We had been having the nicest time of fellowship together
in these heart-to-heart talks.
And believe it or not,
we are still talking about that ninth commandment.
And who would have ever thought that in the nine words
that express the ninth commandment,
there's such a world of truth,
of knowledge, such depths,
that really I do not believe that the keenest mind in the world
has ever fully been able to comprehend
the full depth of truth in this commandment.
On the surface, it's so simple.
But do you realize
that all of God's ten rules for living are very simple?
So simple that even a child can understand.
Nothing that's really impossible to man.
It is possible for you and for me to keep
all of these ten rules for living.
Remember something.
God is consistent.
Man is the one who is the inconsistent one.
God is just plain, everyday living,
and he never asks you or me to do anything as impossible.
That's true.
That's very true in this ninth commandment.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
There's nothing about that that's so profound.
There's really nothing about that
that's impossible for any one of us to keep.
It has to do with your reputation.
It had to do with my reputation.
It has to do with the reputation of our neighbors,
the folks with whom we come in contact with
every day of our lives.
Don't lie about your neighbor.
That's the sum of the substance, the whole thing.
Don't lie about the woman with whom you work.
Don't lie about the man who works beside you
in that place of employment.
Don't lie about me.
Katharine Guman, don't lie about someone else.
It's that simple.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
And yet, there's something that is so profound about the thing
because in bearing false witness, one of the smallest
members of our physical body must be in operation.
To perform this thing, to brace this commandment,
it takes one of the smallest members of your body to operate,
and that member is the tongue, that little old tongue.
But it's so vicious, it can be so vile,
it can be so destructive that the Bible says,
it's a little member, but it boasts us great things.
The tongue, the word of God says, is a fire.
What can be more destructive than fire?
A world of iniquity.
That's exactly how God's word describes the tongue.
Be careful, this commandment says in essence,
how you operate your tongue, what you do with your tongue
regarding another person's reputation.
You can't touch their character.
I made that very clear in a previous Heart to Heart talk
because the character is a true fact concerning oneself.
You can't besmirch my character because that's something I am.
That's me, that's the real me.
But my reputation, you may besmirch by using your tongue
for the wrong purpose, in bearing false witness.
And many a person's reputation has been besmirched,
many a heart has been broken, many a life has been wrecked,
many a family has had to move out of the neighborhood,
many a man has lost a job, many a precious woman
has lost her job because of someone bearing false witness.
Don't you see how important this thing is?
So important that actually God gave a commandment
to safeguard against this very thing
and to protect our reputation.
All right?
I can't read you anything that I said
in our previous Heart to Heart talk except just this.
And that is the fact that what is true
of all of the other commandments
and all of God's other rules for living
is also true of this rule and this commandment,
that whenever it is broken, man pays for it.
You will pay for it.
You hung up on that telephone for 30 minutes, 45 minutes.
For at least three quarters of that time,
you were maligning somebody,
you were besmirching somebody's reputation,
you were saying things that were not absolutely true.
It was just plain gossip.
And when it's all boiled down,
there's very little truth in any gossip.
When you hung up the receiver and walked away from the phone,
you felt like that was the end of it.
You felt you had put it across.
My friend, for every untruth that you spoke
during those 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour,
remember, the thing will come right back
and you'll find it on your own doorstep.
That's right.
That is something that God Himself can't bring back again,
and that's the words that leave our lips.
He's God Almighty.
He's the God of miracles.
But when words have been spoken,
after words have left our lips,
God Himself cannot bring them back again.
You cannot put the thing as it was before.
Those untrue, those false words were spoken.
The harm that it did to that somebody is very serious.
But you have not escaped your own words.
Your own words, your own deeds,
will always come back to you.
You know, there's an old expression
that we used to use in Missouri.
I don't know whether they use it in California or in New York.
It's so homey.
It sounds as though it was born out of Missouri.
Chickens come home to roost, and they always do.
I left you with the seventh chapter of the book of Matthew
in our last little heart-to-heart talk.
I'm going to read it again,
because I still contend, my friend,
that in these five verses that I'm reading to you
from the Word of God,
we're told more about the meaning of life.
We're told more about the art of living.
In these less than 100 words,
we're told more about the way into trouble
and the way out of trouble.
We're told more about the nature of man
than all the sermons that you have ever heard
in all of your life.
That's right.
Judge not.
What were you doing on the telephone?
What did you do at that ladies' aid meeting?
What did you do at that missionary society?
What did you fellows do the other night at the club?
Oh, it was juicy.
I'll tell you, that conversation was a knockout.
It was good listening.
It was good telling.
You had receptive ears, and so you colored it a little bit.
It wasn't just quite the truth,
and before you got through with it,
you had given false witness against a person.
I'm just going to come back to you.
Judge not that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.
You're not going to escape.
And with what measure ye meet, it
shall be measured to you again.
Again.
Isn't that something?
That's the word of God.
That, my friend, is God's great law.
Again, I repeat something that I said the last time
I was in your home.
If the average man understood for a single moment
the meaning of these words and really believed
them to be true, they would absolutely
revolutionize his whole life from top to bottom.
They would turn his everyday conduct inside out,
so change him that his closest friends would hardly recognize
him, would hardly know him.
