Let Your 'Yes' Be 'Yes'

SERMON: 2007-05-24--sm0723--let-your-yes-be-yes SOURCE DURATION: 00:27:21.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 7 contains the final theological conclusion of the sermon ('...for the glory of God'). Candidates 8 through 15 transition into repetitive acclamatory praise ('Praise the Lord'), which functions as a musical response or interlude, marking the end of the spoken sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:25:10.640-00:27:20.560 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I don't know if kids today still do this, but when I was a youngster and somebody wanted to make a promise they had no intention of keeping, or if they wanted to tell a whopper of a lie, they would cross their fingers behind their back. Any of you remember that? And then when they had you believing their promise or buying into their lie, then they would triumphantly pull their arm from behind their back, hold up their crossed fingers and go, "Aha, I had my fingers crossed. It doesn't really count." And that then was, in those days, a socially acceptable way of not having to keep your promise. As I said, I don't know if kids today still do this, but I see enough of our generation nodding our heads that we know how it happened back then. Well, I find it very interesting that the Pharisees here and the teachers of the law had their own way of keeping their fingers crossed behind their back while they were trying to lie their way through life. And they did it, interestingly enough, by a misinterpretation and a misapplication of the Old Testament teaching as it relates to the taking of oaths. And that's what Jesus talks about in this passage when he says, "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.'" Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord. Now, interestingly enough, that verse is not found in the Old Testament in that way. The closest you can come to it is to make a compilation of two verses, Deuteronomy 6 13, "Fear the Lord your God, serve him only, and take your oaths in his name." And Leviticus 19 12, "Do not swear falsely by my name, and so profane the name of your God, I am the Lord." So very likely that verse that Jesus is quoting is part of the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees to the people of Israel, "Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord." Now an oath, as you may well know, is a solemn appeal to God that you are speaking the truth. It rests under the realization that God is witness to all our interactions, all our words. Nothing is hidden from him. And when you take an oath, you're appealing to God to judge whether or not you are speaking the truth and you're giving him the right to judge you if you are not. That's why even today, when you go to court, you are asked to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now the Pharisees added their own particular twist to this business of taking oath. As a matter of fact, they did three things. First of all, they used oaths frivolously. They lived in a culture where lying was very common, and just like a bunch of little kids who don't believe each other, they would frivolously swear and take an oath, "I swear that I'm telling the truth. Now I swear by my grandmother's grave, I swear by the gold in the temple, I am really telling the truth." They swore frivolously as opposed to the biblical concept of using oaths only under the most extreme and severe of circumstances. So they cheapened the concept of oath, not only that, but much as they believed in observing the letter of the law, they did have a conviction that oaths to the Lord had to be kept. As a matter of fact, they made a very big deal out of that, which is why the verse that Jesus called says, "Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord." They were extremely, extremely determined that if you were going to swear an oath to the Lord, you had to keep it. And so now you're saying, "Well, you know, that's pretty good. What's the problem with the scribes and the Pharisees?" Well, never underestimate the ingenuity of a fallen human heart. And they were clever enough to figure a way that they could tell a lie by crossing their fingers, so to speak, behind their back and yet not be in violation of this oath-making business. And you know how they did it. They did it by distinguishing between categories of oaths. That is to say, some oaths were binding, but other oaths were not binding. For example, if you swore by the temple, you didn't have to keep your promise. But if you swore by the gold of the temple, then you did. Or if you swore by the altar, you didn't have to keep your promise. But if you swore by the gift on the altar, you had to keep your promise. And so you can see the clever ingenuity. If I cross my fingers behind my back, then I can make any promise that I want to make, and I don't have to keep it because it doesn't really count. Well, you can imagine Jesus was not too terribly impressed. In fact, in Matthew 23, he puts it this way, he says, "Woe to you blind guides. You say if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You also say if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath." Pretty ingenious. But obviously, a fallen human attempt at being able to have your cake and eat it too. You want to be able to lie and not have your lie count against you. And so as always, what Jesus does in this passage is he takes us back to God's original intent in giving us those commandments in the first place. You have heard that it was said to the people of old, "Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths that you have made to the Lord. What I tell you, I tell you do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is God's throne, or by the earth, for it is His footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Really let your yes be yes and your no, no, anything beyond this comes from evil." Now note, in that passage, there is a two-fold argument that Jesus develops that we need to understand, two-fold critique of why what the Pharisees are doing is so terribly wrong. First of all, He says, "Your distinctions are false. Your distinctions are false." He says, "Heaven is God's throne, the earth is His footstool, Jerusalem is the city of the great King." You cannot make a separation between God and the things of God. You can't make a separation between the temple and the gold in the temple. You can't make a separation between the altar and the gift in the altar. That is a human device to try to cheat and to lie your way through life. And that's why, again, in Matthew 23, Jesus goes on to put it this way, "You blind fools, which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You blind men, which is greater? The gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? For he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it." You cannot make this distinction between this oath you've got to keep and this oath doesn't really matter because you can't make that kind of separation, says Jesus. That's the first argument that he develops in these verses that we have read together. And then a second one is this, that oaths, in order to be valid, had to be in the name of God only. One of the ways in which the Pharisees got around swearing oaths and breaking them was to swear by created things, you know, like in the story of the little pigs by the hair of my chinny chin chin, by the temple, by the gold of my temple, by my hair, by my grandmother, by my grandfather. And Jesus says you can't do that because do not swear by your head for you cannot even make one hair white or black. And the whole point then that Jesus is developing here is that we ought not to be looking for ways to be able to falsify truth and still feel good about ourselves. What God is looking for is an integrity of character that makes our word true and faithful. That's why he concludes this passage then with the words, "Let your yes be yes and your no, no." Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. God doesn't want us devising clever ways of crossing our fingers behind our back to see what it is that we can get away with. No, God is looking for speech that flows from a heart of integrity so that our promises, our promises we make and we keep, our yes means yes and our no means no. Any attempt beyond that to try to confuse other people into obliterate the truth, Jesus says does not come from the father but it comes from the evil one. That's why Psalm 15 with which we begin our service today says, "Lord who may dwell in your sanctuary, who may live in your holy hill, he whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and keeps his oath even when it hurts, he who does these things will never be shaken." So it's a severe criticism of the way the Pharisees and the scribes have not only been conducting themselves but have also been teaching the children of Israel. Jesus says don't swear at all, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Now that immediately raises of course two questions. The first question that it raises then is the question, is it wrong for Christians to take an oath when you go to court or when you become a citizen of this country or find yourself in other legal situations and you're asked to raise your whatever hand and swear an oath, so help you God. Is that a right thing to do or is that in violation of the scripture? After all the scripture says do not swear at all and there are Christian groups who interpret that quite literally in that fashion. And when they go to court or when they find themselves in that kind of ceremony that I was talking about, on conscientious ground they refuse to swear an oath and they base it on the scripture. I admire their courage, I admire their convictions, I think they're wrong. Why are they wrong? Well they're wrong because the issue that Jesus is dealing with here is not whether it's right or wrong to take oaths, the issue that Jesus is dealing with, it is wrong to take oaths frivolously and to use them in a way to perpetrate a lie. And I say that because when you look at scripture you find three very interesting things. The first is that God himself makes an oath, Psalm 110 verse 4, "The Lord is sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever." In the order of Melchizedek. The Lord Jesus, he submits to an oath, we read in Matthew chapter 26, he's on trial for his life before Caiaphas the high priest and he refused to answer any of his questions until the high priest came and said, "I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you were the Christ the son of the living God." And scripture goes on to record then that in response to that demand, Jesus said, "Yes, it is as you say." In other words, he responds to the demand to speak the truth before the face of God. And then of course we have the example of the Apostle Paul. He says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 23, "I call God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth." And God as your witness is taking an oath, "May God do so and so and more to me if I do not fulfill the promise that I made." That by the way is why it's so important to compare scripture to scripture. You can take any scripture verse twisted in a direction that suits you, but it has to fit the overall emphasis of all of biblical revelation. Are oaths wrong? No, they are not provided they are a last resort and are not taken frivolously and are observed scrupulously. Second question then that also arises out of this passage. Does that mean we just say everything that we