In his sermon, Paul Carrington explores the topic of lawful oaths and vows as outlined in the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, particularly chapter 23. He begins with a prayer emphasizing the omnipresence and salvific power of God before delving into the importance of truth in Christian life. Carrington contrasts the world's understanding of truth with the biblical perspective, highlighting that for Christians, truth is important because it reflects the nature of God, who is described as the embodiment of truth and incapable of lying. He recounts the fable of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' to illustrate the consequences of lying and the world's highest standard of truth, which is fundamentally different from the Christian perspective. The sermon discusses the historical context of oaths and vows within Christianity, noting differing interpretations by groups like the Anabaptists and Quakers, who viewed oaths as illegitimate based on their reading of Matthew 5. Carrington argues that oaths and vows are lawful and sometimes necessary, citing biblical examples such as God swearing an oath and the Apostle Paul making vows. He emphasizes the seriousness of oaths, noting that they involve calling God as a witness to the truthfulness of one's words, and highlights the dangers of lying, which he describes as satanic in nature. Carrington also addresses misconceptions about Jesus' teachings on oaths in Matthew 5, clarifying that Jesus condemned frivolous oaths that evade accountability, not oaths themselves. The sermon concludes with a call to Christians to be people of truth, reflecting God's nature, and to be mindful of the weightiness of oaths and vows.

Well, good evening. Tonight we're going to be going through the Second London Baptist Confession on the chapter, chapter 23 of Lawful O's and Covenants, or Lawful O's and Vows. But Before we do that, why don't we just join our hearts in prayer for our brothers and sisters down in Texas Right now as they gather they're speaking to a large crowd of people just preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ So let's just bear them up in prayer Heavenly Father we we are so thankful Lord that you are a God that is not bound by any distance at all. And Lord, even as we are here, you are with our brothers and sisters down in the midst of calamity. But we are so thankful, Lord, that you are a God who saves, that you are a God who delivers out of the worst of circumstances.

And we simply just bring them before you and ask you, Lord, to be mighty among them, that as your word goes forth, that you would be glorified and that sinners would be saved. Lord, that you would give life to the words and cause people as they've been stripped of everything, very many of them, Lord, that they would see the brevity, the vanity, the emptiness of this life in sharp contrast to eternity. Oh God, may you awaken some and cause them to see you and to hear your voice tonight, Lord, we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, as I said, we're going to be looking at of lawful oaths and vows. And, you know, before we get into it, I was just giving some thought, you know, when you contrast the Word of God and you contrast the ways of this world. And one of the ways that we can do that is by looking at the world's wisdom. And one of the fables, Aesop's fables, is about a boy who cried wolf. Many of you might have heard of that fable before where there was a boy in a European village, about 10 years old, and they would be on rotation to go up the hill and over the mountain to watch the sheep and graze the sheep in this village.

And so every time his rotation would come he would go up there when he reached the age of ten and it came to the point where What am I doing all day? It's boring. And he dawned on him. I could maybe add a little bit of excitement to my day if I were to cry wolf. And so he began to cry wolf.

He screamed wolf. And before you know it, one man heard him and gathered all the townsmen. They ran up the hill and over the mountain only to find the boy on his back rolling and laughing that these men actually responded to his cry. And he got home that night and he got a good whooping from his mother, he got in trouble. But on his next rotation a couple weeks later, again sitting there bored, he did the same thing and the same thing happened and again he did it another time and the same thing happened despite the spankings from mom he still did what he was doing well there came a time when the wolf did come and when he cried wolf, what happened?

They said, ah, there's that liar again. We're not going to go up. And the account was that all the sheep or many of the sheep got devoured. And there's some accounts that even talk about the boy being devoured as well. But I see all of that to say the moral of that story is this is that if you lie others will not believe you when you actually tell the truth And what man does is the highest standard that he can appeal to is that right there.

Tell the truth because if you don't tell the truth, men will not believe you. But tonight what we wanna do is talk about truth and why it's important, not simply because men will not believe you or men will believe you but simply because of the fact that it is important because of who God actually is. The Christian has an altogether different reason for coveting and for treasuring the truth And that is because we consider the faithfulness and the truthfulness of God. God himself, when Jesus says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. He says he is actually the truth and he's the one that keeps all of his promises.

