The Ninth Commandment and Being People of Truth

I was wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. Put in clearly practice to do something like that. That was excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, you know, if there's one issue that is going to bring this world to its knees, it's the question of who and what to believe. Right now, we are dealing with an incredible issue of trust and credibility throughout the world. This week, we witnessed truly an extraordinary event, a once-in-a-generation event. As the President of the United States' personal lawyer appeared before Congress to testify in public, he came to say that he had previously lied, but now he was telling the truth, even though he had lied before. It is hard to tell. Was he telling the truth or not telling the truth? And this country is greatly divided on that issue. The New York Times, in December of 2018, reported that since taking office, President Trump has said 7,600 lies. Now, if you support President Trump in what he's doing, and many people do, in fact, that's why he's the President, they would argue that it's the media that's lying, and that there's a lot of fake news out there. In fact, one cute thing that I saw said that it used to be that the news would tell you what happened, and then you would decide how you felt about it. But now, the news tells you how to feel about something, and then you have to go decide whether or not it happened. So there's really a great deal of division here, and this credibility gap creeps into every aspect of our lives. Do we have an emergency on our southern border? Is the middle-class tax cut really a middle-class tax cut good for middle-class people or not? Is there a threat from North Korea and Iran in terms of nuclear weapons? Who knows? Who are we supposed to believe? How are we supposed to digest what we're hearing and seeing around us? And now they have this thing called deep fakes, where you can literally have a video of somebody speaking, and it's not them speaking, but it looks like them speaking. And they'll modify the videos to where they slow things up. So there's this controversy about whether or not a reporter acted inappropriately with somebody on the microphone, and there's claims that they sped up the microphone to make the video look different. How do we know? How can we deal with that? Truly, if there's a time where we long for the day when our great adversary who deceives the world will be put away, as described in Revelation 20, verse 3, truly we desire that day. And since I mentioned the adversary, we know who is the father of lies, right? It's Satan, our adversary. He is the father of lies. We should not assume that we are immune from what's going on around us. We are not just sort of spectators in an arena as we watch all these bad people practice their deceitful ways. We, too, can fall into that trap. And in fact, interestingly enough, you don't need to turn there, but Numbers 23, verse 19, says, God is not a man that he should lie. Now, that's a very interesting statement because the implication in that verse, God is not a man that he should not lie.

Is that by our very nature, as people, we lie. And God isn't like that. But by our very nature, we lie. And why do we lie? Well, you know, you can Google why do people lie, and you will get list after list after list of why people lie.

We lie to protect ourselves. We lie to get ahead. We lie to control our circumstances. We lie sometimes for no reason at all. And then we say it, and then we go, whoa, what did I just say? That was absurd. But we're kind of embarrassed to take it back, and so it sort of floats out there. And we hope it will kind of go away. And people will forget that we even said it, right, instead of saying, actually, no, I just misspoke. I didn't mean to say that.

And so we lie for no reason at all. And sometimes we say things that aren't true, not realizing they're not true, because our memories are not quite all there. And then later we realize, oh, I shouldn't have said that. And then what is that? Is that a lie? Well, that was misinformation. One of my old bosses once told me, and I think there was so much truth to this, he says, whatever happens, it's not the crime that gets people. It's the cover-up. Right? Because once you start trying to cover up a crime, then you've got to lie once, and you've got to lie again, and you've got to get other people to lie for you, and the stories never quite match, and then pretty soon, they got the person. It's never the crime, it's the cover-up. Today, we're going to review what God said in the Ninth Commandment. What God said in the Ninth Commandment, and what I think are three great truths of the Bible in regard to being truthful and not lying. You know, Revelation 22, verse 15, again, you can just note that, contrast those people who have access to the Tree of Life. Right? We know Adam and Eve had access to the Tree of Life in the garden, and it was taken away. And when Jesus Christ returned, that access will be granted again. And so he contrasts in Revelation 22, 15, people who have access to the Tree of Life with people who do not have access, people who will not be in God's kingdom. And in Revelation 22, verse 15, these people are described as sorcerers. That's pretty serious, right? These are people who practice the black arts. These people are described as sexually immoral. These people are described as murderers. Right? Murderers. These people are described as idolaters. And these people are described as liars. These people are described as liars. Specifically, it says, everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

