The Ten Commandments Lesson 9: To Tell The Truth | Devin LaBay

Well, good morning.

It is good to see you this morning.

Again, if you're visiting, welcome.

We're glad that you're here with us at Central this morning.

At Jesus' trial, Pontius Pilate said these very well-known words when confronted with the truth.

He asked a question What is truth?

I think humanity's been trying to figure that one out ever since.

There was a recent poll done that showed that 90% of American society admits to lying.

And that they think it's okay to not tell the truth depending on the circumstances.

Of that 90% that were polled, they said on average, the way it worked out, it proved that they spend about 52 minutes on average per day gossiping.

I find that interesting.

You know, Mark Twain once said, if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember as much.

That's pretty profound, I would say.

The ninth commandments, God says, you shall not bear false witness.

Larry talked about synonyms this morning.

You shall not bear false witness.

You shall tell the truth.

And that's what we're going to be taking a look at this morning in our time together.

And so if you would go with me in prayer to our Lord and our Father, we'll ask the Spirit to bless our message this morning.

Lord, we thank you for this beautiful day today.

We thank you for the nourishing rain.

We pray for those that were in harm's way of the hurricane that all are as well as can be, and uh that they that you will be with them uh as they recover any damage that came as a result of it.

We're just we're thankful here for the blessing of the rain.

We've needed it, and you give us just what we need when we need it.

Lord, you're so good to us in so many ways.

You've blessed us and you've been merciful to us, and there's so many things that we take for granted each and every day that is a gift from you, a blessing from you.

We thank you this morning for the blessing of fellowship, of worship, of friends and Christian family, but above all, we we we thank you and praise you for the blessing of Jesus and the sacrifice that he made for all of us.

Spirit, I pray that the message today will be yours, that that you will help us to understand in our in our minds and our hearts uh more deeply uh the ninth commandment.

You you shall not bear false witness.

This seems to be a problem uh in our world today.

And uh Lord, just ask that that you will help us to not only understand the message of the ninth commandment, but but that you will help us to be better keepers of it.

Lord, we we love you so much and we thank you for all things.

We praise you.

In Jesus' name we pray together.

Amen.

Exodus chapter 20, verse 16 says, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Exodus 20:16

Well, what exactly does that mean anyway?

I mean, well that's not that's not a phrase that we kind of throw around in our 21st century uh culture today.

You shall not bear false witness.

Um we don't hear that, do we?

So what exactly does that mean?

To many people, this commandment applies to the courtroom where we're sworn to, quote, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under sworn testimony.

The reality, family, is that there are a number of transgressions that fall under the umbrella of bearing false witness, some of which uh we're going to attempt to cover today in our time together.

But the bottom line, ultimately, church, is this regardless of the situation, whether we are under sworn testimony in the Supreme Court or we're gathered with friends in fellowship, family, the bottom line is that we must be committed to telling the truth.

Church, telling the truth is important.

Just ask the man with a drinking problem.

He went out with his friends and had a little too much to drink.

And he came home late that night, and his wife was asleep, and he was doing everything that he possibly could not to wake her up.

And he stumbled into the bathroom and he turned on the light and made a little bit of noise and told himself, shh, be quiet.

And he looked in the mirror and he saw the scrapes and the bruises from the fight that he had gotten into earlier that evening.

And so he thought, what am I going to do about that?

I I I don't want to upset my wife again.

What am I gonna do?

So he reached into the medicine cabinet, he pulled out some band-aids, and he started putting band-aids, you know, their flesh-colored band-aids, putting those on his scrapes and bruises, and when he got done putting all those band-aids on his face, he said to himself, she'll never know.

And so he goes on to bed.

And then when he wakes up the next morning, his wife is right next to him, standing next to the bed, looking right at him, and she says, You were drinking last night, weren't you?

No, no, no, no, no, no, honey.

No, no, no.

I wasn't drinking last night.

She said, Well, if you weren't drinking last night, I'd like to know who put band-aids all over the mirror.

Church lying is wrong.

And it's wrong for several reasons.

First, it's wrong because when we lie, we're speaking Satan's language.

It's a choice we make.

We know I've never met anybody, and I've never known an occasion myself when I have been guilty.

We know when we're lying.

We know when we're not telling the truth.

It is a choice that we make, and when we make the choice to lie rather than to tell the truth, not only are we speaking Satan's language, we are distancing ourselves from God and we're embracing Satan.

