The Truth Will Set You Free(14Nov10)
Series: Loving God through the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M8 Sermon Notes (10 11 14)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: The Truth Will Set You Free
BIG IDEA: We express our love for God, ourself and our neighbour when we tell the truth.
Text: Deuteronomy 5:20; Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:9-10
In the comedy Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey plays the role of an ambitious lawyer named Fletcher Reed. Fletcher’s career clearly takes priority over his family—over and over again he breaks promises to be with his young son Max, and then lies to both Max and Max’s mother, Fletcher’s ex-wife Audrey about the real reason Fletcher missed the get-together.
Fletcher lets Max down once too often though, missing his 5th birthday party, and has to deal with the consequences. While blowing out the candles on his cake Max makes a wish that Fletcher cannot tell a lie for an entire day. His wish actually comes true.
For Fletcher the timing could not be worse. He is fighting a child custody case in court, which, if he wins, would be a huge boost to his career. His main witness is willing to commit perjury (to lie under oath) to help win the case, but Fletcher discovers he cannot even ask a question if he knows the answer will be a lie.
Over the course of the film, Fletcher realizes what is truly important to him and how important it is to tell the truth.
As we continue our series in the Ten Commandments today, we are going to look at God's perspective on lying and truth telling. We are going to see how this commandment, like the others, is an expression of God's love for us and our neighbor; and as we keep the commandment how it is an expression of trust in God’s love for us.
So, please turn to Deuteronomy 5:20: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
We know the intent is broader and could be put, “Thou shall not lie.”
In Proverbs 6:16-19, we read that the LORD hates lies:
16 There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up dissension in the community.
In Proverbs 12:22, we also read:
22 The LORD detests lying lips,
but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
Why does God prohibit lying? God prohibits lying because lying hurts our neighbour. And lying hurts us. And when we hurt our neighbour and hurt ourselves, we dishonour our Maker.
How does lying hurt our neighbour?
When this commandment was originally given, the primary context that this commandment was directed to was the law court.
For the Hebrews in the Ancient Near East, justice depended on witnesses to a much larger extent than in our times. They did not have surveillance cameras or DNA tests. Establishing a person’s innocence depended on honest witnesses and their integrity. For example, a death sentence was so important that it required two or three unanimous witnesses (Deut. 17:6; 19:15). In addition, anyone who accused another of murder had to cast the first stone against the accused (Deut. 17:7). If the accusation is false, the accuser would bear the punishment that the accused would have faced had the accusation been accurate. There were no frivolous lawsuits in ancient Israel.
Lying involves more than simply the breaking some kind of abstract rule.
Lying hurts our neighbour.
Have you ever been lied to and found out about later?
How did you feel?
How would you feel, for example, if you were sold a house in Vancouver only to learn a few months later that the house contained a kind of insulation known to cause cancer?
Wouldn’t you feel violated?
Even if the lie is less consequential… let’s say someone tells you she can’t spend time with you this weekend because she’s going to be out of town—but you find out later, she’s really in town, and for some reason, unknown to you, she doesn’t want to hang out with you.
How do you feel? You likely feel disrespected. You probably feel diminished, sensing the person who lied to you did not feel you could handle the real reason.
Lying also destroys relationships and communities.
Lying creates a wall between you and the person. When you lie to someone, you erect a wall that distances you from someone, and you manage your communication from that emotional distance. You manage your communication with that person often ending up telling new lies to make the original lies sound consistent. As you do that, and you create this place of emotional distance between you and the person you have lied to.
Sir Walter Scott said: O, what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice to deceive.
Lying undermines the health of a community and its capacity to function properly.
This past week I heard the story of man who was in car accident. Someone “T-boned” him. The other driver crashed the front of their car into the side of his car. When he talked to the insurance agent later by phone, the insurance agent was giving him the runaround, assuming he was lying, trying to scam them.
Many of us know from experience that making a claim on an insurance policy can be a real hassle because in many cases the insurance company claim agents assume that we are lying. Why? In part, because a lot of people make fraudulent claims. Our communities would function in a much healthier way if people did not lie, and simply told the truth.
As I said, the original setting in which God spoke the Ninth Commandment was the court room. The Hebrew in the commandment include the technical legal terms: ed sheqer. Ed means evidence, meaning to present evidence for a trial; Sheqer means false, fraudulent, deceiving, meaning without basis in reality.
