16 – You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
Children’s books have a way of presenting profound truth in a very simple, understandable way. One of my favorite children’s books is Jon Scieszka’s, THE TRUE STORY OF THE 3 LITTLE PIGS. Its written from the perspective of the “Big Bad Wolf” and I encourage you to read it. (I can’t print the story on the web page due to copywrite restrictions but
it does a great job of illustrating the fact that a skillfully told lie can be a very powerful thing.) This little book, written for children, can remind adults like us that-with the right excuses-we can almost justify anything. With the proper turn of a phrase or clever combination of adverbs and adjectives, a falsehood…an out and out lie….can be made to sound just like truth. A horrible crime can sound like a natural….even noble…deed. And, tragically, in our culture this is a skill that is admired. These days our world tells us that, lying is not only okay, but necessary to get through life. In the past few years we have reclassified lying. No longer is it distasteful or unacceptable.
Now it’s an ART FORM known as, “spin.” We expect lawyers, lobbyists, advocates journalists, talk-show hosts and anyone else in the public view to “spin” the truth if it serves their purposes.
In fact if politician can successfully “spin” a version of truth so as to either soothe listeners or deceive them he is considered to be an exceptionally good politician, someone worth looking up to, a real leader. Gone are the days when GREATNESS and HONESTY were a package deal…remember George Washington and the cherry tree? In the April 29th, 1987 issue of THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, Lloyd Steffen wrote, “Honesty now looks like a dubious virtue if not an actual vice. It is studied and examined as a stratagem rather than as a hallmark of character.” It has come to the point that we don’t even use the word “lie” anymore…instead we say things like, “strategic misrepresentation” or “reality augmentation.” But whatever word you use, its STILL lying and it seems to have become the modus operandi of our society. Historians lie by re-shaping history to conform to current morals. Advertisers lie to sell their products. Politicians lie to garner votes.
Newspapers lie to sell their papers. In fact, we have a whole new field of journalism today-the scandal sheet….also known as TABLOIDS. These are those papers sold in grocery store check out lines, that print “true” headline stories like: “Hundred year old woman gives birth to two-headed baby while on board UFO.” People buy these things because they are tantalized at the thought of hearing the latest dirt, the latest garbage, the latest smut on some person…even if it is almost certain to be totally untrue. On June 7, 1996 the following headline appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, “What a tangled web we weave; we ALL practice to deceive.” The article beneath said that 91% of Americans confess that they regularly don’t tell the truth. And a full 20% admitted that they can’t get through the day without telling conscious, premeditated white lies. The report suggests that, “…as a society, we have moved very far away from the age when a man’s word was his bond….to a society in which people are more accepting than ever before of exaggerations, falsifications, fabrications, misstatements, misrepresentations, gloss-overs, quibbles, concoctions, equivocations, shuffles, prevarications, trims and truth colored and varnished.”
In Boston, a minster noticed a group of boys standing around a small stray dog. “What are you doing, boys?” he asked.“Telling lies.” one of them replied. “The one who tells the biggest lie gets to keep this dog.” The minister was shocked and said to them, “When I was your age, I would never have thought of telling a lie.”
The boys looked at each other, seemingly a little disappointed. Finally one shrugged, pointed at the minister, and said, “I guess he wins the dog.” It sounds as if Isaiah 59:3-4 is describing present day America. Listen to what it says, “No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.” But all this lying is not making people feel safer with each other. A February 1990 Harris poll report dealt with the issue of trust. It was based on a survey of the first college graduating class of the new millennium-the class of 2001. When comparing the moral integrity and honesty of their generation with that of others, this generation of students say that they trust older people more than their peers. They are most likely to trust their grandparents’ generation (79%) followed by their parents’ generation (68%). But when considering their own generation, the trust level drops to only 25%. Apparently, our children are seeing their world-where lies are so prevalent-as a treacherous place. I imagine they can relate to the words of Psalm 12:1-2 where it says, “Help, O Lord! For the godly are no more; the faithful have vanished from among men. Everyone lies to his neighbor; their flattering lips speak with deception.”
