Thou Shall Not Lie

In my pastors' update, a couple months ago, I told a little story, some of you might remember this, a group of high school seniors who decided they would skip class one day.

So they skipped class and went to a movie. So, you know, the next day they had it all planned out, they had a story they were going to tell, and they go into the English class and the teacher says, uh, you missed a very, very important test. And your grade depends on this test. And they all rehearsed, oh, well, we were coming to school, we were all coming to school together, and the car broke down. And we had a flat tire. And with the flat tire, we just couldn't make it. By the time we got it fixed, it was too late. She said, oh, okay, well, I understand. She says, I'll give you a chance to make it up. So what she did is she put each of them in a corner of the room, so they're totally separated, and she said, your entire grade for the year depends on this test. It's very important. There's only one question. Which tire was flat?

There's a funny thing about a lie.

That once you get trapped in it, you're trapped in it. And it's amazing how a person will tell a lie and didn't have to make up another lie because of the lie. In fact, many times, a lie will lead to so much energy being produced to save the lie that it'd been better just to tell the truth.

We've been going through the Ten Commandments, and we're to the Ninth Commandment.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Now, the way that it's stated, false witness against your neighbor, it's a legal term.

It was a horrible crime to go before judges and lie about somebody. Yes, I saw this person steal. Yes, I saw this person commit murder. And this person to receive a penalty for some being totally innocent. But the implications of this commandment, especially when you look at how it's used throughout the Scripture, is that this really involves any kind of lying or misrepresentation against your neighbor. Now, as we've gone through eight of the Ten Commandments, we've looked at how not just the letter of the law, but how these laws are to be applied. And we've been able to look, in some cases, when we went through stealing, it's amazing how many laws there are in the Torah about stealing or applied to stealing. Because the principle is, the principle is private property. People can own private property. Just like the commandment against murder is that human life is sacred. The commandment against adultery is that marriage is sacred. What we have here is a commandment that is supposed to protect truth. All truth. Now, we're just not talking about the truth of God, but it is supposed to protect truth. What is real against falsehood. And although the commandment deals directly with your neighbor, in other words, human beings with human beings, it actually deals with the character of God. Like all the commandments, this comes out of the character of God. That's why in Hebrews it says that it is impossible for God to lie. God's character is such he can't lie. It's impossible he can't lie. It would be against who he is. He would not be God. It would change who he is. He cannot lie. He always deals with the truth. And this is the basis of this law. We're going to go through this. We're going to see that we as human beings, like all the commandments, we don't do this one very well. We may think we do, but we don't. We realize that it's part of God's character. In fact, Jesus said, and it's recorded in John, that Satan is the father of lies.

Falsehood comes from the evilness of Satan. God has never lied to anybody. Now we see people in the Bible that have lied, and some of them seem to be blessed for God by lying. So we're going to have to look at this. My problem I had with this sermon was, what can I cover in 55 minutes? Because I really had enough material for two sermons.

To really expand out and understand what it means not to bear false witness, that we are to protect truth. All truth is to be protected and how that applies. So why do we lie, then? Why do human beings lie? Well, there's a lot of motivations and reasons why we lie. One of the main reasons why we lie is to protect ourselves from the consequences of truth. My grandkids are visiting, and the two-year-old walks up to his dad yesterday, and he has some keys in his hands.

He's not supposed to touch the keys. He's in the car. And he says, have you been playing with the keys? He goes, no. You're not playing with the keys? No. What's in your hand? Oh, you know, I don't know how that got there. That's not what he said, but there was sort of a look at his face.

That's why children learn to lie so easily. What's the reason they usually lie? Because they don't look at the consequences of the truth. Honesty is the trait of always seeking the truth, always wanting to state truth. It is a foundation of character. Honesty has to do with not stealing, but it also has to do with not lying. It is seeking the truth. William Bennett, who was a secretary of education many years ago, he wrote a book called The Book of Virtues. And if you have children, I recommend you get The Book of Virtues by William Bennett. You can probably get it online, use bookstore. In fact, I've bought copies that use bookstore just to give to people. But he has some rather profound concepts there about virtue, about character. Here's what he writes about honesty. He says, to be honest is to be real, genuine, authentic, and bona fide. To be dishonest is to be partly feigned, forged, fake, or fictitious. Honesty expresses both self-respect and respect for others. That's an incredible statement.

To be honest, first of all, shows respect for God. And it shows respect for yourself, that you are real, you are authentic, you're not trying to pretend to be something else. And it shows respect for the person you're dealing with. We should literally be able to look at people and say, I respect you too much for the lie to you.

I respect you too much to tell you something that's not true.

He says, dishonesty fully respects neither one's self nor others. And of course, adding something here doesn't respect God either, does it?

