The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning It's time to sing your song again Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me Let me be singing when the evening comes. Bless, O Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I'll worship Your holy name. You're rich in love and You're slow to anger. Your name is great and Your heart is kind. For all Your goodness I will keep on singing. 10,000 reasons for my heart to find. Bless the Lord, O my soul, my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I'll worship your holy name. And on that day when my strength is failing, The end draws near and my time has come, Still my soul will sing your praise unending. Ten thousand years and forever more. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul, Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul, I worship Your holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul. Worship His holy name. Sing like never before, O my soul. If you want to turn over to Exodus chapter 20 Exodus 2016, and the title of this is Be Honest. Be Honest. Now, do you recognize this statement? Do you solemnly swear, affirm that you will tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God under pains and penalties of perjury." Anybody recognize that statement? Where's that coming from? Your wedding vows? It's in the court system. Now some of you have that memorized because you've been in the court system quite a bit. Maybe not, maybe not, all right, but have you actually listened to that statement, that question? Do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will tell the truth? We're not stopping there. The whole truth, we're still not stopping there. And nothing but the truth, so help you God under pains and penalties of perjury. So it's not just, on the matter of your integrity, it's, I'm going to bring pain upon you if you do not follow suit. Why do we have to do that? Sinful nature, the depravity of mankind, why do we do it? Where does that come from? Where does this oath have its basis? Have you ever thought about that? Now, if we go back billions and billions of years ago. And there was a big bang, ba-bloom. And then all of a sudden, life started to appear after asteroids destroyed the dinos and all that jazz and everything came to be. And there's this gloop that all of a sudden started developing into more of a higher understanding of a being. And then all of a sudden, they became chimps. And then all of a sudden, we got human beings out of this. Where do we get truth from? Have you gone to the zoo lately? And the chimpanzees are there talking to each other and saying, now, do you affirm? Let me get this. Do you solemnly swear and affirm that you will tell the truth? They got their hand in the air. The whole truth and nothing but the truth shall help you, God, under pains and penalties of perjury. Has anybody seen that? Do they care? We have no idea. They just want to be fed, right? Okay? We have no idea in that sense, okay? And the matter of even being able to speak a lie would be outside of their parameters. Now, do they deceive each other? I have no idea. I haven't paid attention to them long enough to be able to figure that out. But where Do we get this idea of honesty? Don't lie. Make sure you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It comes from God, folks. Now, you could say, well, if you go back in history, all of a sudden there was an individual, Jackie could probably tell me about this, there was an individual that decided that this should be the oath that needs to be put into the court system to make sure everybody tells the truth. Why? Because they probably were having issues with people telling the truth. But that basis, the idea behind truth itself and do not lie comes all the way back to God himself, the basis for our truth. So when we dive into this tonight, we are trying to understand, okay, why do we do what we do? It's because God wants us to. Why do we not do what we're not supposed to do? Because God doesn't want us to do those things. And that's just the rule book that's placed out there not to say, oh, God, how could you put all these rules on me? It's such a burden. All of a sudden, we've become that rebellious teenager that's wanting freedom. Don't look at it that way. Instead, turn around and say, God, I'm thankful that you helped me know how I am supposed to live my life. How am I supposed to treat God himself? How am I supposed to treat others? How he relates them? I shouldn't murder someone. I shouldn't commit adultery. I shouldn't steal. But I also should not bear false witness. And so as we get into that, do not bear false witness. Where does this come from? Do not bear false witness. We come at this from Exodus chapter 20 in verse 16. And what does it say? Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Where's that coming from? Well, in the basis behind that, you would get this understanding that when you were to go in front of, if there was an issue, if there was some sort of a criminal activity, if there was a problem, and you were to go before the hierarchy or the judgment system, there was this command you should not, to testify false news, false testimony. You should not give lies in the midst of that kind of a scenario. When we're trying to figure out what has happened to cause the issue, we need truth to be able to fix the issue. It's just as in our legal system today, even though it doesn't look the same as what it did back then, dealing with Israel, okay? We understand that before Jethro came back to talk to Moses, Moses was taking care of all the issues, wasn't he? And you know what he needs? He needs the full truth. He needs nothing but the truth in order to be able to take care of that scenario. But we know when Jethro comes in, his father-in-law says, listen, you cannot take care of the whole of Israel. You've got to be able to set up people that can take care of these problems, these issues. And that's exactly what he did. And so we understand within the the hierarchy that they set up, that when they had these issues, they were going to come in and display what was the problem. And in order to take care of it, God is saying, listen, society needs to be built upon truth. Don't lie. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Listen, God doesn't even need to go that far. He just says, tell the truth. Don't lie. That's it. Don't bear false witness against thy neighbor. You know what? I learned something. As a young pastor, somebody came while I was working in the Flint plastics factory. I was there, and I was at the shipping docks, and we were receiving different plastic, and some guy came in, and he found out that I was an assistant pastor in Flint. And so at that point, then he starts unloading all of his marriage problems on me, okay? And while I'm trying to gather numbers and make sure that I'm getting all the plastics where they need to go, because if I got in trouble, It was bad on me, okay? And so I'm trying to receive all this, but then he's telling me all about his wife and all the things that she's done, and da-da-da-da-da-da, fill in the blanks, and then he goes, but you know what? There's always my truth, her truth, and the truth. Hold on for a second. How do we know what truth is if all of a sudden truth is for you, what you want truth is for you, and truth is for your spouse what they want truth is for their spouse. But then all of a sudden, there is the overarching truth. Like, where do we grasp the overarching truth? Now some of you might have heard this scenario where somebody's coming in and says, well, there's his truth, her truth, and the truth. Well, how do you even jump into that scenario? Well, you've got to come back to this basis point right here. And if we don't take care of this basis point, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. If we don't take care of this, then there's no reason to move forward. If there's no baseline of the truth, not his truth and her truth, but the truth, that's it, we cannot move forward. And so this is where he lays it out. Listen, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Now, who's your neighbor? Like, do we need to go? And what was that show back in the day? What was it? The guy that was always saying, will you be my neighbor? Mr. Rogers, isn't he a great guy? Now, do we go around and sing that going down the street, will you be my neighbor? No, what's happening here in this scenario? In this scenario, we understand that it's anybody that I have dealings with, anybody in my vicinity, anybody that I have interaction with, I need to make sure that I do not bear false witness against them. And I believe that this goes far deeper than just the judicial system because it's any interaction that I have with another human being, if I'm going around and I am lying to this person and I'm lying to this person, then how good am I going to be in going into the court system and actually trying to be a witness in a case, whether it's for my own self or whether it's for someone else? Everybody knows at that point that I am a liar. Who can they trust? Who can they trust? And so this goes much deeper than just the court system and dealing with problems within their society, but if you lose this basis point, you will lose your society. What if all of a sudden, and maybe it's already happened, What if all of a sudden you have a legal court case and you walk in and they don't put that oath out there for the first witness? Do you trust that person? What if they're on the opposing team? All of a sudden there's some concern. What if all of a sudden we don't need to worry about truth anymore, we're just gonna do whatever we wanna do. How good do you feel about your judicial system at that point? Anybody wanna put their full faith in it? We want truth to be the basis, not just because we want it, but because God wants it, and that's what we need to do, okay? But what if my neighbor is not being honest? Do we still be honest? What does God say? Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. That's just the basis. We have to hold on to this. Listen, there is no her truth or his truth. There is only the truth. And that's what we need to hold on to. There's a couple other passages that are in reinforcement of this command. You'll see in Leviticus 5.1, it says, and if a soul sin and hear the voice of swearing and is a witness, whether he has seen or known of it, if he does not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity. And if there's nothing being done, if he knows what's going on, if he's going to be a witness and he doesn't say anything at all, he actually bears that iniquity. He takes that upon himself. It says in Deuteronomy 19, 16 through 19, if a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him, that which is wrong, then both the men between whom the controversy is shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days. And the judges shall make diligent inquisition And behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother, then shall ye do unto him as he had thought to have done unto his brother, so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. Wouldn't you like that kind of a justice system? So somebody comes in and falsely accuses someone else and thinks, oh, you know what? He stole my sheet. So therefore, based on the rules that have been in place, I need four sheep. I want it. Give it back. Give me four sheep in restoration. Let's make this right. And then what happens is they have to go before the Lord and the priests. And when it's found out that that false witness said, hey, this guy stole, when the guy really didn't steal, then at that point God had put in here that the guy who was a false witness and was wanting this judgment to be done upon this person, whatever that judgment was, was supposed to be enacted upon him. Well, this is what you wanted to be done unto this person that you lied about, now it's gonna be done unto you. Do you think that we'd have less problems within our society if all of a sudden the false accusers would actually get enacted upon them whatever they're expecting upon the person that they're falsely accusing? Things would start to change. All of a sudden the tables would turn and people wouldn't be falsely accusing anymore at that point. You go into another one, Leviticus 19, 11 through 12, it says, ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. I am the Lord. Here it is, right in verses right after each other. Here, this is how you shouldn't be speaking. You shouldn't be lying to one another. You shouldn't also be falsely swearing. Guess what? When you swear falsely, that's a lie. Shouldn't be doing that, especially by his name. You're profaning that. You're making that in vain, his name, God's name, in vain by you falsely swearing. So there's many different passages in here where it's talking about, listen, if you're gonna falsely accuse, guess what? There's consequences. This should not be done. This needs to be taken care of. You should not lie. But let's ask this. Why is truth important? I mean, we've talked about it a little bit as we've started this message, but why is truth important? And I've got a few points here that I wanted to present with Scripture to back it up. First of all, God is truth, and truth is what he gives. He literally is truth. He is the truth. It says in Deuteronomy 32, 4, he is the rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are judgment, a God of what? Truth. And without iniquity, just and right is he. He is a God of truth. You jump down into John 1.14, it says, and the word was made flesh. Who's the word? It's Jesus Christ. And he dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and what? Truth. He's full of truth. He is literally truth. You go to John 14, 6. This is probably a verse that came to your mind. As I said, listen, God is truth. It says, Jesus says unto him, I am the way, the truth. and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." It's interesting, as Jesus is questioned in John 18.37, Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the what? Truth. Why did he come? He came to bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice." You know, that's interesting. And we're going to point to this in this next point. But you saw that at the end, truth reveals the team. God is truth. So in relation to that, truth is going to reveal. How we align with that is going to show us what jersey we actually wear. It goes on, it says in 1 John 4, 6, we are of God and he that knoweth God, heareth us. He that is not of God, heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. John here is saying in 1 John, he's expressing how, listen, we are of the truth. And those who are listening, They're wearing the right jersey, the jersey of truth. Those who don't want to listen to those who are trying to teach the truth, they are the spirit of error. And there are plenty of people out there that were fighting against the truth. That is something that they were constantly battling with. telling people that Jesus wasn't real, that he's not God, that they were even talking about how in the false teaching that they were dealing with, they were saying that in the spirit you are perfect, but in the flesh, You are sinful, so it's okay to go and do immorality while you're in the flesh, but yet we wait for the Spirit for when we are perfect. It's just excusing more sin. Is that truth? No. And this is what John is trying to tell people. Listen, don't follow after this spirit of error. Follow after what is truth. He goes on in 1 John, in the beginning of 1 John, he says, listen, we have seen and heard and touched Jesus, and now we want you to experience that same Jesus. We want to tell you the truth. And he goes on and he expresses much of that in 1 John. There's another verse here that we see in Ephesians 