The sermon by Scott Brown focuses on the ninth commandment, highlighting its importance in promoting truthfulness and integrity among believers. It begins by exploring the concept of a society without lies, emphasizing that such a world is aligned with God's nature and the hope of a righteous new heaven and earth. The sermon critiques postmodern culture's relativistic view of truth, which contributes to the acceptance of lying as a norm. It underscores that truth is not a social construct but a divine attribute that believers should strive to embody. The sermon examines the judicial context of the ninth commandment in ancient Israel, explaining how bearing false witness was a significant offense due to its potential to undermine justice and community harmony. It points out that lying is a sin that aligns individuals with Satan, the father of lies, and opposes God's holiness. Jesus Christ's perfect fulfillment of the commandment is presented as the solution to humanity's failure to uphold God's law. Believers are called to reflect Christ's truthfulness and integrity in their lives, relying on the Holy Spirit's power to resist deception. The sermon concludes with practical guidance on living truthfully, emphasizing the fear of the Lord, understanding God's sovereignty, and promoting the good name of one's neighbor.

Well, good morning everybody. Good to see everybody here today. Have you ever imagined what it would be like to live in a world that had absolutely no line? Where nobody ever told a lie, and everybody knew that nobody ever told a lie. A world where everybody only spoke truth with the same honesty and truthfulness that God can self-spoke and speaks.

I know at this point you're thinking, okay that is absolutely impossible. Just look around us today and we think that is absolutely impossible. But maybe so, but although God can do anything. But realize that if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you're going to a place like that. The new heavens and the new earth are called a home of righteousness.

And part of righteousness is complete truthfulness through the tongue. And this is what we have to look forward to. But as you can probably tell we in fact do not live in such a world. We live in a place in the time that many philosophers would call the postmodern age. Right in the postmodern culture truth is increasingly becoming more ambiguous and more difficult to define.

We live in a culture where truth is considered socially constructed in a matter of mere human convention. In fact, the postmodern mind will often boldly claim that God is dead. To put it simply, the postmodern mind to the postmodern mind, truth is not something to be discovered. It's something to be created. And let me just go on the record to say that they are absolutely wrong in saying these things.

But perhaps it is this relativistic view of truth in our culture that explains why lying is Such a morally acceptable practice nowadays. I think we would all agree with that. Seems like lying is just expected of others. We just take it for granted. It's just part of life.

Survey after survey shows that There are a growing number of Americans that believe that lying is a legitimate means to a good end. Right? It's okay to lie on a resume as long as you get the job that you're looking for. It's not going to hurt anybody. This job could bring in lots of money to my family.

I need to provide for my family. So what's a little lie on a resume? A recent survey of college students, 45%, said that it was sometimes necessary to lie, plagiarize, or cheat in order to succeed. It may be larger than that, but there are many studies that seem to corroborate that. And to capture how pervasive lying is in our society, there was a book published in 1991 called, with a very provocative title, The Day That America Told the Truth.

There was one special day where everybody told the truth, which of course, that probably didn't happen. But that tells you about the state of the culture. In fact, along with that, Child magazine, and I've got the article with me today. I'm not going to read it, but you're welcome to read it if you want to, published an article in 1995 titled The Truth About Lying. The Truth About Lying.

So what did this parenting magazine have to say about lying? It says that lying is a part of every child's emotional and intellectual development and it should be encouraged and looked upon as an achievement and not to be, not to chastise them for that. What horrible parenting advice, so contrary to Scripture, Right? It is not to be praised as an achievement. It is a sin and an affront against Almighty God.

So children, children, tell the truth. It is not part of your development. But lying is hardly a modern phenomenon, right? It's actually been going on for over 6, 000 years since the fall in Genesis 3. Since Adam and Eve listened and acted upon Satan's lie.

Ever since then, humans have been prone to lie. They've been prone to deceive, to corrupt. The Bible tells us to suppress the truth. Romans 1 tells us that. And that's why 3, 500 years ago, when Israel was gathered together at the foot of Mount Sinai and God was making his covenant with them, he included the ninth commandment.

It tells us that to bear false witness or to lie is to sin against God. God loves truth. He calls his redeemed people to love the truth. We are obligated to tell the truth in order to reflect God's holy ways. Truth is not dead because God is not dead.

God is living and God is in fact the truth. So we need to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say to us through this particular passage of Scripture, this Old Testament passage in Deuteronomy 5. We need to hear it in order to grow in our understanding of the historic Christian faith and also to know what God requires of us, whom He has graciously redeemed. We need to know what God requires of us, and He gives us His book for that. So this morning, I want to look at two things as we study this passage of Scripture, just two things.

The first, to examine how the Knight Commandment was given to Old Testament Israel. You know, how and why was it given to Old Testament Israel? And the second is to look at how Jesus Christ fulfilled this commandment, because he did fulfill this commandment perfectly. And then we'll conclude the sermon with ways that will help us as Christians to be faithful to this command. It will be a time of application.

So the outline is simple enough. And so let's proceed. So it's in the first place. Let's look at how the ninth commandment was given to Israel. Deuteronomy 15 or 5, 16 reads like this, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Jim read it earlier today. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Now this seems like an interesting way to state this particular commandment, doesn't it? Why not just say, you shall not lie? Right?

