Live Not By Lies | Exodus 20:16
Introduction
Each year, Oxford University Press—its lexicographers, consultants, editors, marketers, and publicists—chooses an Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for the UK and US. Now the chosen word does not have to be new or invented that year, but it must be prominent or notable. In short, they choose a word that says something about that cultural year.
Here are some examples and see if you can remember what that says of that year:
2005: podcast
2009: unfriend
2012: GIF
2014: vape
You hear those words and you’re transported to those moments in history where Apple was really coming the scene, revolutionizing how we intake news, where Facebook was changing how we interact online, how the introduction of short, silly, repeating videos can replace words in a text, and even a new vice that was supposed to be the “healthy” way to smoke. Those moments really capture well the cultural moments of their time.
Maybe you know this, but maybe not—the word of the year in 2016 was this: post-truth. Now, what do you think was happening in 2016 that may have had an effect on the culture’s understanding of truth? Well, of course, there was the 2016 election race between former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and then candidate and real estate mogul and reality TV personality Donald J. Trump. I think it would be fair to say that that particular battle was one of personalities and trajectories, with a light sprinkling of policies thrown in.
You’ll remember, that after President Trump was elected, the buzzword flying around was “misinformation”. The people, it was believed, had been lied to by nefarious sources (Russian, FBI, you pick), and thus the election was in question. As a result, trust in all of our national institutions frayed. We had now been thrust into a new epoch of our society’s history, somehow beyond truth (i.e. “post”-truth). The Oxford dictionary went on to add that word to the dictionary with the following definition: “an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.” Objective, fixed reality—old news. Feelings and emotions—consequential and dominant in shaping American history.
I think it safe to say that, 4 years later, the 2020 election didn’t do a whole lot to improve the mood around the country. In fact, a recent poll done by the Pew Research Center in 2022 on public trust in the government shows in 1964, 77% of Americans trusted the government, compared to only 20% today. Currently, 50% of people say that they do not trust each other, and 71% are concerned with how little we trust each other. It seems that as truth, objective facts, decline, trust declines right along with it.
Simply put, we no longer trust our neighbors. Even here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota we can feel the effects of our growth as a city. As crime goes up, trust in our neighbors goes down. The ‘leave-your-front-door-unlocked” small town vibe some of us remember is gone.
What kind of society can last when the truth is so sidelined to the point that we are “post-truth”? A word that is meant to evoke some type of progress, but what have we progressed into? A society that uses a phrase like “my truth” is an unstable, and therefore untrusting, society. So it is an amazing gift and kindness of God that he embedded in his very law to his beloved people a command that protects truth.
So would you please rise if you are able. It is our conviction that whenever this book is opened up, wherever it is opened up—whether in your home office, at your kitchen table, in a cathedral, in a cafeteria, in a former dance studio, or even in a MS gym—we are hearing from God himself. And it is his word to us for everything we need for life and godliness, and will not return to him void. That’s our hope, that’s our confidence.
At the heart of this command is falsehoods. We can only understand false things in light of true things. Quick philosophy lesson: there are a seemingly infinite number of definitions and accountings for truth, but I find the simplest and most satisfying one to be the correspondence theory of truth: “truth is that which corresponds with reality.” A statement is true if it aligns with, or corresponds with reality. “This pulpit is black” is a true statement because it aligns with, or corresponds with reality. Duh.
We can understand falsehoods this way too. Obviously, false statements are statements that DON’T align with or correspond with reality. “This pulpit is yellow” is false because it doesn’t match with reality. Again….duh.
But who gets to decide what reality is? Who gets to calibrate the standards? Who gets to be the one to determine what is real or not, and consequently what is true or not? We can only understand false things in light of true things—but we need a standard.
Like the question Pilate asked Jesus at the end of his trial in John 18:38…
“What is truth?”
—John 18:38
But he never stuck around for the answer.
A basic, fundamental reality is the Christian claim that this is in fact our Father’s world. God and God alone is the creator and sustainer and ruler of all of his creation. That reality is assumed throughout the Bible. We see this clearly in John 1:1–3 when John riffs on the Genesis 1 creation account by saying…
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
—John 1:1–3
That “all things” that John mentions is, in the original Greek, an adjective that means all, each, or every is meant to incorporate everything…literally ALL THINGS. The fact that John states “all things were made through him” and then repeats it in the negative, “without him was not anything made” is meant to emphasize the reality that the Bible just assumes—God created this world. It is his.
