Matthew 5:33-37
WYSIWIG
Manuscript
I remember when I was a little kid at school. Who remembers when they were at school? Now when you were talking with the other kids and you said something to them and you really needed to convince them that you meant it, or you promised to do something, and you really had to convince the other kids that you were really going to keep your promise, did you say something special so the other kids would know you were telling the truth? When I was a kid, we used to say, “cross my heart, hope to die, if I tell a lie,” and if you were really serious you’d add to that, “stick a needle in my eye.” But there was a way out of it. Provided you had your fingers crossed when you were talking, then that would mean your oath didn’t count and you could tell a lie without having to die or get a needle stuck in your eye. Of course, the other kids might see you crossing your fingers, so you’d cross them behind your back, or under the table or somewhere they couldn’t be seen. The whole thing was that even for us kids, there were two standards of truth. The normal one, which was pretty low, and then if you said something after saying this “cross my heart” business, then you really had to tell the truth. And the implication is that if you didn’t say “cross my heart” and so on, then it didn’t really matter if you told a lie - or well, didn’t tell a bad lie anyway, maybe just a little white lie, then it was okay.
And it’s not just kids who do that. We adults do it too. We don’t say “cross my heart” and so on, but we say other things like “honest to God.” We know that if someone says “honest to God,” they must really be telling the truth. And it somehow means that if you don’t say “honest to God,” well perhaps you don’t have to quite as truthful. A little exageration, a little white lie, that’s okay. But you only have to tell the whole truth if you say “honest to God” or something like that.
It’s even legalised. If you are in court giving evidence, they make you swear on the Bible, as though swearing on the Bible is a truth machine and will make you tell the truth more than if you didn’t swear on the Bible. And if you do witness in court and lie, then that’s called perjury and that’s much worse than lying outside of court. You can go to jail for perjory. You can say a lie out of court in normal everyday life and nothing will happen to you, but the same lie in court in the witness box - and it’s jail for you.
And it’s not just in courts, but it can apply to written statements too. Sometimes we are required to make affidavits, or statutary delcarations, and for some reason, if what I have written is in an affidavit or a stat dec, then it is going to be more truthful than if I just write it on a normal bit of paper. I remember once years ago, a former employer of mine had gone bankrupt and was unable to give me a group certificate for my tax (what payment summaries used to be called), and I was advised that I needed to make a statutary declaration about my income and the tax withheld because the employer no longer existed and couldn’t give me a group certificate. Somehow that was more believable than if I just wrote it on an ordinary piece of paper.
Speaking of tax… tax time is approaching and that’s always a good opportunity to have a good think about the truth. How much of that deduction I claimed on my tax return was really work related??? But then again – even if it’s not a completely legit deduction it sort of is, if you look at it a certain way, and after all, even if it’s not strictly speaking legit, it’s only the tax office anyway - isn’t that every Australian’s duty, to pay as little tax as possible?
After all our taxes support politicians, and we all know they don’t always tell the truth. Our Prime Minister is now famous for telling us before the election that there would be no carbon tax, but now the situation has changed, she feels she is entitled to go back on her word. It’s not just the PM. Before the last election the Leader of the Opposition made this now famous statement: "I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. Which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks." In other words, he admitted that he only tells the truth when it’s carefully scripted. And so we’ve become used to politicians lying or not keeping their promises. But in America, their politicians don’t lie, they only misspeak - a word Hilary Clinton made popular when she refused to admit she had lied about something, she had only misspoken.
Lies. White lies. Little white lies. Misspeaking. Oaths. Promises. Broken promises. Reliability and commitment. These are important topics, and today we will look at them.
Just to refresh where we are in Matthew. Remember we are in the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most challenging pieces of Scripture. Remember how in Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and that our light ought to shine before others so they see our good works. And when they see our good works and know we are Christians, they glorify our Father in Heaven. And then Jesus goes on to tell us what it means to be salt and light, and how we ought to live. And as we’ve been finding out, He’s given us a pretty high standard to live up to.
Then remember in verse 17 Jesus told us that He didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, and we wondered what that meant. And verse 20 helped us understand what He meant when Jesus told us that our righteousness needs to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees if we want to enter the Kingdom fo Heaven. How can our righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees - the most religious people of that day?
