[My colleague Dr. Moore] has introduced his young boys to the wonders of country music, and now they want to go with “Waylon and Willie and the boys” to Luckenbach, Texas! Somehow they have fixated on this. One of the boys asked Dr. Moore, “Can we go to Luckenbach, Texas?” and he answered in the affirmative. They said, “Daddy, when we are six and all grown up, can we go to Luckenbach, Texas?” and Dr. Moore said yes. They were nowhere near six. And now they are, and they are packing their bags for Luckenbach, Texas! When they get there, they are going to be disappointed. There is very little reason to take them to Luckenbach, Texas, other than the fact that one promised to take them to Luckenbach, Texas! One of our colleagues has simply suggested that Dr. Moore ought to take them to Dallas and tell them it is Luckenbach, Texas! Something which I am quite sure [Dr. Moore] will not do. But I could tell there was a glint in his eye and a glimmer of at least reflection that it would be a way out of this conundrum of figuring out what to do with two six-year-olds in Luckenbach, Texas!

We have all been there. We recognize the convenience of the lie. We understand that sometimes the truth just is not all that convenient. We understand that, for reasons that seem sensical to us, the Iie can be far more attractive than the truth. We learn very early to lie. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves. We become accustomed to lying and to hearing lies, such that we expect lies will be told to us. We know, in fact, that some persons are more likely to tell the lie than the truth, even when the truth would serve them better. We attempt to detect lies but we are often deceived. We assume lies and we consume lies. We even enjoy the lies that are addressed to us telling us that if we just buy this product, we can be successful. If we can accept this particular methodology, we can be happy. If we can just receive this therapy, we will be whole. We negotiate lies and sometimes are entertained by lies. But lies kill, destroy, flatter, deceive, delude and seduce.

Then along comes the commandment – in this case, the ninth commandment. The commandment that says very simply, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). Just a few words. It seems to us at face value to make perfect sense. We are told from the cradle that this means no lies. I was confused about this in one sense as a child, because my mother used euphemisms for lies. They were not lies (you didn't just throw out the word). That is what she meant, but she said that they were “stories.” We got in trouble for telling a “story”—something that wasn't true. The problem is that we were always having stories read to us that were not true. In Dr. Seuss, I did not believe that Horton really heard a Who! And yet, eventually you begin to understand what it means for a “story” to be an ugly lie, to be a false witness against one's neighbour or against one's God.

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” Calvin said that just as the previous commandment (that is, the eighth commandment) tied the hands, so this one ties the tongue. We can be very comfortable in a society of lying liars, negotiating our way by our own antennae and our own lie detectors. And then along comes the commandment. We can be comfortable being entertained by lies and being the observer of lies, even the connoisseurs of lies. And along comes the commandment. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.”

The background, of course, is the Ten Commandments. Here we have the law that is given to the people by their Creator – but not just to all the peoples of the earth, but specifically in the context to the covenant people of Israel. This is the law that was written by God upon the heart. This is the law that is writ large throughout creation. But in its specific form of these Ten Words it is given as a gift to the covenant people of Israel. And they are told here, as this series draws to a close, that one of the chief hierarchical concerns of a holy God is that his people will not bear false witness against one another. It ends up on the list of ten! This commandment and prohibition appears in the series of Ten Words.

The Power of a Lie⤒🔗

A life can be forfeited with a lie. A reputation can be destroyed with a lie. The specific first reference of this text is to a court of law – and not to our abstraction of law, but to the law as lived out, the court process as lived out within the covenant people of Israel, where every single day there were judgments being made in the courts. Every single day testimony was being given through the adjudicatory process. There in an honour culture, where reputation was everything and where life and death could hang in the balance, false witness could kill. False witness could destroy. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.”

The law of Israel, in its specificity and in its elaboration, included a very detailed system of how witness and evidence could be brought against someone, especially those accused of a very serious crime. And one of the prohibitions most often repeated in the Old Testament is this prohibition against false witness. One must speak the truth about one's neighbour. In an honour culture where reputation is everything and where a slanderous accusation can destroy not just this man or this woman in this generation, but for generations to come, the unravelling of the social fabric can come from one false accusation or one incident of false witness.

