In the sermon titled 'Live Not by Lies,' Paul Carrington explores the critical theme of truth within the context of the Sermon on the Mount. He explains that Jesus' teachings act as a 'wrecking ball to self-righteousness,' challenging the Pharisees' diluted interpretation of the law. Carrington highlights that true righteousness surpasses the superficial adherence to rules, emphasizing the necessity of 'heart religion'—a genuine, internalized faith. He discusses the prevalent crisis of truth, noting that lying is ingrained in human nature, and critiques the Pharisees for their manipulation of oaths to justify dishonesty. Carrington underscores the importance of truthfulness for Christians, urging believers to embody truth in their lives, reflecting God's nature. He warns about the societal damage caused by a culture of lies and emphasizes the church's role as the 'pillar and ground of the truth.' Ultimately, the sermon calls for a commitment to truth, reflecting God's character and advancing a trustworthy Christian community.

Yes, as our brother said, if you could please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5 and we're going to continue hearing the Sermon on the Mount. Just as we as you get there, What a beautiful line in that song, that Christ lives, that death may die. What a Savior we have. But we're going to be talking today about a crisis of truth. We're going to be talking about speaking the truth and how the Lord wants us to live and how he wants us to regard one another.

And so far in the Sermon on the Mount, we've really spent a lot of time diving back into the Old Testament, looking at the law. And what we're finding, I think just even in talking to some of us, is that the law is much harder and much more severe than we originally thought. It's a much taller mountain than the Pharisees thought. And the only way that they could try to make it doable. In other words, if they were going to attain righteousness and they were going to actually attain salvation, the only way they were going to be able to do that was to round off all the edges of the law.

They were going to have to dilute the law and pervert the law. And Christ is now coming on the scene saying, you don't do that. You cannot touch the law of God. And so if you're going to be saved, it is not going to be through your own behavior and through your own law keeping. And so really what the Sermon on the Mount is, it's a wrecking ball to self-righteousness.

It really does the job of saying there's no root and there's no branch for you to attain what God demands. And What the sermon on the mount does at the same time is it points to something that was so foreign to the Jews in The time of Christ which was heart religion. They had lost heart. They were doing things by rote They had a checklist and all these things But heart religion really is what God is after. He's always been after.

He's after that today. And the only way to come into relationship with this God that we have been worshiping is from a source entirely outside of ourselves. And I think this is the key here is that you have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness raised from death to life you've attained citizenship in heaven And then what happens is that over the years, little by little, incrementally, what is God doing? He's forming Christ in you progressively. That's really the Christian life, and that's what a lot of what we're reading here in the Sermon on the Mount really focuses on.

And so the king is now on the scene. He's seated and he's opened his mouth and he's teaching the people and he's reasserting the authority of God. And one of the things that we've kept going back to is verse 20. So chapter 5 verse 20, which is kind of really the key to understanding the rest of chapter 5. And what the Lord says here, right after he tells us of the centrality of the law and that the law is not going anywhere, he says, for I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

And now we've gone through all the different aspects of the Beatitudes, and we've looked at these different illustrations on what it means to have our righteous to succeed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. And today we're in the fourth of the six antitheses, and Jesus is expounding on the kingdom of God and its relationship to God's law. And so what we're going to be talking today about is really a crisis of truth. And all of us in this room know exactly what I'm saying when we have this, As a result of the fall, we have a proneness in us, don't we, to lying. You don't have to teach a little child to lie.

No one taught me how to lie. It was just, you have to teach me to tell the truth. And this is as a result of who we are. And you go anywhere in the world and it's the same story exaggeration creating false impressions or white lies we call them lies of all shapes and lies of all sizes but what does Jesus say here we're gonna be talking about this in verse 33 he says 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.

