The Ancients Were Told #7

Now, I've got a bit of an exhortation this morning that's not part of the sermon, just about Christmas and New Year's. In the circles that I run in, at least online and having talked to some of you, there's been a lot of talk of Christmas being on a Sunday this year and how churches are handling that, right? It's like, well, churches are just awful if they don't have church on Sunday. And they're unfaithful. And I've even seen men I love and respect ask questions like, are they even a church if they're willing to? Like, is this even a place you should go if they would cancel church on Sunday? And so there's all this pressure in the direction of, like, what is the church going to do? Well, we're going to have worship service. We are going to meet for worship because it's the Lord's Day. And our lives as Christians ought to be organized around the worship of God. Okay? And you'll have times in your life where things will come up and they'll conflict with the worship of God.

Okay, I'm not talking about sickness. I'm talking about holidays. I'm talking about birthdays. I'm talking about anniversaries. I'm talking about sporting events. You know? You guys know the World Cup Finals going on right now? Do you know that some of us like soccer? And do you know that what I said to someone else, only what I've said to myself, was it was the kindness of God that the World Cup was on at 9 o'clock on Sunday morning to me. Because it just means I don't even have to fight and worry about watching it. Because I've got something better to do. And next Sunday, you have something better to do. It's one thing to get after churches and say, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? You better be faithful. You better be faithful. And I think, you know, there's something to be said for that. But one of the questions that was asked in the group I was in was, is this even an issue? Are churches even not meeting? And then people are like, oh, well, look at all these big churches that aren't meeting. And I thought, okay, but what about us? What do we need to hear?

It's our commitment to organize our life and our personal lives, our church, around Lord's Day worship. And I think what would be most helpful to us is to say, you guys should too. No one's saying, I wonder if you're going to skip out on church because you have a family function. We all have family functions. I'd venture to say that there's hardly, if anyone, in this room who's not going to celebrate Christmas next weekend. We're all going to do it. We all have plans. The question is not a matter of if, but how, and what your priorities are. And so what you have next week and the following week is a time to show what your priorities are. As I thought about our church, I thought, you know, I don't think Christmas is actually going to be as big of a deal as New Year's will be. I actually think more people will be here. Prove me wrong, unless you're sick. Prove me wrong.

I was more concerned that we would have better attendance on Christmas Day than we would on New Year's Day because of our commitment to go out and have a good time and ring in the New Year and be too tired to get up on Sunday morning. And that shouldn't be the case. That should not be the case with God's people. May it not be the case with us. Now, I realize what I'm saying, you might be like, well, you don't understand. And I'm going, actually, I do. Actually, the pressures you feel are not unique. Many of us have family who are like wanting to spend that day together. And the only difference is some of us have gone through the knothole of making our commitments known. Some of us haven't. Some of us need to. Now, you might think I've pushed you far enough. I'm going to push just a little bit more about Christmas. Lord's Day worship is not something that you fit in, okay? We've decided not to have Sunday school. We're not having small groups, but we are having worship.

And so I would exhort you not simply to slide in here about three minutes after 10.30 and be out that door two minutes after the service is over, but to worship the Lord. It is still the Lord's Day, and it's actually, in terms of priority, it's more important that it's the Lord's Day than that it's Christmas. You have all day Saturday, you can do Christmas stuff, and we have a Christmas Eve service. You have all afternoon and evening on Sunday to do Christmas. If you have a job, my guess is you all have Monday off of work. Because, or more, right? Like, you have time to celebrate Christmas. And so you should not have a, you know, I should not think I have a good excuse on the Lord's Day to say, I got something else I need to get to. Okay? So I'll leave it at that. We're going to worship the Lord.

next Sunday. And our commitment, my commitment is not to like, oh, we need to hurry and hurry because they got more important things to do. You actually don't. I actually don't. And I know there's lots of preparations that will go into those meals and those traditions and all of that. But man, you have things that you need to have at the top of your priority list. And you need to teach those things to your kids. And you have a great opportunity the next two Sundays to do that. You really do. And so I exhort you. To do it, all right? Now, our sermon this morning is going to be continuing on in the Sermon on the Mount. Getting toward the end of chapter 5, we're going to be studying verses 33 through 37. These verses contain Jesus' fourth example of him correcting the Pharisees and the scribes' misunderstanding of the Old Testament law. The title of this section, of sermons is the ancients were told. And the structure that Jesus uses is, you have heard that it was said, or the ancients were told. And then he says, but I say to you. And so he's taking six examples of their understanding and their abuse of the scripture, the old law, and saying, that's not right. This is what it means. And so we've come to the fourth of those six examples. And this section is about taking oaths and making vows.

