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What comes to mind when you hear about the Ten Commandments? For many people, they bring up feelings of guilt and shame, or they seem like a list of rules that are impossible to follow. In today’s sermon, Tim Keller shows us how God didn’t give us the Ten Commandments to crush us with unattainable moral standards, but to point us to Jesus Christ, the only one who perfectly fulfills God’s law.

Guest (Male): Our scripture reading is Psalm 15 and 16. We’re going to read it together as a unit. Six verses of Psalm 15, eleven verses of Psalm 16, and I hope you will see as we study it that it is a unit.

Psalm 15: Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman, who despises a vile man and honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.

Psalm 16: Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the Lord, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones, in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips. Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. This is God’s word.

Tim Keller: We're in a series on the Ten Commandments. Today we come to the ninth commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. You shall not lie, or to put it positively, be honest. Live a life of total integrity. Honesty, such a lovely word. As Billy Joel said, it’s mostly what I need from you, but it’s pretty hard to find honesty.

I read this in Mark Twain. Mark Twain said, "When I was a boy, I was walking along a street when I happened to spy a cart full of watermelons. I was fond of watermelons. So I sneaked up quietly and snitched one. I ran to a nearby alley and sank my teeth into it. But no sooner had I done so, however, when a strange feeling came over me. Without a moment's hesitation, I walked back to the cart, replaced the melon, and stole a ripe one."

That sort of thing goes down much better, doesn't it? Stolen watermelons go down a lot better than stolen sex or even stolen money. The last three commandments we’ve looked at have been sex, money, and honesty now. I think we’re going to find, if we think about this, that the sex part and the money part bother us considerably more than the honesty part and that we allow sins in this area to go right through and they go down easy. They're not that hard to swallow.

It’s really possible, I believe, to see that honesty is a difficult commodity. My theory about a big city is that big cities do not make people bad, but big cities make clear what’s in the human heart. So New York doesn't create dishonesty. What New York does is it makes clear the inveterate duplicity and dishonesty in the human heart. A lot of you live in professional arenas where half-truths and misrepresentations and out-and-out lies are just something you swim in.

It’s just there. You see it at the highest levels. The thing that irks me a little bit is that people seem to think if we can just ferret out all of these high-ranking officials who are dishonest, things will be all right, and we forget it’s more deeply embedded. The dishonesty is more deeply embedded in the high places than in individuals. Whenever you hear a news release, two countries have had a fight, and the one country officially says, "We lost three fighter planes and they lost 20."

The other country says, "Oh no, we lost three fighter planes and they lost 20," and you begin to realize we’re not just talking about getting rid of a bad egg here or there, but we’re talking about duplicity and dishonesty as actually the chronic lying as the accepted discourse for international diplomacy. You can see it, the dishonesty in the high places. You can see it in the professional places, but you can see it way down at the grassroots level.

Take the time you go out with this person on the very first date. When you come back, if you're honest, you'll realize that you've virtually been lying about who you are the whole date because it’s so important for you to make sure you don't let that person find out what you're really like. So you do an awful lot of things that are very close to misrepresentation. But it goes even deeper than that. We're not honest with ourselves.

Dishonesty starts because we're all so good at denial. The dishonesty not only permeates the high places and the professional places, it permeates the inner places. You know around you people that through blame-shifting and through rationalization, when everybody else can see their fault, are absolutely blind to a particular fault. You can see it, and everybody around them can see it, and they don't see it.

What about you? If you can see other people being totally blind to it, what about you? I talked to a counselor who said he was scared. He said, "When I see how blind people are to their own faults, faults that are as clear as the nose on the face for everybody else to see, I begin to wonder about me. How do I know who I really am?" No wonder Alexander Pope said an honest man is the noblest work of God.

Let me say this: that is right on the money. The Bible says that honesty is a supernatural work of God, and the best answer to the counselor is this: honesty starts when you become honest about your dishonesty and you recognize that you're incapable of it. It can only be a supernatural work of God. If you cannot see your dishonesty, if you cannot raise your hands and say the only way I'll ever have any integrity is if God creates it in me, you're not honest at all.

Honesty starts when you see the dishonesty and when you say, "I'm incapable of it." Until then, you haven't even begun to have any integrity. Now the passage we're looking at here, Psalm 15 and 16, will show you yourself. This passage shows us three things. Number one, it shows us the opposite of integrity. Number two, it shows us the counterfeit of integrity, and number three, it shows us how to cultivate integrity.