Second, lying is wrong because it destroys relationships, it destroys relationships with others.

Family, it's impossible to have a healthy relationship without the truth.

It just can't be done.

Church, our faith, our life, our marriage, our families, our relationships, our society, everything that is important to us must be built upon the truth.

Now, someone might say, well, wow, Devin, that's that's pretty strict, isn't it?

It's pretty strict.

What about telling just a little white lie every once in a while?

Surely, surely there's nothing wrong with that.

Consider the words of Austin O'Malley, who said this.

He said, Those that think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow colorblind.

Family, it can become a very slippery slope when we begin bending the truth.

Third, lying is wrong because lying and Christianity, they can't coexist.

Jesus said in John chapter 14, verse 6, I am the way, I am the truth and the life.

John 14:6

And what we need to remind ourselves of often, if not daily, is that as Christians we are to be like Christ.

That's what the word Christian means.

We are to be like Christ.

And if Christ is truth, church, then how can we in good conscience choose anything but the truth?

Because if we use situational truth depending on the circumstances, are we truly Christians?

Or are we hypocrites?

As Christians, we must never forget, never, ever forget, others are always watching.

Because you wear the name of Jesus, if you share that with people, if people know that you walk with Christ, they're always watching you and they're watching the steps that you take.

They're watching and they're listening to the things that we say and the things that we do.

They're always watching us.

And when we choose to reach for a lie rather than to tell the truth, we push more people away from Jesus than we draw to him.

And as a result, our Christian our Christian witness is diminished.

And people come to the conclusion that being a Christian isn't any different than being anybody else.

There's nothing special about it.

You're no different than the rest of the world.

You just happen to call yourself a Christian.

But there is more to this commandment, church, than the prohibition against lying.

Family, keeping the ninth commandment also means not distorting what others say.

When we misrepresent someone, we also bear false witness.

If you hadn't noticed, the political season is upon us once again.

And it seems to come around faster and faster and faster the older I get.

It's here again.

And candidates have been and will be coming out of the woodwork.

If your phone hasn't blown up with political calls, count yourself truly blessed.

If you've been able to get through 30 minutes of television without somebody begging for your vote, I want to know what channel you're watching.

And here's the thing: inevitably, one politician will make a statement in a particular context, and it's thrown into the spin cycle by three or four different media sources.

And ultimately that statement, or rather parts of it, are replayed from the perspective of the three or four media sources that put it out there.

Depending on the political leaning of the network.

Yes, I hate to bust your bubble.

Networks are politically motivated.

Facts can easily be distorted, or they can be omitted altogether from any side of a statement, depending on the motive of the spin that's placed on it.

Either because they don't have all the facts, or because they omit specific facts.

So what about when we don't have all the facts?

I'm not really interested in what goes on out there.

I'm interested in what goes on in here in the church.

What happens when you and I, when we don't have all the facts?

Family, we can misrepresent others when we tell only one side of the story without all the facts.

Church, we need to know the full context before speaking, because context is everything.

Church, we need to make sure that we have all the pertinent information before we even begin to think about speaking openly about it.

And even then, even then, if we know all the facts and we know all the information, it's probably still a good idea just to not say anything at all.

During his last year in office, Winston Churchill went to an official ceremony.

And there were two gentlemen sitting behind him who began whispering, and one of them said, Man, that's that's Winston Churchill.

And then the other one said, Yeah, yeah, they say that uh he probably needs to turn running the country over to younger and more capable, wiser men.

The first guy said, Yeah, I hear you, I hear you, I hear what you're saying.

They say he's beginning to get a little senile.

And then after the ceremony was over, Churchill turned around and said to the guys, gentlemen, they also say that he's deaf.

Family, most of us can recognize gossip if we really want to.

We pretty much know it when we hear it.

And anytime we fail to correct false information that's being passed around about someone, we can become an indirect party to slander.

Let me tell you something.

People love gossip.

They love it.

It's addictive.

Man, you hear a juicy piece of information, you can't keep that to yourself.

You gotta put a little Tabasco and a little salt on that and serve it up for somebody else, man.

You cannot hang on to that.

That little tidbit of information, ooh, you gotta share that.

You talk about sharing, man.

There's a lot of things we don't want to share.

Most of the time we really don't want to share, but we'll share that in a New York minute.

People love gossip.

Reminds me of a story about four preachers.