The fact is that we live in the midst of a culture that has accommodated itself to lies and to lying, but lies subvert the very substance of society itself. One of the fundaments/requirements for civilization is a basic level of trust. If we do not trust that our neighbours will tell us the truth and will tell the truth about us, there can be ultimately no civilization whatsoever. If we do not trust the courts as making an excruciating attempt to get at true witness and to eliminate false witness, if we believe that the courts are a sham, if we believe that justice is an illusion, if we believe that the courts can be manipulated so that a person or persons may be destroyed, there is no trust, there is no substance to the society, there are no bonds that bind persons together in mutuality and in trust. And Israel's existence was threatened by false witness against neighbour. Israel's testimony to the nations was threatened if it accepted false witness against neighbour.

Scripture on the Importance of Truth←↰⤒🔗

These are matters of life. These are matters of life and death. These are matters of repeated Scriptural concern. Just think of how many texts in Scripture deal with false witness, with lying, and with a difference between the lie and the truth. [I want to] share these verses from both Testaments:

These are the things which you should do: speak each man the truth to his neighbour; give judgment in your gates for truth, justice and peace.Zechariah 8:16, NKJV.

Demetrius has a good testimony from all, and from the truth itself. And we also bear witness, and you know that our testimony is true.3 John 12, NKJV.

The duty to stand for the truth, and to do so from the heart:

Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.Proverbs 31:8-9, NKJV.

He who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart.Psalm 15:2, NKJV.

The great chapter of Leviticus that deals with responsibility to our neighbour:

You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbour.Leviticus 19:15, NKJV.

Elaborating on this, in the fourteenth proverb we read:

A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness will utter lies…A true witness delivers souls, but a deceitful witness speaks lies.Proverbs 14:5, 25, NKJV.

Repeatedly there is the concern in Scripture that a lie can destroy. Can destroy utterly. Literally can lead to a capital execution if the witness be false, or conversely, could allow the guilty to go free and equal in justice in the eyes of God. “A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness will utter lies…A true witness delivers souls, but a deceitful witness speaks lies” (Proverbs 14:5, 25). The opposition and contrast there is clear. Lying kills; the truth delivers souls.

According to the Apostle Paul, we are to tell the truth at all times. We owe unto one another the truth. Paul says:

Therefore, when I was planning this, did I do it lightly? Or the things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be Yes, Yes, and No, No? But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No.2 Corinthians 1:17-18, NKJV.

Paul says very clearly that we owe unto one another a clear, unvarnished answer. Our yes is to be yes; our no is to be no. Our yes is never to be confused with a no. We are never to say a yes and a no in order to evade responsibility. We are not to bear false witness. We are most specifically not to lie. We are to tell the truth. We are to consider the reputation of our neighbour to be of such importance to us that we would not lie about her or we would not lie about him. We would not bear false witness.

First of all, in the court of law. If we are drawn into litigation or if we are drawn into the judicial process, we are to bear true witness. But certainly it is extended beyond that. And as this commandment is repeated, especially in the Old Testament, it is filled out with meaning. You can find it as cited not only in the repetition of the law, the “Deuteronomos,” in that fifth book of the Scripture, but throughout the Bible you will see it referenced. For instance, the prophet Hosea will cite this very commandment and will indict Israel for breaking this commandment. It is extended beyond the law court to the responsibility that we have one to the other to tell the truth. Not just when we have to stand up and raise the right hand and say, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” but even in our casual conversation, even in our social interaction, even in our e-mails, even in our preaching. The Bible treats truth telling as a deadly serious matter – a matter of life and death and a matter of absolute moral obligation.