Honest, abused lies with openness, reliability, and candor. It expresses a disposition to live in the light. This next statement is interesting when we think in terms of what the Scripture says. Dishonesty seeks shade, cover, or concealment. It is a disposition to live partly in the dark, which is why we lie. We're trying to cover something. We're trying to keep some part of ourselves or some part of the truth in darkness. Now, we're talking about here intention, and we'll talk a lot about intention. Sometimes we lie and don't know it. We don't intend to lie. We don't know any different, right? Sometimes we can say something because it's something we've heard all our lives. And then you find out that's not true. I'll never forget the first time I found out that Paul Revere's painting of the Boston Massacre had nothing to do with truth. Because I grew up as a kid thinking that's what happened. Paul Revere wouldn't lie. There was a good painting of it. It has nothing. There's nothing in that painting. It has anything to do with truth. It was just great propaganda. I was so disappointed. I had been telling people over years what happened at the Boston Massacre, and it had nothing to do with truth. You find out what really happened, it's sort of a disappointment. I'll tell you the story sometime. But we're looking at intent here. The intent is to live partly in the darkness. Of course, God called us to live in the light.

A second reason why we lie is to gain advantage over another person.

Sometimes you get more money. Sometimes you can cheat somebody. Sometimes you get a better job.

Sometimes we lie just because to put somebody else down.

People lie to gain an advantage. Now let's look at an example of someone who lied to gain an advantage. We're going to struggle with, and it's interesting because I just had this conversation lately with somebody who said, I don't understand why God blessed this person for lying. Let's look at whether God actually blessed this person for lying, and let's look at how God actually handled the situation. It's the story of Jacob, and he saw. You know the story. You know that the birthright was normally passed on to the oldest son. Now Abraham had passed his birthright on to Isaac, although Abraham and Sarah had thought they could solve a problem a certain way and only created more problems. I mean, 4,000 years later, the Arabs and the Israelis are still fighting over who got the birthright. But God intended the birthright to go to Isaac. He never was going to give that birthright to Ishmael. Ishmael wasn't part of his plane. But Abraham and Sarah had come along and tried to fix it. The guy said, no, no, no. Ishmael's going to have, you know, he's going to be the father of many nations and a great people, but that's not what I was talking about when I gave Abraham some promises. The promises made to Abraham are not a normal birthright.

We have to understand that. They're not a normal birthright. The birthright that Isaac would have given to his oldest son would have been, you're the chief of the tribe. So my tribe, which included their family and children and grandchildren, but it also included servants and their spouses and their children and grandchildren. Remember, when Abraham went to fight the kings who took Sodom, he had hundreds of armed servants with him. His tribe was probably, who knows, hundreds, maybe thousands of people. He had a big tribe. So to be in charge of that tribe was a big thing.

And all the flocks and all the wealth that went with that. And so Esau's, as a firstborn, his birthright was to be the chief of the tribe. But the birthright that God had given Abraham was not a normal birthright. It was something he had given him to say, through you I will produce the Messiah. That's not like any other birthright in history. So let's say God is not carrying out this birthright through the normal means.

He's hand-selecting the people who he's going to use to carry out this birthright, so that he can have Mary, where she was supposed to be at the time Jesus came along.

So we have to keep that clear in our minds. Now, Jacob is born, and Jacob is the second born. So he's not the one that this normal birthright goes to. Genesis 25. Genesis 25.

Verse 20.

Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah his wife, the daughter of Bethuel, the Syrian of Padaan, Aram, the sister of Laban, the Syrian. Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived. But the children struggled within her, and she said, if all is well, why am I like this? Of course, you can imagine. She's got twins in there, and they're fighting each other in the womb.

She's got a Sabbath, and we're going to have a miscarriage. This is horrible.

This is uncomfortable. Something bad is happening. So she takes it to God.

So she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.

The second child here was going to receive the special birthright that went from Abraham to Isaac. What's important to understand here is Jacob already had the birthright.

See, there's this feeling that, oh, by cheating Esau and Isaac, and by lying, Jacob got this birthright from God. No, he didn't. It was already his. All the cheating and lying was wrong. God didn't reward him for the cheating and lying. He was giving it to him, and Jacob, because of lack of understanding and lack of faith, Rebecca's lack of faith. I mean, why didn't Rebecca go to Isaac and say, God has told me this?

Rebecca seems to have never told Jacob or Isaac that. Isaac didn't seem to know anything about it.

So what we have is, okay, we're going to have to fool everybody. We're going to have to lie. We're going to have to manipulate. They get what God wants. They're going to have to say, no, I get what I want. What you're doing is, I don't know what that is. That's not what I want. So let's separate the two issues here. Jacob was the one God said, this is the one that I can work with, and this is the one in which this birthright is going to go through.

Everything else in this story is Jacob's fault.

That's nothing to do with God. So what does he do? He tricks his brother into selling him the birthright. The fact that Esau did what he did shows, as the New Testament shows, that birthright didn't mean anything to him. At that point in time, it didn't mean anything to him. It did later, when he lost it. It didn't much of his life. We also know how Rebecca and Jacob, you know, they connived and basically lied to Isaac. He said, oh man, he stole the birthright. No, he didn't. It was already his. His lying and stealing was sin.

