INTRO: Mr. Myrick had to go to Chicago on business and persuaded his brother to take care of his cat during his absence. Though he hated cats, the brother agreed. Upon his return, Mr. Myrick called from the airport to check on the cat.
"Your cat died," the brother reported, then hung up. Myrick was inconsolable. His grief was magnified by his brother’s insensitivity, so he called again to express his pain.
"There was no need for you to be so blunt," he said. "What was I supposed to say?" asked the perplexed brother. "You could have broken news gradually," explained Myrick. "You could have said, ’The cat was playing on the roof.’ Then, later in the conversation, you could have said, ’He fell off.’ Then you could have said, ’He broke his leg.’ Then when I came to pick him up, you could have said, ’I’m so sorry. Your cat passed away during the night.’ You’ve got to learn to be more tactful."
"By the way, how’s Mom?" After a long pause, the brother replied, "She’s playing on the roof."
Some thoughts about lying:
1. A USA Today poll found that only 56% of Americans teach honesty to their children. And a Louis Harris poll turned up the distressing fact that 65% of high school students would cheat on an important exam. Recently a noted physician appeared on a network news and talk show and proclaimed, "Lying is an important part of social life, and children who are unable to do it are children who may have developmental problems."
2. Intentional deceit is another plague riddling our society. One-third of all adults (32%) claim that "the way things are these days, lying is sometimes necessary." We live in a world where truthfulness and lies are no longer able to be distinguished. We live in a world where students make a great effort to cheat. We live in a world that thinks it is necessary to lie to get by.
-After doing 3.8 million background checks, Automatic Data Processing, Inc. announced that 52% of job applicants had lied on their resumes.
3. The book "The Day America Told the Truth" says that 91% of those surveyed lie routinely about matters they consider trivial, and 36% lie about important matters, 86% lie regularly to parents, 75% to friends, 74% to siblings and 69% to spouses.
-A national survey by Rutgers’ Management Education Center of 4,500 high school students found that 75% of them engage in serious cheating.
-Perhaps most disturbing, many of them don’t see anything wrong with cheating. Some 50% of those responding to the survey said they don’t think copying questions and answers from a test is even cheating.
4. It’s interesting, telling the truth rather than lying is encouraged by every major religion. : Taoism says: Do not assert with your mouth what your heart denies.
: Buddhism says: Lying is the origin of all evils; it leads to rebirth in the miserable planes of existence, to breach of the pure precepts, and to corruption of the body.
: Hinduism says: All things are determined by speech; speech is the root, and from speech they proceed. Therefore he who is dishonest with respect to speech is dishonest in everything.
: Islam says: There are three characteristics of a hypocrite: when he speaks, he lies; when he makes a promise, he acts treacherously; and when he is trusted, he betrays.
: Confucius says: I do not see what use a man be put to, whose word cannot be trusted. 5. What others have said.
: Nietzsche said: What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on, I can no longer believe you.
: James Dobson: If you tell me the truth all of the time I can believe you all of the time, if you tell me the truth part of the time, I can’t believe you any of the time.
TITLE: Being a Person of Your Word
TEXT: Proverbs 6:16, 17b
: It’s strange to some of us to read scripture that indicates that God hates something, but he does.
-What does this mean, "six things the Lord hates" but yet there are "seven that are detestable to him"?
-You can plainly count the number of things listed and find seven, so why does it even mention there are six things the Lord hates?
1. First of all, the number seven that we see in the text and throughout the Bible does not indicate perfection, but completeness.
-God has a complete hatred of these things, they are things that reveal the complete depravity of humans, and the total lack of godliness.
2. It seems strange to see the number six listed followed by the number seven in the same sentence.
-It was a literary technique that was used by ancient Hebrew writers.
: What basically is said: The list is complete of things God hates—all sin. But here is only a small representative of those things. In fact, here are six of them.
-Today we will just be focusing on lying. I. Lying will hurt our relationships.
A. First and foremost – it will hurt our relationship with God.
1. Somehow in our minds we think lying is a misdemeanor of a sin, that it’s no big deal. -Those who believe it’s alright to tell little white lies soon go colorblind.
