Continuing in the Sermon on the Mount, and I believe you can find that on page eight, 10, if you'd like to use the pew Bible. Let's stand together for this reading. God's word. Matthew five in verse thirty three. Jesus speaking, says again, you have heard that it was said to those of old. You shall not swear falsely. But shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil or from the evil one. As for the reading of God's word, you can be seated. In 2006, Nick Saban was the coach of the Miami Dolphins, and although he was coaching at that time a professional team in the NFL, rumors began to circulate that he was soon going to return to the college ranks. to coach at the collegiate level and there was a number of reasons why these rumors came. Number one, Saban had already had great success in college at Michigan State and LSU even winning a national championship there. Secondly, his stint in the NFL was not going as well as he would hope or the Dolphins fans and organization would have hoped. And the third reason was is that there was an opening at a traditional powerhouse, a blue blood. The Alabama Crimson Tide needed a coach. And it was thought that if they could get the right man, that Alabama, with its history of winning, could return to this championship pedigree that it had been lost. And so Saban was asked about this at a press conference as he was still coaching the Dolphins, December 21st, 2006. And his response was very frustrating. Now he said, he went on to say that the reason he gave such a response was to avoid distractions for the current team he was coaching and not get the cart sort of before the horse. But he said, I guess I'm gonna have to say it. I'm not gonna be the Alabama coach. I shouldn't even have to comment on this. I think I've said this over and over and over again. Nick Saban went on to win six national championships as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tie. That press conference was in December. It was in January that he was announced as Alabama's next coach. And because of all of the success that he had, no one really thinks back to that press conference. The success overshadows the circumstances that led to him going to coach Alabama. And if people look back on it now, they simply do so with a sense of humor. And it's not just that he told a lie, but everyone knew he was lying. No one believed him at the press conference. And that sort of thing is expected in these circles. We know that sporting games involve, even in the game itself, the rules allow for and it's somewhat necessary that there is a degree of deception. And sometimes in wanting to not disclose too much information in settings like that, not just in the game, but in press conferences, coaches will sometimes lie or speak what is untrue. We expect this. We expect this in athletics. We expect our politicians to lie. We all know the joke, right? How do you know when a politician is lying? It's when his mouth is open. We've all heard that, but it's a sad, sad state of affairs, isn't it? We don't trust what we hear coaches say at press conferences. We try to read between the lines. We don't trust what our politicians say. We don't trust the news media. Even in our day-to-day lives, we're skeptical. When it comes to what people present as the truth, we know what it's like to have people flatter us to our faces and then behind our backs, they say what they really think about us. For some people, lies are a way of life. Sometimes big lies, sometimes the little white lies. Whereas this is their method, their way of living as a way to keep them safe from conflicts and discomfort and confrontation. And so in our world, it's no secret that truthfulness, trustworthiness is a rare thing. And yet there are some areas, circumstances, occasions where we do still have a sense of the weightiness of our words. For instance, even though we don't think much, perhaps, about the lies that surround us every day, because they're so commonplace, when we find that someone has committed perjury, we still know that's a big no-no. We still take that as a very serious offense. Had Saban been under oath when he said, I'm not going to be the Alabama head coach, when he was asked about if he had had conversations, if he's interested in the job, if they have contacted him, if he would have been under oath, that moment wouldn't be looked back on with a degree, a sense of humor as it is by most now. Well, when it comes to taking oaths, swearing, that's what Jesus is speaking of here in the Sermon on the Mount. And he is in this context dealing with truthfulness and the need for and what he calls his people to, to be people of the truth. In these in these verses, he's really saying that we ought to be people, his people ought to be people who can be taken at their word, who are known for their truthfulness, for their trustworthiness. Those who have been ushered into Christ's kingdom are to be people of the truth. As we base all that we believe on what we believe to be true concerning are God and his son, Jesus Christ, and so his people are to be people of the truth, they are to be not only promise makers, but promise keepers. Now, we've said in the past that verse 20. Serves sort of as a governing verse for this section, and then what follows the The righteousness that is required of us is that which exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And as Jesus comes to fulfill the law, we find that he provides us with a righteousness that is true, that is exceeding the scribes and the Pharisees. And so as he is in this section expounding and applying the true sense of the law of God. He's showing us in it what true righteousness, the practice of true righteousness looks like, and that is the case when it comes to truth telling. And so the practice of true righteousness means that our word should be trustworthy. That's what we're going to see in verses 33 to 37. The practice of true righteousness means that our word should be trustworthy. We'll look at this in two simple points this evening. The first is the issue of oaths. The issue