And when God refers to the Lord Jesus Christ he says that in him all the promises of God are yea and amen and so he's the one that is faithful even to his own hurt when you think of Jesus Christ going to the cross even when it was at the most unquantifiable cost to himself. He did what he did to save sinners because he is the God of truth. He cannot lie. Isn't that an amazing statement? We serve a God who cannot lie.

Such a difference between us and the living God. And so, as people though of the New Covenant, what are we enjoined to? We're enjoined to be people of truthfulness as well because the God of truth makes a people of truth so that when we speak our words are trusted not necessarily because we make an oath or a vow but because we serve a God who is true at all times and so that's the way it ought to be and the reason that God hates deceit so much And the reason why he values truth so much is because he is actually truth. And on the other side of all of this, well, we have the God of truth. On the other side, we have the father of lies.

Like we heard today, there's satanic wisdom or earthly wisdom, and then there's wisdom from heaven. We have God the Father, the only true and living God, and of course we have the Prince of this world or the Father of lies, and he was the one that kicked this whole thing off in the garden with lies. And when Jesus spoke of him, he says there is no truth in him. And when he lies, he speaks of his own character. And so when we speak, would it be too far when we speak a lie, would it be too far to say that we're speaking satanically?

Probably not, right, because the father of lies is the one who we're obeying. We're not pleasing God. And so, I want to just put everything in the context of truthfulness is so important because we serve a God of truth. Not simply because if you lie, men won't believe you. While that's the highest standard the world can appeal to, we're under a whole and altogether different standard of righteousness and truth.

And so, we're gonna be looking at this tonight and in terms of the backdrop of the Second London Baptist Confession, In the 17th century, what you had was certain sects within Christendom, folks like the Anabaptists, and later on you had the Quakers, and they denied the legitimacy of actually taking oaths. That was because they had a, what we'll contend tonight is a faulty view of Matthew chapter 5 and we'll get into that where Jesus talks about oaths when you come before the Lord and he ends it with let your word be yea yea and nay nay. And so that is kind of where this whole chapter stems from in terms of its forcefulness. And it was really intended to clarify the meaning and confirm the lawfulness, the lawfulness of oaths and vows when they're properly used. And so you can almost understand when you go through Matthew 5, you can see, just to be charitable to the Anabaptists and others, you can see how they might arrive at their conclusions.

But I think we'll also see that not only can oaths and vows be lawful, but in many circumstances they're actually required of us. And so, it's interesting to note that God Himself actually swore an oath as did the fathers of old. We'll see how the Apostle Paul himself on several occasions made vows or oaths as well. And so what are we trying to do is just basically contend again that people of truth worship the God of truth and therefore we speak the truth and that's why it's so important. And so in our day though, you know, you look at our day today and we're living in a world where there's so little value, so little premium that's put on the truth.

We live in a world where lies are spoken, you know, without any qualms whatsoever. I was trying to do some research on how many lies does the average person tell a day? And the research says that the average person tells outright lies, not just, you know, just kind of like, you know, just misrepresentation, but outright lies. The average person speaks about two lies per day. But of course, how do you believe research when you're asking people how many times a day do you lie?

And so you can't really put all that stock on it. You might want to multiply that by four and come up with eight or something like that because people aren't simply going to tell you the truth about how much they lie in a given day. So it's impossible to know, but all we do know is that what are we by nature? Is it too hard to say that by nature we are liars? That self-protection is usually the thing that we covet most?

Fear of man? A desire to have and to reach. We'll see that I'm sure next week when we look at James chapter 4. But we live in a world right now in many areas where the father of lies reigns and so there's the concealment of truth. You have the denial of truth, the misrepresentation of truth.

It's become a rare thing in our day. And Isaiah's day, it was much the same as well, where every time you see, this is almost a guarantee, where everywhere you see a diminishment of the fear of God, you will see an increase in lies. And so this is what Isaiah says, he says this in Isaiah 59, that justice is turned back and righteousness stands afar off for truth is fallen in the street. It's this picture of this man that's been beaten and basically killed and is lying there on the side of the road. Truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter.

So truth fails and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Then the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no justice. And this just past week I think you know there was a statement put out called the Nashville Statement that was so bold as to affirm that men are actually men and women are actually women and it sent the whole liberal media into a frenzy that how dare anyone be so, so arrogant, how dare you say such hurtful things. Some of the things that were said was that this is a deadly theology, an ugly manifesto. And then one person went so far as to say that this represents a profound moral failure.

