Hear now the Word of the Lord from Matthew 5:33-37.

33 “Again 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.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
Matthew 5:33-37, ESV

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. My wife and I recently watched a movie, which was a dramatic, historic adaptation portrayal, reenactment, kind of a thing of the 1938 Munich Agreement. The 1938 Munich Agreement was one of the immediate precursors that led to World War Two, although its goal was the exact opposite. The hope was that by this agreement there could be peace for our time. Indeed, after the agreement was struck, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, proclaimed that we have achieved peace for our time. Foe this agreement, representatives from Britain and France and Italy all came together and met with Hitler in Munich, Germany, trying to appease him by giving him a territory, the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, with the agreement that he would not proceed further into the nation of Czechoslovakia. However, within a year Hitler had broken his agreement and claimed the rest of Czechoslovakia before then going on to invade Poland and France. Which again was the beginning of World War Two.

Now, what this movie portrayed, that was so interesting, were two things, two sides to the approaches to this agreement You saw on one side Hitler's absolute willingness to lie. At one point, Hitler declares that he, with his own people of course not publicly, but he declares that he is willing to lie a thousand times over for Germany. That's his perspective. His word means nothing. He will say anything to get what he ultimately wants. By doing this agreement, he wasn't actually sincere about it at all. He was ultimately planning to take all of Czechoslovakia for himself, but this was just a part of his overall strategy.

The second aspect of this was Great Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Where it really brought out his great desire not just to avoid some inconvenience, but really that he wanted to seek peace at all costs. He did not want to plunge his generation once again into the horrors of war that Great Britain had just fought through only a couple of decades before.

Now, what's interesting as you sort of are watching this, especially with the perspective of history and understanding where this is all going to go, is you're just almost shouting at the screen, don't listen to him, don't do it, don't think that he can be trusted. I don't think the movie is at all made to portray Hitler in a good light. You can't really do that. There's not really a way to portray Hitler in a good light. So when we all see this movie, no matter what perspective you're coming from, everyone looks and sees the evil of a man who would lie a thousand times over, do whatever it took, even with the use of extraordinary, horrific, heinous violence to gain what he wanted.

As much as there is a universal condemnation to Hitler, both in his under false premises agreement in Munich in 1938 and also everything else that he did, as much as there's universal condemnation of that. It's interesting to think how often we are so quick to justify ourselves in the way that we bend the truth. Now, certainly, probably in almost every case, the issues are not as severe or pronounced. But how often do we say things that we don't entirely mean? How often do we find ways where we backpedal our way slowly, carefully, well, I didn't quite say that out of agreements. Where we have clearly agreed to do something and we find little loopholes that allow us to extricate ourselves from those situations. We are so quick to demand the truth of others and to condemn others when they don't live up to the standards of truth.

We are simultaneously so quick to just whitewash all of the areas where we don't live according to the truth. As Andrew talked about in our confession of sin, this gets at a Ten Commandments issue. You shall not bear false witness, but it has much more to do with this because God takes more or takes truth seriously. It gets to another commandment as we'll see as we go through this.

Here Jesus is teaching us not just about what we mean to say in the way that we structure our oaths and our vows. But Jesus is getting the character and the heart of God himself. God loves the truth. So our big idea today is that Jesus came to fulfill God's promises..

As we study this section, we see three parts to this.
1. God's Commandment
2. God's Control
3. God's Covenant.

God's Commandment

So first of all, we see God's commandment in verses 33 through 35. Jesus begins this section with the word again, because we are continuing on the pattern that he has been taking us on. Each week we've seen how Jesus is analyzing a different part of God's moral law. He began by talking about two of the Ten Commandments. You shall not murder, sixth Commandment, you shall not commit adultery, the seventh Commandment. There he quoted those commandments verbatim. Then a couple of weeks ago, we looked at his teaching on divorce, where Jesus didn't quote one of the Ten Commandments, but he quoted some of the teachings surrounding marriage and divorce from the Bible, from Deuteronomy 24:1. But there we saw that he did not quite quote it terribly accurately, not because Jesus was misquoting it, but because he was quoting the way that the text had been misquoted to justify unjustifiable, wrong divorces.