The opposite of integrity is dishonesty. The counterfeit of integrity is hypocrisy. And we'll see the way to cultivate integrity. First, the opposite of integrity is dishonesty. If you look at Psalm 15, you'll see that the person is being described as someone who speaks the truth, who does what is righteous, who doesn't take a bribe, who keeps his word even when it hurts. Let’s try to break this down.

An honest man, an honest person is somebody who represents reality, doesn't misrepresent reality, and keeps his word. He doesn't lie, and he doesn't break his promises. He doesn't lie. The Bible says that lying is misrepresentation of reality. There are no levels of truthfulness. There's an interesting place in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, "I say unto you, swear not at all. Do not swear by your head. Do not swear by the city, because your head was created by God and the city is the city of the great King. But let your yes be yes and let your no be no."

What in the world does that mean? A lot of people have abused that over the years, and some Christians because of that text won't take an oath in court, and I think they're missing the point. What Jesus is saying is some people believe when they're under oath, when they've sworn by something, then they have to tell the truth. Otherwise, they're not under oath. In other words, they believe in levels of truthfulness.

If I'm under oath, it’s one thing. If I'm not under oath, it’s another thing. He says, "Listen, when you swear by your head, God made that. When you swear by the great city of Jerusalem, that’s the city of the great King." Don't you realize, Jesus says, that you're always under oath if you're a believer? Don't you realize that there are no levels of truthfulness? Every time you say "yes" when somebody says "will you do this?", that is an oath.

God regards it as an oath. You ought to regard it as an oath. There are no levels of truthfulness. Matthew 12 says you will be judged for every idle word. What if I told you that tomorrow we were going to have a videotape camera on you and everything you said was going to be recorded? What if on Tuesday it was going to be beamed around the world by a satellite and two billion people would watch it?

Now here's a very serious question: would that have any impact on how you spoke tomorrow? Would it make a difference or not? Of course it would make a difference. But let me tell you something. Jesus Christ is saying your actual case, your actual condition is even more serious than that because God is watching. God wants truthfulness and integrity because he’s a God of truth and integrity.

His verdict and his opinion is far more important and has far more dire consequences than even that of two billion people. You are on videotape. Shouldn't that have an impact? For a Christian, there are no levels of truthfulness. Here's Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C, and they know Mr. X did not rob the bank. Someone comes to them and says, "Did Mr. X rob the bank?" Mr. A says, "Mr. X, yes, he robbed the bank."

Mr. B says, "Mr. X, I saw him at the scene of the crime that night." Mr. C says nothing. What have they done? They've all lied. God is not concerned about technical accuracy. The whole idea of integrity is you do right by your neighbor. He who does his neighbor no wrong. Right in the middle of all this stuff about don't lie and don't cheat and don't take a bribe and hold on to your promise and follow your contracts is this: he does his neighbor no wrong.

Remember how Jesus says you can boil all the commandments down to two: love God and love your neighbor. Ultimately, deception is really what lying is all about. Whether you've told even the technically accurate thing, if you did it in such a way as to deceive somebody, that is a breach of integrity. Lying makes people dependent. When you lie, you are enslaving them. They're not free. When you tell them the truth, they're free. When you lie, they are dependent and you have enslaved them to your goals.

Ultimately, it’s just plainly a lack of love. As a result, God will brook no levels of truthfulness. He will brook no deception at all. Now, by the way, footnote. What about harmless lies and benevolent lies? Harmless lies have several categories. I was working out all these different categories of lies. It’s incredible. One is under harmless, polite lies. "Why, Phyllis, you haven't aged a day." A polite lie.

Or, "Look, I would love to go, but I'm going to be out of town that day." Polite lies. Then you have euphemisms, exaggerations, and glosses. For example, "This year the business experienced some seasonal reversals," when actually you experienced disastrous losses. Or you're an editor and you give this back and you say, "Well, you know, I think your writing is too sophisticated for our readers," when actually it’s just bad. Or the person who is constantly giving you word inflation.

