Transcript
We are going to be in Matthew chapter five, Matthew chapter five. Before we read this, lemme just kind of set the stage. Set the stage for the material that's here. Good culture, whether in a country or a city or a community, is fundamentally built on the pillars of trust, honesty, integrity and reliability. These values are the bedrock, the bedrock of a healthy society and thriving relationships. Yet we often witness the erosion of these values, not only globally but also in our backyard. If you consider the corruption in government a hallmark of underdeveloped countries, this corruption undermines trust and stability and creates an environment where dishonesty and unreliability flourish. This isn't just a distant problem, it is a reality we grapple with here in our city in Baltimore where challenges of integrity, transparency within government have been a longstanding concern without spending the entire morning on the series of scandals that we've experienced.
Lemme just kind of put some names out there. For those of you that are maybe new to the city and some of you who've been around the city for a while, you go back to 2009, you have Sheila Dixon who was indicted on 13 counts of perjury and misconduct in office in 2014. You had Robert Stevenson, a former Baltimore City public school principal convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering. He was taking bribes from vendors in exchange for awarding contracts. Gary Wells, Daniel Herschel and Marcus Taylor are some of the three best known names associated with the Gun Trace Task Force. They were all convicted of racketeering, robbery and conspiracy. They were a force of plain clothes officers that were tasked with reducing gun violence in the city. However, the unit was involved in a number of corrupt activities including robbing drug dealers and stealing money and drugs.
They were sentenced to 14 to 18 years. In 2019, Catherine Pugh, who was then the mayor, was indicted on 11 federal charges related to herself dealing book scheme related to the Healthy Hawley children's books that she supposedly sold to the University of Maryland Medical System and the Baltimore City Public Schools, and she ended up pleading guilty to tax evasion. There was Antonio Taylor. Do you know what Antonio Taylor? Did you know what role he played? Antonio Taylor was the Baltimore City. He was the head or supervisor of the Baltimore City Department Public works and convicted of extortion. And then you have most recently, Marilyn Mosby in 2022, she was indicted on federal charges related to her traveling, spending, travel spending, and she was found guilty for those things as well. All that to say that our society is built around a healthy government and a healthy city needs truth tellers.
It needs integrity, it needs transparency, and when those things go out the window, you begin to have what is called corruption and the breakdown of trust, but moving beyond the political realm into culture, we see this in pop culture as well. Sometimes pop culture contradicts these values. I was looking at the Taylor Swift song Blank Space and she writes in a satirical way in 2014, she was being mocked for her series of relationships and so she wrote her song Blank Space to kind of embody this just brutal kind of crazy girlfriend mentality and at the time it was championed as the empowerment of a woman that she was willing to embrace the criticism of her ex-boyfriends and to say, I am crazy and I've got a blank space baby. But the way that she in a sense, heroic sizes, total instability and dishonesty, and she becomes kind of this embodiment of a powerful woman or the empowered woman by saying, yep, I'm going to be as crazy as possible and as hard hearted as possible, sign yourself up basically to be my next boyfriend. It breaks down and you in your own life have been the victim and sometimes maybe the perpetrator of the erosion of a relationship by being inconsistent with your speech or again, being the victim of a person who was inconsistent or not truthful in their speech. Jesus is preaching a kingdom
And he is going around the sea of Galilee and he's talking about the good news of the kingdom and he's saying, my kingdom is invading. My kingdom has come. In fact, he says, reach out your hand, reach out your arm. The kingdom is at an arm's length and he's introducing through this sermon on the mount just the values of his kingdom an ideal and in essence he's saying through these three chapters of Matthew five, six and seven, this is what it looks like when my kingdom breaks out in my followers lives in this world, this is what it looks like. And we saw that He's elevated scripture. He's said, I didn't come to abolish the law, but I've come to fulfill the law like his Bible. He said, the Bible is every jot and tittle, everything that you have inherited in terms of scripture that is going to be fulfilled in and through my life and your righteousness needs to exceed that of your spiritual leaders today, the Pharisees and the scribes.
