Good morning.
Today's scripture reading is from Matthew 5, 33 through 37,
page 836 in the Bible from the back of the pews.
Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors,
you must not break your oath,
but you must keep your oaths to the Lord.
But I tell you, don't take an oath at all,
either by heaven because it is God's throne,
or by the earth because it is his footstool,
or by Jerusalem because it is the city of the great king.
Do not swear by your head
because you cannot make a single hair white or black,
but let your eyes, but let your yes be yes,
and your no mean no.
Anything more than this is from the evil one.
This is God's word.
Okay, here's my introduction.
Don't lie, don't make an oath.
Let's wrap it up.
I do acknowledge the time.
I have about 3,300 words to go through here,
so we'll see how quick I can talk and how well you can listen.
But we are in the middle of a series,
you have heard it said.
In this section of Matthew,
Jesus is taking Old Testament commands
and showing the true heart of the command.
A couple weeks ago, John discussed murder and rage,
and showed that having contempt in your heart
towards someone is equal to cold-blooded murder.
Last week, John discussed divorce.
I'm glad that wasn't for me.
Due to how God set up marriage from the beginning,
marriage should be held sacred,
and divorce is always against God's desired plan.
And today's topic is oaths,
which I'm gonna say I don't normally consider
on the same level as murder, adultery, and divorce,
but apparently Jesus did.
So my goal today is to try to explain
why Jesus included oaths
right alongside these other weightier topics.
And I don't want you to think that Jesus
is just taking random commands in the Old Testament
and just riffing on them to make a sermon.
No, no, Jesus is intentional.
He's calculating in this sermon.
He is a master communicator,
and he's calling us to think carefully,
to meditate on,
so we can see the whole meaning of these commands.
And throughout this series,
we've seen Jesus do two things consistently.
One, he's combating the wrong teaching
that is being pervasive in the synagogues.
And then two, he's also describing
what he expects of his followers.
What does he expect of his kingdom citizens?
So I'm gonna start with the first one
that I mentioned there, combating wrong teaching.
Jesus is walking straight into a cultural debate
that's happening at his time.
It's key to be aware of this
because there's a lot of background
that his audience didn't need explaining.
It's like if I said,
let's talk about the situation at the border.
You hear those words,
you know exactly what I'm talking about.
You're primed.
You know what border, I didn't have to say.
You know what situation, I didn't have to describe it.
And then when I start talking in 30 seconds,
you're just gonna look for those key words.
Did I say illegal or did I say undocumented?
Did I talk about security or did I talk about compassion?
And whatever words I start to use,
you're gonna categorize me.
And just like we can do that,
Jesus' listeners could do the same with what Jesus said.
And when they hear Jesus say these words,
it's not the status quo, but it's upending for them.
It rattles their expectations.
So let me do a little bit more background
and give you a little primer
on first century Jewish teaching on oaths.
I know this is really what everybody wanted this morning.
Let me start by defining it else
because I'm new to sermon preaching
and everybody has to start with a definition.
A definition of oath for a first century Jew
would be something like a promise or a commitment
made to another human in the Lord's name.
Today we may say vow in place of oath,
but for Jews at the time, vows were something different.
A vow was a promise or commitment made to God, not a human.
So here's two examples, a vow.
Lord, if you save me from this tornado,
I will become a missionary.
A promise made to God.
An oath.
I pledge to give $500 to the Village Renew plan.
God is my witness.
It's a promise made to humans in the name of God.
And in preparing for this sermon,
I took time to read some of the Jewish teachings
that date back to the time of Jesus.
And I was blown away by how the Pharisees and the leaders
parsed and scrutinized words and phrases in the Old Testament
to find the law's real application for their time.
They seemed to find a rule for every scenario
and then they had to find a way
to make the promise come true.
And then they had so many rules.
They calculated how much of a sacrifice would be needed
for any type of broken promise.
On analogy, it's really easy to say
it's just like our American legal code.
There's so many rules and regulations.
You gotta study for years.
There's that saying, you commit three felonies a day,
and that doesn't even include the misdemeanors
you get caught up on before you even get to your car.
So for the day-to-day Jew,
there were so many rules and corresponding loopholes
that only the experts knew, the scribes and Pharisees,
those special people.
And only they could accurately decipher what to do,
and then in knowing the rules,
those religious leaders would abuse their power
on the ignorant.
So here's some examples.
When you don't have to pay,
and even when you don't keep your word.
So if two people are asked to give an oath of testimony,
meaning a witness in a court of law,
and the first witness lies about what he knows
and breaks his oath of testimony,
the second witness can also lie and break his oath
and not be liable for sin.
