Leaven of Lies

Well, good afternoon, everyone, on this very beautiful first day of love and bread. I can understand more and more why God commands us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as we come to encourage one another and to lift one another up, especially on holy days like this where we have more of us. And the more of us gather, the more of us are lifted up. The choir certainly lifted my spirits up in the song of praise towards God. It's good to see the choir have the participation of the various people in it from the different churches as well. The spring holy days mean a lot in our Christian context because various subjects are discussed within the holy days that have to do with the symbolism of those days, the season of those days, and the days become very relevant to what's happening in our life, sometimes uncannily relevant to things that are happening right at that moment. At this time of year, we look back historically to the Exodus and to the imagery of the Exodus and leaving Egypt. And we've had umpteen sermons, and most of us here have been around for a long, long time have heard various permutations of explanation of the imagery of the coming out of sin, coming away from Satan the devil, represented by Pharaoh, and coming into the Promised Land. We have the Passover as well with both its Old Testament and also its New Testament meaning and application. And this gives us opportunity to speak about redemption, salvation, and about a way of life.

I like the fact that Jesus Christ, when he talked to the woman who was caught in adultery and she came to repentance, and he told her, woman, your sins are forgiven you, go in sin no more. And I find that with the Passover and with the Days of Love and Bread, this is the message.

First of all, repent of our sins. Our sins are forgiven us, and the meaning of the Days of Love and Bread is, go in sin no more. These days are forgiveness with commitment of sinning no more. Well, the Days of Love and Bread, and actually I'm not talking about any of this today, I wanted to give an introduction here. The Days of Love and Bread are about putting out leavening, and certain and various characterizations have been made about leaven.

Leaven is something which pops up. Leaven is something which permeates completely. You can't have a batch of dough that's half leaven. One interesting thing about leavening is that it permeates the whole loaf, and that's part of the imagery. And also the fact that leavening is all over the place, and before in ancient Israel they had to get their leavening after the Days of Love and Bread from the air, from the spores that were there. So while we put out leaven during these days of leavening bread, as we put out leavening before these days and cleaned up, leavening agents are all around us. We cannot avoid them. But I'd like to talk to you about one of the chunks of leaven that is all over the place, a sin, a sin that probably permeates more than any other sin. It has the capacity and it has the illustrated by leavening probably more than any of the other sins that we have a list of, and it's probably best understood by leavening. It is an insidious sin, colorless, odorless, tasteless, sometimes hard to detect, and something that we can become embroiled in, and probably are in some aspects of our life, without even knowing about it. This sin invariably leads to arguments. It was one of the first actions in the garden of Eden that led to unrest, that actually led to man being cast out of the garden of Eden.

In these days of leavening bread, and it kind of struck me more this year than other years, it's amazing how different things kind of pop out at you. When I was reading the scriptures of the Passover in Terre Haute, and as Bev was reading certain passages for the book of John, we read the whole book of John through, because the book of John is all about various Passovers that occurred in Christ's ministry. You have a character that crops up over and over again, and Jesus makes him known, even as he utters his last words about the Great Deceiver, the Great One who is the Father of Liars. He talks about Satan, the Devil, the Father of everyone who has told untruths, the Father of Liars. On the other hand, our God in heaven, the Father, is the Father of all truths. And what I want to talk about today is about the leaven of untruths of lies, the Ninth Commandment.

Because if you take a look as to the functionality and how this commandment, the breaking of this commandment, what it leads to is pure leaven. It is something which puffs up, it is something which permeates, it is something that's all over the place, and it can be something that we're not even cognizant of or have been so involved in it that we can't even tell the difference. It is very pervasive and has more twists to it than almost any of the other commandments of God. It's far more than just a very simple not telling the truth. You'll see that by the way that this commandment has been described. There's been a lot of literature written even by the ancient fathers about the subject of lying and not telling the truth, because it's very subtle.

The fact that it speaks of deception even makes the subject deceptive, as to how it comes across and how it's manifested in our daily life. How many lies have we told today? How many impersonations and cover-ups have we made before God, ourselves, and our fellow man?

Even John said, if we say that we are without sin, we deceive ourselves. It's possible, very, very possible, to lie to ourselves and deceive ourselves not only that we're sinners, but in other areas where we have thoughts about ourselves that are different. And lying is part of every other sin.

If you commit adultery, you're not going to be talking about it. You're going to be covering up. You're going to be lying. If you're a thief, if you're one who embezzles in the company that you work for, embezzles money, you're going to be secretive about it. You're going to talk about, hey, I'm embezzling money. Lying is a part of the breaking of every other commandment as you cover up and as you continue in it. It's more than just stating a falsehood. Now, the basic definition of lying is that a lying, which is also a falsehood or a pur-barication, is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement.