And he begins to say like you've heard it said it's this formula, this formula of you have heard it said, but I say to you what he's doing in this. As we looked at anger being put on the same level, put in the same courtroom as the murderer, what we saw with lust being put in the same category as the adulterer, we saw that a divorce, the grounds for divorce are severely narrowed and that the marriage covenant must be honored. All of these things are going back to the root level of the law and saying, Hey, this is the righteousness of my kingdom. This is the ethical ideal that makes up my, that composes my kingdom. So it is the thing as we're reading this, consider that the spirit of God wants to take in author these things in our lives. This is not something where Jesus is like, Hey, pull up yourself by your bootstraps.
When you were a kid, did you ever go to the fire station and you got to try on the fire a man's outfit? Remember that? And it was like the whole outfit was connected to the boots. You stepped in the boots first and you had to pull yourself into it. Jesus is like, no, no, no, no. I'm going to give you my spirit and my spirit is going to author this ideal ethic in your life. It's going to make you these types of citizens and so this morning we're going to transition over to truth and language and he's going to lay out an economy around language. Let's look at chapter five verses 33 through 37. Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, you must not break your oath, but you must keep your oath to the Lord. But I tell you, don't take an oath at all either by heaven because it's God's throne or by the earth because it's his footstool or by Jerusalem because it is the city of the great king.
Do not swear by your head because you cannot make a single hair white or black, but let your yes mean yes and your no mean no anything more than this is from the evil one. Let's pray together. Lord, we ask that you would take this text and that your spirit would teach us, Lord, that you would teach us about our language. We're going to communicate this week in different settings. Some of us more than others, some of us are communicating a lot and others of us communicate very little. But Lord, we give you permission to invade our speech and that we would be a people who are truth tellers truthful. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. And so let's look at this text. Let's consider first just the Old Testament context. So again, using the formula, Jesus says, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, you must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord in your version that you have there.
And here on the screen it may look as if this is a quote, but really what Jesus is doing is he's summarizing the Old Testament's teaching about swearing an oath. Now there are some related words that are, or we could say there are similes, the word swearing, oath making and making a vow and the Bible does not distinguish between those three very well. They're fairly interchangeable. Making a vow and swearing and oath are related concepts and sometimes are interchangeable when a story is retold. So Jesus says, here is what you've heard from our ancestors and he's pulling this. Lemme give you some of the settings where this would be found in the Old Testament when the law is given the 10 Commandments, we have this said by God to Moses, don't misuse the name of the Lord your God because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name.
This is in maybe your translation. It may say, do not take the Lord's name in vain. It's the idea of carrying his name, picking up. Don't take up God's name. Don't associate something with God's name in an abusive way where you're using God's name in an appropriate, this is not like saying, oh my God, or oh my gosh or how my grandpa said it. It's more of like a, that you're taking up and carrying the name of God and yet your life and your language are completely other than what God would approve of. He says, we see in the law in Leviticus 19 and there's a lot in Leviticus 19 about swearing your oaths and making these types of formal binding statements. He says, do not swear falsely by my name profaning the name of your God. I am the Lord. In other words, to make a promise to swear falsely and basically lie and associate God's name with that lie would be to profane the name of God.
Then if we go over to numbers 30, verse two, we see this when a man makes a vow to the Lord, do you see this? He makes a vow to the Lord or swears an oath to put himself under an obligation. He must not break his word, he must do whatever he promised. Do you see the idea here was like, look, if you swear in oath, you say you're going to do it, you need to keep your word in Proverbs. I don't have it here to put up on the screen, but there is a proverb and in my preparation I forgotten until just this moment, but there's this beautiful proverb that says, brings a blessing to the person who swears to their own hurt. It's this idea that you are willing to keep your word even to the point where you're being injured and you're getting the raw end of the deal by being a person who keeps their word.
That is the old testament of how sacred language is, how important it is to speak and to not break your word. Look at last one here out of Deuteronomy 23, 21 through 23, if you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to keep it because he will require it of you and it will be counted against you as sin, but if you refrain from making a vow, it will not be counted against you as sin. Be careful to do whatever comes from your lips because you have freely vowed what you have promised to the Lord your God. For the Hebrew mind language was sacred. There was this idea that is rooted in Genesis one because the creation account occurred through God's speaking and things coming into existence. There was a sacredness that our culture doesn't necessarily have. Well, it really doesn't have.