think? Must we be utterly and absolutely truthful in every situation? It gets a little tricky, eh? I mean your friend says, "How do you like my outfit?" And you say to yourself, "Woman, where in the world did you ever dig that up? And how did you ever deceive yourself into thinking that looked good on you?" Now what are you going to say? You know she's going to be devastated. You know that her ego won't be able to handle truthful speaking. How do you handle this situation? Well, it's very important to understand that the biblical emphasis always lies on speaking the truth in love. And even Jesus himself said to his disciples, "There's a lot more that I want to tell you but you cannot bear it now." What Jesus critiques in this passage is lying out of a desire for self-advancement and self-protection. And I find it very helpful to try to figure out what that balance is biblically in terms of speaking the truth in love to each other by remembering three things. Let me just walk you through that very quickly as we bring this to a close this morning. The purpose of speech is to build each other up. And so we read for example in Ephesians chapter four, "Do not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen." And so whenever you're inclined to speak into somebody's life and you feel the truth needs to be told, then you ask yourself the question, first of all, is it true? Then you ask yourself the question, is it loving? That is to say, is it geared to help somebody become better in Christ? Now the lady with a bad choice of address or the man with a, you know, whatever his bad choices are may need all the help in the world to be straightened out so they can see themselves the way that other people see them. And if that's your motivation, by all means speak the truth. But you know how often we are sarcastic, how often we have an underlying agenda to try to get that poke in there because we want to build ourselves up at somebody else's expense. That's wrong. The purpose of speech is to build up. So is it loving? And is it necessary? You know there's a lot of things that a lot of us can see in a lot of people's lives that are not the way they ought to be. And there's a lot of things the Lord sees in your life and in my life at any given point that is not where it ought to be. Not everything needs to be addressed all the time. Some things are just a function of growth. And part alerting to walk after the Spirit and part alerting to walk in community is to recognize that our mouths have to be, have to be, you know, the vehicle, the instrument of God's Holy Spirit so that in His time and in His way we can help somebody grow up and become all they need to be in Christ Jesus. We need to build each other up and we need never to lie or to exaggerate. Love this story? Two Arctic explorers, they're trying to outdo each other concerning the cold they had in endured on their trip to the Arctic. And one guy says to the other, "You know, it was so cold, it was so cold that the candles froze and we couldn't blow them out." And the other guy says, "That's nothing." He says, "When I went there it was so cold the words that came out of our mouths froze as pieces of ice and we had to fry them to hear what we were talking about." That would be exaggeration. And it's easy to fall into exaggeration. And God wants us to be very careful that our yes be yes and our no be no. I've been around long enough to know how gossip works in community. And you know, gossip almost always has a grain of truth but then a whole substructure is created on this that feeds into people's own fancies and that often becomes a distortion of the truth and becomes extremely harmful and dangerous to the people who are subject to that gossip. Never let yourself be found in that situation. And then of course we ought never to make promises that we know ahead of time that we cannot keep. And if we've made promises that we cannot keep and all of us will sooner or later find ourselves in those situations, our response to that has to be our request to be released from the promise or the vow that we have made so that we can continue walking through life with integrity. Why are these things so important? Why is Jesus so adamant about raising this issue with the disciples? I'll tell you why. The well-being of community, the well-being of society hangs on this. If you've ever had a child lie to you, if you've ever had a spouse that deliberately deceived you, if you've ever had a friend that betrayed you, then you will know how irreparably relationships can be damaged if yes is not yes and no is not no. It may take years for trust to be regained, sometimes cannot be regained because the damage is too great and the hurt too extensive. And that's why Jesus says to us here, if we're going to be His disciples, if we're going to be the followers of the Lord Jesus, then our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Our righteousness must be a heart righteousness, a righteousness that isn't always looking for how much can I get away with, but a righteousness that says let me do everything that I can to walk in integrity before God and before each other. Will we fail? Yes, we will. Will there be times when we don't live up to the standard that Jesus requires of us? Yes, we will. That's why we have Jesus. That's why He invites us to confess our sins to Him and to each other. And that's why He invites us to share in the power of the Holy Spirit so that more and more we can be men and women for whom yes is yes and no is no, for the glory of God. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:25:10.640; remove through 00:27:21.000] Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. , Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:27:21.000; resume after this marked segment]