Of course, we know that that's the simple definition of lying, but it's far more than that. It's more than just saying an untruthful statement. It's stated with the intention to deceive others, to making them feel that it's the truth or to give them another impression. Often, with a further intention, you go beyond just stating something false, or with the intention that the other person will believe it to be true, with a further intention to maintain a secret, a reputation, to protect someone's feelings or to avoid punishment, or repercussion for someone's action.

To lies to state something that one knows to be false, or that one does not believe, honestly believe, to be true with the intention that a person will take it for the truth. And a liar is a person who is lying, who has previously lied or attends by nature to lie repeatedly, even when not necessary. And we've heard the term pathological liars. There are various levels of pathological liars of people who lie and do continue to lie, even if the truth fit better. They will tell a dishonest or make a dishonest statement.

Truth is valued in most of the highest civilized societies. Whether it's practiced or not, truth is upheld. The democracies, the great countries of the West, hold up truth as something which is very important. Again, whether it's practiced or not, is another question. Lying to a grand jury, and not telling the truth to a grand jury, is a major offense, a felony, I believe, to lie to a grand jury as it corrupts the entire court and justice process.

I'm a member of Rotary Club, and every time that I'm there at the meeting, we go through the four-way test, as it's called, and it begins with everything that you say and do. Number one, is it the truth? It's held up as a very, very high value, as a very high standard, to live by. We're told as Christians not to be deceived. So it's not only telling lies, but also being very careful to hear what is stated in not being deceived.

In Matthew chapter 24 and verse 5, it's one of the passages I'd like you to turn to, Matthew chapter 24 and verse 5, because the whole apocalyptic process, which begins, as is described in the book of Revelation, by the four horsemen, or in the way it's described in the book of Matthew, 24, begins with deception. It begins with a conquest of people by conquering their minds with deception.

And Christians are told in Matthew chapter 24 and verse 5, For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. They will tell lies about me, Christ says. They will say things to get you to believe something different from what I really am. And certainly a logical mind, if truth is one, if truth is something which is absolute about doctrine, and we have so many permutations of Christian doctrine, I remember one of the arguments that I listened to when I first heard the radio program years ago, they can't all be right.

They can't all be right. Somebody is wrong. And I don't want to believe what is wrong, because there's only one way. There's only one doctrine. There's only one day that we worship, or that we worship on. Or there's a binary-ness about values and about what we do, that it's either wrong or right.

And if people argue saying that, you know, both could be right, they can't both be right. Somebody is wrong. And the one person is preaching a falsehood, and preaching something that is not right. That made me stop and think. That made me stop and wonder and begin to evaluate and begin to ask questions, well, I want to know how I can be right, or how I can know what is right.

And led me to further study. And led me to finding out what the basis is for true values. Verse 11, many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. Talking about the events towards the last days. And in verse 24, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders so as to deceive if possible even the elect. So there is a campaign by the one that Christ spoke of.

The one that Christ was wrestling with in his last days here on the earth as the father of lies and the father of those that he would make into agents of his and prophets of his to deceive. In other countries lying and telling the truth is not held as a paramount and high value. I'm sad to say I'm Slavic, I'm Ukrainian, Russian in my origins, but the people, the ethnicity which I am of, is very loose with the truth.

In fact, with Slavic nations it's known to be that. And with others as well, the Apostle Paul said all Christians are liars. I mean, he just said that. That's in the Bible.

In Russia, telling the truth is not held as a high value. It's in as much stated that way, taught that way, passed on to children that way, as telling the truth is not important.

Communism, as it spread from basically the Slavic peoples even to other nations such as China, became synonymous with falsehood, with lies, with big lies about life and values, lies that were espoused and passed on as truth. And that's one of the things we'll get into here about the consequences of lying. When Chernobyl, when the accident in Chernobyl occurred almost 25 years ago in 1986, the Russian government covered it up. They knew, I don't know what they were thinking, because the explosion was so great and as the consequences were felt around the world, how they could get away with it, I'm not sure, but they didn't even state that there was any kind of a problem and try to cover up and deny it until they could no longer not deny it. It's been a whole lot better for them and the state of the international community to fess up to it that we have a major catastrophe and we need help. And that delay led to the catastrophe being a whole lot worse as far as its health consequences on people.

Another example of Russians, this was one that was not too long ago, or maybe about 10 years ago, was Russia had a flight, air aflot, from Hong Kong to Moscow.

And the plane crashed. It was actually a very, very bad event that happened. The pilot had his eight or nine-year-old son with him in the cockpit and had him at the controls. I thought it would be kind of cute to show. Just like that air control thing that we just had here in the news not too long ago. It was the same type of thing, except he had his son at this A300 Airbus and the plane went down. It killed everybody.