Let's pray. Heavenly father we we come to you again lord we thank you for your word thank you for preserving these words from our Savior on the Sermon on the Mount. Oh Lord, we pray today that you would help us. Lord, help us to be truth-speakers, to speak the truth and love to one another, to be men and women children of the truth. Lord, we see in our culture an ocean of lies and all around us, Father, but we pray that we would stand for the things that are right and true.

Oh Lord, guide us now this afternoon and just bless us as we hear your word. Amen. Amen. Well, let's just first address, first of all, the standard of righteousness as it masqueraded as truth in the days of our Lord. That very first verse there in verse 33, he says, 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.

And on the surface, there doesn't seem to be a lot of problems here or much defined fault with in terms of the rendering. You know, Leviticus 19, verse 12, you find the doctrine of oaths right there. And the quote is, and you shall not swear by my name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God, I am the Lord. You know, Leviticus is not saying don't utter an oath, right, it's not saying that. It's not saying don't, it's basically saying don't swear by my name falsely.

That's what the law is saying. Because when you do that, you're profaning the name of the Lord and if you look up what the word oath means if you go back and and look at what Webster had to say an oath is a solemn affirmation or declaration made with an appeal to God for the truth of what is affirmed. The appeal to God is an oath, in an oath implies that the person implicates his vengeance and renounces his favor if the declaration is false. So it's a fearful thing. Or the declaration is a promise the person invokes the vengeance of God if he should fail to fulfill it.

A false oath is called perjury. So that's the definition really of what an oath is. And of all the ways that the Pharisees skirted the law, and we've seen some of them, we've seen how they did it with murder, we saw how they did it with adultery or even with divorce, to me this seems the most ingenious as we as we get into this. And you know what's going on? Well the Lord, he goes on to give us examples of exactly what the Pharisees were doing.

In verse 34, 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." And what was what was Jesus addressing here? He was addressing a culture where there was a bunch of oaths that were being introduced into everyday conversation and they were oaths that they didn't consider being binding in certain situations. So when I said something to you and then I swore by Jerusalem because I didn't swear by the name of God, I didn't actually have to keep that oath. And so lying became permissible in this sense. Very ingenious if you're from a diabolical perspective.

So when they didn't want to actually say something that was true or that was binding, they'd still swear an oath, right? But do it in the name of something that was considered a lesser thing. And this is the practice, this is the hypocrisy that the Lord is really going to war with in these verses. So in their minds, the way they had kind of cobbled it all together was that all things kind of closely connected with God, Jerusalem, the temple, You know, we'll get to the altar later on, all these things, but not quite God himself. Close enough, but not quite God.

And so if I make an oath by one of these things and break it, no big deal. And of course, when you have this kind of thing in a culture, it leads to a culture of lying. And we were just talking about it at lunch, actually. You go to certain places in the world, and lying is just, you wouldn't believe, it's just so common. It comes out of your mouth just like water, because they've never actually been introduced to this concept of the importance of truth.

And what happens is a low trust society begins to develop and to be established. And that's exactly what was happening here in the time of Christ. And it's not the only time that we encounter this practice. It's even more the Lord goes after it more violently. He goes on the war path.

If you go to Matthew chapter 23 where he goes after the Pharisees and scribes with violence, I would say, he goes with these several woes that he begins to utter. So watch how Christ pours out his scorn and ridicule upon them. Look what he says, woe to you blind guides who say whoever swears by the temple it is nothing but whoever swears by the gold of the temple he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind for which is greater the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing.

But whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore he who swears by the altar swears by it and by all things on it, he who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it and he who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it." And this is what the Lord, he's going after it because he hates lying, He hates this kind of culture that they had developed. And so the Lord goes on to say with great authority after saying what he just said in verse 34, but I say unto you, do not swear at all. In other words, religious Speech may trick men, but you cannot mock God.