These few words, judge not.
Don't do it.
If you do, you will be judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.
And with what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you
again.
Right here in these few words are expressed the simple,
the inescapable law of life.
And the plain fact is that it is the law of life
that as we act towards others, so will others act towards us.
What we give will be returned to us.
The deeds that we do, the thing that we think,
the word that we speak, so will others think and speak
and act towards us.
Whatever sort of conduct we give out, the same thing
that bound to be returned to us.
Don't argue with me.
This needs no argument.
Our lives prove it.
Your lives prove it.
There are tens of thousands who never receive a kind deed
because they have never done a kindness to anyone.
Show me someone who has no friends,
and I'll show you somebody who is too selfish to be a friend.
When somebody said to me, I have wonderful neighbors,
I know right then that they are a good neighbor.
When somebody says, I just hate my neighbors,
I don't say a word to keep my mouth shut,
but I know what kind of person that is.
They are not a good neighbor themselves.
Anything, everything that we do to others
will sooner or later be done to us by someone somewhere.
I didn't say the same person.
It may not even be the same year, the same day,
the same month.
It may be five years later, but as sure
as there's a god on his throne, it'll come back to you
because this is God's law of life,
and it is absolutely inescapable.
The good that we do to others, we shall
receive back in like measure.
And the evil that we do to others in like measure,
we shall receive back too.
I can always remember a woman in our hometown.
She had an obsession, and I mean this exactly what it was,
that when a girl would get into trouble,
she was the first one to spread it.
They might just as well have published it
on the first page of the Concordium.
She enjoyed practically going from house to house
to spread it, and she loved it.
Oh, she would go with the execution, oh.
Isn't it awful?
But inside of her, she was tickled to death.
She had an obsession for it.
I shall never forget when her own daughter got into trouble.
An unwed girl with a baby boy.
Oh, of course, that was different.
But it came back to her right on her doorstep.
Yes, sir?
Watch it.
The good that we do to others, we'll
receive back in like measure.
The evil that we do to others in like measure,
we shall receive back too.
Now, this does not in the least mean
that the same people whom we treat well or ill
will be the actual ones who return the action.
No, I didn't say that.
That almost never happens.
But what does happen is that at some other time or place,
often far away and long afterwards,
someone else who knows nothing whatsoever
of the previous action will, nevertheless, we pay it.
Grain for grain to us.
For every unkind word that you speak to
are about another person, an unkind word
will be spoken to or about you.
For every time that you cheat, you will be cheated.
Every time that you deceive, you will be deceived.
For every lie that you utter, you will be lied to
or lied about.
Every time that you neglect a duty or evade a responsibility
or misuse authority over other people,
you're doing something for which you will have to pay
by suffering a like injury yourself.
To say, Miss Kuhlman, how can you say that?
I'm only giving you God's word and a fool
is the person I've learned that a long time ago.
A fool is a man or a woman who'll take issue with God's word.
And God says, with what measure ye meet,
it shall be measured to you again.
There he is.
That's God's word?
I know if only people would realize that all that this is
literally true for a profound influence it would have
on their conduct.
People are very apt to think, especially when they're
strongly tempted, that they can probably
escape the law of the land.
They can outrun the sheriff or slip through the clutches
of authority in one way or another.
Our young people have had a lot of trouble
in one way or another.
Our young people have had idea.
They can outsmart the law.
They can outsmart the authorities.
They're free to do as they please.
Being given expression, free expression to their feelings.
My friend, God's word does not teach free expression
or that one can do just as one pleases.
God has laid down certain rules for living.
He has given certain laws for men and women to abide by.
His rules, his laws are inescapable.
You absolutely cannot break them.
You cannot escape them.
You cannot go around them.
They are there.
I know that those who feel that they can slip through
the clutches of authority in some way or another,
they hope that individuals forgive them
or else be powerless to revenge their actions
or that the thing will be forgotten sometime or another
or better still, that they'll never be found out.
If, however, they understood that the law of retribution
is a cosmic law, impersonal and as unchanging
as the law of gravity, remember,
this thing that I am talking about is as unchanging
as the law of gravity.
And surely there's no man, no woman living
who's enough of a moron to feel that they could change
the law of gravity.
Neither can any man change this inescapable law of life.
It's unchanging.
It's impersonal.
The law of gravity never sleeps.
It's never off duty or off its guard.
It's never tired out.
It's neither compassionate nor vindictive.
And no one would ever dream of trying to evade it
or coax it or bribe it or intimidate it.
You wouldn't think of trying to break it.
People accept it as being inescapable.
Knowing that it cannot be broken,
knowing that it is inescapable,
they shape their conduct accordingly.
And my friend, the law of retribution
is as inescapable as the law of gravity.
Therefore, you might just as well accept it.
The sooner you do, the sooner you live according to it,
the sooner you shape your lives and your living
to coincide with it,
the sooner you change your life
and fit in with this law of life, God's law,
the sooner you'll be a success, you'll be happy.
Water finds its own level sooner or later,
and our treatment of others returns at last
up on ourselves.
Father God, this is Your word.
I pray that the last few minutes may change many a life
in their living, in their thinking,
in their attitude towards others.
Amen.