The 9th Commandment

In my pastor's update, I had the Life Lessons stories that I tell. I wrote a couple months ago about a group of four high school seniors, boys, who decided to skip class. So they skipped class and they rehearsed their story. And they come in the next day and they went to see a movie. So they come in the next day and the English teacher says, you missed class yesterday. And each of them went, oh yeah, yeah. And they said, well, what happened? Because you missed an important test. And they said, well, what happened was we were all coming together and we got a flat tire. And by the time we got the flat tire fixed, you know, the day was gone. And she said, oh, okay. She says, I understand. She said, so I'm only going to give you the test and it'll be easy. So she put them each in, you know, different corners of the room. So they're totally separated. And so there are the four corners of the room. And she says, now you have one question and you're grained for the entire year. Well, they panned on this question. Which tire was flat?

The funny thing about lies, you usually have to make up more lies that cover the lie. And when you're caught, you're caught. The lie has found you out. The ninth commandment states, do not bear false witness against your neighbor. Now, false witness is a court term. You know, you are a witness. You're standing up and you're witnessing something. So, you know, in the literal sense, it says you can't get up and publicly tell a lie against your neighbor. But as we know, as you study through the ninth commandment, it has a much greater context. It involves any kind of lying or misrepresentation in order to harm someone.

So any kind of lying or misrepresentation falls under this commandment. And it says against your neighbor. This commandment specifically deals with how we deal with other people. We've been going through all the commandments, and we're up to number nine this week. So how we deal with truth. But this is rooted in God's character. All the commandments are actually rooted in God's character. God is a God of truth. In fact, in Hebrews 6, 18, it states that it is impossible for God to lie. Now that's an interesting statement. Because of his character, he's not going to lie. God's never going to show up and say, oh, I guess what? I said Jesus is my son to die for you, but he was a joke.

No. What he says is truth. Because he is truth. When you're the one who designs reality, you're the one who designs truth. In fact, in John, Jesus said Satan is the author of lies. He's the father of lies. So lying is the opposite of God's character. Now that's important to understand as we go through some of the examples we're going to go through today. As we look at how God thinks and how we as human beings think, especially about the truth and how we deal with the truth, lying is so opposed to God's character that he says something very important about it here in Proverbs 6. So, Solomon is inspired to write this in Proverbs 6 and reveals something about God.

Because the language here is very, very strong. We want to emphasize God's love. But sometimes we can emphasize God's love to the point we forget there are things he hates. And that's literally what it means. He hates it. It says these six things the Lord hates. That's the strongest terms of hate. It doesn't mean he bears. It sort of upsets him or it makes him angry. He hates these things. Yes, seven are an abomination to him. Abomination is a strong Hebrew word. It is disgusting. It makes you sick. It is the most strong terms of disgust you can have in Hebrew. These are things God hates and they disgust him. He says, a proud look. God hates pride in human beings. A lying tongue. God hates lying. You ever see a child lie and people say, isn't that cute? That is not God's reaction. He hates lying. He says, hands that shed innocent blood, murder. So here we have lying. God has the same reaction to lying as he does the murder. That's something he hates. The heart that devises wicked plans. Feet that are swift in running to evil. A false witness who speaks lies. This is probably now in terms of, because it is a false witness who speaks lies. In other words, someone who uses the court system and tells lies in order to take advantage over someone. But notice that lying is mentioned twice in two different forms. Lying in general and then bearing false witness. These are things God hates and one who sows discord among brethren. It is so against God's nature to lie. He hates it. He finds it disgusting when we lie. So why do we lie? Why do human beings lie? And it's so easy to lie. Sometimes we lie and then later say, why did I say that? That wasn't the whole truth. That was sort of a stretch of the truth. We do it all the time. We just blur things out. Why do we lie? Well, there's a number of motivations for lying. A lot of them are motivations, actually. But we'll go through just a few of them. One of the main reasons we lie is to protect ourselves from the truth or from the consequences of the truth. Right? Ask a child, did you do that? And how many times will they say, nope. Did you take the cookie? Now the chocolate's all over their face. There's half a cookie in their hand. And they'll say, no. Why are they lying?