Well, Jesus does something different here in the way that he quotes Scripture. Here he's not quoting one of the Ten Commandments verbatim. He is also not trying to show the way that the clear teaching of Scripture had been twisted. He is rather trying to accurately capture the sense of the Old Testament about the oaths and the vows that God's people take. We'll talk about what those are in just a moment. But he's trying to show the overall teaching of God's teaching on oaths and vows. But in this, we can see the way in which this teaching had been twisted.

Now, when we talk about oaths and vows before we sort of get into what Jesus is quoting and teaching here, it's important to understand what we're talking about. When we talk about oaths, we are talking about invoking God or some sacred object. Here, Jesus cites heaven or earth or Jerusalem, to invoke God or invoke some sacred object in order to strengthen a statement or to strengthen a promise. We see this actually quite often whenever we see oaths that are taken to swear someone in when they give testimony in the court of law. That's an oath. That's exactly what Jesus is talking about here.

Vows, however, are when we invoke God's name or something, some sacred object, in order to promise to God that we will do something. We make a vow to the Lord that we will do something for him or carry something out. Oaths and vows and Jesus is getting at the total teaching on oaths and vows in the Old Testament.

Let me read to you a couple of texts that are behind the composite paraphrase that Jesus gives here. And let me try to bring out the way in which this teaching had been distorted. So first, consider Leviticus 19:12, which says, "You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God." Or Numbers 30:2, "If a man vows a vow to the Lord, he shall not break his word." Or Deuteronomy 23:21, "If you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling."

So look at what Jesus says. He's capturing the sense of this, but notice the repetition of the Lord. "You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have performed." What Jesus is exposing here is, as Hendrickson puts it, these subtle hairsplitting distinctions that are deeply flawed. It's where people would pull out specific details and point to those details as loopholes. Loopholes that they would try to stretch out as far as they could possibly go. As loopholes that would allow people out of what they had sworn and what they had promised in their everyday speech.

So what the Pharisees were teaching was that as long as you didn't swear by the name of the Lord, but rather if you swore by heaven or by earth or by Jerusalem, well, then you weren't truly bound. Now, if you swear by the Lord, well, that's on you, that's on your head, you have to keep it. Again, listen to these texts, "You shall not swear by my name falsely." Well, see, they're, it's only about the name of God. As long as you only haven't invoked the name of God, then you're safe. But Jesus goes on to say, understand it's not that simple. If you invoke not just the name of God, but if you invoke heaven, you are invoking an oath by the throne of God. If you invoke, invoke by the Earth, that's God's footstool. If you invoke an oath by Jerusalem, that's the city of the great king. That's where the Lord will dwell on Mt. Zion forever with his people, as we saw a prophecy last week on Easter Sunday, when we look at Isaiah chapter 25.

Now, we've talked a few times in our study of the Sermon on the Mount about the nature of legalism. One of the things that I've been trying to continue to show that Jesus is teaching is that often we think of legalism as a ratcheting up of God's commandments. That legalism is when we ask more of people than God adds to them. When we make our requirements for people stricter than God's laws. But Jesus teaches the exact opposite about legalism. He teaches that the legalism of the Pharisees was to, in fact, relax the requirements of the law.

Look back at Chapter 5:19-20. This is the beginning; this is the first section of Jesus's teaching on the law. He says, "Therefore, whoever relaxes (there it is, that word relaxes) one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

What did the scribes and Pharisees do? They relax the requirement. What is God's requirement? Well, it is a righteousness that exceeds the relaxed requirements of the Pharisees. Yet it is still true that the Pharisees were always adding rules. Yet the sum total is that they are relaxing the full burden of the law. More rules, but a lower standard. How do these two ideas fit together?

Well, we see what's happening here. What the Pharisees are doing is they are piling up discoveries of loopholes. The heart of legalism is that legalism is always looking for loopholes. Legalism looks for loopholes to wriggle out from under the full weight of the requirement of the burden of God's law. So, again, they would say, well, the loophole is as long as you don't invoke the name of the Lord, then you're fine. It's not that big of a deal. You can see it right there in the text. If only if you swear by the name of the Lord is your vow binding. So if you swear by heaven or earth or Jerusalem, you're just fine. Jesus says this is indeed a violation of the ninth commandment. You shall not bear false witness.