Now of course lying is covered in here, but why is it written like this? There are many children's Bibles that probably have it stated, you shall not lie. But the actual words say you should not bear false witness against your neighbor now of course if you're like me your minds are racing just like a Pharisee as you're looking at these words you're thinking okay how can I parse this verse to see exactly what I can get away with? It doesn't say not to lie, it just says I can't bear false witness against my neighbor. So maybe that means I can get away with something here.

No, that's the mind of a Pharisee. We need to reject that thought because this does certainly include all forms of lying and deceit and evil speaking. So let's think about that as we proceed. In fact the wording of this commandment indicates a judicial type of setting. Specifically the words bear false witness were often used as legal terms.

And to help us understand the context here, I think it would help to understand a little bit of the justice system in ancient Near Eastern culture. So back then courtroom justice was rather uncomplicated. It's not like we see it today. There were no special investigators, no DNA specialists, no forensic scientists, and certainly no Gil Grissom and his CSI team. We don't see that.

These judicial proceedings greatly depended upon witnesses. In fact, if you found yourself in trouble, you didn't run down to the local law firm of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What you did was you found yourself a couple or more witnesses that could testify truthfully on your behalf. And that's why it was so important in this culture to bear true witness and why it was so detestable and an affront to God to bear false witness. They were expected to tell the truth because a witness testimony in that day and age could mean matter of life or death.

We see this in the case of Stephen, right, in the book of Acts. And certainly, we see it with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But what happened there, it was false testimony that was born. Rather than the courtroom in our day, we see a scene like you would see in Ruth chapter 4, when Boaz took the elders out into the city gates. That's where justice, that's where these proceedings would typically take place, not in downtown a courtroom.

They were right outside the city gates. So every time you went in and out that city, what's one of the things that you would always think about. You would think about justice because that was always before you as you were entering and leaving this city. It was a part of daily life. It wasn't once a week.

It wasn't once every other day. It was happening all the time. Someone might accuse someone of stealing their sheep or committing adultery. In some cultures, just one person witnessing against an accused could be enough for the death sentence to be delivered and without the other person having a hearing at all. However, in God's economy, His law provided for two or three witnesses to testify against the accused in the case of a capital crime.

Deuteronomy 17.6 says this, and I believe Jesus quoted this, on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death. He shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. So it wasn't just one witness. And to make matters even more telling right God's putting safeguards in here he's telling number one you need to bear true witness now let's read Deuteronomy 17 7 another safeguard against false witness and to me the hate are Deuteronomy 17 7 says the hand of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death. So those who are testifying were the first hands to put them to death.

That's quite a safeguard if you think about it. Think about our judicial system, if this is what it looked like. And it gets even more interesting. If a witness fabricated his story in order to do harm to another, if he indeed bore false witness in direct violation to this command, then the same punishment that he sought for the accused would fall upon him. That's in Deuteronomy 19, 16 through 19.

Right? A person's life rested upon the accusation of his neighbor and the testimony of others in the community. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, kept in mind both the neighbor and the entire judicial system of the community. If false witnessing or lying in a judicial system was tolerated by a corrupt judiciary, might sound familiar, then the harmony of the community would indeed be shattered. There would be no justice, no truth.

You couldn't talk to people. You couldn't have a meaningful conversation. You couldn't trust justice to be done. Which is a horrible reflection of God because God is justice. He is truth and He is love.

Now of course the courtroom is not the only place where false testimony can occur. False witness against our neighbor occurs any time we lie about our neighbor. Lying is, in fact, giving a false testimony no matter where we are, whether we're at home, with our family, whether at work, talking about our boss or other co-workers in our neighborhood, right here, even in church. It can happen. It can happen.

Like I said, people regularly lie on a resume. How about insurance claims? Tax forms. And There are many others I could mention, but we often feel justified to lie on these things. Just as a quick illustration, I've become very familiar with insurance plans in the last month.

For those of you who do not know, my van on the last day of December of 2008 burned straight to the ground. It literally burned pretty much to the ground. And just to make a long story short, that vehicle was not covered on my insurance policy. So we were getting absolutely no money for this vehicle. And we had property in the vehicle, and we had renters insurance, so that was covered.

So can I tell you, brothers and sisters, how tempting it was for me to feel like I was wrong because we had that vehicle for three years? We registered it. I could have sworn we had that vehicle on the policy. But I'm to blame ultimately for that. But I could have easily looked at the insurance company and said, you're wrong.

You robbed me out of $11, 000. I'm going to lie about what was in that vehicle so I can make up for the difference. Do you realize how tempting that was? And then this commandment hit me. And it would be an affront to God.

How can I expect God to bless me by violating one of his commands? Right? He can choose to bless us as we violate his command, but he is clearly not obligated to, And we should not expect Him to. And so the temptation, as everyone in this room knows, that temptation is there to lie, even in the most subtle ways. And we oftentimes justify it by thinking we were wrong or this was our right.