That's really what he's after. Stop this whole practice of dishonesty in everyday speech and conversation. Now unless you're careful, and there's actually groups, the Amish for example, and you've got not only the Amish, I think the Mennonites as well, what will happen is you can see how people would fall into this trap of you say you see the words do not swear at all and you think now that Christ is actually abolishing the Old Testament as it relates to oaths. The Old Testament is full of all sorts of oaths. But just minutes ago, remember, in this very same sermon, he says that till heaven and earth pass away, right?

One jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. And so now we're in this position where sometimes people say, well, you can't swear an oath because Jesus said, do not, you know, swear at all. But forget the Old Testament just for a second, and if you come even to the New Testament, what have you found oaths being sworn? Well, let's see. Because of the unbelievable nature, we saw this by the way in the book of Romans, because of the unbelievable nature of what the apostle Paul is about to say.

He actually swears an oath in Romans chapter nine, verse one, and he says this, he says, I tell the truth in Christ. He's invoking Christ, it's an oath. I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. Why is it so unbelievable? Because he says later on that I could wish myself a curse that Israel would be saved.

And so to add the veracity to that statement, he actually invokes the name of Christ. And so he uses an oath. What about Christ himself? Well, in judicial context, when the Lord is basically on his, during his trial, that night of his trial, he's there and he's entirely silent. As Isaiah 53 says, he's as though he's like a lamb silent before his shears.

But then something happens in the interrogation. And it says this, and the high priest answered and said to him, I put you under oath to the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. What does Jesus do? Does he say, well, I'm not bound to swear under oaths, I don't do oaths because, no, he doesn't do anything like that.

Very simply, he's been put under oath in God's name, and it's the only time that he answers, and he says, it is as you said. Christ responds to the oath that he's put under. And then Hebrews chapter six, so we've seen Paul and Christ, and look what Hebrews chapter six says. It tells us that God, determining to show more abundantly to the errors of promise, the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. Wait, God himself swears an oath.

Why? That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us." So we see there, these are all New Testament references, so Paul swears an oath, under oath Christ responds, and then God confirms his promises with an oath, how can oaths be sinful, right? That obviously God is not sinning. But notice what is happening though, that All of these things are taking place with great solemnity. These aren't just casual statements.

Paul isn't just saying, you know, off the cuff, but with great gravitas, with great solemnity, he's making these statements. Just like When someone takes an oath of office, that's not an everyday thing. And it's taken with great solemnity, or you go to court when a man becomes an elder during his, when you're being asked all sorts of questions. You know, you take an oath that you're gonna be telling the truth, things like that. These are all legitimate, and they're actually good.

Oaths are good when they're uttered lawfully and with that solemnity. Right? And so our whole confed- actually our SLBC has a whole chapter, chapter 23 that is dedicated to lawful oaths and vows. It's actually really, really helpful. And so that's not what the Lord is condemning here, whether or not we can say an oath when the time calls for it.

The great crime of the Pharisees, and what I have to watch out for, is that they had relaxed the obligation of truthfulness in their everyday life. That's what the Lord is attacking here. It's so plain. And so Jesus, what is he doing? He's clearing the deck.

The picture that I gave you guys before was Nehemiah throwing out all the household stuff and then putting back what was right. That's kind of what the Lord is doing. He's clearing the deck. He's wiping away the hypocrisy. And then he's establishing what's true and what true righteousness really is.

And that's what he says in verse 37. He says, but let your yes be yes and your no, no. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. You know, there's something, the Bible is supremely concerned with the truth. The simple speaking of truth, just in terms of human interaction, the Proverbs is full of it all the way through.

And if you wanna just go back and do an analysis, think about lying. You know, the very first lie, what happened? It led to the fall of the human race. And since then, lying has really been a core part of our nature, a core part of our world. You know, when Jesus goes back, he's talking to the Pharisees and he harkens back to the fall.

What does he say? He calls the devil the father of lies. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. How can we calculate the damage that's come about as a result of that first lie? I mean look at the world that we're living in.