To protect themselves from the consequences of truth. Honesty, and lying has to do with honesty. Stealing, not stealing, has to do with honesty, but so does lying. It's a character trait. Honesty is a trait of always striving to be truthful. Now we have to talk about that in a minute because some people say, I'm always truthful. Boy, you're ugly. That's not what it's talking about here. It's striving to always know the truth and speak the truth. Honesty is one of the foundations of character. William Bennett wrote a book a number of years ago. Of course, William Bennett served in the Secretary of Education with one of the presidents. William Bennett wrote a book called Book of Virtues. I recommend if you have children, you buy the book of virtues. You can get it used to find it online. But he goes through important character traits. He says this about honesty, which I think is really thumbs up. Why? He's lying. He's looking for people. He's looking for us to approach life a certain way. To be honest, he says, is to be real, genuine, authentic, and botified. To be dishonest is to be partly fanged, forged, fake, or fictitious. If I'm honest, I'm real. If I'm dishonest, I'm being fake. I'm creating a fiction. Honest expresses both self-respect and respect for others. That's a very important statement. If I respect myself, and I respect God, and I respect others, I will be honest. We should respect other people too much to lie to them. Dishonest fully respects neither oneself nor others. You show disrespect to God, to yourself, and to others. Honest imbues lives with openness, reliability, and candor. It expresses a disposition to live in the light. Dishonest seeks shade, cover, or concealment. It is a disposition to live partly in the dark. To be dishonest, to lie, is to be partly in the dark. To try to live in the light in the dark at the same time. Because when you lie, you know it's a lie. Now, we can tell something that's not true, and not know we're lying. Now, it's a lie, but the intent's different. You know, if you find out you've said something untrue to somebody, you usually go back and say, I told you something that's not true. See, your intent's different. You're not deliberately lying. Lying here in the context of evil is you're deliberately doing this. You have a motive for it. And one of the main motivations is, we're just protecting ourselves from the consequences of truth. So you lie to the boss, and you won't get fired, right? Another reason we lie is to gain an advantage over another person. We know if we tell a lie, we can get the job, or we can get more money, or we can get something we want. If we can just lie about it, we can get what we want. I can get the candy bar. I can get somebody else that's moving up in the company. I can get them put down. So we want to gain an advantage. We want to get something. So the motivation here is that, well, I'm just afraid of the truth. You're manipulating the truth so you can literally gain an advantage, hurt somebody else, or get something from somebody else. One of the prime examples, or good examples of this in the Bible is Jacob. Now, I want to go through the story a little bit, because it is important to understand something. We're going to go through a couple instances in the Bible where a righteous person lied and knew they were lying. And then say, why? How did God deal with this? It's important to understand how God dealt with this. It is impossible for God to lie. So God hates all lies. So what do you do when a right person, a good person, lies? How do you deal with it?

To understand the story of Jacob, there's a couple things you really have to grasp. One is the birthright traditionally was passed on from father to oldest son. And Abraham had been promised by God a special birthright that would be passed on to his family, that would lead to the Messiah. That promise had nothing to do with normal birthrights. Normal birthright was, you get the property. You get to be the chief of the tribe. In Abraham's case, Isaac's case, what did you get to be? Because he didn't have any property. God had given them all this land, but they didn't own it. You got to be the chief of the tribe, which there were hundreds of people in his tribe. It wasn't just his family. Remember, Abraham had hundreds of servants that went off to fight with him. And they would have had families. When he went into Egypt, Pharaoh noticed him. Yeah, he was the whole tribe coming into Egypt.

The birthright would be, you get to be the chief of the tribe. And all of its wealth, and all of its flocks, and all of its servants. But God had given him a different birthright that had nothing to do with the normal birthright. That birthright had to do with salvation. It had to do with God's plan for humanity.

So, you have Isaac and Jacob, or Isaac comes along and he receives the birthright. And there's problems with that birthright because Abraham and Sarah decide, Oh, we figured out how God wants this done, right? And they have Ishmael through Hagar. And God says, No, that's not the way it's going to be done. And here we are, four thousand years later, and they're still fighting about the birthright. So, fighting about the birthright. Because Abraham and Sarah, they didn't understand what God wanted. And what they did was a lack of faith. They did it in a way he did not want, and they suffered for it. So, Isaac comes along, and Isaac has two sons. Now, let's go to Genesis 25. Genesis 25.

Verse 20.

Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah his wife, the daughter of Bethuel, the Syrian of Padan Aram, the sister of Laban, the Syrian. Now, Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived. But the children struggled together within her, and she said, if all is well, why am I like this? In other words, inside, there's a struggle going on. They're actually fighting inside, and she says, I'm going to have a miscarriage. Something bad is happening here. So, she goes to God. So, she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, God answered her personally, Two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger. Now, Rebekah is told, the birthright here isn't going to be normal. The younger one is going to be the stronger nation. The younger one is going to be the one I work through.

And she has two children. The older one is Esau, and the younger one is Jacob.

Now, later, we know the story, Esau sold his birthright. It didn't mean that much to him. He sold it. But Jacob sort of tricks him. Now, here's the question. Did Jacob get it because he tricked him?

Now, think about how the story ends up. Jacob and Rebekah... Now, Rebekah has been told by God... No, the younger one gets the birthright. So, what does she and Jacob do? They lie and trick poor Isaac, old blind Isaac, into giving the birthright, the blessing, to Jacob. And, of course, then it's like, well, so God works through the lie. So, Jacob is blessed by the lies. You've got to separate two things here.

The birthright was already given to him. In other words, tricking Esau and tricking Isaac were sins committed by Rebekah and Jacob. Separate the two things. Jacob was going to get the birthright. Because God already said you're going to get it. Because of Rebekah's lack of faith... No, we're going to have to trick Dad into this. He's not going to believe what God told me to do, right? Because of Rebekah's lack of faith and Jacob's lack of faith, and they lie. If people come to the conclusion, God gave it to him because of their lies. So God must approve lying. No, it was his anyways.

