Summary 

Lying is one of the most common struggles in human life, but the Ninth Commandment reveals that dishonesty is far more than a personal failure. It is harm done to our neighbors, rooted in malice, pride, or shame. God loves truth because He loves justice, life, and the people He created in His image. The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate act of truth telling, declaring simultaneously that our sin is real and costly, and that we are deeply and unconditionally loved. That love is the foundation that frees us from the need to hide or exaggerate. When we understand both the weight of our sin and the depth of God's love, we are freed to live honestly.

Transcript

Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for your commandments. God, I do pray that we would. We ask once again that we would find them to be life. That we would find them to be something we desire because we see them most fully lived in the Lord Jesus himself, who kept the law perfectly.
But also because they were given, Lord, out of salvation, out of a resurrection life where we've been brought near to you and you desire to teach us, Lord. And so we pray that that would be what happens today. That the law would be something that is more to be desired than gold that passes away, that's sweeter to us than honey from the honeycomb. Something to be delighted in and treasured. God would now the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.
The Lord our rock and our redeemer. Amen. All right, I will say that this illustration has Robert and Will in mind. But it's for all of you. It's in their honor.
December 2001, George O' Leary was named the next head football coach at Notre Dame.
Growing up as I did watching Rudy, I don't have to be Will or Robert to think that's a big deal and neither do you. It's the kind of position that coaches dreams are made of, leading one of the most history prestigious football teams. Two days later, which was actually his first actual day on the job, he got a call. He got a call. A reporter had contacted some of the people who had supposedly played with o' Leary at the University of New Hampshire.
The reporter had called them up and none of them remembered the name George o'. Leary. Not a one. And so this call that George o' Leary received was from the athletic director saying, what's going on here? He reluctantly admitted that he didn't really play college football.
According to him, he had a bad knee one year, mono the next, you know, someone, something. So anyway, the reporter phones back the next day and he actually has some documentation. He found out what happened years earlier. Earlier, o' Leary applied for the job at Syracuse. Not the head position, but a lower position coaching job at Syracuse.
And he was asked about his athletic background. And it's true, he actually was on one of the state championship teams. But he thought, well, that's not enough. I gotta pad this, I gotta pad this. And so he wrote down college, University of New Hampshire, lettered three years.
Just a small lie, just a little amendment, right? Just something to pad the papers. A little falsehood, a little witness that could sway maybe his future employer.
It was that that led to one of his dreams becoming one of his nightmares because he lost not only his job. Right. But his reputation. Here's one of the wild things. And actually, I think what I love about this in some ways is that it begins to invite us into thinking that lying is so utterly pervasive in our world.
His brother, in response to this, says, is anyone trying to tell me that resumes are truthful? In the America we live in, the willingness to lie on a resume is an indication of how much you want the job.
And actually he, for one, isn't lying. There's a study done, 3 million different Americans, I guess I don't know how you do a study with 3 million Americans. They found that 50% of the resumes contained lies. 50%.
Last night, Mumford and Sons played at Hershey Stadium, if you're wondering. It was awesome.
But this sermon was on my mind. So there were a number of times where I'm taking out my phone and jotting down little notes, okay. And because a number of the songs that Marcus Mumford sang had to do with truth telling and with lies. Because he's living in the world that you and I are living in. And also about actually the difficulty of belief, because it is the world that we are living in.
And so he sang his song Believe. Let me. I'm not going to sing some for you, okay? I won't do any singing this morning. Let me read it to you.
I don't even know if I believe I don't even know if I believe I don't even know if I believe everything you're trying to say to me. Verse 2 says, I have the strangest feeling your world's not all it seems so tired of misconceiving what else this could have been. I don't know if I believe I don't know if I believe I don't know if I believe everything you're trying to say to me. Some people think that he's actually speaking to God. The reality of living in a world that is so chock full of lies actually has to do even with just not even being able to receive the truth because we're so used to living in a lie.
Which is to say that lying is so pervasive, so ubiquitous, so present. Which is also why it is so present in so many others. Other songwriters, the Eurythmics, Black Keys, Chuck Berry, Depeche Mode, Elvis Costello, Elvis Presley, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I could just keep going on, I don't know, many meatloaf songs. Maybe you Do.
But I know the song. I'd lie for you. And that's the truth. It's just every. It's just all over.
From football coaches to boyfriends to meatloaf to politicians to courtrooms where we say, hand on the Bible, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. To pastors seeking to save face, to lift themselves up. To Morgan Wallen admitting that he often lies to himself in his song. Lies, lies, lies. Y' all don't know that one?
