The ninth commandment states, "You shall not give false witness
against your neighbor." This is a straightforward command
which taken at face value may seem to apply only to the
courtroom. Mark Twain once wrote, "There are 869 different
forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely
forbidden. Thou shall not bear false witness against your
neighbor." (I don't know where he got the number 869.
I've always thought there were 873 ways to lie!) This is the
narrow view of the commandment-that it only forbids perjury. We
do read in Deuteronomy 19:16-20, that "If a malicious witness
rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing...the judges shall
investigate thoroughly, and if the witness...has accused his brother
falsely, then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to
his brother." So, the penalty for lying, for example, at a
capital murder trial would be the death penalty.
But, being a person who reads the news papers and a devotee of the TV
show "Law and Order," I am aware that even though people
swear to "tell the truth and nothing but the truth," the
truth is often far removed from the witness stand. One legal
ethicist said that "Courtroom lying is the most under-reported
and under prosecuted crime in America." (Detroit News
7/10/1997) Another said, "Instances when persons are
prosecuted are rare because, as a society, we've become hardened to
it." (Ibid.) Chuck Colson tells the story of Johnny
Cockrum, who was sent to death row for the 1986 murder of a
convenience store clerk. In 1990, his anger drove him to stab a
fellow inmate. Sent to a lock-down wing, Cockrum faced "the
Monster of hate and bitterness" that had ruled his life and
cried out to God for forgiveness, asking Jesus to be his Savior.
But that's when his legal problems began. You see, his lawyers
were fighting to appeal his death sentence by arguing that child
abuse and drug use excused his crimes. As a Christian, Cockrum
believed that he had to start telling the truth. He told his
lawyers, "You can't lie anymore. I'm a Christian, and I
won't allow you to lie on my behalf." When he tried to
fire his lawyers, they went to the judge to prove that Cockrum was
mentally unbalanced-because he wanted to tell the truth! The
judge agreed.
God commands that there must be truth told in legal procedures.
Mark Twain was correct in pointing this out. Of course, I think
his point, in taking this narrow view of the commandment, is that it
is then okay to practice the other 868 forms of lying since only
perjury is outlawed. However, we've seen how Jesus broadened
the scope of the commandments in his teachings. Murder is
committed when we are angry with our brother. Adultery is
committed when we lust after a woman. Likewise, we would be
wrong to take such a narrow view of the ninth commandment and limit
it to the courtroom. We also would be ignoring the rest that
scripture has to offer. Take a quick survey with me of a few
scripture passages that require this broader view to be taken:
Leviticus 19:11-12
- Do not
steal. Do
not lie.
Do not deceive one another. Do
not swear falsely
by my name and so profane the name of your God.
Lying is the
equivalent of desecrating God's name.
Psalm 101:7
- God says, "No
one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks
falsely will stand in my presence."
Proverbs 6:16-19
- There are six
things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty
eyes, a
lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil, a
false witness who pours out lies
and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.
Of these seven objects of God's hatred, it is interesting to note
that at least three of them involve lying in some form. God
hates lying!
Because of these and other passages in scripture, we must take the
broader application of the ninth commandment-that it applies to all
forms of lying.
But, why does God hate lying so much? The answer has to do with
his character. Again, consider these scriptures:
Numbers 23:19 - God
is not a man, that he should lie.
Titus 1:2 says
that because God is the one, who does not lie,
we can rest in his promises.
Hebrews 6:18 - ...It
is impossible for God to lie.
In John 14:6 Jesus
uttered those wonderful words of self-disclosure, "I am the way
and the truth and the life."
It is clear that lying has no part in God's character. And, as
he wants us to be his people and emulate his character, he cannot
abide falsehood in us.
Jesus further made it clear that when we lie we are emulating Satan,
himself. Speaking to the Pharisees, who were having a hard time
with Jesus' message in John 8, he says,
"Why is my
language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what
I say. 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." (John 8: 43-44)
So, lying is bad. It is forbidden by the ninth commandment and
God hates it. Yet, people do it a lot, don't they?