His lack of faith led him to sin. Read the story of Jacob.

He's constantly being taken advantage of. He and Esau are separated for years. His brother was sick of killing. He doesn't see his mother and father the whole last part of his life.

He moves in with another person, Laban, who takes advantage of him, lies to him. And he spends 14 years basically in slavery to this guy. And then his own sons trick him and lie to him, right? Claiming Joseph has been killed, he spends years in agony thinking his son died. Only to find out, no, he didn't die. The brother sold him into slavery. In other words, he paid 100 times for his lies by everybody around him lying to him.

He didn't get away with his lie. He still got the birthright because God was going to...it was his anyways. He just didn't have the faith enough to accept God's birthright. By the way, Esau shows up. One of the great things of the story is when Jacob and Esau finally meet. And Esau says, eh, it didn't mean that much to me anyways. You keep it.

It's yours. God wouldn't even have it anyways.

So separate the two things. What God is going to do and what we fail along the way, and he does it anyways. Because throughout the scripture, you're going to see people lying and think they're getting something from their lying. No, they're not. God's saying, oh, are you messing up? And you're going to suffer for this.

But God does...hey, Mr. Parramille was talking about, am I a Christian? Yeah, we are. We're Christians because God says we're Christians. How? Because, oh, look at us. See? Here's what God does. And that's what we find in these stories. The man lying had made a horrible penalty. The lying was wrong.

But, in the end, because he was trying to get an advantage, he finally realized. As time goes on, you read his story, oh, the advantage is because of God. God gave me this advantage, and here I'm trying to manipulate. I'm trying to get an advantage that God gave to me. That's why he went back and faced Esau. He went back and told Esau he was sorry.

I've got to go back and tell that man, I treated him horribly. God gave me this birthright, and here I am trying to steal it from him and hurt him because of it. So we see here that we have to separate the two, where we end up justifying lying. We're just looking at God's mercy is what we're looking at. And God, and it's also encouraging, God makes what he's going to do happen in spite of us. In spite of us. And remember, too, God doesn't record in the Bible the way he thinks should have been. He records what happened, including the sins and faults of the people he's working with. The Bible doesn't cover up the sins and faults of the people God's working with. And he just hears what happened. Which is what? True.

They're all flawed heroes in men and women in the Bible, aren't they? Yeah. Because that's who they were. It's the truth. The third thing that we do is we lie to enhance our self-image.

You know, the fish I caught was this big, but over the years, it's this big. Remember, I was talking to a ranger one time. I have to tell that story sometimes. I was talking to a ranger in a park, and I'd seen a bear, and he said, how big was it? I said, ah, I don't know, three, four hundred pounds. He said, you don't have too many bears in the park that big. I bet you it was more like 150 to 200 pounds. I said, by the time I get home, it's 800 pounds. I can tell you right now, it's huge! It was a bear. It was 20 feet away. It was a big bear.

Sometimes we have a hard time. We're not talking about memory. We're not talking about...my memory, Kim, all the time is saying to me, Gary, you just told a story that actually you took a story that happened 10 years ago and another story that happened 20 years ago and mixed them together. You got the people right, but there was 10 years between the events, and you just made a whole story out of that. It's like, oh yeah. That's not an intentional lie, but memory is not exact, by the way. This is one reason why God required two or three witnesses to convict somebody, because we've got to make sure those stories line up. Because just human memory is not that good. But we do lie to enhance our self-image. Of course, I think probably the prime example of that is in Acts 4.

What you will see is God's reaction to lying, because he hates it, is very, very swift and harsh when the intent is harsh.

When the intent is wrong.

Acts 4, verse 33.

This is an early church, and the Jerusalem church had started with an explosion of people, because people had come into Jerusalem for Pentecost, and they were all being converted. God's Spirit was being poured out. It appears that many of them just stayed. So you have lots of people here in the church, and you don't have enough resources, because all these people are staying, and they're probably staying in other people's houses, and new people are coming in, and how are they supposed to take care of everybody? It says, And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was among them. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked, for all who were possessors of land, and their houses sold them, brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and they distributed to each one as anyone had need. And Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles, which is translated instead of encouragement, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land sold it and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet. So here's some of the people who are selling some of their land, excess land or houses, bringing the money and saying, okay, let's make sure that everybody in the church is taken care of. And this man's from Cyprus, sold land, and brought the money, and everybody knew it. And this man was so encouraging, and it was probably a substantial amount of money. And this man is so encouraging to everybody that they give him a nickname. He's the son of encouragement. He's Barnabas. He just encourages everybody. He's got this great attitude, he's faithful, and he's good to everybody, and he gave this money. Well, there's the people who saw Barnabas get all this acclaim. They saw him get all this... you know, and Barnabas wasn't seeking the acclaim. Barnabas was just trying to help people. But because of all this acclaim, there's some people that see that and say, you know what? I'd like some of that. I want everybody in the church to look at me and say, wow! I'd like a nickname.

