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Recently on NPR they featured a man who started a social experiment, online he solicited people to make confessions about things they hadn’t told anyone.  You can imagine some were fairly dark, some were humorous, but one stood out to me.  The one that stood out was, “People are so happy with me because they say I’ve stopped lying, they don’t know that I’ve just gotten better at it.”  At first you laugh and then you stop to realize how dark that statement is.

We all function at some level of trust, we all trust people to some degree, and we assume that they tell the truth.  This commandment here in Exodus 20:16 sets a fairly low standard in that it says in legal proceedings we must tell the truth.  I’m sure we could all keep that commandment but leave it to Jesus to take the simple and make it complicated.  He took the command of not committing perjury and made it a prohibition against lying.

There should be no degrees of honesty, all our speech should be truth. (Matthew 5:33-35)

• We should not need an oath to validate our speech. (Matthew 5:37)
  • Matthew 23:16-22 – shows how convoluted the “swearing system” of Jesus’ day was
  • We should not need to make oaths because the stakes are too high. (Matthew 5:33)
    • Ecclesiastes 5:5 – Don’t make an oath rather than not fulfill it.
    • Hebrews 6:16 – Mechanics of oaths brings a witness in, do you want to bring God in to witness your falsehood?
    • We can not swear by what we do not own. (Matthew 5:34-36)  Jesus here is quoting from Isaiah 66:1 – Informs us that we have no ownership of anything to make an oath.
  • James 5:12 – James reminds us to not make oaths, but simply let your yes be yes and your no be no.  In other words, don’t swear and live so you don’t have to, be people of integrity.
• How do we lie? or The Art of Lying…
  • It sounds like a simple question, but really it’s complex.  If we know the truth but don’t say it is that a lie?  Psalm 55:21, states that flattery is lying.  Proverbs 6:12-13, tells us that we can lie without even using words.
  • One of the most frequent places we lie is when asked for a reference, after thinking about a lazy employee one employer wrote, “You will be lucky if you can get him to work for you.”
  • We need to not think of all the ways we can not lie, and discern how we can best tell the truth.

How to have truthful, redemptive speech…

• Become familiar with the truth. (Philippians 4:8)
  • Many times people that have been lying there whole life have a hard time coming to tell the truth because in many ways they don’t know it.
  • Have you ever lied to yourself, to the point where you came to believe it?  If so ask the creator to speak truth to your inmost being.  (Psalm 51:6)
• Practice living the truth. (Eph 4:15, 25)
  • Once we love the truth, and then become familiar with it, the only logical next step is to live by it.  When you decide to do this, it makes Christianity a great adventure – especially if you’ve not been totally honest in the past.  For a primer in this watch Liar, Liar with Jim Carey.
  • If you start telling the truth then you’ll find  you want to start living the truth.  You’ll start doing the things that you can tell the truth about.  You won’t want to do things you’d be ashamed to say, you won’t want to go places you shouldn’t, because you know you’ll tell the truth!
• Speak the right words at the right moment. (Proverbs 25:11-12)
  • Sometimes we have the right word, but we say it at the wrong time.
  • We need to be wise in selecting the teachable moments of those around us.

Truth is so valued, it is so liberating, this is why Jesus says, “The truth will set you free – the truth is redeeming!”  If you’ve ever lived in a lie you know how true that is, how lies hold you in bondage, but truth sets you free in your relationships.  Even with God, are you honest to God this morning?

Stealing is stealing and the wrong isn’t relative. (Hebrews 4:15)