There was a sacredness in Hebrew culture around what you say that man you're going to speak and that just that act of speaking brings about reality and you've felt that right? There's that dumb saying, the sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me and that is an attempt to harden the heart and not be affected by words spoken over us, which there's got to be some healthy way of processing bad language, but the reality is for many of us, we bear scars from names that were supposedly supposed to never heard us. For me when I was in ninth grade for some reason, and I haven't heard this much since I was in ninth grade, but I was teased for the tone of my voice and so I was around kids my age and in a high school setting and people would walk up behind me and they would make this noise because they said that my voice sounded like a duck.
Now I was self-conscious about that so much so that fast forward 25 years later when I was invited to host a national radio program, I felt like I'm not the guy to do that because I have a voice that sounds like a duck. It's amazing how just the things that are spoken over us can bring about a sense of realness in our lives in the same way that God spoke and the world became. And so the Hebrew mind found just a, they really took language seriously and then on top of that, they had this real idea around swearing oaths. And so by the time we get to Jesus day, there were these customs where the scribes and the rabbis had found all these cute little ways to swear, but to kind of hold there to hold their fingers crossed behind their back in their oath making.
Did you ever do that when you were a kid? You say something but you got your fingers crossed behind your back or you got your toes crossed like, Hey, you can come to my birthday party and you got your fingers crossed. These were adults that were finding those kind of loopholes by swearing, not according to God's name but things that were sacred. And so Jesus says, but I tell you, don't take an oath at all either by heaven because it's God's throne or by earth because it's his footstool or by Jerusalem because it's the city of the great king did not square by your head because you cannot make a single hair white or black. Jesus is identifying their current customs around oath, making swearing by God's name was seen as invoking the divine presence as a witness making the oath highly solemn and serious.
And so the thought was we're going to make these second class oaths. This commentator says this, Jesus goes on to repudiate the use of second class oaths which avoid the name of God and therefore are not binding first. They do not in fact exclude God as heaven and earth and Jerusalem are inseparably linked with God as Jesus shows by reference to Isaiah 66, 1 in Psalm 48, 2, and even your head is God's creation and under his control it is, it's very much like that idea of cross my heart, spit to death, hope to die type language, and yet the rabbis found it. Well, yeah, it adds flare to the language, it's extra, gives seriousness to the language, but it's not binding. Jesus confronts this again as he is just railing on the Pharisees, right? So if you go further to Matthew 23, Jesus brings up this whole thing again.
This is amazing. Look in Matthew 23, he speaks to the custom. He says, woe to you blind guides who say, and he's speaking here to the Pharisees, he's calling them blind guides who takes an oath by the temple. It means nothing but whoever takes an oath by the gold of the temple is bound by his oath, right? Blind fools for which is greater the gold of the temple that sanctified or the temple that sanctified the gold. Also whoever takes an oath by the altar, it means nothing. But then whoever takes an oath by the gift that's on it is bound by his oath. Do you seeing kind of the culture there is supposedly you could say, well, I promise according to the altar that's in the temple, I promise. And that person wouldn't be bound to that oath. It sounded good. It sounded like modern day swearing, but it wasn't actually binding. But if you swear by the sacrifice on the altar, oh wow, you can't break that. You can't break your word then blind people for which is greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift.
Therefore, therefore the one who takes an oath by the altar, takes an oath by it and buy everything on it. Jesus, like it's inseparable. The one who takes the oath by the temple takes an oath by it and the one who dwells in it and the one who takes an oath by heaven takes an oath by God's throne and by him who sits on it. You can't do this whole game. We might say if we were to live in that culture and be able to somehow live in the culture where these goofy oaths were being made and then also being familiar with our own culture, we might liken it to political spin where you're running for office and you're saying the things that get you the votes, but it's like if we really press into that, we know that you're from the federal, you're running for the federal branch of the government or you're running for the executive branch of the government, and what you're talking about really falls to the judicial branch and you will not have power to affect it, but it sure sounds good.
You're sure spinning it well, that's the culture that Jesus is living in and interacting with where oaths are being abused. And so what's take on this whole thing, he says in verse 37, let your yes mean yes and your no mean no anything more than this is from the evil one. Now, Jesus is saying basically, you don't need the extra fluff. You don't need to go and swear by heaven that you're telling the truth. Your yes ought to mean yes and your no ought to mean no. You don't need the extra work or the effort extra language. Now, there was a stream within Christianity that took Jesus's words here very literally as a prohibition against binding yourself by an oath. The Anabaptist tradition would use to forbid you go do jury duty and you have to swear that you will abide by and follow the constitution or whatever.