My friend Brent McKnight served as a federal judge in the US. Brent had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, was highly respected as a judge and was considered a nominee for the US Supreme Court.
To give a little context here, a survey of more than 50 U.S. state and federal judges conducted by the ABA (American Bar Association) Journal, found that most of the judges interviewed said that increasingly "lawyers appearing before them are bending the truth, not telling the whole truth, or just plain lying."
Brent says to the lawyers who have appeared in his court room. “I will believe everything you say but if I ever discover that you are lying, you will never practice in this courtroom again.” Then he would say, “God forgives, but I don’t.” My friend Brent recognized that if the lawyers are lying, you are going to have miscarriages of justice that would affect real people with real lives and families. So, Brent’s categorical imperative in his court for his lawyers is “no lying.”
As with the other commandments, the commandment against lying is not there solely for the sake of personal morality or for the sake of being “good.” It is also in place because whether a person tells the truth or not affects the health and well-being of the whole community.
Charles Swezey, who was a professor of ethics at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, writes: “Life together is not possible without a minimal trust in the veracity of words… The institutionalization of this practice is a social condition for the survival of society.”
In the Ninth Commandment, the judge of all the earth prohibits lying because it hurts our neighbour and undermines the larger community.
Lying also hurts us.
Last Sunday in the message on stealing I cited Plato’s Republic. In one of Plato’s dialogues, he sets up a conversation where someone asks Socrates, “Is it ever to your advantage to be dishonest if, for instance, you knew that you would not be caught? For example, if you had the ring of Gyges, the magic ring that granted its owner the power to become invisible at will, would it ever be to your advantage to do evil?” And Socrates in a very elaborate dialogue argues, “No, it is never in your advantage to do evil, even if you know ahead of time that you will not get caught, because when you steal, you damage your own soul. It is never in your interest to damage your soul.”
(Now a little footnote: there may be rare certain circumstances when it is arguably better to lie than to tell the truth—the classic example is lying to save Jews in Europe during the war, but even then, it wrenches us on the inside. Somehow we know we are compromised by choosing the lesser of two evils.)
As we have seen in this series on the Ten Commandments, whenever the Scriptures say “don’t do something,” the implication is that we have a positive call. The commandment “thou shall not lie” involves a positive call to tell the truth.
Jesus in Matthew 5:37 says:
37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
In Ephesians 4:25 we read:
25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
In Colossians 3:9-10 we read:
9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
God calls us to tell the truth.
So why do we even lie in the first place?
Isn’t it true that we lie because we are insecure about something, something we are afraid of?
Many people who were considered the greatest athletes in the world--people like Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Lance Armstrong--have been under a cloud of suspicion for allegedly using performance enhancing steroids or drugs. Why would a person use steroids or drugs knowing full well the potential scandal and, more important, some of the possible horrible side effects that might ensue? Doesn't it come down to the fact that athletes, in many cases, have a fear of being simply ordinary, or simply being good instead of great? In many cases, athletes have a fear of appearing ordinary.
Or to bring this a little closer to home for us, perhaps we lie at work because we are afraid that we will lose a customer, so we say, “The cheque is in the mail,” when it is not. But if we look inside, if we dig deeper into our hearts, it is saying “I am afraid my business will not be successful.”
Or we exaggerate our resume because we are afraid about whether we will get the job or not, or for an online dating service because we fear we are not attractive enough.
Or, we are meeting with a person in a social situation, a person we really want to impress, so we exaggerate an accomplishment and spin the truth to put ourselves in a good light. Why do we that? Because we are insecure.
Why do we feel insecure and afraid?
There is a long history here. In the very beginning, back in the Garden of Eden we see Satan approaching the first human beings, Adam and Eve, in the form of a serpent.
He tempts them by suggesting that if they separate themselves from God and they eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one tree that God has forbidden them , they won’t die; in fact, they will really live for the first time. They will be wise. They will be autonomous, free, fulfilled, more fully human than ever before. Satan’s temptation suggests that Adam and Eve would be better off separating themselves from God. (By the way, the sin is not wanting to be like God. We are created in God’s image and called to be like God as we love, lead, create, and relate. The sin is to be like God without God.).
