You Shall Not Bear False Witness

Well, good morning. It's good to see you all. Good to have you here. We are going to study the ninth commandment today. The ten commandments are broadly broken into two tables of the law. The first four commandments are the first table of the law, and that table deals with man's relationship to God and how we interact with him, how we are to worship him, how we are to be with him. The second table of the law is horizontal. It's man to man. How do we interact with each other? How do we love each other? If you recall, Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That sums up the first table of the law, the first four commandments. He says the second commandment is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

That deals with the second table of the law. And that deals, those are where we find ourselves now with honoring, right? The first of the second table, the fifth commandment, is that we would honor our authorities, that we would honor our fathers and mothers, that we would be in submission to those who rule over us. We have honoring others' lives. We don't murder, right? We have the commandment regarding sexuality. And that has to do with our persons. And we have not stealing, which is dealing with possessions. And today, we're going to deal with bearing false witness, with lying, and see how we love our neighbor through that. And also, the idea is, one of the big ideas behind not bearing false witness is reputation, truth.

honesty, and the way that we deal with one another. But as with all the commands, it's important that what we would do is we would remember the context in which the commands are given. The first command, according to some traditions, or maybe we tie it with the first command, but the first verse of this section is, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And so we haven't done this, but we could have that verse, right? And then have each of the commandments. And you could insert that. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Each one of these commands are grounded in the character of God. It's grounded in who he is, in his nature. He's not commanding us something that is apart from him.

In Jeremiah 17, 9, it says, it's a verse that should be engraven on all of our minds. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And in the Psalms, we're told that all men are liars. The commands that we receive in these verses are not random commands that God just happened to come up with that he thought, this might be a good way for us to live. But they're rooted in the nature of who God is. I am the Lord your God. You shall not do, insert the command, to flow out of his nature. And they're in direct contradiction to the nature that we have and its corruption from the sin of Adam. And so as we consider the command to not bear false witness, we have to realize that Our hearts are very deceitful. And all men are liars. And Jesus says, I am the truth. And so there's this stark contrast between who we are and who God is. And how much of our sin and the things that we do are rooted and grounded in our self-deception.

And so even as at some point we will talk a little bit about Rahab and some deception that maybe she does, but I want it to be fixed in our minds that our hearts are deceitful and we will find any escape path we can to justify the lies that we tell ourselves and to affect how people view us because we want to portray a certain image of ourselves that's clean and good and pretty and nice so that everyone will like us. And we have to be skeptical of our motivations. We have to be skeptical because what Jeremiah warns us of is that the heart is deceitful above anything else. The heart's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? All right.

We'll get back to my notes. If you can stand for the reading of God's word, our passage for today is Exodus 20, verse 16. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Perhaps the first thing we should notice on this passage is that it does not say you shall not lie. It actually begins by saying you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. And the idea of bearing false witness against your neighbor includes the idea of lying and the concept of deception. Like that's wrapped up in it. But there are some distinctions there, which as we get on, we'll find are important.

as we work through it. But bearing witness is first and foremost a legal idea. It has to do with being in court and testifying. If you saw a crime or maybe you're an expert in a certain area, you may be called into a court to testify to the truth. Maybe you committed a crime and you're being called in to testify. Whatever it is, when you are called in to witness, this command binds you to telling the truth. Often, if you're in the court setting, you're actually sworn in to tell the truth. I swear to tell nothing but the truth, right? Now, if we just were to take that command and just kind of leave it in that political or that courtroom context, It's probably a fairly simple command for everyone except for Michael and Amanda, right, who are in the court a lot and dealing with that stuff. Most of us are rarely in the court. But as God sees fit, this is not just a command dealing with the court, but it has to do with all of our lives. Bearing witness goes far beyond simply speaking in an official court.

I mean, I think I was talking about this with my kids. How many of you kids have been called into an unofficial court setting? Mom and dad are not in the room. Someone starts crying. Mom or dad enter the room and they say, what happened? You have been just called to bear witness. You have been asked to testify. as to why your sibling or your friend is crying and hurt. And so this gets really practical all of a sudden, because you are commanded by God to not bear false witness. What does that mean? It means you must tell the truth. So when your parents ask you what happened, what do you say in that moment? You realize that you're called to testify and to speak to the truth, and what you say has import. That means that what you say will actually have bearing on what happens. It may lead to someone being spanked or disciplined in some way. So you may not lie. You may not blame your sibling because you're mad at them to try and get them in trouble. You may not use that as an opportunity to get someone else in trouble. To lie,