And so wherever you get lies increasing, truth is looked at in such a terrible light. And so we want to make sure that we have a proper view of the truth as we consider the Word of God. And so in this chapter it's broken down into five paragraphs. Paragraphs one to four is dealing with oaths and then paragraph five is dedicated to vows. And the reason they've done it like that is much of what pertains to vows is actually contained in oaths.

So you don't have to repeat the whole thing. The Westminster has seven paragraphs but we're only going to be dealing with five. And so before we get into the actual chapter or paragraph, the question is well what is an oath? And what an oath is, is it's a statement that is made to men where you're calling God to witness in order to emphasize the truthfulness of your statement. And so it signifies a confirmation of what you're actually saying.

So when you testify and you know you go to court and you actually give an oath, that's what you're doing. The essence of it is again calling God to witness what is said and what you're doing is invoking him as the ultimate judge of the truth or the falsity of what you've been saying. You can think of it like church membership, the church membership covenant that you take is an oath. And then you've got a vow, whereas an oath can be placed upon us, right? You can be placed under oath.

A vow is something that's made voluntarily and it's made directly to God and it signifies commitment that I will do this. It's a vow that you make, like a marriage vow would be an example of that. So, you're making it, you know, before witnesses but you're making it to God primarily. And so, let's look at chapter, paragraph one. And this paragraph deals with the nature of lawful oaths.

The nature of lawful oaths, and this is what it says, a lawful oath is a part of religious worship. And religious worship was the chapter we just looked at a couple of weeks ago. And so, it's a follow on to that. It's saying a lawful oath is a part of religious worship wherein the person swearing in truth, righteousness, and judgment solemnly calls God to witness what he sweareth and to judge him according to the truth or falseness thereof. And so, it's really starting with a qualifier of what is a lawful oath, which means by the fact that he says lawful oaths or the writers say lawful oaths, you can also deduce that there are things called unlawful oaths as well.

And so we'll talk about that in paragraph two. But really, what we're doing here is looking at, well, how is this religious? If you go into a courtroom, how is it a part of religious worship? And I think what the framers, When I was looking at this and looking at some commentaries on it, what the framers of the confession are really trying to do is they're trying to say that anywhere you invoke or call God, it becomes by virtue of that religious. Just like you can worship God out in the fields Or you can worship God on a mountaintop.

Likewise, in a courtroom, when you call God to witness, it's a part of your religious worship where you're acknowledging God as sovereign, acknowledging Him as He is, worthy and one that you will stand before one day. And so that's the reason why it's so important. And you can remember if you remember Solomon's dedication at the temple, this is what he said in regards to oaths. He says, if anyone sins against his neighbor and is forced to take an oath and comes and takes an oath before your altar in this temple. Then hear from heaven and act and judge your servants bringing retribution on the wicked by bringing his way on his own head and justifying the righteous by giving him according to his righteousness.

So you can see almost the exact same thing. He's saying if a man is telling the truth, praise be to God, it's validated and he stands before God innocent. But if he's lying, at the same time you're calling God to be your judge and to hold you guilty for misspeaking, for misrepresenting, for denying or for lying. And so it's a really serious thing you can see here. They're not playing around at all.

And sometimes even back in those days in the 1700s, if someone was suspected of a crime, what they would do is swear an oath of innocence. They would be put under oath. You didn't see them, there's no direct evidence, but you put them under oath. And If they would say, I have nothing to do with it, then it would be, that was how high the fear of God was in the 1600s, 1700s. Well, not so much today.

And you get many examples of people swearing oaths or making vows in the Bible. And we have Nehemiah right at the end, we'll see when we get to Nehemiah 13 when the people there had began marrying pagan wives and giving their sons and daughters to pagans, he went back to Jerusalem after many years away and he made them swear an oath. He says, I swear by God. And each person had to swear that they would not give their sons and daughters. We see it when Samuel was coordinating Saul, he says, God is witness between you and me.

And of course Ruth to Naomi, which is a great account when you know Naomi was trying to dissuade Ruth from coming with her and she says, may the Lord do so to me if I do not go with you. And so she was committing or making an oath before the living God. And again, because men are naturally liars, oftentimes we'll be placed under oath to validate or verify what we're actually saying is true and if you're lying then you're requesting the consequences to fall back on your own head so you have to if you don't fear God That's not a big deal for a moment. But you do know that you will stand before the living God, and that day will come up before you. And so you need to make sure that you're a truth speaker, especially if you claim to fear God.