And of course, we all see not only that it led to all sorts of relational problems, but most of all what happened was that as the wages of sin led to an estrangement from God, That very first lie was an absolute terrible thing. But as a result of that, it went even further. You know lies just became so common and it led to all sorts of things like idolatry and false religion. Think about idolatry. You're actually saying This is a God when there's a true and living God and there's only one God.

And you begin to bow down and prostrate yourself before a lie. Think about the destruction that's happened in relationships all down through the ages because of lies. It's incalculable. Even the cause of wars have been as a result of lying. You know, up until this present day, just consider one lie.

Consider the lie of Darwin's theory of evolution? Do you know that you can draw a direct line from his theory, which he formulated in the 1800s, to the 20th century, where more people were slaughtered in the 20th century than in all the other centuries added up together. Over 100 million people, all because Man is no different than a beast. So to slaughter him is no different than to step on an ant, kill a cow, survival of the fittest. Man came from nothing, he's going nowhere.

That is the result of a lie. It's amazing when you begin to start to think about these things. So what I want you to understand is that lies have consequences. This is what I wanna get at here. And by the time we come to Pontius Pilate, Here we have this man, you remember the question he asked?

He says to Jesus, he says, what is truth? After years as a Roman politician, this man had become so cynical. It's as though he's saying, is there even such a thing as truth? Meanwhile, he's got the king, truth incarnate, right in front of him. And he can't recognize it.

And even in our day, just I want you to think about this. Just think about the last four or five years, where we've kind of been treated, we've kind of been swept, if you will, swept under with an avalanche of lies everywhere you look just go back a few years masks get the jab You'll own nothing and be happy. Men can be women. You've got things like sodomite marriage, but not just sodomite marriage. I don't know how many of you saw, but there's this sodomite that was a politician in Biden's cabinet.

His name was Pete Buttigieg. And him and his partner ended up adopting A child. God forbid, but it happened. And you know, the picture that they took was on Pete sitting on a hospital bed with the baby, with his guy behind him with his arm around him, as though they had something to do with the birth of this child. It's ridiculous.

But that's only to be outdone now. We just we don't even say pregnant women. We can say birthing persons. You see the lies everywhere. Hillary Clinton receiving the Medal of Freedom.

The list continues. Lies after lies. You could come up with your own list. I just was thinking of some of these here. But what is the basis of all these these scams?

It's really lies and you know much of it has nothing to do with whether something was actually true or not. They're not really interested, I don't think, in the truth. I think rather from a diabolical aspect. Here's what I want us to think about. If I can get you to say that a man is in fact a woman, is there anything I can not get you to say?

If I can get you to say that, I can do a lot with that, can't I? So what are they really after? They're after subjugation. They're after compliance, right? They're after humiliation.

You know, even the sat traps of Daniel's day, go back thousands of years, they didn't actually believe that Darius was a god when they set up their little scheme and scam to punish Daniel, but they wanted Daniel out of the way. And it was ingenious because participation in the lie is what's important. You don't have to believe it. And I read one quote, a society of emasculated liars is easy to control. Once men start selling their souls, Yeah, sure, I'll just go along with it.

That's an easy society to control. And so as truth begins to lose its premium in the culture, it spreads to every corner. If you go to Africa, if you go to India, if you go to China, And sadly, even many parts of Europe today, lies has taken such root because there's no value for the truth. You know, Alexander, one brother, actually I was talking to Trent earlier this week, and he reminded me of a book called Live Not by Lies. And there's a man by the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn he actually wrote the original essay live not by lies listen to what he says here he says speaking of his culture communist Soviet Russia he says we know that they are lying they know that they are lying They even know that we know they are lying.

We also know that they know that we know that they are lying too. They of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category, but the pillar industry of this country. That's where it goes when lying just takes root and then just spreads. And that I think, you know, this past week as a family we we listened to the State of the Union.

I don't know if anyone else listened to it or clips of it. And it was so freeing at one point just to hear There are only two genders. I think even in our own home, people were clapping just to hear that. But I began to think, why were we clapping? Was that new information?