If you were to read the Bible for examples of oaths and vows, or if you were to read the Bible and look for places where oaths and vows are talked about, you'd find there's quite a bit of it. A lot, a lot in the Old Testament, and even in the New. These things are a part of our lives, and I believe that they should be. Though some would take the passage we're going to study this morning and twist it to make it say that Christians should never, ever, ever make vows. In fact, that it's sinful to do so. If we lived in a world without sin, I would agree.

Vows and oaths would be unnecessary. They would be superfluous, but we don't live in such a world. Oaths and vows exist because of the sinfulness of man. Our propensity to lie, to not do what we say we're going to do, to conceal the truth, to be careless with the things we say and commit ourselves to do, that propensity to those things is so constant. that God in his mercy chose to instruct us on the importance of the truth and our commitment to it. We need to be careful about the things we say and do the things we say we will. And so this morning my hope is that we'll come to see actually how often we lie and betray our Lord and also that God would help us to become men and women who pay attention to the things that we say and do them, even when it's costly to do so.

Our text is Matthew 5, verses 33-37. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? Again you have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord. But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be yes, yes, or no, no.

Anything beyond these is of evil. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. And so this section, like all the ones that have come before it, Jesus is taking a section of the Old Testament law and showing how the Pharisees have twisted and abused that portion of the law, suiting it to themselves, conforming it to themselves instead of conforming themselves to it. Now, this passage that they're supposedly quoting, you shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord, is more of a working understanding. This is the working out of what they think the Bible teaches about vows, as opposed to a particular chapter and verse where this exact thing is said. And so what kind of texts are they drawing on to develop this concept, this way of handling vows? One passage would be Leviticus 19, verse 12.

where the Lord says, you shall not swear by my name as to profane the name of your God, for I am the Lord. Numbers 30 verse 2 again says, if a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. Now, I could give you a number of other examples from the law, from the first five chapters of Scripture. that have to do with oath-taking and law and vows and different types and what the parameters are. We could go into the prophets and we could see where the prophets are accusing the people of breaking their vows, of not keeping their vows, of being careless. And we could see the judgments that they face. We could even look and we could find places where the Lord makes vows, where he swears by himself in the Old as well as the New Testament.

We have examples of men like Paul making vows. It's a normal sort of interaction or way of speaking in our life, and it goes all the way back to the time of the Bible. If we were to summarize the Jews' habit at this point, their working understanding of vows, we could summarize it this way, that the Jews were in the habit of regularly making vows pertaining to all sorts of things those vows on some authority or some thing of value, whether that be heaven or earth, Jerusalem, or even their own heads. The fact was at their time, their words were cheap. They were a dishonest people prone to lying who often did not do what they said they were going to do. Now you may think, well, that's awfully harsh of you to say it about them. And I say, well, if you read, show me where I'm wrong.

Take for example, when the Lord led them out of the land of Egypt and they're out in the wilderness and the Lord descends on the mountain. You remember at Mount Sinai, he descends on the mountain and Moses goes up and the Lord converses with Moses and says, gives him terms of a covenant, terms of an agreement. And the terms are, I'll be your God if you'll be my people. What you need to do is go down. I'm paraphrasing, but the gist of it was you need to go down to those people and you need to ask them if they're willing to accept those terms. So Moses does. He goes down the mountain. He asks the people. Thunder and lightning shaking and all the rest. Holiness. Don't touch the mountain or you'll die. This is what God said. And all the people cry out with one voice, all that the Lord says we will do. That is a vow. That is a commitment.

And so Moses, and so then he says, okay, consecrate yourselves for a period of time, and then I'm going to come back. Moses is going to come up. We're going to have, you know, God's going to give the law. He's going to give the terms of that covenant. And so all of that happens. People consecrate themselves. Moses goes back up the mountain and communes with God and gets the law. And he's supposed to get all of these things. Days, weeks go by. And then he's going to come back down. He's going to tell the people. But what are the people doing while Moses is gone? Yeah, they're sitting there looking at this mountain, and they're sitting there wondering, where'd Moses go, and when's he going to, you know, what happened? And they found this middle ground. You might be expecting me to say, well, they just broke their vow, and they just threw it away. And I'd say, no, that's not actually that simple. What they did was they said, you know, if God speaks to us, we'll die. You be our mouthpiece.

