1. As we continue in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we come to Matthew 5:33-37 where Jesus covers the topic of vows and Honesty. Not nearly as controversial or emotional, but probably even more applicable to everybody in the room as you’ll see in just a minute.
2. But before we read the passage, some context. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were experts in using the law to their advantage. Experts in circumventing the law. They had interpreted the law in ways that were advantageous for them personally. In the Mishnah, the oral traditions of the Rabbis, they had entire section devoted to the subject of vows. Which vows were legally binding, which ones weren’t. Which vows were the most binding, which ones carried the least legal weight.
3. The Jews in Jesus’ day swore by all kinds of things (gold, earth, beard, temple, God, heaven), and when they really meant it they would use strong language, strong vows involving God like we swear on a stack of Bibles. We swear to God. May God strike me dead if I don’t (you know you’re not getting paid back when it starts w/that) If they didn’t intend to keep the vow, they would swear by lesser things (beard, hair, the earth) so they weren’t legally bound. It was like us crossing our fingers or declaring that it’s opposite day. You look really pretty. Oops, it’s opposite day. They’re teaching on vows promoted a culture of dishonesty, of system manipulation and semantics much like we have in our world today. Jesus addresses that here as He declares it DOUBLE opposite day.
4. Matthew 5:33-37 33"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34But I tell you, Do not swear at all (if you have to swear, you’re basically saying, now we all know that normally I lie, but this time): either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
5. Noah. I’ve got to tell you, this one really hit home this week. My oldest son, Noah, was bugging me all day Thursday to play dominos with him. Th’s my writing day, so I’m home, but working. But every time I’d come out of my office for lunch or water or something, “dad, can we play dominos?” And finally, to just try to end it, I said, yes, when I’m done with work, we’ll play dominos. He was stoked. Well, I finished working, it was about 5 o’clock and Noah’s right there. Can we play dominos, now?
6. Well, it was a beautiful day and I didn’t want to sit inside and play dominos, so I talked him into going swimming – tried to do the “instead of”, but he made sure it was a “both / and”. He said, OK, I’ll go swimming, but we’re still going to play dominos, right? So I said, yes. He was starting to doubt me b/c it’s getting late and we still have to eat dinner, go to karate, he’s doing the math; so he made me shake on it. So we made a deal.
7. So we’re in the pool, maybe 30 min. later, Noah just randomly says, “Dad if you don’t play dominos with me, you owe me $20 for breaking the deal.” That got me thinking. (If he gets 20 for me not playing, how much do I get if I play?) What’s making him think I’m not going to play? I’m thinking back. How many times have I told him I would and I didn’t? Why is my son paranoid that I’m going to break my deal?
8. Well, sure enough, the day gets away from us and it ends up bedtime and we haven’t played dominos. I’m explaining what happened and that we can play tomorrow, and he says, Dad, you promised. The first thing that popped into my mind, I almost said it, was “I didn’t promise! I just said we’d do it.” (angel/devil) And I thought, I can either sit here and try to explain to my 8 year old the difference between a promise and a commitment or I can teach him that my word is my word. So I did what any good dad would do – I said, well, I think your mom really wants to play with you. Just kidding, we played dominoes. It’s great having a lawyer for a son!
9. Jesus says let your yes be yes. And people try to make this passage say a lot of different things – that Christians should never take vows or be under oath, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying at all. The vow isn’t the thing – integrity is the thing. Honesty and integrity. Follow through. You say what you mean and you do what you say. That’s what Jesus is telling His followers. He says I want the people who dare to follow me to be honest, salt of the earth people who have nothing to hide, nothing to lose, nothing to fear and they live honest and upright lives. When they speak, people believe them. They trust them. B/c their word is their word.
10. Why is this so important? Think about the world we live in. How many of you here trust politicians when they make a campaign promise? (1%). Why? B/c we’ve been lied to so many times. How many of you trust used car dealers? Why? How many of you naturally trust church leaders? It’s Ok, be honest. Why? B/c we’ve seen so many church leaders cheat people, mislead people, take people’s money, live a double life. (for the rec. I drive an 02 Dod. Ram and an 04 Gr. Caravan and have no mistresses. I swear by all the gold in the temple!)
11. Jesus says what if there was a group of people on this planet who could actually be trusted. Their word was their word. They didn’t have to swear, they didn’t have to promise or make people believe them – they were just honest. Not some of the time, all of the time. What would happen? Eventually they’d earn people’s trust. They’d earn their confidence. They’d earn the right to be heard. Then we could share the incredible life-changing message of the Gospel. We know it’s true. We want other people to know it’s true. But if they can’t trust me, they can’t trust the message. Plain and simple. If they can’t trust my motives, they’re not going to believe my message. That’s why we’ve got to live this stuff out.
12. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were supposed to be pointing people to God. They were supposed to be leading people to Follow God and bringing people to Him. Instead, b/c of their hypocrisy, they were turning people away from God. And this happens today.
13. (Christian business man who doesn’t use the fish. 1. Other Christians have already ruined it for me. They’ve done bad business, haven’t kept their word, and given Jesus a bad name in the marketplace. 2. Rather than use Jesus to get business, let good business give me the opportunity to tell people about Jesus.)