He doesn't have to make a sacrifice.
Laurie's face just.
Because the first one lied,
the second one's oath is inadmissible,
and therefore he can lie too.
No punishment, no remorse needed
for lying to a court official.
Here's one of my favorite ones.
One can only take an oath concerning an item
that is defined by size, weight, or number.
So if you happen to be a first century Jew
and you need to lend somebody some money
maybe because you're going out of town
and you wanna be safe with it,
so I give John a bag of 40 shekels to hold for a few days.
And I make him swear under oath,
you will give back this bag of coins in the name of Adonai.
And John says, yes.
But I forget to say the number of coins.
Well, when I ask for the bag back,
John can just say, well, I don't know how much you gave me,
but whatever is in my possession you may have now.
He could take.
Not lying, because I didn't say the number.
It's not stealing because I didn't say the number,
and I just asked him to return the bag back to me.
This literally sounds like the rules
me and my sisters used to make up
and like saving spots on the couch
when watching a TV show.
Like just loopholes and loopholes and loopholes.
One last example.
Because Jesus alludes to this in Matthew five,
I want you to hear this one.
If someone makes an oath in the name of heaven
or in the name of earth and breaks it,
they are not liable for sin
because it wasn't in the name of the Lord.
But if someone makes an oath in the name of God,
makes an oath in the name of the Lord and breaks it,
he is liable for sin.
So this sounds serious, but with this rule,
it's easy to imagine.
Some foreigner comes into Israel
hanging around the Galilee region, let's say,
and he makes a deal with somebody, a Jew local,
and the Jew just avoids the special word.
He doesn't say Adonai, he doesn't say Yahweh,
he doesn't refer to the Lord in some way.
And because of that, he can break his oath
and not be punished at all.
It's the law, he cannot be held accountable.
This foreigner just gets duped.
It's so unfair, and it's so easy to see it happening.
Here's the point that I want you to get.
These rules were supposed to identify
when people were breaking the law
and they required punishment.
But the real effect, what would happen in day to day?
This is exactly what you would expect.
People made oaths that they never intended to keep.
People jump through the verbal loopholes like a gymnast
to trick and manipulate the unsuspecting.
And this is what everyone listening to Jesus was used to.
They grew up with it.
These were the laws.
Then they hear these words from Jesus.
I'm gonna read Matthew five again.
Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors,
you must not break your oath,
but you must keep your oath to the Lord.
But I tell you, don't take an oath at all.
Either by heaven, because it is God's throne,
or by the earth, because it is his footstool,
or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King.
Do not swear by your head,
because you cannot keep a single hair white or black.
But let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.
Anything more than this is from the evil one.
Jesus' quote in verse 33
is from a few different places in the Torah.
And John has said it every week,
and I just want it to be reminded for everybody.
Jesus isn't trying to diminish the law.
He's not trying to put the law aside.
But he is showing how we need to live it out fully.
Or in John's verbiage a couple weeks ago,
it was to fill full the law.
So let's break down what Jesus is trying to communicate here.
Verse 34, don't take an oath at all.
And we should ask why, Jesus?
Sounds like a pretty big expectation.
Answer, because everything outside of you is the Lord's,
and he controls it.
And that's our first point today.
Don't swear an oath on what is God's.
And Jesus gives us three examples
of where God extends his rule as King.
So it's not ours to use in an oath
which is heaven, earth, and Jerusalem.
Verse 34 says, and this is the full thing,
heaven is off limits because it is God's throne,
and he is not going to share it with you.
Verse 35 says, you don't get to use the earth either
in your oath because God claims it as his.
No matter how much authority you think you may have here,
the Lord reigns.
What about Jerusalem?
Well, Jerusalem will be the Lord's,
so don't try to use anything that's going to be dead
so don't try to use anything that's going to be dedicated
to him.
And here's Jesus' point.
Let's narrow it down.
You don't get to borrow what is God's as a bargaining chip
to convince someone of your sincerity.
You don't get to use what is God's as a bargaining chip
to convince somebody of your sincerity.
How much you mean it.
That's worth meditating on if you want to this afternoon.
In verse 36, this is where Jesus gets real creative on us.
The last item Jesus uses as an illustration
is our own heads.
We shouldn't use our own head to communicate our seriousness
about our promise either.
The reasoning is pretty humbling.
You have no control over even the hairs of your head,
so how can you offer up the rest of your head?
How can you offer up the rest of your head?
And that's our second point.
And you might notice I have quite a bit of gray coming in.
And if I tried to get rid of this gray,
it wouldn't be gone for long
because neither by willpower or belief can I change it.