You speak to us. They were afraid. And while Moses is gone, they petition Aaron and say, Aaron, will you make us a calf? And their understanding at the time was we're going to worship the true God in the image of this golden calf. And Aaron says, well, I, you know, sure. And then Moses comes down and he sees what the people are doing. He sounds like a party going on. He comes down and he says, what in the world is going on? And what he finds out is they're worshiping the true God. in the form of this golden calf. I don't know that they thought they had broken their vow, that they had made a mistake. They had just swapped out something that was scary to them for something that was acceptable to them. Now, were they right? Is what they did acceptable? No. You see it in Moses breaking the tablets. It's very common for God's people to not do the things they say they're going to do, to not follow through, to change the terms.

to augment the things that were said, to suit their own desires. That's what you see them doing here with Aaron and with the golden calf. And you see Aaron knowing what he did was wrong when Moses comes down and he asks him, he says, Aaron, what have you done? He says, well, it was the people. I didn't want to. There's examples in the New Testament of these sort of vows, of vows being made. In Matthew 23, Jesus talks about those who would swear by the temple, and he literally just says, he says, you guys have these arrangements where if people swear by the temple, then that doesn't matter. But if they swear by the gold of the temple, then they have to do it. Or if they swear by the altar, I promise by the altar in the temple, I'll do this thing. Actually, everyone understood that didn't mean anything. But if they swore by the sacrifice that was on the altar, then it mattered.

And so the Jews were in a habit of accommodating their dishonesty with all kinds of vows. They built this whole big system of when it was meaningful and when it wasn't. And they're not unique in this. Every society has a way of communicating, a way of understanding whether you really mean it or not. In our society, a simple example maybe just in your home would be if you tell one of your kids to do something and they don't respond to you. Do you have confidence that they're going to do it? We don't in my house. We want you to respond to us. Yes, mom. Yes, dad. I will. Something. Say something. And the kid will say, I did say something. I say, I didn't hear you. You need to make sure I hear you. Or what if you're talking to somebody and they refuse to make eye contact? And you're saying, hey, this is the thing. You know, I think, you know, you were with your boss and you said, hey, your boss is saying, you know, you did this thing and you messed it up and I need you to, and the employee's like.

We understand that we have no confidence that that person is going to do what's required of them because they're communicating that they're not going to. Whereas if they stood there and they paid attention and they asked questions and they engaged with it, you'd say, well, I think they're going to do what they say they're going to do. Hey, bud, can you come to work on Saturday? Well, you know, yeah, yeah, I can come in. I'm not real confident he's going to come to work, even though he said he would. So the Jews had this idea that there was such a thing as false vows. that there were vows that you'd make that didn't really matter. And that if they made those false vows, they hadn't actually sinned. They said yes, but they didn't mean it, and that was okay. And so they'd swear by heaven, and they wouldn't swear by the Lord, because if they swore by the Lord, then that did matter. There was a place where you could violate this, where you could fail, where if you said, as God has witnessed, I will do it. If you did that, and then you didn't, well, then you sinned.

But as long as you didn't say that, whether you swore by heaven or you swore by earth or Jerusalem or by your own life or even, you know, your own head, none of that really mattered. But they had built this system, this way of communicating that never transgressed God's law, that didn't matter. And so when Jesus comes back to them and he says, regarding heaven, he says, don't make any oath at all. By heaven, for it's the throne of God, or earth, because it's the footstool of his feet, or by Jerusalem, for it's the great city of the king. The theme that Jesus is trying to get across and impress upon them is all that stuff you think doesn't matter, it actually does matter, because God made it. And you're actually swearing by the Lord when you swear by those things. In fact, when you say you're going to do something, you're bound to it in every circumstance.

He's taking this way of communicating, this way of interacting, this dishonesty, these lies and deception that were common in their society and in ours, and he says, no, that's not how we relate. That's not how my people can speak. If you as my people say you'll do something, you're under obligation to do it, they would have sat there and said, we've never made any vows. We've never broken any vows. We always keep our word. when it matters. And Jesus' goal is to point out to them that's not actually true. You make vows regularly and you don't keep them. Now, it might be confusing to talk about vows and oaths and for us to be thinking like big, significant, solemn occasions. And we do make vows in those types of circumstances, whether marriage would be a good example. We make vows and marriage is a big deal. And we say, well, there's something serious going on there. What is a vow? A vow is simply at its most basic level, is simply a promise or a commitment to do something or to not do something for a period of time. Now, why don't we think of vows this way? Well, because then all of a sudden we'd be guilty of breaking our vows all the time. Oh, yeah, honey, how many times does a husband say to a wife or a wife say to a husband, yeah, I'll take care of that today. Yeah, I'll be sure to get that done, only to fail for whatever reason. And then the spouse gets upset and says, but you said you would do it.