Family was calling the airline wondering what happened. Russians were not releasing any information. In fact, their first news release was that the flight was cancelled. Well, believe me, it was cancelled, but they just couldn't tell the truth about this. And probably one of the grievous big lies of the Soviets was a famine of 1933. My mother lived through that. She was an eight-year-old girl. Five to six million Ukrainians perished and three million Russians perished. Upwards of ten million people are said to have starved to death in the year 1933.

And the Russians covered it up and covered it up. In 1983, the Ukrainians in Canada wanted to hold a 50-year memorial to the great famine of 1933. And the USSR at that time said, what famine? They wouldn't even acknowledge that the famine had occurred. Finally, in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, everybody started fessing up and speaking about how horrible this was. But all these things were covered up with big lies.

The Garden of Eden is where the father of liars began his work. Genesis 2, verse 17. The consequences of this action have persisted to this day because Satan the devil in his perversion has come to the point of being a pathological liar who cannot tell the truth or will tell the truth in such a way as to have evil intent.

And God is spoken of in the book of Hebrews, is God cannot lie. God's character and nature is such where it is impossible for God to lie. You know, maybe philosophers will try to debate that. Well, could he, if you really want to, skip all that. God, in his nature, is described as God is love, and God is one who cannot lie. He cannot tell an untruth. This is an aspect of his character that is so paramount and so important, and one that we can be very, very thankful for, that we do have a source, we do have a well of truth, where we know that there is an absolute, there is absolute knowledge from God that tells us things that are true.

Now, I'm going to make this into a two-part sermon, because I'm going to talk about lying today, and I'm going to talk about truth next week. I actually wanted to speak about lying and truth, because they kind of go together, they're the opposite of one another. But when I took a look at all the instances in the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation about the word truth, they are multitudinous. In the way that a way of life, the religion, the inside speak that we use, are you of the truth, is something that was just commonly used by Christians, and even by the Old Testament, by David and his Psalms, about truth. Because there's only one truth about a subject. You cannot have things that conflict in meaning and definition, unless they all kind of bring about a more fuller definition. But you cannot have contradictory information about something and both be true. And that's why we're here. That's why we're here on a Tuesday afternoon, because there's something about what we believe is true about these days, and about the meaning of these days, that we want to learn about. And when I came to the point of seeing that what I had been taught about a day of worship, or about holidays and their origins, as being untrue, and my eyes were opened, there was a freedom, there was an emancipation, there was something that made a commitment in my life to follow this as a way of life forever. In spite of anything that I would face, in spite of any trials, in spite of anything personal, in spite of anything, you know, whatever in my life, I would say that the reason that I am here and have stayed here, and I've been in the ministry now for 40 years, and I have seen all kinds of things, is the fact that I have found the truth here. I don't want to let go of the truth. I don't want to go back to believing lies. Genesis 2, verse 17. God said, Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for today that you shall eat of it, you shall surely die. God who cannot lie said this. In chapter 3, and the serpent, representative of the devil, enters in the first part of the verse, first part of the chapter, but then we get down to verse 4.

The woman says in verse 3, But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. And a serpent replied here, said to the woman in verse 4, You shall not surely die, contradicting God directly.

They obviously couldn't both be right. But the woman believed this deception, and of course it led to what happened to mankind.

The Old Testament and New Testament of the Bible both contain statements that God cannot lie in various places. You can turn to Numbers 23, verse 19.

There are a number of places, and the book of Proverbs very disparagingly speaks about untruth and deception. But from the very beginning in chapter 23, plus of course the ninth commandment, Thou shalt not bear false witness, as one of the critical cardinal points, I should say, of belief. Numbers 23, in verse 19. This is just one of many, and they kind of slip in and out here of discussion, usually with some other subject. God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent. Now this is just one of the statements, like this. We could also turn to other places, and I'll just, you just want to write down some for your reference to the Old Testament. Psalm 89, verse 35, back to chapter 2 and verse 3. But in the New Testament, we have a similar statement in Hebrews chapter 6. In the Hebrews chapter 6, in verse 13. For when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely, blessing, I will bless you, and multiplying, I will multiply you. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by greater, by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heir of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay on hope for what is set before us. So, God is one who cannot lie. It's not something that's possible for him in any way to do. And we could be very, very happy and great for that. But the devil is spoken of as the father of liars in John chapter 8 in verse 44. This is in that section here with the Passover, one of the Passover sections, but in John chapter 8 in verse 44. I think it's important to write these verses down because they do give us biblical support. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. So, the source of lies is from Satan the devil. In the book of Colossians, in chapter 3 and verse 9, one of the instructions for Christians in the Christian living chapter here is, do not lie one to another.

