Telling the Truth

Guest (Female): Welcome to Telling the Truth, the ministry of Stuart and Jill Briscoe. On today's program, we're joined by guest speaker Charles Price, who offers insight on one of the pillars of your Christian walk: the issue of truthfulness. Stay tuned.

We want to help you grow strong in your faith as you conquer temptation by sending you Triumph Over Temptation, a powerful four-message series by Stuart and Jill Briscoe. We'll send you a copy of Triumph Over Temptation as thanks for your gift today to help continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of helping others experience life in Christ. So call today to request your copy: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Charles Price with today's teaching.

Charles Price: I'm going to read to you from Matthew chapter 5, where Jesus gave us what we call the Sermon on the Mount, in which he addresses many down-to-earth, practical, everyday life issues that we face as much today, of course, as they ever did in Jesus' day as well. I want to read from verse 33 to verse 37.

Jesus is giving a series of contrasts between what you have heard and what I say unto you, in which he goes behind the surface issues that they have heard and tried to live by to the core heart that lies behind those issues. In verse 33, he says, "Again, you have heard it was said to the people long ago: Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.

"But I tell you, do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes' and your 'No,' 'No.' Anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

That's as far as we're going to read. In these verses in Matthew chapter 5, we can't escape the fact that the Christian life is different to that of the world at large. Every issue Jesus raises here sets his people apart from the norm. We're to handle anger differently, he tells us in verses 21 to 26. We're to treat sex differently, he tells us in verses 27 to 30. We're to approach marriage differently, he tells us in verses 31 to 32.

In all these issues, it is not simply that we are to be more disciplined than other folks, but that we have different resources by the indwelling presence of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. That is what equips us to live differently. That, of course, is what the Gospel is about. As God said in Ezekiel 36:27, speaking about the New Covenant that would come, he said, "I'll put my Spirit in you," and here's the result, "and move you"—that is from within—"move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

That's why if our hearts remained untouched and unruled by the Holy Spirit, our behavior will remain untouched and undirected. Now we come to another issue which relates very much to the ones that have gone before; it's the issue of Christians and the truth, as I'm calling it. Now, what I'm going to share with you is not the kind of issue that'll lift the roof—not that we ever do that very often.

Sometimes you say, "Wow, that's exciting, that's something I really need to get hold of." This may seem in some ways a little more mundane, but I want to suggest that what I want to show you is one of the steel pillars on which your life is going to be held together and structured well. This issue of telling the truth, letting your yes be yes and your no be no, is actually the issue that impacted what Jesus talked about earlier in these verses.

Adultery is about breaking your word, having said to your spouse, "forsaking all others," yet you do not forsake all others. It's not an attractive, available girl that makes a man commit adultery; it's the lack of honesty in his own heart that makes him commit adultery. He does not keep his word. If that door is closed and bolted in your life, that you stand by your word, a lot of these issues don't actually arise because your word has already determined them.

But if that door is left open, you'll face the temptation again and again. Divorce—another thing Jesus talked about—is about breaking your word because the commitment you make at marriage is "until death us do part," but "yes" did not mean "yes" and "no" did not mean "no." So when Jesus moves on now to talk about truth and speaking truthfully, he goes to the very heart of so much else in our lives that comes out of that root character of honesty, truthfulness, and integrity.

I want to talk about three things from these verses. I want to talk first about truth in communication, then we'll talk about truth as character—something deeper than just what we say—and then truth as a commitment: letting your yes be yes and your no be no, as Jesus says here. Let me talk first of all about truth in communication. Communication, of course, is an essential part of life.

This last week, I was in California speaking at a conference, and I lost my voice for almost three days. It's not quite back to normal yet, but it meant I couldn't speak, which was a relief to most people there, I'm sure. But it also meant that I had a very real sense of isolation because I could not communicate even at mealtimes. We had several doctors there at the conference, and they all seemed to have different views about the best thing to do about my voice.

It was very isolating not to be able to communicate. Communication is part of life, but we live in a day that is unsurpassed in the amount of communication, the mass communication that we deal with. We talk about the internet as an information highway. We talk about I.T., which stands for information technology. It embraces the whole computer world, but it's about information primarily.

We have 24-hour news services on radio and television, and that doesn't go back very long. We're bombarded with information, and so, as a result, because there is so much of it to get our attention, often what is communicated becomes shallow, sometimes superficial, and sometimes sensational. Politicians speak in soundbite terms—something that can get picked up on the news and won't take more than 20 seconds to report.

We hear about a profession of spin-doctoring, where spin doctors are not concerned about the accuracy of what is communicated; they're concerned about the effect of what is communicated. So, truth becomes a very fluid commodity in the process. That's the world in which we live. The Bible has a lot to say about the tongue. Proverbs 18:21 says the tongue has the power of life and death.

With that little thing wagging in your mouth, you can make people laugh, and you can make people cry. You can encourage people, and you can discourage people with it. You can build people up, and you can tear people down. You can lift people, and you can condemn people. You can refresh people, and you can intimidate people with the tongue. Words can build marriages, and words can destroy marriages.