Everything is great. It was a blessing. It was a triumph. It was inspirational. What’s wrong with harmless lies? They're harmless. They're not harmless. They can't be harmless or they wouldn't be forbidden. What happens with harmless lies is they create cynicism, don't they? You can't identify any one of those things as really being all that bad. In fact, you can't always even nail a person for that being a lie.

Because of the sort of thing it’s very difficult, even though you know you're not going to be out of town, it’s very difficult to prove that the person's a liar when they say, "I'd love to come, but I can't." You can't nail them. But what happens is harmless lies breed cynicism. It’s word inflation. It gets to the place where people don't believe what they hear, they don't believe what they read, and they don't believe what you're saying.

Harmless lies are not harmless. But then there's benevolent lies. Benevolent lies are lies like this: when you've got a friend who's got a drinking problem, who's fallen into some kind of moral lapse, who's mismanaged his funds and you lie to protect them. Or when you've got a loved person who's going to die and you can't tell her or him. Or in a situation like Watergate kind of lies where you say, "Well, the little people, they just wouldn't understand. So we have to lie."

In some cases, those things are a little harder to write off, and some of those conditions are a little bit more difficult. Yet they are not benevolent lies either. The whole biblical principle is that lying is an assault and affront to your neighbor. When you lie even to people out of love, you demean them. You put them in that dependent condition. You treat them like children. And the worst thing about it is you isolate that person from yourself. Lies always isolate. It breaks community. It makes you utterly alone.

Guest (Male): We all chase things like success, true love, or the perfect life—good things that can easily become ultimate things. When we put our faith in them, deep down we know they can't satisfy our deepest longing. The truth is that we've made lesser gods of good things, things that can't give us what we really need.

In his book *Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters*, Tim Keller shows us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the truth about societal ideals and our own hearts, and shows us that there is only one God who can wholly satisfy our desires. This month, we’ll send you *Counterfeit Gods* as our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. You can request your copy at gospelinlife.com/give. That’s gospelinlife.com/give. Now here is Dr. Keller with the rest of today’s teaching.

Tim Keller: There's no such thing as a harmless lie and I'm not even sure there's such a thing as a benevolent lie except in some extreme cases, and even then you come away knowing you've been defiled. Because it says here, "the man who does these things"—see verse five—"will never be shaken." Lies create anxiety. Lies create fear, lies create isolation, lies create hiding. As a result, you're shakable. Don't lie.

Another part of honesty is keep your word. See what it says here in verse four? It says he keeps his oath even when it hurts. You know what a promise is? G.K. Chesterton says a promise is an appointment you make with yourself. An appointment you make with yourself for the future. In other words, a promise says regardless of what happens, I'm going to be there.

When you make a promise, you free yourself from your future. You see, forgiveness is the only way you can keep from being controlled by your painful past. Promising is the only way you can keep from being controlled by your unpredictable future. When you promise, "I'm going to love you," what you're saying is I refuse to be pushed around by my genes or my brain chemistry or society or history. I promise to be there for you five years from now.

When you make the big promises, the promises to your spouse, when you make the big promises to your employer, you make the big promises even to a church. When people come to me and say, "What is this membership stuff? What do you mean by being a member of a church?" I say it’s very simple. Membership just means you make a promise. And the Bible says life should be built on promises, the promise to be there regardless of how I feel, regardless of my glands.

When you make a promise, you bear witness to the fact that you're not a lump of human dough pushed about by your glands, pushed about by the environment. In this modern environment, our modern society says so strongly you must not keep promises if they don't fulfill you. Your needs, your personal fulfillment must be more important than any promise. You live in a society like that, beware.

Because the Bible tells you that in the name of freedom, when you break promises, you've become a slave to your glands. You've become a slave to your past, to your brain chemistry, to your feelings, to what other people are saying about you. That’s no way to do it. Promises bring freedom and broken promises bring enslavement. Sir Thomas More was going to be burned at the stake because of a couple of things that he wrote, some promises he made.

He had a beautiful daughter named Meg who just pleaded with him to recant. "Go back on your promise and save yourself." At one point he said this to her. He said, "When a man takes an oath, Meg, he is holding his own self in his hand like water. If he opens his fingers, then he need not hope to find himself again." By the way, the Bible does tell us that there are such things as foolish promises, sinful promises that would be more of a sin to keep than to break.