The God of Truth←⤒🔗

It is rooted in the fact that the God who created us, the God who established his covenant with Israel, the God who redeemed his people through the blood of his Son, is the God of all truth. He himself is truth. All that he does, all that he says, all that he reveals, all the acts he performs, are words and deeds and acts of truth. As Jesus in his High Priestly prayer reflected, in speaking to the Father, “Your word is truth.” He prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Everything about God is a reflection of absolute and undiluted truth. In him there is no lie. He hates lies. His justice and his righteousness are established in an absolute veracity, in absolute truth. Those who would be his followers must be a people of truth. All those who are his creatures are obligated to the truth.

Jesus Christ himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). We are told in the New Testament that the Church, the people of God, are to be the people of the truth. And conversely, we are told that Satan is “the father of lies” (John 8:44). We are told that we are to have within ourselves as Christians, as believers, the Spirit of truth, but we are warned that there are deceiving spirits among us.

The entire biblical worldview takes with extreme urgent and even excruciating seriousness the fact that the difference between the true and the false, the true statement and the lie, is infinite, even as the distinction between the holiness of God and our human sinfulness is infinite. And we should see the difference between the lie and the truth as pointing to the ugliness and the deadliness of sin.

How far we fall short of the glory of God! We say we worship and follow God, and yet we lie. Truth and lies: how important to know the difference! How important to tell the truth. Ultimately it is because it is about God; it is about God's own character. If God's people – both the covenant people of Israel and the new covenant people of the Church – do not mirror, follow, obey, reflect God's own concern for the difference between the truth and the lie, then we sin. We create a scandal to the gospel. Ultimately it is about our worship of God, it is about our following of Jesus, whether or not we love the truth and hate the lie.

Does Truth Exist?←⤒🔗

It is first of all about God, and it is secondly about our fellow human creatures. We owe the truth to every single fellow human being, who is a fellow image-bearer of God. But in a fallen world, lies sure seem to rule. There are big lies and small lies. There are crude lies and there are sophisticated lies. There are slick lies and there are awkward lies. There are long lies and short lies, quiet lies and loud lies. There is propaganda. We have grown accustomed to this. We expect that the powers that be, humanly speaking, will often lie to us. As a matter of fact, sometimes we even depend upon the fact that they will lie to us and will lie to others. In a time of war, we expect the military to deceive. In a fallen world, lies seem to reign. And as true propagandists know, the bigger the lie, the more readily it is often believed. There are great huge lies of ideology, and then there are the little intimate lies within relationships.

There are some who believe that truth does not matter anymore because the truth does not exist. I mean, the very distinction between the truth and a lie assumes a worldview that has been forfeited by at least many, for some sectors of their lives, in a postmodern society. We are being told repeatedly that there is no such thing as absolute truth or universal truth, that all truth is socially constructed, and that it is simply a compliment we pay to propositions that serve our interests. We call them true, because if we can establish them as true, then it has binding authority upon others and we can extend our power upon them by determining that this is something that we will construct and we will now call true, and we will hold you accountable to this, which is not objectively, universally, abstractly true. It is merely truth as our social construct for the oppression and manipulation of others.

This is one of the hallmarks of postmodernism. It is found in figures such as Richard Rorty, the philosopher, who perhaps distils this postmodern concept down to his very essence when he said, “Truth is made, not found.” Truth is made. We are about this process of social construction. We are creating the truth as we go along. It is not really true; it is just what we call true. And it breaks down into different cultural-linguistic systems and different systems of power and oppression, so there are different truths for different people, different truths for different places, different truths for different needs, different truths for different purposes, different truths for different manipulations. And there is no distinction between the truth and the lie, because as we have grown up to maturity and this brave new postmodern world, we understand that belief that there actually is truth is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Truth Historically←↰⤒🔗

It is really not quite so postmodern after all, if we pride ourselves on the postmodern being recent. Friedrich Nietzsche writes this:

What then is truth? A moveable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions. They are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and are no longer as coins.Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, 1873.