Verse chapter 5, The certain man named Ananias and Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession, and he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostle's feet.

Now, what happens next isn't because... you know, this looks like a good thing. It's because he makes a lie out of this. But Peter said, Ananias, why is Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? He said, you didn't have to sell anything. There was no command from God for you to sell your land. There was no requirement. No, we didn't ask you the apostles. We didn't ask you to go sell your land. It's your land. You own it. You didn't have to sell it. But you did. And then you bring it and tell everybody, this is all of it. I'm giving everything. I'm keeping nothing for myself. No profit. I'm giving everything to God and to His people. I'm making a big public show of it. The apostles were there together. They're all there together. There's people there. They bring it. And everybody says, wow, this is amazing. It's like Barnabas. And Ananias and Sapphira are about to have their self-image enhanced in the eyes of everybody in the church.

He says, and after it was sold, was it not in your own control? He says, even if you sold it, and said, look, I sold the land, and I brought 20% of it to give to the church, everybody was said, isn't that amazing? It's your land. When you sold it, you could have kept whatever you... You can pay your tithes out of it. But you're not required to give anything here. This was just an offering that people were giving. Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God, that Ananias hearing these words fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. And as they were carrying him out, his wife came in, and they asked her, did you sell this land, and did you give all of it to the church? And they said, yes, she said, yes, we did. And God killed her too.

That's not Old Testament. That's New Testament. That's the church. Why? Because the intent was evil. By the way, that's why God didn't kill Jacob. Jacob was just a weak man that had no way to figure out how he was supposed to get the birth of it. It was his. Mom told him it was his. God had said, it's yours. And instead of trusting in God, he tried to figure out a way to make it happen. So God said, okay, you'll suffer for it, but I'm not going to kill you for it. These people intent was evil, so God killed them. So when we look at how God deals with lying, it's very serious. He just shows mercy when we're weak. He shows us mercy when we're weak. Another way that we lie is we do it for sport. We do it because we want to make fun of somebody or hurt somebody. Proverbs 26. This one is a little difficult because we tease. It's okay to tease. There are certain people that I know that over the years have done all kinds of practical jokes to me, and I could never come up with one better to get back with. I had an elder one time in a church that always did something to me. And it was in fun. It was not a lie. He was just kidding me. But there's a fine line. Because kidding can be hurtful. Children will kid each other, but they're not really kidding. Sometimes they're trying to hurt each other. That's all. I was just teasing. The grandkids have been around, so that's why I have all these kids' stories. No, no, no, no. That wasn't teasing. That was the hurt.

So that now steps into being a lie. So we have to be very careful. Look what it says in Proverbs 26, 18. Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death. So this is like some mass killer walking around just killing people, shooting these arrows into whoever you can see. To put it in modern analogy, we say, like a man who walks into the McDonald's and starts shooting everyone. So there's some power to what he's saying here. He says, is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, oh, I was only joking. He's like a crazy man, because you're hurting people and you'll destroy relationships. We have to be real careful about that. I have to be careful because I will exaggerate. I'll tell a true story, and then at the end they'll say something like, and that's why to this day, Kim says this. And later Kim will say, Gary, I think some of them actually believe that I say that. Surely that was so exaggerated, they don't believe that. Yeah, yeah. You know, you gotta be careful what you say. Well, the story's true. So now everyone's like, no, I get messed up. So you hear me a lot of times, I'll tell a true story, then I'll make some exaggerated statement, and I'll say, nope, last part wasn't true. Because I thought of some people believed it was true. And I do that the other day. Someone thought it was true. Oh, let's talk about Mr. Keller's name, manhandling that chair. You know, next time we both got in the car, and we looked at each other and said, boy, you weren't carrying your part. No, you weren't doing your part. No, actually, that's not what I always said. I thought everybody would know that. Well, we looked at each other and he said, when you find that you're 75, you're not near as strong as you were when you're 60. You'll find that out someday. But, you know, I made a joke, which everybody laughed at. Somebody probably thought that was true. So, you have to say, now the last part's not true. We want to be truthful. We want to be truthful. And that's where I have to be careful. You know, I still, something that still makes me feel bad to this day. I was a teenager, and I was with some friends, and we went to pick up this kid's cousin, and he didn't like him. I don't know why he didn't like him. I never met his cousin. We were going to a movie or something. So, the three of us were in the car, and what him turned around and said, here's some chewing gum. And it would look like little, what do they call it, chiclets, you know. And I took it, and I took a couple out, and then they both started laughing and said, no, no, no, don't, don't. It's X-lax.

So I gave him back to him and said, man, that was, that was cruel, you know. Well, his cousin gets in the car, and he just tells me how much he didn't like his cousin. And he turns around and says, here, have some gum. So I'm thinking, oh, now they're going to tell him, and they can't tell him.