Well, all right, but what all this says is that the Ten Commandments. There's no way you can take the Ten Commandments and just say, antique, passe. Pass it off. No. At the very least, we must admit that they speak to our world, to our lives, to our words.
And so today, we come to this ninth commandment, right? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Don't bear false witness against your neighbor. Don't lie. And the Bible is replete.
It's well stocked with telling us how the Lord hates lies. Let me read a few of these passages to you. Proverbs 6, 16, 19. There's six things that the Lord hates. Seven that are an abomination to him, which, by the way, is the complete number in Scripture.
Haughty eyes, pride. A lying tongue. Hands that shed innocent blood, Murder. Heart that devises wicked plans. Sounds like some of this conceit, maybe.
Or desires to take something else from somebody else. Something from somebody else. Feet that make haste to run to evil. A false witness who breathes out lies. And one who sews discord among brothers.
Isn't that interesting? This is list of the things that God says. I hate these things. These are not for the good of the world. And there's this list.
One of them is repeated.
One of them is repeated. Lying. A lying tongue. Verse 17, 19. A false witness that breathes out lies.
So it shouldn't be surprising that we find this kind of thing elsewhere. Proverbs 11 tells us a false balance. Lying in your business dealings with others is an abomination to the lord. Prov. Proverbs 12 tells us lying lips are an abomination to our Lord.
So it's not just lying with our words, but also with our practice, our life. Psalm 101 says that he who practices deceit will not dwell in the house of the Lord. And if we, you know, I could keep going, but if we just get to the end of the Bible. Revelation 21, for you who are astute, yes, there's one more chapter, but it's near the end. Okay, okay.
Liars are among those who it says will find their place in the lake of fire.
So is it any wonder that we are also told that to live in light of the resurrection, to be a resurrection people, to be a people who have been brought from death to life, means that we are people of the truth? And also, as Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 25 told us, to put away falsehood, put it away from you, to let each one of us speak the truth with his neighbor. It says, for we are members of one another. Or as James tells us, the book of James later on in the New Testament, do not boast and be false to the truth. Don't do that.
But so anyway, so what's clear in the Bible is that, like, we don't want to practice falsehood, lying tends towards destruction. Lying in our actions, unjust balances, lying with our words. These are not things for resurrection people. But this morning, I want to just pose a couple questions, okay? One is, why do we lie?
And then the other one is why does God love truth? Okay, so why do we lie? Why do we lie to ourselves? Why do we lie to and about our neighbors? The first word I'm going to give you is malice.
Part of why we lie is malice, which is to say part of why we lie is the intent for harm.
Maybe. Let me put it this way. Part of why we lie is we like to put others down. It's just something about putting someone else down. And I think we start here because I think that's actually part of what's going on.
In the first lie. In the Bible, you come to the snake in the garden, the snake who loves death, putting others down, who loves destruction, who loves to harm, who loves it when marriages are a wreck, who loves it when teenagers aren't talking to their parents, right? Who loves it when things are not right, when deceit runs rampant, rampant, when promises empty are empty. Serpent loves this kind of thing. He loves destruction.
And Jesus tells us, as we heard in John chapter eight, that we're of our Father the devil. When we do not stand for the truth, when we lie, we're actually of this sort of practice of malice, harm seeking in the world.
And Jesus actually tells us in that passage that that is accompanied, that kind of action is accompanied by murder, the intent to cause harm. So one reason why we do not practice truth is because we do not love life. Actually, one reason is out of malice. But here's my guess, is that when I said malice, some of you started to glaze over. You're like, that's not really a word I use that often.
It's not really something I think I do very much. This preacher feels a little out of touch this morning.
Sure, he can quote Morgan Wallace and Mumford Sons, but he's using a word like malice, whatever.
But I want you to think about this for a moment, okay? Isn't it interesting that this command. So the last three commands were those two words, right? We looked at them. Low blah, blah, blah, low blah blah, blah.
It was just there were two words. This one gets a little bit longer. So this, this is not just don't lie, right? It's not what it says. Instead, the command is, do not bear false witness.
Don't lie against your neighbor.
Which, you know. So often we think of the commands as governing our individual lives, right? How does this speak to me personally? And there's actually. That's super important.
That's really true. We kind of think of it maybe as a code of ethics for our individual, personal, kind of how do we engage with those about us. But all of these commands are social. All of these have to do with how you interact with others. Honor your father and your mother, right?
And we talked about how that's not just your father and mother, but it's actually kind of the structure, the social structures of the world. Don't murder. That's a social dynamic. Don't steal. That's a social thing.