Well, with lying accepted as the norm these days, many of us have forgotten exactly what a lie is; so let’s pause to refresh our memories. Webster defines a lie as:“a false STATEMENT made with intent to deceive.” And that’s a pretty good start. But let’s deepen our understanding by examining some of the many other shapes and forms that lies can take…
For instance, one form of lying could be called, “the SILENT lie.”You see, you can lie or spread falsehood without even opening your mouth with the use of a lifted eyebrow, or a shrug of the shoulder intended to give a false impression. Proverbs 6:12-13 describes this kind of lie when it says, “A scoundrel and a villain who…winks with his eye, signals with his feet, and motions with his fingers, who plots evil with deceit in his heart-he always stirs up dissension.” But you don’t even have to do that; without moving a single muscle you can spread a lie. Just by silently listening to people say things about another person that you know are not true and not speaking up and coming to their defense is to bear false witness. It is validating a falsehood without saying or doing anything.
And then there is lying by FLATTERY. Proverbs 26:28 warns us of this kind of falsehood when it says, “A flattering mouth worketh ruin.” Now, when I say “flattery” I am referring to the act of giving INSINCERE praise….saying something to someone’s face that you wouldn’t think of saying behind their back. To a woman’s face you say, “That’s the prettiest dress I have ever seen!” but behind her back you would say, “She looked like a mess in that dress!” Or to your minister you might say, “Wonderful sermon, pastor.” but in the car on the way home you would say, “That’s the most boring thing I have ever heard.” Now, I know you guys never do that but I’m just using it as an example! Psalm 55:21 talks about this kind of lie when it says, “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.”
Now, we all love to be complimented. In fact man is the only “animal” I know whose head swells when you pat him on the back. But we must remember flattery is like perfume. It’s all right to smell it, but don’t swallow it. This reminds me of a story about two brothers who were well-known in their community to be two of the most evil men in the entire county. They were cruel, abusive, and involved in just about every kind of crime from gambling, to drugs, etc. But they had lawyers who were more than capable of twisting the truth to help them avoid prosecution. One day one of the brothers died. And his surviving sibling went to see the pastor of the local church to ask him to do the funeral. He said, “Reverend I will write your church a check right now for one million dollars. All you have to do is promise to say at the funeral that my brother was a saint.” Now, he was asking this pastor to lie about his brother, to share false compliments, insincere flattery, in his funeral message — but the pastor accepted the check and agreed. Finally the day of the funeral dawned and the pastor stepped to the pulpit. Then with great conviction, He said, “This man in the casket before you was one of the most cruel men I have ever known.
He was a liar and a thief. He had his filthy hands into just about every kind of crime you can think…but…COMPARED TO HIS BROTHER….He was a saint.”
And then….TRUTH ITSELF can be used to tell a lie. In John 8 Jesus is telling the Jewish religious leaders that He is the Son of God. And in response they were using truth to spread falsehood by saying, “WE were not born of fornication,” and they weren’t but by saying so they were inferring that Jesus WAS….that our Lord was the illegitimate son of Mary and not the Son of God. You see, we can even use TRUE statements to lie. A captain on a ship disciplined a certain sailor on his crew for an infraction of the regulations. And from then on this sailor held a deep grudge against his captain. One day the captain was sick and this sailor was in temporary command. On this particular ship, it was the duty of the person in command to record the daily entry into the ship’s log. This sailor entered the following statement, “The captain was sober today.” Now that was the truth…he was sober everyday…he didn’t drink. However, writing that in the log was a selective truth. The sailor wrote this because he wanted to hurt the captain’s reputation. His intent was to deceive people into believing that the Captain had a drinking problem! Now, when we start getting this specific in our definition of what a lie is, many of us may wonder, “What’s the big deal about a little lying now and then? What’s the danger here?” And what IS the danger? What are consequences of our not telling the truth?