What he points out here is when you swear by these things by heaven, by earth, by Jerusalem, it's also a violation of the third commandment. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, because understand that heaven and earth and Jerusalem were places that God had set His name. God had used and created the heavens and the Earth to glorify Him. The heavens and the Earth belong to the Lord. The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein. Jerusalem was the place where God set his name. These are places that were meant to reflect God's glory. If you swear by these and then break your oath, you are taking the Lord's name as a light, vain thing. It's not enough just to avoid citing and the name of the Lord and framing your oaths that way. Heaven and Earth and Jerusalem were created to reflect the glory of the Lord.

So Westminster Shorter Catechism 55, says, "The third commandment forbids all profane thing or abusing of anything whereby God makes Himself known." It's not just to use the Lord's name as a swear word. It's also Jesus says to invoke these things as a part of your oaths and then to go on to break those oaths. What Jesus says is, this isn't just a matter of honesty, but by the way, that you framed these oaths. If you're using them and framing them in such a way to create various loopholes out of keeping your word, then you're exposing an issue of your heart. It shows that you not only are not a person of your word, but you're also exposing that you don't think very highly of God and his name if you take the name of the Lord in vain.

Now, what's interesting, if we think about how pervasive our dishonesty can run, about how deep those roots go in our lives. In some ways, we are in practice, in training to become liars from the very earliest days of our childhood. Children lie very early on and it's really funny because very early on they're terrible at it. You know, how did you get all of the cupcakes frosting on your face? Well, I tripped and I fell into it, and that's how all the cupcake frosting got onto my face. Real example. Or they might say something about, well, I didn't do this and something else is just totally clear. You know that they are lying. Children are very bad at lying, but they do it anyway.

But little by little children, including me back in the day, including you, we learn what we can lie about and what we can't. We learned the kinds of things that well, okay, this is obvious, I can't necessarily lie about it, but we can lie about this over there. Sometimes we learn these clever ways of framing our oaths. So you ever do the cross your fingers behind your back trick? Oh, I don't have to do it, I had my fingers crossed the whole time. Or you might say something and say, No, no, no, it's opposite day. Children love these games about all these loopholes that get them out of fulfilling their word. If they're really serious, they will fulfill these vows swearing by the pinky swear, the all sacred pinky promises.

Teenagers then learn all the better how to be vague or noncommittal in their language, especially by telling non-verifiable lies. Don't worry, Mom, I was at the library. How is she going to know if I was at the library or not? I think there's actually a bar in some college towns that's called The Library, so you can accurately tell your mom, I was at the library. Even some people go on to do this professionally. Lawyers, lawyers are trained to write loopholes into contracts and to spot loopholes. No offense to lawyers, but this is ultimately we're working with a world in which people are good at lying and lawyers are trained to spot those at the very least.

Our whole lives in some sense are about learning how to lie, how we can say things without saying what we mean. Jesus says how we use our words is a very serious matter. It's not enough just to frame our ohs in the right way. I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I didn't swear by the name of the Lord. Ultimately, Jesus says, This reflects our heart. What the heart thinks, the mouth speaks. That's what Jesus teaches. I heard that particular framing in a book that I was reading yesterday and I thought it was so good. That the heart thinks the mouth speaks. That's true for Hitler, who is willing to lie a thousand times over for Germany, and it's true for us what our hearts think, our mouths speak.

So are we then, honestly, sincerely, straightforwardly dealing with others or are we seeking to deceive? God's commandment says that we must be honest in our speech and we also must not take the Lord's name in vain and all of these things that we cite as an oath.

God's Control

There's another part of this that comes up in verse 36 that deals with God's control. Look at what Jesus says, this is the second part to verse 36, God's control. Jesus says, "Do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black." Now, this is a statement that requires significant reflection. It requires us to think. What does Jesus mean by this? It's interesting, he's talking about the head of a man and a man is someone who is made in the image of God. Men and women are created in the image of God. To swear by a human head is to swear by someone who is made in the image of God. Jesus could have continued in talking about the third commandment. If you swear by the image of God and you break that vow, you are again taking the name of the Lord in vain. A man is God's image. He could have said that, but he doesn't say that.