And they say, well, I didn't. Things came up. Life happened. I forgot. The more I thought about it, I thought what you wanted was unreasonable. So I didn't do it. Many of us want to say, in my house, that doesn't happen. And so a vow is simply a promise or a commitment to do or not do something. And it includes having God as a witness to whether we do it or not. And Jesus' point here was to say, God is witness to everything that you say. If you swear by heaven, it's not as though God's not aware or engaged in what's going on. Or if you swear by earth or if you swear by your own authority or with your own life, it's not as though God's not witness to the things you say. You don't have to invoke his name directly for him to be a witness to the things you said. If he plumbs the depths of our hearts and knows all of the things that we are even inclined to, do we not think that he knows what we say we'll do? That somehow he sits there and goes, well,

They didn't say me directly, so I guess it doesn't matter. The Bible tells us that whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should do all to the glory of God. The foundation or the root of that passage is, if you're a Christian, everything you do is in the sight of God. Everything you say, you're obligated to the Lord to do. Now, you might say, if you're just feeling the weight of that, you might say, that's unreasonable. I can't bear that burden. I can't be held accountable for everything I say. I mean, I don't always think about what I say. And I'd say, you're right. And that's a problem. We're actually a lot farther away from perfection than we might like to think we are at any given day. I'm really close. I'm a man who keeps my word. And I just laugh when people say stuff like that. I'm like, no, you're not. No, you're not. You don't do what you say you're going to do. All the time, on a daily basis, you're failing to do this.

You lie to yourself and expect other people to go along with the lie that you were going to get it done and the justification for why you didn't. And this is how we live. This is our weakness. It doesn't have to be willful for it to be true. This is what we do. In Proverbs 15, verse 4, at the end of that verse, it says that he, the question of Psalm 15, I'll give you a little bit of context for it, is who may ascend? The holy hill of God. Who may go into God's tent? Who can be in his presence? And the rest of the psalm answers the characteristics or the attributes of that man. Okay? And one of the things it says here at the end of verse 4 is that that man who will ascend into the presence of God, who can ascend his holy hill, is a man who will swear to his own hurt and does not change. He swears to his own hurt and does not change. Now that's weird.

It's a weird construction. We don't talk that way. What's it mean to swear to your own hurt and not change? It means that he does the things he says he's going to do. If he says he's going to do it, he does it, even when it's hard, even when it hurts. His pain, the cost of keeping his word, is not a justification for him to break his vow. The things he says matter. Now, haven't all of us at some point said we would do something only to find out we had no idea what we committed to do? And then immediately you're faced with the question of whether or not you're going to do it, you know? There have been times I've said, yeah, I'll help with that. Yeah, I can give you a hand with that. And then I show up and figure out, oh, wow, this is not what I thought. Daniel's smiling. I'm thinking about your shed. Are you thinking about your shed?

Go to Daniel's house and look at his shed. It's a glorious shed. It's quite large, bigger than some people's houses. And Daniel wanted to build it and was going to build it. And I said, Daniel, I'll give you a hand. And I looked and he told me what he wanted to do. And I went, we are both in for it here. And it was delightful. It was a joy. We did it. But man, there were times where I was like, I don't want to go over to Daniel's house again and finish this two-story shed that he's building all by hand. There were probably times where you went, what did I get myself into? And we've all had that thought. What in the world did I get myself into? Get married and you think, what in the world have I gotten myself into? You get pregnant and you think, what in the world have I gotten myself into? He swears to his own hurt and does not change. He keeps his vow even when it's hard. Now, there's a funny thing in the Bible about vows. Probably the greatest example of

of a bad vow is Jephthah, okay? Jephthah was a judge and he was sort of like the black sheep of the family. He was a rough around the edges guy and his family is like, well, we'll get him when we need the hard work to be done, but he wasn't really all that loved or popular and he had done things to warrant that sort of reputation. So then comes time for a war and They need Jephthah. So they go get Jephthah. And Jephthah goes out to war and he wins in the war and he comes back and he's just happy and everyone's like, that's great. You know, praise the Lord and all this stuff. And Jephthah says, I'm gonna offer a sacrifice to the Lord. The first thing that comes out of my house, out of my gate to greet me, you know, he's thinking an animal, some critter is gonna come out. He says, I'm gonna sacrifice that to the Lord. Well, what comes out the gate to greet him? His virgin daughter. And now he's left going, I made a vow.

What am I supposed to do? Because, of course, that's not at all what he meant or intended. And it's a tragic story, an absolutely tragic story, because he actually does kill his daughter. He gives her a time to weep and to grieve and to mourn, and then he does kill her because he'd made a vow. And we just look at it, and it's just repulsive to us. The idea that he would do it, I mean, you want somebody to just raise up and just kill him for what he did, to save his daughter. And it just leaves such a nasty taste in our mouth. about vows. And we just think, well, if that's what's required, then I have no commitment to keeping my word. I wouldn't do something if it was costly. And the million-dollar question is, is what Jephthah did right? And I contend to you that the answer is absolutely not. There's more than one lesson from Jephthah. One, the first lesson, and the one that dovetails perfectly with this is, be very careful what you say, because your words do matter. He should never have said what he said.

because he didn't count the cost of what he said. But if you can get past the difficulty of that and the tragedy of Jephthah's vow, and you continue to read in Scripture about vows, what you find is that there's other places where vows can be revoked. For instance, if a wife or a daughter goes and makes a vow to do something, and her husband or her father doesn't know about it, and in the day that he hears that his wife or his daughter went and did this thing, he can say, nope, and that's that. Well, she said it. But he says she shouldn't have said it. And the trajectory of that passage is, if someone does something foolish, it can be undone if it's undone quickly. And in that situation with Jephthah, I'm convinced that what Jephthah should have done is thrown himself down on the ground at the mercy of God and prayed for forgiveness for his vow. And pleaded with God and said, take my life instead of hers. But he didn't. He had a bad understanding of vows. Though he did understand that they were important.