But when Adam and Eve separate from God and bite the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are they in fact better off? Are they wiser? Are they freer? Are they more fulfilled? Are they more fully human? No.
When they separate from God by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they immediately sense that something has been taken from them…something has been stripped from them. So they reach for a fig leaf—something to give them a sense of covering, security, and protection (use prop here).
The reason we lie is we are insecure…afraid… and we’re trying to reach for fig leaf.
God does for Adam and Eve—and us--what they could not do for themselves.
He covers us over…
2000 years ago God became a human being in Jesus Christ. When he was 33 years old he became naked, dying on a cross, absorbing our sin and shame in his body so that we could be forgiven. Christ became naked so that we could be covered in gleaming white garments, and able to enter into the presence of God without fear or shame. When our hearts really know that we have been deeply loved by God to the point where he became naked and as a human being allowed himself to be humiliated on a Roman cross, so that we could be covered in gleaming white garments, and received into God's living room as treasured sons and daughters of God, it is then that we can be healed of our insecurity, shame, and fear that causes us to lie, to spin, to cast ourselves in favorable light.
When this begins to happen, we become people who are able to tell the truth.
I have found this to be true in my own life.
Last Sunday I talked about how as a teenager I loved going into stores and experiencing the rush of stealing things. Part of the reason I valued my hobby of shoplifting was because it impressed my peers. And I was a very self-conscious, image-conscious teenager. But after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, I felt convicted about my need to make restitution. There was a part of me that was so afraid of going back to the stores and confessing the truth about my shoplifting. I wasn't so much concerned about paying back what I had stolen or about being arrested. I was just terrified of looking like an idiot to someone as I confessed to them that I had shoplifted stuff. I was afraid of losing face. But, because my insecurity was being healed by a growing sense of God's love for me, I was able to go back to those stores I had stolen from and meet with the store’s security people, confessed my shoplifting, and make restitution.
There was another area in my life where I found it difficult to be forthright. When I was romantically interested in someone, I found it difficult to express my feelings. I feared rejection. But, slowly over time even that fear was healed. I first met Sakiko right after undergrad when I was working in Tokyo. For me, it was love at first sight. But, I sensed that a mutual friend of ours was romantically interested in her so I did not pursue anything. Ten years later, I was in Japan meeting with this mutual friend and we had a very honest conversation. He told me, "I've always liked Sakiko, but just as a friend. She’s still beautiful and single." He also added, "She remembers you well and in fact she asks about you from time to time." He picked up the phone and called her, and then handed the phone to me. I said, "This is Ken from Canada.” She said, "I don't remember you." I said, "Would you like to go out for coffee with me tomorrow?" She said, "No – I have plans tomorrow." "Really? How about changing your plans?" Amazingly, she agreed to change her plans and have coffee with me. I turned to my friend and say, "This is the first time I get to see Sakiko in 10 years, I'm rarely in Japan these days... maybe I should tell her how much I've always really liked her... and maybe I should just ask her on the spot to marry me." My friend paused, and then wisely advised, "Maybe, because she didn't remember you, you'd be better off making it your goal to have another date at some point in the future."
(Good idea. To not reveal feelings out of wise discretion is good. But, to not reveal your feelings because you are afraid of rejection is not good).
I didn't propose to her on that coffee date (because of the wise discretion of my friend). But, my willingness to be candid and honest (even stupidly candid and honest) suggested to me that I was becoming more open. The reason I was more transparent was because I knew that as much as I wanted to be with Sakiko, her acceptance of me didn't determine my worth, because my worth was increasingly being found in God.
One more story here—where there’s considerable pressure at work.
A man I know named Charlie faced a quandary at work. As a chief financial officer of a major fast food company, he was asked to exaggerate the potential future earnings of the company to inflate the stock price so that when the company was sold off the executives could reap a financial windfall.
