Good morning, Valley View. We are continuing our study in the Sermon on the Mount. You want to go ahead and turn to Matthew chapter five. We’ll be reading from there shortly. One of the things you’ve got to look out for in life, especially maybe you’re not in tune to it when you’re little, but as you get older, you become more in tune to it. You’ve got to watch out for the fine print. You know what I’m talking about. People love to sneak things into the fine print and try to sneak things past you, to try to deceive you or manipulate you, or to get you to maybe get out of something that you thought you had agreed to. I remember a time this happened to me, I was grieving, I was mourning, I had just heard this was 2013 and the news had come out that Lance Armstrong was indeed doping the whole time. Surprise, surprise. Took it kind of hard. So I felt like I need to find someplace to go and drown my sorrows. And where does every good Baptist go to drown their sorrows? Cracker Barrel. Right? I mean, it’s a place of imminent comfort. They have this nice, cozy fireplace. They have very delightful and kind servers. They have this wonderful country store where you can find all kinds of enticing items. And of course, I think the thing that brings the greatest comfort are their biscuits. That’s where I go to drown my sorrows. I drown my biscuits in 100% pure maple syrup. And I don’t do this as much now, but at the time that was a source of great comfort. So here I am, sitting in Cracker Barrel, ready to drown my sorrows, drown my biscuits in 100% maple syrup. And I reach for those little awesome little glass maple syrup bottles they have. And I see something I had never seen before. Before it had always said 100% pure maple syrup right there on the Bible– ha, bible , –on the bottle. And instead, this time it says 100% natural syrup. And I thought something is not right. I even called the lady over. Did you give me the right stuff? And of course, together we looked at the fine print. And if you’ll put an image up, here are the comparison of two bottles. You have pure maple syrup, pure natural syrup. But even here in the fine print, it’s not all maple syrup. 55% pure maple syrup, 55% cane syrup. I was tricked by the fine print. They tried to sneak it in under me. They went back. They used to have pure maple syrup. Now here’s the point. Obviously that’s pretty inconsequential. It was devastating at the moment. But we would say on the list of things you could be tricked by, that’s not very big. But there’s something about human nature that we love to sneak in the fine print on people. We think, let’s see what we can get away with. Let’s see if we can appear to be telling the truth, but really not maybe putting up some other picture. We like to do that with one another. We also like to do it in our relationship with God. Let me appear to be all in for him. Let me appear to be the great Christian. But yet also, I’m okay with sneaking around the side on some other things. I’ve made up my own rules about what’s okay and what’s not. But we’re not tricking God, and Jesus is going to address this today in the Sermon on the Mount. So if you’re in Matthew chapter five, turn there, and I’m going to read verses 33 through 37. If you would just stand as I look at those verses, read those verses out loud, just as a sign of reverence for God’s Word. Matthew 5:33 again, you have heard it. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. You can be seated. So here we have we’re in this section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus has said, leading up to this, I didn’t come to abolish the law. I didn’t come to get rid of the law. I came to fulfill it. Also your righteousness. If you want to be a part of the kingdom of heaven, your righteousness needs to be greater than that of the Pharisees. The guys you think are super righteous, the guys who put themselves forward as the most righteous. Your righteousness has to actually be greater than that. And of course, that leaves everybody wondering, what does that mean? Jesus is sharing that with them. He’s showing them, here’s what the law meant. And he gives six examples. And we’ve walked through a few of those already and they all follow this pattern. That’s what that word again here in the outline points towards this pattern. He says over and over again, it’s some version of you have heard that it was said to those of old, or you’ve heard that it was said, or again it was said. But I say to you, that’s the pattern we see in these six examples. You heard that it was said in the and the fact that he uses that word heard shows that he’s trying to point out that he is not here again, to contradict the law of the Old Testament. He’s here to contradict or clarify the wrong interpretation of the law that they’ve been hearing from the teachers around them, those who have twisted the law to make it say whatever they wanted to help them live out whatever decision and lifestyle they wanted to live. So this is the pattern we’ve been seeing. You’ve heard that it was said. But I say to you now, what is the actual issue he’s addressing here? You have heard that it was said in verse 33, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. Now the issue he’s raising here with this verse he’s bringing up or this law, we’ll get into that in a second. But the issue he’s trying to raise with them is how they keep their verbal commitments, their