Well, firstly, Jesus is our righteousness, if we trust and follow Him. Then He fulfils the righteousness that we can’t fulfil ourselves, and that is great news. And if you are here today and you don’t know that Great News, that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that if you turn away from your sins and your former life and turn to Jesus Christ and become His follower, God will forgive your sins and you can have eternal life. If you don’t know that fantastic news, then please come and talk to me afterwards and we can talk about it more. And it’s great news that Jesus has forgiven us if we trust in Him
But that doesn’t get us off the hook from how we ought to live, because Jesus still expects us to follow Him and work, with His help, at becoming more like Him and living up to the standards that He gives us in the Sermon on the Mount. And when He told us that our righteousness needs to exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, we need to remember that Jesus was talking about real righteousness. You see, the Scribes and Pharisees were really religious people, and wanted everyone else to know that. They concentrated on the outward form of religion, while inside, many of them were full of evil. And we can be the same, but Jesus urges us to holy not just on the outside where everyone can see, but on the inside too, with the law of Christ written on our hearts. And we’ve been looking at what Jesus has to say about various topics as we’ve travelled through the Sermon on the Mount.
Remember then in verse 21 and onwards we looked at murder. Commandment number 6 says “You shall not murder” (Exod 20:13). But Jesus said – it’s not just what you do, it’s what you think. Jesus said in verse 22: “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with His brother will be liable to judgement.” Jesus fulfilled the law on murder by making it not only apply to our actions, but also to our thoughts. Not only must we not murder, we mustn’t even get angry with our brother or sister, or call them things like fool or idiot. And if we know our brother or sister has something against us, whether it’s our fault or theirs, we need to go and sort it out.
And then we looked at verse 27 about adultery. Commandment number 7 says, “You shall not commit adultery.” (Exod 20:14). But Jesus tells us it’s not just what you do, but also what what you think - the real you. And if you even just think of adultery, if you lust, flirt, our tempt someone to lust after you, then you’ve committed adultery in your heart. And he extends that to divorce too, which we looked at last week
Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law. He goes to the thoughts and intents and the deepest recesses of who we really are, and He calls us to purity of mind, as well as action. And now He does the same with oaths and lying. In verse 33 (page 810) it says:
Matthew 533 “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.’
Now where does it say that of old? Well, in a few places it talks about making oaths to the Lord, or in the Lord’s name, for example:
Leviticus 1912 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
In this verse the Israelites were told not to swear falsely. Now to swear falsely meant that you made an oath, a promise in God’s name, and then you didn’t keep it. That’s what a false oath is. And again in Numbers 30:1-2 it says:
Numbers 30 Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes of the people of Israel, saying, “This is what the LORD has commanded. 2 If a man vows a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
And so we see in the Old Testament that God told us that if we make a vow then we must keep it. Now by the time of Jesus, over 1000 years later, people looked at these laws and found loopholes. Yep, they said, the Law tells us that when we swear by God’s name then we must keep our vows. But then they thought that meant that if you didn’t swear by God’s name, well then, the standard of truth wasn’t quite so high. So what they did was that instead of swearing by God’s name, they’d swear by other things that weren’t quite as important as God. So they thought the standard of truth required wasn’t quite so high. They’d swear by heaven, rather than by God, and thought that meant they could get away with not keeping their promise. That’s why Jesus says in verse 34:
Matthew 5 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God.
Many of the people back then thought they could get off the hook from having to tell the complete truth by taking an oath by heaven rather than by God. But Jesus says, well you want to swear by heaven, well heaven is God’s throne, so it’s as good as swearing by God’s name. Similarly, some took oaths by the earth, or Jeruslalem, which is why Jesus continues verse 35 and tell us not to take an oath
Matthew 535 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
That is, many of the people back then thought they could get away with making an oath to the earth or to Jerusalem because they weren’t as important as God’s name, and Jesus says, okay, so you want to swear by the earth, well, that’s God’s footstool. And as for Jerusalem, that’s the city of the great king. And some people swore by their own head. And Jesus says about them:
Matthew 536 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
What a ridiculous thing to do, to swear by your head; we can’t even change the colour of our hair. Yes, yes, we can dye our hair, but that doesn’t change the natural colour of our hair. People in Jesus’ day abused oaths. God had told them back in Leviticus and Numbers to keep the oaths that they made by His name. And the people took that to mean that they only had to keep the oaths made in God’s name. Any other oaths or promises, sworn by other things besides God, or not sworn by anything at all, well, they thought, the standard of truth wasn’t just quite so high. A little white lie here and there… or make a promise… but you don’t really have to keep it. And Jesus says, no! That’s not acceptable. What’s the solution? Well Jesus is very blunt. He says at the begning of verse 34:
Matthew 5 34 “But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all.”