And we'll see that there are no degrees of truth. Speaking truth is more than just not lying. And speaking truth goes beyond our words. And those are the three points that I want to share with you today. The truth will set us free, Jesus Christ says. We must be clothed with the belt of truth, as Paul says in Ephesians, when he speaks about the armor of God. We must worship God in spirit and in truth, as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in John 4. And we receive the spirit of truth when we receive the laying on of hands after we are baptized. And we are sanctified by the word of truth. Truth is what God is. It is the foundation of what God is, and it is what God wants us to be. And if there is one way that the people of God can distinguish themselves, is by truth-telling. And as we listen, as we take note, and as we contemplate, I pray that God's spirit would work with our spirit to help us understand where we have to change in this area. Let's start out by going over to Exodus 20, as we have with our other eight sermons, our eight discussions on this topic. Exodus 20, verse 16. Exodus 20, verse 16. And let's read this great command and how powerful this command would be, and how amazing it would be if our society were to even just keep these few words. We would not have had to witness what we witness today, or this week, I should say, in the news.

Exodus 20, verse 16.

Now, the word false here in Hebrew is the word shekir, S-H-E-Q-E-R. S-H-Q-S-H-E-Q-E-R. Which Strong's concordance defines as deception, disappointment, or falsehood. And the word witness is an interesting word because it refers to something that was seen by a person. Now, you can be a witness, but you can also witness something. And so, when we think about this, most commentaries point out that this language is very legal in tone. That is, it's speaking to something that occurs in a legal setting. That if you are going to give testimony, and this testimony is going to be relied upon as to whether somebody did something, somebody is guilty or innocent of something, you shall not bear false witness against our neighbor. And so, for example, if we testify and say something we think is true, but our memories are bad, and we didn't carefully consider our words, then we may be sharing misinformation. And we may be sharing a falsehood. And this could be breaking the commandment as well. We're going to talk about intention here as we get into this message a little bit more. But in expanding on this topic in Romans 13, Paul makes it clear that this goes well beyond just a legal setting. Go to Romans 13, verse 9, please. Romans 13, verse 9.

This goes beyond just a legal setting because this is more than what we say about our neighbor. This is also about what we say to our neighbor. Romans 13, verse 9. For the commandments, and now he's going to list four of the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, they are all summed up in this saying, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

This is how we show love for our neighbor by not bearing false witness, by not speaking falsehoods. If you go over to Ephesians 4, verse 25, you'll see that Paul also talks about this when he's talking about relationships within the church, and how we speak to one another. Because when we talk about bearing false witness against our neighbor, what we're doing is we're speaking about our neighbor to somebody else. Oh yeah, I saw him do it, for sure. He took that. He's guilty. I saw him. Somebody else comes along. Yes, I saw him too. See, that's bearing false witness against our neighbor.

But Ephesians 4, verse 25 says, therefore, putting away lying, each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members, one another. That is to say, we have to speak truth to our neighbor. So it's not just in a court setting that God is interested in that. He wants us to be able to speak one to another. And so with this understanding that really what we're talking about is truth-telling, what we're talking about is what comes out of our mouth, let's talk about these three points that I shared in the introduction.

The first one is that there are no degrees of truth. There are no degrees of truth. You cannot say, well, this was 92% truth. See, there was an 8% error in what I said. This was, that guy, there was 1% of truth in what he said. No, there's no degrees of truth. Something is either 100% true or it's false. There's true or false. And to understand this point biblically, let's look at Jesus Christ's instruction in Matthew 23.

