Pastor Grant Brown's sermon, 'The Law of God (Part 17),' focuses on the ninth commandment, emphasizing the destructive nature of lies on individuals and society. He highlights biblical examples such as Ananias and Sapphira, and the serpent in Eden to illustrate the pervasive impact of deception. Pastor Brown argues that lies are rooted in human depravity and stand in opposition to God's truth, as shown in Romans and 1 John. The sermon further discusses situations where deception might be justified to protect life and uphold God's commandments, citing examples like Rahab and the Hebrew midwives. Pastor Brown critiques secularism's failure to uphold truth, attributing societal decay to the rejection of absolute truth. He calls for Christians to embrace truth, advocate for laws that reflect God's Word, and pray for a Christian nation. Ultimately, he stresses that Jesus Christ is the embodiment of truth, capable of overcoming sin and lies, and urges believers to rely on Him for salvation and societal restoration.

Isn't it amazing that you're about to hear from God? Beginning in verse 1, Then God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me but showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, That your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. May God bless the reading and the preaching of this is word. Amen. You may be seated. Live not by lies and instead love the truth.

That's the ninth commandment. Love your neighbor And love for neighbor means telling your neighbor the truth and not telling your neighbor lies. Why? Because lies destroy people. Lies destroy people.

And last week we saw that with the false testimony of two worthless men in first Kings, an innocent man named Nabath put to death because of lies. Lies kill people. We were confronted with the case of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5. They lie to God, they lie to His apostles, and God kills them. God hates lies.

Lies destroy people. And it doesn't take very long in your Bible reading to find out just how destructive lies are. Every pain, every tragedy, every single affliction, every loss in your life can be traced back to what? A serpent in a garden whispering lies, bearing false witness about who God is and what God has done. And a man and a woman believing those lies from the serpent, instead of the truth about God.

You live in a world full of pain and misery, suffering and affliction, a world of death and murder, and all of it traced back to lies. Telling lies and believing lies. John 8.44, the devil has been a murderer since the beginning. Why? Because there is no truth in him, for when he speaks, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Lies literally kill people. But lies can also destroy people without taking their life away from them. Lies can also destroy people without killing them sometimes. What can lies do? They can destroy reputations, destroy families, destroy churches, destroy nations.

How? Well, through slander, gossip, and flattery. Slander is saying something not true about someone else. Gossip is saying something behind someone's back that you would never say to their face. And flattery is saying something to someone's face that you would never say behind their back.

These things are very serious, church. God says that a flattering mouth works ruin. God says that a lying tongue hates those that it crushes. And God says, I will put to silence, I will destroy everyone who slanders. This is very serious.

So you must love one another. We must love our neighbor by shutting slander, gossip, and flattery down. So when a visitor to our church comes in talking like that, slandering other churches, slandering other pastors, hey we don't do that here. We love the law of God and we love our neighbor we don't do that so repent or leave and ladies ladies please listen to me women this is a particular this is a particularly easy pitfall for you. I'm not picking on you because you're women.

God says it's a pitfall for you. You need to be on guard against gossip and idle chatter. The sin of gossip has been tolerated far too long among Christian women. Almost as if it's kind of respected. No.

I'm not picking on you. God says that gossip, particularly in the house, is a sin common among idle women. First Timothy 5 verse 13, speaking of women who are lazy, idle. Quote, they go around from house to house and not merely idle, but gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention. Men can gossip too, absolutely.

But God says, particularly to you women this morning, watch yourself. Fight this sin. Put this to death within you. Don't be idle. Lies destroy people.

Lies destroy reputations. And they destroy our neighbor's good name. That is not love. Don't you, this is interesting. Don't you find it interesting that of all the dangers that David faced as a king of Israel, what was one of the things that he most hated, that he most prayed about in all the Psalms?

At the very top of his list, How many times throughout the Psalms do you read of David pleading with God to rescue him from lying lips? All the time. The top of David's Concerns. Psalm 109 is an example. Psalm 109, verses 1 through 4.