Charlie had recently entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ and he did not know what to do. He did want to mislead people with false numbers and cause the stock price of the company to artificially expand, placing the stock holders at risk—on the other hand as the breadwinner for his family, he felt he could not afford to be fired either. He was flown to New York City where he was scheduled to make a presentation before a group of investment bankers. In the hotel room the night before, Charlie could not sleep. He stayed up all night praying to his “new friend” Jesus for guidance. The morning he was scheduled to make the presentation before the investment bankers, the chairperson of the corporation which owned his company met him in the hallway, and urged Charlie to make the presentation with the inflated profits. Charlie said he could make a presentation with great enthusiasm, but could not lie about the numbers. The chairman gave him the ultimatum: “Make the presentation or get off the team.” He ended up walking down the hall and calling his wife Suzanne to tell her had been fired. He was convinced Jesus led him to make the right decision—to tell the truth, even though that decision cost him seven figures of income. Over dinner at his home, Charlie said to me, “That was the best business decision I’ve ever made.” He looked down at the fish on our plates, and said, "God has always provided all that we need. We've never gone without."
Even though Charlie was new to his friendship with Jesus Christ, he had begun to place his security in his new friend, and less in his career and his capacity to make money. As a result, he was less fearful and able to tell the truth.
But, how do we become people of the truth? How do we become people who know the truth, speak the truth, and are set free by the truth?
Again, at the risk of sounding like an old broken record, let me say again: The key to keeping every single commandment is to keep the First Commandment. If we put God first, if we have no god but God, if we make Jesus Christ the centre of our lives, we will become people who are secure enough to speak the truth.
When we put God first and we really place our really trust in him…when we invite him to cleanse us of all our impurities, which we can do because he came to us in Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, died naked on the cross, absorbing all our sin and shame in his body, so we can be forgiven and freed of our sins…invite him to cover us with gleaming white garments, to cover us with a sense of his boundless love for us, we will become less insecure, less fearful. We will feel less of a need to define ourselves by what other people think of us, less need to spin and exaggerate, less need to lie out of the worry that we won’t succeed if we are honest. We will become people who are secure and free enough to tell the truth.
Willpower and self-discipline are important, but keeping the Ninth Commandment--like keeping all the commandments--is less about willpower and self-discipline and more about grace, more about the grace of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit who can give us a new heart and a power to follow the ways of God.
As we are filled with Spirit, not only will we be set free to speak the truth personally, but if, as a community, we become people who speak the truth, then as a community we will become a freer place.
So let’s become people who speak the truth, and know we are covered by the love of Christ.
Ten Commandments M8 Sermon Notes (10 11 14)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: The Truth Will Set You Free
BIG IDEA: We express our love for God, ourself and our neighbour when we tell the truth.
Text: Deuteronomy 5:20; Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:9-10
In the comedy Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey plays the role of an ambitious lawyer named Fletcher Reed. Fletcher’s career clearly takes priority over his family—over and over again he breaks promises to be with his young son Max, and then lies to both Max and Max’s mother, Fletcher’s ex-wife Audrey about the real reason Fletcher missed the get-together.
Fletcher lets Max down once too often though, missing his 5th birthday party, and has to deal with the consequences. While blowing out the candles on his cake Max makes a wish that Fletcher cannot tell a lie for an entire day. His wish actually comes true.
For Fletcher the timing could not be worse. He is fighting a child custody case in court, which, if he wins, would be a huge boost to his career. His main witness is willing to commit perjury (to lie under oath) to help win the case, but Fletcher discovers he cannot even ask a question if he knows the answer will be a lie.
Over the course of the film, Fletcher realizes what is truly important to him and how important it is to tell the truth.
As we continue our series in the Ten Commandments today, we are going to look at God's perspective on lying and truth telling. We are going to see how this commandment, like the others, is an expression of God's love for us and our neighbor; and as we keep the commandment how it is an expression of trust in God’s love for us.
So, please turn to Deuteronomy 5:20: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
We know the intent is broader and could be put, “Thou shall not lie.”
In Proverbs 6:16-19, we read that the LORD hates lies:
16 There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up dissension in the community.
In Proverbs 12:22, we also read:
22 The LORD detests lying lips,
but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
Why does God prohibit lying? God prohibits lying because lying hurts our neighbour. And lying hurts us. And when we hurt our neighbour and hurt ourselves, we dishonour our Maker.
How does lying hurt our neighbour?
When this commandment was originally given, the primary context that this commandment was directed to was the law court.