Don't lie. It's not just don't lie. It's don't bear false witness against your neighbor. Which means that bearing false witness does harm it. It's a malice dynamic.
It harms the world.
And of course, obviously, when we think of bearing witness, we think of the courtroom, right? A place where justice is determined. Truth telling has to do with the care and the fate of your neighbor. That's what this is saying. Truth telling has to do with the care of your neighbor.
Lying has to do with the harm of your neighbor.
The good name of our neighbor is so often not honored with our speech.
And the farther away we actually put people, the more easily we kind of harm them. I hope not many of you are in the cesspool that is Twitter, if you are, or maybe Facebook or any of the other kind of things in which we engage with people from a distance. You know how quickly it is. Malice lying, not seeking the other's well being. Rumors spreading, innuendos increasing, false accusations abounding, slander running rampant.
Which is just to say that part of the reason why we Lie is we actually do harm the world. Part of living out of sin is living towards the harm of the world. It's malice. But I do actually think that for the most part, you're like, I don't think I practice lying like that. So give me another reason.
Peter, I have two more for you. Don't worry. Okay, the second one. Actually think why we lie is out of pride. I think the second reason we lie is out of pride, which is to say that we think of ourselves more highly than we ought to.
There's a good pride that you have, but oftentimes pride leads to sin. It's over thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to.
And of course, this goes back to the garden, into buying into the first lie. The devil wants to place himself as God working against the good creation of God towards its harm. But the fact is that we actually do the same, right? We say, oh, God may have said this, but you know what? I'm going to buy that lie and I'm going to persist in lies because I think I'm better.
I'm going to elevate myself above my proper place in the world. Which is, say we puff ourselves up.
So often our malice is done for the sake of ourselves, because we actually puff ourselves up by pushing others down.
Think with me. Some of you will know the story of Ananias and Sapphira. In Acts, Chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphire have a piece of property and they sell it. And from the proceeds of that sale of property which was theirs, Peter says, was it not yours when you sold it? You could have kept it.
They go to the church leaders and they're like, hey, we're going to give it all to you. Lying. And Ananias dies. And then Sapphira comes and she's like, oh, we gave it all to you. You know, she dies.
And what Peter says is, it's not just that you have lied to man, but you've lied to God. But why? Why did they do that? Why would they do that? If Peter says that all their property was theirs and they could have, like, you know, given some of it away because it was theirs to do that, why did they just do that?
Because socially, can you imagine how we gave it all away? Puffing themselves up. How great will we look in this community if we can just tell them we gave it all away?
Pride. They wanted others to think well of themselves, of them. O' Leary wanted others to go, wow, three years later, we should consider this guy. And man, how often do we just want Others to think well of us.
So pride. And now I think the third one is actually in some ways the flip flop of that. And the third reason I want to say that we lie is actually out of shame.
We lie because of shame. We lie to shield ourselves from exposure of who we are, of what we've done.
We often don't even really like who we are, which is why it feels like the flip flop of pride. We aren't often proud of actual the real accomplishments that we have done. We actually aren't often really proud of the gifts we've been given and who we are. And so we lie. So we lie out of malice and out of pride, out of shame.
But if these are some of the reasons why we lie, what I also think is really important to look at this morning is this reality that there's also reasons why God loves truth, which I think commend it to us.
We can say, just kind of blankly, that God loves truth because he is truth. Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth and the life. God is the author of truth. When he speaks, they are true words because it is coming out of his character. So one of the reasons why God loves truth and God loves truth in us is because it's actually a reflection of who he is.
But beyond this, beyond the sort of character of God, why does God love truth telling? So the first thing I want to suggest to you is that God, one of the reasons is because God loves justice. God loves justice. This is just replete throughout the scriptures. And again, this is courtroom language that is used in the Ten Commandments.
We're not just called to bear truthful witness to our neighbor because we love our neighbor. We're not just supposed to do that because we love our neighbor, but it's because God actually loves your neighbor. God desires the truth to be spoken about the people, about you, about who they are, about what they've done. God loves your neighbor. Now, I'm not going to read for you all of the Westminster larger Catechism, as I did last week, which you were all riveted by, which is fantastic, and of course I commend it to you again.
But consider this the first sentence that, that it has when it, when it's asking the question, what are the sins forbidden in the ninth Commandment? Listen to this. It begins like this, says the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment are all prejudicing of the truth and the good name of our neighbors.
As well as our own. And then it says, especially in public, juridature they're saying there's a special place where justice is at play, where truth telling must happen.