2. The Lord hates lying, it rates right up there and he will punish them.
: Psalm 63:11 c, "The mouths of liars will be silenced."
: Proverbs 19:5, "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free."
: Proverbs 19:9, "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will perish."
: Revelation 21:8c, "The idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."
3. You may think this is rather severe, but we need to understand truth is very important. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
-When you build anything on a lie it will always come crashing down. It seems to me that lying is one of the oldest sins and it is the weapon of choice for Satan. After all Satan is known as the father of lies.
4. Lying is not in the nature of our Heavenly Father, rather it is in the nature of the devil. -Children will take on the traits of their parents.
5. When the Antichrist comes to power, lying, deceit, deception will be honored rather that the truth. The kingdom of God is opposite or the reverse of the kingdom of the devil.
-So when I lie I’m really advancing the kingdom of darkness, rather than being a witness for Christ. TS: Lying will not only hurt our relationship with God but with others.
B. It hurts others. The Bible is full of stories of people who allowed lying to be a part of their lives and it brought a lot of destruction.
1. King Saul lied to the prophet Samuel – that he had carried out the Lord’s instructions, when he clearly didn’t. Saul chose to lie to his friend Samuel and the outcome was that this led to the decay of their relationship.
2. The story of Joseph and his brothers – the brothers were jealous of Joseph and all the attention he was getting from their father. So one day they sold him as a slave. They went back and told their father a lie to cover their tracks, thus straining their relationship for many years.
3. When you think about Joseph’s father Jacob you feel bad for this man whose kids deceived him.
-What comes around goes around. The pain and suffering Esau felt when he was robbed of his father’s blessing has now come full cycle. Now Jacob is feeling the pain because of the deception of his own family.
TS: Lying will not only hurt our relationships.
II. Lying will hurt the church.
A. You might ask how. One of the things the church stands for is truth. When the church stops telling the truth society is in trouble.
1. What is the church? We, Christians, are the church.
-We are representatives of God to a dying world. We are witnesses of what God has done in our lives. As we witness God move in our lives, we witness to others about God and what he’s like. (And we do that by our speech and our actions.)
2. So if we as representatives lie, we are saying something to the world. We are giving a mixed message.
-We are being a poor representative, a poor witness, that nobody will take seriously.
B. Sadly, too often our attitude is like a little boy who was asked what a lie was and replied, "A lie is an abomination to the Lord, but a very present help in times of trouble."
1. Folks, we need to understand something, we will either advance the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness.
2. Lying disrupts the unity by creating conflicts and destroys trust. It tears down relationships and leads to open warfare in the church.
Point: Lying destroys the church.
TS: Lying will not only hurt our relationships and hurt the church, but it will also hurt the individual.
III. Lying will hurt the individual.
A. If we do not love the truth – we will become prey to lies ourselves and perish as a consequence. (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11)
1. Hosea tells us (10:13) Israel ate the fruit of lies and as a result she was destroyed.
2. The problem with lying is that it diminishes our respect for the truth and reduces our sensitivity to the ugliness of lies.
-Lying becomes habitual, even to the point that a person doesn’t even know he is lying.
B. Imagine how life would change is we lived in a world of lies.
1. An author named Sissela Bok wrote a book called "Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life." She thought through this question:
In such a world, you could never trust anything you were told or anything you read. You would have to find out everything for yourself, first hand. You would have to invest enormous amounts of your time to find out the simplest matters. In fact, you probably couldn’t even find out the simplest matters. In a world without trust, you could never acquire the education you need to find out anything for yourself, since such an education depends upon your taking the word of what you read in your lesson books. A moment’s reflection of this sort, makes it crystal clear that you benefit enormously by living in a world in which a great deal of trust exists – a world in which the practice of truth-telling is widespread. All the important things you want to do in life are made possible by widespread trust.
In Conclusion
Lying destroys. A little white lie is still lying. Telling somebody you’re going to be somewhere or do something and a better opportunity comes along and you space them off, that’s lying.
