The Truth Matters (Part 1 of 2)

The ninth commandment calls for honesty. God wants us to be truthful in what we say and what we do and that sounds simple enough and yet lying seems to come so naturally when we struggle telling the truth.

Today Alister back gets to the source of our problem on Truth for Life.

I invite you to turn to Exodus chapter 20 Exodus 20 and we come to the 16th verse, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Now, the ninth commandment is a call to truthfulness for this prideful lying that is designed to do down one's neighbor and, simultaneously, to exalt oneself positively. It calls for the seeking of our neighbors good and speaking truth about our neighbor in such a way as to produce good in their lives. The call to truthfulness expressed here in the 16th nurse of Exodus 20 was is is is is vital in our day as it was then, but many claims of the time that this commandment was given carried with them the death sentence and consequently, if a person gave false evidence in a court of law. It may well lead to the death of the individual and it wouldn't point of fact amount actually to murder in order to address this issue to safeguard against it. The witness was to be the executioner so that one lie in a court of law giving testimony that was untrue, which brought about the death sentence on the individual concerning whom we spoke, then we would inevitably incur the blood and filthiness of the one, about whom we had spoken falsely now.

In each of these commands and we try to say this each time in each of these commands implicit in them is the understanding that behind the Decalogue behind the 10 Commandments exists a personal creator God who by dint of who and what he is possesses every right to guide his creation in the way that he chooses. He is the source of truth in its essential character. He is the one who speaks and we do well to listen now we live in a climate where that is rejected almost exclusively no one has been more responsible for this in philosophical terms that Immanuel Kant can more than any other philosopher more modern times was responsible for introducing the notion that there is no absolute truth. That truth is, in point of fact, relative that truth is only what we believe it to be that truth possesses no existence in and of itself is only what we subjectively conceive of in our own minds, when this plays out in our culture is in the kind of silly statements that we hear all the time where when we have made a statement concerning something.

An individual may respond by saying what I may be true for you but it isn't true for me.

Now we need to understand the Bible reports that at every point because the Bible begins with God in the beginning God who is a truth telling promise keeping God, who cannot lie God, who in himself embodies true God, who in his incarnate form says I am the way, the truth, the life God who an account of his great holiness cannot tolerate sin, and in the list in Proverbs 6 of the seven things that God is said to hate twice in that list. If you go to it and read it at your leisure. You will discover that God says he hates lies and he hates deception. Despite the fact that the Bible is so clear. The attitude of many in our society this morning is is characterized by the misquote from the law courts. I promise to tell the whole truth and nothing like the truth. While people may not say that maybe a misquote, but in bona fide in many cases is actually true. And one of the great guy. Llamas of modern jurisprudence is that without an absolute standard of righteousness without a concept of truth. Truth to try and try cases on the basis of truth on a sliding scale has got to be one of the great guy. Llamas of modern time, especially when those who are in the jewelry have been brought up to believe what is true for you may not be true for somebody else so there's great quest for truth is like going to a desert and coming up on barrage after mirage is just an illusion. This in any way let me quote to you from a couple of sources. The American Association for the advancement of science recently argued that quotes proficiency at lying proficiency at telling lines.

Maybe the best measure of advancement with primates. That's us playmates with primates much more adept at it than other mammals and human beings.

The most masterful deceivers on the plan, so the evolutionary hypothesis says what the Bible regards as sin. Contemporary culture regards as a virtue that what the Bible says is absolute contemporary culture says is relative.

So you don't think that is a challenge for us to go out into our days upholding the truth of God's law, presumably you never going to try the truth of God's law.

Some of you will be familiar with a magazine called child essentially has to do with child psychology in its April 1992 edition. In an article entitled the truth about lying. It expressed the old view is it called it in the new view see which is your view.