Now, I didn't participate, but I didn't stop it either. I just kept thinking, well, that can't be good. I'm not sure what's going to happen, but they can't be good. Like a half hour later, you want some more gum? Oh, they made that voice so sick. It, um, it was dangerous. It could have killed him. They fed him axelax all night. And to this day, I think, why didn't I say something? I mean, I just, I, I kept thinking, what's this going to do? I'd never taken a laxative. I didn't know what would happen, you know. And to this day, I think, wow, man, I wish I'd have stopped them and said, come on, guys, you can't do this. And I would have stopped. They would have said, oh, man, Gary, you're so pathetic. I mean, I'd get thrilled a little bit, and then we'd be going on with life, you know. But to this day, it bothers me that I didn't stop that, that what they thought was a joke. And a couple days later, both of them were terrified when they found out how sick they made him. Because they didn't realize either what it would do to him. You know, that's lying. And by keeping my mouth shut, I lied to that boy. I don't remember his name, but one of these days, I like to meet him and say, you know, I'm sorry I kept my mouth shut. Because we could have killed that kid. I could have killed him. So, we have to be careful about doing things for sport. It's okay to tease. But there's a line where the intent isn't teasing. The intent isn't fun. And certain people, you can play jokes on. And certain people, you can't. Right? It hurts their feelings. Others, they don't mind. They'll just figure out a way to play a joke on you.

So, for sport, it's very dangerous. The fifth way is that we make false promises we don't intend to keep. That's obvious. Right? Oh, yeah. I'll pick you up Thursday night, and then the person ever shows up. And I know people like that. They never intended to keep the promise anyways. They were just trying to be nice. Or look nice. There's another reason for lying. And this is when a person is a pathological liar. They do it because it's compulsive. They enjoy lying. They don't even know why they lie. You cannot have a healthy relationship with a pathological liar. You cannot.

They will simply lie to you because they are liars.

And you cannot have. You have to step back, and you cannot have a close relationship with a pathological liar. You cannot. They will ruin your life. Only God changing that person. If you know a pathological liar, you know, hopefully someday you can maybe talk to them about repenting and turning to God, but if they don't want to do that, you cannot have a relationship with them. I mean, you can say hi to them, but you cannot be close to them. I've seen whole families destroyed by a pathological liar. Person you select a liar? And they will stop. Now, we have another issue here, and that is, and this one gets a little sticky because we can sort of play games on our minds, and that is, we'll just tell a half-truth.

I mean, it's sort of the truth. Well, it's mainly truth. Right?

I read a story one time about a sailor who was a first mate on a ship, who one night, he was the best first mate, but the captain didn't like him much, and he was really good. The sailors liked him. Every other captain always liked him. And one night, they were on shore leave, and he got drunk. He had never been drunk before.

And the captain let him see in his log, you know, first mate was drunk last night. He said, well, you know, that's not exactly true. He said, it's true, I was drunk. But he said, I've been in the service for 20 years. I've never got drunk before. I'm sorry. I tell nothing but the truth. And in my log, it says you were drunk last night. First mate said, okay. Well, the next night, the first mate went to the captain and said, Chris, the first mate has to hand in a log, too. He says, I want you to see what I put in my log lesson. Captain was sober last night.

Wait a minute. That makes it look like I'm not sober all the time. And you know, like, wow, this is unusual. It's so unusual, you had to put in your log that I was sober. He says, sorry, I only tell the truth. See, I'm half-truth. They're both half-truths.

The mate was drunk, but it wasn't his custom. And the captain was sober, and it was his custom. But by simply making the statement, he created a false impression. Creating a false impression is still a lie. So it can have a lot of truth to it, but it's still a false impression. One of the greatest stories of that is Abraham in Genesis 12. Now, here we have another situation where it's so easy to misunderstand what's happening.

Genesis 12. Like, God is rewarding him for lying. No. We always have to look at things in the context of God's plan. Genesis 12, verse 10. Now, there was famine in the land, and Abraham went down to Egypt to dwell there. For the famine was severe in the land. He came to pass when he was close to entering Egypt. He said to Sarai, his wife, Indeed, I know that you are a woe to beautiful countenance. Therefore, it will happen when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Now, the Pharaoh was a living God. He could do whatever he wanted, and she must have been a beautiful woman. And now, and here he was, his tribe's marching in, and he's going to say, Pharaoh's going to say, Ooh, get me that woman, and I'm going to get killed.

So, he tells her, Please say that you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you. Now, what is the problem here? God promised him he would have children. He is under duress because he is afraid this could happen. It is a reality of what could happen. He's forgetting God's promise.

Abraham's intent is not to defraud Pharaoh. His intent is to save his own life. It doesn't make the lie right.