Because Jesus Christ actually spoke to this point when he talked to the Pharisees about their hypocritical behavior. He talked to them about their their parsing of truth. He talked to them about how they created hierarchies and degrees of truth. In Matthew 23 verse 16, this was in a whole chapter where he took issue with the religious leaders of the day and the things that they did in terms of misleading the people. Matthew 23 verse 16. Woe to you blind guides who say, whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing. But whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it. Fool's and blind. For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?

And whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing. But whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it. Fool's and blind. For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?

Now let's understand what we're reading here. Let's understand what's actually going on. So what was happening was that certain leaders would say, well, you know, this person did this, and I swear it by the temple. Now, we don't often do that today, but sometimes you might hear, you might say, oh yeah, swear to God. Maybe you've heard people say that, right? That expression is actually sort of a very, very ancient practice that was practiced at this time. And believe it or not, there's actually an entire book in the Mishnah devoted to this topic.

There is an entire discussion. And let me just read you briefly here from the Expositor's Bible commentary on this verse. This is actually under Matthew 5, but I think this says it. A sophisticated causatory judged how binding an oath really was by examining how closely it was related to Yahweh's name. So the bindingness of what you said in terms of an oath, or the truthfulness of what you said in terms of an oath, was tied in to how closely you swore it according to God. And the closer you got to God, then the closer you got to truth.

Now sometimes we might say, oh I swear by my mother's grave, right? Maybe you've heard that kind of... Well, the idea is that you love your mother, and you would never do anything to hurt your mother. And so if you swear it by your mother's grave, well then it must be true, because you love your mother. And so by the same token, they would say, I swear it by the temple.

But then other times they say, well I swear it by the temple's gold. And see, the temple's gold is more valuable than the temple. So if I say I swear it by the temple's gold, then it really is true. Where if I swear it by the temple, well it's true in a way, but there's certain things, and I may not actually perform that oath quite in the same way that I said it.

You know, there's some interpretation there. And what is going on... I'll continue reading here. Swearing by heaven and earth was not binding, nor was swearing by Jerusalem. Though swearing toward Jerusalem was. This is from the Mishnah. That an entire Mishnahic tract is given over to the subject shows that such distinctions became important and were widely discussed. Now, there's actually a lot of scholarship around this that talks about how actually the rabbis, or they were called Pharisees at the time, were actually very, very careful about what they said.

And they created these rules so that people would actually be faithful in what they said. But Jesus Christ comes along and says, you guys are hypocritical in this. You are misusing this. You are going down the wrong path. Because when you start creating these variations of what you swear by and what you don't swear by, you're missing the point.

And he says here, verse 20, Therefore he who swears by the altar swears by it, and by all things on it. And he who swears by the temple swears by it, and by him, that is God, who dwells in it. That is, don't make distinctions about these things that people have to parse through and figure out, well, now did he swear by the temple, or by the gold, or did he swear by the altar, or did he swear by the sacrifice that was on the altar?

I can't remember. And so I'm not sure how I can rely on what this person said. Jesus says it's the same. It's the same. And if you want to see the definitive teaching on this topic, it's over in Matthew 5. Let's go over to Matthew 5. Now, some people would say that Matthew 23 and Matthew 5 are contradictory, but in actual fact, Matthew 23 was Jesus making a point to the Pharisees about their hypocritical behavior in this interpretation of this Jewish text. And in actual fact, they needed to just speak the truth and not lie to the people.

Matthew 5 actually gives the doctrinal teaching. In Matthew 5 and in verse 33, we see, So don't even swear at all. You don't have to say, Well, I know, you know, look, he did it. I swear by... No. We don't say that. And so the Church of God teaches that you just tell the truth, and you don't swear.

And I hope people are not swearing because it says you're not supposed to swear by your mother's grave. You're not supposed to say, I swear to God or I swear by God. Now, you know, we have these things that we do sometimes that are traditional. You know, if somebody is sworn into a public office, you've probably seen they put their hand on a Bible. Why do they put their hand on the Bible? Because, see, that's close to God.