Make sure you fear him more than man. It's very important. And so we go astray as soon as we're born, is what the Psalm says. We go astray speaking lies right from the womb. And again, we fear men and self-protection and all these types of different things.

And we've come up with all different ways to validate ourselves, right? You've heard the fondly named terms like, well, white lies. We call them fibs. We call them tall tales. Aren't these just nice ways to put a smiley face on being dishonest and to somehow reduce the impact and reduce really our obligation to tell the truth.

We try to take the edge off and that's really what God is totally against in every way. But we often lie because we think we'll get away with it and we might get away with it for a time but to know that we will stand before him should be something that checks our spirits and because we worship him we want to be people that tell the truth but also keep in mind that when you are under oath or when you're giving an oath what you're in danger of specifically is in breach, you're in danger of breaching the third commandment. And if you think of it like that, that really does add another level in terms of being able to speak the truth, right? The third commandment is very clear. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. And then we also have the ninth commandment. We may just break the third, but you could also break the ninth commandment which says you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. And this is another thing that we can be so flippant about even when we talk, when you're going through the book of James and the use of our tongue, we can very easily bear false witness against our neighbor and be brought under this condemnation. May God help us to see the importance of this and if we have fallen into sin in these areas, we have a God who can grant us repentance if we but acknowledge it.

And we go to him and say, Lord, forgive me. Forgive me for lying. Forgive me for what I said or whatever it is. And we have a God who's mighty to forgive us for these types of things as well. But the last thing we want to do is to profane the name of our God, to wound or to defile his name.

And so in paragraph two, we'll go through the first part of it, it's a bit longer, but we'll go through the first half of it. And it says this, the name of God only is that by which man ought to swear and therein it is to be used with all holy fear and reverence. Therefore to swear vainly or rashly by that glorious and dreadful name or to swear at all by any other thing is sinful and to be abhorred." And so some people have accused the authors of the Second London Baptist Confession, the Westminster, and so on, of a doctrinal slip here, because they're essentially saying that if you are going to swear an oath, do it in the name of God, in God alone. But the question is, well doesn't this fly in the face of, again, what we mentioned earlier, what Jesus said himself in Matthew chapter 5. And, you know, you can actually go to that chapter and read what he says in Matthew chapter 5, and I'll read it here if you don't have a Bible it says this and he's he's going through and expounding the law and he says this again you have heard that it was said to those of old you shall not swear falsely but shall perform your oaths to the Lord but I say to you do not swear at all neither by heaven for it is God's throne nor by the earth for it is his footstool nor by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great King.

Nor shall you swear by your head, Because you cannot make one hair white or black but let your yes be yes and your no no For whatever is more than these is from the evil one And so we're the framers of the second London Baptist confession are basically saying you are committing idolatry if you invoke any other name but God. Some people would say how dare you invoke the name of God because of what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5. But really when you think about it how can you swear or give an oath to anyone but God? If you're gonna call someone to witness that has no authority, like I swear by Jerusalem, or I swear by the temple, or by the gold that's in the temple, or by heaven. These are really a lot of times non-entities or they're physical things, but they're not actually physical beings that can hold you accountable for telling the truth or telling lies.

And so, pagans do that with their idols basically as they give or attribute life to idols just like the Jews in Jesus day were actually giving life to places like Jerusalem or to the temple and so on when they swore by them and so you have to ask the question well What is Jesus doing on the Sermon on the Mount? Is he just abolishing the law? Is he saying, Moses said this, but he takes a big eraser and erases it, and I say this? Well, remember at the beginning when he started expounding the Sermon on the mount, he says, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.

And what does he do? He then takes a look at murder. He takes a look at adultery. Later on, he takes a look at a couple others as well. And here, we have to ask the question, is he totally obliterating what was said before or is he saying something different?

And I think it's worth really pondering this because in the intertestamental period, right, from the time of Malachi to Christ, that 400-year period, you had a lot of man-made laws that were brought in that were all of a sudden given equal credence with God's law or sometimes even higher credibility than God's law. So you'll remember in Matthew 23, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees because they've come up with this thing called Corbin, right? This thing called Corbin where instead of honoring your mother and your father by taking care of them, you say, sorry mom, sorry dad, what would have benefited you I'm now giving to the temple? And Jesus condemns them because they're breaking the fifth commandment to uphold a man-made commandment. They'd come up with things like, you know, the Sabbath day, you can only take 40 steps and all these different types of things, they had created these things in their own way to protect the law.