He paid a terrible penalty for his lying and stealing. See, that's the point of the story, not that, ah, it's okay to lie in order to get God's birthright. That's not the point of the story. It was his. He didn't have the faith to know it. The point of the story is Jacob and Rebecca tried to do things differently than what God would have them do. And what was the result?

Jacob was separated from his family, basically most of the rest of his life. He was separated from Rebecca and Isaac.

His own brother tried to hate it. He would try to kill him for a long time.

And who did he hook up with? Well, Laban. And what did Laban do?

Tricked him and lied him into being a slave for 14 years.

And then he has a bunch of sons and life is pretty good until his sons, what? Sell Joseph off and come back and lie to him that they killed him or that he died. And he spent years grieving for a son that was still alive. That's a pretty stiff penalty. Read the life of Jacob and look how many lies damaged his life. He spent a lifetime of being lied to. There's his penalty for lying.

So he had to separate it. No, he didn't get the birthright because he lied. He got the birthright because God gave it to him. The rest of it was God saying, well, this is the hard way to go through life, son. And it's him failing. It's him having troubles. It's him having heartache for decades.

All because he thought he could get a damage over his brother when he had already given it to him.

So that's another reason we lie. But I bring that out and say, well, another case here to show that the lie here isn't the positive part of the story as people read into it.

God carrying out his plan is the positive part of the story. Jacob's failures are in here because God deliberately, when he sees the Bible, he does not write the Bible to show us how things should have been. He writes the Bible to show us how things were.

In other words, what we see is the truth. There's no sugarcoating Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, or Joseph. There's no sugarcoating Peter or Paul or Mary or anybody in the Old or New Testament. There's no sugarcoating anybody. We see them as they were. The reality of who they were as people, strengths, and weaknesses. That's because it's the truth.

The whole book is truth. That's what God is showing us.

Now, a third reason we lie is to enhance our self-image. We want people to really think good about us.

And what's interesting, the more you do this, the more you have to lie to keep up the pretense, until your whole life can become a lie. You can be living a lie.

I knew a man one time that passed himself off as incredibly rich. Then one day we were talking, he said, well, I'm not rich all the time. He said, there's times when I have no money at all.

I said, well, how do you keep this pretense? Huge house, big cars. He says, I go borrow money. And then I make some money and I pay it off. And then it was all pretense.

I mean, there were times he had money and there were times he had nothing at all.

He said, yeah, there's times I come home and say, honey, I didn't make anything this week. Get dressed up. We're going to go to the highest class restaurant in town to celebrate. And spend hundreds of dollars on a meal. It's a pretense.

Let's look at this kind of pretense in Acts 4. And this is going to tell us something to be able to also tell the difference between the way God dealt with Jacob and the way God dealt with these people here.

This is the beginning of the church in Jerusalem. Lots of people are coming to the church in a very short period of time. People from all over the world were there on Pentecost and they stayed around. And the church outgrew its ability to deal with its own numbers and its own poor people and its own widows. And it says, and with great power, the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them. So here's how then they had to deal with this great influx.

This was exciting times. People were saying, I've got some extra land here. I'll sell that.

I've got a rent house over there. I'll sell that. We'll take that. We'll give it to the church. Everybody will be taken care of. And Barnabas must have sold a big chunk of land. He was also the type of person that just encouraged everybody. I mean, when you were around Barnabas, he just infused you with faith and encouragement and hope. And so they gave him a nickname. Ah, you're Barnabas. Being son of encouragement. Now there were a couple of people who saw that. It was like, you know, who does Barnabas think he is? Everybody in the church talking about how good he is, how wonderful he is. And they wanted that kind of self-image. So chapter 5 verse 1, But a certain man named Ananias was to fire his wife, sold a possession. He kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet. Seems like a good thing. But their intention was wrong and it was all a lie.

Because Peter says in verse 3, But Peter said, Ananias, why is Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? He says, you didn't have to sell that land. There was no commandment to sell that land. God didn't require you to sell that land. You didn't have to do that. But you did. Why? Because you wanted everybody to think you were special. And so you've come and lied to everybody. Now, it was at the apostles' feet. So all the apostles were there. There was probably all kinds of people there. And here they were. They brought this. And everybody's like, wow, this is amazing. It's like Barnabas. They sold this land, this property, and they brought everything here and gave it to the church. And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? In other words, you could have brought, hey, we brought 10 percent. We brought 20 percent. And everybody would have said, isn't that generous? See, if they did 50 percent, everybody would have said, that's way above what you have to do. But that's not why they were doing this to be generous. They were doing this because they wanted to get an image in the church. And they were willing to lie to do it. Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. And Ananias, then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. The man died. His wife, Sapphira, comes in, and Peter says, did you sell all this land and give all of it to the church? He said, we sure did. He said, you lied to God. And she dropped dead. And you think, why did both of these people die? This is the New Testament. This is the Old Testament. Why did they die and Jacob not?