Either how much it grows, because I would like that,
or what color it comes in as.
This is humbling, because I would change it.
I would want to do something different,
but I can't even control the hairs of my head.
God made me, and he has a claim on my life,
and I have to submit to that.
So my head and my hair are his.
And this is gonna come up later.
I just wanna highlight it now.
I really think Jesus wants us to be humble
and to force us to reconsider everything.
Because if I can't claim what is part of me
in an oath, in a promise, in a commitment,
I need to really be treading lightly
in everything that I say.
I'm gonna take a quick detour here
to address a question that probably several of you have.
And Jesus' exact words are don't take an oath at all.
There's nothing hidden in the Greek there.
There's not like some special wording that Jesus uses
to really mean something different.
But a reasonable question, should we take that at face value?
Those are the words, is that what he meant?
Meaning, never under any circumstance,
make an oath or a promise.
Is there any legitimate reason ever to make an oath?
very important point of view.
Or is everyone from sin?
And I think that's a very important point of view.
Some people in Christian history have taken that view.
They have said you can never take an oath
and they have lived by that.
But here's one, was it truly wrong
for me to take marriage vows?
We call them vows, but they are promises made
to another human in the name of the Lord, that's an oath.
What about the people who made money pledges
to donate to Village Renew?
Are you guys in sin?
Or was it okay because we didn't tell you to write
in the Lord's name after your donation?
Are you clear there now?
What if you were asked to testify under oath
to save somebody's life?
Would that be a reason to do it?
So to the core question,
should we take Jesus's words at face value?
My answer is no, I don't think so.
And I'm not trying to contradict Jesus.
I do not want to do that.
And a lot of people agree with me here
and I'm mostly gonna quote them.
But I think Jesus is speaking against the abusive usage
of oaths in his day and their manipulation of others.
He is using hyperbole to drive home this point.
He is exaggerating his statement
to grab attention, not set limits.
So another reasonable question,
hey Nick, how do you know it's hyperbole?
A simple rule for identifying hyperbole in the Bible
is to let the Bible interpret the Bible.
So let me give you some other Bible verses
that indicate the Bible thinks about this
a little bit more nuanced than Jesus is saying here.
Jesus spoke under oath to the high priest in Matthew 26.
So Jesus broke his own rule there.
God makes several promises to people
in the Old Testament on his name,
which again, that's Jesus's definition of an oath,
which is you swear something to a person in God's name.
And the Lord doesn't do this, he does it regularly.
He swears to Abraham several times in Genesis 22 is one.
He swears to Noah in Genesis six.
He swears to David in second Samuel seven.
And that one's repeated all over the Psalms.
So it's not like anybody missed it.
So Jesus isn't saying never ever under any circumstances
use an oath or make a promise.
Maybe Jesus's words for our day would be,
you don't need a notary or a legal contract
to make your promise binding.
Our words should carry weight in all of our relationships.
So now, let's jump to the part of this section
that doesn't usually get a lot of airtime in sermons.
Let's look at the last line
of verse 37.
I'm quoting, anything more than this is from the evil one.
This is where I see Jesus elevating oaths
to the level of the other sins we have discussed,
murder and adultery.
Making exaggerated insincere oaths
is akin to acting like Satan, that deceiving serpent.
It's a big, big claim.
So let's try to understand it.
In John six, sorry in John eight,
Jesus calls Satan the father of lies,
saying there is no truth in him.
And this tells us everything we need to know about Satan.
If he speaks, it's a lie and it shouldn't be believed.
Even if he speaks scripture, because in Matthew four,
the Satan comes up to Jesus and quotes scripture to him.
And he quotes it correctly, but he manipulates it.
To be deceptive.
Can anybody think of any other claims that Satan made
that should have been questioned and doubted?
Like on page three of our Bibles?
Back on page three, Satan in the form of a snake
shows up in the garden and offers a well crafted
promise Steve, you can eat of the tree, you can.
And here's his vicious vile lie.
You will certainly not die.
In fact, you will be like God.
Satan lies to Eve from the beginning
in an attempt to manipulate her.
And he is successful, because he is really good at it.
And this is the truth that we all need to know.
People have been following in his steps ever since.
Lying straight through our teeth,
manipulating with half truths, making false promises,
abusing the truth, and then,
abusing trust.
No one needs to teach us these things.
We become experts while we are still kids.
True story.
Aidan, who is two, but this is about when she was one.
If she had a dirty diaper, and we asked,
did you poop in your diaper?
And her response would be, no, no daddy.
Daddy poop in my diaper.