• Who we steal from and how we steal?
  • Proverbs 6:11, “Differing weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good.” – God hates a dishonest scale, and probably a dishonest time clock, or dishonest time sheet.
  • Luther talks about our negligence as stealing: “When a manservant or maid-servant does not serve faithfully in the house, and does damage, or allows it to be done when it could be prevented, or otherwise ruins and neglects the goods entrusted to him, from indolence idleness, or malice, to the spite and vexation of master and mistress, and in whatever way this can be done purposely (for I do not speak of what happens from oversight and against one’s will), you can in a year abscond thirty, forty florins, which if another had taken secretly or carried away, he would be hanged with the rope. But here you [while conscious of such a great theft] may even bid defiance and become insolent, and no one dare call you a thief.”
  • Deuteronomy 27:17, “‘Cursed be anyone who moves a neighbor’s boundary marker.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen!’”– It’s wrong to misrepresent what we own and defraud our neighbors, I wonder if this is a relevant principle to the issue of copyright?  Have we moved the markers of what we own over the work of another?
  • Luke 20:25, “He said to them, ‘Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’” – Here we see that we have a divine mandate to pay our tax, and that to Christ it’s not a game to see who saves the most.
  • We’ve relativized stealing if it’s someone we know it’s bad, if it’s the government it’s good, if it’s a big evil corporation it’s good, etc.
  • An online abbreviated version of the Freakanomics study I mentioned is available by clicking here.
• Who we’re ahead of?
  • Are we just doing enough to be better than our neighbor, are we doing better than most of the church?  Are you beating your spouse in righteousness?  Even if you’re ahead on the leader board of righteousness here at BGCC you’re still losing.
  • The point is that we can’t just be better than our neighbor.  Hebrews 4:15 – Jesus the great High Priest is understanding but perfect.  He won in righteousness and now offers his to us.
  • We think it’s a competition of goodness and forget it’s a gift of grace.

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What relevance does a close to 2,000 year old book have for our sexual expression today?  All that’s in this book is “Don’t,” “Don’t commit adultery,” “Don’t have sex before marriage,” and just to be safe, “Don’t have sex at all.”  If that last one isn’t in there, it should be.

Why would God give us such a strong sexual desire and then give so many restrictions?  Consider the words of 1 Corinthians 7:36, “36 If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his fiancé, if his passions are strong, and so it has to be, let him marry as he wishes; it is no sin. Let them marry.”

I want to give you a new perspective on this, God is not restricting this desire he is telling us how to derive as much pleasure from it as possible!  Believe it or not, modern sociology backs this up!  USA Today in the last few years and Rolling Stone magazine in 1998 both revealed studies that discovered the most sexually satisfied people in America where those in monogamous marriages.

Marriage was created to be a blessing and it is this commandment that seeks to protect it.

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We have nuanced murder and allowed exceptions for everything from euthanasia to abortion.  We are plagued with violence, violence is our entertainment, it threatens our streets, it evacuates our schools, it invades our cities, for some of you it resides in your own homes and you live with violence everyday.  Murder entertains and is provided for our viewing pleasure every night on broadcast television.  It’s into this situation that God speaks this word in Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder.”  God says to our society filled with violence, “Live!”

