We'll turn together tonight again to the ninth commandment and we're going to turn to Exodus 20. We'll read the entirety of the moral law as it's recorded there. Exodus 20 verses 1 through 17. We'll be focusing specifically on Exodus 20 and verse 16 as we consider the ninth commandment again. So, Exodus 20, verses 1-17, and you'll find that in your pew Bible on page 61. Exodus 20, verses 1-17, where God's word reads as follows, And God spoke all 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. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of 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 hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. So for the reading from God's word this evening, may he add its blessing to our hearts. This is our second week on the ninth commandment, and I want to just, by way of reminder, review what we've considered when it comes to the ninth commandment already. Last Lord's Day, we kind of looked at the theology. Behind keeping the ninth commandment, behind what it means to bear false witness, behind all of that sits the theological reality that God is true, that God is the one true God. And so He must be true, in matter of fact, He must be true in order for Him to be God at all. If He's not true, then there's really not any foundation for any discussion of truth in our society. There's no reason for us to consider telling the truth if God is not truth in and of himself. And so we considered that. We considered how since God is true, he is only able to speak what is true. And therefore, any distortion of truth, whether it be through lying or some of the other things that we considered, any distortion of the truth is an attack on the very holiness of God, an attack on his person. And so that's the theological foundation behind the Ninth Commandment. And then last Lord's Day, we considered personal expressions of breaking the Ninth Commandment. So we thought about that in terms of three basic categories. First, we thought about gossip versus being silent when you know the truth. So gossip, speaking the truth for an untruthful cause, speaking the truth for the destruction of the person that you're speaking the truth about. And on the flip side of that, we saw that if you know the truth about somebody that could protect their reputation and you remain silent, that's kind of the opposite of gossip in both cases. Truth told or truth withheld is used for the destruction of the individual. And then the next category that we looked at was the category that's kind of under the umbrella of slander. So slander being saying something that is not true for the purpose of destroying another person. And then we compared that to flattery, where you again are speaking the truth but you're not using it in a faithful way, but you're using it in fact to gain favor. And then finally we saw lying as a generic category, and we teamed that with the distortion of the truth, and in all of those things we saw that there was an attack on God as true. That as God speaks the truth, that we as his people should speak the truth, and that when we disregard the ninth commandment in these different ways that we're actually attacking the Lord God of heaven. So we finally took that and then applied that very specifically, and we saw how the Christian, because he worships God, and because God speaks the truth, we as Christians cannot affirm something that is not true. We can't promote something that is not true. No matter how many people claim the lie, We are not able to affirm what is not faithful, what is not true. And so our focus so far, when we've considered the Ninth Commandment, has been on the expression of the individual when it comes to the truth. But there is another aspect of the Ninth Commandment that is not on an individual level. There is another place where the ninth commandment must not be broken and that is within the ministry of the church. The ministry of the church specifically in proclaiming the Lord to the world, proclaiming the Lord to the saints. There are two basic questions that the church has been charged with answering from God's Word. The first one is, who is God? And the second one is, what has He commanded? And that really is the essence of the gospel. We think of the gospel sometimes as promise only. The gospel is promise, but it is also promise of renewal. And so we're trying from scripture to learn who God is and what he has commanded. And the church in its gospel ministry task must always be answering those questions with complete honesty. It is the responsibility, it is the mission of the church to answer those questions honestly. And so the ninth commandment has implications for the church as well, not just for individuals, but for the body of Christ, the church in all ages and also in ours. The ministry of the church is to tell the truth And we tell the truth because God's word must always be faithfully proclaimed, even if it would lead to suffering and persecution. And to learn that lesson tonight, we want to look at the mission of the church, and we want to look at the failings of the church. So we want to see that God's word must always be faithfully proclaimed, even if it would lead to suffering and persecution. And to learn that, we want to see the mission of the church and the failings of the church. Now, I want to grant to you that today's sermon is really a large application of what was stated last week. The theological foundation that we learned together last week also sits underneath the corporate mission and corporate responsibility of the church in terms of truth-telling. And so usually it's our practice at the end of a sermon to extract from the theological truth some application, some principles, some uses from the theological truth that we have learned from the text. I'm going to assume To the detriment of some of you who haven't heard the first part of this series, I'm going to assume some of that truth, some of the things that we've reviewed together. And I want to think from the theological truth about the larger explanation and application of that to the church as a whole. So let's begin by thinking through the mission of the church with God is true in the background. The church on a fundamental level exists for two purposes. It exists to gather saints, and it exists to sanctify saints. not all its energy can be spent on simply gathering saints, because if the church spends all its energy on gathering saints, the saints who are in the church already will suffer, they will be neglected, and it cannot spend all its energy either on sanctifying saints or sanctifying sinners, because then the lost will be left to their eternal condemnation without a voice of warning, without a promise of hope. And so the faithful church, when it is carrying out the mission that it has been given by the king of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, the faithful church