He rather talks about the kind of control that we often speak as though we have, but we don't actually have. 1Jesus says, you can't make your hair white or black. Now you might say, Well, of course I can. I can go out and get some hair dye and dye my hair, that's assuming you have hair, and I can do this and I can change the color of my hair. But understand, Jesus in his day, they had hair dye, too. They had lots of different dyes. We read about dyers of fabrics and things like that. You could get dye and dye your hair at that time, that existed.

What Jesus is getting is something more significant because see, even if you dye your hair, as soon as that hair starts to grow, you see, you haven't actually changed the hair. You have simply changed its appearance. You have dyed it so that for a time has a different color. What Jesus wants us to reflect on is the way in which we speak, sometimes we reflect a sense of control over ourselves and especially over our bodies that we don't actually have.

Now this is at the heart of our culture's idolatry of the body. Our culture's mantra is my body, my choice. God says it's not that simple. Ultimately, our bodies are given to us as a stewardship. We did not create ourselves. We do not own ourselves. Our bodies are given to us by God to be stewards of those bodies. We don't have ultimate control. We can't create for ourselves what we want to be. We can't even change a hair on our head, much less our gender.

Jesus is getting at the heart of a deep issue. Our culture says you can make yourself absolutely whatever you want to be, even if it involves mutilating your bodies. Jesus is saying, think what you were saying. You are suggesting in your speech that you have a level of control where you are able to confirm the reliability of your words by swearing by a head over which you can change nothing. You have no real control over this.

What Jesus once again is asking us to consider is our hearts. Now, when Jesus talks about dying our hair, he's not trying to set legalistic rules about which hairstyles you can and can't do. He's asking us to consider, why am I doing something like this? Why am I speaking as though I have ultimate authority and autonomy and lordship over my body when I am simply a steward of something that God has entrusted to me for a time? He's again piercing beyond just the way we frame our words; he's getting to the heart. How do I believe in my heart and how does that spill out of my mouth? And the way that I suggest that I am my own creator, I am my own providential upholder, I am the sustainer of me, of myself, of I, of my body.

Am I bearing false witness about possessing more control than I really have? The question we have to ask, am I embracing God's wisdom and creating me as he has created me and his providential goodness and trusting my body to me as a stewardship? Or am I bearing false witness about my role as a steward by suggesting that I am instead my own self creator, by denying God His glory, by suggesting that I own me? How we speak about the control we have over ourselves matters that requires reflection. Jesus says this almost offhandedly, but he's getting at a profound issue that touches on a number of false messages in our culture today. God alone is most holy, wise and powerful in preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. We cannot speak as though we control these things in the same way.

So how then should we speak? Well, quite simply, we need to speak in a way that reflects God's truthfulness. Our words need to reflect not that we have possession or control as God does, but in a way that reflects the way God is speaking as someone who speaks truthfully. We need to speak with sincerity, forthrightness and clarity. Not trying to walk into our speech, these loopholes that we can then exploit later at the proper times or to deceive or mislead or hedge. We want to speak as God speaks honestly.

God's Covenant

So this brings up third, God's covenant, verse 37. What Jesus says in verse 37, he says, "Let what you say, be simply yes or no, anything more than this comes from evil." Literally, this is let your yes be yes and your no be no. Jesus saying we must speak sincerely.

Now there's more than this. When Jesus says is when we swear these oaths, when we have to ask for our pinkie promises to make sure that we are really actually serious this time. Jesus says this actually comes from a place of evil. It recognizes that we don't normally speak truthfully, we don't normally speak honestly, but we're engaging in this oath so you know that I really mean it this time. The other stuff, well, I may or may not have been speaking honestly, but now you know that I'm really serious. Jesus says, don't do this. Jesus says back in verse 34, do not take an oath at all.