Be not silent, O God of my praise, for wicked and deceitful mouths are open against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They encircle me with words of hate and attack me without cause. In return for my love, they accuse me. But I give myself to prayer. David knew, and you and I know, the destructive power of lies.

So what are we to do? What are you to do? Well, I quoted it last Lord's Day, and I'm going to quote it again. Nobody can ever get enough Heidelberg. We're gonna give you a little more Heidelberg catechism.

Here's the answer to what is required of you in the ninth commandment. Quote, that I never give false testimony against anyone, twist no one's words, not gossip or slander, nor join in condemning anyone rashly or without a hearing. Rather in court and everywhere else, I should avoid lying and deceit of every kind. These are the very devices the devil uses, and they would call down on me God's intense wrath. I should love the truth, speak it candidly, and openly acknowledge it.

And I should do what I can to guard and advance my neighbor's good name." End quote. In a sentence, live not by lies, but instead love the truth. And in doing so, You will love God and you will love your neighbor. That's what we saw last time. That's what we saw last time.

Lies destroy people. Deceiving your neighbor causes destruction. And so does deceiving yourself. You may not deceive your neighbor, brothers and sisters, and you may not deceive yourself. Because lies will very much kill you too.

I Need you to get this, friends. Lying is a demonstration of depravity. Lying is a demonstration of depravity within. Romans chapter 1. Ungodly, depraved men do what?

Suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They don't love the truth, they hate the truth, so they suppress it. And then They exchange the truth about God, which is clearly seen. They exchange what is true about God for a lie, and everything gets wonky in their worship, and in their lives. They exchange the truth, and they live by lies.

That's depravity. And what does Romans 3 verse 13 say? Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving and the poison of asps is under their lips. Paul is talking about the sinfulness of man and what a man is like apart from the work of Jesus Christ within him.

And what is a major mark of a man's depravity. Poisonous lips, deceiving tongues, and a throat and mouth full of death. Lies. And all of that lying. Throat full of death, mouth full of poison, where does it all come from?

Doesn't start here, does it? No, it originates here in the heart. Lying is a demonstration of a heart of stone in need of a Savior who can crush it and make it new. Listen to 1 John chapter one. If you say that you have no sin, you are deceiving yourselves and the truth is not in you.

But if you confess your sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. But if you say that you have not sinned, you make him a liar and his word is not in you. Lying is a demonstration of your depravity, but telling the truth, confessing your sin, running away from lies, and running To Him who is truth, Jesus? Telling the truth about your sin and telling the truth about the Savior, believing the truth, embracing the truth, that is evidence that Jesus Christ has triumphed over your depravity. You can tell the truth about your sin and embrace the truth of the Savior.

That is no longer evidence of depravity. That is evidence of gospel triumph. Believing the truth about your sin and the truth that Jesus Christ is able to save you from your sin, that is evidence of being born again. That is evidence and demonstration that Jesus, who is the truth, has set you free. Friend, this morning, you must embrace the hard truth that your sin is great.

Deceive yourself no longer. Deceive yourself no longer and embrace the hard truth that you are in desperate need of a Savior. You cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And as you embrace that hard truth, also embrace the glorious truth that there is a Savior who is greater than all of your sin. His name is Jesus, and He is the propitiation for your sins, and not for your sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.

That's the greatness of His grace. You may come and be welcome to Him right now. Repent, turn away from lies, and be welcome to Jesus Christ, who is the way and the truth and the life. Lies destroy people. False testimony, believing lies, false religions send people to hell.

But what if telling a lie might save somebody? What if telling a lie might save someone? What if you're a Hebrew midwife, and Pharaoh tells you to kill all the Hebrew baby boys? You fear God, and so of course you don't murder babies. You don't murder your neighbors.

