I would like to start with some questions that require an honest answer. The first question is how many of you have told a lie in the last five years? I’m not talking about the white lies when your wife asks if her jeans make her butt look big. I’m talking about honest lies from God. How many in the last year have told a lie? How many in the last month? How many in the last week? This day? Some of you are accepting the Fifth Amendment. The second question is a bit easier. How many of you would say that you are an honest person? Interesting. The same people who just admitted that they are liars are now basically saying that they are honest people. How can it be? Psychologists have an answer. They say that the reason we can have two conflicting ideas about ourselves in our brain is because we have the power to rationalize things. We don’t really see some of the actions although they could be wrong. Technically, we don’t see them as lies, so it doesn’t affect our self-esteem or our idea of honesty. For example, if you were filling out a job application or writing a resume and you’re updating your LinkedIn profile and you added a degree or skills or jobs that you didn’t have, a lot of people wouldn’t consider that a lie because it’s just beautifying and everyone does, by which is not really a lie. Seeing as it’s tax season, everyone is filing their taxes. Technically, you’re supposed to put in your income from all sources, including cash tips or the business you did on the side and got money under the table. Technically speaking, you have to add it to your income tax because it’s taxable. But I suspect some people don’t do that because everyone leaves things out. Anyway, Uncle Sam doesn’t need any more of my money. That’s where we get into the idea that when we falsify the truth a little bit, we’re not technically lying because everyone else is. The problem with that is that it creates a culture that is steeped in dishonesty and lies. As we know, the more lies there are in society, the more difficult it is to navigate through the culture to determine what really is the truth. A perfect example is the ongoing arena of political candidates. No matter who you’re voting for, basically all candidates lie to some degree. The challenge we have as Americans is not who tells the truth but who tells the fewest lies. It becomes very difficult to navigate in society. We’re able to hold these seemingly contradictory ideas in our heads that we’re basically honest people, but there are times when you can twist the truth a little bit. I think that’s the attitude that Jesus is trying to address today in Matthew 5. Again, we’re going through the series called Learning to Live Everyday Life Like Jesus. It is a series of sermons based on the Sermon on the Mount. Today we are going to deal with the subject of oaths and lies, and forged oaths. I would like someone to stand up and read the NIV passage from Matthew 5:33-37. (Writing read here.)
I’m sure many of you read that passage and, on a surface level, it doesn’t seem to make much sense what’s going on there. That’s why it’s helpful to give you a bit of background information as we go along. The passage begins with Jesus saying, “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have sworn to the Lord.'” I suspect most of us know what an oath is, but in case you don’t, I’ll put in the dictionary definition. An oath is a solemn appeal to a deity or some revered person or thing to witness a determination to tell the truth, to keep a promise, etc. have him repeat: “I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God.” That’s an oath we’re thinking about. It is very similar to what Jesus is referring to here. An oath in the past and even today seems to add a lot of weight to his words because, technically speaking, we know that if we break the oath we have made to God, we will at the very least be charged with perjury in the courtroom. . At best, we will experience the wrath of God. Oaths are very serious things. In the first century, oaths often extended to culture and the marketplace. People took oaths when they transacted. They took them when they traded property, sold animals or cattle and that sort of thing. So oaths were very common. They find their biblical basis in the Old Testament. There are many passages that speak of that. But one particular passage comes out of the book of Leviticus 19:12 where it says “Do not swear falsely by my name and thus you will profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.” As a side note, when he talks about profaning the Lord’s name, he’s not necessarily talking about what we consider blasphemy, although it’s obviously not good to use the Lord’s name in vain. But what he’s talking about here is swearing. Oaths that we would take in which we would invoke the name of God as a witness that we are about to tell the truth. When these people heard the words of Jesus where he said, “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people a long time ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have sworn to the Lord,'” most of the people people would say nod their heads. I understand this. Whatever oath I take when I call on the name of the Lord, I keep it. I keep that particular commandment. But as we talked about in the last few weeks, we also know that the Pharisees and the teachers of the laws would look for loopholes in the law that would allow them to keep the law but also allow them to get what they wanted. The attitude developed if I cannot speak falsely in a particular situation because I have invoked the name of God, then perhaps I should try a different strategy. Maybe you shouldn’t take an oath in God’s name, but possibly substitute something else for that name. So they got into the habit of substituting words that seemed to be related to God but were not the same as swearing directly to God. They would swear by heaven or they would swear by earth or they would swear by the city of Jerusalem. Later we would see that they would swear by the temple or the gold in the temple or the altar in the temple. It is similar to how we would say I swear on a stack of Bibles. In a sense, it is swearing on something sacred. It is giving credibility to words, but it is not the same as swearing by God. That way, if you were to break the oath, you wouldn’t have to deal with God’s wrath. This is a loophole that people developed.
Jesus, as he does, often sees through those kinds of loopholes. That is why he goes on to say “But I tell you not to take an oath at all: either by heaven, because it is the throne of God; or by the earth, because it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the Great King. And don’t swear by your head, because you can’t make a single hair black or white.” What Jesus is doing here is shooting holes in his loophole and his faulty logic suggests that just because you say, I swear to heaven you won’t be in trouble if you break that particular vow or that promise. You are basically doing the same thing as swearing to God because, after all, heaven is where the throne of God is located. Or when you swear to the earth, it’s like swearing to God because the earth is God’s footstool. Or when you swear to the city of Jerusalem, it is a very holy place because it is the city of the great king probably referring to King David or the coming Messiah. Or you shouldn’t even swear on the head of a human being because God made the head and made every hair on his head. So when you swear by a head or a lock of hair, it is the same as swearing by God. In fact, Jesus would probably say that if someone were to swear something else on creation, like they swear on a pile of rocks, it would be the same as swearing by God because God’s fingerprint is on everything in creation. What Jesus is suggesting is that an oath is an oath. An oath is an oath to God no matter what you swear. On a stack of bibles, heaven, earth, fruit. No matter what it is, it would be basically the same thing because all of these things are connected to God because they were all made by God. So if you break that oath, you’re going to have to deal with the wrath of God.
At this point in the story, people are probably getting a little nervous or a little annoyed at Jesus showing up to close their loopholes. They may even be thinking that if I can’t swear anything, then what should I do? Jesus seems to anticipate his question, going on to say: “Just let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” He’s basically telling you to be the kind of person you can trust to be honest. It is not necessary to swear under oath. When you think about it, the only reason we have oaths is because the general consensus is that most people are dishonest. People cannot be trusted. That is the only reason we take oaths. Because we can’t be trusted. So you need some kind of commitment to some form of deity or else there is a chance that the person is lying. Supposedly, an oath will make them think twice about lying, not only because they can be charged with perjury, but because they would have to bear the wrath of God. Most importantly, what Jesus is trying to convey is that the people of the kingdom are honest. They are basically honest and good people. Very good and honest people. This goes back to the idea of the whole context of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus came proclaiming that the kingdom of God is here. The kingdom of God is now. It is not a way down in the future. It’s not something you’re going to experience in the future. The reality of the kingdom is happening. When Jesus came on the scene and said, “I cast out demons by the finger of God,” that means the kingdom of God has come. It arrived 2,000 years ago. So the kingdom of God is coming. What he suggests is that kingdom people need to develop a kingdom mindset. That means they don’t act religious and do religious things to give the appearance of being good people. They are good people by nature because they are citizens of the kingdom. Jesus, in his words, is anticipating a kingdom that is not characterized by dishonesty but is characterized entirely by honesty, which means you don’t have to take an oath on a stack of Bibles. It means you don’t have to take an oath on anything. The reality is…