For the Hebrews in the Ancient Near East, justice depended on witnesses to a much larger extent than in our times. They did not have surveillance cameras or DNA tests. Establishing a person’s innocence depended on honest witnesses and their integrity. For example, a death sentence was so important that it required two or three unanimous witnesses (Deut. 17:6; 19:15). In addition, anyone who accused another of murder had to cast the first stone against the accused (Deut. 17:7). If the accusation is false, the accuser would bear the punishment that the accused would have faced had the accusation been accurate. There were no frivolous lawsuits in ancient Israel.
Lying involves more than simply the breaking some kind of abstract rule.
Lying hurts our neighbour.
Have you ever been lied to and found out about later?
How did you feel?
How would you feel, for example, if you were sold a house in Vancouver only to learn a few months later that the house contained a kind of insulation known to cause cancer?
Wouldn’t you feel violated?
Even if the lie is less consequential… let’s say someone tells you she can’t spend time with you this weekend because she’s going to be out of town—but you find out later, she’s really in town, and for some reason, unknown to you, she doesn’t want to hang out with you.
How do you feel? You likely feel disrespected. You probably feel diminished, sensing the person who lied to you did not feel you could handle the real reason.
Lying also destroys relationships and communities.
Lying creates a wall between you and the person. When you lie to someone, you erect a wall that distances you from someone, and you manage your communication from that emotional distance. You manage your communication with that person often ending up telling new lies to make the original lies sound consistent. As you do that, and you create this place of emotional distance between you and the person you have lied to.
Sir Walter Scott said: O, what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice to deceive.
Lying undermines the health of a community and its capacity to function properly.
This past week I heard the story of man who was in car accident. Someone “T-boned” him. The other driver crashed the front of their car into the side of his car. When he talked to the insurance agent later by phone, the insurance agent was giving him the runaround, assuming he was lying, trying to scam them.
Many of us know from experience that making a claim on an insurance policy can be a real hassle because in many cases the insurance company claim agents assume that we are lying. Why? In part, because a lot of people make fraudulent claims. Our communities would function in a much healthier way if people did not lie, and simply told the truth.
As I said, the original setting in which God spoke the Ninth Commandment was the court room. The Hebrew in the commandment include the technical legal terms: ed sheqer. Ed means evidence, meaning to present evidence for a trial; Sheqer means false, fraudulent, deceiving, meaning without basis in reality.
My friend Brent McKnight served as a federal judge in the US. Brent had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, was highly respected as a judge and was considered a nominee for the US Supreme Court.
To give a little context here, a survey of more than 50 U.S. state and federal judges conducted by the ABA (American Bar Association) Journal, found that most of the judges interviewed said that increasingly "lawyers appearing before them are bending the truth, not telling the whole truth, or just plain lying."
Brent says to the lawyers who have appeared in his court room. “I will believe everything you say but if I ever discover that you are lying, you will never practice in this courtroom again.” Then he would say, “God forgives, but I don’t.” My friend Brent recognized that if the lawyers are lying, you are going to have miscarriages of justice that would affect real people with real lives and families. So, Brent’s categorical imperative in his court for his lawyers is “no lying.”
As with the other commandments, the commandment against lying is not there solely for the sake of personal morality or for the sake of being “good.” It is also in place because whether a person tells the truth or not affects the health and well-being of the whole community.
Charles Swezey, who was a professor of ethics at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, writes: “Life together is not possible without a minimal trust in the veracity of words… The institutionalization of this practice is a social condition for the survival of society.”
In the Ninth Commandment, the judge of all the earth prohibits lying because it hurts our neighbour and undermines the larger community.
Lying also hurts us.
Last Sunday in the message on stealing I cited Plato’s Republic. In one of Plato’s dialogues, he sets up a conversation where someone asks Socrates, “Is it ever to your advantage to be dishonest if, for instance, you knew that you would not be caught? For example, if you had the ring of Gyges, the magic ring that granted its owner the power to become invisible at will, would it ever be to your advantage to do evil?” And Socrates in a very elaborate dialogue argues, “No, it is never in your advantage to do evil, even if you know ahead of time that you will not get caught, because when you steal, you damage your own soul. It is never in your interest to damage your soul.”
(Now a little footnote: there may be rare certain circumstances when it is arguably better to lie than to tell the truth—the classic example is lying to save Jews in Europe during the war, but even then, it wrenches us on the inside. Somehow we know we are compromised by choosing the lesser of two evils.)