Jacob lied. Has to do with intent. This was a pure, evil intent. Remember when we read the scripture in Proverbs about stealing? He said, if a person steals because they're hungry, and a person steals because they're greedy, they both are judged by the law.

The law requires a penalty for both of them, but it may be different on the person who was greedy than the person who was hungry. Everybody knows there's a difference there. Lying is lying.

Is against God. But this is an evil intent. And so the judgment is very harsh.

This tells you how much God hates lying. How much does God hate lying? Let's go to Proverbs.

Proverbs 6.

Proverbs 6. You know, we know God's love, and we should stress God's love.

God's mercy. God's forgiveness. But you know, there are things that God says he hates, and that's exactly what the Hebrew word means. He hates it. It's a very strong word. It doesn't mean that all that makes me uncomfortable, or I don't like that. He hates it. The word abomination is very strong, too. It means literally it's just something that's so disgusting.

It's just it's sickening.

Verse 14 of Proverbs 6 says, these six things the Lord hates.

Yes, seven are an abomination to him. A proud look. He hates pride. A lying tongue. He hates it.

Hands that shed innocent blood. God puts lying here as disgusting to him as murder. We have to understand God is truth.

The lie goes against everything he is. He hates it.

God hated what Jacob lied. He didn't kill him. The intent was wrong. I mean, the intent was all messed up. God is always merciful in weakness. He's not merciful in rebellion. He's not merciful with evil intent. He cuts us some slack sometimes. Now, that doesn't mean there's not a penalty. Look what Jacob went through. Horrible penalty, but he didn't kill him. It took a long time for Jacob to figure out the trust of God.

What he did, guess what he did? He went back to tell Esau, I'm sorry. That's what we knew. He finally figured it out. He went back home to tell Esau, I'm sorry.

He was my birthright anyways. I didn't have to do that to you.

But it took him a long time, and he had people lie to him his whole life in horrible ways. He says, Hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren. He hates these things. Notice lying is twice in there. One in a general sense, the other probably has specifically to do with legal proceedings, to lie in a legal proceeding.

So bearing false witness, telling a falsehood is listed twice in these things that God hates.

But we'll do that sometimes to protect our self-image.

A fourth reason we lie is for sport. Now, this is a...

We can cross this line. It's a fine line. I mean, we'll tell a story that's funny.

My wife sometimes will tell me. I'll tell a story that's true. And then at the end, I'll make some exaggerated comment. I'll tell some story about something I did. And then I'll say, and every sense of it, my wife says this. Well, she doesn't. You all know that. And then every once in a while, she'll say, Gary, sometimes they don't know when you're kidding and when you're not. You know? Oh, yeah, I guess that's why sometimes you'll hear me say, I'll say something. And you know it's a true story. And then I'll make some off-the-wall comment. And then I'll say, and the last comment wasn't true. Because I realized, people come up and say, really? And it's like, oh, no. The punch line, the story was true. The little thing at the end that I attacked on wasn't true. And I figured everybody knew it. So we have to be careful how we tease people, how we kid. You know, a practical joke on one person can be funny. You do it to another person, they're emotionally devastated. So we have to be careful what we do. We have to be careful we're not lying that we're telling the truth. Look what it says in Proverbs 26. The way the King James translates this is so interesting. Proverbs 26 verse 18.

So this is a subtle way we can lie.

We can, it's for a joke, it's kidding.

But it's really a lie and it does damage. Once again, we're into the intent. And what it actually does to the person, verse 18 says, 26 verse 18, like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death. He said, what I'm going to tell you next is like a crazy person. They put this in modern English. We say, well, this is like a crazy guy that walks into a McDonald's and starts shooting people. I mean, that's how strong this statement is. It's a crazy man that's just going around killing people. He says, is the neighbor, so this is what this is like, is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, oh, I was totally joking. The destruction you can do to people is enormous.

I still, you ever do something as a kid that still bothers you? I did something as a teenager, still bothers me. I was with some friends and we were going to see a movie or something. I remember what it was. I got in the back of the car because one of the other guys was his car. I got in the back of the car and one of them turned around and said, want some gum? I said, yeah. The chicklet gum, he hit me and I put a couple and it's about to blow my mouth. They both go, don't, don't, don't. They started to laugh. They said, that's X-lax. I wasn't sure what X-lax was, but I was sure it wasn't good. I mean, it was a laxative, but that's all I knew. I wasn't sure what laxative did, but not really because I'd never taken ones, but I knew what they were supposed to do. Well, the one boy didn't like his cousin and we were going to pick up his cousin.

So his cousin got in the car and he says, here, have some gum. And he hands it to him. Of course, I think they're going to do the same thing they did to me. They did not. The boy took put it in his mouth and he said, you know what, it hit him in the back. And I thought, oh, man.