In preparing for this sermon, I spent an hour or so working through
the Bible, cover to cover looking for liars. I found more than
I thought I would. How about you? Can you think of any
famous (or infamous) liars in the Bible? (congregation
responds) Here's my list in Biblical order: Satan, Cain,
Abraham, Jacob, Rebekah, Laban, the 12 sons of Israel (even including
Joseph), Potiphar's wife, the Hebrew midwives who saved Moses, Aaron,
Pharaoh, Ahab, Jezebel, the Israelites who spied out the Promised
Land, Rahab, Jael, Samson, Saul, David, David's wife Michal,
Jonathan, Elisha, Gehazi, the false witnesses against Jesus, Judas,
Peter, the false witnesses against Stephen, Ananias and Sapphira, and
Satan (the Antichrist of Revelation). There is quite a Liar's
Club in the Bible, isn't there? And I'm sure I've missed more
than a few members.
I learned two things from this exercise. First, I was amazed
how many of the people in the Bible Liar's Club are people whom we
consider heroes of the faith. Take Abraham, for instance.
This father of our faith lied twice, once to Abimelech and once to
Pharaoh. Both times he told the same lie-that Sarah was his
sister, instead of his wife-afraid that her beauty might cause him
harm in these foreign lands. Look at David. His lying
cover-up of his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, is the textbook
example of a lie turning into something far worse-in David's case
Uriah's murder and the death of his child. Consider Peter, the
rock on which Jesus would build his church. Peter denied that
he had ever even met Jesus to a harmless servant girl. From the
experience of these heroes of faith, I am encouraged that God can use
and transform even liars for his glory.
The second thing I learned from this exercise was how pervasive the
telling of lies is in the Bible. This should not surprise me
however, because I know how pervasive lying is in our world
today. And, people are people. The lying recorded in
Scripture simply underscores the basic human nature we share with
people of all ages-we are all sinners!
Paschal, the 17th century mathematician and Christian thinker said,
"no one should expect to meet more than three or four honest
people in a lifetime." A 1991 research study titled,
"The Day America Told the Truth" revealed that we are a
culture of liars. This study reported that "91% of us lie
regularly. The majority of us find it hard to get through a
week without lying. One in five can't make it through a single
day-and we're talking about conscious, premeditated
lies...." The authors of the study concluded that
"Lying has become a cultural trait in America. Lying is
embedded in our national character. The majority of Americans
today (two out of three) believe there is nothing wrong with telling
a lie. Only 31% of us believe honesty is the best policy."
We are all lied to regularly in our culture-Advertising, so-called
"Reality-based TV" (now there's an oxymoron if I've ever
heard one!), news reporting, legal proceedings, politics (in the
cases of both Watergate and Monica-gate, it was lying to cover-up
their respective misdeeds that brought on Nixon's resignation and
Clinton's impeachment, not the misdeeds themselves.). We are
lied to by our co-workers, friends, and even our family. Lying
is considered by some an art. We accept in many cases that we
will be lied to by certain people. The reason for this moral
bankruptcy was characterized by a senior in my wife's English class,
who recently wrote that the principle that guides her life is that
there are no absolute truths, all truth is relative. This is
the prevailing view of our culture. (Never mind that in saying
this, the student was stating an absolute that denied the possibility
that such absolutes exist!) We can understand why truth-telling
is rare these days. If truth is relative, it becomes something
that serves me and my purposes, rather than something I serve.
If I can sell you a product that you don't need and doesn't really
work well to begin with by telling you a pack of lies, that is okay
because it sells the product and makes me rich.
We get lied to regularly, but more than likely, we also are guilty of
lying to those with whom we relate. Do you have a hard time
telling the truth? As an exercise, see if you can go through a
whole day without lying. Ask God to help you catch yourself
every time you embellish, exaggerate or modify the truth, withhold
the truth by silence, or tell a flat-out lie.
I'm convicted that my biggest problems with telling the truth are
probably exaggerating it or not telling enough of it. I have
this tendency to make blanket statements of truth when this is not
called for. If two or three people come to me and say they
don't like so and so, then I go and tell my friend, "You know, no
one likes so and so," I have exaggerated the truth, I have
lied. When a family member doesn't do a certain chore when
asked, I have been known to reply, "You never do anything
around here." That is a lie. (How much that family
member does may still be open to question, but it is not true that
they never do any chores.)
In Jonathan Swift's book Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver
encounters some creatures called the Houyhnhnms. These are such
rational creatures that they find dishonesty entirely absurd.
