

Jesus is our perfect example.

He is the realization of truth speaking.

God made promises, Jesus came to fulfill them.

And the righteousness that God expects requires perfect truthfulness and faithfulness to one's word that is fully complete.

God expects that.

And he demonstrated that he himself is like that.

He is always truthful.

He is always faithful.

You can trust what he says.

Jesus was perfectly faithful.

He was perfectly truthful.

And his obedience to God's requirements can be applied to your life.

If you will think with me just for just for a few minutes here on.

Thinking about this subject from a Trinitarian perspective.

Father, Son, and Spirit.

Let's begin with the Father.

Since God is perfectly faithful, not an ounce of unfaithfulness, no shadow of darkness.

We can implicitly trust everything that He has recorded in His Word.

Do you come to your Bible with that sense of trust?

Do you come to your Bible believing and relying on the perfect faithfulness of God the Father?

What level of trust do you give his word?

Of course, our word doesn't mean much often.

We need something more.

So in Jesus, in Jesus we see that God is perfectly faithful to his word.

Jesus said, Don't think that I've come to abolish the law of the prophets.

I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

He said, I've come to keep my word.

The fact that Jesus came, the fact that he came to die, that he came to live, that he came to be raised from the dead is in fulfillment of his word.

That wouldn't have happened.

God wouldn't be faithful, but God is faithful.

And because God is faithful, his children should now emulate that faithfulness.

But the fact is, we struggle with it, don't we?

We fail then to achieve the kind of righteousness that Jesus requires.

So Jesus says, Come to me.

Come to me, and I will give you my righteousness.

The righteousness that is always truthful, the righteousness that is faithful to God's word, I will give that to you.

So we need to come to the Son.

Now, what about the Spirit?

I think the Apostle Paul expressed this very clearly in Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

He said, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, he says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who works in you.

God's working.

If you have come to Christ for his righteousness, then he is working in you.

He has given you his spirit to slowly put out those fires, to slowly do away with the poison that comes with your tongue.

He is working, therefore you work.

Put a muzzle on your mouth if you need to.

Recognize those things that lead you into sin.

Avoid them.

So that we might say with the psalmist, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my redeemer.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we come to you confessing that we need your righteousness.

Lord, do not let anyone leave today without recognizing their need for that and to trust in you with all of their heart.

Lord, work powerfully in our hearts, in our minds, and in our mouths so that we might display that we are your people.

Lord, make everyone who knows us see something different about the way we communicate.

Enable them to see that we are more like you every day.

And how we speak truth and how we remain faithful to what we have to say.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your faithfulness.

Thank you for being the rock that perfectly obeyed the Father.

Thank you for the righteousness that you give to us, that we can rest on you, that cornerstone.

Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.