When you're asked for the truth of what happened is to condemn yourself before God and to hate your brother or your sister or your friend and to not love them. Now, in Deuteronomy, it says, the judges shall investigate thoroughly. And if the witness is a false witness and he accused his brother falsely, Then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. And thus you shall purge the evil from among you. The rest will hear and will be afraid and will never again do such an evil thing among you. So you get what we're being taught in Jesus' law and God's law is that if you're asked what happened and you lie in order to get someone in trouble, Because you're angry, because you're scared, because you don't want to get in trouble. And it's found out, even though you didn't commit the crime, you ought to receive the punishment that you were wishing upon the person you lied to against. So you hit your sibling with the sword, or you whack them, and you're angry, and then you lie to mom or dad so that you don't get a spank.

and your other sibling gets a spank, the one who should get a spank now is you. Even if you didn't commit the sin, but you lie about it, you deserve the consequences for it. And the reason, part of the reason you do is because then everyone's afraid. Because they realize that to God, the truth is important. And when you lie, it is so serious, you deserve the punishment for a crime you didn't commit. because of the seriousness with which lying is taken. Lying is a very serious sin. God does not play around with it because God is truth. Now, tied into this idea of bearing false witness is the idea of reputation and of honor. And we live in a day where We don't think much about honor. We don't take it that seriously most of the time. But God does. And part of the positive side of keeping the ninth commandment is that we ought to be jealous for each other's reputations and our own. Now, when other people gossip to you about their wife or maybe their husband or maybe their in-laws or their kids,

How do you respond to that? Because you realize when we're telling stories, telling a story is bearing witness to something. You're testifying about a person, about a situation. You're saying this is true, or why would you be telling that story about them? And so you're affecting how other people will view a situation or view another person. by telling the stories that you tell. And if we sit and listen to it, that makes us an accomplice to it. So part of this commandment is that we need to be very careful about the things that we allow ourselves to hear and the things that we allow ourselves to spread. Because we could be participating and lying and deceiving about another person.

You should have a reputation as someone who is very unsympathetic to gossip. You realize that people who gossip want people who are sympathetic to it. Gossips, the last person that a gossip wants to talk to is someone who wants to know if what you're saying is actually true and what the point of it is and why you're telling that story. And if you're that kind of person, gossips will sense that and they won't have anything to do with you. We should all have a reputation as someone who does not want to be the center of gossip and the center of destroying other people's good name. Gossip is a form of false witness. It's talking behind someone's back. It's telling stories about them, trying to change how people view that person or interact with that person, making them skeptical of that person. So you should ask yourself, before you go telling tales about other people, Or if someone starts to tell you stories about another person, maybe you should ask yourself, can the person I'm going to talk to have any effect on this situation? Because often we say, oh, it's not gossip. I'm telling him to warn them. Or because I think it might be a helpful thing for that person to know. Well, if it's helpful for them to know, then they should be able to have some sort of effect on the situation. So one thing to ask is,

Can they actually do anything about the information that I'm giving them? Can they affect it? Can they resolve it? Do you need advice? Are they able to give you good advice? Or are you just telling someone to tell them? Because it's interesting. I thought it was interesting. Maybe they'll think it's interesting. I've had some people who have come to me and said, well, I'm not sure what to do about this, but I saw this. Here's what happened. I'll let you deal with it. That's good. That's what we should do. You go to your pastor, your elder, if you see sin and you're not sure whether it's sin that you should deal with or you can deal with, it's good to go and say, here's the problem that I saw. I'm going to forget it. You deal with it as you want. It's wrong and an entirely different thing to start telling four or five friends about this thing that you saw and that maybe It's important. Maybe it's not. I just sort of thought I'd tell you about it. That breeds ill will and it's gossiping. And it's bearing, potentially bearing false witness against someone, even if it's true. And that you're destroying their name in front of other people. Now, this becomes really serious, even more so when we consider the culture that we live in. Because we all have these

Phones in our pockets, right? Which are all connected to the internet. And we have TikTok and Twitter and YouTube and Telegram and all type of social media. And social media is all about lies. Filled with lies. It's there to spread false information. It damages people's reputations and lives. I mean, you think about the number of times in national news you've heard of someone accused of rape. Then it turns out it was just an accusation. But you never see the follow-up story about how the person was acquitted and they were lied against and their life was destroyed. And this is so much of what social media is. It is incumbent upon you that you do research before you share any news article, any article, any story.