Jesus is not necessarily forbidding that there are three times in the epistles where Paul calls upon God to witness his language. He calls upon God to basically bear witness to what he's saying, that it is true, which is a similar idea to saying, I swear by heaven that this is true. So he's what Jesus here is emphasizing is not the absence of swearing an oath. We're not cussing, we're talking about swearing an oath. He's not talking about the absence so much as he's saying, let us be a community of people that tell the truth. And when we say something, we mean what we say. And so sometimes that means it's like shut up, stop. Stop talking because you are not being honest. You can't proceed with this conversation and be honest without really blowing up this relationship. Just be quiet or redirect the conversation. And then other times it means you need to take a risk in the relationship and you need to tell the truth.
But the community, this kingdom that Jesus is inaugurating and welcoming people into is a community where truth is spoken and words have meaning, and they're not just this interchangeable thing that kind of play a short game and get their way. Isn't that the kind of kingdom you want to be in? How much difference does that make in relationships? How much difference does that make in business dealings? How much difference does that make in an academic atmosphere? How much difference does that make in a governance in a government where there is political speak? If you could just tell the truth and you could be known as a person that you mean what you say. Well, this teaching of Jesus really took hold. This instruction is included in the end of James. So James is the brother of Jesus and he talks about this. He literally quotes this idea from Jesus in his letter, his instruction, this instruction here falls in between a command to live your life with patient endurance and to be a people of intense fervent prayer. So he's wrapping up his letter. He's like, live where you are, just patiently enduring suffering and be a people that pray intensely between that. Here's what I want. Brothers and sisters do not swear by heaven or by earth with any other oath, but let your yes mean yes and your no mean no so that you won't fall under judgment.
One of my favorite examples of this concept, yes, meaning yes and no meaning no is in second Corinthians, I've shared this before because it's just a great story. Paul planted the church in Corinth. He left Corinth to keep doing ministry and after he left, some other leaders came along and were talking smack about Paul and they were saying that Paul was less than the legitimate apostle that he was a second class apostle. He was like a BT string quarterback. He was a bench warmer of an apostle that God happened to use with the Gentiles, but they were saying, we are the true apostles, right? Paul's not around. And so Paul is writing back into the mess that is Corinth and he is correcting them on what they've done wrong, but he's also trying to maintain what he believed to be his spiritual authority and influence in this church.
And he threads a needle through all of second Corinthians as he does this because he's not there to really push back actively against these superior apostles. He has to appeal to them. And so one of the accusations that's made against Paul is that Paul had said, Hey, I'm coming back to Corinth, and yet he wasn't there yet. And so this group of people who are against Paul was saying, look, Paul doesn't keep his word. He's not coming to see you all. He's changed his plan. So he says, because of this confidence, I planned to come to you first so that you could have a second benefit and to visit you on my way to Macedonia and then come to you again from Macedonia and be helped by you on my journey to Judea. The key thing here is that he said, I planned. Do you see that there?
Do you make plans in your life? Look at how Paul makes plans in his life. He said, I had this plan. That's the first thing. You make a plan, you have a plan. Now, when I plan this, did I have two minds or was I of two minds or what I plan, do I plan in a purely human way so that then I communicate? Yes, yes. And then I say no, no, at the same time, in other words, do I speak out of two sides of my mouth? And then he says, as God is faithful, that's not just like a quaint old saying that like a night in the dark edges would've said as God is faithful, no, as God is faithful, the character of God is that God is faithful. He's consistent with his word. As God is faithful, our message to you is not yes and no for the son of God, Jesus Christ whom we proclaim among you, savannas Timothy and I did not become yes and no. On the contrary in him it's always yes, for every one of God's promises is yes in him. Therefore, through him we also say amen to the glory of God. You see, he says, look it, our language to you was not yes and the no, it's just as consistent as the message. If you're making plans and then backing up on your plans, how can somebody trust you to communicate about God? You are the representative of God's message. Why would anybody trust you?