Like, wait, I didn't know that. This is amazing. No. But it is right to rejoice. Why?

Because it's symbolic, isn't it? It's as though it's symbolic of a resurgence of truth. That we don't have to play along and this game, this charade that's being forced upon us has lost its grip. You know, we're free to believe and we're free to know the truth. And in every sphere that truth is spoken, it sets men free to some extent.

And so when you see the rabid, senseless, crazy behavior of liberals right now, what's going on around us. What you're seeing are people who are standing back and they're watching the edifice that they had spent so much time building begin to totter and now to collapse. That's why there's so much angst and so much frustration, so much crazy talk. And this is precisely why the Pharisees were incensed with Jesus. Why?

Because this edifice of lies that they had built where they shaved off all the corners of the law so that they could actually think that they were righteous. He's now saying when you look at a woman and you lust after in your heart you're committing adultery after all their careful construction And he's not having any of it. This is what makes the Sermon on the Mount so powerful is that the Lord is exposing sham religion. This sham representation of the law and their perversion of it. That's what's causing these men all through the Gospels to gnash their teeth at the Lord Christ.

And what's worse is that he did it publicly. And the people were beginning to notice, so much so that when you get to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, this is how it ends. And so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings that the people were astonished at his teaching. For he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. This is what was really the problem.

What is the chaff to the wheat is really the question. And so I want to end here with a few thoughts, really, four things on why is God so concerned with the truth? I think the first thing just to bring out is that first of all God is truth and so he's he's the ultimate source of truth right truth actually it proceeds from his nature It comes out of who he actually is. And so he loves truth, and he hates lies. And when you go to, say, for example, Proverbs chapter 7, he gives a catalog of seven sins that God hates, in fact, that are abominable to him.

And do you know that two of the seven, one is a lying tongue and the other one is a false witness who speaks lies. Out of all the sins you would think okay he's gonna pick lying but he uses two from the category of lying to demonstrate how much he hates lying so that's one God hates God is truth that's number one but I think the other one is he gave us truth. You see that Bible that you have in your hands is so important. I was reading a book by a man named Vishal Mangowadi. It's a fascinating book and one of the things he says is he says if you have a zillion pieces of a puzzle.

Imagine this whole church, maybe even going out to the road, are little tiny pieces of a puzzle. Puzzle pieces. Would you begin assembling them into one picture without knowing what that picture is supposed to look like. You know when you get a puzzle and it comes with the thing on the box so you can actually see what you're going to be putting together? You can't do that, but the Bible that you have in your hands, It puts together the reality of God's world.

That's what you have. And it gives you a vision of what reality is and what it's really all about. You know, I was speaking to a Jewish young man on Friday and It was really interesting. We had a conversation. He was asking questions.

He's just had a child, a little girl, and now he's starting to think about life and why is it, what is life about? What is it, why is it important? Like where am I going? What am I going to teach this little one now that I have in my hands. And all the, we started talking about, this is a guy from work, and we started talking about all the fundamental questions that men who don't know the Word of God, they are still asking but there's no answer to.

And so things that we might take for granted, who are we? I mean, who are we in terms of our relationship with God? How did we get here? Where are we going? What happens when we die?

How can we be right with God? See, every question worth asking is answered in the Bible that you have in your hands. Think about how rich we are. God gave us truth. You know, his word, it declares the only way of salvation.

You're not going to find it anywhere else except in his word. You know, what was the Protestant Reformation at its core? If you want to just kind of boil it down, All it was, it's a revealing of truths that were already revealed in the Book of Truth. And men started to read it and understand it and spread it. And little by little the Reformation Took footing.

What was at the heart of Josiah's reformation in the book of Kings? Well, Hilkiah Comes and says I found the book of the Lord in the temple and of course Josiah he tears his garments and then he begins to start making reform, but it was on the basis of the Word of God. And so not only though is it the Book of Truth, but Jesus himself, he is the Word, He is truth. When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, he's truth incarnate. And so the third thing I'd like us to think about is the fact that without truth you can't be saved.