As we have seen in this series on the Ten Commandments, whenever the Scriptures say “don’t do something,” the implication is that we have a positive call. The commandment “thou shall not lie” involves a positive call to tell the truth.
Jesus in Matthew 5:37 says:
37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
In Ephesians 4:25 we read:
25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
In Colossians 3:9-10 we read:
9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
God calls us to tell the truth.
So why do we even lie in the first place?
Isn’t it true that we lie because we are insecure about something, something we are afraid of?
Many people who were considered the greatest athletes in the world--people like Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Lance Armstrong--have been under a cloud of suspicion for allegedly using performance enhancing steroids or drugs. Why would a person use steroids or drugs knowing full well the potential scandal and, more important, some of the possible horrible side effects that might ensue? Doesn't it come down to the fact that athletes, in many cases, have a fear of being simply ordinary, or simply being good instead of great? In many cases, athletes have a fear of appearing ordinary.
Or to bring this a little closer to home for us, perhaps we lie at work because we are afraid that we will lose a customer, so we say, “The cheque is in the mail,” when it is not. But if we look inside, if we dig deeper into our hearts, it is saying “I am afraid my business will not be successful.”
Or we exaggerate our resume because we are afraid about whether we will get the job or not, or for an online dating service because we fear we are not attractive enough.
Or, we are meeting with a person in a social situation, a person we really want to impress, so we exaggerate an accomplishment and spin the truth to put ourselves in a good light. Why do we that? Because we are insecure.
Why do we feel insecure and afraid?
There is a long history here. In the very beginning, back in the Garden of Eden we see Satan approaching the first human beings, Adam and Eve, in the form of a serpent.
He tempts them by suggesting that if they separate themselves from God and they eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one tree that God has forbidden them , they won’t die; in fact, they will really live for the first time. They will be wise. They will be autonomous, free, fulfilled, more fully human than ever before. Satan’s temptation suggests that Adam and Eve would be better off separating themselves from God. (By the way, the sin is not wanting to be like God. We are created in God’s image and called to be like God as we love, lead, create, and relate. The sin is to be like God without God.).
But when Adam and Eve separate from God and bite the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are they in fact better off? Are they wiser? Are they freer? Are they more fulfilled? Are they more fully human? No.
When they separate from God by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they immediately sense that something has been taken from them…something has been stripped from them. So they reach for a fig leaf—something to give them a sense of covering, security, and protection (use prop here).
The reason we lie is we are insecure…afraid… and we’re trying to reach for fig leaf.
God does for Adam and Eve—and us--what they could not do for themselves.
He covers us over…
2000 years ago God became a human being in Jesus Christ. When he was 33 years old he became naked, dying on a cross, absorbing our sin and shame in his body so that we could be forgiven. Christ became naked so that we could be covered in gleaming white garments, and able to enter into the presence of God without fear or shame. When our hearts really know that we have been deeply loved by God to the point where he became naked and as a human being allowed himself to be humiliated on a Roman cross, so that we could be covered in gleaming white garments, and received into God's living room as treasured sons and daughters of God, it is then that we can be healed of our insecurity, shame, and fear that causes us to lie, to spin, to cast ourselves in favorable light.
When this begins to happen, we become people who are able to tell the truth.
I have found this to be true in my own life.
Last Sunday I talked about how as a teenager I loved going into stores and experiencing the rush of stealing things. Part of the reason I valued my hobby of shoplifting was because it impressed my peers. And I was a very self-conscious, image-conscious teenager. But after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, I felt convicted about my need to make restitution. There was a part of me that was so afraid of going back to the stores and confessing the truth about my shoplifting. I wasn't so much concerned about paying back what I had stolen or about being arrested. I was just terrified of looking like an idiot to someone as I confessed to them that I had shoplifted stuff. I was afraid of losing face. But, because my insecurity was being healed by a growing sense of God's love for me, I was able to go back to those stores I had stolen from and meet with the store’s security people, confessed my shoplifting, and make restitution.