It makes God's judgment, I'll have more mercy. You understand what I'm saying? God never justifies lying. But he always is more merciful. You only see a few cases in the Bible where someone lies and God shows mercy. There's only very few. This is one of them. Why? Now, Abraham hadn't learned faith yet. He hadn't sacrificed Isaac. He hadn't lived enough faith yet. He failed miserably a simple test. And that is, go into Egypt and I'll protect you, I'll take care of you. He goes, I've got to figure out a way to get protected here. Now, say you're my sister isn't exactly a lie. If you look at some of the Scriptures, and you look at Jewish commentary on it, it's very possible she was his niece.

Because, you know, and they would call each other, I mean, brothers and sisters in a family, you know, so-and-so was the father, or so-and-so. Sometimes it really was his grandfather. Okay, these terms are different than what we use today. They were much more general. It is very possible they were related. So what you have is a half-life. You tell him we're related. That means he has to ask me permission. Maybe we can get away with this. Well, that's not what happened. He lied and paid a horrible penalty for it, because what happened, so it was when Abram came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. The prisoners of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh's house. Now, what am I going to do? He took my wife, and he paid a terrible penalty for this. What am I going to do? I can't fight the armies of Egypt. This is the nomadic lands I've come from. This is a deal with a band of Amorites. This is Egypt. And I lied, and he took my wife. He paid a terrible penalty for this. I don't know how long this goes, but you can imagine how many sleepless nights Abraham had and Sarai had. What have we done here? Now we've got to go tell Pharaoh, oh yeah, I lied to you, then he'll kill me for sure.

And they're trapped in their lie. He treated Abraham well for his sake. He had sheep, ox, and male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels. Oh, now he's making a rich man even richer. Now what's he going to say? If I go tell him, he's going to say, oh, so you're just a charlatan. I've heard about those nomadic tribes. You came in here, and you're just, you know, self-taught. You're telling your niece off, and then you're going to get enough stuff, grab her, and get out of here, right? Ah, I've heard about you people. He's doomed. His lie has trapped him in an absolute situation where he has no way out. He's suffering because of his lie. He didn't get away with it.

He's doomed. He has no way out of it. But the Lord plagued Pharaoh in his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you've done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she was my sister? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore, here's your wife. Take her and get out of here. Leave Egypt, and I hope you never come back.

Now, did God reward him for his lie? No. Did God save him so God could carry out his plan? Yes.

He suffered because of his lie. And I use these because people look at these houses and God supports lying. No, he doesn't.

He does understand human weakness. And sometimes it's like, oh, how stupid can you be? He's going to kill you for sure now.

How many hours is Abraham praying, God? I sinned and I am no way out of this. I can't get out of it.

We're still to see the problem with the lie in these stories. We're supposed to understand God's judgment, which is it wasn't evil intent. It's just stupid weakness. So God said, I'll show you mercy for his sake, for God's sake. Because God was, he said, I'll give you a kid. I told you I was going to give you a child. If I get you, kill them off. I can't do that. So I'll save you. I'll get you out of this. When there's evil intent, there's no evil intent. God judges lying very harshly.

He judges it very harshly. But when there is human weakness involved, he will show mercy. But he does that with all sins, doesn't he? There isn't a sin, a murder, which we think is probably the worst of all the sins. God has forgiven murderers. He forgave David. There's lots of murderers he did not forgive in the Bible who suffered terrible punishments. And by the way, David suffered terrible punishment. He did not get away with murder. He spent his whole life with the rest of his life with his own sons and own family members trying to kill him. That's about as bad as it gets. And he said, God told him, your whole lust of your life, your family will be filled with violence because of what you did. But God still gave him, offered him forgiveness so he could have a relationship with God. Same with him with Abraham. He lied, but maybe it's just weakness. It wasn't like Ananias and Sapphira, whose intent was evil. This is just stupid weakness. He did it out of fear, and now look where he is. So God did not condone him, but he did save him. Another way that we can break this commandment is through slander. And slander is a sin that we all commit without even thinking about it. And yet it's tied in with this. Slandering is the oral utterance or spreading of a falsehood to harm someone's reputation. Every time we put someone down or gossip based on falsehoods or half-truths, we are actually being false witnesses. And we love to get a half-truth that's bad about somebody we don't like. Because we can pass on the half-truth, or we only know part of the story. Oh, yeah. You heard about her, didn't you? And that guy?

Well, you know, there may be some half-truth there, but it may not be what the implication is either. So passing on a half-truth that leads to a false implication is also a lie.

The slander is a very common sin. It's a very common way of breaking false witnesses. Being a false witness. Because sometimes we feel better about ourselves when we get the dirt on somebody else. Sometimes we feel better about ourselves when we have the dirt on somebody else. One minute says in Psalm 50, Asaph was inspired by God to write this.

Psalm 50, verse 16.

So here's what God says to wicked people.

So he says, it's not like you went out and stole, but you did buy stolen goods. And you're pretending that you're not wicked. So he's saying, you know, you think you're playing this game that you're keeping the commandments, but you're not. So, you know, just because you didn't commit the, I didn't do it, but man, it was a great price. I knew it was stolen, but hey, you know, the act was already done. He goes on, he says, you give your mouth to evil, verse 19, and your tongue frames the seat. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. Well, who is your own mother's son? It's your brother. It's your neighbor.