14. One thing I like about this generation (there are plenty of things I don’t like) is the desire for authenticity. They want real. They’re sick of being misled, misrepresented, lied to, let down, sick of sleazy politicians and slick sales tactics. They want truth, reality, authenticity. And they’re waiting for someone to show it to them. (And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working with someone who’s been burnt by the church, hurt by people in the church and all I can say is “I’m not like that, I won’t do that”. It’s scary to have to put yourself on the line. Watch my life; I’m not perfect, but I’m trying. So often, the only collateral I have is my life. People don’t care about the building, the business card or the billboard, they want to know are you the real deal or not? Can I trust you?)
15. The real challenge for us today is to examine our hearts and make sure we have integrity. A completeness of character. That we’re the real deal. That word integrity comes from the Latin word integer, which means whole. An integer is a whole number. Not just a part or a half or three quarters, 9/10, the whole character is right with God. I’ve got to examine my heart and my life to make sure I’m honest in all areas. That my yes is yes. That my no is no.
16. Are you keeping your commitments? 1. Marriage vows. Promise keepers. 2. Debts, payments. (Tony Elam) 3. Schedule – appointments. 4. Volunteering – we have people that just don’t show up! (lord of the flies) Yeah, I’ll call you this week. I’ll send you an email. Will you? I’ll pray for you. We’ll play ball after work. I’ll take you to the park. I swear when this job is over, I’ll take you and the kids away for a week.
17. Are you over-committing? It’s interesting b/c Jesus not only says our yes needs to be yes, but that we also need to know how to say NO. Some of you need to learn that word. Whenever you say yes to something, you say NO to a hundred other things. Yes to work may mean NO to family or God. Yes to TV may mean NO to exercise or prayer.
18. Do you exaggerate? I know so many people that I really have to be careful how much I listen to them b/c they exaggerate things so much. Always in their favor. Round up or down. (how poor you are; $1 in the bank, doing well; we’ve got money in the bank!) Worked a million hours. When you exaggerate, people learn to not trust you. (Proverbs 11:1) The Lord hates it, when we stretch the truth, exaggerate or lie for our advantage or gain.
19. Do you play word games? Semantics. You said you’d be home after work. it’s midnight…technically, that’s after work. Word games cause people to not trust you. Say what you mean. Do what you say. a half truth is a whole lie.
20. When people ask you a question, do you answer honestly? What if your wife says, does this dress make me look fat? Ouch! Now I’m not saying you need to be brutally honest; “no, that dress doesn’t make you look fat, your fat makes you look fat.” Don’t be that honest! The Bible says to speak the truth in love. Ladies, don’t ask us that stuff, please.
21. Usually, it’s one of two reasons why we’re not totally honest. Two things – we want to appear better than we are, OR we want to avoid consequences. If you break down all the situations where we’re tempted to be dishonest, it almost always comes down to trying to look better or trying to avoid consequences.
22. I can’t afford to be honest with the government, so I cheat. If I tell my wife the truth, she may leave me. I don’t want my kid to be disappointed, so I tell him what he wants to hear. We want to avoid consequences. Abraham in the OT did this with Abimelech. Told him that Sara was his sister. So Abimelech didn’t kill him and take Sarah. So b/c he lied, Abimelech didn’t kill him, but he still took his wife/sister. Still didn’t work out too well. (if someone’s going to take my wife into their harem, rather be dead.) Whenever we take short-cuts to try to avoid or minimize consequences, we always create a bigger mess. Proverbs 11:3 says, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”
23. And we want to look good. We want people to think of us as better than we are. Ananias and Sapphira did this in the book of Acts. We want people to see us as smarter than we are so we embellish our resume. We want people to think we’re holier than we are, so we wear masks and try to cover up our sins or our mistakes. We don’t confess our sins. We want people to think we’re doing better than we are financially so we have cars / houses we can’t afford. For some of us, our whole life is a cover-up. We’re not real. B/c we want people to see us as better than we are, we’ve built an illusion of who we want them to think we are.
24. Jesus wants us to be free. John 8:31, 32. He tells us that the truth will set us FREE! from the burden of always trying to cover up. Always trying to hide. Always pretending. Covering our tracks. When you come to a place in your life where you trust God, you’ve given your life to Him, and you know that He’s got your back, then it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks about you anyway. You don’t have to cover up to avoid consequence; you obey God and leave the consequences to Him. You don’t have to go around keeping appearances or making yourself out to be something you’re not –You can know the truth and the truth will set you free.
25. As Christ followers, we have to understand that the truth isn’t just something we try to live by, it’s who we’re following. The truth is a person. Jesus says I am the way, the Truth and the Life…if we want to get to heaven, we’ve got to follow the truth, Jesus Christ.
26. And as we do, we find one of the coolest things about Jesus is that He’s absolutely, 100% faithful to His Word. He’s never broken a promise, never failed to come through, never missed a payment, never been late. He said he’d die for us and he did. He said he’d rise from the dead and he did. He said he’d come back for us and He will.
27. Today, that’s what we remember during communion…the fulfilled promises of Jesus to us. Body, blood.
28. Prayer – Help us live this out. Thank you that you did. You are always faithful to your word!