They begun meeting on Monday mornings for coffee together.

And during the conversation, one of the preachers said to the other three, he said, You know, our people come to us and pour out their hearts and they confess their sins and their needs to us.

Fellas, we need to do the same.

Confession is good for the heart.

And so they all agreed that they would cast lots, they would, you know, they would toss coin, cast lots, and whoever it landed on, they would go first, and then we go counterclockwise around the table, and everybody would take their turn.

Excuse me.

And so the first guy goes and he says, you know, I I gotta confess, I gotta confess, I I like drinking a little too much wine with my dinner.

And everybody's like, well, you know, it takes a big guy to say that.

You know, appreciate you sharing that with us, especially as a minister, man, sharing that information.

And the second guy said, Yeah, I I hear you.

Um I have an affinity for cigars, and I don't know if cigars are a sin for you, but you know, the body is a temple of the Lord, and and I believe, you know, that that it probably isn't a good thing.

And so I'm gonna have to confess to you guys that I I have an affinity for cigars.

I like I like to smoke cigars.

Well, the third guy, he says, yeah, okay, here's my turn.

I like to play poker for money.

Not a lot, not a lot, you know, but you know, I'm I got a problem with it.

You know, not a big problem, you know.

I'm not going, you know, I'm not losing a house or anything, but you know, I I have a uh I like I like to play poker.

Well, the fourth guy, it comes his turn, and he didn't want to say anything.

All of a sudden, he's mom.

He didn't want to say nothing.

And everybody said, well, hey, buddy, it's your turn.

It's your turn to go.

We did it.

It's time for you to share something.

We've opened up our lives to you.

Why don't you share something with us?

And they kept pressing him, and he said, you know, what's your vice?

Finally he answered and said, Okay, you guys just remember this.

You remember that we cast lots for this and for the order of how this went.

And I'm going last because it is purely providential.

Don't y'all forget that now.

And I said, Okay, okay, okay, what's the big deal?

What's your vice?

Says, guys, with that having been said, my vice is gossip.

And for crying out loud, there's no social media at this table, and my battery just died.

Family gossip is dangerous.

Let me repeat that.

Gossip is dangerous.

Because what we see is a juicy little piece of information that we're going to share with everybody that we can, we don't realize that whether that information is true or not, it causes damage either way, and it's seriously dangerous because of how it can affect the life of that person that we're flippantly throwing around information about.

In all my years of ministry, I've seen the destructive effects of it in people's lives.

It can be devastating.

Whether it's true or not.

Gossip is dangerous and not only dangerous, it's damaging and it's hurtful.

James understood this.

Chapter 3, verses 5 and 6.

Listen to what he says.

It is likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.

Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.

Church, it only takes a spark to burn down a forest.

It only takes a little piece of false information or sensitive information to hurt someone's feelings or to destroy someone's reputation that they've built their life on.

And have spent a lifetime building.

And once it's out there, man, it's it's like toothpaste coming out of the tube.

It ain't going back in there.

It's not going back.

The damage is done.

There's a Yiddish folk tale about a man who told so many lies about the local rabbi that he finally felt guilty about it.

And he went to the rabbi and he said, I am so sorry.

I apologize.

I want to make amends for it.

And so the rabbi said, Well, I'll tell you what you do.

Get two pillows and go to the town square.

And I want you to rip those pillows open and start flailing them around.

Just flail around.

All the feathers, flail all those feathers out into the wind, and then come back and see me.

Well, he did it because he wanted to make amends.

He wanted to be off the hook with his conscience.

So he goes back to the rabbi and he says, Hey, I did it.

He was proud of himself.

I did it.

I did exactly what you said.

I took the pillows.

Man, the feathers flew all over the place.

And the rabbi said, If you truly want to make amends and truly understand.

And learn the damage that you've done and can do.

Go back to the town square and put all the feathers back in the pillows.

Family?

It's serious.

We need to understand that.

So, how can we avoid transgressing the ninth commandment?

What can we do in order to not be guilty of bearing false witness?

Well, first, we need to commit ourselves to telling the truth.

And I know, I know.

I've already talked about that.

But you know, as Christians, we need to be people who are counted on to tell the truth and to keep our promises.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 37, simply let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Matthew 5:37

Notice what he says next.

Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Once we say yes, once we say no, we have met our obligation.

If we take it further than that, then guess what?

We're on dangerous ground.

That's what Jesus is saying.