of oaths. Jesus says, do not take an oath or do not swear. What does he mean by this? The second thing we'll note is in verse 37 and that is, The simplicity of speech. So the issue of oaths and the simplicity of speech. Let's look first at the issue of oaths. Again, that's what he's speaking of here when he says in verse 34, do not take an oath. Once again, we have this familiar refrain and we've seen time and time again. This is the fourth time of six that we'll see it. You've heard that it was said. And then in verse 34, but I say to you. Now, in the past three sections, we've noted how you have heard that it was said was a quotation of the Old Testament, of an instance of Old Testament law. But here he's not so much as quoting a passage directly as he is providing a summary of what the Old Testament taught with regard to taking oaths, with swearing. Now, some believe that he was quoting the tradition here. And he may have been, in this sense, that this was the way that the Jews of his day would summarize all that the Old Testament had to say with regard to taking oaths, making vows, swearing, truthfulness. And so Jesus is quoting that, you have heard that it was said. Regardless of whether he is alluding to a particular text or a number of texts, or if he is directly quoting that tradition, which is intended to summarize the Old Testament teaching on taking oaths. What Jesus says here is certainly a faithful summary of the Old Testament with regard to oaths and vows. And so he says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord. what you have sworn. Now there appears to be an allusion to several passages. We have, of course, the ninth commandment, you shall not bear false witness. And Jesus says here, you shall not swear it falsely. There's also the third commandment where we're told that we're not to take the name of the Lord our God in vain, which is in a frivolous, worthless, empty, meaningless manner. And part of taking God's name upon our lips does have to do with swearing, with taking oaths. You are not to take an oath to swear by any other God, only the true God. Deuteronomy 6.13 says that God's people are to swear by his name alone. Deuteronomy 23.21. declares that what we vow to the Lord, he will require of us. And then Numbers 30 verse 2 says essentially the same thing. A man shall not break his word that which he has vowed to the Lord. So this is a faithful summary of the Old Testament's teaching here. You shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. This is where, as we have gone back to verse 20 several times, Righteousness that is to exceed the scribes and the Pharisees. This is where we get a little bit of insight into the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees who missed the point of the law and were very precise to conform to the external demands of it. So as we saw in verse 31 last week, right, it wasn't that they were so concerned with the true meaning and intent and purpose of marriage. But they were scrupulous when it came to making sure when you put away your wife, you must give her that writing that you must put the bill of divorce in writing. So when we come to verse 33, this is what they narrowed in on. Just like in verse 31, they narrowed in on the bill of divorce. In verse 33, they honed in on, you shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. So, of course. None of the scribes and Pharisees would say that if you swore something to God that it was OK to break that oath. That's a given, that is very clear. But there may be a little wiggle room if the oath was made to someone else and if you called someone or something other than God to bear witness. So Jesus says, You're not to swear by heaven in verse 34, by earth in verse 35, also in verse 35, by Jerusalem or in verse 36. Don't take an oath by the hair of your head. The idea here is that if you take an oath based on these lesser things, you've got a little wiggle room. The idea is they don't have quite the same commitment, they're not binding as much as Calling God to witness would be. Why are we not to swear by these things? Jesus gives the reason. He connects all of these things to God himself. So the intention was to avoid God. Jesus says all of these things were in reference to God. Don't swear by heaven because that's God's throne. Don't swear by the earth because that's his footstool. Don't swear by Jerusalem because that's the city of God's king. And don't even take an oath by the hair on your head because you're not able to make one white or black. Or to grow it for some of us who are follically challenged. It's God who has control over all of these things. God is the as a friend of mine says he is the the ultimate referent. Right. Jesus is placing all of these things in reference to him. And so you can't escape your obligations just because you've you've you've made them you've sworn you've called to witness other things. Apparently, these are. Actual things they were making a habit of swearing by. You know, the Jerusalem or by the temple or by the gold in the temple, as we see in other places. Jesus is saying it all comes back to God. You can't avoid him by swearing on lesser things. Those things I remember saying as children were foolish. Cross my heart and hope to die and stick a needle in my eye. I swear on my grandmother's grave. There's no need for it. We're not to trivialize our promises by making them on anything less than God himself. God is the witness. He knows the words that we say. He knows the thoughts and intentions of our heart. And so they're not to swear by any of these created things as though they could actually bear witness. Now, at times, God himself does call upon creation to bear witness. We have this in Isaiah, we have this in Jeremiah, calling upon the heavens and the earth. But that's sort of the point. He is God. He's the creator. He has power over these things. We don't. And so if you're looking for something to swear by that can make your commitment any less binding. Christ would have us to know that your testimony is before the Lord himself. So that's