This is devastating. I do not know what you heard with those words, but it is the fall of an entire civilization. It is the collapse of any shared meaning. It is the denial of any responsibility of truth. It is the denial that truth even exists. This is nihilism in its unvarnished, uncut face. Here we have Nietzsche writing an essay, the title of which betrays the entire collapse: On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense. How in the world can you have a conversation about truth and lies in a non-moral sense? It can only happen if you believe there is no morality. It can only happen if you believe there is no truth. It can only happen if you believe there is no such thing as the truth and no such thing as a lie.

“The truth,” he says, is simply “a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed.” Let's be real clear about this. If that is true, we are closing up shop. There is no reason to be here – and that is the truth. Poetically fixed, culturally reinforced… If there is no truth, there are no lies. If there is no truth, there is no God. If there is no lie, there is no sin. If there is no sin, there is no gospel. It is all a lie.

That is the problem, isn't it? You cannot, even if you are Nietzsche, really talk about lies and truth in a non-moral sense, because you have to eventually say that to claim something is true is a lie, which means there is some independent judgment of knowing that the truth of the matter is that there is no truth. And thus to say it is is to repeat a lie. We are trapped within the knowledge that God has placed within us, the conscience that is the structure of our own mental operation and the structure of morality in the world beyond. We can deny there is a truth, but we have to claim that denying the truth is a truth.

That is why postmodernism collapses in upon itself. That is why there are no postmodernists at 33,000 feet – they do not want gravity to be socially constructed. That is why no one wants a postmodern heart surgeon. No one wants a postmodern banker. You want your banker to believe that two plus two equals four when it is your dollars. But we live in a culture of the lie. We are living in a world in which, at least for large sections of life, people are believing the lie that there is no difference between truth and the lie.

And the pedigree of the philosophical subversion of truth goes back far beyond Nietzsche. In fact, it goes back to the very origins of philosophy itself, but in our most modern experience we can go all the way back to Immanuel Kant, whose critical philosophy and epistemology leaves doubt as to whether human beings, human knowers, can ever really know the truth.

Truth Today←↰⤒🔗

And then in popular culture, truth is just so messed up. We actually live in an age in which people think they can improve upon the truth. Edmund Morris was commissioned to write what was supposed to be the great biography of Ronald Reagan. Those of us who had read Edmund Morris' work on, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt, waited with great anticipation for this great biography of Ronald Reagan. And then it emerged. The title of it is Dutch – that was his nickname, so that makes sense. It has Ronald Reagan's photograph on the front, and that makes sense. But when the book was released, Edmund Morris made an incredible admission. He said that the book actually was not intended to be a traditional biography; rather, it is traditional biography mixed with his own fictional imagination. The publisher of the book had the audacity to say, “This is an improvement upon the biographical form”! The truth isn't enough! Edmund Morris, my mother would say, is telling a “story.” And the problem is the book is absolutely useless, because there is no distinction between the truth and the lie. And in this case, the lie is an imaginative and fictive recreating of events and conversations. But you cannot trust it. That is bad enough, but for the publisher to suggest that this is an improvement in the biographical genre, that is absolutely frightening!

More recently, James Frey's book The Million Little Pieces came out, leaving his reputation later in a million little pieces itself. Because it turned out that all of these awful, excruciating experiences about which he wrote, he had not actually experienced. He presented it as autobiography and it turned out that it wasn't! Oprah Winfrey loved it and she made it one of her Book of the Month selections, and she was frequently talking about him and had him on her program. But when the lie was revealed and it turned out this had not happened, she had him back on her program, and it was supposed to be where she was to confront him with his lies. And amazingly enough, what Oprah said to him was, “I feel your truth even better now.” This is the society we live in! “It seems truer now that I know it is a lie. I find even deeper meaning in the fact that you decided to make this up. That is even more meaningful than if you actually had experienced this.” It is the sound of an entire civilization falling in on itself when we are told that we have been told a lie and we actually prefer the lie to the truth!