They put their hand on a Bible, they raise their hand, and they say what? You know, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. That's swearing. The Church of God teaches that we don't do that. Right? We don't say, so help me God. It's fine to say, I affirm. I affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But we don't believe that it's appropriate to say, so help me God. Now, this thing about the Bible, interestingly enough, you know, there's no constitutional basis for that. You know, that's just tradition, just so we're clear.

So, John Quincy Adams, when he became president, 1820-something, he put his hand on a law book. He didn't put his hand on a Bible. President Roosevelt, when he found out that President McKinley had died, they went around searching to find a Bible. They couldn't find one. So he became president without putting his hand on a Bible. So that is something that we do by tradition. I think it's a beautiful tradition, by the way. But it gets to this point. It gets to this point. We don't need a Bible, like, oh, he put his hand on a Bible, so I'm not sure I can trust him. So we don't need to have those props. We just say yes, yes, or no, or no.

And so, in fact, Josephus actually writes about this, interestingly enough, about this topic. Because this was quite widely discussed at the time. And Josephus writes about the Essenes. You might be familiar with them. This is a very strict sect. And he writes about them in Wars of the Jews, Book 2, and he says this about them.

So this, I think, is an interesting way of approaching this topic. That we should let our yes be yes and our no be no. And he said, based on this, we teach that we just say the truth. And we don't say 99% of the truth. We tell the truth, which is a statement of commission. That is, I just speak the truth. We say the whole truth, which addresses the issue of omission. You're not going to leave anything out, so you're going to speak what you know to be true.

You're not going to leave out a portion that would somehow color it. That's, you know, the whole truth. And nothing but the truth means that you're not going to put in a lie about something else that might color the topic. That's why we use that term, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Because that's what the truth is. And that's what we in God's church should speak.

Which brings me to my second point. Speaking the truth is more than just not lying. Now, that's kind of weird. Speaking the truth is more than just not lying. According to Merriam Webster, the definition of a lie is to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive. That's a lie. So if you're talking to a friend and you say, Hey, what time are we getting together? I think church next week's at 2.30.

Right? Is it 2.30? No, no, no. Next week, church is at 1.30. Your friend says to you. And then you find out the church is actually at 2.30. Did your friend lie? Well, no. Technically, your friend did not lie. Because there was an intent to deceive there. The person misspoke. But your friend created confusion by giving you misinformation. Your friend gave you misinformation. Your friend spoke a falsehood. And so speaking the truth goes beyond just lying.

And this is where we tend to get tripped up. Because we may say something with no intent to deceive. But it may still be a false statement. And there's a concept in law around this called recklessness. Okay? Recklessness.

And that is, if somebody is just reckless with what they say, then they can be held to the same standard as if they lied. Even though they didn't have an intent to deceive. We can't be reckless in terms of what we say. And so telling the truth is really the larger intent of Scripture.

It isn't just about lying. Well, did you lie? Well, no. Technically, I didn't lie. I didn't have an intent to deceive. But I really thought this was true. Yeah, but you created all sorts of confusion because you spread misinformation. And if you're reckless with what you say, if you've probably heard, you know, engage brain before opening mouth, probably heard that, right? No intent to deceive, right? But you spread misinformation. You cause confusion. And once we start getting confusion, we get the possibility for hurt and difficulty. You know, Jesus Christ described Himself by saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

So Jesus Christ, when He makes a promise, right? When He makes a promise that He's going to return, when He makes a promise that by His stripes we are healed, right? When He makes a promise, there is no risk that He's not going to do it, right? He's not going to say, well, you know, things have been very busy up here in the Third Heaven.

You know, there's been a lot of demand for healing, and I'm sorry I haven't been able to get to you, but, you know, I will get to as soon as I can, right?