spoken commitments. In fact, this practice of spoken oaths was really important at the time because people weren’t as, skilled in writing contracts, writing things on paper. They didn’t carry around paper and pen with them as much. And so you had to have. And even going back in further ancient times, you had to have these ways of speaking that indicated to others. We’re now entering into a more spoken formal contract. So, you know, there’s ordinary speech where you’re just talking, hanging out, saying whatever. But then there’s moments where your speech changes and now it means something more binding, more formal. That would have been especially important in more of a spoken culture rather than a written writing things down culture. So you had to have these kind of I know now when you use these words, I know now you really mean it. We’re entering into more of a verbal contract rather than just normal everyday language. And so Jesus says here, by bringing up this issue, you’ve heard that it was said, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. He’s trying to address this issue of how do we go about the proper way of speaking with one another in a way that is making promises that we’re meant to keep, are meant to commit to? And what he does here is he quotes from the Old Testament this isn’t actually an exact quote like he’s done in some of the other. As we’ve seen, it’s more of a compilation of a number of different passages, and I want to flip over to one of the verses he’s referencing. It’s in Leviticus 19. If you have a copy of the Bible and if you have a church Bible, the page number should be on the screen. I think it’s page 92. You want to flip over to Leviticus. This is an important section because it’s going to highlight some of what Jesus is trying to address with the whole issue that the Pharisees are doing of changing the law to make it say whatever they want, make it attainable in their eyes. Make it a list of do’s and don’ts that they can keep. Leviticus 19 Leviticus is the part of the Bible where people often stop in the yearly Bible reading plan. That’s about as far as we get, and we go, whoa, that’s a lot. I think I’m good. I’m going to pause here. If that’s you, it’s okay. Skip ahead. It’s all right. Some Bible is better than no Bible. We’ll be getting into a new Bible reading plan at the beginning of next year. We keep Bible reading plans out there. Any time you want to pick up a Bible reading plan, jump in whatever day of the year it is. Don’t feel like you have to try to catch up, but Leviticus 19 is a really important section. In the book of Leviticus. You think of Leviticus as just law, after law after law and rule after rule, and that is certainly there. But if you look at chapter 19 first, it starts off and you can just look at the titles depending on your Bible. I don’t know what kind of chapter or section titles you have, but chapter 19 starts with out with the Lord is holy, the holiness of the Lord. So much of Leviticus is about reminding them that God is holy, and we often tend to forget that and treat him a lot more familiar. Especially in our day and age. We tend to forget how awesome and holy and separate he is. And of course, verse two is a powerful verse that’s quoted. We saw this in first Peter you shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. We’re called to holiness because of how holy he is. But as it gets down into the part where our passage is quoted today, you can see the title for verses nine through 18. It’s all about loving your neighbor as yourself. If you’ve been a Christian any amount of time, you’ve heard these verse first greatest commandment love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. Second is love your neighbor as yourself. This is at the heart of what Jesus teaches, and here it is in the midst of the most intense part of the Old Testament law. Even here they were driving at how do we love one another well? I’m just going to skim across some of these commands here. When you verse nine, when you reap the harvest of the land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, but you leave some for others. This was kind of their system of welfare. Verse ten, you shall not strip your vineyard bare. Verse 11, you shall not steal or deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another. Verse 12 is what Jesus is referencing in the Sermon on the Mount. You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of the Lord. Verse 13, don’t oppress your neighbor. Verse 14 don’t curse the deaf or put a stumbling block. Verse 15 don’t do injustice in the court, don’t slander in verse 16. And verse 17 is driving at the core issue that the Pharisees have been missing as they talk about the law and interpret the law. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. See, there’s this misconception that the law was a list of rules, and if we can keep those on the surface we’ll be good. But even the heart of the Old Testament law says, I care about what’s going on in your heart. I care about the way you view your neighbor, not just okay, I was nice to them on the surface. No, no, no. Also in my heart. How can I get past whatever hate I might have for someone? Because this whole section is driving at verse 18, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So even at the heart of the Old Testament law, the call was to check your heart, to make sure that you’re thinking about what’s going on in my own heart, I’m not just keeping the outward law, I’m also dealing with the heart. And so Jesus, when he’s bringing up oath taking, he’s trying to also hear another example of him dressing, addressing the heart of those who are teaching the law and misteaching it, to construe it to mean whatever they want so that they can do whatever they want with the law. And when it comes to oath taking, they had this great system of making sure they can say whatever they want, to get things their way, to make sure they get their way. What we want to do instead is move towards radical truth. So, you know, at the beginning I said that people love to use fine print to get their way. I think when we think of ourselves, we need to think of ourselves not as fine print Christians, but as giant print Christians. We’re not trying to hide anything from anyone. We’re not trying to sneak someone something past someone to deceive or manipulate someone we know or God himself. No, we’re giant print Christians. We want to live out the scriptures to the fullest, to the most obvious. We want to be all about extreme truth to its fullest. And so I think he gives us three ways to be all about radical truth, radical truth and transparency. And let’s look at this first way here in verse 34. He says, I say to you, do not take an oath at all. Here’s the thing I think he’s addressing here. The first way we move towards radical truth is to make sure you’re making the right promises, make sure you’re making the right promises, the right kind of promises. When he says you should not take an oath at all, I don’t think he’s saying don’t ever make any promise at all. He can’t be talking about that, because last week we just looked at him elevating the importance of marriage. And what is marriage? It’s a promise between two people. And last week he said, really, if you go back to creation, God’s intent is what one man, one woman for a lifetime. We should keep that promise. We should hold it with great reverence. Even the disciples, when he talked about this, said, this is such a big deal that maybe we should never even get married. It’s that big of a commitment. And Jesus didn’t say so don’t make the commitment to one another. No, he was elevating the importance of that promise. So he’s not saying here right after that contradicted himself. Don’t ever make any promises. What he’s going to address here are the kinds of wrong oaths we take to try to deceive others. The kind of wrong promises we make, the kind of habits and attitudes people have developed over the years to try to get around keeping our word, get around keeping God’s word. And so he’s going to address a few of these. I got four examples that I think come from these notes, that these are from this passage, that these statements represent first. And by the way, I think we could use the word and I’ve put this in your, in your notes. We could use the word. What they were trying to do is basically build a system of legal loopholes. Okay. Yeah. We said that. But here’s my here’s my way around that. I’ve got a loophole here, here, built into the promise we made between each other. You thought it was a promise, but really, I knew all along I could get out of it easily. And the people who were teaching the scripture at that time had that mindset with God’s Word. We built in legal loopholes in our relationships and our commitments in the ways that we commit to one another. But we don’t want to be fine print Christians. We want we’re not trying to make fine print promises. And so he’s going to attack that type of promising. Look here, for example, first he says, I say to you, do not take an oath at all. Either by heaven, for it is the throne of God. I think this represents the kind of promise that we need to reject. And this is the second point how we move towards being not a fine print Christian, but one who is about radical truth. Radical transparency. First is to reject the fine print, reject it completely. Don’t keep that as an option in your life. And one of the ways people do this. Here’s an example. When we use heaven, swear by heaven. I think that’s an example of swearing by God’s name. Now this is going to take a minute to unpack. There’s a lot going on here. The Jews were known for being very concerned about taking God’s name in vain. That’s one of the Ten Commandments. They didn’t want to break that. And so they had this system whereby they avoided even being able to pronounce or speak his name. If you would put the image up on the screen of some Hebrew words, this first word at the top image this. These are the letters basically YHW, h. And that’s found in Exodus 3:15. Jews write Hebrew from right to left to the opposite direction of what we write it. And I mentioned this before that when Hebrew was first written down, they didn’t include the vowels in the writing. They used vows when they pronounced it, but it wasn’t written down in the writing. Later along, they came along because Hebrew wouldn’t have been people’s first spoken language at that time. Aramaic would have been in the first language. Probably Greek would have been a second language, kind of the trade language. Latin was coming on the scene. A lot of people didn’t remember how to speak Hebrew, pronounce Hebrew, so they brought in some of the vowels. In fact, if you see this is the word Adonai, you’ve probably heard that word. And they’ve added