I did not, I swear I did not do that.
Here's the point.
Jesus is tying insincere oaths to acting like a snake,
because through oaths and promises,
we can manipulate people into fulfilling our will
and desires without giving them anything in return.
We make grand oaths.
I swear on my unborn child,
on my mother's grave,
I would, we can use these weighty things
to prove our sincerity.
We can say them.
We can try to convince somebody.
But when it comes time to follow through,
we show that our words meant nothing
if we don't fulfill our promise.
If we don't show up to do the thing,
our words mean nothing.
Once my desire is fulfilled,
it's very easy to ignore your desires.
And let's break this down just a little bit.
Because there's two degrees of this that are common.
The first, and this one's the most obvious.
I make a promise to do something,
but in my heart, I don't ever mean to fulfill it.
This is just lying, just a straight line.
We'd all agree on that.
That's a lie.
Not an ounce of truth in my words.
Just like Satan in the garden to Eve,
false promises made with no truth.
The other way that we can act like a snake
is to make promises.
And the other way that we can act like a snake
and be just like Satan
is through a promise without counting the cost,
without being ready to pay what was promised.
And you'll hear, I'm gonna switch between
oaths and promises and commitments,
because to me, they're all the same thing.
So let me give you an example of my failures in this area.
Early in my marriage,
we had lots of fights over me not keeping my word.
I would go out with my friends and tell Bethany,
hey, I'll be back at a certain time.
And then when that time came,
I just wasn't quite ready to leave.
So I would push it back a little bit,
and then I would push it back a little bit more,
and then a little bit more,
and finally I would arrive two to three hours later
than I originally said.
My desire to stay
was more important than Bethany's desire
for me to come home.
I chose myself instead of choosing my wife.
And if that sounds selfish, if that sounds snake-like,
it is.
That's exactly what it is.
And what was the result of me doing this
over and over and over again?
Well, first, my word meant nothing,
but Bethany felt dishonored, she felt unvalued.
She felt like I was never gonna choose her
and I was never gonna sacrifice myself.
I was becoming more snake-like every single time I did this.
And Jesus is calling us to more.
He wants us to do better than that.
So quick recap, just to make sure everybody's following along.
Jesus isn't communicating that oaths and promises
are sinful in themselves,
but using them can easily turn sinful
when they are used wrongly to manipulate others
or when we fail to keep them because of selfishness,
that I'm not ready to pay what I promised.
In every promise, there is the choice to be like Jesus,
faithful and true, self-sacrificing, self-giving,
or be like Satan, deceptive, selfish, a snake.
And Jesus' remedy for this is simple.
Be intentional, be wise, be committed.
Stop making those grand, grand oaths.
Don't call on heaven and earth to testify
for you, as verse 37 puts it.
Let your yes mean yes and your no, no.
But that simplicity is scary, isn't it?
Because we can't hide things in long, drawn-out word formulas.
We just have to say, yes, I will.
And we can't condition our statements to protect ourselves.
Maybe we'll fail, maybe I'm not ready to do that.
I need to say, no, I won't.
Also, we can't speak over-confidently either.
Can I always follow through?
Will I always be able to make it happen?
Am I even prepared to make that self-sacrifice
in the future, I'm not there yet.
We need to be cautious.
And in the book of James, the apostle expands
on Jesus' message.
The apostle expands on Jesus' thought here.
He explains to his readers, and he calls them
to humility when making plans.
James 4 says, you don't know what tomorrow holds,
which means you don't control the future.
You don't even control tomorrow.
So here's the advice, quoting James.
You should say, if the Lord wills,
we will live and do this or that.
If the Lord wills.
And I'm gonna pause, because I've heard this before too,
hey, should I always say the Lord wills
after every statement?
No, I don't think that that's required either.
I think we can communicate to each other
without those special tags on our sentences.
But it's a matter of the heart.
It's a matter of where we're coming from.
How are we entering into the conversation?
You are a person made in the image of God,
and I should be honoring you.
We are not in absolute control of our lives.
So be humble, be prudent, be cautious
to make that promise tomorrow.
But if you say the thing, you better follow through.
You bear the name of Jesus.
You carry him around in all of your interactions.
To honor him, you put your whole will
into completing your commitment.
And I'll interject here.
I'll interject to myself again to interrupt.
Say, there are some promises that can be made in sin.
Not that the promise was sin, but it was made in sin.
The Old Testament is filled with those promises.
Fathers sacrificing their son or daughter.
Kings willing to kill people
because they didn't listen to a command.
Those are sinful, and it can happen today.