A very mild statement, but just make sure that when we talk to one another, we never, never have a pervertication or state in untruth one to another. And in Revelation chapter 21 and verse 8, that the lake of fire in the final land is going to take in everyone, including liars. Revelation chapter 21 and verse 8. Again, you can do a study from the very beginning of the Bible to the very end and see the strong statements that are made. Here's the ones that will end up in a lake of fire, the cowardly and believing, abominable, murderous, sexually moral, sorcerers, and all liars shall have their part in a lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Just like certain diseases of abuse or substance, we can get caught up and trapped in them.

And being a liar is just like that. A person can become entrapped and their mind can become diseased, can become pathological in not recognizing the truth and passing on lies, and having no compunction in doing so because they have been used to doing it from the very earliest of their days. Now, as far as lies are concerned, there is more than just the very obvious. I think that all of us will be horrified, and if we have told a lie, and we probably all have at some point for different reasons, told a lie. We have felt badly about telling the lie. We felt convicted. We felt, I shouldn't have done that. That was very wrong of me to do that, and probably have gone and said, God forgive me for saying this because it was simply untrue. We may have gotten away with it, and we may not have gotten away with it. But there are different kinds of lies. This is what gets into the pathology of lying. When children are born, they have a perspective of reality that is basically their world and how they see it. A little child picks up vibrations from their family, from parents, from siblings, and they come to a point to where they begin to use information to gain advantage or use information to avoid punishment. It's probably one of the first places where they learn to cover up and to lie and develop what's called a Machiavellian complex or Machiavellian way, usually about age four to four and a half, where there needs to be moral guidance in a child to show them that you cannot say those things. That is untrue. Lies have to be shown to a child as that is something which is untrue. Let's take a look at some of the lies that people can tell. What is called the big lie? The big lie. This is a lie which someone attempts. This is the one that I believe that we in the church have really gotten past. I don't believe anybody here still continues to tell what I call big lies. Of information that will be discounted by the person because they have information that contradicts that. We perhaps know people at work. We know people around us that tell big lies where it is so preposterous and why they tell it we don't know. But we have information that is something which contradicts that. There's also a lie called spin, where you tell for the most part truth, but you use it in a way that you can almost get people to believe the opposite of what you state in the facts. You know, Bill O'Reilly speaks about the spin stops here, you know, and he is one that purports to be one that tells the truth about a lot of things. Of course, he has his own particular bias for what he tells. I remember when the tobacco companies were on a defensive back in the early 90s when restaurants were beginning to exclude smokers. Northwest Airlines became the first airline that didn't allow smoking on their flights, and all the tobacco companies were in uproar. Tobacco companies had a massive campaign in magazines and newspapers to talk about the public aspect of smoking, of what public means.

And the text and the ads that came out in their text were amazing. I never saw writing that was so skilled in making you feel sorry for smokers. It's almost like you say, would you please light up? I mean, we're in a public place. I mean, you need to smoke. I mean, it was almost to that point where it talked about the rights of everybody. It talked about what it means to be public. It made people who were non-smokers feel like they were restrictive of other people and their rights. I mean, it was so well put, but it was spin to its maximum by those who were very good at it. A defense attorney, his job is to create doubt in an audience or in a jury about the person who he is defending. Reasonable doubt. And if there is doubt about the fact the person is guilty, then he cannot be convicted. So while a defense attorney might know that a person is as guilty as all, his job is to spin information, is to throw people off the track, to get the prosecution's evidence minimized, to get people to get his client off the hook. There's another kind of lie called bluffing, where you really don't know, but you bait people into conversation that you pretend that you know, when you really don't. With intention to perhaps get more information out of them, it is something which is used in games, but in real life, it is a form of lying.

There's also a statement, there's also a kind of lie that's called, I've heard it, a barefaced, a bold-faced lie. This comes from the 1700s in Britain, when people who had shaven faces, you know, not the people with the beers, but people with shaven faces, they were considered to be more the honest people. And if one of these people actually told a lie, it was so unbelievable that this kind of a person could tell a lie. And so this is a reference to a lie that, well, you wouldn't believe that this kind of a person would be saying a lie. So while it may have had different meanings now to us today, it is something that originated that way. There could be a contextual lie. One can state part of the truth out of context, knowing that without complete information, it gives a false impression. You can state actual, accurate facts. Yes, yet you can be very deceptive in how you use them and get people to believe the complete opposite. Forms of sarcasm can also be lies. In sarcasm, you state something that is outrageous. It's not true. It's perhaps even funny. But it's a way to deceive people in what you say and the way you feel about them.

There are exaggerations. Exaggerations. And these usually have to do with adventure stories.

It's a hyperbole that you take a story that is perfectly well sometimes within itself, but in order to get maximum value from it, you have to stretch it. And you have to make it appear to be more powerful, more meaningful than what actually happened. And oftentimes, when people tell exaggerated stories, it becomes a habit. From their youngest years, they start telling stories in a way that is just natural, and they actually believe the things that they are saying.