We deserve this. We need not think that way. We need to think scripturally about that. And so I mentioned if you lie, it comes in many different shapes and sizes. Right here are some words that are used to deceive, falsify, prevaricate, stretch the truth, exaggerate, to cover up, misrepresent, Which represents purger, libel, slander, distort, conceal, fabricate.

These are just a few of the many terms that we use that fall under the language of or the umbrella of lying. Now some lies aren't even counted as lies, are they? Right? Although we should think of them as lies. Everybody knows what I'm talking about, don't they?

The white lie. We say white lie because white indicates purity. The pure lie. That doesn't even make sense. There's a pure way to violate God's command?

No. A white lie is a lie. And sometimes it's hard to deal with. And we think of social situations, or usually what we think of, with the white lie. But you can tell the truth in those situations and still uplift the person asking you the question.

It is possible. But we shouldn't lie. A fib, My mother often called it telling a story. Which was confusing because I was always being told stories. So I never really got that.

Or crying wolf. There are so many ways we try to cover up the fact that we're lying, we're bearing false witness. It's sin. It makes us feel good about our sin. Let's use the biblical language.

Let's call it deceit. Some of the words I listed are biblical words. The slander is certainly one of them. But make no mistake about it, lying destroys. It undermines trust at every level in every relationship.

It destroys relationships. And as the verse says, we are not to ball false witness against our neighbor. We're not to lie against our neighbor, nor are we to besmirch his reputation or her reputation. Now in an attempt to justify yourselves this morning, which I might be tempted to do, You might ask the same question as the self-righteous lawyer asked in Luke 10, verses 25 through 37. This is the tale of the good Samaritan.

You remember the question he asked? Well, who is my neighbor? He's trying to get around. He's trying to find a loophole. Who is my neighbor?

Jesus answered this question by indicating it was the one who showed mercy to the Samaritan. That was His neighbor, the one who showed mercy. In other words, everyone is our neighbor because everyone is created in the express image of God. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Romans 13, 8 takes it even further and tells us that loving our neighbor, And that would most certainly include speaking the truth and love to your neighbor.

It's a fulfillment of the law. Loving your neighbor is a fulfillment of the law. They're related. Romans 13, 8, Oh, no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. God commands us because of his very own nature.

He commands us to bear true witness because of his very own nature. He commands this because of his truthfulness. Oftentimes, we will call that God's veracity. It means God's truthfulness. It is that perfection of God whereby he must reveal himself truthfully.

God cannot lie. He cannot lie. And this is an amazing and an extraordinary statement. And we get a couple of them from Scripture, and I'm going to give you two right now. The first one is Titus 1, 1 and 2, because you say, well, what do you mean God can't lie?

Show me that God cannot lie. Open up the Titus 1, 1 and 2 and I'll show you. The Word of God says this, Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began." Again, Hebrews 6, 18 says this, that by two immutable things, immutable meaning unchanging, it cannot change, two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay whole of the hope set before us. God cannot lie because He is truth. There is nothing in Him but light and truth.

And lying is utterly contrary to God's holiness. Utterly contrary to His holiness. We might take lying lightly. And we often take lying very lightly, but God does not. It is an affront to His very nature.

It is not just a virtue that you'd find in Bill Bennett's book of virtues. This is His nature. He is truth. And lying only conforms to Satan, who is the father of lies. That's what lying is.

It only conforms to Satan, the father of lies. And we can look at the entry of sin into the world. It came on the heels of a lie, by the father of lies. You remember that very subtle question? You could even say, well, he didn't lie, he just asked a question.

No, his intent was to deceive. So he was a liar. Indeed, has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? He's calling into question God's word. He's attempting to deceive Eve, thereby the lie.

And then later he said, you shall not die. We see lie in the beginning of chapter 3. The truthfulness of God here is called into question by the serpent through the instrumentality of a lie. And it left the human race in a pattern of lies. Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 11 3, the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness and he was and is crafty.

Again, We see another line in chapter four where God calls out to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? This is after Cain just killed his brother Abel. And what did Cain say? I don't know. Not only did he say I don't know and lie about it, he decides to upbraid God and say, am I my brother's keeper?

So he doesn't only lie, he's pretty arrogant about it. And so we see up until this very day a pattern of lies ever since Genesis 3. We see that lying is Satan's strategy. He takes God's truth and then perverts it into a deception. And You may not know this, but He is extremely good at this.

This is what He does. He takes truth and twists it and perverts it, and then displays it as truth to us. And we can either turn away from God and embrace that truth, or we can reject it on God's Word and run to the cross. But that's what He does. He perverts it.

He takes a good thing like marriage between a man and a woman, and He perverts it to something that is an abomination to God today. And we see it prevalent in today's society. He assumes the form of an angel, an angel of light when he does this in order to redirect us away from God's truth and toward the thing that we love so much, ourselves. The tragedy of the falls that Adam and Eve actually bought Satan's lie. They bought his lie.

As Romans 1, 25 tells us, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. The catastrophic result of this sin is that guilt and corruption came upon the whole human race. None of us are free from this. Human beings now suppress the truth about God, and they suppress the truth about themselves.

They lie to themselves to make them feel better. They base everything on what appears to be and not what actually is. We might be able to relate to that this morning. That's because humanity has changed the view of the universe that was right side up, just as God made it for one that is horribly turned upside down. And I think that's why Jesus' words sound so foreign to us.