As believers, our word should count for something.

Whatever happened to the days when a handshake and your word were good enough.

Some of us can remember that.

Maybe it's because we've lost sight of the golden rule in treating others the way that we want to be treated.

Family, I believe that the golden rule would apply to the ninth commandment with regard to bearing false witness, lying, and gossiping.

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

Church, if we wouldn't want anybody doing that to us, then maybe we shouldn't do that to somebody else.

I mean, could it be that simple?

I mean, could it really be that easy?

Well, sure it could be.

But it isn't.

And it won't be unless it starts with us.

However, somebody may be asking, well, what if the truth's going to hurt somebody's feelings?

What if the truth, if we just are truly truthful, what if it's going to hurt somebody?

Are we really expected to tell somebody that their outfit looks really nice when it doesn't?

Is a POW expected to reveal the troop locations of their fellow troops when their enemy asks for it?

Are we really supposed to tell the thief who's robbing our home when they ask us, hey, where's the good stuff?

Are we supposed to tell them?

Surely it's okay to lie in those situations, isn't it?

Families Christians, we're obligated to tell the truth to those whom the truth is due.

And what does that mean?

Church, it means we don't have to tell the thief where the valuables are.

It means we don't have to reveal troop positions.

It means that we don't have to be brutally true, even though we think the yellow outfit looks better than the blue outfit.

You know, it's just as truthful to say, you know what, I think the blue one looks better.

We can do that without hurting somebody's feelings.

Regardless, as Christians, we have to remember that we've been called to speak the truth in love, according to Paul and Ephesians.

Second, we need to make sure that we have all the facts.

And again, I've covered this, but it's of vital importance.

Because we can misrepresent somebody by passing on false or incomplete information.

Third, when we choose to accentuate the positive, things are always better.

And that's a choice that we have.

We can choose to accentuate the positive.

We can choose to expose someone's faults, or we can choose to accentuate someone's strengths.

It is a choice.

We can praise others for what they're doing right, or we can criticize them for what they're doing wrong.

Church, most gossip is inaccurate, negative, or completely untrue.

So if we choose to accentuate the positive, then most gossip will be eliminated.

Church, before we pass on any information about someone else, we need to ask ourselves four questions.

Is it true?

Do you know it's true?

Is it true?

Is it helpful?

Is it necessary?

Is it kind?

Church, we need to be as gracious to others as we want them to be to us.

Not bearing false witness goes hand in hand, hand in hand with a golden rule.

Making the decision to simply treat others the way that we want to be treated will eliminate a lot of the problems we have in relationships with others.

Making the decision to tell the truth, which is a spiritual decision that we all have to make, it begins by grounding ourselves completely in the truth.

The most important truth that you and I can confirm is that Jesus is the Son of God.

Because that's the beginning of our eternal relationship with the Lord.

And it comes from a question.

Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ?

That Jesus is the Messiah, that he is who he claimed to be?

Is Jesus the Son of the living God?

Because until we confirm that truth, we have no hope for life after this one.

And maybe that's a truth that you've never faced.

You've thought about it, you've danced around it, you've avoided it for whatever reason.

But maybe today, maybe right now, the Spirit is encouraging you to make that confirmation true in your life.

Yes, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

And if you're willing to go there and have never gone there before, are you willing to go further?

Are you willing to confess it?

But are you also ready to die to yourself?

Because that's the picture that Paul paints in Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

And he's reminding the Christians at Rome of that.

He says, Don't you remember that all of you who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

And not only that, you were buried with him through baptism into death for the reason of being resurrected with him for a brand new life.

If you've never made that choice before, what's stopping you?

And whatever it is that's stopping you, is it worth eternity?

That's a question you have to answer.

And if you are willing to face that and to go there, because you want to live with Jesus forever when this life is over, and you want to know that you're going to heaven when Jesus returns, you're invited to respond as the Spirit calls you this morning.

Everything is ready for you.

If you're looking for a church home, you're visiting with us today, we, number one, we're glad you're here.

Number two, we want you here at Central.

Because we want you to be a part of our church family.

If you need us to pray with you or pray for you, maybe yesterday was a tough day for deeper reasons.

And you need us to pray with you and pray for you.

Our shepherds will be here at the front, waiting to receive you, to welcome you, to embrace you, to pray with you, and to pray for you.

Whatever your need this morning, please don't leave this time together without that need being met as we stand and sing.