And so from Jephthah, we can learn that vows are very important. When I say that he should have repented, it's not because the Bible says, I can point to a chapter and verse that says, and this is what Jephthah should have done. It's me reasoning from scripture about what we do when we sin. What do we do when we screw up and we fail terribly? What do we do? Continue on in the sin and in the failure? Because, well, I started it, so I have to finish it. No, you turn from your wicked way. And that's what Jephthah didn't do. You see vows even in the New Testament where Paul calls down and invokes the name of God. And he says, I am not lying. God is witness in Corinthians. In Acts 18, you have Paul, just a passing comment that Paul, when he was leaving one place and he went through Centuria and he was on his way to Ephesus, that while he was in Centuria, he got his hair cut because he was to fulfill his vow. And you're like, and there's no explanation given of it.

Just that he did. He was keeping his vow. It was a Nazarite vow. If you want to go read about Nazarite vows and what they would do about when they would go into worship and their hair and all this stuff, you can go read about it in the Old Testament law. But Paul, we don't know why or where or what the terms were. We just know that Paul made a vow and that he kept his vow. He fulfilled it. He got his hair cut while he was in Santeria. And so we have vows even in the New Testament being made. And so I think we'd be foolish to take...

Paul's example there, and say that he somehow has sinned. I think rather we should look at this passage and say that when Jesus says make no oath at all, he's not saying that we should do away with this always and forever. Because the Bible is full, both in the Old and New Testament, of people making vows and commitments before the Lord. But rather that we ought to be careful. Careful in what we say and careful to do what we say. Don't think that you can swear by something less than God and somehow reduce your responsibility to fulfill your obligation. Make no oath at all under those circumstances where you think that it's not important whether you do it or not. A false vow or a broken vow is basically the same thing as perjury. Perjury is when someone goes into a court of law. This is where we would understand if someone's going to perjure themselves. They go into the court of law, and then they would swear.

I actually don't know. Amanda, do we still swear on Bibles? No? Well, you used to swear on Bibles. You put your hand on the Bible and you put your hand up and you say, I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God. And then they were going to ask you what happened. And you, having made a vow to the Lord to tell the truth, were supposed to tell the truth. And if you didn't, it was criminal. It was a breaking of a vow. It was perjury. Because the fact is you didn't intend. when you took the vow to keep it. And so perjury is willful lying. Perjury is seeing that you're supposed to do something and not deciding to do it later. Sometimes it's willful and very willful. Sometimes it's due to negligence or forgetfulness. But the real question is, what do you do when you remember you've said something? Some of you have heard this story before. I'll tell you again. When Vanessa and I first got married, I agreed to go work on a farm. And I agreed to go work for 10 bucks an hour.

This was whatever, 17 years ago, something like that. I suppose there's still jobs that pay $10 an hour now, but I went to go work, and I had made an arrangement with the farmer. I was going to go into the pastor's college, and so the arrangement was I'll work full-time for a year, but I need flexibility while I'm in the pastor's college to be able to not work full-time, but to be able to work basically when I have time to. So full-time on breaks, full-time in the summer, full-time. You know, but other times I need to only work three days a week. And, you know, you can imagine if you tried to find a job with that kind of flexibility, it's kind of hard to find. They're like, well, it's a part-time job. And you're like, well, but I need it to be a full-time job sometimes. And they're like, no, it's a part-time or it's a full-time job. But these are the terms. And so the arrangement was I would work full-time for a year. Then I would work part-time all through the pastor's college. And then I'd work, you know, after the pastor's college. Five years was the commitment. Indentured servitude. So I go to work.

I don't particularly like, and so here's the truth is, I don't particularly like the job. And at that time, though things have changed 180 degrees, I didn't particularly like the people. I felt underappreciated and taken advantage of. Well, then my wife got pregnant. I needed to make more money. So what'd I do? Well, I went and arranged to go get a different job. And then the farmer caught wind that I had gone and gotten myself another job. And you know what he did? He fired my butt. Why? Because I decided that my word that I had given to him was not important. That what was important was that I make more money because I had a pregnant wife at home. So what happened? Well, what happened was after a week of misery, I went out to the farmer and I said, I would like my job back. And the truth is, and he knows it at the time, I didn't want my job back. I wanted him to say, I understand that, you know, and I forgive you, but...