They built another fence around the law and ended up becoming hypocrites and enforcers of man-made standards and not God's. And so every time Jesus was condemned by them, He wasn't condemned for breaking the law, but he was condemned for breaking their law, which is very, very important for us to understand the difference. And this was always the problem. Every single time he had an interaction or a problem with them, It wasn't because he broke the Sabbath or he did something that was contrary to God But he did it contrary to their law and they killed him for it at the end of the day And so what this this particular area really helps us with is really a study in hermeneutics And and really we have to ask ourselves does the Bible contradict itself this statement Jesus makes Does it contradict itself Because we see a lot of other examples in the Bible. Well, I think we have to be aware of a superficial reading of it and really look at the whole counsel of God to determine our doctrine.

And we have to ask the question, was Christ obliterating the law or was he establishing the law? Well, if he tells us I came to fulfill it or establish the law, then we have to examine and see, well, what is he doing? And one of the questions I would ask us is this, is did Paul, the apostle, did he misinterpret Christ? Would you say that would be a valid argument? Would you want to go down that slippery slope and see where it ends?

Well, there's numerous occasions where Paul himself made vows and oaths. You can see it in Romans chapter 1 verse 9 he says, for God is my witness. He's making an oath, for God is my witness whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers." And then he says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 2, or 2nd Corinthians 1, 23, he says, moreover, I call God as my witness against my soul. That's an oath. He's saying, I call God as my witness against my soul that to spare you, I came no more to Corinth.

Or in Galatians 1 20, he says, now concerning the things which I write to you, indeed before God, I do not lie. Or Philippians 1 8, for God is my witness. How greatly I long for you with all that affection of Jesus Christ. And then finally, Hebrews 6, the author says, for people swear by something greater than themselves and all their disputes and oath is final for confirmation. He doesn't condemn oaths.

He's simply saying this is the natural way people swear and then he goes on to say that God when he could swear by no one greater swore by himself. And so we see God himself swearing a vow or making an oath. You see the Apostle Paul on, I just went through about five examples where he actually made vows and oaths. You see it in the book of Acts, remember when he shaved his head to keep a vow? That was another example.

And then all the way through the Old Testament you see Abraham making vows, you see Jacob making vows, you see man after man after man, all the way through the law, you see it in Deuteronomy chapter 10. So it's all the way through Old New Testament, it's all the way there. So we have to confirm when we look at it from a hermeneutic standpoint that we have to understand what Jesus was saying in the context of that and what he was attacking were frivolous oaths that people were making to try to escape accountability to God. And so there's two ways to sin when it comes to oaths. One is to swear in God's name, but to do it lightly or carelessly.

And then the other way to sin is to swear in the name of anyone or anything else other than the living God. Those are the two ways. And so what Christ is forbidding is not oath speaking, but unlawful oaths. We really need to understand that, those attempts to evade the penalty of lying by swearing by things that are impotent. And what it really, really allows us to do is this, it says, hey, I can break my oath as long as I didn't swear that oath to the living God.

And so one commentator, this guy William Hendrickson said it like this, one did not need to be quite so conscientious about keeping it, their oath before when they swore it by Jerusalem or something else. And so in daily conversations, oaths began to multiply by heaven and by the earth and by Jerusalem and by the temple and by the altar. In order to make an impression, a person might utter such an oath. So you want to make an impression, I swear by Jerusalem that I'm telling you the truth. And it has zero validity, or so you think.

Because Jesus goes on to condemn that. He says Jerusalem is the city of the great King. Heaven is where God dwells. The earth is his footstool. Do you really think that you're escaping the God who is in every place at all times by swearing by things like this?

He's saying don't think you're getting away with that at all. And so it says it affords you the opportunity of talking big and dispensing enormous promises. If the affirmation which he had made was a lie or if the promise was never even meant to be kept, that was not so bad as long as he had not sworn it to the Lord. So, hopefully that makes sense in terms of how we're looking at it. And so it goes on to say that, yet as in matter of wait and moment, so the second half of the paragraph, for confirmation of truth and ending all strife and oath is warranted by the Word of God, so a lawful oath being imposed by a lawful authority in such matters ought to be taken.