We call them the Westminster divines, the people that wrote the Westminster Confession. In larger catechism, short catechism, they said there's a special place for truth telling because God loves justice. He loves justice. God hates wickedness and he loves justice. The second reason I want to suggest to you of why God loves truth telling is that because God loves life.
So the fact is that when our first parents, they bought into the lie of the serpent and they began to perpetuate that lie, they died. They died spiritually, but actually right afterwards, right? We know that their progeny died by murder. So death comes into the reality of the world.
But beyond this, they actually die relationally with one another, right? They're no longer naked and unashamed, beginning to cover up. They're beginning to say, I'm going to present myself just so that you kind of like me living out of pride and living out of shame. They're covering themselves up. And here's the truth, right?
You all know this. When one lie breeds another lie breeds another lie.
Lies compound. And when lies compound, you have to cover yourself up more, you have to hide more. And when you do that, you are living into death, because that is not what you were made for. Lies kill. That's what I'm suggesting to you.
And God loves life. We know that lies can actually quite literally kill in the courtroom, right? They can lead towards death, maybe death if somebody is wrongly accused.
We know that lies kill marriages.
They utterly kill marriages. Lying on tests can not only kill the possibility of a grade that you do deserve, but also it can kill your knowledge and just the reality that you can grow and learn and understand the world better. If you're living into that lie, you're not going to do that. Lies on a resume like o' Leary's can kill a dream and make it a nightmare. Lies kill.
God loves life. So God loves justice. God loves life. And another reason this is related to these things. But God loves your neighbor.
God loves your neighbor. God commands us not to bear false witness against our neighbor because he loves your neighbor. Why? Very simply, if we go back, your neighbor was made in his image just like you were. And slander and deceit and false accusations, they are like throwing something at the very image of God that God made.
He said good. The cut against an image bearer of God. Many of you know who Martin Luther is, the great 16th century German reformer. He said that the 9th Commandment requires that we put the best construction on everything regarding our neighbor. Meaning give your neighbor the benefit of a doubt, act towards their good.
With your words, God loves your neighbor. Finally, I've got a fourth reason for you. This is simply that God loves you. God loves you. God's love is for you.
See, we lie out of pride and we lie out of shame. For one, because we do not understand sin enough, and we don't understand the goodness of God's creation and his creation of us enough.
Which is to say we think of ourselves too highly. So we diminish our sin and we think of ourselves too low in a way. So we live out of pride. We also live out of shame, and we diminish God's very image in us. We don't understand our own value.
Father's Father's Day. I had a lot of different ideas of how to wrap Father's Day into this sermon, but it was getting too long.
There's so much of this command has to do with how we. How we train our children, how we talk to our children, how we love our children.
Think of a couple, right? I mean, we're told, us fathers are told specifically in the Bible, they were not to provoke our children to anger, right? Which is to say, don't continue malice. Don't treat them in a way that's not honest. When you're adjudicating a conflict in the life of your family, do so with truth and proper justice, because injustice will breed anger.
But I found this basic insight so helpful kind of in my life, and that's this. Children want to know the answer to two questions. It's kind of basic. One is, do you love me? And the other one is, can I do whatever I want?
And getting this right is very, very important because you have to dress your children always, always with a resounding yes. The first one, I utterly love you. There's nothing that can separate my love from you, the love between me and you. Nothing. Neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation.
Maybe, to use Paul's language, right? And then the other, the answer to the other question, can I do whatever I want? What do you think that answer is? No, I can't. It's not good for you to get your way all the time.
Actually very harmful for you. But in some ways, these questions have to do with pride and with shame, right? Our parents in the garden believed the lie and perpetuated the lie that they could do whatever they want. That God might have said, hey, don't do this. And they said, you Know what?
We should probably do it. We should probably decide that we understand what should be done in the world more than he does. He might be a liar when he's telling us what we should and shouldn't do. Maybe we should be the ones that determine our life. But they also didn't understand just how valued and how perfectly loved they already were, right?
They were totally cared for.
And of course, all that led to the huge question about shame. The huge question of shame is, am I loved? And what did they do after they bought into the lie of saying, I can do whatever I want? They hid, right? They covered themselves up.
They were no longer naked and unashamed, but they were clothed and full of shame.
What you need to hear and what your children need and what the world needs is an answer to this pride and this shame.
And the answer to our pride and our shame is addressed in this idea that God loves truth. God loves truth.
The answer to why you cannot do just whatever you want or that you do do whatever you want. And the answer to the idea that I am actually not totally loved is in the God who tells truth. Now I want you to think with me for a moment. Okay? This actually hit me after I already kind of printed out my sermon this morning.