And it is that reality that has underpinned the entire book of Exodus so far. This is the God who made the heavens and the earth and all that it is in them—defeating Pharaoh and displaying his wonders was easy. This is the God that said to Moses…
“Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
—Exodus 4:11–12
The maker of the universe and the former and shaper of all mankind was not going to find it hard to supply stammering Moses with everything he needed for the mission he had tasked him for.
And it is this same reality that has made this Mt. Sinai scene so remarkable. This Creator God has condescended so far to speak to these grumbling, ungrateful people directly—and he says to them, “I am the Lord your God.” Incredible.
This morning, it is my aim to persuade you that the ninth commandment deals with fundamental realities. You are inevitably going to be either obeying or disobeying this command a thousand times a day. Will we live by lies or not?
Because God is a God of truth, the only way to love your neighbor is to love the truth.
From this ninth commandment, we are going to draw out 3 related, but different commands: 1) reject falseness, 2) love your neighbor, 3) love the truth.
Reject Falseness
We often short-hand the ninth commandment to simply, “do not lie.” While that’s true and can be helpful in remembering the general content of the commandments, that does not account for the full depth of the command. For instance, the command itself “you shall not bear false witness” conjures up a courtroom scene. We see that clearer in the NIV’s rendering of the word “witness” as “testimony”—the entire verse translated, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
We all know the scene (and I’m a sucker for a good courtroom drama)—some great room where there is lots of wood and leather, probably books on the wall that all look the same, portraits of robed judges hang on the walls, a courtroom stage where the players all sit, and a lawyer gets up to call a witness to give testimony either for or against the accused. And that witness stands before the judge, puts his hand on a Bible (interestingly), and repeats after the bailiff to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God.
Now, those of you who have seen a courtroom drama, or some binge worthy true-crime documentary, you know that other things can give testimony other than eye-witnesses—DNA or video evidence or phone records for example. But in the ancient world, there was no CCTV or credit card statements or DNA swabs. The accused really did live or die by the testimony of his peers. Life or death is on the line.
The entire justice system is based on the testimony of others. And so, out of an abundance of God’s mercy, he makes requirement within the Law that the accused shall not be convicted by the testimony of just one person, but in Deuteronomy 17:6, Moses writes:
‘“On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.”
—Deuteronomy 17:6
The Lord, in his wisdom, understands our frame. He knows we are prone to lies in order to profit ourselves. And we develop the skill of lying early, don’t we? Not long after our children start speaking do we notice their prowess at twisting the facts, ignoring the facts, or downright making up the facts to avoid the discipline they know is coming. Lying, and all its variations (telling falsehoods, exaggerations, slander, gossip, backbiting, and more) is not a second language to us—it is our native tongue.
Jesus diagnoses us well when he says…
“Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
—John 8:43–44
And he’s right! We can trace this all the way back to the beginning. At the very beginning, just 3 chapters into the story, we see the first slandering and lying. We know the story—the serpent comes into the serene paradise and comes to the woman and asks that wicked, confusing, misleading question, “Did God really say…?” Right there, in that moment, Eve could have obeyed the ninth commandment by setting the record straight, not giving in to the serpent’s twisting tongue, defended God’s good name and his good intentions and his trustworthy nature. And then the serpent gave the most destructive and consequential lie in history by saying to Eve, “You surely will not die.” Instead of testifying to the truth, she trusts the lie of the serpent over the very word of God. And the very thing that the serpent said would not happen, has become our greatest enemy: death.
It’s clear that the way “false witness” includes speaking. After commenting on the origin of our lying nature in Genesis 3 to James’ description of the destructive tongue in James 2, Victor Hamilton comments saying…
“Not without reason does James refer to the tongue as an arsonist. Uncontrolled, it becomes incendiary. Unchecked, it becomes the most lethal weapon in destroying the unity in a believing community.”
—Victor P. Hamilton
Have you considered the effect your words have on others? Whether it be your friends, your spouse, your children, your parents. The words we speak can build up or tear down. It can build a community through strengthening trust, or rip a community apart by rumors and gossip and slander. And we are prone to entertaining gossip, aren’t we? There’s so strange satisfaction and exhilaration we get when we hear some juicy news involving others. Solomon is exactly right when he says in Proverbs 18:8
“The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.”
—Proverbs 18:8 (NIV)
But look at the verse right before…
“The mouths of fools are their undoing, and their lips are a snare to their very lives.”