Now, I should have said something because they were lying to him. I was so shocked to begin with. And then by the time I sort of got my senses, I was chewing it now. Now I have an excuse. So I participated in the lie by not saying anything. And all night long, they gave him gum. They made him so sick, he could have died. It could have killed him. It could have killed him. And it wasn't until a couple of days later that it scared them and they told me what happened. They made him so sick, it could have killed him. I still feel bad. One of these days, I want to meet that kid. He wouldn't remember me. He's an old man like I am. But I'd like to meet him and say, I'm sorry I didn't stop that because I lied to you by keeping my mouth shut. It seemed like a funny joke to the other guys. They almost killed a kid. They almost killed a kid.

See? It's a lie. What they did to him wasn't a joke. Okay? The joke is the onion gum, right?

And you put the onion gum, you know how kids are, they spit out the onion and everybody laughs. Okay? That's a joke. That's not even a good one, but it's a joke. Exlax is not a joke. It's a lie.

So for sport, is the way we can lie, too? But we just don't think of it as a lie.

We also lie by making false promises with no intention of keeping them. You know people like that? They always promise, oh, I'll be there by eight. They never show up, right? Ever. Oh, I'll pick you up. They never pick you up. It's always a lie. There's another form of lying I have to at least touch upon, and that's the pathological liar. That is the person who lies through compulsion. You cannot have a healthy relationship with a pathological liar. Don't.

Do not try to have a relationship with a pathological liar. You hope they repent and turn to God, but you'll never know when they're lying or not lying. There can never be trust. You can't have a relationship. And if you've ever known a pathological liar, they'll lie about anything.

They don't even know why they lie. They just lie.

So you try your best with a pathological liar. I mean, sometimes you have a family member, and so you have to have some kind of relationship with a family member, right? They're a pathological liar. But you know the limitations and how difficult that can be. Now, lying gets pretty subtle after a while. I mean, what we were talking about is pretty obvious lying, but lying can be subtle because it can contain half-truths. Well, it's sort of true, so it could be true, or I'm only telling you the truth. I read a story one time about a captain of a ship, and he didn't like the first mate. He was a good first mate. Everybody else thought he was a good mate, but the captain didn't like him. And this first mate had never... he'd never gotten drunk. And one night, they were on surely even, he got drunk. So the next day, the captain walks up to him and says, I want to show you what's in my log. Last night, first mate was drunk. He said, but that's not true. He said, in 20 years, that's the only time I've been drunk. The way you word that, it looks like I'm drunk all the time. He said, no, I just said the truth. Last night, first mate was drunk. He said, well, that'll go on my record. He said, I only tell the truth. The next night, the first mate, who also keeps a log that becomes official, walked up to the captain. He said, I want you to read what I put in my log today. Last night, captain was sober. Now the captain said, well, wait, wait a minute.

That makes it sounds like that's unusual that I'm not sober. I mean, I must be drunk all the time. And he said, I only write the truth. See? It's true. But what's the intent? They just ruined each other's careers. They're both alcoholics. You know, once it's read, then I think, you know, because it appears. But what they both say was true. We have to be careful with half truths.

So much of the time as Christians, we don't premeditate the lie. We lie because we're under duress.

Right? Most of the time, the reason Christians lie is because, oh, I'm going to lie so I can hurt this person. It's because we're under duress. We don't think things through. And we say something to either protect ourselves or to save ourselves or to save our self-image. You know, we do these things because we're under duress. And we can do that with half truths so easily.

We have the prime example in Genesis 12. Genesis 12.

Once again, people use this example to pull out a wrong conclusion. God blessed Abraham, or Abram, for lying. No, let's look at what it actually says.

Verse 10. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there. For the famine was severe in the land. It came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, Indeed, I know that you're a woman of beautiful countenance. She must have been a stunningly beautiful woman. Therefore, it will happen when the Egyptians see you that they will say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me, for your sake, that I may live because of you. Now, it's a lie. It's actually half a lie.

If you read later in Genesis, it says that she was his half-sister.

Some Jewish sources say that actually means she was his niece. So we can't figure out whether she was a half-sister or niece, but the point is, they were related. So just tell them you're related to me. You're my wife. Or, I mean, my sister. That way, you know, they're not going to come kill me to get you. In fact, they have to negotiate with me to get you, and I won't see because you had to negotiate with the brother to get the wife. And I will drag out the negotiations, and we'll get out of here, whatever. He's thought this through. Now, this is right after God had told him, I'm going to bless you, and you're going to be the father of many nations.

Abraham hadn't learned faith yet.

So what he's doing is, okay, God, I'll take care of this. We'll figure out a way.

Tell him you're my sister. We'll get in out of Egypt as quick as we can and get out of here. Well, the lie caught up to him. So they go around telling everybody the lie.

Verse 14, so it was when Abraham came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful, and the princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commanded her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh's house. And Pharaoh comes along and says, oh, it's only your sister? How's she not married? Welcome to my house. Now they're trapped in the lie. Well, being my half-sister doesn't help me at all right now, does it? Because my wife is getting ready to marry the most powerful man in the world. This wasn't like when he was in Canaan, going through that area fighting Amorites or Moabites or other nomadic tribes. This was the superpower of the day. This is like El Salvador deciding to invade the United States.