these little dots here, here and here. Those are their attempt to say, this is how you should sound it out. These are the vowels, the symbols for a and o and a. So even today when Jews are reading quoting from Old Testament, in fact you’ve probably heard the famous prayer the hero O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. When they say God, they’re even though it’s Yahweh in the print, they don’t pronounce it. They say Adonai instead because they don’t want to mispronounce his name. What happened over time, though, even though these vowels were added, if you look up the word Yahweh, and that’s how we often pronounce it. But that’s my best guess, because they did not have the vowels in on, because they didn’t want to take a chance that anyone would know how to pronounce it properly. If you don’t know how to pronounce God’s name, you. You can’t take it in vain. You can’t mispronounce it. This is how much care they had for making sure and have that we don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, that we don’t take his name lightly. In fact, eventually what happened is they took those vowels a, o, and a, and they just added them in between the consonants for the name of the Lord. All that word means is I am. When Moses met with God at the burning bush and asked, okay, who should I tell the people sent me? He said, I am. That’s just the Hebrew word for I am. I am sent you. I will be who I will be, I am who I am. They took those vows and just added the vows from Adonai and added it into there. And of course, that’s where ultimately we get the word Jehovah. That’s where that word for God, Jehovah comes from. In fact, the next image will show you from William Tyndale Bible. William Tyndale was the first one to translate the full Bible into English, from the Hebrew and Greek. And right here in the middle, he’s got the Lord Jehovah. He’s the one that kind of popular popularized that word for God’s name. Okay, here’s the point of all that they took very seriously God’s name. We don’t want to take it in vain. We don’t want to misuse it. And so instead of swearing by God’s name, there were these substitutes. We’re not going to use his name, but we have these official substitutes that you can use. Heaven wasn’t one of those, but it was really close. And that’s the point. Let me pick something I can swear by that says to someone, I’m telling you, I’m basically swearing upon God himself without fully going there. And I think it’s kind of this way of saying, I’m making a prompt, suddenly saying, I’m making a really important promise. I want to appear to be making a really important promise without really making it. Let me make sure you think I’m all in. But in my heart I’m holding some back. And we gotta reject that. We don’t want to be the kind of people who promise, first of all, according to God’s name, because we don’t really have the right to use his name in making promises. If I were to promise for something on behalf of someone else without asking them, that might not go well. If I came to you and said, I knew you were in the midst of moving, and I said, hey, let me tell you, Leroy, I promise you he will help you move. He is the best. You know Leroy, he played offensive line at PRP. He’s built for moving. I’m making this person up. But you know what I’m talking about. You here, Leroy. And you go. Yeah, I want that guy to help me move. Thank you for promising that he’ll help me move. I hadn’t talked to Leroy yet. I go and ask him and he goes, I can’t. Sorry. You’re going to have to tell him. I come back to you and tell you. I’m sorry. Leroy can’t help you move. Now. Not only are you mad at me, you’re mad at Leroy. Even though you never talked with him about it. What does Leroy have against me? Why didn’t he want to help me move? Does he think he’s too good to move my stuff around? I don’t want to see Leroy again. Like I have now injured his character in your eyes. Because I promised something to you on his behalf. Some of us feel this way about God because others have made promises on God’s behalf for you. I promise God will heal you. I promise. Really? Now I believe God heals. I hope he does. We pray for that all the time. I believe he still heals. But look, Paul prayed three times. He was very specific. Take this thorn out of my flesh and we don’t know exactly what it was. I think when we get to heaven, he’ll show us. Look, here’s the thorn I’ve been talking about all along. It was embedded very deep. We’ve speculated about what it was. He prayed three times. Take this. Heal me. And he did. God didn’t heal him. And so you mean to tell me that you can’t demand that God must heal you? You’re somehow more spiritual than Paul when God chose not to heal him. And by the way, Paul was okay with it. Yes. God, I trust you. I know you’re at work. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But I know I’m trusting you. Some of us have had others make promises on God’s behalf, and that’s that’s disrupted your perception of God and hurt his reputation in your eyes. We’re not to do that. By the way. I’ll just say as a side note, if that’s you, if you’re someone who has, maybe you’ve been a part of a church, maybe even here where you’ve suffered. I know some say spiritual abuse. I don’t quite know how to summarize that. There’s some hurt that has come to you because of your involvement in a church. I I’m sorry for that. I don’t know what your situation is. I want to give you the. I hope we can earn your trust here. We’re not going to rush you through that. That takes a long time. If your perception of God was skewed by someone else wrongly, that can take a long time. Take the time you need. I’m sorry that has happened. We need to be careful with our words and not make promises on God’s behalf for him that we don’t have a right. Just like you wouldn’t want someone to make a promise on your behalf. So that’s the first one. The second one comes back to this word earth. Don’t promise on heaven because that is the throne of God. You don’t own that. That’s not yours. That’s not your right to make. But also then it comes to earth. Or don’t make an oath by the earth, for it is his footstool. This has a couple different meanings. I’m just going to focus on one. I think this highlights our tendency to overpromise things. Yeah, I swear to you, by the earth. But I’m promising you the earth. If I don’t hold this up like you have a right to the whole earth, that this is God’s footstool, not yours. That’s like trying to sell someone the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s not yours to sell. We use this phrase you’ve promised. They promised them the moon. Like you have some right to give the moon to someone else. You have some ownership over the moon. We tend to have this I’m going to overpromise, I’m going to really sell it. I’m going to make it sound. In fact, our phrase is too good to be true. And if it sounds too good to be true, you know how it goes. It probably is too good to be true. Even though we want it to be true so badly, we want it to be true. Let’s avoid that tendency to overpromise because we want to be people of our word. Look at this third example here. Not by earth it’s his footstool or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. I think this is an example of us building in an escape clause into our promises. So I mentioned that there was this system of formal oaths you can make. There are ways you could use words that indicated specifically that I’m about to make a promise that really counts. But there became this tendency. And if you flip over to Matthew 23, we’ll look at an example of this. There became this tendency of building in escape clauses around it, so that you didn’t really have to keep your promise. Matthew 23. This is the section of woes we’ve we’ve come to this a number of times because it’s almost a compliment to the Sermon on the Mount, or a counterpart to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is being very direct with the Pharisees. And over and over again he says, woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites! He calls them directly hypocrites, blind guides seven different times in here, you hypocrites! And here’s where he’s pointing out some of their hypocrisy in verse 16. What do you blind guides who say, if anyone swears– this is the issue we’re talking about here– making an oath swears by the temple. It is nothing. And by the way, he’s saying, woe to you who say this. If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bounded by his oath. You see, they’re putting in this escape clause. I didn’t swear by the gold. I only sweared by the temple. Therefore it’s not binding. I don’t have to keep it. Here’s what he says to that tendency, that mindset. You blind fools. Which is greater? The gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? Jesus pointing out the hypocrisy, the flaw in their logic building in this escape clause, I can swear by the temple and I’m good. I don’t actually have to keep it. I didn’t say gold of the temple. The reason why this matters when we look at Jerusalem. There was Rabbi at the time who taught. If you say swear by Jerusalem, that’s not binding, you’re okay. But if you say to Jerusalem, no, that’s binding. What? Really? We’re getting that minute. That one little word I said by, I didn’t say to. So I’m good, I don’t have I didn’t really. I don’t have to keep it. I’m not bound to it. We build in our little escape clauses to make us feel good about our desire to really get out of following what God says. Don’t build escape clauses into your promises. That’s like the little kids that put their fingers, cross their fingers behind their back and think, I can say whatever I want. It doesn’t matter because I got my fingers crossed. No, and that’s not how we act. That’s not how Christians are called to be. Lastly, look at this last example. All right, I get it. I shouldn’t swear by heaven. Of course that’s not mine. I shouldn’t swear by Earth. Yeah, I don’t have any say over that. Of course I don’t own the city of Jerusalem. It’s important people value it. But what about my own head? Shouldn’t I have a say over that? Do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. This is the tendency, I think, when we make a promise by doing this, taking this approach, it’s this approach where we deny the sovereignty of God. We deny that God is the one ultimately in control. And here’s what I mean by that. He says, you know, we say, I own my own head. I sure certainly should have say over whether I invoke that in a promise or not. But he says, you don’t even can’t even decide if you make one hair white or black. Now, in our day and age, we go, I can make my hair whatever color I want. This doesn’t make any sense to me, by the way, this is my natural color. I don’t color it this way, I promise. I didn’t