Did it ever strike you as weird? Let me pull this up. Okay. I actually marked it earlier. John, chapter 18.
Jesus is before Pilate, and he's talking, right? He's talking with Pilate. And Pilate says to him, this is chapter verse 37, chapter 18 of John. He says, then Pilate said to him, so you are a king. Jesus answered, you say that I'm king.
For this purpose I was born. And for this purpose, I've come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who was of the truth listens to my voice. And then Pilate, Pilate asks him a question. What's the question that Pilate asked him?
What is truth? Did it ever strike any of you that it's odd that Jesus doesn't say, that's a great question. Let's talk about this. I'm the way, the truth and the life. You know, whoever comes to the Father, when no one comes to the Father except through me.
I mean, what an opportunity to share the good news, Jesus.
And that's the end of their dialogue. Pilate saying, what is truth?
I want to suggest to you this morning, you know, why do we. You know, why do we lie? Okay, malice. But shame and pride. What about, why does God love truth telling?
Because he ultimately, because he loves you. But what is it? What's really the answer, in a way, towards to Pilate's question? Here's what I want to suggest to you. It is the cross.
It is. It's Jesus going to the cross. Jesus is answering Pilate's question there on the cross. Because what is the big truth of the world? That actually we are absolutely loved, utterly loved, completely loved.
God himself will die for you. That's the message of Christianity. You know, image bearers who run away from him, who don't believe his word. God goes, I will hang on the cross for you. That's how much I love you.
What's the other part of the. The truth telling? Can I do whatever I want? No. Sin has to be dealt with.
And that happens also on the cross. I mean, the cross is like the big answer to what's truth. God's love is utterly expansive. How bad is your sin? Absolutely horrible.
Beyond you could. Beyond your, like, imagination. It is so bad that God has to die. God himself has to take on flesh and die for you. That's truth telling.
That is the message of Christianity, that God's not shirking away. Right, and what's that doing for us? Right, What's. What I'm. What that is doing is that it is addressing our pride in a proper way.
It's bringing us low because our sin is so bad. And it's addressing our shame. It's lifting us up because God's love is so great. It's so great. And it's addressed right there.
What is truth? Let me show you on the cross. Truth is a God who gives, who loves, who dies, who redeems. Truth is a people that are made in the image of God, full of dignity and life and wonder and beauty, who are running away from God, who are deciding that they are the arbiters of what is right and wrong in the world, who are living into lies. And truth is that God will love those people, forgive those people.
That is truth.
Let me end with a few more words from Marcus Mumford.
So one of the last songs, Malif and I left, unfortunately, quite early, from what I understand, because there were some other wonderful things that happened. But I like to say that Saturday night for me is a school night, and if I stay up too late, I don't show up as I ought to for you.
So anyway, one of the last songs that we heard them sing was their song here that he sings on the recording with Chris Stapleton and some of the lyrics. Let me read some of them for you. He says, here's my final serenade that's how it begins here's my gun here's my blade Here's a picture that I saved for for too long here's my credit card and my keys and the reason I won't find peace he's just laying it all out here's all the stuff that I use to defend myself here's the stuff I use to harm other people here's the thing that I use to buy so that I look good Whatever, right? Here's all these reasons I won't find peace and then here's the course it says well, here's my pride and here's my shame here's the trophy that bears my name like the pride thing here's all the mistakes I made the shame stuff for too long here's the answer I never give here's the calls I should have made here's the substances I crave the ways that we try to hide our pride and our shame Right all along says, here it is here's my pride and here's my shame Brothers and sisters, be truth tellers and go to the cross and say, here it is here's my pride and here's my shame God, would you speak your truth over me? Will you tell me again how much I am loved?
How great a sinner I am? How much I run from you? How much I believe the serpent's lies? And would you speak your truth, Lord, over me? And would we be truth tellers?
Amen. Amen. God, thank you for your commands. Would we hide them in our hearts? That we would not sin against you?
And would we love your ways? Would we be people of the truth and not people of the lies? Would we be honest with our sin? Would we be honest with how destructive it is against our neighbor, against ourselves? And then also, as we lay it before you, would we receive your love?
That we would see you as the God who loves justice, the cross where justice and mercy kiss, embrace. Would we see you as the one who loves our neighbors, Lord, that you died not just for us, but for those around us? You took our sin upon yourself on the cross, and you are remaking us into the very image of love itself. You, Lord God, do all this. We pray for us, for our good and for your glory.
Amen.

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