He has no way out of his lie. Now, once again, why doesn't God kill him? Well, first of all, God had a plan. He just promised him he was going to have kids. It's like, oh, my Abraham.

Abraham's intent is not evil. He's afraid. That's not making it right. Understand it doesn't make it right. But the intent is why God showed him mercy. You know, think of David and Saul.

They both committed sins. Why is it that Saul was rejected and David was not? Because David always came back to a core intent. I am sorry. All I want to do is please you. And that was his intent. And in his weakness, he sinned. And he suffered because of his sins. David was horribly punished because of his sins. But God didn't kill him. God killed Saul. Lord pronounced his death. Somebody else killed him. Abraham had been made a promise by God. God was going to carry it out in spite of him. You know, that should make us feel good sometimes. Now we rebel against God. That's, you know, God can remove his spirit from us too. But with God's spirit, he has promised to give us eternal life. Now we can mess up. And as long as we have the intent, no, Father, I repent. Be with me. Change me. Help me to grow. I submit. I repent. He does. He carries out his will. It's only when we say, I refuse to follow your will anymore that we're in trouble. So how, what he does is a weakness. It's wrong. He pays a horrible price. How would it like to be Abraham walking every night, all night long? How much sleep you think he got in these days as they went by? My wife is getting prepared to marry Pharaoh. I won't even ever be allowed to talk to her again. I mean, if I show up at the palace, they will kill me if I try to talk to her. What do you think Sarah's going through?

How many, how many, how long is she crying? And everybody else saying, oh, don't cry, sweetie. This is great to be part of the Pharaoh's harem. You get all the food you want. It's great.

You get to all these nice clothes, you know, and there's a hundred of us. I didn't get to see old Pharaoh all that much. So you don't have to love him. It's a great life, kid. How much crying is she going through saying, God, what an idiot my husband is. They're not getting away with the lie is the point.

I'll say, God blessed Abraham for lying. No, he did not. God blessed Abraham because God made the promise. God blessed Abraham because he was God, not because of Abraham. That's what we have to realize. And Abraham pays a terrible price. In fact, verse 16, he treated Abram well for her sake. He gave him sheep and oxen and male donkeys, and male and female servants, female donkeys and camels. Now it's Abraham's day. Well, I can't go tell him now. He'll say, oh yeah, I heard about you nomadic people. You come in here and you're always scamming somebody. You're trying to scam Pharaoh so I can give you all this stuff and then you and her run out. Yeah. It's going to take you a long time to die. He can't get out of this.

But the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she's my sister? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore here is your wife. Take her and get out of my country and don't ever come back. Go away. Get out of here. God, in spite of his lie, saved him, not because of his lie. And he suffered because of it. It would take Abraham a while to figure out, because you find he did this one another time, that half-lies are still lies. And they never worked. They got him in trouble. He finally figured it out. Which brings us now to something else. The concept of slander. Slander is verbally attacking somebody with some kind of falsehood in it. You know, it might be 90% right, but if it's 10% wrong. I've thought about slander because this is something I've been guilty of. Slander is a hard thing because we talk about people because why? We are people in relationships. And we must pursue the truth. I believe that Mrs. Clinton, by supporting things like homosexuality, supporting abortion, those are evil things. And I'm not afraid to say that because we are to stand up against evil. But you know, I've had people come and say, you know she murders people. My answer is no, I do not. So I'm never going to say until it's proven that she murders people. Because if she hasn't, that's slander. It doesn't matter what her other evils are. Do we pursue truth? Her other evils are enough. Of course, don't get me started about Donald Trump. We'll go on all day. But I've heard things said about Donald Trump and it's like, there's no proof of that. Sometimes we want something to be true. So we accept that it's truth.

Try to find the truth and deal with truth. But it's, slander is a funny thing. You feel good when you put somebody else down.

And when they're bad, it's nice to make up that they're even worse. Right?

I've had people say, you know President Obama is a Muslim. And my answer is, no, I don't. Now, I know he's done this wrong and this wrong and this wrong in accordance with the law of God.

I can talk about that. I can't make an accusation I do not know.

Well, why not? He's a bad guy. No, that's not the issue here. The issue was the truth.

So we have to be even careful the things we say about people that we may greatly disagree with, or maybe doing something against God by making a false accusation that's not true. But this pursuing of truth is a whole lot more difficult. Oh, I know the truth. The truth is the Ten Commandments and keeping the holy days and you don't have an immortal soul. No. Truth is everything that's true. And the problem is you and I don't know everything that's true.

You and I say falsehoods every day. We just don't know it. That's why we're not judged by God for some of the falsehoods we say. We don't know. Our own memories are faulty, right? I've told stories and Kim's saying, wait a minute, Gary, what you did was you took a story from 10 years ago and went from 20 years ago, related instances, put them together and made one story out of it.