Some doubt that it is now even possible to lie. Some even argue that it could be healthy to lie. Child Magazine in April 1990 has an article, The Truth about Lying. It is a positive title. There is a little hope. But the caption on the title underneath in the magazine, as it is blurbing the issue, says this:

The old view: Lying, like other issues of other morality, was seen only in black and white. Children were taught that all lying was bad and deserving of strict punishment and frequently reminded that lying will make your nose grow as long as Pinocchio’s. New view: Today, some lying is considered normal. In fact, a child’s first few lies are seen as an important step in the development of the self.The Truth about Lying, Child Magazine, 1990.

I see a lot of little cells developing, I can tell you that! The implication of this is that the parent has to nurture the lie: “Come on, you can do better than that! If you are going to lie to me, I want a whopper. Don't you come in here with these amateur lies! You better work on this lie a little bit more, because it is very important for your development. This is a developmental process. You come in here, and if I am satisfied with a little lie, you are never going to grow up and be the kind of liar you have to be! So you go to your room until you come up with a better lie, and then you come out here and I want you to look me square in the face, and I want you to tell me the biggest, baddest lie you can possibly come up with. It is important for your development. Go!” 

We look at that and we say, “This is nonsense!” But ultimately, it is just one more [symptom] of the therapeutic worldview, in which we just assume this is for our development. We help our children now to develop into liars.

The People of Truth←⤒🔗

We know, however, that as we are charged to be the people of the truth, Christians have a unique and God-assigned responsibility to speak that which is true and to speak for the truth. There is a mutuality to these responsibilities. There is a duality to our responsibility. It is not nearly enough now that we speak the truth; we must speak up for truth. It is a fascinating responsibility in this postmodern age. It is a very interesting missiologically and evangelistic responsibility now in this postmodern age: not only to speak the truth but to speak up for truth. We sometimes have to look to people and say, “What I am telling to you is true, and by the way, what I mean by that is it is true!” This isn't exactly new. This is why as far back as the 1960s and the 1970s Francis Schaeffer was having to tell people about the difference between truth and true truth.

We are to be the people of God's truth. It is a mark of the Christian that he or she be truthful. It is a mark of true Christianity to be established in the truth. God's people, even in local congregations, are to be little platoons of truth and little platoons of truthfulness. Even little islands in the midst of seas of lies. Even little oases in the midst of deserts of lies. God's people are to be the communities of truth, the people of truth.

There is an inner logic to the Ten Commandments that is often missed. And one of the ways we miss this is simply by reciting the commandments as separate words. First commandment, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth… we are done with the list! But there is an inner logic to the Ten Commandments that we miss, to our peril. There is a clear link between the third commandment and the ninth commandment. Let's remind ourselves of the third commandment:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain.Exodus 20:4-7, NASB, emphasis added.

In the very beginning God spoke these words, saying:

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.Exodus 20:2-3, NASB.

The inner logic goes from the first to the second to the third. “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” The Lord says, “You will not bear false witness against me. To bear false witness against me is not only to break the third commandment, but to break the second commandment, which is to create an idol. By your false words about me, you create an idol – an abstraction of your own invention. In lying about me, you effectively become an idolater.” And in breaking the third commandment, you break the second commandment, and in breaking the second commandment, you break the first commandment. By lying about God we create an idol, and by creating an idol we become an idolater, and we violate the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

False Witness about God←↰⤒🔗

False witness is taken very seriously by God about himself. “Do not tell lies about me. Do not take my name in vain.” The worst possible lie that we can possibly tell is a lie about God. Long before we get to a concern for truthfulness among human creatures, God directs us to the imperative of truthfulness concerning himself. The reputation for which we must be most concerned is the reputation of God himself. Theology is speech. Doctrine is speech. The danger of getting the theology wrong and the danger of getting the doctrine wrong is not merely to come up short on a systematic theology exam; it is to bear false witness about God. It is to lie about God. It is to create an idol in the place of the one true and living God. It is to violate the third, the second and the first commandment in retroactive sin. That is why we take theology with such consequence!