His words are right side up. We live in a world that's upside down. Jesus' words are truth. Pure truth. And we must always remember that God hates lying.

He hates lying. And as I said before, it's a direct opposition to the character of God, and he detests it. Don't take my word for it. Let's turn to the Proverbs. I don't have the next hour to read all the verses that would tell you about this, about how God hates this.

But here's two out of Proverbs. Proverbs 6, 16-19. These six things the Lord hates. Yes, seven are an abomination to Him. A proud look, a lying tongue, so there's one for the tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies.

There's number two in the lie category. And I think you can make an argument for this one as well. One who sows discord among the brethren, often done with gossip and slander. Do you get the impression that God takes seriously bearing a true witness about telling the truth? Proverbs 12, 22 says this, Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those, and here's the good thing, alright, we got the bad part, lying lips are an abomination of the Lord, which is actually good because it tells us what to obey.

But then it says this, but those that deal truthfully are His delight. Those that deal truthfully are His delight. Do you want to be an abomination to the Lord? Or do you want to be a delight to the Lord? As you can see, God hates lying, but He does take the light in those who speak the truth.

So, the God who cannot lie demands that we all tell the truth. But again, because we have fallen with Adam, we don't see God as the center of the universe. But we see ourselves as the center of the universe. That's what Adam and Eve did. They saw themselves at that moment at the center of their universe, not God.

That's what the natural person does. He thinks that true heaven is to be master of his own universe. That's the true heaven, to be master and in control of your own universe. And he often believes that lie. But the truth is, brothers and sisters, the person who has made themselves the center of the universe is not on the road to heaven, but they're on a road that leads straight to hell.

This person has exchanged the truth of God for the lie and has not repented of his rebelliousness. He's not humbled Himself before the living God who demands truth in the inward being as David says in Psalm 51. Sin, it bends the truth, it twists the truth, it pollutes the truth, It suppresses the truth. And God, in whom there is no lie, loves the truth and calls his people to love the truth with him. Like us, God is not two-faced.

He doesn't live a double life. He doesn't compartmentalize. His whole being is truth. And with Israel assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai, and as he made this covenant with this nation, God commands his people to reflect his veracity, his truthfulness, and to be full of honesty and integrity and not to lie or bear witness or bear false witness against their neighbor. That's what he's saying here.

But as we've seen in the previous commandments, right, we're on number nine now. As we've seen in the previous eight commandments. Israel's utter failure to keep the ninth commandment demanded that a Savior come. One who would keep all of God's commandments perfectly. And make no mistake about it, He kept all of God's commandments perfectly He spoke not one deceitful word out of his mouth there was no guile in him So now that we've looked at the first point, namely how the ninth commandment was given to Israel and what that meant, we now come to the second point that we want to study.

How did Christ fulfill the ninth commandment and what does that mean? I think the reason we want to think about how the ninth commandment was fulfilled by Christ is because God the Son came in human flesh at a very particular time in history. It wasn't arbitrary. It was planned from the beginning. He came at a time when Israel had been breaking the ninth commandment, among all the other commandments.

We're talking about the ninth today. He came at a time when Israel was being judged for covenant breaking. They were under the rule of Rome. They had been in and out of exile. But as you go back and as a nation in the holy promised land of Canaan, Israel behaved just like Adam did in the garden, exchanging the truth about God for a lie and worshiped the creature and turning to false gods, in fact, turning to themselves.

So what did God do? God sent his prophets as covenant prosecutors to go to the people of Israel and proclaim to them how they have broken covenant with God and have violated the law. We see this with the messages of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, what people often call the minor prophets, I'll call the latter prophets. And now justice would have to be administered according to that covenant. Well Then the kingdom split.

They went into exile. They mourned for 70 years. One of those prophets that God sent was Hosea. And here's what Hosea said in chapter 4, verses 1 through 3. Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel.

For the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land. There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in that land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraint with bloodshed upon bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells there will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Even the fish of the sea will be taken away.

Hosea lists swearing and lying among this list. But this is what Hosea was saying to the nation of Israel as a prophet of God. And this is the context in which Jesus comes, and John tells us in John 1, 14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

This was the second Adam, not tricked by Satan's lies like the first Adam. Jesus appears and is full of truth. He is truth itself. Whereas Adam exchanged the truth for a lie, Christ remained true. Right?

He didn't fall into Satan's temptations. And we see this clearly in Matthew 4, when the Spirit led Jesus out in the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. And we heard Satan's perversions of scripture in that chapter. The scripture, which by the way, John 17 tells us, is truth also. Thy word is truth.

But Jesus didn't succumb to Satan's perversions of Scripture. What did he do? He wasn't fooled by deceit, but rather he spoke the truth in return. He spoke words of Scripture in return. That's what we're to do.

We're not to believe the lie. We're not to exchange the lie for the truth. But we are to speak the words of Scripture. We're to believe the words of Scripture. We must believe them.