Oh, yeah. Made a great story, though, but it wasn't true. Well, it was true, but it was sort of partly true here and partly true there. It's like, okay, let me retell this story. Because every once in a while, we'll be at dinner or something. The first part of that happened in 1990 and the second part happened in 2005. And the first one happened with our kids and the second one happened with somebody else's kids. And you put the two stories together. Oh, yeah. This is why God gave us wives, by the way. They remember all this stuff, you know. Oh, yeah. Now, I didn't lie with intent, but if we're pursuing truth, what do you have to say? Oh, yeah. Wait a minute. Get this right. Get the story straight. And then the two of you put the story straight, right? Okay, now we got it straight because I'll remember things she did and she'll remember things I didn't. And every once in a while, not very often I have to look at her and say, that's not exactly how that went. And I feel great happiness. Because I, you know, it's like a hundred to one that I'm wrong. And it really is a hundred to one that I'm wrong. So she's not here. Can I say I can say that? Look at Psalm 50. Psalm 50. Slander is something that's so easy for us to do. I, there's many a times, I mean, on a regular basis, I'll be in a conversation, I'll go home and I'll think, you know, I wish I wouldn't have said such and such. I don't know if that is true. And sometimes even if it is true, I mean, sometimes you have to pass on bad things about people. But sometimes I think, some bad things aren't even worth passing on. Why put it other person, put that in somebody else's mind, you know?

I just regularly, I think about this, about this concept of slander, because we do have to sometimes pass on bad things about people. It's not like we can never ignore reality. We must try, we must try to see if it's true. I was told one time when one of the presidents of United did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Now that is a very strong statement. I didn't know the man. So I went to his house and had dinner with him.

I said, I have a question I need to ask you and I'm not making an accusation. You don't know me.

But there's only a way I know to find truth. And he looked at me and said, do I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ? I said, yes. He said, I know. I don't know how that got started. And he explained to me what he believed. And he also had 40 years of sermons, by the way, to back it up. So now I know what the truth was. Sometimes Jesus is going to go ask, what is the truth here? What do you believe? Why did you say this? You ever have somebody say something and you're really upset with him and you go ask him and they'll look at you and say, I don't know. I was so stupid. I had too much coffee that day or something. I don't know why I said that. Or we can go around saying, imputing a motive to them. We have to think through this concept of slander. And this is a hard one. Look at verse 16, Psalm 50. But to the wicked God says, what right have you to declare my statutes or take my covenant in your mouth, seeing you hate instruction and cast away word behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented with him. See, there's a manipulation going on here. You didn't steal, you bought the stolen goods. See, I didn't steal anything, but man did I get my car at a great price. You have been a partaker with adulterers. I really didn't commit adultery. I love to hear the stories, though. Swap the tales. You give your mouth the evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. Who's your mother's son? It's your brother. So he's making a point here, you know, this is we have to apply this to everybody.

Even the people you don't like, you are to apply the same standards of am I telling the truth even if you don't like them. Liking them is not the issue.

That shall not bear false witness is the issue.

These things, verse 21, you have done and I kept silent. It's interesting the way God says this. You can do these things and I showed you some mercy. I didn't punish you. I didn't come down on you. I, you know, you continue to do them. And you thought that I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and set them in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces. I don't know that's a scary statement from God, isn't it? Lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. Whoever offers praise glorifies me. And to him who orders his conduct aright, I will show the salvation of God. He said, stop doing these things. Receive the salvation of God.

Bearing false witness is a big concept. One last point I just want to mention.

Lying doesn't mean you have to tell everything about everything.

You know, I have found when people say, well, I'm just brutally honest, when people usually take that approach, they're actually more brutal than honest, right?

Of course, there's every man's fear. Does this dress make me look fat?

My answer always is, you look great to me.

Let's look at it this way. A child comes up to you. He said, well, I have to always say the absolute truth.

A child comes up to you and scribbles on a piece of paper, just some scribbling.

Because I've had this happen. It locks up and hands it to you. I've had children in church come up and give me scribble on a piece of paper. Well, there's a big scribble in her face. Oh, well, what's that? It says, I love you.

Now, what am I going to say? No, that's scribbling. You can't even write yet, you little twerp.

There, I'm brutally honest. I say, I love you too and give them a big hug. That's what I do, right?

Context means something. The situation you're in means something. I'm not lying to the child. I'm not saying, oh, your penmanship is perfect. You just don't have to say certain things. Tack does not mean dishonest. Now, at the same time, you and I live in a world of double speak. That's what a lot of political correctness is. It's double speak. And which words are distorted to mean something that they don't mean. We see it in advertising all the time.

Right? We see it in politicians all the time. Salesmen do it. Or they twist words around. I mean, come on. No company has fired anybody in years. They just downsize. Right? No one got fired and is downsized. One of my favorites is there was a hospital once that, when people died, they listed it as negative patient care outcome.

