The Ninth Commandment

And we're continuing our look at the 10 commandments. We're nearly at the end. We're today on number nine out of the 10. So we can turn to Exodus 20, and we'll be reading from that, obviously, from the 10 commandments there. Exodus chapter 20.

But as we're turning there, I just wanna share with you that I've read recently that the Duke University in North Carolina, I think it is an Ivy League, you know, well-to-do sort of university in America, recently conducted a census and found that international fact-finding websites, those fact-checker websites that we may be familiar with, ABC fact-checker, if you watch Q and A, you know that they often work hand in hand, fact-checking websites that check politicians' answers or statements that they make regarding what they're achieving and or, you know, what Labor or the Liberal government did wrong or those sort of things, those services have multiplied by 50%, at least 50% in the last two years.

These fact-checking services, and 96 fact-checking services, operate in 36 countries worldwide. Mark Stenzel, the director of this report, of the Reporter's Lab, explained that the increase in terms of this political fact-checking has come about because politicians are seeing more and more as, in his words, euphemistically speaking, being economical with the truth. He said the high volume of political truth-twisting is driving demand for these political fact-checkers around the world. Many of these sites use a sliding scale to measure the degree of truth or falsehood in a politician's words.

In America, a popular truth-checker called the Truth-O-Meter is best known amongst them and uses a scale ranging from true at one extreme end, through to mostly true, all the way down to pants on fire. Now, today we're going to look at the ninth commandment, which has something to say about all of this. Let's read together from Exodus chapter 20, and we're going to read just the one verse this morning, verse 16, the ninth commandment. But God tells His people: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Now it's a good thing, no doubt, that reporters and news outlets are fact-checking and holding politicians' feet to the fire on the claims that they make. But the spectacle of that gotcha moment, which I think, if I am to be honest with myself at least, we really enjoy the spectacle of someone being caught in a lie is much more than really being concerned about integrity and far more to do with a sense of weird voyeurism of someone getting caught in the act. When we read this ninth commandment in Exodus 20, we read something that might be a little bit muddied by kind of jargon, it's kind of technical or legal-sounding talk. I mean, who of us here mentions the word false testimony in a normal conversation?

That is sort of seen as something relegated to the court system. You can't bear false testimony in court. And to be fair, this has definitely got something of that sort of sound. It's got that legal court-like language being used here, but ultimately, there are four or five different aspects being talked about here. And very quickly, I'll just mention them.

Firstly and foremostly, what this one sentence is getting at is that we will not, or God's people will not be wrongly harmful to our neighbor. Wrongly harmful to our neighbor. Secondly, from that, it's got the connotation that we will not injure the innocent accused. We will not injure the innocent accused. Thirdly, this addresses the hindrance of the administration of justice.

It impedes the natural and reasonable flow of justice. A person that is innocent might become guilty. The person that is guilty might get off scot-free with a false testimony. So it is impeding justice. Fourthly, it undermines, not just a relational thing, but it affects the community.

It undermines public confidence in a judicial system. I mean, who of us here, perhaps even coming from Africa, has seen justice systems being rorted in incredible ways? Even in a very Western setting of the, you know, the O.J. Simpson case, who felt very confident in the US justice system at that time? False testimony brings an undermining of confidence in a judicial system. And then lastly, fifth, it leaves in its wake a very tumultuous society.

Once justice is undermined, society begins to fray at its edges. But like I said, right at the top is a concern. Number one is a concern for not harming an innocent person through speech, through something that is false. Now, of course, a false witness and a false testimony has been a problem since the start of the human story, hasn't it? Remember Genesis one and two.

Remember a lie being told by Satan to our first parents in the garden. That lie was the occasion of the fall of the human race into sin and misery. Remember it was the devil who gave our first recorded false testimony, wasn't it? Satan, in the form of a serpent, said to Eve, "Did God really say?" Sort of a deflection or a minimisation of the truth.

And then an outright lie followed up afterwards: "You will surely not die. You will in fact be like God." A blatant lie. And our first parents, Adam and Eve, they fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. And when God finds them hiding in the forest, hiding their shame from Him, we see the effects already taking place.