Words can develop friendship; words can break friendship. Words are powerful. Now, the first thing Jesus talks about here is about oath-taking. He says, "You've heard it said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.'" When he says, "You've heard it said long ago," he does not then give a direct quotation from the Old Testament. There are allusions to this, especially in Moses' writings in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.

Moses said, "If you take an oath, make sure you keep it." Oath-taking, of course, is swearing by something bigger than you are that I promise what I say is true. Then Jesus says, "But I say to you, do not swear at all." Now, some people have taken this as a prohibition on taking oaths in a courtroom or taking an oath of allegiance or putting your hand on the Bible when you make a statement and so forth.

I grew up with Christians who held this view, and I respect it, but personally, I doubt very much that is the intention here because swearing is not in itself wrong. God himself swore. Hebrews 6:17 says there, "Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath."

That was in conversation with Abraham after Abraham had been willing to offer his son Isaac in sacrifice and God held him back from doing so. But then God said to him in Genesis 22:16, "I swear by myself, declares the Lord." Now, that would be enough to justify the fact that swearing in itself is not the issue. Jacob got an oath from his son Joseph. Joseph extracted oaths from his brothers.

Jonathan asked for an oath from David. In the Old Testament, Paul took an oath in Romans chapter 9 and again in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. So, oath-taking is evidently not intrinsically wrong. The point is that Jesus is making that oath-taking is not the only time you tell the truth.

Guest (Female): You're listening to Charles Price on Telling the Truth. More from him in a moment. Temptation is nothing new. It's been around since the dawn of mankind, and it's not going anywhere as long as we're on this earth. You'll face temptation every day, but sometimes moment by moment. So, we want to send you a special resource to help you stand strong in God's word when temptation does come along.

It's a four-message series from Stuart and Jill Briscoe called Triumph Over Temptation, and they created it to help you not only conquer temptation but to grow stronger in your faith as you do. This series will give you powerful biblical tools to defeat sinful desires and encourage you with the truth that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right.

We'll send you Triumph Over Temptation as our thanks for your gift today to keep sharing the life-changing truth of God's word with people across the globe through the resources and teaching of Telling the Truth. So call today to request your copy of this resource: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's get back to Charles.

Charles Price: That's the issue because actually, oath-taking is itself, if you think about it, a confession of dishonesty: that you say it and you sometimes hear people in conversation wanting to convince you what they're saying is right, and they'll say, "Cross my heart and hope to die," as we used to say when we were kids, anyway. Because normally maybe you can't be believed, but this time really, really believe me.

It's a confession of dishonesty, and the alternative that Jesus puts to them is that you don't need to swear in order to be believed; you need to be believed because you speak the truth, period. The background seems to be that they were swearing anyway over little things. Swearing is usually by something bigger than you that gives value to what you say because it's bigger than you.

It's like giving a verbal security to what you're saying. If you want a financial loan, normally you've got to convince the bank from whom you're getting the loan that you have some kind of security for the loan. If you're getting a mortgage, that your house is worth more than the mortgage, so that if somehow you default and can't pay your mortgage, the value of the house will offset it eventually. So, it's something bigger than you.

If you haven't got resources that will match the loan, then you probably won't get the loan. Well, swearing was a bit like that verbally. God swore by himself because there was nothing greater for him, of course, that he could swear by. But the Jews did not swear by God because, as you may know, the Jewish people did not pronounce or write the name of God. They wrote the consonants Y-H-W-H, which is probably best translated as Yahweh, but we don't know what the real word was.

It's been traditionally read in English as Jehovah, but they wouldn't use the name of God. So, they swore by lesser things, and Jesus talks about some of the things. You swear by heaven, verse 34; by the earth, verse 35; by Jerusalem, verse 35; by your heads, you can't make one hair white or one hair black, but you swear by your heads.

In Matthew 23, when Jesus raises this subject again with the Pharisees, he talks about them swearing by the gold on the temple, thinking it's greater than the temple, or by the gift that's on the altar of the temple—these lesser things. Jesus says about that, what collateral is this? What kind of value does this have?

So, it's not that swearing itself is not valid, though Jesus challenges the kind of swearing that they engage in. Sometimes, on solemn occasions, it may well be necessary in a court of law, for instance, or taking an oath of office of some kind; that is entirely reasonable. Though taking oaths would be the exception rather than the rule, though it seems it had become fairly normal for people to take an oath just to convince people they were telling the truth.

Instead—and this is the real issue we want to address—in verse 37, "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes' and your 'No' be 'No.'" Here's why, and this is important: "Because anything beyond this comes from the evil one." Now, that raises the second point I want to talk about. If the first point was truth in communication, the second point I want to talk about is truth as character.

Jesus says if you're not telling the truth—your yes doesn't mean yes, your no doesn't mean no—do you know where it comes from? It comes from the evil one. You see, the measure to which we tell the truth is probably the most important thing about us. The truthfulness of what we say derives from our character, which is either true or it's corrupt.