But then when Pharaoh calls you in and he asks you, hey, why haven't you killed the babies? Why haven't you done what I asked you to do? Can you lie? Can you say to Pharaoh that the Hebrew women, they're just so quick when they give birth. This baby's just popping right out.

We can't get there in time. Can you do that? That's what the Hebrew midwives did. And in Exodus chapter 1, God rewards them. The text says He was good to them for their lying, for their faithfulness.

What if you're Rahab in Joshua chapter 2, and you meet two men who belong to the one true living God, and you're presented with a choice. I can hand these two men over to the pagan king of Jericho, or I can protect these two men and belong to the one true living God Yahweh. So you decide to go with the one true living God Yahweh. But then after you hide them the pagan king comes along and he asks you where are those men? Can you deceive him and say that they've gone away?

Even though you know they're right there in your home? Well, that's what Rahab did. And God rewarded her. In fact, James 2.25 says that Rahab was justified, made right with God because she saved the lives of the Israelite spies through deception. She feared the Lord, she trusted in the promise, and so she lied to the pagan king, and as a result was made to be a part of the very ancestral line of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

Why? Because she trusted the promise of God and deceived the pagan king. What if you're Samuel in 1st Samuel 16 and you're afraid of King Saul who is going to kill you because you're going to anoint a new king. You're afraid that King Saul is going to kill you and so God tells you that instead of saying you're on your way to anoint a new king just tell everybody you're on your way to make a sacrifice to God so that Saul won't kill you. Is that deception okay?

God told Samuel to do it. It's got to be okay. What if you're David and you're fleeing King Saul in 1 Samuel 21 and you come up against the Philistine King who plans to kill you. And so you feign madness. You deceive.

What does God think about that? Well The text only tells us that God blessed David and eventually made him king of Israel. The text never condemns what David did in that deception. What if you're in World War II and you're housing your neighbor in your basement while the Gestapo are out about looking for your neighbor to kill them. What if they knock on your door and they ask you like they asked Cory Ten Boom?

Hey, you hiding your neighbors in there? Are you hiding Jews? If you say yes, they will kill your neighbor and probably you too and if you say no you protect your neighbor but you deceive the enemy are you want to lose lose scenario Can the Gestapo open the door and say to you, hey don't deceive me You can't lie to me because God says you can't bear false witness ninth commandment So you need to give up your neighbor because God commands it. Does he? Does God command that?

Should Rahab have given up the Israelite spies? No! The scriptures couldn't be more clear. Rahab was righteous in what she did. What about Korey Ten Boom?

Hiding Jews. Was God angry at her for saying she didn't have Jews in the hiding place? Does God command you to tell murderers where they can go and kill your neighbor because hey, you can't tell a lie? Are you in a lose-lose situation when it comes to the law of God when evildoers, when enemies use the law of God as leverage against you. Are you put into the situation that you can either obey the sixth commandment, thou shall not murder, or you can obey the ninth commandment, but you can't possibly keep both the commandments of God?

Is that how God works? No! Absolutely not. God doesn't do silly stuff like that God will not allow his law to be used as a means of manipulation So brothers and sisters don't make this overly complicated. You need to ask two questions.

Question number one, ask this question first. Who is the one bearing false witness? Who is the one bearing false witness? Who is the one breaking the ninth commandment? In the situation with Corrie ten Boom, it's the one with murder in their hearts.

It's the Gestapo on their way to kill your neighbor. They're the ones who broken covenant. They're the ones who are asking you how they can break the Sixth Commandment and murder somebody. They are bearing the false testimony that it is okay to kill your neighbor. They are the ones coming to your door with the testimony that's false, murderous righteous.

Murderous righteous. And so when they ask you, are you hiding Jews, If you tell them where the Jews are if Rahab tells the king where the spies are You are going right along with false testimony. You are agreeing with them that murder is righteous. You can't do that. Rather, in deceiving them, you are keeping covenant.