There was another area in my life where I found it difficult to be forthright. When I was romantically interested in someone, I found it difficult to express my feelings. I feared rejection. But, slowly over time even that fear was healed. I first met Sakiko right after undergrad when I was working in Tokyo. For me, it was love at first sight. But, I sensed that a mutual friend of ours was romantically interested in her so I did not pursue anything. Ten years later, I was in Japan meeting with this mutual friend and we had a very honest conversation. He told me, "I've always liked Sakiko, but just as a friend. She’s still beautiful and single." He also added, "She remembers you well and in fact she asks about you from time to time." He picked up the phone and called her, and then handed the phone to me. I said, "This is Ken from Canada.” She said, "I don't remember you." I said, "Would you like to go out for coffee with me tomorrow?" She said, "No – I have plans tomorrow." "Really? How about changing your plans?" Amazingly, she agreed to change her plans and have coffee with me. I turned to my friend and say, "This is the first time I get to see Sakiko in 10 years, I'm rarely in Japan these days... maybe I should tell her how much I've always really liked her... and maybe I should just ask her on the spot to marry me." My friend paused, and then wisely advised, "Maybe, because she didn't remember you, you'd be better off making it your goal to have another date at some point in the future."
(Good idea. To not reveal feelings out of wise discretion is good. But, to not reveal your feelings because you are afraid of rejection is not good).
I didn't propose to her on that coffee date (because of the wise discretion of my friend). But, my willingness to be candid and honest (even stupidly candid and honest) suggested to me that I was becoming more open. The reason I was more transparent was because I knew that as much as I wanted to be with Sakiko, her acceptance of me didn't determine my worth, because my worth was increasingly being found in God.
One more story here—where there’s considerable pressure at work.
A man I know named Charlie faced a quandary at work. As a chief financial officer of a major fast food company, he was asked to exaggerate the potential future earnings of the company to inflate the stock price so that when the company was sold off the executives could reap a financial windfall.
Charlie had recently entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ and he did not know what to do. He did want to mislead people with false numbers and cause the stock price of the company to artificially expand, placing the stock holders at risk—on the other hand as the breadwinner for his family, he felt he could not afford to be fired either. He was flown to New York City where he was scheduled to make a presentation before a group of investment bankers. In the hotel room the night before, Charlie could not sleep. He stayed up all night praying to his “new friend” Jesus for guidance. The morning he was scheduled to make the presentation before the investment bankers, the chairperson of the corporation which owned his company met him in the hallway, and urged Charlie to make the presentation with the inflated profits. Charlie said he could make a presentation with great enthusiasm, but could not lie about the numbers. The chairman gave him the ultimatum: “Make the presentation or get off the team.” He ended up walking down the hall and calling his wife Suzanne to tell her had been fired. He was convinced Jesus led him to make the right decision—to tell the truth, even though that decision cost him seven figures of income. Over dinner at his home, Charlie said to me, “That was the best business decision I’ve ever made.” He looked down at the fish on our plates, and said, "God has always provided all that we need. We've never gone without."
Even though Charlie was new to his friendship with Jesus Christ, he had begun to place his security in his new friend, and less in his career and his capacity to make money. As a result, he was less fearful and able to tell the truth.
But, how do we become people of the truth? How do we become people who know the truth, speak the truth, and are set free by the truth?
Again, at the risk of sounding like an old broken record, let me say again: The key to keeping every single commandment is to keep the First Commandment. If we put God first, if we have no god but God, if we make Jesus Christ the centre of our lives, we will become people who are secure enough to speak the truth.
When we put God first and we really place our really trust in him…when we invite him to cleanse us of all our impurities, which we can do because he came to us in Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, died naked on the cross, absorbing all our sin and shame in his body, so we can be forgiven and freed of our sins…invite him to cover us with gleaming white garments, to cover us with a sense of his boundless love for us, we will become less insecure, less fearful. We will feel less of a need to define ourselves by what other people think of us, less need to spin and exaggerate, less need to lie out of the worry that we won’t succeed if we are honest. We will become people who are secure and free enough to tell the truth.
Willpower and self-discipline are important, but keeping the Ninth Commandment--like keeping all the commandments--is less about willpower and self-discipline and more about grace, more about the grace of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit who can give us a new heart and a power to follow the ways of God.
As we are filled with Spirit, not only will we be set free to speak the truth personally, but if, as a community, we become people who speak the truth, then as a community we will become a freer place.
So let’s become people who speak the truth, and know we are covered by the love of Christ.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:26 PM
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