You cannot share something you've not read through and read through carefully. Because by sharing things that you think are true, but you don't know if it's true, you can destroy people's lives. You're lying without maybe even knowing it. And guess what? You're still then responsible for having borne faultless witness to something. And so in this day and age where everything is so easily shared, we just post it. Oh, we read the headline and it made us angry. And of course the Democrats would do that. Or of course Republican, of course it would have to be true. So you just share it without reading through it, taking the time to verify if it actually happened. You're bearing false witness. You're breaking this command. You're participating in lies. And the more divided we are in our politics, the more disagreement we have with someone, The more anger we have towards something, the more easily deceived you are. And the more likely you are to bear false witness against people. And the problem is often, too, that what we are tempted to share and do in these situations is false when there's plenty of truthful things that we could say about the situation that are really bad. And it's like, if you really want to warn someone, then actually find the truth about the situation.

Don't share the made-up things because then you look like a liar, you are a liar, you've borne false witness, and you've actually done more harm to the cause that you're trying to support than if you actually went and found the truthful thing, which is awful, rather than the made-up awful thing. But social media is not simply at risk of destroying people's reputations and livelihoods by sharing lies or perpetuating false ideas or religions or whatever by sharing lies. There are many other lies and deceits that we can find. How much of TikTok is just teaching you how you should look, what your body shape should be? How much of social media is telling you how happy this person is? And boy, aren't you just a miserable wreck because you're not as happy as the lies that they're feeding you on social media. Aren't you a loser?

book about self-help. You must be a loser because you're not that successful. And so you allow your joy in life to be robbed because of the lies and the false witness that's being portrayed to you by algorithms. You look at it and you're like, wow, that mom's life is really put together. Because all you see is a very edited and very curated video, which has been fed to you by an algorithms. And these algorithms often have more insight into your desires than you do. And you think that these algorithms and the videos that the social media is feeding you is actually real. If you believe it, you're naive. You're buying into lies. And these lies will steal your joy. And if you join in and start sharing all these things and feeding them to other people, all you're doing is spreading the deception.

Beware of social media and what the internet feeds you. And especially as it comes to our children. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Like, we'll find what we want and we'll believe what we want. I have a friend who, when my brother-in-law got married, he had been told that the cabin he was staying at, there'd been a lot of bear activity up there. In fact, the cabin next door, their dog had been attacked by a bear. So he was going to bring a shotgun with him. And a friend of mine, we were talking and he's like, dude, it'd be so epic to shoot a bear on your honeymoon. Like how epic would that be? So I told my brother-in-law. So what he did was he photoshopped a picture of himself in with a bear, like standing there with his gun, you know, next to this black bear or whatever. It was an obviously fake photo.

And so I then sent it to my buddy and was like, hey, look, he shot a bear on his honeymoon. And my friend's pretty tech savvy, and it was an obviously photographed, Photoshopped photo. He believed it. He swallowed it, right? Like, he was talking about how cool it was. And the thing was, it was like, if he hadn't wanted to believe it, he would never have believed it. He would have easily looked right at the photo and said, that's Photoshopped. But he wanted it to be true so bad that he was not discerning at all when he looked at the photo. He just looked at it and was like, oh, it's evidence. It is what it said it was, right? And there's just a warning to us that the things that we want to, if we want to believe something's true, we're very susceptible to deception. We must be on guard. And so much of social media is just trying to feed you the things that you want to be true.

Whether it's about your life as a mother, whether it's about your political views, whether it's about how successful other people are and how successful you wish you were or you want to be and you think that other, you name it. There's very sophisticated things in these algorithms that just like as you click on things, it knows so that it can start feeding you the things that you want to believe is true. And then you think all the other, the rest of the world must think and be like this because this is all the news and the things that I'm being fed. And so much of it is lies. And so much of it steals our joy because we think that God has been unkind to us because we don't have the things that these other people are portraying to us, which is often just lies. And in fact, the heuristic I operate by is the more happy things I see someone post on Facebook, the more miserable they are in their real life.

So they have to post it on Facebook or Twitter or whatever so that a couple years later, as it comes back in the algorithm, they think that maybe I actually was happy. So I think it's the inverse. The happier someone appears on social media, the more miserable they are in real life. Lies kill. Lies kill. They're only destructive. When you practice lying and deceiving, what begins to happen is... You think everyone else is a liar and a deceiver because you know that you're lying and you think, well, no one should actually believe me because I'm lying, but people do believe me. So maybe I'm just the dupe of everyone else because everyone believes me and I'm duping them. And so as we begin to perpetuate lies and trade and deception, it begins.

to destroy us. We can no longer trust anyone. We no longer know what's up and down. Because you know that you can't be trusted, yet others do believe you. Everyone else is trying to get you, which will destroy your relationships and will destroy your joy in life. Lies kill and deceive. We must be very, very leery of deceiving others. Now, you say, well, What about times that we have where we can see it seems that deception was helpful or protected? I've had people, multiple people have asked me leading up to this about Rahab. You know, Rahab lied. And Rahab seems to be commended for her act in protecting the spies. She lied to throw off those who were there to kill the spies.