You don't have to come back to work. But through gritted teeth, I said to him, I would like to keep my word to you. And there was a good bit of heavy counsel behind me pushing me this direction. I didn't come up with this on my own. But I thought, these older, wiser men have told me that this is important, and so I'm going to go do what they say and hope that I'm going to get out of the job because I don't want to go to the job. And I say to him, I'm sorry. What I did was wrong. I gave you my word.

and I'd like an opportunity to fulfill my word. And I'm wanting him to say, yeah, no, don't worry about it. It's fine, we're fine, but, you know, carry on. That's not what he said. What he did is he looked me square in the eye, and he said, do you mean it? How far can one be pushed before one loses strength to do what's right? And he looked at me, and that's what he said, and he just stared at me in the eye until I said something back to him. And I said to him, yes. And nothing in me wanted to keep my word. You understand, nothing in me wanted to keep my word. And I said, yes. He said, well, we start on Monday at 7 a.m. And that was the end of it. And I just, oh, it was so awful. I had a job. The week before I didn't have a job, but now I have a job. And I'm miserable. And I can't, I could tell you, though I'm not going to take the time to, how merciful God was to me and to my family and is still to this day through that old farmer and his family.

They became mothers and fathers to us. They care for us. They've cared for you in ways that you are probably not aware. And I'm absolutely convinced that if I hadn't gone back and repented and kept my word, none of that would have come to pass. And so sometimes you say things and you don't know what you're getting into. I said, oh yeah, I'll come to work. I need a job. I just need a job. Personal off-meer job, I'll take a job. I had no idea what was in store for me, what kind of work I would do. what kind of hardship I'd face, how much my family would grow while I worked there. I just didn't know any of that stuff. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. What I did know was that I'd committed myself to something and that I was under obligation to see it through and to trust God to provide for me and my family financially, relationally, and all the rest while I kept my word. And what I can tell you is that God is faithful, and he did.

And so I don't say to you that you need to stand by your word as someone who's never had to do it themselves. Be careful what you say. And if you say it, do it. You remember the two sons that, you know, the dad comes and says, hey, son, I need you to go work in the vineyard today. And the son says, no, I'm not going to go work in the vineyard today. So he goes to his other son and he says, son, I need you to go work in the vineyard. And he says, yes, sir, I will. And then the Bible tells us that the first son who said no regretted it, that he felt bad about what he said. And he went out and he worked in the vineyard that day. But the second son who said he would do it and then didn't do it had failed. Jesus asked at the end of that parable, which one of them did the will of their father? And what we would say if we were telling the whole truth is, well, neither one of them did it perfectly. But one of them actually did it a whole lot better than the other one. And it's actually the one who started out worse. So don't lie to get people off your back.

Don't say what people want you to say. That first son said how he felt. I don't want to go to work in the vineyard today. And that gave him room to repent of his laziness or pride or resentment or whatever it was that caused him to say, I don't want to. He was honest, and so it made room for him to repent and say, you know, I was wrong. I should go do what my dad asked me to do. That other son lied. Oh, yeah, Dad, I'll go do it. I'll get to it. Sure, you can count on me, man. I'm always there for you.

Until he wasn't. So vows are a necessary thing. Keeping our word is a necessary thing. Because you and I are inclined to lie in so many ways. So many ways. Okay? I was having a conversation with one of my sons recently. And I said to him, you know, have a good time. Go to bed at a decent hour. Like, you know, 1230. Teenage boys, go to bed at 1230. Have a good time. We'll see you later. He was going away for the day. And I was talking to him. Well, how'd it go? Was it fun? And I said to him, I said, well, what did you guys do? I said, what time did you guys go to bed? And he says to me, he says, well, we were laying down and not doing anything. We were just talking. And I smiled because I just thought, you are my son. You're my son, and you don't know what you're doing.

I'm going to tell you what you're doing. He told me, he says, well, we were just sitting down and we were talking and we were just, you know, kind of winding down. And I just said, you know, honey, I asked you a simple question and you didn't answer it. And you knew what I was asking you. You knew when I was asking, like, what time did you go to bed? It's because you're tired now and, you know. And instead of just saying, I stayed up late. That's why I'm tired, Dad. I stayed up past when you told me to stay up. And this was a very sweet conversation between us. And I said, honey, you knew what I was asking. He says, yes, I knew what you were asking. And I said, you immediately, seamlessly, just decided to not answer the question I was asking you directly, but to explain to me that you were headed in the direction of doing what I wanted you to do, but you know you didn't do what I told you to do. And he says, yes, I realized that. And I said, okay, so in the future, just tell the truth.