So if you're thinking, Nick, you're telling me
I need to fulfill my promise,
but I might have a different situation here.
I might have promised something that is sinful in itself.
And if that's the case, let's talk, let's chat,
let's try to navigate that together.
Maybe we need to lean more into forgiveness
than fulfilling the promise,
because that would be sinful too.
But for the majority of us, we don't get that out.
We need to conform our wills to Jesus' command.
And what will come of this strange
self-giving follow through?
What's the result of it?
You will be fulfilling the law of God.
You will show that Jesus is your highest treasure,
and you will become more like him.
You will follow in his steps
by overcoming the Satan-like actions.
You will become powerful, a better person,
and more God-honoring.
Amen?
And another thing will happen.
You're gonna make a whole lot less promises.
You will be rightfully scared.
It might be weird up front.
Like again, you might try to use certain tag lines
to communicate something to your loved one.
Like, hey, I'm trying to express how I feel about this,
so I'm gonna use a whole lot more words.
Sure, do that.
Try to be intentional in your communication.
But really what's gonna happen
is you will be able to walk in freedom and not fear.
So let me explain what I mean that
through an example in my life.
I apologize if I keep referencing my life,
but I feel like I've got a good grasp on this one.
My diet.
Thank you, H.
As many people here know,
I am very, very allergic to gluten.
I cannot eat anything that has touched wheat or bread.
I am extremely careful,
because I know if I eat something that has touched wheat
if I'm not, I will have migraines and possible paralysis
for several days.
And I figured out last year I can't have corn either.
And the result is the same.
I get migraines.
So any type of corn product, any additive at all,
is affecting me.
And I'll tell you right now,
there is a lot of corn products out there.
Anything that's pretty much wrapped in plastic
has some kind of corn in it.
And so what happens is if I go to a restaurant
to eat, it takes me about 10 minutes to order my food.
And several trips to the kitchen, I'm that guy.
I just apologize upfront to the waitstaff.
But I also sometimes just go to grocery stores
just to read ingredients labels,
just to see if I could eat anything new.
Just hopefully I can find something.
And most of the time I can't,
but I just walk around reading ingredients labels,
like reading all of them, and then back up.
And so in reading all of these ingredients labels,
my diet just becomes more and more restrictive.
It makes most of my interactions
with food really difficult.
But when I follow my diet correctly,
and I intend to, I always try to,
like I never try to mess up.
There is no cheat days for me.
When I do it though, I live free from migraines.
I don't have to worry about them.
Those restrictions that I've kind of introduced on my diet
allow me to live in freedom,
and comfortable the rest of my life.
the rest of my life.
When I'm careful and intentional about my diet,
I don't have to worry about when the next migraine
is gonna show up.
So let me take that same principle to promise keeping.
If you carefully evaluate your speech in your heart,
if you read the ingredients labels of your promises first,
really look at what you're saying.
Do you find that your guess really means yes?
Or do you find broken promises and unfulfilled commitments
to your friends, coworkers,
very likely your kids or your spouse?
This is sin, and it devalues those made in God's image.
Stop doing it.
Just stop.
Like, just don't make the promise
if you don't feel like you can keep it.
If you've failed enough times in the past,
just stop making the promise.
And I'm preaching to myself here, like,
I'm sitting up here and my wife is right there.
She is hearing me say,
Nick, stop making those promises.
But I need to read the ingredients labels of my promises.
I need to read them really carefully.
What will it take to fulfill that promise?
Or that oath or that commitment?
What sacrifices involved?
Am I ready to pay the cost?
Are you ready to pay the cost?
Satan is waiting for us to make promises we can't keep
because then he can keep us in failure
and humiliating those around us.
But Jesus is calling us to fulfill the law
by being truthful and honest in our speech.
And this isn't just a kindergarten rule.
Like, hey, you always need to be truthful
because it hurts those around you.
This isn't even about adding a new rule to follow,
but it's about bringing life to everyone around you.
But it's about bringing life to everyone around us
and glorifying our Father in heaven.
It's so much more because it delivers the other person
the worth that is due them.
And at the same time, we get to value our Father in heaven
because he is truth and light
and we should be living in him.
So I just want to make sure you hear me
that I am not trying to say don't make promises.
Don't say those things in that way.
Because that's just what the Pharisees did.
Because we all have to do it.
We all live in community with each other.
We have to make commitments, we have to rely on each other.
And so just as Jesus, just when you say yes,
when you say yes, mean yes.
And when you say no, I'm not gonna do that again,
mean no, you're not gonna do it again.
And in that, we get to make Jesus look so beautiful
and so wonderful.
And that's the point.
Let's pray.