Matthew 5:33-37— Series on the Mount #17

33 "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34 But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Character Counts.

There was a time when I was a liar. I lied about everything. If I thought you would be impressed with something I would tell you it was so. If there was something I had done that you saw favor in, I would talk it up make it grander, make it more wondrous.
If there was something I did or had done that you would not like or if it would make you look down on me, I would deny it to my dying breath.

And I was good at it. Those of us in the Christian faith, those of us following the way of Christ are said to have gifts of the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:8-11 says:

8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

Well, I don’t know that it’s in scripture, but I would say I certainly had gifts of the evil one back in the day before I knew of Christ. And my gift was lying.

And I don’t have to tell most of you this, you’ve seen it or you’ve experienced it. Lying is hard work. Your every thought becomes, “Okay, what did I tell them yesterday? Or oh, no! I hope those two people don’t get to talking, otherwise every thing's gonna unravel.”

In fact, there are some relationships that I used to sabotage in the past because if I made person A dislike person B, they would never talk to one another and then I could stick to my lies.
It was destructive and it was damaging. And that’s who I was before Christ.

So, once I came to know Him. Once He regenerated my spirit through the saving work of Christ on the cross and the continuing sanctifying or purifying work of the Holy Spirit after my salvation I began to be transformed. I saw the destructive path of my dishonesty. I saw how trapped and enslaved I had become in my little web of lies and through Christ I was freed.

And you may be in the same boat, you may have been in that same boat. You may have lived a life of lies and found freedom.

But, as many of you know, there is a residue left by many of our sins. It is like when you clean a really dirty window, there are areas where it’s clear as crystal, but until the cleaning is thorough, until it is complete, there are still these little streaks that disrupt the view.

That’s how I’ve found it to be with many old time liars that have turned a new leaf — or, more correctly, who have had their leaf turned by the Holy Spirit.

You’ll see if there is the residue of their old sin when they try to convince you that every thing’s on the up and up when there was no doubt about it in the first place.

Because you see, even though they have been transformed, even though they don’t need to lie and can find comfort in who they are, they still feel like they have to go in the far out other direction and just really make it clear to people that they are not lying.

So they always swear that they are telling the truth. And they go over all this ground over and over again and what it does is it just gets in the way.

And sometimes it makes people think they aren’t telling the truth when they are because they swear to it too much.

To that person. If it is you. Jesus would say, lovingly, “knock it off.” And we’ll get to why He wants us to knock it off in a moment.

But first, let’s get to another group of people. You may be in this camp, or you might know somebody. Don’t dwell on it unless it’s you.

There are some people who just flippantly say I swear to God that I… or God strike me dead if… Or, by God, I’m…

Or, in what they think is reverence to the Lord they replace Him with something else. They say, I swear on my momma’s grave… or I swear on my kids’ lives…

Or they call down cursing on themselves if it is later found out they lied. May I get struck by lightning is I’m lying… May my favorite NASCAR racer loose this weekend if… or, If I’m lying I’m dying…

And it goes on and on. And this group of people aren’t saying these things because they feel like they need to convince somebody. They just use these expressions like it’s punctuation. It just becomes thoughtless noise.

And to this second group, Jesus seems to say, lovingly, in Matthew 5:33-36, “Knock it off.”

So that covers the piece on, don’t swear, not by God, not by people, not by the earth or a great city. Don’t even swear by your own head, or by your own life.

But now let’s move on to the last verse, Matthew 5:37:
“Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

This introduces a couple of more camps of people that need to be addressed. Again, Maybe it’s not you, but I’m sure you know someone. If none of these relate to you than you get a free pass this week, pray for the rest of us.

We’ve discussed the second part of this verse, anything that goes beyond your yes or no, anything you add to it is from the evil one, that is Satan.

But let’s look at the first part of the verse: “Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'”

There are several camps of people that are immediately dealt with here, and no I’m not going to talk about politicians, that’s a given, that’s too easy.

No the camps are the over committers, the absent minded and the liars. The over committers, the absent minded and the liars; I believe that everyone who has a problem with their yes being yes and their no being no fall into one of these three areas.

The over committers are sometimes those people who feel the need to people please, and in other cases the over committers are those who just over-estimate how much time is in the day or how much energy they actually have in order to do all that they have promised to do.

The people pleasers sometimes have a low view of them selves and try to gain the respect or the kindness of others through being the “go to” person in every situation until they “go to” their grave or they just burn out and fade away.

Eventually they simply cannot fulfill all of the things they have agreed to do and things begin to unravel and they are left feeling more rejected than before.
I used to be in this camp and it was not until I was pointed toward a deeper relationship with Jesus that I finally found freedom.

You see, if we try to look for the satisfaction or joy by pleasing others, that satisfaction or joy will never last. It will never last. It is the same as anything else that we try to find fulfillment in other than Christ, everything else fails us, if not right away, than eventually.