Why? In verse 37 Jesus says:
Matthew 537 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
or as some versions put it Let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no.”
In other words, don’t use oaths. Don’t swear by anything, because you shouldn’t need to. Let all your “yeses” be “yes” and your “nos” be “no.” Tell the truth all the time. And in fact Jesus wasn’t really adding anything to the law. We already looked at Lev 19:12:
Leviticus 1912 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
But the verse before it says:
Leviticus 1911 “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.
It doesn’t say only tell the truth when you are under oath, but tell the truth all the time. You shall not lie to one another.
Well what does that mean for us here today? Back then in Jesus’ time people swore by Jerusalem and the earth and heaven and their heads and probably other things too. We don’t tend to do that. We make different sorts of oaths. And we are exactly the same as them in that we assign an order of priority to when we tell the truth. There are some occasions we reckon we must tell the truth, and others when it’s not so important. If we are in court – better tell the truth. If we sign a stat dec – better tell the truth. If we put something in writing – better tell the truth. But if it’s not in writing, or we haven’t said “honest to God” or something like that, or no-one would really know… well then…. truth can be bent, can’t it? NO! It can’t. Jesus says, “let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’.
As Christians we must be people of the truth, people’s whose word can be counted on, relied on all the time. That applies when we fill out our tax return. When we fill in our time sheets at work. When we tell the wife where we were when we were late home. When we tell our kids stuff. We must be people of the truth. And we must also be careful not to exagerrate or embellish the truth, or even engage in gossip. Let us be people who are truthful, not spreading gossip.
And this passage in Matthew is not just about being truthful with facts, but also about keeping our promises. In fact, the oaths that are mentioned in our passage, while they do cover truth-telling and lying, they mainly refer to keeping one’s word. If you say you will do something – then do it. If you say that you will spend next Saturday with the kids, then do it. If you say that you will take your wife out on a date, then do it. If you tell your boss you will do something, then do it. And here’s one quite pertinent now: when you fill in those availablity forms for service in the church, please keep your word. Let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no.” If you can’t make it when you’re rostered on, don’t just not turn up. Take responsibility, and be committed to your commitment, even if it’s inconvenient. Now if you really can’t do it because of some extenuating circumstance, and we do realise that happens from time to time, then find someone else to do it or talk to the co-ordinator of that ministry area before you pull out. That’s keeping your word. That’s your “yes” being “yes” and your “no” being “no.” In today’s society we don’t like commitments. We often have a salesperson from yet another electricity company knocking on our door and telling me to break my contract with my current provider and go over to them. “Break my contract”? The idea of a contract today has become worthless. Let our yes be yes and our no be no. If we say we are going to do something, then do it.
Of course, that means we should think carefully before making a commitment to do something. Really think if you can do it, and if you think there might be reasons why you might not be able to do what you say, be upfront about it. I’ve learnt from the promise to do things with the kids on Saturdays. Now my promise goes something like: “Kids, we can do stuff together on Saturday, if I’ve finished my sermon preparation!”
I hope that is clear, but some of you might just have one more question, and that relates to when the government or others require us to take oaths. For instance, if we appear in court, we are asked to swear on the Bible. From time to time we are required to fill in stat decs or make affidavits. Should we object and say “no, I’m a Christian, I don’t take oaths and you can count on my word, I don’t need it to be a stat dec or to swear on the Bible for my word to be true.” Well, my personal take on that is, that we have not chosen ourselves to swear on the Bible in court, or to fill in a stat dec. That is a requirement that others put on us, and so I personally don’t think there’s a problem with swearing on the Bible in court or filling in a stat dec, because it’s not us who is making that requirement. Provided we have the same attitude that what I say in court after I’ve sworn on the Bible, and what I write in a stat dec, is no more truthful that anything else I say or write. Because whenever I speak, wherever it is, whatever promise I make, my “yes” is “yes” and my “no” is “no,” and I can’t make it any more truthful than that.