You are bearing true witness to the truth that those people in your basement are made in the image of God and that murdering them is evil. Who is the one bearing false witness? Who is the one breaking covenant? Deceiving covenant breakers, deceiving those with murder in their hearts, deceiving those who are bearing false witness might be the most righteous thing in all the world to do. God says so multiple times in different narratives.

Here's another question for you to ask. Not only who is the one bearing false witness, but next, who is your neighbor? Who is your neighbor? Rahab hid the spies and she lied to the pagan king. Why?

Because the spies had become her people and the pagan king was no longer her king. The king had become the enemy and the Israelite spies her neighbor. The ninth commandment says very clearly, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. That's your neighbor down in the basement hiding from murderers. And it's your enemy that's asking you to rat them out.

Who was your neighbor in that moment? Love for neighbor might very well mean sometimes deceiving your enemy. Rahab, David, the Hebrew midwives, the Bible says so. Now we dealt with something similar to these things in the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder. Remember that?

You shall not murder, but what about in war? Well, God says in war, that's not murder. Why? Because it's war. Where enemies are clearly defined, and your neighbor, those who you're in covenant with, are also clearly defined.

Love for neighbor, love for your people, might very well require you to kill the enemy in war. And God makes a distinction in His Word. That's not murder. The same principle applies to the ninth commandment. There are times when deception is not bearing false witness.

Ask the question, who is the one ultimately bearing false witness in the first place? And who is my neighbor in the situation? And does love for neighbor, does love for those in covenant with you Ultimately demand that you deceive those who are your enemy at times? The answer is yes. The answer is yes.

Calvin says the same thing, quote, your tongue must declare the truth when it serves both the good, repute, and advantage of your neighbor, End quote. You must tell the truth when it serves both the good repute and advantage of your neighbor. Truth spoken is to work for the eternal good of your neighbor. To protect and help your neighbor. It's not to work towards evil.

So we are a truth people, right? Are we a truth people? We love the truth. We love the whole truth, and we love nothing but the truth. That's what we are as Christians.

And so We take the ninth commandment very seriously, but just as Jesus said, we are to love our enemies. You are to love your enemies. And sometimes you love your enemy enough to deceive them. Sometimes we love our enemies enough to deceive them. Why?

So that the evil that they plan to do would be brought to nothing to keep our enemies from doing further evil and incurring even more of the wrath of God. In Zechariah chapter 8 verse 16, these are the things which you should do. Speak the truth to one another, judge with truth, and judgment for peace in your gates. Speak the truth to one another. Why?

For peace in your gates. And that ought to very much inform the way you think about speaking to enemies when your neighbor's good is on the line. Live not by lies, and instead love the truth, because lies destroy people, and lies destroy nations. Lies destroy society. Lies destroy nations.

Beloved, when nobody loves the truth anymore, society collapses. Nations fall apart. Why? Because when the truth goes away, what do you have to stand on? Why can't I steal your wife?

Why can't I kill my neighbor? Says who? You? Have you seen you? What are you?

You're just like me. Why should I listen to you? Why can't I be a pedophile? Hey, love is love, right? Love is love.

Why can't I be a girl even though I'm a biological man? Why not? You gotta have a standard. You gotta have a transcendent standard and that can only come from the one who is transcendent. Almighty God revealed here in His Word.

When you give up on objective truth that comes from God the Creator, you give up on sanity. Because everyone ultimately can just do what is right in their own eyes and it won't take very long for the next letter to come down the pike. LGBTQ plus next letter P, pedophile. P is going to come next. Why?

What's wrong with that? Nothing can be wrong if truth doesn't exist. Nothing can be wrong with the next letter being P if I'm just listening to you. Pedophilia and all the other letters can only be wrong if there is one who is the author of everyone who is in self-truth, who holds the universe together by the word of his power it can only be wrong if he exists and he says it's wrong and beloved that's exactly what he says right here That's exactly what the name above all names and the King above all kings says. The thrice holy one, the triune God, the one true living God, He calls balls, He calls strikes and He never makes an errant call.