One explains, "the use of speech was to make us understand one
another, and to receive information of facts; now if anyone said
the thing which was not [how the Houyhnhnms referred to
lying], these ends [would be] defeated." They make a great point.
So, why do we lie? Some lies are rooted in malice and hatred.
We want to do verbal damage to someone, so we create a harmful
"truth" about them and share it. This is the sort of
problem David faced in Psalm 27 that we read as we opened the
service, "They accuse me falsely of things I've never done."
Other lies are motivated by fear of consequences.
Children (and adults) often lie to cover up for some bad thing
they've done. In the Veggie-Tale classic, "Larry-Boy and
the Fib from Outer Space," Junior Asparagus breaks his dad's Art
Baggoti collector's plate and worries what his dad will do when he
finds out. He meets a cute little fib from outer space who
convinces him to simply lie about how it happened and escape
punishment. With each subsequent lie that he has to tell to
continue the cover-up, the fib grows into a hideous monster that
threatens to take over the city. That's when Larry-Boy steps in
and ... (You'll have to watch it or talk to some of the children here
to find out what happens.).
Personal embarrassment or pride can be reasons for lying.
We may lie to save face or to build ourselves up in the eyes of
others. I think this is what prompted Ananias and Sapphira's
lie in the fifth chapter of Acts. They weren't struck dead
because they kept back some of the money from the Lord when they sold
their property, but because they lied to the Holy Spirit about
it. I believe they perpetrated this fraud so they would look
good to their fellow church members in Jerusalem. "Yes, we
gave the full amount." God could not tolerate such
pretense at the birth of his church.
Greed, success, and the desire for money drive us to lie.
It's so easy to fudge on the taxes we owe the government, or shave
the figures in the accounting ledger so your business can appear to
be in the black. Surely it was greed that drove Jacob and his
mother, Rebekah to foist the lie on blind old Isaac, when Jacob
impersonated his older brother, Esau and stole his birthright.
There are many motivations to lie. Is it possible though, to
have good motivations that might justify the
telling of a lie? I believe this can be the case.
For example, you want to throw a surprise party for someone you
love. Playing a harmless April Fools' joke on someone, acting
in a play, writing fiction-these all require some degree of fudging
on the truth. We may lie for the sake of politeness and
civility. Say you get invited to a party you seriously
don't want to attend. Instead of saying, "I wouldn't be
caught dead at your party!" you say, "You know, I'd
love to come, but I have another engagement that day."
Sometimes we may exaggerate the truth to build up another person's
self image. You may tell your dad today, "You're the best
dad in the whole wide world!" Surely, this is preferable
to brutal truth telling. I used to laugh at the old Calvin and
Hobbes cartoon strip when Calvin would regularly inform his dad of
how he was not doing well in the latest opinion polls on his
performance as a dad.
In times of war, it is prudent to hide the truth from the enemy and
to intentionally deceive him. An indispensable key to the
success of the allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, was the fact
that the Germans had been fed misinformation to lead them to believe
that the invasion was going to happen elsewhere. Commenting on
this, Winston Churchill said, "In wartime, truth is so precious
that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."
One would be hard pressed to fault Corrie ten Boom for lying to the
Nazis to protect the Jews their family was hiding during the Jewish
holocaust. For a contrasting view, the philosopher, Immanuel
Kant, held that truth must be told at all costs. He insisted
that if a murderer comes to your home seeking to kill your friend,
who has taken refuge in your back room, you must answer a truthful,
"yes," to the murderer's question, "Is he back
there?" Dietrich Bonhoffer counters that "in such a
case self-righteousness of conscience has become outrageous
presumption and blocks the path of responsible action." (Ethics,
p. 245)
The Bible contains several stories of people who told lies that were,
I believe, justified. The classic example from the book of
Joshua, is that of Rahab, the harlot who hid the Hebrew spies who
were sent to collect information, so they could attack Jericho and
enter the Promised Land. When soldiers came to her door looking
for the spies, she lied to protect them saying, "Yes, they were
here. I didn't realize they were spies. They left and
I'll bet you can catch them if you hurry." All the while
they were safe in the hiding place she placed them in on the
roof. Through her actions, she was spared in the capture of
Jericho and was commended for her actions, even finding a place in
the list of heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11.