We don't have to worry about that with Jesus Christ, right? But we have to worry about that one to another, don't we? And like I said, this is where we often kind of have issues. Let's go over to 1 Timothy 3, verse 15. 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3, verse 15. This is Paul talking to Timothy.

He says, If I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself. So all this instruction is how you're supposed to conduct yourself in the house of God. And what is the house of God? This is how Paul describes the house of God, by the way. This is us. We are the house of God. This is how he describes us. Which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

The pillar and ground of the truth. Now, the pillar and ground are a reference to what holds up the structure. You have a foundation, and you have a set of pillars. And that holds up the structure of the church. And now we get into something that you often hear talked about, which is called integrity. Integrity is actually a structural concept. This building has integrity. It has integrity because there is a foundation. There is some engineering calculation that went into how much weight these walls had to hold up this ceiling. And you're thankful for that, because otherwise with rain the ceiling could collapse on us. This building has integrity because of the way it's constructed. And the church also has integrity because of the way that it's constructed. And part of that construction involves truth. Truth is the framework of what the truth is all about. Jesus Christ is the truth, and the church has the truth, and the church should speak the truth. Speak the truth in terms of what God's Word is, but speak the truth generally. And let's see where that's actually described. Let's go to Ephesians 4.15 now. We were in Ephesians a moment ago.

But now let's go to Ephesians 4.15.

Jesus Christ is the truth, the church He founded is supported by truth, and the members collectively are to speak the truth. Ephesians 4.15. But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into Him, which is the head, Christ. This means that when we open our mouth, we need to tell the truth. As I said, engage brain, engage mouth, right, in that order. And if we don't engage our brains and focus on our words, we may unintentionally share false information or untrue statements without realizing it.

Now let me give you an example. This happens all the time. Research shows that our memories are notoriously unreliable. Notoriously unreliable. So we might be 100% sure that what we are saying is the truth, and we will say it passionately to somebody about what we remember.

We are not lying, because we don't have an intent to deceive, but we may be sharing falsehoods. When we speak about the past or our memories of events, it's important that we recognize our own shortcomings and not be too dogmatic, because people can have different recollections, and this can be frustrating. Now, if you've ever been married, you know this happens, right?

I say something, and my wife says, No, no, that's not how it happened. And I say, No, no, that's how it happened. And then, pretty soon, rah rah rah rah, right? And you have a dispute over something silly, about what happened where and what I did and what I said and what you said, No, you didn't say that, I said this. And we just think, you know, we've got the perfect memory. The perfect memory. And there's no risk that anything has gone wrong inside this head. But that's crazy. So, let's recognize that our memories cannot necessarily be relied upon. And we need to be careful about being too dogmatic about these things. Another example of this, which I struggle with, is we say something like, I'll call you back tomorrow, right? Or, I'll get to that project next week. Now, do we have an intent to lie? No. We have every intent to do that. I hope so. I hope you don't. If you say, I'll call you back tomorrow, and you don't mean to call you back tomorrow, then that's different, right? But presumably we have good intentions, and we know about good intentions, right? And so we say, I'll call you back tomorrow. But if we don't follow through on that commitment, we haven't lied, but we have not spoken the truth. We have set a falsehood. Now, here's the thing. God can judge our hearts about whether or not we had an intent to deceive. But our neighbor, our wife, our kids, our parents, name them, they can't necessarily judge our hearts. And if we speak often, I'll do that next week, and consistently we don't, then after a while the other person begins to just think we're a liar. Now, maybe after the sermon you'll say, okay, I know you're not a liar. Okay, I know you're not a liar because there's not an intent. But there is this concept of recklessness, which is you're reckless with your words. You don't think carefully about what you're saying, and as they say, you're writing checks, you can't cash, right? There's nothing in the bank. I don't trust you. You said you'd do this, but you're not going to. And that creates tension within families. It creates tensions within the church. It creates tensions within a country. And so we have to be careful about the commitments that we make. Before we say things, we need to know whether or not we can do them. And so, again, telling the truth goes beyond just lying. We have to be careful with our words. We need to be recognizing that we make mistakes in what we remember, in things we say. And if we say that absurd thing, it would happen sometimes, right? We say something. And we go, ooh, what did I just say? Right? I didn't mean that. We need to speak up and say, oops, I'm sorry, big mistake. I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say was this, right? Just get it out and get it done. You will feel so much better that you just said that. Even if five minutes later you realize, oops, everybody's still there, right? As one of my bosses used to say, anybody can be stupid for five minutes. Right? So just say, I was stupid. I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. I didn't say that right. Just get it out. And then you will feel so much better. You will have told the truth. And so we get to the third point here, which is that speaking the truth goes beyond words. Speaking the truth goes beyond words. Let's go back to Matthew 23. Matthew 23, Jesus is teaching here, in verse 27. Matthew 23, in verse 27.