But if we're talking about value and about telling the truth and making certain that every yes and every no actually means yes or no, or that every impression that we make to everyone is the impression of what it really is, that what we want them to believe is not opposite of what we are saying. We need to be very cautious and ask ourselves, are we playing into a spirit? Are we playing into a disease that is representative of 11 that fills the whole world? This whole world, when you take a look at advertising, you take a look as to what politicians say, what is being stated, and what you hear on television. And while in the press and in journalism, you want to believe that everything is the way it is stated. There is so much deception. There is so much pervarication. There's so much falsehood in this way that this world comes across. Falsehoods, when they conflict, cause, obviously, conflict. And conflict causes turmoil, and it causes all the crises and troubles that we have. There's what's also called a noble lie. A noble lie. This is, I grew up with noble lies.

Again, my background is Ukrainian, and we were a community of immigrants in Minneapolis-St. Paul area. This is true about other nationalities, but we said some preposterous things about the people of Ukraine as being the best people in the world. Their language is the most beautiful in the world. I know that maybe this sounds good, but we grew up believing that. Also, we believed, and we were told by our teachers, that the Russian language is very ugly. The Russians, they just, you know, their language is so rough sounding and so horrible sounding. And honestly, as I was growing up, I believed that the Ukrainian language was so beautiful they would recite poetry in how beautiful the language sounded, which it is, you know, to Ukrainian. I mean, my wife doesn't understand the word of it, you know, it all sounds, you know, gobbledygook. But nonetheless, you know, everybody thinks that their language is the best and the most beautiful.

And it's something that you can kind of believe. I mean, yeah, sure, you know. But what does this lead to? The Russians, you know, when I came to start working with Russians and saw what they felt about Ukrainians, it was totally the opposite. They felt that they had a superior and beautiful language, and their language is beautiful in many ways. In fact, when I go to Ukraine, hardly the Ukrainian Bible is used. They use the Russian Bible because it is far more majestic in its sound than the Ukrainian language, which really does sound a little bit hilly-billyish, you know, compared to the more majestic sound of the Russian language. But the point I'm making is that people make these things up, and they create a conflict, they create a hostility, they create an animosity between people. And that's the way nationalism is. I remember also when I took German in high school, we had a German teacher who really was quite a character.

I mean, I think he really liked Hitler. You know, he just spoke so highly of order and so forth in Germany during that time. But he would talk to us about how beautiful the German language was. He says, the word for flow in German. Now, flow in English sounds so crude, like a brook is flowing. In German, it's fleecen. Isn't that beautiful? Okay, you know. But nonetheless, you know, it's this type of nationalism to make people believe that theirs is the very best because they say so. That creates a hostility and creates a confrontation between people.

Now, we can have the same thing about ourselves as one state being better than another. Just really just plain, downright believe it.

But these are what are called noble lies. They're not really, you know, untrue that the word fleecen is beautiful sounding. When you set it against someone else or say it's better than someone else, it is a lie. It is not true. And it's something which does lead to conflict. It's also called a jokos lie. What's that? It's lying when you are joking. And saying things that are untrue about people in a sarcastic way to belittle them. Jokos lies are lies meant in jest, intended to be understood as such by all present parties. It can be a kind of sarcasm and teasing.

But it can lead to saying things that are untrue, that are humorous about people, that can be very, very hurtful. This is another form of lie which is called, and it's acceptable in some areas. And hopefully we have come out of that in this among ourselves, it's called a lie to children. Lying to children. Where we feel like we can tell our child something such as, you came from a stork or Santa Claus. And these are lies. This is not true.

And how many children, when they came to the realization after years of having Santa come down the chimney and deliver all the presents, that he didn't exist? Now we think it's funny, he'll kind of make light of it, but for a child who creates his own reality from where he's at, to come to live life, and he has to some a major, a major breakdown of values, it can lead to cynicism, and oftentimes leads to cynicism towards Jesus Christ, and leads to cynicism towards those things that are right and good. There's lying by omission, where you can leave a lot of facts that are true in a story, but you can leave some very, very big things out that can cause the entirety of the story to collapse or lead to a misconception about something really quite different, and something that is totally, totally different.

It's called the being economical with the truth lie, which is a euphemism for deceit, which is holding back, again, similar to lying by omission, certain relevant facts, and being very careful not to reveal too much information, but in the process, it leads to an entirely different impression for what you had. That is also the emergency lie, the emergency lie. It's a lie that's told strategically because you don't want to hurt another party, such as you may know that, you know, a neighbor's husband is unfaithful, but you don't, you know, tell the wife if she asks you where he is, or you know something about some situation that would cause a great deal of harm, you don't. Fabrication is another form of lie.