Remember Herod made a promise to his stepdaughter when he was drunk or sexually aroused? He says, "I'll give you anything, even up to half my kingdom." She says, "I want the head of John the Baptist." He says, "Oh no." You know what he should have done? At that point he should have admitted the sinfulness of what he did. It was a greater sin to keep that promise than to break it. Or what he should have said is, "I'm sorry, his head is in the other half of my kingdom."

Am I suggesting casuistry? No. Right here in this very passage we see though the situation in which a promise might be broken: when it hurts somebody else. When it was so foolish and it was so rash that to keep it would hurt somebody else. But when it only hurts you to keep it, keep it. Because you may think you're buying freedom now, but you're actually selling your freedom later. That’s the opposite of integrity.

The counterfeit of integrity is hypocrisy. Because it doesn't just say that this man speaks truth. Look in verse two: it says this man speaks truth from the heart. The word integrity is the same word as our English word integer. What’s an integer? A whole number, not a fraction. When we say here, "this man speaks truth from his heart," what we're saying is what he says is what he is. There is a wholeness about this man. There's a simplicity.

The word hypocrisy actually comes from the Greek word for actor. No offense, those of you in the theater. Because a hypocrite is the word for actor in Greek. It simply means you're one way on the outside and you're another way in reality. Inconsistency comes when you find yourself being one way with one crowd and another way with another. I remember down south, I lived in a little mill town.

I used to walk into one room and people would be saying, "You know what’s made this country great? Labor unions. That’s what’s made this country great. Don't you think, pastor?" I'd sit there and say, "Hmm, yeah, I'm sure we'd all be in the rice paddies if it wasn't for labor unions." Then you walk into the next room, everybody would be sitting around saying, "You know what’s ruining this country? Labor unions. That’s what’s ruining this country. Don't you think, pastor?"

"Well, you know, there's a lot to that. You really got a good point there." You see, I'm not a man of integrity. Integrity means you're not saying one thing and thinking another. You're not saying one thing and doing another. You're not one way with one crowd and another way with another crowd. It means you're the same from crowd to crowd. I'll never forget the story by Alan Emery, who is a fabulously wealthy businessman.

He remembers when he was just a clerk coming up in a textile firm back in Camden, New Jersey, back in the 1920s. He remembers in front of the great big boss of his company, he was standing there and the boss said, "Emery, let me tell you a joke," and told him the most filthy joke he'd ever heard in his life. Emery stood there and refused to laugh. The guy said, "Don't you think that’s funny, Emery?" He says, "No, I think it’s dirty."

Now there's a happy end to that story. The guy said, "You got guts, Emery," and gave him a quick promotion. It doesn't always work like that. But you see, that’s integrity. Do you have integrity? Are you one way in private and another way in public? Do you have a good public persona, but on the other hand, in private your family knows what you're really like? Or do you have good private morality in the area of sex, you're straight arrow?

But on the job everybody knows that you pad your expense account? Are you a person of integrity? What amazes me, I was just reading a book by Tom Peters called *Thriving on Chaos*. It’s a management manual. All the way through here he points out that management has to change in this country because things are constantly in flux. So the only way to be a good manager is to constantly push for innovation. Constant innovation and constantly get your people to take risks.

Then he asks this question: "If you're going to be a manager in a time like this, how will you ever get anybody to trust you?" If you're constantly saying innovation, change, risk, vision, he says that’s how you have to lead today. How are you ever going to get anybody to trust you? And the answer is the only way you'll get stability is if you are a person of total integrity.

The last chapter in his book says, "Demand Total Integrity." And I was amazed. He started to tick off the little ways in which you have to really have total integrity or you'll have no stability, just what Psalm 15 says. He who does these things will never be shaken. Tom Peters says this: he says, "For example, there should be total dependability. Never make a promise you can't keep. Never make claims that you can't produce on. Always over-deliver. Don't lie in order to get a contract."

He says, "Treat everybody even-handedly. Everybody." He says, "For example, be the same in public as private." Sounds just like the Bible. He says, "Don't say publicly, 'We're for quality,' but then privately have unreasonable deadlines so that everybody knows that though you're telling everybody else publicly 'I want quality,' yet your employees know you can't want quality." He says, "Treat people in an even-handed way. Don't have lavish perks for management and none for anybody else."