He says, do not bear false witness against your neighbor. Who is your neighbor? I guess it's anybody you'll come in contact with. Your neighbor's everybody. He says, verse 21 is very interesting. He says, These things you have done, and I have kept silent. God says, you know, I didn't come down and smash you when you bought stolen goods. Or you confeder with adulterers. In other words, you like the stories. I didn't give it adultery, but I secretly admire these guys that have lots of women. Yeah, I just slander people. But you know, it's partly true. I think it's all true. I just tell everybody. He says, because God says, I don't deal with you immediately, because I give you mercy, because I give you space. You think I'm like you. He says, look, these things you have done, and I kept silent. You thought that altogether I was like you. You think I'm like you, because, oh, yeah, God doesn't care about my stolen goods. God doesn't care if I slander people.

But I will rebuke you and set them in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you to pieces, and there is none to deliver. Whoever offers praise glorifies me. And to him who orders his conduct to write, him who makes these things right, I will show the salvation of God. God says, I will show you mercy. But you have to deal with these things. Slander is a terrible sin. It's a way of breaking this Ninth Commandment. We just do pretty... It's a pretty common thing we do.

And I don't know about you. I've said things about people later. I'm thinking, oh, I wish I'd have never said that. I don't know if that's all true. Besides, why say it anyways? There are certain times, even if it is true, there's no need to just pass on things. Sometimes we do need to pass on something about someone that's committed a horrible act. But a lot of times we don't even have to pass that on. It is so easy to do it. Not always because our intent is to hurt them, but we are relationship people. We're designed to have relationships, so we want to talk about each other. But we have to be careful about how we talk about each other.

And then, and every... This is sort of a last point here. That is, you know, not lying doesn't mean that you have to say everything. Right? You know, every man's greatest nightmare is, does this dress make me look fat?

No, you look like you did when you were 20. That's a lie. Unless you're 21. Then you probably can get away with it. But outside of that, it's a lie.

Tacked, and there is tact, it means that you understand the situation. That's when you say, I don't know, you... Don't ask me, because I think you're gorgeous. And I like you the way you are. And if I say, oh, you look heavier, you're going to get all upset. So I'm not going to say, no, I like you the way you are.

Think of it this way. Here's an easy example. You ever have a child come up and scribble on a piece of paper and hand it to you, all smiles, and you look at it, and you say, what's that? It says, I love you. Now, I guess if you're going to be absolutely truthful, you have to say, no, it doesn't. You don't even know how to write.

Pretty... I mean, that's pretty mean, isn't it? But I'm telling the truth. Some people like to say, I'm brutally honest. I have found that when most people like to brag that they're brutally honest, they're actually more brutal than honest.

What do you do? You look at the child, you say, I love you, too, and you give them a big hug. Right? We understand that not lying doesn't mean... you always tell the truth about everything.

And you understand the limitations of the people you're dealing with. This is not what God does with us. He understands our limitations. He deals with us within our limitations. But you and I... the reason this is so hard is you and I live in a world of double-speak. Double-speak means that people and politicians do this all the time. They take words and they distort them. They distort them to mean something it doesn't.

I remember telling my wife, Department of Homeland Security, that's double-speak. Double-speak! That's just a way for the government to grab more power. Now, I don't know what their motivations were, it may have been... But in the end, you only lead to one thing. You know what I mean? You only lead to more power and loss of liberty among us, among the people. It's double-speak. Nobody's ever been fired from a company, they were just downsizing. One of my favorite ones is there's hospitals that... This is how they list when someone dies. It is negative patient care outcome. Well, yeah, that's pretty negative. Now, it's not always wrong to use double-speak. I mean, in polite society, you don't say, oh, I have to go to the bathroom. You might say, where are the facilities? You hear women say that. Men never say that, but women do. Can I use your facilities? That's a polite... Now, that's okay. That's sort of a double-speak, but there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we use double-speak to not seem crude. But double-speak can be used to distort. Salesmen do it, advertising does it, politicians do it all the time. And it's a deliberate attempt to do that. And it's so common that we actually... We do it sometimes without even thinking it ourselves. We will use words and we'll distort the words, but really what we're doing is lying. You know who's great at this? It's the military. The genius is at it. I remember... I read something a number of years ago, and I kept this as a list of things. This was during the Vietnam War. And there was a military expert, or military leader in a press conference, who got up and they asked him about some villages being bombed and how much damage was being done. And he said they were destroyed. But we had to bomb them to save them. You destroyed the village, but you had to bomb it to save them. Now, this is what happens when you're now explaining into a double-speak world things that will be misconstrued. So now, they come up with a language. You see what happens? They come up with a language to try to make it look a certain way, but then you start looking at this language and pretty soon language becomes meaningless. During one press conference, it was about the invaded Cambodia, and the officer in charge said, you always write it's bombing, bombing, bombing. It's not bombing, it's air support.