—Proverbs 18:7 (NIV)
The mouth and the words that come out of it show our hearts. And when we speak and spread gossip and rumors, we show our foolishness. But this commandment is bigger than just the words we speak. If murder is the climax of the sin of anger, then lying to a judge would be the climax of a lying and deceitful heart. Like all other sin, falsehoods start in our heart. And in a very real sense, all sin is a deception.
We see this all around us. We really do live in a world of lies and deception. And that deception comes out not just in our words, but in our very lives. What we believe—our theology—always comes out of our fingertips. Maybe you are prone to exaggeration, hyperbolizing the situation to garner sympathy. Maybe you are prone to white lies, whether on your time card or in your homework or on social media, in order to protect your pride and the image you’ve carefully curated to display to the world. These forms of falseness must also be rejected.
In the extreme, our self-deceived world displays their deception in increasing clarity. There are men who really do believe that they can become women, and women who believe they really can become men. Think about it—in 2015, the decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner was on the cover of Glamour magazine, cosplaying as a woman, and given the magazine's “Woman of the Year” Award. And we, you and me, are supposed to not only accept that deception, but celebrate it.
But we should expect this. Remember what Paul said as he diagnosed the sinful nature of man in Romans 1…
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them…For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen…And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
—Romans 1:18–32
I hope you hear in that long list of “unrighteousness” all the references to the 10 commandments. Paul’s words are ringing truer and truer as the years go by. So we need to think biblically as we look around the world and at ourselves—we are prone to self-deception, living against the grain of God’s creation. But no matter how hard we try, we can not stop living in God’s world.
So how then shall we live? The ninth commandment requires that we reject all falsehoods. Recognize the futility of bearing a false witness in this world that God has created. But notice that this command is directional. So we turn to the second derived command….
Love your neighbor
It has been said before, but is worth repeating, that the 10 commandments are often divided into two tables. This is not just an exercise of theologians organizing things the way they want them, but rather we get the idea from Jesus himself when he summarizes the entire law in Matthew…
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
—Matthew 22:37–40
In essence, Jesus boils these 10 commandments into just 2: love God (commandments 1–4) and love your neighbor (commandments 5–10). In fact, Jesus didn’t just summarize the 10 commandments with this little phrase, but the entirety of the Law and Prophets. Essentially, all of the commands of God can be summarized as “love”.
But love is a transitive verb—it requires a direct object. Someone or something must receive that love. In this second table, the direction of that love pivots from loving God to loving others. The fifth commandment isn’t just to “honor”, but to “honor your father and mother”, your first neighbors. Commandments 6–8 are not simply to not murder, steal, or commit adultery, but to not do those things against your neighbors and your most intimate neighbor, your spouse.
These commands are directional. So it makes sense that breaking these commands, even in the recess of our hearts and dispositions, do not just hurt ourselves, but others. These sins always have ripple effects. And in the ninth commandment, the object of our deception is made explicit: our neighbors.
So God’s word gives us commands, and a beautiful thing about this word is that it also anticipates and answers our questions, and maybe even our excuses. We hear we’re supposed to love our neighbor and not bear false witness against our neighbor, and maybe you’ve been tempted, like the lawyer in Luke 10 who, after Jesus gives him a summary of the law (love the Lord you God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself…), asks “well….who is my neighbor?”
Jesus’ response to that question is to tell the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. And Jesus' point in telling that story is that your neighbor is anyone you come into contact with. In fact, the Hebrew word Moses uses in Exodus 20:16 is literally translated as “one you associate with”. But that word has an equivalent in both Greek and Latin. In the Latin translation of the Old Testament, the word used was “proximus”, from which we obviously get the word, proximity. And the Greek word is the same word used by the lawyer in Luke 10, and it means “a human being who is close by”. So the scope of this command could be summarized as anyone within your sphere of influence, in your community, literally anyone you are in proximity to, even your enemies, that is who you are commanded to love by not bearing false witness against them.
Doug Wilson, commenting on the ramifications of false witness to our neighbor, says…
“Trust is essential to all community, and false witness makes that impossible…Bearing false witness therefore is civil war—warfare against one’s brother, one’s neighbor. It is an act of violence against someone you should be at peace with.”
—Doug Wilson
Maybe you’ve experienced this event before—where you have been the victim of some falsehood spoken about you. Rumors spread like wildfire, don’t they? You know the ruinous effects that that can have on you and your relationships within a community. Like Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Edmund blatantly denies seeing the White Witch—community and even family ties can be rattled, shaken, and shattered so fast.