The old view they said, like other issues of morality was seen only in black and white children where taught that all lying was bad, deserving of strict punishment and they were frequently reminded that close lying will make your nose grow as long as Pinocchio's, which of course is in itself a lie still view the new you quotes today so lying is considered normal. In fact, a child's first few lies are seen as an important step in the development of self cannot run counter to what were looking you shall not give false testimony against your friend in Playskool in preschool knows says the lady we realize it's an indication of the development of their little selves stupid stuff going to the Bible says the fool has said in his heart there is no God. That is not intellectual incapacity that is moral foolishness and anybody with half a brain knows it's foolish I know is wrong. I get some the most intelligent people in our world today. Some the most influential thinkers. Some of the folks who are always on the check shows always on the talk shows are filtering this down so that it is in our culture as Christians, once again, we sin our songs. We make our March and we failed to challenge the culture of the point of greatest issue you have made lying on absolute fine art is just it just something that you can become skillful at, and presumably the more skillful you become, the more human you are, the more you express your distinctiveness from other mammals.

Interest.

Interest now, let's talk a little bit about the means whereby we tell lies you tell lies what you can tell lies with a wink of your eye. You can tell lies by silence you dialyze with a knot in your head.

You can tell lies in the number of ways, but the most common way in which we tell lies is by means of what physicians tell is essentially a 2 ounce slab of membrane and some of our cases is a little heavier than that.

I'm sure by the slab of membrane enclosed is a complex array of muscles and nerves and it enables our bodies to be able to chew and to taste the swallow.

It's called the tongue some vital part of human existence. God deemed it so without a time.

No mother can soothe your baby to sleep. Nor can she shout to her son tidy up your room without a Tom no teacher can communicate with pupils no ambassador can adequately represent our nation. No attorney can present truth in court without times. In short, our world is reduced to unintelligible shrugs and grunts so our tongues are vital and the Bible says our tongues are vicious vicious take I saw from your workshop and use it and use it and use it against more and more blunt. Take your time and use it and use it and use it in this way, sharper and sharper in shock scorpion has always been a minutes tail and a human being has always been and it's Tom so says the Scriptures.

James chapter 3 a fire he says is our time. A restless evil. It's full of deadly poison and it is by means of our tongues that we fall foul of the ninth commandment so often somebody wrote these words, if your lips would keep from slips five things observe with care, to whom you speak, all of whom you speak and how and when and where somebody else road if all that we say in a single day with never a word left out were written each night and clear black and white.

It would make strange reading. No doubt, and then just suppose there are. I should close we would read the whole record through that when we cried when we try a great deal less talking to do and I more than half think that many a kink would be smoother in life's tangled thread half that we see in a single day were to be left forever on say that's why the Bible says that a perfect man is the man who is perfect control over this vital yet vicious little slab of membrane that we all understand so the means of our breaking the ninth commandment is our time.

The source of the problem is, as we read in John chapter 8 that we belong to our father the devil, we like to do his deal. We like to speak the way our father speaks and he speaks his native language towards his native language is a language all of his own in his lives everything out of his mouth is a complete lie anytime he ever uses truth that is in order to manipulate it in order to create lies in chaos and distortion and so the world held in the grip of the evil one lies into lies like crazy and religious people going through the religious duties proud of their associations and their background unless their tongues have been redeemed by the blood of Christ are the proponents of their father's material and so consequently we find that we lie from the beginning to even the garden. The serpent comes and says hey you know, if you eat that fruit will not die was a lie with a lie began with lives. It is continued about the manner in which we tell lies. If the means whereby we tell lies is largely our tongues that we recognize we do with silence about the manner in which lying occurs. Limiters one through one or two, most of which are obvious for civil surgery. Perjury courtroom lying people going into court and taking a no and then failing to tell the truth of deliberately misrepresenting the truth. Ask any trial lawyer and they will tell you in all honesty that this is far more prevalent in our culture is prepared to admit.

Indeed, one of the reasons that it is so difficult to try cases effectively is because of an endemic problem with lying. That is one of the reasons I think this is pure conjecture that many of the issues are settled out of court on the basis of kind of counterbalancing the interests of people because it saves them from going into court and lying through their teeth and making it obvious to everybody.