Let people live don’t kill them with…

• Your actions (Exodus 20:13)
  • The most literal interpretation of this command prohibits the actual, physical taking of life.  We can not murder each other.
  • God values human life and we see this clearly throughout scripture.  I think where the value of life is shown most clearly is in the punishment for murder.  God says you can’t put a price tag on life, the only way to pay for it is with a life.  Which is why for centuries the church has generally supported capital punishment.
  • Today we do not have the time to discuss the ramifications of the death penalty, the effectiveness of it, or whether or not it has place in Christian society.  I will however state that the death penalty can be strongly supported from scripture.
    • Genesis 9:6 is generally seen as predating and holding precedent over this command.
    • Numbers 35:31 tells us that humanity has no power to commute the death sentence.
    • In Romans 13 we see that Paul admonishes respect for the government agents who bear the sword.
  • This command does not rule out the death penalty, only murder and other scriptures support it as well.  But, thankfully most of us aren’t murderers, we haven’t been called to make decisions on jury’s regarding the death penalty and so I want to move on to what we are more prone to struggle with.
• Your language (Matthew 5:22)
  • I like the way the NASB translates verse 22 when it translates the word “raca” very literally as “good-for-nothing.”  Literally, “you don’t count for anything,” “you’re empty headed.”  Jesus makes it clear that we can kill each other with our language.
  • I just attended a seminar on some issues of domestic violence in the church; it was very intense, very interesting.  The presenter who’s worked with thousands of victims of domestic violence says that so often what remains hurtful the longest is the violent language these women hear.
  • Our words are so damaging, we turn our words into knives and attack each other.  Jesus speaks to this and says, “Stop killing each other – LIVE!”
• Your carelessness (Matthew 5:23-26)
  • Notice the language here, Jesus says listen, “If you are offering your gift at the altar.”  This is active, in other words it’s happening right now.
    • One thing I hate is when you’re in line, 5:30pm at the grocery store.  Every checker is 4 people deep and everyone wants to get home quickly.  The only reason I’m there is because Jenny called and said, “Can you pick up one thing for me, please?”  So, I’m here – I want to be there and I’m next in line when the guy at the checkout says, “I forgot something,” and darts back into the store…
    • This is what Jesus is talking about, you’ve waited in line to make your offering, you’re at the altar, you’ve got your sacrifice and you remember that you’ve forgot.
    • What does Jesus say to do?  Finish your offering and then be reconciled?  No, stop what you’re doing and be intentional about reconciliation.  Don’t allow anger, hate, language, actions to build to the point where we kill each other because we were too lazy to reconcile.  Reconcile now!
  • Martin Luther’s comments on the proactive nature of this commandment.  “Under this commandment not only he is guilty who does evil to his neighbor, but he also who can do him good, prevent, resist evil, defend and save him, so that no bodily harm or hurt happen to him and yet does not do it. If, therefore, you send away one that is naked when you could clothe him, you have caused him to freeze to death; you see one suffer hunger and do not give him food, you have caused him to starve. So also, if you see any one innocently sentenced to death or in like distress, and do not save him, although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him.”  (For further reading see Matthew 25 and James 2)
  • In other words let your thoughtful way of living be a living way for others!  Do not let others die because of your carelessness.

Grace: provides us a chance at life.

• Life is maybe the top value God has for us.  Jesus proclaims this in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life abundantly!”  So, we too must be about the work of living and life-giving.
  • John 3:16 tell us that God sent his son so that we would have eternal life.
  • It’s grace that provides us the chance at life, and we love grace when it’s for us.  We love to be the recipients of grace, but what about the dispensers?  What about grace when it’s for others?  What about when it’s for truly depraved people?
• What about murderers?
  • Many in this church would say that those who murder, they deserve the death penalty.  There are good scriptural grounds to justify it.
  • We see in Egypt it’s an eye for an eye (Mat 5:38), but in the Promised Land we turn the other cheek.  It’s not that there isn’t a price for our sin, it just means you don’t have to pay it.
  • I find it so ironic that this command to not kill, was chiseled by the same hands that took a man’s life in Egypt.  Moses the murderer becomes Moses the life-giver.
  • What I about the persecutors like Paul?  (Acts 7:54 -8:1)  Paul gets a second chance at life and uses it to write almost half of the New Testament.
• This text is used so often to rail against abortion.  I know that God is intimately involved in our creation (Psalm 139:13) and believe that abortion is a sin.  But, God’s grace is big enough to cover this sin.
  • Sometimes those who call themselves Christians speak so angrily against abortion providers and women who receive them.  I hear words like murderers, immoral, selfish, worthless, hate.  All these are summed up in that Aramaic word raca and I wonder, if there are not two parties guilty of murder.
  • And while Paul deserved the death penalty and Moses deserved the death penalty and some women might – I’m so glad that there’s grace.  Because you can rise from that situation into a place of prominent service with Jesus Christ.

I think at the end of the day we need to realize we all have violated this command (Luke 24:7).  Jesus was handed over to us sinners and we killed him.  Romans 6:23 reminds us that the wages of all sin is death.  We all deserve the death penalty, we all deserve punishment.  All of us sinners, along with Moses and Paul, and anyone else whose ever taken a life, we as sinners crucified the Lord of Life.  And things would look pretty bad for us, if it stopped at Romans 6:23, but it goes on in a great crescendo to Romans 8:1 which states, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!”  Amen.