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like white-washed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Interesting. Apocracy, according to Merriam's Webster's, is faying to be what one is not. The Greek word for hypocrisy is hypocrites, which sounds kind of familiar, right? Because that's where we get the word. The word in English actually comes directly from the Greek. And it was a term that was used in the Greek theater. You probably heard this described before. It comes from the Greek theater, and it means stage playing or play acting. Now, that's great if you know you're watching a play, right? I think you know that Tom Hanks is not an astronaut. You know that, right? He's not a lawyer. He's not an astronaut. He's an actor, and he's a very good actor. And I enjoy seeing Tom Hanks movies, right? But I know that he is not truly an army officer, right? He didn't live in 1945, and he wasn't in 1944. He wasn't on Normandy beaches and so forth. Now, it's different. When we play the hypocrite, like the Pharisees did, looking one way on the outside of it being something inside, we are living a lie. We are living a lie, and the truth is not in us. Let's turn over to 1 John 1, verse 8. This is important because the truth has to be in us, right? If God's Holy Spirit is in us, then God's Spirit, which is a spirit of truth, is in us, and it cannot coexist with the spirit of deception.

1 John 1, verse 8.

It says here, He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which gives light to every man who comes into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made with him, and the world did not know him.

I'm in John. I'm reading. We're talking about light, and I'm like, I know I'm getting to this. Yes, I'm betrayed. Yes. All right. I'm misleading. I lied. Did I lie? No, I didn't lie. I just spread misinformation. See, this is good. This is good. We're going to have great conversations about this afterwards.

There we go. 1 John 1. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Now, I've been in conversations where I've asked people. I've asked somebody, you know, you've told me a lot of things that have happened to you, and things aren't very good. Did you do anything to cause this? Did you misspeak? Did you, in a moment of emotion, you know?

And the answer was no. You know, we should ask ourselves that question, because if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. We each have something that we have done that caused some issue. And a lot of times, that's because we are pretending to be something we're not. And that's why we come down to protecting ourselves. Why do we want to protect ourselves? Because we have an image to protect, right?

Why do we want to get ahead? Because we have something that we want to convey about who we are and what we are. We've made mistakes, and I've made mistakes. We've missed the mark, and we won't make mistakes. And our conduct should reflect authentic Christianity, authentic Christian values. Hypocrisy is lying. Pretending is lying. Trying to be something we're not is lying. Now, let me talk to the men for a moment, and I'll talk to the ladies here.

I want to share a passage from a book called Wild at Heart by John Eldridge on page 52. And this is under the heading of the poser. And I think this is a very interesting insight. He's speaking of the story of the Garden of Eden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. And he talks about how they took of this fruit, and he says, and I'm going to start quoting now, then what happens?

Adam hides, quote, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid Genesis 3 verse 10. You don't need a course in psychology to understand men. Understand that verse. Let its implications sink in, and the men around you will suddenly come into focus. We are hiding every last one of us, well aware that we too are not what we were meant to be, desperately afraid of exposure, terrified of being seen for what we are and are not.