It's truth. Anything else is falsehood. Anything outside of Scripture is false. The bad news, of course, is that because we are sinful, and we suppress the truth and we suppress God, who is holy and full of truth, and hates our sin, hates our lies, hates our deceit. Well, because he is holy and just, he must punish that sin with his very own wrath.

Earlier I said that we need to understand ourselves and I also said that God hated lying, that He hated deceit. So keep that in mind, that God hates lying and He hates deceit. And I want to Take us to Romans 3, starting in verse 10, and I want you to look at what the Scripture says about the state of the unregenerate person, which all of us either were at one point or are sitting in this very room. You are either a generate and a child of God or not. But what does Romans 3 have to say about mankind?

Before the fall. Or not before the fall. After the fall. Verse 10. As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one.

There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one." Now listen to this.

As we talk about the ninth commandment and our words, listen to a few of these verses. Their throat is an open tomb, Which is basically talking about words that come out. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of ass is under their lips.

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift as shed blood, destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." It's quite an indictment. But Because God is holy and just, He must punish the sin with His wrath. The bad news continues because we deserve hell on account of our lying.

And what we have done or not done or failed to do with this truth, we have broken all of God's commandments. But there is good news. There's good news. And the good news is that Jesus Christ, who is the truth and has never told a lie, never deceived anyone, never suppressed the truth, but was so fully righteous and perfect that the Father in heaven exclaimed, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The good news is that He was punished for our lying, for our twisting of the truth, for our gossip, for our backbiting, for our tail bearing, for our bending of words, and for our injury to our neighbor that bears testimony in such a way that it causes them harm.

He was punished and died for all of those sins, our sins. And He has offered to you today as the only way, the only truth, and the only life. He's the only way. He offers this to you this morning. The only way in which you can be reconciled with the Father.

It's the only way you can reconcile being a sinful creature and being bound for hell in God's holiness and His perfectness in allowing people into heaven. Because there is no sin in heaven. There is no imperfection in heaven. And since from birth we are all this way, there had to be a remedy. And this is it.

It's Jesus Christ coming into the world and living a perfect life and fulfilling these commandments perfectly, which Adam and no one else has ever done. And then dying, he was crucified, But he conquered death because he rose on the third day. He was resurrected by God. This is how it's reconciled. Christ says to the sinner, come to Me, all you liars and weak sinners, and be washed in My blood and clothed in My righteousness.

Be covered by my truth, for I am truth." Jesus tells us the truth when He says this because He does not lie, because He cannot lie. Christ has fulfilled all the demands of the law so that those who are in Him, they are no longer under condemnation of the law as we see in Romans 8.1. But if you are not in Christ, then God will judge you according to this law, to this very commandment. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not lie.

I think every one of us in our room are undone just by our words alone. Forget the other nine commandments, and don't forget them. But what I'm saying is this commandment alone condemns us. So if you're not in Christ, God will judge you according to this law. And He demands perfection.

Which means that you could never have told even one lie in your life. If you have, you're a liar. And you need the cross. And if you've been saved, praise the Lord. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean all of our lying goes away.

We still do this. We still lie. It's that process of sanctification. But We still need the gospel here. We still need the cross.

We need to remember the joy of our salvation and that there is refuge at the cross. Those who are in Christ, the law has already been fulfilled. Justice has been satisfied. The law does not come to us as justice that must be satisfied, not as something that must be fulfilled from merit, but rather as the way in which the people of truth are to live in gratitude for what Christ has done for us. We don't reject the law when we're saved.

It shows us how to live. It shows us how to love God by obeying His commands. We do this out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. We don't cast it aside. So the ninth commandment is applicable today for all of us.

So the ninth commandment thunders from Mount Sinai, but it comes to us through Jesus Christ. And that brings us to the last thing that we want to think about today. How the ninth commandment applies to us in the new covenant. It calls us as we are sitting here today, as those united with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be lovers and speakers of truth. We're to be lovers and speakers of truth.

It calls us to reflect our Lord who is the truth even as we live in a world of falsehood and lies. How can we do this? How can we be speakers and lovers of the truth in this world that we live in that is so perverted with lying? Obviously by the power of the Holy Spirit. The scripture comes to us and gives us some specific guidance on how we are to do this.

Praise the Lord, God has given us a revealed Word. When we think about how we might seek to fulfill the ninth commandment in gratitude and thankfulness, there are some things which we should know. I actually have the number seven here. I just don't know if we'll get to them all. But there are some things that we should know.

Here's the first thing I want us to know right now. The fear of the Lord. We need to understand and embrace the fear of the Lord. And we all know that. We know that's the case.

But may I say, brothers and sisters, that lying is a sheer act of no fear of God. There are all sorts of ways that we lie and we try to tell ourselves that it's not a lie. What that really is is it's a lack of fear of the Lord. Any lie. Just like stealing.

It is saying, when you lie, you're saying that God's not looking. You know what? He doesn't hear anything. And you know what? If He does, He won't do anything about it.

That's sort of what we're saying if we lie. See, God doesn't care. He doesn't see it. And if He does, He's not going to do anything about it. Because oftentimes we can think of many lies that we felt we've gotten away with.

We can get in the pattern of that, that we won't get caught. And you might not get caught by a human being, but God knows everything. He knows our heart. Every single word we will give an account for. And He already knows those words.