do this to try to look older and wiser, even though I’m not above that, by the way, it’s okay. I’ve got nothing against people coloring their hair at all. It’s pretty common, but really all we’re doing when we do that is painting our hair. We’re making a different color on the surface. And the point? This is just a way of saying you can’t go back in time to a place where your hair was really that color, and you can’t go forward to a time where your hair will be a different color. You don’t have control over even that. Only God does. And so don’t go around thinking I am in control. I can do whatever I want. James four I’ve listed in your notes. You can look it up later, but he says, don’t go around saying, hey, tomorrow I’ll go do this and that and sounding like you’re the one who’s all in control because he says you do not even know what tomorrow holds. You have no idea. That doesn’t mean make plans. That means that doesn’t mean don’t make plans. That means walk in humility, trusting that God is the one that is sovereign, not me. So these are examples of these kind of improper fine print oaths that we want to make, these fine print promises that we want to make. And Jesus is saying, don’t be like that. Don’t be the person who is making the fine print promise. Instead, be the person of absolute truth. And here’s how we do that. Look at number three. Simply rely on your simple word. Rely on your simple word. Look at verse 37. This is his conclusion to the I’ve said to you, don’t do this, but instead do this. Verse 37, let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. Your translation might say the evil one. It can be translated either way. And of course, who is the father of lies, but the great deceiver himself Satan. And so if we have in our heart these little tricks of deception, we’re playing his game. We’re falling right in with his intent. But just let your words simply be yes or no. You don’t have to try to come up with these formulas to get around keeping the truth, following the truth, keeping God’s Word. In fact, I love it when I’m in the conversation with someone and they kind of hit this pause and they go, can I be real with you now? Or say you hear the word honestly, can I be honest with you now? And in the back of my mind I’m always thinking, were you not before? Will you? Is this a sign that you were being dishonest up to this point and and they weren’t. Hopefully. Usually that’s just our way of saying I’m trying to be more transparent now. I’m sharing with you something I don’t normally share, but it always catches me a little off guard, and it always catches me off guard when people really double down on their truth, on their on the fact that they know I really mean I’m not lying. The more they double down, the more skeptical I get. You know, the more red tape, the more fine print there is, the more you go. What are they trying to hide here? I’m going to show you an example of this. This is a clip. Have you heard of Elizabeth Holmes? She started this company. She became the youngest female billionaire ever. And it was all a lie. The whole company was a lie. The whole system she had set up, all of it was fake. She got exposed, got convicted, was sent to prison. But before being sent to prison, she had a filmmaker come and live with her for, I don’t know, it was something like 30 days. And of course, her intent was to show that she hadn’t done anything wrong. When I show you this clip, I want you to watch, and the movie hadn’t come out yet, so I don’t know anything about the I’m not recommending the whole movie. Okay, but this clip I want you to watch, the way that she doubles down on the fact that she isn’t lying, and on the fact that she is keeping her promises that she is trustworthy. Look at all the different ways she does this. In this very short clip. Let’s play the clip. I’m not that person, I can promise you that. I don’t have anything to deceive you on. Of course I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no. There’s no reason for me to do that. Okay? Okay. Good talk. You’re being real right now. I’m always being real. The long, creepy stares, the fake half smile. I’m always being real. You were just convicted of being the biggest liar on planet Earth. I would never deceive you. Why do you think I would do? The more doubling down you get, the more you go. What are you trying to hide? What’s going on here? And look, I don’t know her. Her at all. I’ve not studied the case in depth. I. I don’t know, but those are a lot of red flags. We’re called to be huge print Christians. We shouldn’t have to add disclaimer after disclaimer after disclaimer to say no, look, I promise you, I am telling the truth. Our word should simply be yes or no. That should be enough. Our character should be as such, high standing and quality that no one has to question or doubt. I’m going to give you just four quick action points, application points related to this idea that I think we’re called to. Number one, make sure your life is an open book. Make sure people know I’m not here trying to hide anything. In fact, the word we use, especially we used of our elders, we’re called to be above reproach. That’s in Titus. The passage in Titus I’ve listed there, we’re called to have such upstanding character that no one even questions. I love that what Joseph Josephus says of the Essenes. I’ve put this quote in your verse. You may not have heard of this