1. Well, first off…when we lie WE HURT OURSELVES.
I Peter 3:10 says, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.” When we lie we don’t ENJOY the life God has given us. We don’t SEE good days. We become suspicious of other people, wondering if they are truthful with us. We live our days in constant fear that we will be found out and we are usually forced to tell more and more lies to cover our deceitful tracks. Martin Luther said, “A lie is like a snowball. The longer it is rolled on the ground, the larger it becomes.” And no matter how good we are at “spin,” lies always catch up with us eventually. God warned us of this in Numbers 32:23 when He said, “You can be sure that your sins will find you out.” Lying destroys character and can become a habit. The more you lie the more EASILY you lie. We forget what the truth is and lose ourselves in a web of deceit. We become less real…less genuine. Doctor Laura Schlesinger writes, “The liar kills himself spiritually by diminishing in himself the divine glow that raised him above the rest of the animal kingdom.” A farmer once cut down a huge tree that was on his land. It looked good from the outside but he discovered that the heart of the tree was rotten. He looked closely at it and found a huge old nail. Apparently years ago someone had driven it in the tree and it had caused the heart of the tree to rot. This is how it is with the life of the person who lies. His life becomes a hollow shell and his spiritual life withers and dies. So when we lie we hurt ourselves…
2. But we also hurt our RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER PEOPLE.
A wife once asked her husband, “Why don’t you play golf with Ted anymore.” Her husband replied, “Would you play golf with a man who moved the golf ball with his foot when you weren’t watching?” His wife said, “Well, no. I wouldn’t.” Her husband said, “Well, neither will Ted.” We are social beings. We need relationships to be happy. We want to get along with one another and live in harmony but this is not possible if we cannot trust one another. When the truth is not a “given” factor in any relationship, disappointment, heartache, and insecurity are the inevitable result. Lying knocks the foundation out from under any relationship whether it is with a spouse or a child or a best friend. And, among the most significant relationships that are damaged by our lies…are our relationships with other Christians in our church family. Writing to the church at Ephesus Paul said, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of ONE BODY.” (Ephesians 4:25 ) Now, think about it. What would happen if your physical body lied to your brain? Let’s say your FINGER is touching a hot stove and says to the brain, “This doesn’t burn! No damage being done here” Then all of a sudden your nose tells your brain the truth and you say: “Then why do I smell burning flesh?”
What if your eyes lied to your legs about where you could walk? What if your ears lied to your brain about when it sounded safe to walk across a busy street? If your body worked in this deceitful way it wouldn’t be long before it was no longer functioning. And the same is true of the church. When we don’t put away truthLESSness, people become afraid to reach out. They become hesitant to move because they don’t know whom to trust. We have to be able to trust one another here of all places…if we are to move forward as the Body of Christ….functioning as His hands and feet in this community and world.
3. But you know, the WORST damage caused by lying is that it PUSHES US AWAY FROM GOD.
In Proverbs 6:16-19 there is a list of seven actions that put a wedge between us and God and three of them have to do with deceit. Listen to what it says, “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to Him: haughty eyes, a LYING tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.” Proverbs 12:22 says, “The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful.” So we know how God feels about lying! You know, everyone has heard the saying, “God is love”…but some make the mistake of thinking that God is only love. Love is but one of God’s many character traits. He is also TRUTH. John 17:3 says that He is, “the only TRUE God.” Jesus said, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life.” (John 14:6 ). The Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of Truth” (John 16:13 ) So just as God defines what it means to be good, holy, and pure; He also defines what it means to be true. And….He cannot tolerate falsehood. In some ways its like a person who has allergies. My son Daniel is allergic to cat hair. His immune system is overly sensitive to the stuff. It attacks it in the same way that it would an invading bacteria or virus. His eyes water and itch. So what do we do? Well, we remove him from places where there are cats. Daniel and cats don’t mix. Now the analogy is not perfect, but it really is much the same way with God and lying or for that matter, with God and ANY sin. God doesn’t just choose to dislike sin. By His very nature, He will not tolerate the presence of sin. So when we callously, thoughtlessly lie in the course of everyday life, we are separate ourselves from Him. We move farther from Him. We become like those people Paul was describing in Romans 1 when he said, “…they exchange the truth of God for a lie.” So there are several negative consequences that come with disobeying this 9th tender commandment.
And then….there are some other principles related to this law that I think we should understand. And the first is this….
a. Scripture DOES teach that it’s okay to lie in order to deceive a godless government.