Because He's God. So hear this friends, we have got to get this. The idea that you can have a secular nation, A nation that divorces itself from God, that divorces itself from the truth, that idea is absolutely nuts. It leads to insanity. You can't have a secular nation.

It's preposterous. And if you're thinking, well, yes, you can. You can have a secular nation. You can have a nation that's just going to be neutral. Okay?

We've tried that experiment here in America. How's it gone? How's the secularism experiment gone? We have men in women's restrooms, we can't tell what a woman is, we've got abortion on demand. I mean literally you can kill a baby in Massachusetts right now up to the very second it comes out of the birth canal.

I'd say that experiment has failed. Secularism isn't real. You try to take the one true living God out of the equation and you're just going to replace Him with a false God. It's not whether you have a God or not, it's which God. It's not whether, but which.

So if you take the one true living God out of the equation, most likely the state becomes God. Wear this mask. Get this jab. And if you don't, we'll excommunicate you. I don't know what else to call that but a false religion.

Same language that we use. Excommunication. A false religion with a false God. Secularism is a lie. It isn't real.

You simply exchange the truth about God for a lie. You swap out the one true living God for a lie. And this is what you get. You get the word insanity. When you give up on truth, you get insanity.

And when you get insanity, you know what you get? You get destruction in your nation because nobody and no institution can last very long on insanity. You just don't last long with insanity. So how do we get here? How did we get here in America?

How did we get to the place where we throw off the ninth commandment in Iowa? Where we throw off the truth and we flirt with destruction in Earlham? Here's how. Weak men. Affeminate men.

Cowardly men. Men with no backbone, men who are soft, men of whom the world is very much worthy. Men who behave as if there is an 11th commandment that trumps all the rest, the commandment, thou shalt be nice. Thou shalt be nice. Brothers, we gotta stop that.

We gotta act like men. We gotta stop being soft when it comes to telling right from wrong. We've got to stop being cowards hiding behind words like tolerance and inclusion. Tolerance? We cannot tolerate men in women's restrooms.

It's the very opposite of real love to tolerate that kind of insanity. We must tell people the truth. We will not do that dumb stuff here. We will not do that in Erlum any longer. We will not do that in Iowa.

We will not do that in America. We got to be Gandalfs. You shall not pass kind of stuff. No murdering babies here. No acting like men can be women.

No acting like love is love and so homosexuality isn't that big a deal. No, brothers, if you hide behind tolerance and inclusion, you hate your neighbor and you're a straight-up coward. Preaching myself first. Pastor Peter Leiter quote, while we gleefully spread gossip on social media, we tiptoe gingerly around the truth. We say we're tolerant and want to avoid triggering, but we're cowards and hateful cowards to boot.

If we can't tell the truth, we cannot identify real evils. If we are forbidden to name problems, we cannot propose solutions." So a great example of this. It's been in the news a lot. A great example of all this is what's going on with the WNBA right now. Now come on.

WNBA. The Women's National Basketball Association. The W means something. Woman was made from man. In the beginning.

The W means woman. But if you've been listening to the insanity that is going on in the sports world right now, what's the woman? Let's let men play in the WNBA. Come on. You got woke city insanity going on in the sports world right now and people living by lies.

And you've got men in the NBA. I mean, the dudes that are supposed to be the toughest baddest mamajamas on the planet The dudes with the kind of physique that make you think of Spartans and the Iliad and the Odyssey I mean these are guys they they get on the floor. You're like he could kill me so easy. Dudes that get on the basketball floor and man they talk the talk don't they? You ever heard some post-game interviews?

These are supposed to be the warriors in our day. And they're a bunch of losers. Affeminate cowards. I mean those guys view themselves as the mightiest men and they are anything but mighty men because they've got women in the WNBA far more courageous than they are, taking far more hits than they are. Women in the WNBA saying, men and women are different, and men being cowards, you won't even say that.