Just say, Dad, I was hanging out with my friends. We were having a good time. And we stayed up till 1.30, whatever time. I don't even remember what time it was. I stayed up late. That's why I'm tired. I'm sorry. That's dishonesty, okay? I love my son. He knows I love him. That's dishonesty. Because we said to him, honey, go to bed on time. He said, yeah, okay, Mom. Okay, Dad, I'll do it. And then when I asked him about it, and you realize I wasn't trying to like catch him in a lie. I was just asking how the trip, what'd you do at night, you know? And he says, well, you know, his conscience is doing a thing that all of our consciences do. And then he started to spin a story about how what he did was not all that bad and wrong. And this is what we do. And it's deceptive. And so I smiled at him and I love him. And I said, honey, just tell the truth. Just tell me the truth. That's fine. I, you know.

I want you to learn from it. Here's the lesson you should learn from it. And we talked. But we're all inclined to be careless with our words. I mean, could you imagine if you had a child and he's going out for the night and you said, hey, honey, be sure to go to bed at midnight. And he says, I don't have any intention of going to bed at midnight. I'm going to hang out with my friends. I might stay up all night. I'm not making any plan about when I might close my eyes. Like, why would you expect such a thing of me? I'm not committing to that. I mean, we would all just be.

Flabbergasted if our kid said something like that. But it would be honest. It would be honest. And then we could have a more honest conversation about whether that's good, bad, or going to be allowed. And so all I'm trying to say to you is, be honest. Do what you say you're going to do. If you say, yeah, I'll wash the dishes. Yeah, yeah, I'll pick up some bread on the way home. Yeah, yeah, I'll have that project done by midnight. Yeah, whatever. You're saying, carelessly, make sure you do it. Because if you don't do it, you're sinning. It's a violation of the seventh commandment. Seventh? Ninth. I'm wrong. Sorry. I was thinking earlier that there's actually two commandments in play here, two of the tenth commandments. One is the ninth commandment, you shall not bear false witness. And the second is, you shall not take the Lord's name in vain.

Because Jesus is making the case here that if you speak as a Christian, as one of God's people, and you say, yeah, I'm going to do it, you're doing it as a Christian. You're doing it. You're committing not just to that person, but you're committing before God has witnessed that you're going to do it. And if you say you're going to do it, you've actually just besmirched his name because you're not doing what you said you were going to do before him. So we really ought to be careful about the things that we say. We really are inclined to lie. And if you think of places where we as a society would say, these are important things, marriages. You know, what does it take for a marriage to be legitimate in God's eyes? A man and a woman saying, we want to be married. And then for them to consummate their marriage. That's it. All the stuff we do for weddings is because people are inclined to lie about whether or not they made those commitments and did those things. I never said that. I never intended to be married with you.

We were drunk. We were on vacation. That sex didn't carry with it the obligations that it should. And so a lot of the things we do surrounding marriage and the vows that we have people take, we don't find those things written in Scripture. What we have is a response in the marriage vows and in the marriage ceremony to the propensity of men and women to not do what they should do as a husband and wife. And so we make very particular vows. When the marriage ceremony starts, everyone is told, we're gathered here today in the sight of God and these witnesses to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. And are you willing, dad? Yes. Are you willing, man? Yes. Okay, and then we're going to make vows. Repeat after me. I make my vows until death separates. And to this, I guarantee my faithfulness. That's the end of the vows for both of them. And then there's paperwork that has to be signed.

Because I'm the officiant. I have to write my name on it. I have to say, yep, they're married. And we have to turn in the paperwork. And we have to mail it in by a certain date so that everyone says, we know this is a real thing that happened. Same kind of thing goes on when you have a business interaction, a business transaction. What is a notary? You guys know what a notary is? Other than that they get a real cool little embossed stamp. A notary is someone to say, I was there when these two people agreed to do this thing. I'm an objective party. I don't benefit from this deal happening or not happening. I'm going to put my special stamp with my special number and the date right there. And that's what proves that they made these commitments that are written on this piece of paper to one another. And both parties have to be there when we do it. It can't be like, oh, well, they'll sign it, and then they'll email it, and then they'll sign it, and then, no. We all have to be inconvenienced to get together and sign it together. And the notary has to say,

They did this thing right then. Why? Well, because people lie. People lie. All the time they lie. They say, well, I never agreed to that. Actually, in that contract you signed that the notary notarized, yes, you did commit to do that. How much easier would our lives be? How much less trouble would there be in our world if people simply did what they said they would do? Why don't we trust politicians? You've lost confidence that they'll do what they say they're going to do. You've come to expect that they are lying to you and that the words that come out of their mouth are worthless. And the difficulty we have is that we actually need to have people leading us and caring for us and guiding us in our churches, in our homes, in our society. But we've lost any confidence that they'll actually do what they say. And the truth is, they have good reason to have lost their confidence that we'll do what we say. Your wife has good confidence.