But there's no need to stop with Rahab. We could also look at the Hebrew midwives. We could look at David numerous times in his military fights. Joshua in his fights is practicing deception of the enemy, right? And there are many other examples throughout Scripture of people using deception to... protect others, to win battles, to win fights. And so we have this question that's like, okay, well then, are there some instances where lying is justified? Where we say, okay, maybe this is fine to lie. And what I want to say is, first of all, is that remind you what Jeremiah says, that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

And so it's very, very easy for us to try and find exceptions to where lying really appears to be justified and then use that in order to just practice deception carte de blanche, right? Blank check for lying whenever you want. And so if that is the tug in your heart, be warned. God is a God of truth, not a God of lies. Now, What I will say is that one of the greatest things is that God has created man in his own image. And that gives a certain weight to life. We ought to protect life and do what we can to protect and sustain life. Now, when we look at Rahab and what she did, the command is to not bear false witness against our neighbor. And I think you can make...

good argument that she was not deceiving neighbors. They were these enemies that she had that were arguing, that were out to kill and harm the people of God. And so she lied in protection of them. And there's basically two camps that I think people fall into. And godly men have fallen on either side of these. Whereas one is that we must be scrupulously honest in everything we do. And so therefore, if you are asked, are you hiding Jews or are you hiding these spies? Then you must say, yes, I am. Or just be quiet and trust that God will save them in some other way. Some of the difficulties of that that are presented is that the very act of hiding them is deceptive. So the fact that you took them in, when you know it's illegal and you hid them, is in itself an act of deception. And when you took them in, you obligated yourself to protect them. So then to turn them over would be now a violation of the sixth commandment, which is you shall not murder. Because you took them in and you're breaking this commandment underlying by turning over people whom you have said you would protect.

So there's a whole lot of complicated things that play into this. And there's something here that we can learn. Calvin says, therefore, although our purpose be to assist our brethren, to consult for their safety and relieve them, it never can be lawful to lie because that cannot be right, which is contrary to the nature of God. And God is true. And still, and still the act of Rahab is not devoid of the praise of virtue. although it was not spotlessly pure, for it so often happens that while the saints study to hold the right path, they deviate into circuitous courses. And I think that there's sort of a, there's a beauty to what Calvin's acknowledging here, that the saints study to do the will of God and they strive to, and yet many are the circuitous routes that we go by doing.

fulfilling what we believe God's will to be. And there's a reality to the fact that we live in a poor fallen world, and often there are very difficult and sometimes even extreme situations which we find ourselves in, and it's unclear how we should act as Christians. And we have to be careful of how we deal with those who would draw the lines differently in those situations than we would. We must have charity towards one another and not think that we are, oh, so much more righteous than they are. A helpful thing to think about in a circumstance like this is why are you going to practice, why would you want to practice deception? And who would pay the consequences of the practice? If you deceive, who is going to pay the consequences for it?

We talked about in the beginning, you know, being brought up, our kids, you know, the sort of little court scenes you have in a family. All right, something happened. Who did it? If your lie is merely to protect yourself from pain and punishment, it's wicked. Part of what's so amazing about Rahab's lie is that she lied in order to protect God's people. She clearly states that she fears God and that she knows this land is for God's people. And she did it at her own cost, to her own peril. In other words, the safe and easy route for her would be just to turn over the spies and say, well, go in and take them. And so no matter whether you say no, no lying in any circumstances, or you want to justify what Rahab did, what she did was at cost to herself. It was not self-protective. It was protective of the people of God. In Proverbs, it talks about stealing.

And it says that if the man has nothing and he's hungry and he steals, he still has to pay the consequences of his stealing, but everyone understands why. And there's not the animosity towards him than if he had stolen for his own enrichment when he had no want. And I think that in situations like that, there is that reality too, where we want to hear, okay, Rahab lied. And God blessed her and she became part of the people of God. In fact, she was in the line of God. And therefore, when I'm in a really intense situation and I'm uncomfortable and I might get hurt, I'll just lie so that I can get out of it and not get hurt. That's not what Rahab did. Rahab actually put herself in greater jeopardy through her protection of the people of God. We all dislike tattletales, right? We sort of have this thing where it's kind of weird sometimes as a parent where another kid comes and tattles on another kid. And what you realize is they tell you information that you have to deal with often, but you're just as upset with a kid who's tattling as with the kid who actually sinned in the first place. Why? Well, because the kid who's tattling isn't doing it out of love for their brother. They're doing it out of hatred for their brother. Because the tattle's like, I'm going to tell the truth to try and get other people in trouble because I'm mad at them.