Exodus 1 tells of the time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt and their nation grew so that the Pharaoh told the midwives to kill any baby boys that were born. But verse 17 says that the midwives feared God and did not do what the Pharaoh had asked. When he summoned them to ask why, they lied and said, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” And verse 20 tells how God felt about their deception. It says, “So God was kind to the midwives…” A more modern day example of this can be found in the life experiences of Corrie Ten Boom. In her book THE HIDING PLACE Corrie tells of her father, a devout Christian man who hid Jews in his home and helped smuggle them out of the country under the noses of the Nazis. His pastor came by and urged him not to do these things, saying, “Christians must obey the law.” But, Father Ten Boom responded by saying that Christians are to obey God first, above any human law that conflicts with His laws.
b. A second principle to remember is this: It is not always essential for us to tell the truth.
People are often unnecessarily hurt by the insensitive and callous remarks we make…even if they ARE true. I mean, I realize that often the truth hurts but it is not always necessary to tell the truth. A courteous elderly lady once said to a little girl, “How do you do, my dear?” The little girl replied, “Quite well, thank you.” After a long pause the woman asked, “Why don’t you ask me how I am?” The girl just paused a moment and then said, “Because I’m not interested.” Ephesians 4:29 says that the only words that should come out of our mouths are words that are, “helpful for building others up according to their needs.” In other words, we should BUILD UP OR SHUT UP. If the truth hurts in a way that does not build up the person…does not help the person…it should not be told. We love to confuse honesty with frankness. But there is some truth that we don’t need to be forthright about and should just keep to ourselves. Someone put it this way: “Honesty means that everything you say must be true, not that everything that is true must be said.” And when we DO need to share painful truth that benefits a person and helps them to mature, we should do so in a loving manner. Ephesians 4:15 says, “Instead, SPEAKING THE TRUTH IN LOVE, we will in all things grow up into Him Who is the Head, that is, Christ.” In a recent issue of MARRIAGE PARTNERSHIP Carole Mayhall wrote, “Honesty is not always the best policy. Truth must be married to love; honesty must be intertwined with kindness.”
c. Another principle to remember is this:….it’s not enough to refrain from bearing false witness.
As followers of the one True God, we must be willing to bear TRUE witness. We must stand up for what is right. That old phrase is so true: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Christians must not sit on their hands in the face of evil. We need to speak up for the truth. This is part of our role as salt and light. St. Telemachus was a fourth century monk who lived in a monastery in Europe and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit one day set out on a journey to Rome. When he arrived, he followed a crowd of people into the Coliseum and as he looked into the arena gladiators came out and began their fight to the death, entertaining the crowd. Telemachus thought, “Here we are four centuries after Christ, in a civilized nation, and people are killing one another for the entertainment of the crowd. This isn’t Christian!” So he got up out of his seat, ran down the steps, climbed over the wall, walked out into the arena an stood between two large gladiators. Putting his hands up, he meekly cried out, “In the name of Christ, stop!” The crowd laughed and jeered. One of the gladiators slapped Telemachus in the stomach with the flat of his sword, knocking him down. But he got back up and again stood between the two huge gladiators. He repeated, “In the name of Christ, stop!” This time the crowd was angry that this little monk would spoil their entertainment so they chanted, “Run him through!” One of the gladiators obeyed and took his sword and stabbed Telemachus in the stomach. One last time he weakly cried out, “In the name of Christ, stop!” Then he died on the arena floor. The crowds grew silent, and within minutes they left the Colosseum. History records that, thanks to Saint Telemachus, this was the last gladiatorial contest in the history of the Roman empire. The same Holy Spirit that led Telemachus to stand up for the truth may lead you to do the same whether it be to speak out against the sin of racism or abortion or homosexuality or even against our culture’s tolerance of lying. But remember, it is not enough to NOT lie. We must also speak up for the truth.
You know the GREATEST lie we tell is when we say we don’t need God’s forgiveness for the times that we break His commands. I John 1:8,10 says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us….If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and his Word has no place in our lives.” So the first step to accessing God’s help in obeying this and all of His commandments is to be up front with Him-HONEST-about our sin. Verse 9 promises that if we do, “He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This morning, in the privacy of our seats many of us may need a time of honesty assessment after which we ask God to forgive us for the times we have intended to deceive other people…or times we have used the truth to hurt others rather than build them up. Others may need to trust God’s promise to bless us when we obey His leading in our lives. You may need to take Him at His word and join this church….or give your life to Him as Savior and Lord. Whatever decision you have to make, we invite you to do so as we stand and sing.