Well, that's about as negative as you can get. But see, that's trying to twist language to mean something it doesn't. Now, sometimes we do that to be nice. And I'm not saying all double speak is wrong. I mean, I've heard ladies, instead of saying, you know, I have to go to the bathroom, say, can I use your facilities? You know, which they're just trying to be proper.

There isn't anything wrong with that. I mean, that's not because that's, once again, you are not twisting words or distorting words to create to do harm to the other person. You're just being nice. You know, sometimes we don't want to say when someone dies. How do we say that? So we struggle with how to say certain things. But there is then an attempt to twist language. Use experts at that. The U.S. military. They can twist things around to try to make it sound like it's not bad. During the Vietnam War, I kept an article that I had years and years ago, because during the Vietnam War, these were military news conferences.

And these were actual statements that were made. Once there was a bunch of villages that were absolutely destroyed, and the officer once asked what was the purpose. He said, well, we destroyed them to save them. They destroyed the villages to save them. Yes, they were being indoctrinated with communism. So we destroyed them to save them. During the invasion of Cambodia, one army officer just started shouting at a press conference.

You always say it's bombing, bombing, bombing. It's not bombing, it's air support. What is air support? It's bombing. But air support sounds better than bombing. During the Cold War, the U.S. military claimed they would never strike first. But, these are exact phrases, we were in a permanent state of pre-hostility, which meant that we could launch a preemptive counter-attack. We're not at war, we're in a permanent state of pre-hostility, and we would not attack first, but we could launch a preemptive counter-attack. What's a preemptive counter-attack?

Well, first of all, it's not a counter-attack. A preemptive attack means you strike first. But saying counter-attack, well, we will strike first if they're going to strike us first. But we will never strike first. Well, my favorite is one Air Force colonel described the Titan II missile. The warhead on that missile had 600 times more powerful a bomb than the one dropped on Hiroshima.

He said it was a very large, potentially disruptive re-entry system. A very large, potentially disruptive re-entry system. We shot it and space comes back down and it could cause some damage. Now, we live in that world. That's what a lot of political correctness is, too. It's manipulating language until it actually changes its meaning. You and I have to be careful not to do that. Now, it's not wrong to use language to be clear but not tell everything. But it is wrong to manipulate language in order to do harm. To manipulate language in order to give the person a false impression so they believe a lie.

Let's conclude with Matthew 12, when Jesus says here. So next time you look and you see in the Bible where a good person lies, you'll see a few cases, not too many, but you'll see a few cases. And it says, well, they got away with it.

God did not punish them. Or something good happened from it. Remember, God's going to carry out His plan in spite of us. And there's times He doesn't punish absolute weakness. You will see people under duress that are trying to figure out a solution to an impossible problem. And God cuts them a little slack. It doesn't mean the lying is right. It means... I'll give you a perfect example. The midwives who lied about the Israelite babies.

If they told where the babies were, they were going to die. So they simply said, oh, we don't know. How do you judge that? Well, they lied. And before the law of God, they are judged for lying. But their intent was what?

So God does not punish them. It doesn't mean lying is okay. It means human beings stuck in that kind of moral dilemma had an issue they could not work out. And God did not punish them. Now, there was God works with us in the world we live in. It doesn't condone anything. Any more than Abraham or Jacob, right? Look how much they suffered because of their lies.

And I wanted to stress their suffering. But God did not give up on them. God worked with them and worked them through their sins. They had to learn honesty just like everybody else. God's Spirit has to learn honesty. They had to learn God's way just like everybody else.

But lying is very serious. Matthew 12, 33. Jesus says, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for a tree is known by its fruit. Brutal vipers, how can you, these talking the Pharisees, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things. An evil man out of his heart, of the evil treasure, brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it on the day of judgment. For by your word you will be justified, by your word you will be condemned. It's not talking about the justification that leads to salvation. It's talking about punishments. God punishes us by our words. We need to recognize them. We need to know them. You know, the biggest lie is the one that's lived. The biggest lie is the one that's lived. You and I live in a world of lies. This whole world, this is all, the whole thing's a lie. Satan created a lie and we live in it. That's why it's so hard for us to deal with it. We don't even know what the truth is a lot of times about a lot of things. We don't even know all the truth of God, do we? Because we live in a giant world of lies. That's what we live in. And God is bringing us out. And as God brings us out, we learn, and it's painful, and sometimes we fail. But you really understand what bearing false witness is. You realize we all fail sometimes.

And what we do, we go and we say, I failed. I want to have the right intent here. I want to seek truth. And we have to be dedicated to seeking truth in everything, including ourselves. And when you turn to God, and we stay close to God, and we ask Him to help us seek truth as that happens in our lives, slowly but surely, lying, slander, misrepresentation, all those things will become very clear to us. You'll see it in yourself, and we'll overcome those things. And just like God is the God of truth, we as His children will become the children of truth.