It's where basically you make things up, because you don't know the facts, and where you don't know the facts, you just simply fill in and just make stories up, kind of like science fiction. You begin to believe it yourself. You may know certain things, and I really appreciate people when they're telling something or explaining something and say, honestly, I don't know.

Instead of making things up along the way that fill in for the things that you don't really know, fabrication, and just simply making a story up.

There's a lying in trade with a seller of a product or service may advertise on true facts about a product to gain sales. And of course, there's been an outrage against this in the last several decades, where different consumer protection laws have taken hold and have been protecting consumers, but there's been a lot of lying in trade. Another kind is complements and false reassurances. We're a person to gain favor of somebody complements them when they really don't mean it at all. To gain favor, to in some way to please them, they tell things that are simply not true, which is also similar to a white lie. Kind of a lie that you don't feel really hurts people.

It is something that if uncovered, it has no big deal. But white lies lead to darker and darker lies.

What happens when people start lying? Well, there's two things. One is they can be found out.

You found out that somebody's been lying to you. A mate finds out their mate's been lying to them, or a friend is discovered, and the relationship breaks down because what other lies have they told. And can you believe them in the future? And can you believe them when they talk to you in the future and you kind of wonder, have they told you the truth or not? And you probably have a list of people right now that you know that I'm not sure if I believe everything that he or she says because of a record, or because of a pattern, or because they were found out, or because I highly suspect the kinds of knowledge that they transmit. But another phenomenon that occurs, and a very dangerous one as well, is this. Is that a person becomes embroiled in the lie that is being told.

They begin to believe it themselves and pass it on to others. You know, I always wondered, how was it that nations like Germany, rational people, the highest of civilization, you know, among the countries that were, that had gone through the Great Reawakening, through, you know, the age of reason, could ever come to the state of mind of being so fervent for Nazism in World War II? How could this entire nation, I've read several books, we had one Thousand Shall Fall, you know, talking about the mentality of just the local Nazi clubs in the local gatherings, is that the mindset of the nation was so warped because of them believing lies that they espoused as their own reality and passed on to everyone else.

So you ask this question, how was it that Satan was able to draw away one-third of the angels? What did he say? I'm sure it wasn't something that was a one-time deal, where he made a frontal assault against God and all the other angels just fell in.

He got a few people who began to, few angels that began to agree with him, that came to the same mindset as he spouted out his differences and his sense of dissatisfaction with the God of love and the God of truth.

And this group of angels then went out to others and spread this discontent and spread this lie of Lucifer to others. And it got to the point where it was one-third.

The rebellion of the angels was done through deceit and through lying. And when we read back in Matthew 24 and about the first horseman, the one of religious deceit, that in one sense is the most dangerous one, because if you can have your mind warped and twisted to where you will believe lies, everything else is lost, you know, down the road.

You can't even reach a mind anymore because they believe falsehoods. That's why it's so important for us as Christians to always be testers of truth. As John wrote, test the spirits whether they be of God.

Question what you hear as being right or wrong. What are the biases?

What is the motive? Is what you see all the truth? The great area probably where there's been more bias and deceit has been in the area of religion.

When we take a look at Christianity, which is as simple and pure as it is from the Bible, and you know, I take a look at a couple things in my life that helped steer me towards what I call pure truth. And one of them was, as I told you, I grew up in a community of Ukrainians that had their biases.

I grew up in a community which was anti-Semitic and there was never any lack of jokes against Jews.

And I never, as I mentioned to you, had a lack of statements about the greatness of the Ukrainian people. I'm not downing them because so many other nations do the same. When you take a look at the cultures of various nations, so many of them have very similar things.

But I know that my father, in our family, in spite of what I may have heard from my teachers, was never involved in any of that.

Different people tried to get my father to become a part of their little subculture. And it's interesting that we had maybe 200-300 people in Minneapolis, St. Paul, maybe 400, that were immigrants. And they had about a half a dozen political parties in absentia, in exile. Some were socialists. Some were imperialists. Some were some other connectivity to a kind of a thought. My father was never a part of any of that.

And I know that they tried to come to our home. I remember one time, this one person said, you've got to join us. My dad said, look, you're all good friends, but I'm just not interested in that. And that made a great impression upon me as I was growing up, that I never became so embroiled in a political cause. And then when we came into the church, you know, we never got involved in politics on the outside. And I know that when I was just coming into understanding the church, I was such a big Barry Goldwater supporter. You cannot believe how much I want to support Barry Goldwater, because he was going to solve the world's problems.

But you know, at that time, I just basically moved away from that whole debate in my high school. Which was, half of our high school was for Barry Goldwater, and half of it was for Lyndon Johnson. I never became involved in politics in that way, and got so embroiled in a particular parlance, in a particular message, in a particular bias that was spoken.