But the ninth commandment directly prohibits acting as Edmund— the perpetrator, spreader, distributor of some falsehood or rumor. Cornelis Vonk in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism says this about the ninth commandment…
“A Christian must guard against backbiting and slander, though these two words do not mean the same thing. Backbiting involves speaking evil unnecessarily about one’s neighbor, even if what is said is true…But slander involves intentionally speaking falsehood with evil intention to cause someone harm.”
—Cornelis Vonk
In October of 1991, then-Judge Clarence Thomas was nominated to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. And, as per our Constitution, the Senate called Judge Thomas into their chambers and was questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The world got a front row seat to the effects that slander can have on a man when then-Senator (and chair of the committee) Joe Biden questioned Thomas on the spreading rumor of impropriety between Thomas and Anita HIll. Thomas, after unequivocally and categorically denying all of the allegations against him, asked how the members of the committee would feel if sleaze, dirt, rumor, and lies were spread about them in this public way. He then went on to say, “The Supreme Court is not worth it. No job is worth it. I’m not here for that. I’m here for my name, my family, my life, and my integrity.”
If, as Proverbs 22:1 says, a good name is more valuable than material gain, then damaging someone's reputation, tarnishing their good name, is worse than stealing their possessions. In fact, false testimony can be just as damaging as stealing with your hands. And in doing so, we do not love our neighbor.
So, how should we love our neighbor? What does the ninth commandment require? Well, we will love our neighbor when we…
Love the truth
The famous Russian writer and dissident, Alexander Solzhenitysn, while living in Communist Soviet Union, wrote this in his famous article entitled, “Live Not By Lies”...
“In our timidity, let us each make a choice: whether to remain consciously a servant of falsehood….or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect from one’s children and contemporaries…Some will lose their jobs. But there are no loopholes for anyone who wants to be honest.”
—Alexander Solzhenitysn
We do not love our neighbor by telling, spreading, or living by lies. And we also do not love our neighbor by just not telling lies. We love our neighbors by loving, promoting, declaring, and living in the truth. And the only way to do that is to know the truth. And the truth is not some abstract philosophical principle, but a person. And not just any person, but our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 John 5:20 says…
“And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”
—1 John 5:20
In order to rightly love our neighbors, we must be united to this truth. We must love this truth, and not be swayed by the destructive lies that swirl around us everyday. And in a society that has much declined even since Solzhenitysn’s days, living the truth has become harder and harder. HR departments really are calling in those who refuse to use their coworkers preferred pronouns. Teachers really are being commanded to use that child’s preferred new name, and not to inform their parents. Politicians and presidents really are saying women have the fundamental and inalienable right to kill the thing in the womb. That really is happening, and we must not turn away from that.
But the promise of the ninth commandment is that when we love the truth, when we don’t bend to the societal pressures that are escalating among us, we express our love to our neighbors, which includes the very enemies of God who hate him and desire that we live by lies.
John, again—a great champion of the truth—says…
“Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother (sixth commandment) is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”
—1 John 1:9–11
I can not love my neighbor by lying to them. I can not love the LGBT community by lying to them. I can not love my atheist friend by lying to him. I can not even love myself by lying to myself. And it doesn’t remedy that problem to call the lying “winsomeness”, or “niceness”. Of course, don’t be a jerk. We must be graciously and kind and charitable in our dealings with the lost. But if our foundations are not resting fully on the truth, as revealed in the person of Christ, we will actually be doing more harm than good.
No, we must receive light and live in the light, and call all those who are walking in darkness to turn to the light, and that light of the world has come, and we have seen his glory, and we have beheld him and we love him and we adore him and we treasure him and we bow to him as Lord of all, and his name, that great name above all names, given to him by the Father himself, is Jesus!
So, my friends, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, but testify to the truth! And as you do, remember that you were once lost in darkness, in your own self-deception. I was once an enemy of God, despising the truth. We were all once liars, deceivers, slanders, just like the rest of mankind. Jesus was exactly right—we belonged to a family whose father was the devil, the father of lies and liars. What we needed was a new Father. What we needed was a family to be adopted into. And God, being rich in mercy, awoke our hearts from the grave, paid the cost of our adoption—his only Son Jesus Christ—and gave us his Spirit, so now we are able to love and worship him in spirit and in truth. So love the truth, because it really is able, and has, set you free.