Luther was absolutely convinced that the chief breakers/violators of the ninth commandment were heretics and false prophets and empty preachers. I yet I wonder how many preachers, as they prepare to preach, worry about breaking the ninth commandment: bearing false witness. And more than that, worry about breaking the third commandment: taking the Lord’s name in vain. False witness about God.

In Jeremiah 14 the Lord said to Jeremiah:

The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.Jeremiah 14:14, ESV

Isaiah 44 is that great, classic chapter about idolatry. The man who deludes himself. He cuts down a tree, and with half of it he makes a fire and bakes bread, and he does what you would do with a tree you just cut. But with the other half of the tree he creates an idol. Do you remember the last of this? It says that it deceives him to the extent that he has not the wisdom to say, “Is not this a Iie in my right hand?”

Theology is not just about orthodoxy and heterodoxy. It is not just about right and wrong. It is not just about accuracy and inaccuracy. It is about the truth and the lie. In Romans 1 we are told that in our sinfulness, humans exchange the truth of God for a lie. It is interesting that heresy here is redefined as a lie. All of a sudden this word reappears. It is the inescapable word. Ultimately, it is the only appropriate word! It is a lie to lie about God. What an infinitely awful thought. And yet, how lightly and how frequently it is done.

Turn on the television. It is bearing false witness about God! “Don’t worry, God just wants you to be happy. No worries, God just wants you to be well.” “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” Just keep those cards and letters coming. Vain theology. Theology that would revise God. Theology that would improve upon orthodoxy and thus create a heterodoxy. Theology that lies rather than tell the truth. Perhaps heresy is the clearest example of a lie that leads to death and the ugliness and the danger of it is made apparent to us. We dare not bear false witness about God. We do not take refuge in ambiguity.

Dr. James P. Boyce, the founder of this institution, in his address of 1856 on Three Changes in Theological Institutions (the effective Magna Carta for this institution), when he spoke of the confessional responsibility of those who would teach on this faculty, he said that all who teach here must sign the confession of faith, pledging to teach in accordance with and not contrary to all that is contained therein. And he did not stop there. He went on and said “without hesitation or mental reservation.”

Augustine understood the concept of mental reservation. In his confessions and in other writings, he talks about the fact that we can lie by appearing to say something that is partly true. We can lie, reserving to ourselves the knowledge that we do not mean what we say – mental reservation. Dr. Boyce said, “No, sorry. Forfeit won't work.” The only way a theological seminary can exist with integrity is if its faculty agrees of heart and of mind to teach in accordance with and not contrary to all that is contained therein, without hesitation or mental reservation. No crossed fingers behind the back.

This reminds us of our continual dependence upon Scripture. How else are we going to speak the truth about God unless we are completely dependent upon his truthful revelation of himself? If we ever depart from this truthful revelation, either by heresy or by vain imagination, we transform the truth into a lie and we lie about God. We must trust the Scriptures.

Telling the Truth to One Another←⤒🔗

But we also know that ultimately we must move from the third commandment to the ninth, from our responsibility to our Creator to our responsibility to our fellow creatures. What we owe to God leads inexorably to what we owe to each other. Not merely because the other is another human being, but because the other is another human being made in the image of God. And our obligation is to his Creator, or to her Creator, even more than to him and even more than to her. We owe unto God treating him/her as a fellow creature made in the image of God.

The original context here in Exodus 20, when we read, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour,” was interpreted by Israel to mean you do not lie to a fellow child of Israel. You do not lie to a fellow member of the covenant community. This is repeated in the definition of what this means. Again, in Leviticus 19, we are told that the neighbour is the one who is near to you, your kin, and your fellow covenant keeper. Here you find the responsibility within the covenant not to lie to each other.

But we are not left there. We must move, as Christ people, into the question: “But who is my neighbour?” It is no longer just our kin and our kindred. It is no longer just our family and the familiars. It is no longer just our tribe. It is no longer even just the covenant people of God. We are told that we owe unto all all that we owe unto our neighbour.