When you stand before the bar or at court or something like that. And what's a great example in the Bible of this? Well, a good example would have been our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself when he was finally wrongfully accused of doing the things that he they said he would do destroy this temple and in three days I'll build it up not knowing he was speaking about himself they accused him falsely they couldn't even get their story straight and finally he's standing there before the high priest silent as a lamb before it shears. He didn't come with his own defense, his own attorney, or anything like that. He was silent.

But then something happened and the high priest, It says this, and the high priest arose and said to him, do you answer nothing? What is it these men testify against you? But Jesus kept silent and the high priest answered and said to him, I put you under oath by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus said to him, after keeping silent, because he was put under oath before the living God, Jesus acknowledges, I'm before a lawful authority, the high priest, and I'm now being put under oath to God.

Jesus said to him it is as you said, nevertheless I say to you hereafter you will see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. And so we see God swore an oath. We see all the men of old in the Old Testament swearing an oath. We see the Apostle Paul swearing oaths and vows. And then we see the Lord Jesus himself being put under oath.

And after keeping silent, which was his right to do, when he was put under oath before by a lawful authority, he actually responded. This is our example. This is how we should be interpreting it. And so it's really important that we look at it in that context. And then Paragraph three, it says this, whosoever takes an oath warranted by the word of God ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act and therein to avouch nothing but what he knoweth to be true for that by rash, false, and vain oaths the Lord is provoked, and for them this land mourns." And so what the framers are saying here is basically only those things that are known to be true should be affirmed.

If you don't know something to be true, should you affirm it as true? Well, no, you should not do that. And you also want to be conscious of this, that as you're taking an oath, what you want to do is be brought under the weight of what you're actually doing. Again, you're calling God to be your witness that you are about to speak the truth. And what happens to a country?

What happens to a church? What happens to a family or a person who doesn't really regard truth as they ought to? Well, what does it tell you at the end? It says, for this, the land mourns. And you can look at a land like the one we're living in and see that all of a sudden when truth is no longer valued, you see the downward decline.

You see the Romans 1 happening all around us. This is what happens in a world like that. And it's because people are provoking God to anger by by lying. And so it's really important to understand that what is God hate? You remember in Proverbs chapter 6?

He says, six things the Lord hates and the seventh is an abomination and one of those is a lying tongue. It seems like such an innocent thing and yet when you go to Revelation 21, all liars, all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire. May God help us to be a people that repent and turn before it's too late." And so paragraph four speaks of the integrity of lawful oaths and an oath is to be taken in the plain and common sense of the words without equivocation and mental or mental reservation. And this again, fairly self-explanatory, but again, the Pharisees had mastered the art of spinning things, thinking that they could get themselves off the hook by swearing by lesser things. And Jesus says, no, God is over all things.

Don't think that when you swear by Jerusalem, somehow you're appealing to something lesser. God is over everything. Speak the truth. And we can look back, You know, even to one of our presidents, one of the presidents of the United States, while he was under oath during an impeachment trial and he was being questioned about an illicit relationship, committing adultery with a woman, a man by the name of Bill Clinton, and I'm not saying this to denigrate him at all, but to simply give an example of this. A man who had been to Oxford, he had studied law at Yale, so he wasn't just a guy that fell off the bus and didn't know his left hand from his right up or down.

He was a man very tried and practiced in the ways of this world. But to get his audience to try to abandon a common-sense understanding of what he was doing, he ended up doing something that if you are a parent that's paying attention, it will resonate with you when you think of your own children. The word is obfuscation. Have you heard of that word? That word obfuscation when something is so apparently true, but you're watching someone actually try to get around it, to shift attention and do all these different things.

And I want to read you exactly what he said when they asked him, is there a relationship between you and this woman? I'm going to read you the exact quote with all the ums and errs and all that kind of thing. He says, it depends on what the meaning of the word is, is. If the, if he, if is means is and never has been that is not, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.

But as I have testified, and I'd like to testify again, this is, it is somewhat unusual for a client to be asked about his lawyer's statements instead of the other way around. I was not paying a great deal of attention to this exchange. So instead of answering the question in the plain meaning, he wrapped it around and came off to try to get himself out of a situation to speak the truth. And we have to always be careful. Again, Children can do this very well.

Instead of speaking the truth, we try to pass blame. You try to do that, you see that in our first parents in the Garden of Eden. A great, great danger. And so the final paragraph, it deals with vows. And I'll read the first part of this.