And we have run off into the bushes. We hide in our office, at the gym, behind the newspaper, and mostly behind our personality. This book was written in 2001, and I would argue a lot of men hide behind their computers. Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise. I think that is a very, very interesting commentary on men, because men a lot of time define themselves by some sort of image of themselves, whether it's their work, whether it's what they're good at or what they're not good at.

And he continues, I won't quote it there, but he continues to give examples of how men who know nothing about cars, I don't know a lot about cars, we go to the garage to drop our car off, and what are we going to do? We're going to say, oh yeah, yeah, carburetor, yeah, I've got to rebuild that. I was just working on that the other day.

Men who know nothing about sports, when they get around guys who have sports, oh yeah, yeah, how about them Dodgers? They're doing really well. And this is his point, is that men tend to sort of like, oh, I'm a run sports figure, I'm supposed to know somebody about sports, I'm a man. Instead, it's like, I really don't know anything about sports. I never really got into sports, so yeah. It's hard for men to do that.

And then he goes on to describe church.

And I'm not going to pull from the book here, but I just got a little excerpt. And this is a little harsh, but I want to read it, because I think there's something here. And I'm quoting from the book, this is on page 53. Dave runs into Bob in the church lobby. Both are wearing their happy faces, though neither is happy at all. Hey, Bob, how are you? How are you? Bob is actually furious at his wife and ready to leave her, but he says, great!

Thanks! The Lord is good. Dave, on the other hand, hasn't believed in the goodness of God for years ever since his daughter was killed. Yep, God is great all the time, he replies, and they go on. Let that not be said about us. You know, there's somebody here if I say, how are you doing? He's going to tell me. And so I better be prepared to hear that. I went to a training a couple weeks ago. It was a training, I won't go into a lot of details, but it was a training on when you go into rest homes and you go and you visit people. And you know what they told me? Don't ask how people are doing, because they're going to tell you. And then you're going to be there a long time, because they want to tell you, right? So if you ask how somebody's doing, let them tell you, right? Don't expect fine, and then move on. We need to be able to tell the truth with one another. Now for women, and especially teen and young girls, the pressure of social media is becoming unimaginable. So if you are not a digital native, if you're not on Facebook, you probably won't relate to this, but this is a very serious issue. On entrepreneur.com, an article entitled, Why Everyone and Everything on Social Media is Fake, that's the title of this. Bob Deutsch writes, quote, social media, the first mass medium to allow people to publicly share their thoughts, feelings, and lives with others, has become dangerously inauthentic. From cries of fake news to the rise of bots, bogus followers, and other trolls, it's hard to know whom, what, and where to trust. And then he continues, here's what's really ailing social media. Everyone on social media is infected with the same problem. That is, the very nature of it causes all of us to be fake. So while we can share the delectable stack of pancakes we had for breakfast, the highlights of last night's party, our feet poolside on vacation, and of course our likes and laments, all we're sharing is a simple chronicle. One that, with the right filter and snappy status update, can project an image of life far better than the one we authentically experience. The evidence that manufactured projections are the bigger problem is supported by countless studies correlating teen depression and anxiety with heavy social media use.

Now, I should add as well that the problem is so rampant that I came across a site called LifeFaker.com. LifeFaker.com. And this site brings people in and says you can buy all of these fake pictures that you can use on your social media site. So here's all this picture of food that you made, and here's the picture of the vacations you took, and here's the picture of all these things. And so it's called LifeFaker.com, and actually it's actually a site that's devoted to helping teens in particular, but young adults in general, deal with the pressures of social media by telling them that they don't need to have fake lives to have value. So LifeFaker is actually a fakeout because when you actually click to buy the photo, and it happens all the time, it actually takes you to a site that says, look, you don't need this. You have value in your life without faking it with your friends. And it's a whole site that's devoted to that. And it's very popular because people really need that reassurance that they don't have to have fake lives. They don't have to pretend to be something they're not. Let's go over to Acts 4, verse 32, because interestingly enough, even though there was not social media in the first century, if there was, this would be the social media story of the first century. This would be the LifeFaker.com. This would be the Pharisee pretending to be something that they're really not. This would be the poser that John Eldridge talks about. Acts 4, let's start on verse 32, and let's read this story. Acts 4, verse 32 describes this incredible time in the first century church.