The weather had trying to do is simply secure their own ends in their best loved ones. It is not inconceivable that if this continues in this country are courts not only will take a long time but it will prove absolutely totally useless and when that happens. Anarchy takes the streets revolution takes place, and if we think that in this country were not right for some kind of revolution will crazy because the way in which the laws of this land were set up were posited upon the fight about personal creator God who exists who speaks you listen to what he said and so your all your Constitution and your Bill of Rights and all that week foster the greatness of this nation is posited on those truths without that. As I given this stop is a recipe for total chaos because then everybody's right becomes everybody right so I have the right to do whatever I wanted to take all my clothes off and walk down Madison Avenue and embrace homosexuality. There is no one in the world is any right to tell me I shouldn't because after all, I have my rights. You see, once you have broken the link between the God of all creation and the creation that all you're left with is rampant, all embracing anarchy and we cannot hold it together Pro 10 in this country on the basis of pragmatism alone and will not work. That sounds like a prophet of doom then maybe it is but what it is is to say this.

If the church doesn't get on its knees and cry to God for revival so that I was in the great 18th-century awakening into the early 21st century that God begins to restore amongst his people. Concern for righteousness and for truth for judgment first begins in the house of God. What will become of those who know nothing of Christ. If we do not do that and we deserve what we get. How long will it take for us to understand that when we get before God and honesty in relationship to the things of Christ and the gospel and see that righteousness proceeds from transformed life's but does not create transformed life. See you cannot stop lying by an act of Congress. Prohibition doesn't because man is desperately wicked if we could get it as good as we can get it is still be that is why Jesus said, go into all the world and what preach the gospel play because it is change life's to create change streets that creates change families that creates change schools that creates change cities that creates change culture.

Never in the history of man has culture been changed from the top down.

It is always been change from the bottom where it is the Stalinist revolution or whatever it is it is always been change from the bottom up. How did Jesus Christ change the from the bottom up what was going on in Corinth, bottom up. Think about your conversely says not many of you were wise know many of you are powerful, not many of you were influential.

The people dressing and others writes out what happened. One of just a bunch of warming people who believe that Jesus Christ was true and he proclaimed such a little off the points. Let's get back here that all started from perjury that I allowed myself a major tangential run and for those of you want to let it go. Then let it go.

Now let me tell you another way in which we break the ninth commandment, we break it by rumor by rumor. The seeing of things that just aren't true. The little gossipy statements about other people there need be no basis to it need only be allegation. It can be a pack of total lines, but in the culture in which we live, where truth is relative and not absolute chaos reigns where people love to believe the worst where rumor abounds and sells millions and millions of magazine would be hard-pressed to rebut the things set Shakespeare says of rumor. He says rumor is a pipe that is a musical instrument lawn by surmises jealousies and conjectures and also easy and so plain a stall that the blonde monster with uncounted heads this still discordant wavering multitude can play upon it takes care of her Shakespeare did nothing much of the proletariat. He calls the populace. The blonde monster with uncounted heads and the still discordant wavering multitude. He said you could go into the multitude and asked him to play this beautiful organ the good and play it, but asked him to play on the pipe of rumor and anyone of them can play it so easy to play and the way you blow it he says is on the basis of conjecture and jealousy, and surmising even involved in rumor lately passed any rumors on this week passed on any unsubstantiated information to anybody stuff that you got no way of knowing whether it was true or not true but you like the feel of a little juicy one. Hello Col. about somebody squeezed out from some corner dropped in casual conversation never made much, but you don't need to drop like an incendiary device into an environment into an office into a coffee room into a school, something that may damage the life of that individual for a long long time. One throwaway line concerning the high school senior girl one passing comment concerning that student.

One word of innuendo concerning that work colleague who is now gone on vacation lies. Our words can do real damage our lives hurt others. That's Alistair Begg with part one of a message titled, the truth matters. Your listing to Truth for Life. If you're enjoying Alister's series on the 10 Commandments you might want to consider making this series. The next topic for your small group. It comes with an accompanying study guide and if you lead a college-age or young adult group. This is a terrific series for everyone to work through young people face more pushback than ever as they try to uphold God's law.

In our current culture.

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