It speaks of this, that a vow which is not to be made to any creature but to God alone is to be made and performed with all religious care and faithfulness. And so, again, since oaths and vows are so closely related, much of what applies in paragraph 1 to 4 regarding oaths applies with vows going backward. And so, an oath can be placed upon us, but again a vow is voluntary, right? And you think of a vow, someone who made a vow in the Old Testament would have been a woman like Hannah who was pleading with God for a son, and God, if you give me a son, I will turn him back over to you to be a servant of yours in the temple. And of course, exactly what she did.

And a lot of times, a vow might be made in thankful response to an answer of prayer. And so Ecclesiastes 5 says this. Walk prudently when you go to the house of God and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed.

Better not to vow than to vow and not pay. Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands?" Again, just you see all the solemnity, the importance of it, as opposed to the brashness and rashness that often happens. And the back half of this paragraph really attacks a problem that was going on at this time in the 1600s with the Popish or monastic vows and it says but Popish monastic vows so while it's supremely important to keep your vows it says but Popish monastic vows of perpetual single life professed poverty and regular obedience are so far from being degrees of higher perfection that they are superstitious and simple snares in which no Christian may entangle himself. And so this was happening at that time where people were taking these vows of celibacy to try to make themselves acceptable before God.

And if you did them, that you would achieve a higher level of perfection or super spirituality rather than recognizing justification by faith alone. And so G.I. Williamson, he says it really well as a commentator on this, he says, it was wrong to take such an oath in the first place. You shouldn't have taken that oath because it was unlawful. It would be doubly wrong to keep it after discovering that it was sinful.

And so a person who made a vow like a man like Martin Luther or his wife Katie or Katharina Luther, right, you remember at that time they were bound by their oaths to basically, in the case of Cate, to serve and remain in a convent before the Reformation. But of course, Martin Luther begins the Reformation, begins preaching, and people begin to understand that all of this attainment of God's favor by works was no longer applicable. And so all of a sudden when they've come to this do they continue with their vow or do they say well that vow was made improperly and to keep that vow would to be sinful in the first place. And so what you ended up getting, much to the chagrin of many church leaders, were nuns on the run. You get these, all these nuns leaving convents and getting married.

In the case of Martin Luther, he ends up at 41 years old marrying Katharina, who was 26 years old. And he had this statement to say, probably not the most romantic line in history, but he said, if I can manage it, before I die, I will still marry my Katie, despite the devil. And so he makes that statement because he understands that they're now free from those ungodly vows that had nothing to do at all with the Word of God. And so that really ends us off on this chapter of lawful oaths and vows. And I just want to end with a couple things just to consider in conclusion here.

I think The thing we can get out of this most is the way Jesus talks in Matthew 5. He says, let your words or your conversation be yea, yea, and nay, nay. Tell the truth because we serve the God of truth. Be honest and keep your commitments even to your own hurt. Even if I didn't I didn't want to keep that business contract but I'm gonna keep it because I did put my name down and I said I would do it.

God will honor that. That's one thing. I think you can think about it from the concept of wedding vows, you can think about it in terms of our church covenant, pastors when they say I will uphold this confession and then don't do it, you're breaking your oath or your vow before the living God. And so Matthew Henry says the worst the worst men are the less they are bound by oaths, the better they are the less there is need for them. And then the last thing I would say is this, realize that we, going back to that little fable, realize that when we do lie, and I need to realize this, you need to realize this, that we are not only lying to men But we are lying before the living God and and so our reason and motive should be I'm not not going to lie So that I can escape a bad reputation with men but I want to speak the truth because God is witness to everything that I say.

And so if you fear God, I think large part this is going to condition your relationship with the truth. May God heighten our fear of him so that our detestation of lying and untruth diminishes. So may God help us in all of these things. Let's just close with a word of prayer. Father, we so thank you for exposing us to yourself.

Very truth indeed. Lord, you are the embodiment of it, and we seek to be a people of truth. Oh Lord, we pray tonight that you would make us sensitive to this important thing of being truth-speakers. Lord, help us, even at our own, even at cost to ourselves, Lord, that we would be people who speak honestly and uprightly Lord that our light would shine in this regard that we would put a hedge and a guard over our tongues and our mouths and Lord we would see everything as wrapped up in giving you glory and praise. May you grant us repentance, Lord, for the many times we've spoken words that are untrue.

Oh Lord, may you give us repentance, help us to consider these things in Christ's name, amen.