Or during the Cold War, the Pentagon released a statement that it was not at war, but it was in a permanent state of pre-hostility, in which, if we had to, we would launch a preemptive counterattack.

A counterattack means you've already been attacked, but it's preemptive. Now, we had to hit them before they hit us, but we don't want to say we'll strike first because nobody wants to strike first, so we'll say a preemptive counterattack. One Air Force colonel described the Titan II missile with more than 600 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb as a very large, potentially disruptive reentry system.

Matthew 12. But see, everybody does that. Advertising does it. I mean, it's just the world we live in. And we can twist language around until sometimes we can be using language to hurt somebody or to manipulate them or to save ourselves, or all kinds of things, just by manipulating language. And we have to be very careful, because if our intent is to misrepresent, if our intent is to lie, by using these words, we're sort of technically right, but we're really not, because we're hiding the intent.

We're hiding the intent. Matthew 12, 33. Either make the tree good, this is Jesus talking, and it's fruit good, or else make the tree bad, and it's fruit bad. For a tree is known by its fruit. Fruit of vipers. How can you, being evil, speak good things? For now, the abundance of the heart, the mouth, speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things. An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you, for every idle word man may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.

For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. Now, this isn't talking about justification in terms of being justified by Jesus Christ. This is talking about how we are as people, because what we say shows who we really are. What we say shows who we really are. Now, once again, under duress we can do all kinds of things. How many times have you said something in anger and then immediately looked at the person and said, I didn't mean that, that didn't make sense, right?

But that's taking responsibility for your words, okay? We have to take responsibility for our words. And sometimes we'll say words that logically, even as we say them, we can be saying, well, that's not what I really...but you feel, emotions take over, we say all kinds of things.

We have to take responsibility and say, no, no, no, that's not what I mean to say here. And the same thing with truth. There's times we have to say, you know, what I just said is totally right. The fish really wasn't that big. It was that big. And everybody laughs, but everybody understands that.

He's just trying to be truthful, you know? Just trying to be truthful. We can't be careless, I guess, at the point of making. And none of us are going to be exact all the time. We know that. We get each other slack all the time, with memory, with being careless with things, with saying things exactly the way they were.

That's why God gave us wives. Because they tend to get details that we miss or forget. Right? Really? I forgot that. I've said that a thousand times. Now, I don't know if it's a thousand times. Okay, I'm not lying. You understand what I'm saying? There's exaggerations that we say. There's things that... That's not lying. We know that with each other all the time. Because we understand that language is inexact. And sometimes language is expressing an emotion or something that's not exact.

So, those are problems we have with human communication. They happen all the time. And all the time. But we're talking about if your intent is truth, the other person's going to figure out your intent is truth. And then you're going to try to find the truth. But when you're dealing with a person who lies, there's no trust, is there? There's no trust. Because their intent is not truth. And you know what their intent really is. You know what the greatest of all lies is?

It's a lie that we live. People can actually convince themselves of a lie and live the lie. Satan has lied to us, and we live it all the time. We're living a lie all the time. It's why it says, Jesus said, He's the Father of all lies. God never lied. Satan lied, and He didn't do it out of weakness.

You know, that's why He doesn't get mercy from God for His lie. He did it out of pure evil intent. He doesn't get any slack given to Him.

We, though, can know that God will show us mercy as long as we're trying to give the truth and trying to say the truth. And when we say something that's not right, we deal with that intent and we repent of it. Sometimes we have to go to the person to repent of it.

As we're constantly trying to be people of truth. God is the Creator of reality, He is the Creator of truth. When we submit to God, He will lead us to truth in all things. The truth isn't just the Bible.

The truth isn't just the Bible.

It is in all things.

People come up sometimes and they'll say, I don't know, wacky things about maybe some person in power or something. I don't know if that's true or not. There's enough we do know what's true about people that we can talk about what's true. I mean, the kings of Israel were publicly condemned by God's prophets for their evil. And the leaders of modern United States, for the most part, were evil people.

And as Christians, we recognize evil. But you know how many times, this person, I don't even need to talk about it, I make up somebody here. Donald Trump is a communist and he's in bed with Putin. They're working together and overthrowing the United States. I actually heard them. I don't know. I can tell you all the things that Donald Trump does that's against the Bible. But how can you, in other words, we have to be careful even about prominent figures, what we say about them, if it's not true.

And I can, Mrs. Clinton believes in homosexual marriage and abortion. Those are both evil things. We don't have to make up things. And people say, well, she believes this or she says this or her real intention is this. I don't know what her real intention is, is it not? I just know those beliefs are evil and outstanding. You see, you know what I mean? But you can't make up things about people. I don't hear who they are.

We seek the truth in all things, even against people who we disagree with and even against people who are sinning. As we seek the truth. God leads us the truth. So therefore, as He leads us closer to truth, lying, dishonesty, slander, spreading rumors, becomes less and less part of our lives as we learn to become His children. Children of truth.