Let me read you what Jesus said in John 8:44 talking to the Jews. He said, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

Now, says Jesus, lying is the devil's native language. It is his mother tongue. When he goes into default mode, he lies. Now, it's interesting that Jesus should say that because if you take time, as I have done, to look at the times the devil speaks in the Bible, which aren't many—when he verbally speaks—he actually never tells an outright lie.

There is more than one way to lie. Lying is his mother tongue, but he is very subtle in the way he lies. What he normally does is ask questions designed to lead you into deception. So, for instance, in Genesis chapter 3, in the Garden of Eden, he came to Eve and he said to the woman, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?"

Now, he's not making any—he's not affirming anything; he's just asking a question. "Did God say you should not be eating of any tree in the garden? Is God being unreasonable?" Now, of course, God had said no such thing. God actually said, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die."

But his innocent-sounding question was packed with innuendos and suggestions designed to deceive. It's a clever way to lie, but it's lying.

Guest (Female): Charles Price on the importance of truthfulness. He'll be back with some final thoughts for the day. But first, we all struggle at times with sinful desires and selfish motives. When you do, you must remember that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right.

That's the empowering truth Stuart and Jill Briscoe wanted to help you grasp when they created their four-message series, Triumph Over Temptation. This series will equip you with powerful biblical truth to help you triumph over temptation and grow your faith in the process. Triumph Over Temptation is our thanks for your gift today to keep sharing the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth with so many people around the world.

Generous friends like you keep broadcasts like this one going, reaching others with God's healing love so they can experience life in Christ and find strength to carry on with courage. So if you haven't given before, consider a gift today to help keep God's word going out around the world to you and many others. Remember to request your copy of Triumph Over Temptation when you call and give. Just call 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's the conclusion of today's teaching.

Charles Price: By the way, when you find yourself reasoning that God is unreasonable in looking in these ethical issues that Jesus raised in the Sermon on the Mount—if you sat here maybe some of these Sundays saying, "This is unreasonable, I don't like this"—I'll tell you whose voice you're listening to. It's the voice of Satan. He makes God unreasonable. He asks questions. "This is unnecessary."

When Satan appears in the book of Job and talks to God about Job, God said of Job, "He is a blameless man, he is upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." That's a wonderful description to make of anybody. Satan comes back and says, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" He doesn't tell any lie there; he just throws in the question. "Do you not think Job has a hidden agenda behind all that?"

"You think Job fears God and is blameless because he actually cares about you, God? Or has he got his own agenda here?" It was a question designed to cast doubt. Of course, a lot of gossip is like that. A lot of gossip isn't saying, "Hey, did you know so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so?" It's kind of asking a question designed to provoke the thinking that maybe so-and-so is so-and-so after all.

When Satan appeared in the wilderness and spoke to Jesus and tempted Jesus three times, each of his temptations began with this word: "If you are the Son of God." He didn't say he wasn't the Son of God, but he's throwing a doubt, or trying to. It's a clever way to lie, but lying is his nature. To ask questions that carry implications that blacken somebody's character.

By the way, lies are usually a cover-up for corruption. That's why I called this point truth as character. There are quite a lot of liars in the Bible, but they all lie—as far as I can see—they all lie to cover up something else. Cain was the first to lie. Having killed his brother Abel, he was asked, "Where's your brother?" He said, "I don't know where he is. Am I my brother's keeper?" He just actually buried him.

But he lies to cover up the fact that he's just killed him. Abraham lied to Pharaoh about his wife. He went into Egypt against the will of God, and his wife was very beautiful, and Pharaoh thought, "I like her." Abraham realized what was going on and said, "She's not my wife; she's my sister. You know, you can have her; she's my sister." He lied to cover up his own being in the wrong place.

Jacob disguised himself and lied to his father. He pretended to be Esau to get the blessing that belonged to the firstborn that he wanted to get. He was a cheat and a liar. David lied after his adultery with Bathsheba. Ananias and Sapphira, husband and wife, agreed together to lie to the church in Jerusalem: that the money they were giving, they said, was the money they got for some land that they sold.

But it was not the money they got for the land; it was a part of it. They didn't have to give any of it, but they gave the impression, "We're more generous than we are." Peter said to Ananias and Sapphira, "You've not lied to men, but to God." Lying is the native language of a corrupt heart. Therefore, lying is a symptom—usually, if not always—of something much deeper.

No wonder it tells in the book of Proverbs that God hates lying. It says, in fact, there are seven things God hates, and two of them have to do with lying. One of the things God hates is a lying tongue. A second thing is a false witness who pours out lies. Proverbs 12:22 says the Lord detests lying lips, but then in contrast, he delights in men who are truthful.

He detests lies; he delights in truth. Contrast. Proverbs 26:28 says a lying tongue hates those it hurts, and that is always the case. Usually the intention is to hurt, which is why we lie.

Guest (Female): Thank you, Charles. Before we go, we want to remind you, when you give to continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of sharing God's word through Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one, we'll say thanks with the Briscoes' four-message series, Triumph Over Temptation. These encouraging messages will help you defeat temptation and grow in your faith as you do.

So please request your copy when you call 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being with us today on Telling the Truth. Come back tomorrow for the second part of Charles Price's teaching on the issue of truth. See you then.