A good reason to distrust you. Your husband has a good reason to distrust you. Your kids have a good reason to think you will not do what you say. Your parents have a good reason to mistrust what you say. And your boss. Because we don't do what we say we're going to do. And then we justify it. All kinds of excuses. We have all kinds of things to say. I didn't know that's what you meant. I didn't understand. My prices have gone up. You couldn't possibly expect me to do that under these circumstances that are out of my control. The fact is, sinful people need accountability to make sure that they do what they say they're going to do before the Lord. And so whatever we say, whatever we do, whatever we commit ourselves to reflects on our Lord. And so Christians ought to be the sort of people who keep their word, who count the cost, and even when it hurts, do what they've said they would do.

In the end, it doesn't matter as much as you think it does whether you want to do what you said you would do. I'm sorry, I know we all got cases of the feels, but if you say you're going to do something, you should do it. If you don't do it, you shouldn't say, well, here's the reason it's not my fault I didn't do it. You should simply say, I failed, I'm sorry. I didn't do what I said I was going to do. And then you should go do it. And the reason that's important is that when someone loses trust, like really loses trust, it's very difficult to get back.

One of the requirements of elders in the church is that they have a good reputation. What is a man's reputation built on that's more important than whether he's trustworthy? Is there something that's more valuable than whether or not you look at that man and you say, he'll do what he says. I can trust him to do what he says. He should have a good reputation in the church and outside of it. He should be known as the sort of man who does what he says. And if he's not, then there's no hope for him being a leader in the church because people will not trust him. People already don't trust him because he doesn't keep his word. Keeping your word will be costly at times. You will inevitably, no matter how hard you try, get into situations that don't go the way you intend. In those situations, you're not free to break your word. You'll also end up in situations where you really are not able to fulfill your word. It's not a matter of your will or a matter of your desire. You literally won't be able to do it.

however much you might want to. We would like to think that those sorts of situations will be avoidable our whole lives, but they're not. What do you do when you end up in a situation that you didn't intend to be in, or when you end up in a situation where you really aren't able to fulfill your commitments? What are you supposed to do then? Well, here's what I'll end with. Reverse the roles. If the shoe is on the other foot, how would you want the person who's failing to bathe? Michael, your cough is contagious. This far away. Excuse me. This is the golden rule, that you treat other people the way you want to be treated. So if you're failing, what would you want someone who is failing you in that same way to do? Do that. Start there. Don't expect more of them than you would be willing to offer yourself. Be willing to work out a solution with them that may well be costly to you. The second thing, learn from it.

Don't do it again. We often don't count the cost the way we should. But as we live in life and as we make mistakes and end up in situations where we said something we shouldn't have said, there are often very good lessons to learn about what not to say in the future. Learn them so you don't do it again. Because the Bible tells us that if you don't count the cost, when people walk by and they see your failures, they're going to laugh at you and say you're an idiot. And that's as it should be. You are. You should count the costs ahead of time. Learn from your mistakes.

Learn to count the costs beforehand and not afterwards. People who can't finish fulfill their vows. There is a reckoning and they do count the costs. They do it at the wrong time. Do it beforehand. And finally, if you want to obey this passage, if you want to be the sort of person whose yes is yes and whose no is no, be sure to communicate. When you see a problem coming, communicate. Don't wait until you get caught or the problem is so bad that you can't avoid it anymore. Go to the problem and deal with it. If you were contracted to work with a business and the business says, hey, yeah, we're going to come and we're going to, you know, remodel your bathroom next Wednesday. If they find out, do you want for them to wait until Wednesday morning to say, hey, sorry, can't make it, if they knew a week before that they weren't going to be able to make it? No, you'd want them to call you a week before and say, hey, you know, unforeseen circumstances, we're really sorry.

Let's work together and figure out what we can do. What inconvenience have we created by our inability to keep our commitment, and how can we make that right with you? You might say, well, don't worry about it. Just, you know, when can you come? And that's fine. You might say, that's going to cost me five days of lost wages that I can't get back, and so I'd really appreciate a discount. Or you might say, well, I'd really like that upgrade that you said I couldn't have because... It really is expensive, costly. You're going to have a back and forth. There's going to be some solution, and that company should be predisposed to say, we screwed up, we're sorry, and we're going to demonstrate that we're sorry in this way. We should do the same thing. When we fail, when we can't do what we say, when our yes turns into no or our no turns into yes, we should go to the people that we failed and say, I'm sorry, what do I need to do to make it right? And we should expect that it will be costly and that they won't just come to us and say, no big deal.

They may, but if they do, that's pure grace because they've chosen to eat the cost of your mistake. And you shouldn't presume that on other people. We need to be done, so I'm gonna finish. Keep your words and don't lie. Let's pray.