Now, what does Jesus mean by this? Does this mean that there's absolutely never a time to take an oath? Well, what we see in the Bible is we see lots of the saints taking oaths. We see God himself taking oaths. It's something there's never, ever, ever, ever, ever a time to take an oath. But the point is that our speech should never need an oath for someone to know that we are speaking truthfully.

The context, especially grave or serious context, may require that we swear an oath so that we are representing and reflecting the seriousness of the situation. As, for example, when we give testimony, raise our right hand, put our hand on a Bible and swear that we are going to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That should always be the case. In that context, we are swearing an oath to represent that we recognize the seriousness of the situation.

So in Westminster, Confession of Faith 22, paragraph two, we read this, "As in matters of weight and moment, momentousness and oath is warranted by the Word of God under the New Testament as well as under the old. So a lawful oath being imposed by a lawful authority in such matters ought to be taken." You can swear an oath if you're giving testimony, for example, but the point is that people shouldn't need to rely on your oaths to know whether or not you were being truthful.

Now, I think what Jesus is getting at here is that we need to be people of sincerity, where our lives are guided by truthfulness. I read an article a while and the idea has always stuck with me. The author was drawing a distinction between authenticity and sincerity. Our culture talks a lot about authenticity. We want to be authentic. We don't want to be fake. We want to be authentic. But what this author was pointing out is that in the attempt to be authentic, sometimes that means just sort of giving vent to whatever evil is in our spleens. We just sort of give vent to that and that's being authentic, right? What the author is saying is that we're saying is it's actually a better idea to try to be sincere.

So a sincere person is not necessarily giving vent to every thought, every evil thought that is in his head. A sincere person isn't trying to speak my truth to express all of my corruption in my heart. But a sincere person is rather seeking a different kind of truthfulness. Where I don't pretend to be something I am not. I don't act as if I am someone who has gotten beyond sin, I certainly haven't, but I'm also not trying to just sort of let all that sin hang loose. It's a recognition of a relationship where I see that I am a man who is full of sin and also recognize the eventual goal to which God is calling me. So that I am called to not just let all of that hang out, but I'm called, by God's grace, to mortify that sin.

C.S. Lewis and his book Mere Christianity, says there's two kinds of pretending. There's a bad kind and a good kind. He says there's a bad kind of pretending where the pretense, what you are pretending takes place in place of the reality. You pretend one thing and that's in place of what is true. So he says, if a man pretends to offer to help you, but then doesn't, that's the bad kind of pretending. You might think of padding your resume or cheating on your taxes. You're pretending to be one thing in order to get what you want, but the pretense is in place of the reality.

He says there's also a good kind of pretending, when the pretense is meant to lead to the real thing. He says, when I don't feel loving, it is a good and godly thing for me to pretend to be loving to other people. Not just to give vent to all of my evil thoughts about other people, but he says, when by God's grace, we say, Lord, I don't feel like it, but I want to serve these other people. He says, what happens is God's grace meets us there in the midst of our obedience and helps our feelings to come in line with our actions.

So he points to children playing dress up. He says, you see these little girls who are caring for these babies as though they were mommies. They're not really mommies, they're just pretending to be. You see little boys dressing up as firefighters or soldiers. They're not really put on the field of battle or expected to charge into a burning building, but they are pretending to be. What C.S. Lewis says is, "All the time, they're hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretense, the pretend, of being grown up, helps them to grow up in earnest."

We are called to be sincere people. Where our yes is yes and our no is no. Not to hide things about us, not to lie about what is inside of us, but to be people where we are seeking to live honest, sincere, straightforward lives. Lives that conform to the truthfulness of God. Lives what we are seeking to mortify our sin and to put off sin by putting on Christ himself.

Application

So the application of this is just what Jesus says at the end here in verse 37, "Let your yes, yes and your no be no." Jesus takes truth so seriously. Satan is the Father of Lies, Jesus says. But Jesus says that he is the way and the truth and the life. He's the truth, whereas Satan is the Father of Lies. Our speech will either reflect the character of Satan or the character of Jesus. Our speech is that simple. It's not just words we say. It's not just things that we throw out there to try to get what we want. Our speech will either reflect the character of Satan or Jesus, but not both.