Even listening to this sermon on the mount, If you begin to take what we just talked about today, okay, I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie, but you didn't first enter in through the narrow gate and go back to the very first words Jesus uttered, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is where the sermon begins. It begins with a man who has been laid in the dust. A man who's been acquainted with himself and he's now begun and started his relationship with God. Someone told him he's a sinner and that he's broken God's law and he needs a righteousness from outside of himself.

That he's snake-bitten and then unless you come out of your tent and you look upon that bronze servant you're gonna die a miserable death in your tent. That's that's what happens is that without the truth you cannot be saved. And so the the man who we meet really, blessed, is the poor in spirit. He's the man that's humbled himself. He's repented and he's clung to Christ.

The last thing I want to leave us with here is that you have become a member of the community of truth. When you become a Christian you're now a member of that community, the Church of Jesus Christ. I talked about a low trust society. There should be no higher trust community in the world. A culture where men and women and children, they're endeavoring to walk in truth because we've been saved.

We've confessed now the King of Truth as our Savior. We've been given truth, the good parts of it, the uncomfortable parts of it. Now my identity isn't on how much I can create an impression to make you think well of me, but my identity comes from being in right relationship with Christ. And so Paul, when he writes to Timothy, He writes a number of instructions so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God. And then listen to this, the pillar and ground of the truth.

The church is the pillar. You know what a pillar does? It supports and upholds everything. This is the only thing in the earth that God has left to uphold everything else from a truth perspective. We've been given truth and we uphold it.

We hold it forth. It's so beautiful. That's what Jesus kind of meant earlier when he says, how you are the light of the world. It's this bright and shining community of believers. And so in conclusion, what does Jesus say to you, brother and sister?

Let your yes be yes, and your no, no. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one." And so what's amazing is that after the Soaring Heights, you know, if you go to the book of Ephesians, you read chapters one to three, it's thrilling to look at it. You've been told that you sit in heavenly places, right? That you're no longer strangers and pilgrims in the earth, and aliens, that God's ultimate purpose is actually revealed. But then Paul comes to a section where he actually highlights things that grieve the Holy Spirit.

And look what he says. Therefore put away lying. Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor for your members one of another. And so that's all I wanna leave you with today here is that, you know, the ideas from these verses here is that we want to maintain such sincerity and truth in all of our words that people can actually believe when I'm saying something and when you're saying something because you're a person of truth. As I mentioned we all have a proneness to lying, to exaggeration, to creating false impressions, to what we would sometimes like to hide behind, you know, white lies.

It's a little one. All sorts of different types of lies. But Christ wants all of that to cease. He doesn't want us acting like the Pharisees. What did they do?

They categorized, you notice what they did? They categorized their lies. You can swear by the altar, just don't swear by the gold on the altar. You can swear by, you know, Jerusalem, but wait, it's the city of the great king. They had all these little things they were allowed to do and not allowed to do, to be dishonest.

But the Christian doesn't need to invoke God's name in order for something to be believed. I think that's what Christ is saying. Because you're a person of truth, and you're serving a God of truth that's brought you into a community of truth. So may God help us to be those that speak the truth, even to our own hurt, because we serve a God who is truth. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you. You are the God of truth, Lord, and I pray you would help me and help us all, Father, to walk in the light, to be those that honor you, Lord, that those who desire to please you looking and hastening to that day when we will stand before you oh Lord we can't do any of this alone Lord you know my heart you know the proneness of each one of us, Father, but we ask you to help us. Thank you, O Holy Spirit, for living in us and changing us little by little and forming us and conforming us more to the image of Christ. Be with us, Lord, as we leave this place. Lord, thank you for the day you've given us and we just pray you would send us out with encouragement and great strength to live for you this week.

In Jesus name we pray, amen.