In these cases, people either don’t know, or don’t care about our feelings. Or, if they see in you or I this kind of vulnerability, they may try to exploit it.

And all kinds of destructive co-dependent relationships can spring up from that. You may have seen marriages like this. You see it in almost every workplace. It’s everywhere.

And again, bringing it back to tonight’s message. If our goal is to please others in order to wrestle out some kind of approval, we will ware ourselves out and eventually let people down. Our yes’ will go unfulfilled and we will become liars. So, Jesus warns against it. He says lovingly, knock it off.

And what happens to the other kind of over committer who doesn’t realize or admit that they are biting off more than they can chew is that they also begin to fall short of their promises. Then things don’t get done in time or with the level of excellence that a Christian should strive for and their yes, becomes a no. They become liars, and Jesus warns against that too. He says lovingly, knock it off.

Now, there’s people in both of these camps that say, “Well if I don’t say yes, if I don’t do it, it won’t get done. Or if I don’t do it, it won’t be done right.”

To that I say, first off, if you think you are the only one that can do it right, you think to highly of yourself and to low of others, get over yourself. And, if it happens to be true, learn to be okay with that.

It doesn’t all have to be perfect and it doesn’t all have to get done. The world will not end.

Learn when to say yes and when to say no and when to say wait and see. But we don’t want to lie, and we don’t want to fall short on our commitments.

Moving on.
The next camp that does not come through on what they say — the next camp that does not make sure that their yes is a yes and their no is a no — are the absent minded brothers and sisters. You can call them scatter-brained, you can call them flighty or whatever. There are times when I fall into this category as well.

Truth be told there are times when I fall into each of these categories. If you search yourself, you might find yourself in each camp too.

Anyway, to the absent minded. If this is you, you may constantly be making apologies, constantly saying you are sorry because you have completely spaced off on a commitment, or gone and done something you said you wouldn’t do.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I find myself doing this it always seems to come in waves, and it is usually at work where I’ll miss two or three appointments in one week. And those waves always seem to coincide with the last category, when I am over committed.

I’m telling you this is a major stumbling block that I have not yet found victory in. I juggle family, church, school and my day job. And if I don’t structure all of it just right, I’m up a creek really quickly.

So the only advice I can give here is the advice I have not yet heeded and that is slow down and start cutting things out of your schedule in order to give yourself breathing room.

And this also includes taking time out each week for Sabbath rest.

But again, we haven’t got that figured out yet. But, we WILL be tackling the issue of the Sabbath in the church and in the Christian life soon.

Finally, we get to the liar. Now if you notice, all the other camps eventually lead us into being liars if we don’t watch out.

And in case you were wondering God’s not okay with that.

Let’s just look quickly at Revelation 21:7-8
7 He who overcomes (that is he or she who overcomes sin and death through the death burial and resurrection of Jesus, He) will inherit all this (That is fellowship with the Lord in person, in the new Heavens and the New Earth), and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars (He groups liars with all the other “big sins”)—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

In other words, our lies are not something to be shrugged off or laughed away. God takes it seriously, so we need to as well.

Now, I know the first obvious response is, the blood of Christ covers all our sin, and takes it away from us as far as the east is from the west.
And that is all true.

The point that Jesus makes is, if you are walking in the sin of lying and think it is no big deal, it is like walking in unbelief, or with a murderous heart, or in sexual immorality, or witchcraft.

The New Testament, from Jesus to Paul to James, says over and over, that that is the fruit of one who is not known by Christ, so take lying as serious as any other sin. Repent and turn back toward Christ.

One last thing, we’ve got to close this down. But the reason we do not lie, the reason we tell the truth is the same reason we do any other “good” thing.
We do it in thanksgiving to God, for His gift of grace and mercy to our soul.

And we do it to reflect a part of who He is into the world. We remain faithful to our words because God is faithful to His.

Turn with me quickly to Genesis 17
1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."
3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

Now, if we follow this throughout the Old Testament and into the new we see that God keeps His promises. No excuses, no take-backs, Every time, even when we are unfaithful to our end of the deal, He is faithful.

His son, Jesus, on the cross, is our ultimate example that He does whatever needs to be done to hold up His word.

So when we, as His adopted children say we will do something or say we won’t, that is all that needs to be said. We are His ambassadors in this world.

The fact of our salvation is all the proof we need. Anything else that anyone demands beyond that is related to their sin. It is not something we need to fall into.

And, if we feel like we need to swear an oath to prove ourselves as honest, it is because we seek the approval of man instead of the approval of God, and Jesus, In Matthew 5: 31-37 lovingly says, “knock that off.”

So, let’s go out as salt and light and simply let our yes be yes and our no be no, amen?

Let’s pray…