the issue of oaths. The issue of oaths and then we'll get to verse 37 now. And this is really Jesus is speaking here of the simplicity of speech. He says, so don't swear by these things, but let what you say simply be yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil or from the evil one, as it can be translated, the desire to sort of continue to bolster these things and to feel this need to overemphasize and convince people of our truthfulness by all the things that we're trying to swear by should not be necessary and actually can proceed from evil. Now, we should at this point speak to oaths and vows and the abiding nature of them or whether they were discontinued, because the text here really causes us to ask that question. Is Christ forbidding all swearing, all vows, all oath taking? Are we no longer allowed to swear by the name of God or by when he says don't swear by anything at all. And when he says in verse 34, don't swear or don't take an oath at all. Is that what he means? At all. Period. Well, there are some Christian traditions who have held to this and that still do. Believing that Christ has made an end to all these things in the New Testament. That we're not to take oaths anymore, which is the public calling God to witness, and we're not to take vows anymore, which is really the sort of the devotional equivalent of taking oaths. Many times we refer to vows, we speak of vows, we're really speaking of oaths, those public testimony that we've given. But some traditions do believe this. During the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, there were groups who were seeking really to start over. So you had the magisterial reformers, men like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin, those who were seeking to reform the Catholic Church. And you had those who wanted to, if we could use the terminology of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, they wanted to start from the beginning. We refer to them as the radical reformers. The Latin word radical, or the root of the word radical is the Latin word radix, which means root. They wanted to go to the root and grow it from the beginning, start all over. We've heard a little bit about this, well there's a whole bunch of these different groups. We heard a little bit about this morning in Sunday school with the Anabaptist tradition and we know some of their descendants with the Amish and the Mennonites and these are groups that we know. sort of live by their own rules. They live in largely isolated communities. They take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously as their ethic. And they do believe that Jesus is forbidding all swearing. And so that's one of the reasons why sometimes we refer to them as pacifists. They won't serve in the military or in public office, anything that would cause them to be where they would be required to take an oath. That has not been the case for most of Christian history to believe that Christ is forbidding all oaths and vows now. And in societies and commonwealths that have a Christian, stem from a Christian heritage, they haven't taken it this way either. And so it's not strange to us, is it, to think of putting your hand on a Bible? and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God. We have this built into our culture and from our heritage. We take marriage vows at our weddings. We take membership vows. Our officers in the church take ordination vows. We require in church discipline cases, for people who have been summoned to serve as a witness in a church court before a session or a presbytery or at the denominational level, we require those witnesses to swear an oath. And that's one of the, I won't get into it, but that's one of the issues being debated right now in the PCA. What if an atheist is called to be a witness in a church court? A person who doesn't believe in a future of rewards and punishment? A person who doesn't believe in God, in a final judgment, can that person, how do we ask that person to swear and believe that they're telling the truth? What place does that have in a church court? The point is that we require these things in the church and in society. In short, in Christians have not, with few exceptions, Christians have not understood that Jesus is forbidding here all oaths and vows, all swearing. Rather, what he means is when he says do not swear at all or do not take an oath at all, he means do not take an oath in this way, by these things, since it's God himself who bears witness. to what we say, to the truthfulness of our words. Rather, Christ is really, as he is, the one who authoritatively, but I say to you, explaining, expounding, applying the true sense of the law he is upholding, the true biblical teaching on lawful oaths and vows. We've laid a bit of the Old Testament foundation for swearing as we alluded to those passages that as we mentioned those passages that this verse 33 seems to be summarizing. You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. We've seen some of the Old Testament background for this, but before we get to really what Jesus is saying about our speech in verse 37. I want to just mention a few New Testament passages that do point to the ongoing lawfulness at times for oaths and vows. In Matthew 26, Jesus was silent before his accusers. He was silent until he was placed under oath. As the high priest says, I adjure you by the living God. That's when Jesus spoke. You have a couple of occasions where the Apostle Paul takes an oath as he's writing to the churches. In Romans 1.9 and in 2 Corinthians 1.23, he says, God is my witness. He calls God to witness to the truthfulness of what he's saying. We also have the author of Hebrews who tells us that God himself took an oath when he swore. Because he could swear by no greater than himself, he swore by himself when he made his promise to Abraham. And when it comes to God's speaking with him making an oath, as we said this morning, his bare word that comes to us, regardless of the tone, like it was in tenderness this morning in Isaiah, his bare word is enough for