And so there's this reality to where with truth, we can maliciously share truth in order to harm other people, in order to not protect and care for others. And so we need to be very careful that we're not just all about the truth in order to get revenge on other people. I think that's why we have this sort of inherent dislike of people who tattle. Because it's... all self-preservation. It's cowardly. It's not born out of love for the other person. It's born out of hatred for the other person. And you sense that and you go like, ugh. Now we feel this tension because we're living under a bureaucracy that hates God and opposes Christians. And so it is not, you say, well.

Spending so much time on Rahab, I think, well, is there usefulness to this? Why is it worth exploring and looking through? Well, I think there is usefulness to this because we live in a country where much of the bureaucracy that's over us hates God. And we know that there's a tension there. And so you may be in a situation very easily where you have to deal with caseworkers and you have to fill out forms and you question how to do so honestly while protecting you and your children or maybe other people. And if you find yourself in a situation like that, if you have the opportunity and the time, it's good to get counsel to figure out how to deal with that situation. But you may not. And so you have to think about these things beforehand because you may not have time. But we must recall that the Bible tells us that we must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. A wise man does not run his mouth or share every thought and opinion that he has with everyone that he meets.

Every person needs to know every detail of everything. And it's not lying. Sometimes withholding information is lying, especially if you know that it's your mom or dad and they're trying to get particular information out of you. And withholding that can be a lie. But not telling all the truth that you know is not a violation of the ninth commandment. A silly example, maybe. I remember on a youth retreat years ago, one of my youth leaders asked my sister a question about, he wanted to know the details for something. And she didn't know. She said, sorry, I don't know. And then she left and she actually went and she found out what he was looking for. In the meantime, someone else answered his question. And then she came back and she told him the information that he had. And he said, okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And then she left. I remember one of the kids that was there was like, Dude, why didn't you tell her you already knew? He's like, I don't need to tell her that. What good would that be? What kindness is that to her? To just be like, oh, I already knew that information. He's like, she was very kind and got the information and came, right? And he wasn't lying to her by not telling her that, oh, I already knew what you just told me. He was actually just being kind to her. And so there is a point where sometimes just sharing every opinion and thought that you have, because I, and

this idea of just, I need to be as truthful as possible, that you actually can cause more harm to other people or to yourself or to your family or those in your charge. Our enemies are not necessarily our neighbors. And if someone is trying to kill you or your family or someone you're protecting, like in war, you do not owe them the full truth. You must protect those you've committed to protect. To not protect them would be a violation of the sixth commandment and of not murdering. This is a lot of gray and murky waters, and you have to use wisdom and discernment in how to approach this. And so it's something that you have to pray, and you have to be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove. And you have to show charity towards those who are in challenging situations like this and would make a decision different than you. We must love them because they're in a very challenging situation. But we must remember that the Bible does not command us to be witnesses.

It is assumed that you're a witness. There's no command that you must go forth and be a witness. You are made in the image of God. Being in an image of God means that what you do testifies either blasphemously or truthfully of the God who created you. So you will always be witnessing to something. The fact that we're created in God's image means we reflect him. And it means that our very lives are a testimony in favor of or against God. So what kind of witness do your actions portray of God? As I said earlier, John 14, 6 says, Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Jesus says, I am the truth. Think about what that means. He embodies the truth. It doesn't mean that Jesus is a mere representation of the truth or that Jesus merely points to the truth, or he has part of the truth. Jesus is the truth. This means that anything that is true must flow from him. And any knowledge or any structure of knowledge that does not take this into account is inherently flawed. Now, in John 8, 44, what does Jesus say? He says, you are of your father, the devil.

And you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. And so we left, I want to leave you with this question, which is who is your father? Do you live by lies or do you live by the truth? Are you scrupulous in your words and your interactions with others? Do you work hard to speak truthfully about others, even or especially when you disagree with them? Do you take seriously your reputation and the reputation of others? We must take stock of our lives because the Lord takes the truth seriously. He is the truth. It means we ought to take the truth seriously as well. And so who are we like?

Do our lies portray the father of lies or the truth? Let's pray.