And great grace was upon them all, nor was there anyone among them who lacked, for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and they distributed to each one as everyone had need. And Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles, which is translated Son of Encouragement, and the Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

This is the perfect Facebook profile. Barnabas is it. Everybody wants to be like Barnabas. He's amazing. He's encouraging. He sold his land. He laid it at the apostles' feet. He's kind of this norm, and everybody's just like, he's amazing. Right? And now, in chapter 5, we meet Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, who wanted to fake it until they made it.

Right? And so this is what happens. But a certain man named Ananias was Sapphira, his wife, sold possession. That's fine. But look what happened. He kept back a part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet. Now, this is really interesting if you think about what's being described here.

Look for the words of Ananias and Sapphira. Look for their words. You won't find them. Luke, who wrote this story, didn't even bother to tell us what he said. And yet he's accused of lying. Not just accused. He did. Verse 3, but Peter said, Ananias, why has 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? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control?

Why have you conceived a thing in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. Ananias lied to God, and Luke didn't even bother telling us what he said. Ananias might have come there and just put it at his feet. He said nothing. And basically, what the implication would be, that he had given all. He might have come and said, here it is, I sold this land, and here's everything.

He might have lied by commission. He might have lied by omission by saying, here's this piece of property that I sold, and here's the money. And he kind of left out, kind of leave it up to the audience to deduce what he had done. Whatever he did, we're not even told what he did. The fact is that he lied. He was trying to be Barnabas. He was trying to be something he wasn't. He wanted his cake, and he wanted to eat it, too.

He wanted to be having this reputation, but also wanted to keep back some of the money for himself. Psalm 51 verse 6 says that God desires truth in the inward parts. We have to be true to ourselves. We have to be honest about what we believe. We have to really confront those things. We cannot be the hypocrite.

You know, if we're a young person listening to this message, and we're wondering whether this is really true or not, right? That's okay. We encourage you to go and ask some questions. Just try to ask them to us in the church. You know what happens is young people, they're thinking about the truth, and instead of coming and asking somebody in the church, they go ask their friends. I'm in this church. I don't know about this. What's going on in this church thing? Well, that's fine.

You know, you can have your friends. But go ask a minister, too. Give us a chance to talk about this. But go figure it out. Don't just sit here and, like, feel uncomfortable. And if somebody is just understanding the truth for the first time, don't just go along with the flow. Oh, these people are nice. I want to be nice like them.

There's a reason that we're nice, because there's something inside, and you've got to get that something inside. So go get that something inside. Don't just try and pretend and get along. Oh, I guess you dress up, so I'll dress up and come and be with you. No. Let's get to something that's inside. Let's understand what God is looking for. Self-examination means coming to terms with how we really feel inside, what we really think.

And if we are here acting one way and behaving another way elsewhere, we need to come forward and get help. We need to come forward and get help. Now, those are those three points. And I hope it's helpful. I mean, if we open our mouth and make commitments and we don't keep them, that's going beyond. It's not lying, but it's not telling the truth, and we're not people of the truth. If we pretend to be something we're not, we're lying, even though there's no words coming out of our mouth.

And if we say something with an intent to deceive, we're not people of the truth. Proverbs 12, 22 says that the Lord detests lying lips, but delights in people who are trustworthy, people of the truth. We should be people of the truth. What a wonderful world tomorrow it will be when people tell the truth.

And let's have that kernel of the kingdom with us everywhere we go by speaking the truth in love, growing up into all things which is the head of Jesus Christ.