And thus, not only are the third and the ninth commandments conjoined, but also the great commandment. What did Jesus say?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.Matthew 22:37, 39, ESV.

Love of God and love of neighbour combined together in one commandment. Love of God and love of neighbour combined in telling the truth rather than bearing false witness. The key to understanding this is the fact that our neighbour is God's creature. In the original context we leave a mere concern for responsibility to our fellow covenant-keeper to all fellows made in the image of God. We move from Leviticus 19 to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we learn that everyone is our neighbour, and thus we owe the truth unto everyone. No lies!

Now, we must never act as if this is always an easy matter. In 1803, the Long Run Baptist Church here in this community, the church for which the local association takes its name, split. They had a church fight. They had a theological debate, and it was over lying. The question was (and it was not an abstract question in the day in 1803): If an Indian raiding party comes and demands of you where you have hidden your children, are you obligated to tell them the truth or are you allowed to tell them the lie? It lead to a split within the congregation. We can at least admit that lying is an issue we are splitting over. This is an old question.

What about the Hebrew midwives? What about Rahab the harlot? Augustine said, “When forced into such a situation, one should respond with silence.” But there is deception in the Bible. God actually commands deception at some points (Joshua 8:1ff; 2 Samuel 5:22ff). God commands Israel and its military operations to deceive.

You can lie in more than one way. Winston Churchill said to Joseph Stalin in the midst of World War II, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” You can lie in more than one way. You can lie, as Charles Hodge said, by leaving the lights on in your home as if you are there so that no robber will enter. Charles Hodge, by the way, said that is an advisable lie.

How we put all that together? Well, there is no easy answer to that, and there is always the danger that we will deceive ourselves and grow comfortable with the lie. There is always the potential that we will rationalize our way into lying once again.

We do understand there are excruciating situations, and in ministry you will face excruciating situations. When an elderly man is on his last days, do you tell him just how awful his predicament is? Does a doctor always owe the patient the absolute truth? Or if that is settled as a matter of medical ethics, do family members owe each other the truth in that situation? When an elderly woman looks and says to the one visiting her, “I have a question: Am I beautiful anymore?” how are you going to answer? (That one easier than it sounds. The answer is always yes: a fellow human made in the image of God.)

But we find ourselves repeatedly in situations in which it sometimes appears that a lie will serve better than the truth. We do know this: God will judge the lie. We do know this: We will be judged for our lies. We do know this: Lies hurt, lies kill, lies deceive, lies destroy. We do know this: We owe the truth to God, and because we owe the truth to God, we owe the truth to each other and to all others.

Recognizing the Truth←⤒🔗

T.S. Eliot said humankind cannot bear much reality. That is an awful indictment, isn't it? Humankind cannot bear much reality. In other words, we cannot bear the truth. And yet, Jesus says in John 8:32, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Let's admit that the only reason we know the difference between the truth and a lie is because we know the one true and living God. Let's admit that the only way we know what it means to tell the truth is because we have received the truth. And let's admit to each other that the only way we recognize the truth as the truth is because the Holy Spirit opened our eyes to see the truth.

Alone, we would not only not bear much reality; we would not even see the reality. But by God's grace, we have seen the truth. We come to know the One who is the way and the truth and the life.

Thus, we have been incorporated by the power of God into the people of the truth, and even and especially in the midst of this postmodern age, we are to be the people of the truth. We are to be the people who speak the truth and only the truth. And we are to be the people who speak up for the truth, and always for the truth.

The Truth and Evangelism←⤒🔗

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” You know, we all know what we are told in the beginning. This means you do not lie. But of course it means far more than that. It means you tell the truth.

It is certainly not an accident that the word we use so often for evangelism is the word “witness.” We must be ever mindful of the fact that not only do we owe unto each other the truth and not the lie, the apostle Paul tells us we owe unto all people everywhere the gospel of Christ. We are to be not only a non-lying witness, but to be a gospel witness. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of te earth” (Acts 1:8).