Ninth Commandment: Honesty
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Ninth Commandment: Honesty
I think we have a tendency to follow Adam and Eve’s leadership from the first time people ever blew it. We go and hide. We are trying to hide things about ourselves. They hid. They blamed. They distorted the truth. We aren’t that different. That’s why we need the ninth commandment.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. This verse was referring specifically to future courtrooms in
But this truth is obviously more relevant than in courtrooms in ancient
Honesty and Lying in HD
We aren’t honest with each other for a very basic reason: We are trying to hide things about ourselves. It could be because we are embarrassed, we don’t want to face consequences of our actions, people pleasing, or we want to manipulate a situation for our benefit. There are lots of reasons we lie, but they all come back to us hiding who we really are, hiding what we’ve really done, so we live out a fake life.
Let’s see how we do it. We hide by…
1. We’ve done something we shouldn’t and someone asks us about it and we just flat out lie about what really happened. We are trying to protect ourselves and not damage the relationship (never mind that our behavior has already done that!). Sometimes we cover up even more sinful actions with our lies because we love our sin. Related to this would be acting sugary sweet and acting like there are no issues with a person to their face, but just reaming them in private. Our hidden sin of people pleasing comes out here.
2. We’ve done something we shouldn’t and we are afraid someone might find out, so we begin constructing our lie. Have you ever rehearsed your lie? “Officer, my mom is really sick and I needed to be with her.” Did you lie if you only rehearsed your lie, but didn’t actually do it? I think so. Our deceitfulness runs deep and the worst part is that we often listen to our own lies and begin to believe them.
3. We falsely report things. We can do this with taxes, number of sales calls we’ve done, how often we’ve been to worship services, how much books cost this semester, and lots more. You tell your parents you go “most” of the time to worship services, but when you actually add it up, you came 5 times out of 15 weeks of the semester. You want someone to think one thing, but you don’t want them to know truth. Why? You obviously wanted to do whatever it is that you did, why not own it? Surely part of the reason has to be that we value their opinion/relationship and even if we felt fine about our behavior, we are trying to hide what we did.
On our weekly sheets on our staff, I actually typed in a lie so that I could set a good example. We try to invite 5 people a week to Redeemer as personal goals. I’ve been doing poorly at this and I initially typed “
4. We don’t exactly lie…but we don’t exactly tell the truth either. I think this is the Christian way to lie. It’s perfect. You save your skin and preserve the relationship, but still deceive someone about what actually happened, and you get to feel like you’ve got integrity! Awesome. You and your wife agree that there is just way too much football being watched. She leaves to run some errands for several hours one Saturday afternoon and gently reminds you to discipline yourself on the tv watching. As soon as the car pulls out of the driveway, click, ESPN is on. Not only do you watch football, but you gorge yourself on it and you hastily empty the dishwasher and start a load of laundry to throw her off the scent before she comes home. She sits down and asks how the afternoon went and how you did with the football watching. You respond, “Great. I just did laundry and got caught up on a few things around the house.” Ok, true. You have not lied. But have you been honest? No. You answered honestly as far as it went, but deceived her. And you walk away feeling good about things. Excellent!
I think this one might be the most toxic. Its the easiest one to just lie like a rug and still feel like you are a good person. These are the kinds of things that we do all of the time: (these examples courtesy of
-Don't leave a note when we accidentally bash someones door in the parking lot.
-Don't mention that the radiator on the car you are selling "as is" leaks after the motor warms up. After all, you are selling it "as is."
-Don't mention to your spouse that you blew $50 on something for your hobby(scrapbooking/hunting). Since you are in charge of the books, you can move some money from another budget column and they will never know.
-The copy machine is broken and the boss says, "OK, who broke the copier?" You are the only one who knows who did it, but if you just don't answer and look around the room like you don't know, maybe no one will suspect."
We can try to manipulate situations and people with half truths like overstating how sick or busy we are to get out of something we don’t want to do. We are sick. We are busy. But maybe not THAT sick or busy. Instead of communicating directly our desires, we play games with truth to get our way. Ouch. Let’s move to some good news.
The Gospel Picture
God doesn’t lie. Titus 1:2. In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began. Or Hebrews 6:18. It is impossible for God to lie. More than that, He’s honest with us. His words are reliable and His commitment to us is sure. Isn’t that great? We can trust His words and His love to us. The cross guarantees Christians’ to be loved by God. He won’t deceive you. Others may have made promises only to abandon you, but God won’t. This is gospel hope!