group of Jewish teachers. The Essenes, of course, in Scripture we see the scribe see, we see the Pharisees, we see the Sadducees. Those were two different. Maybe like we would view denominations, Jewish denominations, in a sense, but there was also a group at the time they don’t show up in Scripture called the Essenes. They were maybe more of like the radicals, maybe more of the ones who had the monasteries up in the mountains. Here’s what Josephus, who was a Jewish historian at that time, here’s what he said of them. This was their public reputation. And the quote is not on screen. It should be in your notes. If you have the notes, whatever they say is also firmer than an oath, whatever they say. But swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury. For they say he, you, he who cannot be believed without swearing by God is already condemned. Even he’s acknowledging they were known. Hey, if they say it, it is completely trustworthy and they’re skeptical of those who have to add something else to their words to try to justify and validate. That’s the kind of people we want to be known as. Man, if someone at Valley View says something, you can count on it. They don’t have to dress it up. They don’t have to add oaths and swearing and promises over and over again to try to convince you that they mean it. That’s what we’re called to be. Secondly, reject empty oaths. Just get rid of this, especially using God’s name, swearing to God on something. You know, we live in an age where there is so much fakeness around us all the time. You can’t open up a any kind of social media app with wondering, was that real or was that fake? You didn’t have to do that 30 years ago, or the age of scams all the time. Was that phone call real or was it fake? Was that email from that Nigerian prince real? I sent him my bank account info. I should be getting lots of money anytime now. Was that real? We live in an age. There’s so much fakeness. You want to know what will stand out? Radical truth. And we want to stand out in a culture that is desperate for truth. They’re looking everywhere for truth. They’re man. They’re grasping onto everything around them, thinking, well, this give me hope. Will this give me joy? And it’s right here. Reject empty oaths. Number three, don’t shade the truth. I don’t know if that’s the right word to choose there or not. I think you know what I mean. Don’t try to make the truth sound a little better for your purposes. Just a little. Yeah, it was $100, but I said 200 because I thought that would sell it a little better or don’t make it sound worse than it was to try to sell it a little better. Just it was just a little bit. I’m just going to make it a little bit worse to make sure. I still remember this lady. We were doing a yard sale in Little Rock. She pulls up in a Mercedes and gets out of her car and goes, I’m down to my last $10. I know your chair is $20, but can I get it for ten? You just got out of a Mercedes your last $10. Really? That’s all I asked her. Really? That’s your last $10? Yes it is. Okay, well, you better take this chair then. I hope you survive somehow with just you and this chair and your Mercedes. You didn’t have to shade the truth. Don’t do that. Just speak the truth. Speaking in love. Just speak the truth. And then, number four. See your word all the way through. When you make a promise. When you make a commitment. In fact, I’ve been using the phrase, whenever we encounter something with the elders, something difficult. We’ve got to see this through all the way through. Here’s the phrase to the bitter end a lot of times we get most of the way through when we go. Now it’s getting too hard. I think we’re good. No, no, no, we gotta see it all the way through to the bitter end, through the hardest parts. That hardest part is that last 10%. Make sure people know if I say something, I’m going to see it through all the way through to the bitter end. Here’s why this is important. In Titus, why is it that we don’t lie? God never lies. His character is truth. Jesus in John 1:14, he’s full of what? Grace and truth. He is full of grace and truth. That’s who he is. And so when he makes promises to us, we can count on it. We don’t have to wonder, did he really mean it or not? Will he really be there for me no matter what? And the way you go about your life and the way you use your words tells the world something about your view of God. If we are people who hold to the truth of God’s Word, who are giant Christians in the commitments we make to others, others will see that and it will stand out. Here’s the final blank in your outline. Your word is your witness. Your word is your witness. In a world where people don’t mean what they say, they say whatever they need to say to get what they want. Your word is your witness. Your word is pointing people to the one who keeps his word, the one who is called the word Jesus Himself. And he is the one that gives us the strength to commit to following His Word. Let’s pray. God, we thank you that you keep your word. You never break your promises. You will never leave us or forsake us. You are completely, entirely trustworthy and faithful, even when we’re faithless. Help us to be more like you and to be radical with truth. To not try to get around what’s clear in Scripture. To not try to skirt around, to manipulate and get our way. Help us to be all about your way. Thank you Jesus, we love you. Amen.