He knows every word, every idle word spoken. You know, the early church has given a terrifying record of two professing Christians who showed absolutely no fear of the Lord. They went about lying in order to get people to think more highly of them. As is so often the motivation in our own lives. We want people to like us.

We want people to think highly of us. And that alone can cause us to sin. We want the praise of man. We don't care about the fear of God. And as such, we will lie to get that praise.

But the New Testament gives us this startling and stunning account. They lied in order to put forth an image that they wanted people to see that really wasn't real. That wasn't their real image. It wasn't who they were. They were hypocrites.

The New Testament tells us about two people that God killed in the Christian church for lying. I'm not talking about the Old Testament anymore. I'm talking about the book of Acts. I'm talking about Acts 5, written by Luke. Do you know that?

There were two people that were struck dead for lying. I think Paul says, you did not lie to man, but you lied to God. You lied to the Holy Spirit. What was their problem? They had no fear of God.

They clearly had no fear of God. And God punished them by killing them. They seemed to think they could lie in the presence of God in His church and get away with it. Apparently they thought God was stupid or that He was unable to do anything to them. Or maybe they thought he just didn't care.

Oh, he cares. He cares. He cares about his word. He cares about his character. He cares about us walking in obedience to him.

I say it's terrifying, but You know what? It is wonderful that the New Testament gives us this record. It is terrifying, but brothers and sisters, it's wonderful. It's a wonderful testimony because we can read these words and we can see what God thinks of sin, what he thinks of lying. This should scare us.

It's wonderful because it gives us instruction on how we must fear God and keep His commandments. That's Ecclesiastes 12-13. It's the sum of the whole matter. To fear God and keep His commandments. Perhaps we, like Ananias and Sapphira, feel like we could get away with lying because we're good at it.

Perhaps we've managed to keep lying to our spouse, to our children. Children, perhaps you feel like you can lie to your parents and they won't know about it. Lie to friends, your boss, church leaders, brothers and sisters among us. We lie to each other in order to keep something hidden or secret. Those secret things we don't want to get out and we lie about them.

Perhaps you found yourself living something of a double life. Well, the Bible has news for us. We're not two people, we're one. We're one person. There's only the you that comes to church.

There's only the one you that sits in front of that computer. There's only the one you as you're with your friends, a justified sinner. And as we are tempted sometimes to think that we might be able to keep all sorts of sinful and defiling activity under the radar, We might think that we can keep it under the radar, keep it under control, I can control this lie. When nobody knows, we should be confronted with the reality that God always knows. He always knows.

To live a lie is to live like there is no God. It's to demonstrate a sheer lack of the fear of God and that's what that's one thing I want us to take away from this sermon today. Is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We see it all through the Proverbs. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And this fear of the Lord causes us, or should cause us, to flee from all falsehood and lying and to be a people of truth. Number two. I want us to consider and contemplate the sovereignty of God. Okay, here's another term I'm throwing out there. Everybody's saying, yeah, Yeah, we believe in the sovereignty of God.

Everyone here, I think, embraces the sovereignty of God. Well, we do at different levels. It's another part of the sanctification process. I think we do believe in the sovereignty of God, but at different levels. And so why am I saying that?

We don't always apply the sovereignty of God every area of life and we should. And I think bearing false witness or lying is an issue that we often don't apply the sovereignty of God to. And to illustrate this, I want to use an example from the second chapter of the book of Judges. Now, this should all be familiar to you as the account of Rahab and the spies. And I know you all were wondering if I was going to mention this this morning.

And there was much talk about this on Tuesday. And I guarantee you, I will not be saying all those things this morning. But I bring it up for one particular reason. One particular reason. So to recall the passage together, Rahab houses two men that Joshua sends into the land to spy.

And then when she's questioned by the king's men as to the whereabouts of the spy, Rahab lies and said that she didn't know where they were from or where they left to. In actuality, Rahab hid them, right? But then you look in Hebrews 11 and Rahab is praised. Hebrews 11, which we call The great faith chapter. It actually says, by faith, she received the spies with peace.

She received the spies with peace. And don't forget James 2. James 2.25 says this, She was justified by her works as she received messengers and sent them out another way. So how does this relate to the understanding of God's sovereignty? Where am I going with this?

It is often assumed that if Rahab had not lied in this situation, that those spies would have been killed. That's often an argument. If Rahab hadn't lied, these spies would have been killed. Let me ask a question. How do you know that?

First of all, it's a hypothetical situation. In one respect, there are no hypotheticals. Everything depends on the details. So you can't say that. You can't say, if she had done this, then this would have happened.

If you do, you're assuming the role of God. Just know that. God was sovereign in this situation. Rahab was praised because she feared God. She believed that city was going to be destroyed.

And so you see her in Hebrews and you see her in James. She was not praised for her lying. She lied. She lied. But she feared God.

Right? That's what we need to understand. She feared God. And so how does that relate to us this morning in the sovereignty of God? Oftentimes, and I'm just going to say right here, after the service, when we fellowship together, we often walk up to one another and say, hey, how are you doing today?