We need to take a look at political campaigns. How can two candidates be so opposite of one another? Now, I know in some cases it's a difference of opinion on how to do something. But in other cases, one is not telling the truth, and one is telling the truth, or both are not telling the truth. But you cannot have both telling the truth. Now, that's where we, as Christians, need to shine and to come out of being duped and deceived with simple arguments. Where you have a lack of facts, you have omission, you have exaggeration, you have all types of things, or even the big lie. And Hitler was noted for saying that the bigger the lie, or his chief of propaganda, the more people will probably likely believe it.

Now, we have to be very, very cautious and very careful. But religion is one area which has fallen down the most in the area of deception. And certainly, Lucifer, the state, the devil, is most happy to be able to serve that area more than any other, to discredit religion.

The Russian writer Tolstoy said, you know, the greatest area of deception is religion. But at least it's for a good cause. That's the way he described that type of thing. So again, with lying, there's two things that happen. One is that you will distrust and you will lose confidence in someone as one of the consequences. But the other consequences is that you can become embroiled in that lie and become a transmitter and a believer and pass on that same information and that same untrue falsehood, untrue witness to others. Another kind of lie is called puffery. Puffery. Puffery is an exaggerated claim typically found in advertising and publicity announcements, such as the highest quality at the lowest price. Are always, he votes in the best interest of all the people. Well, such statements are unlikely to be true, but they cannot be proven false and don't violate any kinds of trade laws usually. And especially the consumer is the one who's expected to be able to tell what is the absolute truth, simply will not know. I mean, how can somebody say he always votes in the best interest of all the people or the highest quality, lowest price? We can't prove it one way or the other, but it's called puffery.

Again, without a moral support in a family or in a nation where lying is decried and lying is one of those commandments that probably gets less press than the others, because people can see what killing does and it's no good. I mean, even the gentiles, as Paul wrote, can come to see that certain natural laws are in effect, that when people kill one another in a neighborhood, that's bad. You need to have law and order in society. Adultery, well, maybe so so, you know, but it's, you know, you'll go to jail for a long time in this country or be executed for killing somebody. With adultery, you're not going to go to jail. Actually, you'll go to jail, you could go to jail for lying, but lying is one of those areas, too, which is not held as one of the areas that's in the cardinal area. You'll go to jail for stealing. You'll go to jail for murder, but you won't go to jail for adultery or for lying. So it's not held up in the very highest esteem. And yet, as we have seen, God holds to lying as something and telling the truth is something which is of the most and utter greatest importance. He cannot tell a lie. God cannot prevaricate. God cannot give us a false impression. Can we be thankful for that? You know that God is not giving us any kind of false impressions. What if this was all a big practical joke? Sometimes they don't have a thought to self. You know, this could be real when I die. All the things that we've been preaching are going to actually happen. Well, they better.

I'm going to be expecting the kingdom of God and all those things that I've been preaching and passing on to the churches that I have preached to. I'm going to be expecting that. I believe that. And you know, my faith is solid because I never doubt God. Why don't I doubt Him? Because He cannot tell a lie. That everything He says about the truth, which is made so very clear to me in the Bible, is so very, very vivid. As I said, there are a couple of things in my growing up that kept me from becoming embroiled and having my mind perhaps tainted without being a thinking mind, but just go along with a certain political cause or a certain religion. One was my dad's training at home, because my dad was apolitical, probably because he was too busy doing other things that he enjoyed. His art and other things that he liked to do, he just didn't have time for all that political discussion.

But the other is that I truly felt in my sophomore, junior year of high school that God made certain things extremely clear to me in the Bible. I don't take credit for that because I was a great intellect. I'm actually sort of okay in the middle. But I know that I saw certain things that were being taught by my church, certain things that were taught by those around us and even political values, that it just wasn't the truth. And I was saddened greatly when I was found that Sunday was not the day we're supposed to be worshiping on. I was wondered why we read the commandment in church, thou shalt remember the Sabbath day, but we kept Sunday. When finally that opening, the fog was lifted, I said, well really, they're lying to me. They're not telling me the truth. And then just like anybody else that you catch and lie, you say, what else aren't they telling me? And boy, that really opened the door. When I learned about Christmas, when I learned about the fact that God's holy days were covered up, it's been a deception that's taken place over a long period of time and I woke up to it. And one of the areas in which this world will be cleared, the way that their minds will be cleared, is that they will be able to tell the truth from error. And error is lies. And they'll be able to understand that.

This is sort of about a place in the sermon that I wanted to tell you about this. All these stories about lying in children, in primates.