us to take him at his word. And yet he seems to accommodate to our weakness. to give us a greater measure of assurance by taking an oath himself. And so oaths are occasionally appropriate. We hear it from God, which seems to speak to the fact that God takes the oath, that extra sort of measure seems to speak to our hesitation to believe his word. And then we find that there are occasions or circumstances where we may take an oath. And that sort of speaks to Our inability to keep our word doesn't or rather our how prone we are to speak falsehoods. But there are appropriate times due to the seriousness of the matter of the circumstance where a lawful oath. Where an oath is lawful. And it's intended for us as we are really seeing here that it would provide us no. No wiggle room. A man can't say, you know, I didn't really mean till death do us part. We who were present would say, God heard what you said and we were there at the wedding. We heard you say you were going to forsake all others for a lifetime with this woman. You can't wiggle out of this. So there are appropriate times. due to the seriousness of the matter or the circumstance. But it's not always the case. Oaths and vows aren't things that we should be doing every day. We don't need to. And so Jesus says, let what you say be simply yes or no. You shouldn't have to do this every day. Our simple honesty, our simple word of yes or no should be enough for someone to believe. God's people should be that trustworthy. It doesn't mean, of course, that everything we say is serious all the time. It doesn't mean we don't joke or kid around with one another, but it means when it comes to serious matters, it means that people should believe you without the need to add something extra. You shouldn't have to add, I cross my heart and hope to die. Somebody put it this way, you shouldn't have to overwhelm people with suggestions of your sincerity in day to day settings. I'm serious, I swear. I'm swearing on whatever it might be. It should be enough that. People know our integrity in our life, that it comes out in our speech when they hear, did he really say that? Well, then it must be true. Or he at least must believe it to be true. Because people take our honesty, our words that seriously. People shouldn't have to ask us as we did as kids. Let me see your hands. You know, the fear was, if you had your hands behind your back, your fingers would be crossed. And if the person was wearing shoes, we'd always say, your toes don't count, but let me see your hands. We should be trustworthy. We shouldn't be thought of as the boy who cried wolf. And every time you say something, people doubt that you're speaking the truth because you're prone to exaggeration or embellishment or because you shade the truth often. Or you're a person that someone knows that Or everyone knows it. He's a good guy, but he'll tell a lie if it's advantageous to him or to avoid trouble. Or even with the things, our commitments. Yeah, he said he would do it, but yeah, I doubt it. My wife often says, make your words count. That's what Christ is saying here. Make your words count. People should be able to take them at face value, let what you say be simply yes or no. Your simplicity of speech should reflect a life of honesty and integrity. So the practice of true righteousness means. That our word should be trustworthy or 20, as we've said, is sort of served as that governing verse. In the section. This righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is a righteousness that doesn't trivialize. The commitments and the promises that we've made, it doesn't. It doesn't search for loopholes. To get to get out of those things that we've sworn. But the righteous. God's people, those who are committed to truth, we're to be known as people of the truth. And the righteousness of the God who is truth. The righteousness of the Savior who says, I am the way, the truth and the life. This righteousness is to be reflected and replicated in the people of God. This is the righteousness, the true righteousness that Christ is bringing. So that we, too, are known not just as people who believe the truth, but people of the way of truth. And it's reflected in our. In our lives, our simple honesty, we can be taken at our word. That's the righteousness that Christ brings, that's the righteousness he creates in his people. A truth telling community. Wouldn't that be a refreshing thing? It shouldn't that be a refreshing thing? To think there is a truth telling community in a world of lies. That in the church of Jesus Christ, that's where truth is found. And not only the truth proclaimed from the scriptures, but the truth that is in his people as they're being conformed to the truth and as they are people of the truth. People who speak honestly. From hearts. That were deceptive. Hearts that were full of all sorts of deception and falsehood, but hearts that have now been aligned to the God of truth. As the righteousness Christ brings and creates in his church. Let's pray. Lord, we. We believe your word when it says, let God be true and every man a liar. We know how prone we are for various reasons. To be committed to untruths. Whether it be the hardness of our hearts and unbelief. Whether it be to save ourselves from trouble or to please others. Whether it be out of pride. That we ask, O Lord, that as we have come to know you, the one who is the truth. that you would make us people of the truth, that we would speak the truth, that we would live in a truthful, honest way, and that the integrity of heart that you have created in us through the righteousness of Jesus Christ would be known in our words. That we would be known as people who would take lawful oaths and vows seriously if the circumstance necessitates. That we must swear and that we would take your name upon our lips in a meaningful, not a vain way, but seriously and soberly. But in our day to day interactions, O Lord, may our yes be yes and our no be no. May our word be trusted. And we ask that you would help us in the pursuit of truth through Christ, who is our strength. Amen.