You doing all right? And often, not always, the response is, I'm doing fine. When in reality, that's a lie. That might be true. You may actually be fine.

And I'm not saying that you want to spill out every single detail of your life. But we are a community of brothers and sisters. We are in covenant with one another. And we are to bear one another's burdens. And it's a blessing.

It's one of the blessings of this command that allows us to bear one another's burdens, to encourage, to exhort. Right? So it's a blessing of this command. But often we say, I'm doing fine. Nothing wrong here.

And it's a lie. What we should be doing is opening up. At some level, there's a balance between sharing the truth and sharing it to the point where it's destructive or unedifying or not edifying anymore. Right, you don't have to confess everything, but what I'm saying is we need to be more truthful to each other so that we can bear one another's burdens. And often, how that ties back into the sovereignty of God.

And I've heard this said before, where someone says, well, if someone came to my door and knocked on it and demanded to find out where my family is, and if I didn't tell them that they'd kill them, I would just lie and then protect my family. Again, we're presuming on the sovereignty of God. What we're saying when we say those things are I am my family's shield, and you are in a way, But I am my family's ultimate shield. And not the song that we sang earlier this morning. That God is a shield about us.

God is our only shield. It's not our trickery or the way we craft our words or our lies that will protect anybody. And you can say, well, if I don't lie, they'll kill my family. You don't know that. There might be a high probability, but that is a big difference from saying you know it.

Because when you say you know it, you're presuming to be God. And so when we come to each other, when we ask each other how we're doing, don't try to guess the future. Don't try to figure out, well, if I say this, then this person is going to think this of me, and I want them to think that they're more holy than I really am. I want them to think that I'm more pious than I really am, so I'm not going to share anything. It's too damaging to my reputation.

You're deceiving yourself with a lie. And if you ask the question, you're lying if you really don't want to hear their response. So if you're not ready to sit down, and maybe that's not the time, but maybe you could set aside a time, say, you know what? We don't have time to talk about this now. But how about Monday?

We can get together for lunch. I'm not saying it always has to be at that minute. But if you ask that question, ask it in sincerity. Like you really want to know what's with that person. Because if you don't, don't ask the question.

Because you're lying too. You're saying, I really care about you, but I don't really. So it goes both ways. But please, apply the sovereignty of God to these situations. Don't presume on the future.

Don't think you can figure out what this person is going to do or think or say. Just be obedient to the Word. That's it. Just be obedient to the Word and trust that God will work everything else out. I have a few more.

Number three, understand that Satan is the father of lies. This comes from John chapter 8, verse 44. And There's a whole discussion between a group of professing Jews that say that they believe in Christ. And he and Christ and these Jews have a talk about truth. And Ultimately, Jesus says that they are from a father of lies.

And here's what it says. You are your father, you are of your father the devil. And you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature.

For he is a liar and the father of lies. Remember that. Any lie that we tell comes from the Father of lies. A.W. Pink says that lying is the sin that makes one most like the devil because he is all about lies.

And we should remember this. We should remember this. We should remember that we should let our yes be yes and our no be no. Which we find in Matthew 5.37. But it doesn't end there.

It doesn't just say let your yes be yes and your no be no. It says anything else is from the evil one. So let your yes be yes and your no be no. Say what you mean. Which means no is okay, right?

It's not saying say yes to everything. No is a perfectly legitimate response. Say no and let your no be no. If you say yes, then let your yes be yes. Because anything else is from the evil one.

If you promise someone to come over to help them move and you don't show up, you're not letting your yes be yes. You're not taking it seriously. You're not taking this seriously, that this lie comes from the father of lies, and that when we lie, we most represent Satan and not our father, God, if you are indeed a professing Christian. We need to be for the truth. We need to proclaim and embrace the truth, and thereby reflect the truth of God.

But when we lie, it is of the evil one. Let's also understand the nature of our evil, number four. I think it's important to know the nature of our evil, and it's in our hearts. The essence of our evil is not in disobeying this commandment. That is not the essence of our evil, not in disobeying this commandment.

It's a good start, but it's not the essence of our evil. The commands merely name the evil and its fruits and tells us not to do them. That's what the command does. Like Paul says this in Romans 7. If not by the law he wouldn't know what coveting was.

They do not, These commands do not create the possibility of evil. The evil is already there. The essence of our evil is that we prefer anything to God. Right? John Piper wrote this in a blog a while back.

But he says, the essence of our evil is that we prefer anything to God. Long before that we are told not to lie, what do we do? We lie. Children do it right away without even teaching them. Don't have to teach them how to do that.

I think one reason why it's important is that it will ultimately affect the way that we pursue change. If you think that the essence of your evil is commandment breaking, then your focus of change will be on commandment keeping. Right? And this is doomed to fail in at least two ways. Number one, we could get good at it.

We could think we get good at keeping the commandment. We think we've changed, but in essence, our evil still remains. It's still in the heart. We still prefer something other than God. And then if we can't get good at it, we despair and we quit trying.

If we know that the essence of our evil is that we prefer anything else to God, then our focus will be on the change of our heart. Number five, I want us to know that we are to promote our neighbor's good name. We see this in Ephesians 4, 25, all the way through, I think, verse 29. We're to speak the truth of all image bearers of God. Paul warns us about the sin of slander and gossip and backbiting in many of his letters, Romans 1, 2 Corinthians 12, 1 Timothy 5.