God says, "What have you done, Adam?" And what does Adam do? He deflects. He says, "This woman you gave me, she gave me the fruit and I ate it." It's like, I was forced to do this.

You have to listen to your wife, and I did. He is muddying the reality. He is muddying the truth. I am the victim here. It is her fault.

I am not responsible morally for this. In an effort of self-justification to get himself off the hook, Adam bears false witness to his neighbor. He witnesses the reality. He knows what's going on, and he gives a false statement. So for all the technical-sounding wording of the ninth commandment about bearing false witness, bearing false testimony, it really is just saying, don't lie.

Don't tell an untruth about someone. That is why in Deuteronomy, when Moses is really laying out the finer details of the 10 commandments, he rehashes the 10 commandments thoroughly. In Deuteronomy 19:15, he tells Israel that if a person who has been accused of a crime is to stand before a judge, they can only be condemned, they can only be judged by two witnesses, not one. Two witnesses must come forward. Why?

Because of Eden. Because of what happened with Adam and Eve, we are now not reliable truth-tellers anymore. We struggle to be people of the truth. We cannot trust just one person's voice. And it's not just that we find the truth occasionally inconvenient and we slip into deception from time to time.

No. Our inability to be people of the truth runs so deep. Jesus, in the way that he just does it so painfully and searingly, obviously, he makes a full diagnosis in passages like Matthew 12:34, where he says, "How can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasures brings forth good.

The evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words, you will be justified, but by your words, you will also be condemned." He said, "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and defiles a person." What he's getting at, what he so painfully says, is that we don't really lie to spare someone else's feelings.

We don't tell a little fib in order to help someone. We lie because our hearts are sick. We lie because we are radically influenced by this thing called sin. In fact, of the most hateful things humans can say, the most hateful things humans can say to one another is linked to the ninth commandment. When you say someone is a so and so, they are a this and that, when we gossip about them or when we accuse them of something, we're not telling the full truth.

Even though they might be a very annoying person, we are often exaggerating. We are saying this is how they are all the time. They are an idiot, meaning for eternity, they will be an idiot. But that's not true. That is not true.

Out of evil or jealousy or anger or whatever, we distort the reality. And so those justifying, self-excusing evasions, those moments of tearing down a brother in gossip or a sister in gossip out of spite or for a little thrill, the exaggeration of flattery that may appear kind on the surface, but really is an attempt to either win the approval of someone or to evade the scrutiny of someone else, they are in one way or another a breach of the command: do not give a false testimony of the truth. Do not give a false testimony of your neighbor or of yourself.

So this law then isn't just an incidental, isn't something for just the lawmakers to take note of here, you know, a person must swear on the Bible and understand that they may not tell a truth, but everywhere else, that's okay. This is not an incidental. This is not a superficial law. It is radical and pervasive.

And so in a hard-hitting passage that in the New Testament draws, I think, very much from Jesus' teaching and then further back into Exodus 20, James, the brother of Jesus, wrote about the powerful effects of our language, the powerful effects of speaking the truth or speaking what is untrue. In James chapter three, and we may turn to that, and I'm sure you've read or you've heard this passage before, in James chapter three.

James, the brother of Jesus, talks about the taming of the tongue. Let's start at verse five of chapter three: "So also, the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire, and the tongue is a fire. A world of unrighteousness, the tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and is set on fire itself by hell.

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison." James says the tongue, how we speak, is three things, three metaphors. It is a forest fire, it is a wild animal, and it is a deadly poison. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire, he says, and a tongue is like that spark.

I don't know if you guys remember celebrity, or I think she was a fashionista or something, Charlotte Dawson, a few years ago on social media, committed suicide as an act of online bullying. Online verbal bullying. A full-grown, mature woman. A single careless word of gossip, something we may not even think about, is like a still lit cigarette butt thrown from the window of a passing car into a hot, dry bunch of leaves, unthinkingly, carelessly, and that is all that it may take to set ablaze, to set in motion a series of consequences we could never imagine.