Did everybody here ever hear about Coco the gorilla here? Okay. Coco the gorilla was a gorilla who was actually trained in sign language. He was able to communicate pretty freely with people. And Coco, in a rage in his cage, came in and tore up the sink, just tore out the sink completely out of the cage. You know, that he was washing or whatever it was. What the rage was, but he really made a mess of it. Well, his trainers came in, and there's a little kitten, you know, walking around. And Coco was pointing to the kitten. The kitten did it, you know. Anyway.

Probably would have fit in some other place better, you know, here. But I had to tell you about Coco the gorilla.

Telling the truth is a lot healthier way to just live life. You know, when you are entrapped with having to tell lies, and usually, like I said, the breaking of any commandment means that you have to lie in order to maintain the impression that you are either covering up or not doing it, or just protecting yourself. When you tell the truth, you never have to worry. Your story is always the same. You never have to worry. He said that there's two ways to detect a lie, probably more than any other. There's a whole study done on just different truth serums and lie detector machines, but none of these have stood up to the test of being absolutely, totally reliable.

But one thing that's for sure, and there's a book out that's very good. It's called How to Tell Somebody's Telling the Truth in Five Minutes or Less. But it takes a lot longer to tell a lie than it is to tell the truth. So if you ask a question, asking somebody about something, it takes an awfully long time for them to answer the question. Probably they're having to elaborate and fix and to create impressions. The other way to detect a lie is somebody answers too quickly. Well, I hear that you did this. No, I didn't!

No, I didn't. That's another indication. You protest too loudly or too quickly.

When you tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said last time. You don't have to say, well, how did I tell that story last time? Because it's the truth. The truth is always the way that you live and the way you express yourself, and it's always the same. There's a freedom in that.

As I said, I came from a culture in which telling the truth was not valued. I had to learn its value in the commandments that I learned in the church as something which is the cardinal aspect of God's character and something which he said to watch out for, because if once you're deceived, you could be cut off from any other truth because your mind is clouded and deceived.

But telling the truth is freedom, because you know what you said. You can say it over and over again, and there's never a problem. My wife, Beverly, has come from a Scandinavian culture.

She's come from a Norwegian culture, and particularly in her home. And I don't, you know, I don't mind telling this because Beverly's father was an amazing person. His word was always sure. Whatever he said, he would always do. Whatever he owed, he would always pay. Whatever he intended to do, he would fulfill. Beverly said that they weren't spanked much, but there was one time when the father said they were driving from someplace, when you get home tonight, you will be spanked.

And they knew that they were spanked. And when they came home, they were spanked. I mean, there was absolutely no bargaining because he said that's what's going to happen. They were spanked. I think maybe that's only one time, and the last time Beverly's never been spanked. I don't want to talk about her spanking here anyway. But I'm just saying is that, you know, there are people who really hold to their word, and they do what they say. In our culture, we want to please people. You know, he wanted to. So you can do things where you compromise truth for the sake of thinking that you'll have a better relationship by omitting things and by covering things. Scandinavian people, on the other hand, in this particular case, can tell a truth, but they can be thought of also as being undiplomatic and harsh and perhaps less lacking intact. But it's the way that people see truth.

Our lives, our communications, are so much our relationships based on our communications of what we say to one another, the way we write to one another, the way that we speak and relate. People are looking for honesty, but honesty comes at really looking at truth.

Honesty isn't just saying any old thing to try to gain a relationship.

Honesty is telling the absolute truth. Now, that can be something which is also embedded with tact and diplomacy and kindness.

But ultimately, teaching ourselves and teaching our children to be truthful is one of the most important values that we can teach them. Not only that, but also to understand the truth, to detect the truth, is also a very, very important capacity of something which is done.

Again, there have been a number of biblical writers that have spoken a great deal about truths and some very interesting writings that I read this past week about what they felt. Actually, the value of telling a truth has been held highly by many. I hope that we understand how strongly God feels about truthfulness and righteousness. Now, I want to complete this next time I speak here because I was saying, well, okay, I want to end my sermon with a whole section on the value of truth. I was overwhelmed. I said, well, where do I start?

Thy word is truth. Pilates questioned, you know, what is truth? The fact that the Apostle Paul, as he preached in the New Testament world, spoke about the way of the truth and spoke about truth, truth, truth. I thought to myself at times, though, we sometimes have used it as kind of an inside term. It's not an inside term at all. What we believe and what we do is the truth. And, you know, we may not have it perfectly. Hopefully, it's only because, you know, we just haven't come to it or don't have all the facts. But we are always, as individuals and as a church, seeking for the truth of God. The truth ultimately sets us free. I'd like to conclude with 1 Corinthians 5, verse 8.

Because it's interesting that the Apostle Paul could come to the point of defining the meaning of unleavened bread in this particular manner. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. But this is how he describes leaven, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.