Again, as we look at Jesus's teaching here, he's not just telling us what we should do. Jesus is living this out. The whole purpose of Jesus is here, the whole purpose that he has come to Earth, that he has been born a human being is for the sake of fulfilling all of God's promises. Jesus came as the fulfillment of God's promises.

You see what the Bible says that is that an eternity passed before even the foundations of the world had been laid, before anything started in creation. God in eternity passed, decreed to send His Son into this world to suffer and die and to rise again. Now you see this reflected in various places in Scripture, but it's particularly clear in Romans 16:25-27 where Paul praises God and he says, " Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen."

A mystery is something that is covered in hidden, and it was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed. It's been uncovered. You can see what has been was hidden, as has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God. God in eternity past gave a decree a to command that Jesus Christ would come into this world to die. It was a mystery hidden in the past, but it's been disclosed to bring about, Paul says, the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ. Amen.

In eternity passed, God made this promise. Then what's fascinating is that God actually confirms this with an oath. The author of Hebrews 6:17-18 says, "When God desired to show convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of His purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath." God swears oaths. "So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us." God made a promise, and God confirmed that promise with an oath. Then, as Paul writes in the 2 Corinthians 1:20, "All these promises of God find their yes in Jesus Christ."

Now we talked two weeks ago about how marriage God designed from the very beginning. At the very dawn of creation, God established marriage to be a picture of Christ in the church. So that adultery in marriage, lust outside of marriage, so that divorce, all of these are things that tell a wicked lie about Jesus. It tells a lie, that Christ will be unfaithful. If marriage is a reflection of Christ in the church than any of this sin in marriage is something that tells a lie about Jesus.

Well, the same thing is true in all of our speech. If we are God's image bearers who are made to reflect the glory of God, if in our speech we do not deal honestly and sincerely with one another, then we are telling a lie about Christ. We're telling a lie about God. That God is unfaithful, when he absolutely is faithful. God cannot lie.

So this is true in gospel ministry. We see Paul right in 2 Corinthians 4:2, that when we try to tell people about Jesus, we can't manipulate them, tricked them, we can't play on their emotions, we can't cover over the truth. He says, "Instead, we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God."

What Jesus is teaching us here and what the rest of the Bible tells us is that we must put away our endless search for loopholes. That's the nature of legalism. Legalism seeks loopholes. I want to find a way out of doing what I've promised to do. I want to find a way out of the full requirements of God's law. It relaxes the standards of the law. We need to check our hearts. What are we hoping to gain by our dishonesty? What are we hoping to gain by stretching and bending the truth, by going back on our word? If we're willing to deal with this honestly, then this thing has become an idol to us. If we're willing to lie to gain it. Then it's become an idol to us.

Ultimately, what we see is dishonesty really violates the whole law. If you stumble in one place, you're guilty of violating the whole law. All of this is interconnected. The ninth and the third and the first and the second. So the question is, do you need to ask forgiveness from God or from someone else? Do you need to recommit yourself to truth, to following through on your promises? Do you need to adjust the way you speak about your intentions? Ultimately what this reminds us of is that all of us are liars. What Paul writes is, "Let God be true, though every man were a liar." Every man is a liar. All of us are not entirely truthful. All of us break our word. All of us stand guilty and condemned before God because we do not accurately reflect God's truth.

The gospel is that though we are liars, God is true. God keeps his word. And in his word, he promised that he would send Jesus to die for our false lie-telling. That even though we followed after Satan, the Father of Lies, Jesus came to die for us so that we could be forgiven and cleansed and washed by his blood. So that we could be transformed by his grace to be people of sincerity and truth. What the gospel calls us to, what Jesus is putting this law on us to drive us to look to the cross, to remember and recognize is that Christ came into this world as the fulfillment of God's promises. We cannot tell enough truth to overcome our lies. Instead, what we are called to do is to look to Jesus in faith.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would make us people of honesty and sincerity. We pray that you would forgive us for the ways in which we do not speak clearly and forthrightly and truly, but the ways that we seek loopholes out of our own speech to misrepresent our thoughts and purposes and intentions to get what we want. Forgive us for these sins, for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen. We pray that you would help us to look to him in faith this morning. We pray this in Christ name. Amen.