One exaggerated statement, one spiteful comment about someone, something that we know cannot be true all the time of someone, sets a whole series of negative consequences possibly in motion. The tongue can be like the setting of a forest fire. The second metaphor we find here is that the tongue can be like a wild animal. Every kind of beast, James says, any bird or reptile or sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind. Interestingly, I mean, this was two thousand years ago.

I think we're even more capable now of taming things than back then. But anything in his time, he reckons, had been tamed except for the tongue. Years ago, you might also remember this one: a duo by the name of Siegfried and Roy, a world-famous pair that operated in Las Vegas in Nevada in the US, performed a nightly show with a bunch of tigers every night, day in, day out. Hundreds of times, these tigers obeyed every command. They sat when they needed to sit.

They jumped through hoops when they needed to do that. They performed for an audience one particular night like any other night. And then suddenly, out of the blue, a tiger grabbed Mr. Roy, dragged him by the neck, put him in a hospital where he had lost litres and litres and litres of blood, survived barely, and the world realised that maybe you can't really completely tame a tiger. You only think you can tame one. Well, James says, your tongue is as wild as any tiger.

You may think you can control it, but then you realise you can't. Again, we've seen this sort of thing very, very recently in our postal vote, haven't we? Lots of people saying how we should speak to one another, how we should debate, how we should argue, how we should reason with one another, and yet, intelligent, well-educated people, considered wise and learned, suddenly, under the right circumstances, rip into one another. Destroy one another's credibility, destroy one another's character, give a completely unfair and unjust accusation, and the tiger leaps from the stool. It sinks its teeth into the flesh.

The tongue can be one of the wildest animals, James says. And then thirdly, the tongue is a deadly poison. This is all in the context of false testimony, sharing what is not true. He says it can be a forest fire, sparking a series of unintended consequences, a wild animal that we think we have control over, and it can just turn. It can just go wild.

And then finally James says, it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. Not only does it destroy like a fire, not only does it cripple and maim like a wild animal, it ultimately kills with poison. Australia boasts some of the world's most poisonous snakes. That's something I'm sure many of us at the camp are very aware of. And one of these snakes which we don't think, although Sarah may prove me wrong here, we don't have here is the inland taipan, which is one of the most deadly snakes in the world, capable of shutting down vital organs within at least forty-five minutes without an antidote.

And like a taipan's bite, a lie, a false witness, spoken with venom and not with our neighbor's best intentions at heart, those words can track and seep through the body of our minds, of the minds of our friends and family members. Those words pervade their systems. They penetrate the heart. And unless the antidote of forgiveness is given, they may suffocate and they may die. They may in some way become less of who they were.

Now, in a sense, this sounds very extreme. Very extreme. But telling a lie is not merely a minor predicament. It is not something that is merely inconvenient. It is something that we know, and we have seen, and we've been a witness to, can fester and can last for years. Bitterness.

I mean, how many arguments in years past have just caused resentment, where people age, where people's lifestyles change from a single argument, a single false, unfair statement?

So what can be done about this? What can be done about these heart issues? Well, two things. First, we must flee to Jesus Christ. First, we must go to Him, because Revelation 1:5 calls Him this: the faithful and the true witness.

Jesus Christ is the faithful and the true witness. You shall not bear false witness. Jesus is the true and faithful witness. John 14:6 says that He is the way and the truth and the life. And you'll remember in Mark 14, at His trial, false witnesses came.

And false witnesses were ushered in to give their testimony against Him, and never once did He reply in His own defence until He was asked directly, "Are you the Christ, the Son of God?" And when He confirmed that it was true, the high priest said, "We've got you. Blasphemy. False testimony against God, a false truth about God." And we find Jesus Christ condemned as a blasphemer, someone whose testimony was rejected as utterly, utterly false.

The faithful and true witness, the one who came from the Father, John 1:14 says, with grace and truth, full of grace and truth. And He dies at the hands of false witnesses. And He dies condemned as a blasphemer, a false witness against God. The only one who was the truth and spoke the truth, who never bore false witness, is condemned as a false witness. And on that cross, we have to remember, and I hope we do, on that cross He bore the wrath of the curse of falsehood.