Why would anybody trust you about the gospel if your life is utterly inconsistent? I had this acquaintance that was foisted upon me years ago. I was working at a Bible college and somehow this guy got hired who was a friend of a friend. It was kind of like a buddy deal. We're going to put him here, he's going to work there and he's great. And so he would come and he would pop into the office after we had all been there for a couple of hours and his hair was slicked back. He had been at the beach surfing and Hey, how you doing? He would talk you up, Hey, we got to get coffee. I really want to get to know you. Super slick talker. And initially he was like, wow, this guy's really, when you first meet somebody, they're like, wow, that person is really positive.
They're like an encourager. They really got this way to really be friendly, really friendly. And I'd be like, yeah, that sounds good. Let me know when you're available. So then the next week comes by. He hasn't been at work all week and he comes back in. Wow, the surf's great out there, man. Love what you're doing, love the work you're doing. You're just amazing. I could learn so much from you. And then we got to connect. We got to get together sometime. Let's get coffee. All right? Yeah, that sounds good man. Let's do it. Let's get together. Another week goes by, the guy's not anywhere to be found. This goes on for a long time like buddies. Buddies with the president, and pretty soon there's this grumbling because he's getting paid exactly what all the rest of us are getting paid and he has the same privileges and rights that all the rest of us have. And you know what? That wouldn't be like if in New York place, if that kind of person was there. You're like, this guy is utterly inconsistent. It's amazing the cancer of somebody like that, just how it just demoralizes because it makes all the rest of us feel like, who are we? Who are we that this guy's got some sweet deal. He's totally a phony getting this suite set up from the president and he's just pulling a fast one over.
I changed departments and this was two years in like a year and a half, two years of this guy working at the Bible college and nobody liked him. And we put him in, my new boss put him in our department and he was assigned, the director was done with the guy but didn't want to fire him himself. So he basically put him with my new boss and he was required to attend the staff meeting every week, and my boss was an excellent team lead. He would take good notes in the staff meeting. He'd put names at the end of every action item, and then every week we'd do a debrief, right? You'd been in good meetings like that and we'd go through, what did you accomplish? And everybody's name would come up. We'd go through the notes and there's his name, what'd you do? Nothing. We did that for a couple of weeks. The guy went into the president's office, he fired himself. He said, I don't fit here anymore. I can see I'm not really getting the job done. I don't know where he's at now, but it's funny, just the accountability that's needed for a person like
That, that's not the kingdom of heaven. And if you've been hurt by somebody like that, I'm so sorry. I mean, there's people that maybe don't follow Jesus and they're like that, okay, alright, so maybe they're not reigned and ruled over by Christ, but we are a people that are governed by Jesus. He's our king, and so we don't get to get away with just talking however we want. We need to be a people of honesty, integrity, authenticity, simplicity, and reliability. Lemme just finish with this. In Mark 14 at the crucifixion story, Peter is there warming himself by the fire and he's being told You're a follower of this guy Jesus, and he started to curse and swear, I don't know this man that you're talking about. He's not just denying his knowing Jesus, but he's cursing and swearing. He's enhancing his speech as in the midst of being dishonest.
This is the brokenness that Jesus is calling us out of, is this enhancement of language to try to make a dishonest point. And then he's calling us to this in Hebrews 7 21, he being God or Jesus became a priest with an oath made by the one who said to him, the Lord is sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever. All throughout Hebrews 3, 4, 5, 6, and seven, the language of oath making and swearing and promising is pervasive. And it says that God can swear by no one greater, and so he swore by himself, God uses an oath and secures the eternal priesthood of Jesus. For us, that's the right place for an oath to be made. That's that covenant making. God who speaks and swears and says, this is the reliable speech. This is what you can rely upon. That's what secures for us, our priest, Jesus. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word.
Thank you for being a God that is reliable and trustworthy, that we can base our lives on your word, that we can stand upon your promises and know that you will never fail us. God, we confess the looseness of our lips and we ask that more and more. Your spirit would come and author in us a carefulness about our language, that we would be trustworthy people, that we would say things and we would follow through even to our own hurt. Lord, we ask that we would have that type of character, that type of integrity in our lives. We want to be the recipients of that kind of culture. We want to live off the fruit of people that talk like that. We pray that you would help us to contribute to that kind of kingdom, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.