We live in an evil, fallen world, where Satan, the father of lies, is
ruling. Because of this, sometimes it is necessary to choose
between the lesser of two evils. But, I must add that this can
be a difficult thing to assess and must not be done lightly.
How can you know when a lie might be the better option? I
believe Paul clarifies this in Ephesians 4:15 when he commands us to
"Speak the truth in love." We must take
seriously Paul's qualifier, "in love." Truth is
embodied in relationship. That's why the ninth commandment
speaks of our neighbor. We must not speak lies against
our neighbor. We also must be careful to not speak truth
against our neighbor. Even the truth we tell must be motivated
by love for our neighbor. It is simply not true that
"sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt
me." It is possible to use truth as a weapon. As one
poet wrote:
A truth that is told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
Our words have tremendous power-power to build up a person in love
and power to tear a person down. Are my words, my statements of
truth and my occasional amendments of the truth, motivated by love
for my neighbor? This is the litmus test for all of our
speech. Let me caution, that I am not endorsing lying.
I am saying that sometimes it is the least evil option we
have before us, because of the sinful world we live in. A lie
told in such a circumstance is still evil. It is just the
lesser of evils. When we get to the perfect world, heaven,
there will be no more lying. Until that time we must continue
to pray, "Deliver us from evil."
Do you have a problem keeping the ninth commandment? Is lying a
habit that you can't seem to break? David Seamands offers the
most practical suggestion for stopping habitual lying. He says,
"As soon as the Holy Spirit checks you and you catch yourself in
a lie, go back and tell the truth to the person to whom you
lied." This will work. But, what if you are guilty
of that most fundamental of all lies-the lie of self-deception?
What if you have been denying the sin in your life and perhaps don't
even know when you've departed from the truth? Well, I have
good news for you. God is in the business of transforming liars
and other sinners. Jesus demonstrated God's love for liars on
the night before he died for them, at his Last Supper. The book
of Luke records this tender exchange between Peter and Jesus in
chapter 22:31-34.
"Simon, Simon
(Peter's given name), Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But
I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And
when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." But
Peter replied, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to
death." Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before
the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me."
Jesus is saying, "Peter you're going to do the unthinkable,
you're going to lie about even knowing who I am to save your
neck. You're so proud, Peter. You can't even see your
weakness. But, I have prayed for you. I'm going to the
cross and die to forgive that sin and all your other sins. And
when you realize and accept your forgiveness, I've got plans for
you. I want to use you!"
We can't change without God's help. Do you know that Jesus is
still in the business of forgiveness and transformation? Do you
know that the Holy Spirit is still praying for us when we don't know
how to pray? Open your life up to God's work. Let him
change you. Let him equip you to take the truth of God to those
who are living in the darkness of self-deception. God had plans
to use a liar like Peter. He has plans for you, too.
CONFESSING OUR SINS
As we come to confess our sins this morning, listen first to what the
Apostle John had to say about our need to confess.
If we say that we have
fellowship with God and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not
practice the truth. ...If we say that we have no sin, we are
deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. ...If we say
that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us.
Let's pray:
Dear Father, we affirm that you are the All-Righteous One.
There is certainly no falsehood in you. You are all truth.
Our lives, on the other hand, are sinful. Sometimes my vision
is so darkened by sin that I deceive myself and deny sins that I have
committed. Sometimes I can't think of anything to confess.
Yet if I really examine my life, when I allow your light of truth to
penetrate my dark, sinful recesses, I begin to see my life as you see it.
We all ask you to do that for each of us now. Let us stop
deceiving ourselves. Show us our sin. Even those hidden
ones we are too blind to see. Help us to confess them to you
now. Amen.
Would you together acknowledge the forgiveness of God in your life
with the words in the bulletin:
REHEARSING THE COMMANDMENT -
(from The Study Catechism, 1998)
|
Question:
Answer: |
What is the ninth commandment?
The ninth commandment
is, "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor |
|
Question:
Answer: |
What do you learn from
this commandment?
God forbids me to
damage the honor or reputation of my neighbor. I should not say false
things against anyone for the sake of money, favor or friendship, for
the sake of revenge, or for any other reason. God requires me to
speak the truth, to speak well of my neighbor when I can, and to view
the faults of my neighbor with tolerance when I cannot. |