4, in verse 25, we see Paul in a couple of verses. It says, wherefore putting away, what? Lying. We put it away for another rainy day, right? Is that what we're supposed to be doing? No, no, no. It's forsaking lying. I'm going to drop this. I'm going to put it away. I'm not going to take this up. This isn't going to be my pet. This isn't going to be the thing that I hold on to and cherish. Speak every man truth with his who? Neighbor. All of a sudden we're coming back right to Exodus chapter 20. Do not bear false witness against thy neighbor. What should we be doing? Speaking every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. The basis, one basis for telling the truth is that God is truth. It helps us to be more and more like Him. As we tell the truth, we are more and more like God Himself. But it also shows where we align what jersey we have. Why are we motivated to speak truth to our neighbors? Why? Because we are members one of another. It's talking about the church coming together and being able to express that truth. We're able to hold on to the integrity of each other. Ephesians 4.15, it says here, but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. How do we grow up in the head who is Christ? What does it say? speak the truth in love. That is a basis point. Jesus did the exact same thing as he was here ministering on this earth, speaking truth in love that may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. But you know, another basis for why we shouldn't be lying is because lies hurt. And I think we would all agree with this, wouldn't we? Proverbs 18.8, it says, the words of a tailbearer as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. Have you ever been there when someone is lying about you? Has it ever made you sick? Like, we understand this verse. We understand the basis for this, and even what someone has used against us with their mouth and in their words, it actually affects us physically. Lying hurts. And is that something that Jesus wants to be a part of? That he wants us to be a part of? All of a sudden, when we are about this business, we're coming back to failing at another one of the Ten Commandments. Do not take God's name in vain. That one has really hit me hard. Do not take God's name in vain. I just always thought of it as just a language that I speak. As long as I just don't ruin God's name and use it empty, in an empty way, then I'm fine. But yet when I claim the name of Jesus Christ, when I say that I am a Christian, that I'm a follower of God, that I am a child of God, all of a sudden, if I am not representing Him, then I am emptying the value of His name towards others that are around me. And if I'm lying about other individuals, that just tells everybody else, wait, wait, which team is He on? Which team is he batting for? Which team is he fighting for? Is it his own to save himself and whatever he wants out of his own lying and bearing false witness? Or is it God's team that he's fighting for? Because we know that in this next point, God hates lying. It says, these six things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him. This is in Proverbs 6, 16 through 19. This is how it continues in 17. It says, a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, and heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies. Now, go back. Doesn't he say the same thing basically twice? This is what he hates, a proud look, a lying tongue. Then go forward to 19, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. What do you think God's opinion of lying is? What is his feeling towards bearing false witness? He hates it. He is in opposition to it. So that's why we should have nothing to do with it. So this is where we come down to the last point here. So what happens when I lie? You say, wait a minute, I've never lied before. The altar is open. And it's too bad that our noses don't grow whenever we lie, right? And politicians wouldn't be able to get through the door. Or used car salesmen. That's only because of my experience in the last two months, all right? I'm not bitter. But what happens when I lie? Because I can talk about other people and their struggles with lying, but what happens when I lie. It's not that big of a deal in my life. It's not something I really struggle with. Remember last week when I started putting in some application? In the application, I told you it's like these 10 commandments are all connected. They're intertwined. It's like when you mess one up, when you fail in one, all of a sudden you fail in another. And so when you steal, sometimes that's also lying in the same move. And so some of those things where, hey, stealing answers on a test. You say, well, what's lying about that? Well, all of a sudden I've turned in work that I'm claiming is my own, that's why I have my name at the top of the paper, and yet I'm turning it in as my own, but yet that is a total lie. But what if they gave it to me? You're still lying. You're claiming it as your own. If only teachers would invite me into the school to be able to teach about this. Because guess what? This is a major problem in our schools. Do I have an amen from teachers? Yeah. Barry, I know you're a former teacher, but I mean, that is something that they're always struggling with to the point where