Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20100117.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Exodus: God's Forming The Nation Israel For His Abrahamic Covenant
Part II: God's Forming Israel To Heed Him, Exodus 15:22-40:38
F. God's Giving His People Their Moral And Civil Law, Exodus 20:1-17
2. The Latter Six Commandments: Loving Mankind, Exodus 20:12-17
e. Commandment Nine: Upholding The Sanctity Of Telling The Truth
(Exodus 20:16)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    Exodus 20:16 forbids lying, but this call seems outdated today:

    (1) The Communist Manifesto, p. 92, asserts "Communism abolishes eternal truths . . . ," and for the 20 % of the world who live under communist rule, publicly asserting the truth on many issues is often a rare thing. (learn-usa.com/transformation_process/hdn003.htm)

    (2) The free world has a problem with truth, too: world leaders met in Copenhagen last year to avert an alleged global climate crisis, but newspaper headlines read, "'Iowa temperatures a solid 30 degrees below normal,'" "'Peru's mountain people face extinction because of cold conditions,'" "'Beijing - coldest in 30 years.'" (Cal Thomas, "A Chill on Global Warming," 1/5/10, crosswalk.com/news/11624588/)

    (3) When the President on 9/9/09 promoted health care bill H. R. 3200 before Congress, claiming, "'the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally,'" Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, shouted, "You lie!" (cbsnews.com, D. McCullagh, "Does Joe Wilson Have A Case On Health Care, Illegal Aliens?")

    CBS News responded that as "rude" as Wilson's cry was, "he did have a point": Democrats had twice blocked amendments requiring health care participants to verify their legal status, "to have implicitly allowed" such "illegal immigrants to be covered by H. R. 3200"! (Ibid.)

    (4) Falsehood can plague religion, too: last week, the White House denounced televangelist Pat Robertson for claiming that since Haitians had made "'a pact with the devil'" to defeat French colonizers in 1791, 'they have been cursed by one thing after another,'" hinting that this pact had led to Haiti's earthquake! (csmonitor.com, 1/14/10, "For comments on Haiti, Pat Robertson blasted by White House")

    Robertson's words seem cruel and false to many, but the reply by Haiti's Ambassador to the U. S. casts a new light: he said, "'(t)he pact with the Devil made it possible . . . (for) the U. S. . . . to gain the Louisiana Territory . . . So, what pact the Haitians made with the Devil has helped the U. S. become what it is.'" (themoderatevoice.com, 1/14/10, "Haiti Ambassador Comment on Pat Robertson")

    We are left wondering if such a pact was indeed made, and some who believe the ambassador's words may think a pact with Satan is good since it has aided America versus what the Bible says of Satan!

    We may then ask, "What does God's Exodus 20:16 ban on lying actually mean, why, and how is it to be applied today?!"

    Need: "What does God's ban on lying mean for us today, why is it important, and how do we apply it in out era for His blessing?!"