You've got women telling the truth, and you've got your supposed warriors hiding behind lies. That's how you die as a nation, men hiding behind women. It's just an illustration, but it's pervasive in our land. And may God grant us mercy. May God grant us real men starting right here.

We will not do that in our land. So how do we get out of this mess? How do we get out of the mess? Well, men first, we got to get rid of the 11th commander. No more of that, okay?

We got to stop worrying about being nice all the time. We stop living by lies, start loving the truth and telling the truth. Second, brothers and sisters, we need to stop believing in the lie of secularism. You can't have a truly secular state. It won't work.

It doesn't exist. As Bob Dylan put it, You've got to serve somebody. So let it be the triune God. Let us tell the truth that the state belongs to Jesus Christ, that the state must declare that Jesus Christ is Lord. Third, pray for a Christian nation.

Pray for a Christian state. Pray for a Christian county. Pray for a Christian early. Psalm 11, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Well one thing they can do is build.

Build upon foundations that can't be destroyed. Namely the rock, named Jesus Christ, the truth in flesh and his law. How do we get out of this mess? We tell the truth, we stand on the truth, we stop believing in the myth of neutrality, the myth of secularism, and we pray for a Christian nation, a Christian state, and a Christian county, starting with a Christian Erland. And when you have a town, and a county, and a state, or a nation that bows the knee to King Jesus, then our laws will reflect the truth because we hate lies as a people and we love the truth.

And God loves to bless that condemnation. Pastor David Mitzemacher again, quote, Christians must advocate for institutions and laws that uphold the truth. Courts must punish perjury. Journalists must be held to the standard of accuracy. Educators must teach that truth matters.

Defending the ninth commandment publicly means not only living truthfully, but insisting that public life be governed by the truth, rather than narrative. A society that tolerates lies will inevitably oppress the vulnerable and embolden the wicked and ultimately destroy itself. But a nation that loves the law of God is built on a foundation that cannot be shaken." We can live by lies as Iowans and Americans, and we can die. Or we can turn to Christ and declare together as a town, county, state, and nation, Jesus is Lord, and we will live. Because while lies destroy people and destroy nations, Jesus Christ destroys lies.

Jesus Christ destroys lies. Friends, there was a serpent in a garden that came speaking lies to men. There is a God who became a man and crushed that serpent's head under his feet with truth. There were men who bearing false testimony put Jesus on a cross. There was the God man, Jesus, who cried out bearing true testimony that it was finished.

There was a man named Pilate asking Jesus, what is truth? And there is an empty tomb and a curtain torn in two that answers that question without difficulty. What is truth? I am, Jesus says. I am the truth.

First John 3, 8, the devil has been sinning and lying from the beginning, But the Son of God has appeared for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil. Friends, if there is ever a time in your life that you think that some sin or some failure has triumphed over you to such a degree that the only option left to you is despair. Stop living by lies. Because there is an empty tomb. There is no sin that is more powerful than the unblemished spotless Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, yours included.

There is no lie that is more potent than the truth that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. There is a Savior who very much knows His way out of the grave, and He will take you with him. So don't you listen to the lies that come from the pit. Listen to the truth. Listen to him who has triumphed over the pit.

For everyone look at yourself and your failures and your guilt and your shame. For everyone look at you. Take a hundred, take a thousand looks at Him who triumphed over the grave. There is more righteousness in Jesus Christ than there is sin in you. There is more mercy in the gospel of Jesus Christ than there is failure in you.

God says so. And oh, 1 Samuel 15, he cannot lie. Hallelujah, that's great. Father, thank you for this word. Make this people, make my people, your people, a people that will not listen to lies anymore.

Cause us Lord to take every thought and make them obedience to Christ. To make them obedient to Christ. Because Christ, in him we are more than conquerors, in him we are forever yours. And He has put that serpent under His feet. We Thank you.