AI is now doing the homework for them. Listen, AI is not you. And so students, let's not be a part of that. You are lying in that sense. Well, what about, again, going back to that illustration of last week, cheating on my taxes, lying about my income or the expenses to make taxes easier on myself? Again, that is bearing false witness. You are not testifying correctly against your neighbor. What about lying that dives into deception? How many lies are involved in adultery? Now folks, I know we've already taken care of this, but just get this. When adultery happens, did it start with the big act of adultery? Where did it start? It started with something small. It actually started with this, me lying to myself. Who's your closest neighbor? All of a sudden, when you get in moments like that, stealing, killing, anger, gossip, all of a sudden we are lying to ourselves saying, I'm okay in doing this. I am justified in my actions. They aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, so therefore I can do what I want to do in this scenario. All of a sudden, the deception has started up here within my own mind, which draws me to the big actions. It starts in my own heart. And that's where I need to keep myself in check. It's not just about what comes out of my mouth, but what's in my mind. I've been transparent with you in this sense before. That is my biggest battle, folks, is my mind. Do you all agree with me on that? I mean, some of you said, no, it just comes right out. Whatever's up there, it just comes out. But I think most would come back to this point of, listen, what's up here, sometimes I hold it in. In fact, over the past week, I've had to rewrite several text messages that I was about ready to send or the email that I was about ready to send. All of a sudden, I delete the entire thing. It was already up here. Just didn't get sent. But what lie am I telling myself? Kids, have you ever heard this question? Hey, have you cleaned your room? I told you to clean your room about an hour ago. Have you cleaned your room? Oh, yeah, sure. Then dad walks in. He's doing an inspection, because he's the drill sergeant for the house. And he looks underneath the bed. Yeah, it's not supposed to look like that. Everything from the floor, tossed underneath the bed, or you open up the closet, and whoa, I did not know you could hoard that many things. Where's your dirty clothes basket? I have no idea. I can't find it. Well, you better go get a pickaxe and start working on whatever's in your closet so you can actually find your dirty clothes basket. How about that? Or have you taken out the trash? Yeah, I think so. Have you ever heard that? Yeah, I think so. I told you to take the trash out before you started playing video games. See, this is for adult dads too, right? The wife comes in. I thought I told you to take the trash out. Three hours ago. What are you doing? I'm trying to keep up with my Call of Duty kill death ratio, okay? Here we go. I think I did it. And the trash is like two trash cans high. What is this? Well, I did it about two weeks ago. All of a sudden, we try to throw around deception and try to finagle our way out of it to try to appease, but yet the lie, the deception is still there. What about this? Have you ever called in a sick day when you weren't really sick? Have you ever exaggerated in your marriage when you're trying to win an argument? Have you ever heard these words? Well, you always, you never. You know what that is? Immediately, that is a lie. You know what I'm trying to do? I'm trying to win at whatever expense it takes. I'm also bearing false witness. against my neighbor." In that case, we need to be able to back up and watch the words that erupt out of our mouth. Even in the sense of being a Christian, hypocrisy is built off of lies, and it doesn't usually start like a big mountain. It starts as something very, very small, where most people can't see it in the beginning, but then it starts to get big, and then all of a sudden, your lying issue looks like that coal mound over in Kincaid. It looks like we just built a whole other mountain outside of that power plant. Well, how did it get that big? Well, it kept showing up. It kept dropping off another load. And over and over, over and over, over and over, we just keep building. Do you know what happens when we lie? We put another lie on top just to cover for ourselves. And it just keeps building and building and building. And the more you lie to yourself, folks, the more you start to believe yourself. Even as crazy as some of our lies are. So, what do I do? when I lie? There's really no surprise that I'm bringing this verse back into it. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How do you get rid of a mountain of sin? Repent. Confess. You know what God does with that mountain? Go on. Cleanse. Right there, you see it. That's truth, folks. Rest on that. Talk to God. Talk to God. Let's pray. God, we thank you so much for your truth. We thank you for the fact that you give us truth and we can rest on that truth. God, we thank you that you're the basis of truth. And Lord, help us to respond to that in a way that reflects your glory, your honesty, your integrity. God, help us to live as we should. In Jesus' name, amen. I'm just going to let you take a few