  1. The wording of Exodus 20:16 reveals its prohibition primarily applied to a legal case: God did not want His people to give false testimony in court against their neighbors that would cause them wrongful injury, B.K.C.,O.T., p. 140; NETBible: Exodus 20:16.
  2. However, in Leviticus 19:11 where God told the people of Israel to relate well to their neighbors, the commands against stealing and lying in the Ten Commandments are repeated without any hint of a court setting, revealing God opposed ANY DECEIT at ANY TIME.
  3. The background of the book of Genesis alone shows God gave this command to preserve the world from the havoc that deceit inflicts:
    1. Man fell into sin and death and all creation was left in bondage to the curse when man heeded Satan's slander about God's character and his lie about the forbidden fruit in Eden, Gen. 3:1-24; Romans 8:19-20.
    2. Threatened, Abraham twice lied in denying Sarah was his wife (Gen. 12:11-13; 20:1-2), as did his son, Isaac about his wife (Gen. 26:7), but in each case, it led to more trouble (Gen. 12:14-18; 20:3-10; 26:8-10)!
    3. Jacob deceived his father to gain Esau's birthright (Gen. 27:1-35), but this led to generations of enmity, Gen. 27:36-41; Obadiah 9-10.
    4. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Rachel and Leah, producing crude strife between them that led an onlooking little Reuben to be weak in character: he was adulterous, and failed to aid Joseph by resorting to craft versus taking strong action, Gen. 29:15-30:24; 35:22; 37:21-30.
    5. Jacob's son's deceived the men of Shechem to take vengeance upon them, but this led to tensions between Jacob and Canaanites, Gen. 34.
  4. Some qualify God's prohibition on lying, saying truth is relative and that lying is at times more edifying than the truth, and use key Bible passages as proof. ( Z.P.E.B., v. Three, p. 927) We view these:
    1. Though saints like Abraham (Genesis 20:2), David (1 Samuel 21:2) and Peter (Matthew 26:72) lied, their lying was not condoned by God, but even led to trouble (Genesis 20:3-18 in Abraham's case; 1 Samuel 22:13-22 in David's case; Matthew 26:74-75 in Peter's case).
    2. Rahab the harlot lied about the location of the Hebrew spies (Joshua 2:4), and Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25 claim she rightly received the spies in faith. Yet, God condoned her faith, NOT the WAY she expressed it by lying, Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, ftn. to Jos. 2:4-5.
    3. God's prophet, Micaiah, told Ahab that God had sent a lying spirit to deceive him via Ahab's false prophets (1 Kings 22:23). However, this does not mean God condoned such lying: the account of this event in 1 Kings 22:19-22 shows God let an evil spirit do what that spirit had offered to do -- to deceive Ahab to get him to trust his false prophets' message to go up to Ramoth-Gilead that he might be slain there. This judgment FIT Ahab's slanderous deception about an innocent Naboth he had slain, so God let the deception occur, 1 Kings 21:1-19.
    4. Paul predicted God will send the unbelieving world a strong deception in the future Tribulation Period that it might believe a lie (2 Thess. 2:11); however, as in Ahab's case , this will involve God's letting the wicked false prophet and antichrist mislead people in judgment for their own REFUSAL to TRUST in CHRIST, 2 Thessalonians 2:12!
  5. Opposite existentialist claims, Scripture consistently censures deceit:
    1. Hebrews 6:18 reveals it is impossible for God to lie, so since He calls us to be holy as He is (1 Peter 1:16), believers must not lie, Eph. 4:25.
    2. Indeed, the father of lying is Satan, John 8:44, so we believers must avoid lying as those who have been translated from Satan's kingdom into the kingdom of God's dear Son, Jesus Christ, Colossians 1:13!
  6. The WAY to overcome lying is through Christ (as follows):
    1. Romans 3:4a reveals that all of us humans have lied (!), so each of us needs God's salvation and deliverance from lying, Rom. 3:23, 24-26.
    2. When we believe in Christ as Savior, we are forgiven all such sins and indwelt by the Holy Spirit for victory over lying, John 3:16; Rom. 8:9.
    3. We believers then must rely upon the Holy Spirit's power to live in the truth of God's victory over all deceit, Gal. 5:16-23; Eph. 4:25.
Application: May we (1) believe in Christ as Savior to be cleansed from deceit and empowered to live in the truth, John 3:16; Romans 8:9. (2) May we then rely on the Holy Spirit to walk in God's truth (Gal. 5:16-23; Eph. 4:25), (3) relying on written Scripture for insight into the truth amid a lying world, Isaiah 8:20; John 17:17!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

 The Church where Christians attend should be the first place where the truth of God in His Word is stated as truth.

Sadly, this is not always so: Don Landis, in his article, "Not Just a Container of Truth", p. 80 in the Jan.-Mar. 2010 Answers magazine, claimed the philosophy of existentialism entered the Church by the belief of neo-orthodoxy, teaching "that the Bible becomes God's Word when He uses it to speak to us. (In this view anything can be God's Word if He chooses to speak to us from it.) The 'existential' part is that we identity God's Word through our own experience. In essence, we decide what is true by our likes, desires, or biases."

This is a key reason why many folk in our culture today lie to one another and to themselves: if one departs from submitting to God's absolute truth in His written Word through the adoption of the errant existentialist viewpoint, he has no certainty of what is absolute truth, nor may he feel that absolute truth is important or that it even exists!

Thus, to be sure we hold to God's absolute truth, we must rely on the Holy Spirit as believers to stick to God's truth as follows:

(1) Psalm 119:160 NIV says of God's words that "All your words are true . . ." In John 17:17b, Jesus said of the words of God the Father in His high priestly prayer, " . . . thy word is truth." In Matthew 5:18 KJV, Jesus added: "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Thus, all of God's spoken as well as His written Word is true and authoritative for faith and practice, a stand we call belief in the "plenary inspiration" of the Bible. We dare not choose what parts to believe and what to deny, but we are subject to all of the Bible's words as all of it is God's inspired, authoritative Word, 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

(2) Since all of Scripture is God's true, authoritative Word, and since the world where we live is full of lying entities influenced by a lying Satan's deceptive activity (1 John 5:19 NIV; John 8:44), we must use the written Bible as our final guide for truth versus relying even on ourselves, a fact revealed in passages like Proverbs 3:5 and Isaiah 8:20.

Accordingly, may we trust in Christ as Savior from sin and deceit as the BIBLE directs us to do for eternal life, John 3:16. Then, may we RELY on WRITTEN SCRIPTURE to KNOW the truth, and HEED it in the POWER of the indwelling Holy Spirit, that we might WALK in the TRUTH with GOD'S BLESSING!