And we must realize that gossip, for instance, is a violation of the night commandment. I love the way the Puritan Thomas Watson put this. He said, he that raises a slander carries the devil in his tongue. And he that receives it carries the devil in his ear. We're not to spread it.

We're not to listen to it. When we engage in gossip about our neighbor, our brother, our boss, our friend, or we participate in it by listening to it, without stopping the one given the information and asking if they've shared this with the person in question, then we violate the ninth commandment if we entertain these tasty trifles. We sin against that person, and we damage the reputation in good name. Even if the testimony is true, it may still be malicious and harmful. That's not the only test.

Is this true? There are many true things that can be said that will be harmful to the person. You might want to think about three things before you open your mouths. Number one, is it true? Number two, if it is true, does it need to be said to this other person?

And number three, would I say it this way if the person I'm talking about were present? I think unless our words, there might be more, but unless our words can pass at least those three tasks, Christians, we have no business and no right to speak about our neighbor and to do so is to hate him not love him. So let not love him so that no corrupt word proceed out of our mouths it's so important that we have a sacred regard for the truth and that this truth be constantly pressed upon our children. For God is truth. We must impress this ninth commandment upon our children.

God is truth. Christ is truth. The Holy Spirit is truth. Now this makes the imperative that we as parents should set before our children a personal example of what we teach. We shouldn't just say things, we should actually do them.

And we must remember that we destroy our teaching on being truthful when we make promises that we do not keep or we make threats that we never carry out what I mean by threats is if we tell them we're going to chastise them or discipline them because they deserve it and we don't do it we're lying to them we're lying to them And it breaks down what we're actually teaching with our words because they're going to look at our actions. So we should be very slow in making unconditional promises, as many in this room probably know. You don't make unconditional promises to your children, but once you have done so, then you need to carry it out at all costs, unless it brings sin, right? Unless there's sin against God in doing that. I think the last thing I'll just mention very briefly, and I'll end with this, is the importance of daily confession.

I'm going to call us to repentance right now for violating this commandment, for the deceit in our mouths and the lies that we tell and the way that we bear false witness. I'm calling myself to repentance which I have all week as I had my face in my Bible and being taught these truths of what God thinks about lying. We should be in daily confession. Not just of this commandment, but all the time we should be in daily confession. If you want to be a person of truth and avoid living a life of hypocrisy, engage in daily confession of sin with God, the one and the only one who can forgive.

It's been said that our character is who we are when nobody else is looking except God. I had to recently be reminded of this, of my own life, as I engaged in a lie of convenience and I had to go to my knees and ask for repentance. To make things convenient, I, one of our children, was born and we had to apply for a birth certificate. And so as I was filling the birth certificate out there, lots of questions they asked. And one of them is where was the child born?

Well, our address and where our child was born, two different counties. We didn't have the child at our own house. And so the council we were given is just say you're at your house because it will avoid a ton of paperwork and a lot of hassle. Without even thinking of it, I thought, that makes sense. And so that's what we did.

And so as I read this and as my wife and I talked about this, it was a glorious time because it brought me to confession of this. Because it was, it was a lie of convenience. I thought, it's not going to hurt anybody, it's going to make things easier on me. But that's not the litmus test. The litmus test is what does God say about lying?

He says, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not lie. That's the test. It's not whether it inconveniences us. It's not whether it makes us more financially prosperous.

It's not whether it makes us look good in front of our friends and co-workers and our boss. It's is it truth or is it not? And this is how the New Testament applies the night commandment to us. We are polluted with sin. We are prone to lie.

We're prone to suppress the truth, prone to slander our neighbor. God says, if you are redeemed, He says, you are united with my son. You are my new creations. You are people of the truth. So don't live contrary to what I've made you.

Don't live contrary to what God has made you. We should be people who reflect God. Right, God is so kind and so patient and so gentle and so infinitely merciful to condescend the sinners like us and then to bathe us in the blood of Christ and to clothe us in Christ's righteousness. He is so good to give us the Holy Spirit who has regenerated us and made us new creations to walk in, to speak the truth as we travel to our final destination, to that city that John describes in Revelation 21 where he says, nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. Loved ones, this is our home.

That is our home. That's where we belong. We're to be people of the truth. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that you are truth.

We would not know truth if it were not for You. You are the perfection of truth as in the Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. Oh Lord, as Isaiah says, if all you had were our words, we would be undone. If all you had were our words, we would be undone. And Lord, we are grateful that you have provided a way of reconciliation between you and us.

That you did indeed send your Son, who fulfilled the commandments perfectly to die a horrible death on the cross, a death that each and every one of us deserves, but He died for us. Oh Lord, we're so thankful for this. So thankful for this truth. That if we profess the name of Jesus Christ, we will be saved. Thank you for this way, for we do not deserve it.

We cannot earn it. It is a precious gift from You, Lord. Lord, help us walk in righteousness this week. Help us walk in holiness and help us to reflect the truth which You are. In Your name we pray.

Amen.