He bore the poison. He bore the flames. And here He is, the one who embodies the truth, who is the truth, paying the price of my insincerity. So what do we do about the forest fire that can be our tongues? What do we do with the wild animal that we can hardly tame?

What can we do with the deadly poison of our insincerity? We must turn to the one who has the remedy, who has the antidote. And what is the antidote to this poison? It is forgiveness. The only thing that can heal our lives and one another's lives is to forgive the other one.

It is to receive their forgiveness. It is to give their forgiveness. That is the antidote. But the bigger antidote is the forgiveness we needed from God and Jesus, our King as well. We must turn to the one who gives this remedy, who can douse the flames of bitter hearts, who can tame the beast, who has the antidote to the poison, who can give us a whole heart, a clean heart, a clear conscience.

And so we must go to Jesus Christ, and He will douse, and He will tame, and He will heal. Jesus is the answer when we fail the ninth commandment. But then, and I wanna finish with this, we must love our church as well. We must run to Christ, but then we must love the church. Ephesians 4:25 says, "Having put away falsehood, he's talking to new believers here, having put away the falsehood of this old life, let each one of us speak the truth with his neighbor. Let us speak the truth with our neighbor.

Don't be people of the lie. Be people of the truth now as we follow the true King. Paul gives us the motive: for we are members of one another, he says. We are members of one another. You see, when you come to Christ, he does more than pardon you for your sin.

He begins to renovate that old life. He begins to change our motives. He will make you know that you belong. He will change your heart to love the one sitting in front of you, to really love them, really. And as that love begins to blossom within us, as we come to know Jesus Christ and He plants in our hearts a love for the people of God, we will see ourselves becoming truth-tellers.

We will speak the truth in love. We will long to be agents of the gospel of truth to non-Christians. We will dare say to them, if you don't turn to Christ, you will go to hell. We will be that truthful. Why?

Not because it's offensive, not because we hate them, but because it's true. Because we really, really care about their eternity, and we know and we believe this is true. We can speak to one another, encourage one another, even rebuke one another, because it's true and because we love one another. Brothers and sisters, we need to get close and stay close to Christ, and we need to stay close to one another. And as we do that, as we love and trust Him, as we learn to love and serve one another, the scriptures promise us that our mouths will become instruments of gospel good.

The word of Christ, Paul says, will dwell in us richly as we share and encourage and admonish and correct one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs for this purpose. And in this way, with all wisdom and thankfulness in our hearts to God, we will become people of the truth who speak the truth in love, agents of the gospel truth for the world, to which the ninth commandment calls all of us, not merely to the truth, but to bear witness to the greatest truth of Jesus Christ, the gospel and His love for all of us. Let me pray. Father, we know this.

We know most of these things that we have talked about. But, Father, it is good for us to be encouraged and reminded. And as we pray this morning, as we leave this place, Lord, I pray for the things that may have even been bubbling away in this past week, God, that we may deal with it. We may deal with it rightly, trusting and knowing, God, that nothing happens without a reason, knowing and trusting that nothing is a mistake in Your perfect plan. Work in us, develop us, help us to love and love truthfully.

Not sentimentally, not an airy-fairy talk, but truthfully and earnestly and conscientiously. Father, help us as we operate in very, very murky circumstances. Help us in our workplaces where a stretching of the truth here and there is almost expected of us. Help us when we have to make those sales. Help us when we have to give feedback.

Help us, Lord, when we have to encourage or motivate. Lead us, Lord, by Your truth. Lead us by the Spirit that guides all of us and will lead all of us into truth. And, Father, I pray that when we do this, we may see the wonderful blessing that comes from that as well. For as we make hard decisions, as we take risky and brave steps, that we will see the liberating freedom that You offer us, that we know is always attached to Your word, to Your commands, and we may do that in such a way to bring honour and glory to You and to bring blessing, freedom, and joy into our lives.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.