He says, "Don't take friends to the company box seats when everybody knows you're only supposed to be taking clients there." He says, "Don't you realize there is no such thing as a small lapse in integrity?" Don't you realize when you tell the sales people "put in a lot of orders right before the end of the quarter" because even though you know they're all going to be canceled, they'll look really good for the accountant? They'll be canceled a week after the period is over.

He says, "Don't you realize that there's no such thing as a small lapse in integrity? You'll never get people to trust you. You'll never be able to get people to feel they're respected." When I read that, I said, "Unbelievable." On the front of the book it says, "Time for a management revolution. A new approach to management." Are you kidding? Psalm 15 says: he who does these things—absolute dependability, absolute honesty, absolute consistency—will never be shaken.

But poor Tom Peters, I read that last chapter and I realized the things he was telling people to change were things—the lack of even-handedness, the duplicity. He says, "For example, don't be publicly saying 'everything’s fine, everything’s fine' when all your employees know things aren't fine." I just don't know how anyone is going to change without conversion. And I think he’s being totally unrealistic.

The only way to change is conversion. How? At the end of Psalm 15, it says, "He who does these things, lives a life of total integrity, will never be shaken." But in the middle of Psalm 16, it says, "Since I set the Lord ever before me, I will never be shaken." Do you see that? To live a life of total integrity means to have God ever before you. It’s your only hope.

Let’s just close like this: you will never have a life of personal integrity unless number one, you see that you need God. The reason that lies began, the lies began back in the Garden of Eden the moment that Adam and Eve decided to live for themselves. If you decide you're going to be your own master—and many of you in this room are—you're making your own decisions, you're organizing your own lives, you're not putting everything under the word of God.

Don't you realize he built you? He created you? He keeps you alive every second? Therefore, for you to live as your own master means you're out of touch with reality and you have to hide from reality, and that’s the beginning of our dishonesty. It’s the root of everything else. Why do you find it so hard to admit you're wrong? Why do we have this ceaseless self-doubt that’s always gnawing at us? Why do we always have to be convincing ourselves we're somebody?

Why do we have so much trouble hearing criticism? Why do we always have to rationalize and blame other people for our problems? All the dishonesty comes from that: the unwillingness to admit we need God, the unwillingness to admit we're totally dependent on God. You will never be people of integrity. You can't possibly be managers in Tom Peters' revolution unless you first start that way. I need God. Honesty is the beginning.

Jesus told a parable about two men that were told to go out into the field and work. The one man said, "I'll go," and he didn't go. The other man said, "I won't go," but at the eleventh hour changed his mind and went out. Jesus says, "Which one was obedient?" The Pharisees who were listening to the parable says, "Well, it’s the second man, the one even though he originally said no, he went. And the one who said he would go and didn't go, he wasn't obedient."

Then Jesus says, "That’s right. And that’s why the harlots and the whoremongers will go into the kingdom of God before you. Pharisees, you won't admit your weakness. You won't admit your sin." And it’s the only sin that blocks my grace. The only way you'll ever be honest is if you admit your dishonesty, that you need God, that you're utterly dependent on him. And then lastly, you have to find him in Jesus.

Jesus Christ said to Pilate, "I am of the truth, and everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." It’s one thing to know the truth and to have the truth and to be trying to do the truth, but friends, how can you be of the truth? How can you have the truth in your veins? Only if you love Jesus Christ and he has entered your life, his life has entered and penetrated you. Only if you live as if God’s always before you.

Remember when I told you that illustration about the videotape? You're on videotape. That’s what it means to put God ever before you and you will live a life of integrity. If you open your heart to him, he'll open his heart to you, and then only then will you be able to open your heart to other people. Only then will you be able to live a life of total integrity.

You know what that means? It’s to be so genuine, it’s to be so simple, it’s to be like your heart is like a clear lake—you can see all the way to the bottom of it. It’s to be almost a stern person and yet a very approachable person. People will almost be afraid of you if you're that honest, and yet they'll want you to deal with them because they know you talk straight. Because they know you're basically loving and fair. They'll want to deal with you because you'll be a person of integrity. Are you? Go to him. Open your heart to him. Set him ever before you, and you will never be shaken. Let’s pray.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com. There you can subscribe to the Life in the Gospel quarterly journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources.

Again, it’s all at gospelinlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today’s sermon was recorded in 1990. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.