Some of us feel let down by God, but I can almost guarantee that your frustration with Him is based on things you thought He owed you that He never promised you. You are mad because your career or life or whatever isn’t as fulfilling as you hoped and you feel like God has let you down. But God never said He would bow to the American idolatry of happiness and self-fulfillment even if we do!
Even worse, some of us have self-inflicted wounds and we’ve wrecked our own lives with a really bad choice or a series of bad choices and somehow God has been unfair, untrustworthy, and untruthful with you. The reality is that you didn’t want to know what God said and you did what you wanted to do and now blame God for the results. But God is honest with us and we can take His promises to the bank and there are lots of them. Very few have to do with a promise of better homes and vacations and He won’t encourage us to seek out relationships and marriages on our terms of self-fulfillment. But His promises are to keep our soul well and to heal what’s broken. He will make it right some day, too.
In short then, Jesus forgives us where we haven’t been honest with ourselves, people around us or Him. If we trust in Him, He forgives us. But as we taste His trustworthiness, we begin also to speak more truthfully. We commit to not deceive each other. The shame that we carry is disarmed by His mercy and our broken areas that we are ashamed of begin to find healing when they find light.
Honesty: A Redeemer Family Trait
The beginning point for us would be all of the things we’ve talked about so far. Not lying is a start. Not playing the little truth games we like to play would be good. Positively, we seek to be honest with each other in our speech and conduct. That’s that starting point, but it’s not all that we mean. The NT expands honesty to something that goes beyond simple truth statements. James
1.You to them. In other words, our family trait of honesty pushes us to take our hiding, ashamed, broken selves to our friends here at Redeemer and let people inside. I get that there are some things that don’t need to be shared from the mic. There are some things you might be ready to share with your entire RG. It might even be inappropriate to do so. I had a friend tell me they went to a singles retreat where a guy confessed lust towards a female member of the group that was there. I bet he could have shared that with one of his friends there, right? But there has to be someone that we allow to carry our loads with us. I bet everyone in here has some secrets of past mistakes, abuses committed to you, addictions, current struggles, that you would almost rather die than people know them. I get it. I am one of you. Let me tell you one thing: These struggles grow like crazy in the dark. Even if its just one person, you’ll find sin’s power and the shame dissipate when you are honest with people. We sometimes say, “This is an ok place to not be ok.” But it’s also not ok to stay like that and we want to say what’s broken and then have people around us help us apply the gospel to that broken area. That’s what our recovery ministry is all about. That’s the environment that could be yours at RG. Will you make it into this sort of culture? Will you open yourself up to people around you? Or do you prefer to do nice little Bible studies or just avoid it altogether?
2. Them to You. It also means that when other people admit that they aren’t ok, we don’t gasp. There are some areas of brokenness that seem much more common and acceptable to you, but if we are really walking in the reality of the gospel, won’t we be aware that we aren’t really all that different? Outside of God’s grace, we are capable of anything. We have people here that have made some really bad decisions, others have had really bad stuff done to them that they haven’t told anyone. Some have some serious struggles that are ongoing. Will you accept them? If someone tells you they had an abortion or they have an eating disorder or they are suicidal or they have thought of a divorce, what will you do? Gasp? We can model the gospel to one another as we accept each other because of Jesus. We’ll take their honesty and give them a safe place to fall. No doubt, there are several of you in here who don’t think people here would accept you and that’s why you haven’t gone to a group or haven’t let anyone in a group know anything about the real you. And we all have lots of experiences with judgmental religious people to back this up! Let’s accept. Let’s love. Let’s help each other grow and see our inclination to run and hide disarmed by Jesus’ grace!
This morning is a fight for truth. It’s a call to honesty. This message could take you in different ways. It could call the embellisher to guard their words and confront sin beneath the sin issues like their need for approval, hidden sin patterns or whatever. But whether you have lying issues or not, some of you are very private and are closed off to your brothers and sisters. You aren’t available to them and you certainly haven’t made yourself open to them. Maybe you prefer the fantasy world that likes to pretend that they are fine and you like for them to think you are fine. But let’s push for honesty, truth, and confession of broken areas that we are ashamed of. Let’s fight for truth.
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