balances both of those responsibilities. It has a voice of gathering sinners out of the world, and then it has as part of its voice telling the truth to the saints within the walls of the church that they might be further sanctified. And in balancing either of these responsibilities, it goes about these responsibilities really in the same way. The primary responsibility of the church, if you want to boil it down to three words, the mission and responsibility of the church is to tell the truth. That is the simple responsibility of the church, to tell the church. The church doesn't exist to establish the truth. The church doesn't exist to articulate its conception of the truth. The truth exists whether the church is faithful to it or not. The responsibility of the church is simply to proclaim the truth that already exists and it is found in this book, in the Holy Scriptures. which is the opposite virtue to bearing false witness. Honesty is a spoken expression of the truth. And so honesty is simply declaring what already has been established as the truth. And the church is to declare all the truth regarding man and his duties in fulfilling whatever aspect of its ministry that it has. So the first thing we want to consider when it comes to the mission of the church in terms of telling the truth, The first thing we want to consider is how the church is to tell the truth in terms of gathering sinners, meaning it's ministry to the unbeliever. And so when the church speaks to the world, it can do no more than is required of her. Sometimes the church goes astray because it tries to do more than what God has asked of it. The church doesn't exist to change a man's heart. The church cannot do that work. The church doesn't have the power to resurrect those that are spiritually dead. The church only has the responsibility to be faithful, to declare the truth that has been entrusted to her. And so anytime we try to abbreviate this truth in order to accomplish something that hasn't been given to us, when we start abbreviating the truth and taking shortcuts in faithfulness that we might be able to persuade As soon as we begin down that road of corrupting the truth, we begin missing things as God's people. Our mission becomes corrupted in that sense. So the aim of the church then has to be to declare the whole counsel of God to the unbeliever without apology. That means that we should not feel guilty or inadequate because of the words that we speak to the unbeliever. Because if we are speaking the word as it is recorded here in scripture, we can be confident that we are speaking the only words, the words of truth, which God might use to give life to the unrepentant heart. And so we as the church proclaim the truth. Our aim as a church is to declare the whole of God's counsel to the unbeliever. Now when it comes to the gospel, There is an elephant in the room for many unbelievers. Perhaps in your conversations with unbelievers, you have heard a question something like this raised with regard to the promise of the gospel and salvation in Jesus Christ. The unbeliever who refuses to yield to the truth of the gospel can ask a question that goes something like this. Are you telling me that this person, dear Aunt Susie, who has always been so kind to me, are you really telling me that this person, just because they don't believe in Jesus, is actually going to be in hell? Well, if the church is to be faithful in gathering sinners out of this world, these sinners must hear the truth. And so when somebody raises that question, however much we may want to dance around the truthfulness of the answer that we're about to give, if we are to be faithful to the ninth commandment as a church, in order to declare the truth, we have to give an answer that sounds something like this. That is exactly what the Bible is teaching. That is exactly what the scriptures teach. Because the scriptures outline for us this story of redemption and it includes all the parts, even the parts that the world finds distasteful. See, the Word of God teaches us that God created all things. that he calls his creation to worship him, to worship him not according to their own desires, but to worship him in the ways that he has set forward as good. The Bible teaches us that there is an actual fall that happens in Genesis 3, where Adam brought the entirety of the whole human race under the condemnation and judgment of God by his disobedience. As we saw this morning, there is also in Scripture this promise of redemption that depends for no part of it on man. It's completely dependent on the power of God at work. It is fulfilled and satisfied in Christ. The part of Scripture also teaches that Christ will return and that all the dead will be raised and that the wicked will be condemned and the righteous righteous in Christ, they will be brought into their eternal inheritance. And so to live in rebellion, to refuse worship, to maintain your independence from God, to refuse to worship Him, to disobey the commandments of Scripture means There is eternal condemnation no matter how nice Aunt Susie might be. However nice she may appear on the outside, the message of Scripture is if you don't turn and repent of your sins before God, you will be condemned. And in the ministry of the church to the world, that truth must be spoken. To remain silent on that point is to distort the message of salvation. The world may not want to hear this truth, but the church must declare it. The world may not want to hear about sin, but the church must declare it. The world may not like it that man contributes nothing to salvation, but the church must declare it. The world may not like it that God will come and judge all people, but the church must declare it. The world may not like the idea that the Son of God comes and is condemned on behalf of His people. That sounds to them perhaps like, as it's been blasphemously called, kind of like child abuse. They will describe it in that way. But the church must declare what the Scriptures have written. The mission of the church is to tell the truth to the perishing, to warn them of the danger to come. Just like you would warn somebody who's driving a car towards a bridge that has collapsed. Just as you would warn somebody who's in a house which is engulfed in flame. Just as you would warn somebody who's about to step on a poisonous snake. You would cry out and warn them and you wouldn't try to sugarcoat it. To the person who's in a house on fire, you would call out to them, your house is on fire, get out. You wouldn't say, hey, if, I mean, I don't know how you feel about moving, I don't know how energetic you feel at this time of day, but you might feel a little warm in a little while if you don't get moving. No, you would warn them, you would call, you would speak the truth. And that is the mission of the church when it speaks to the world. That is the mission of the church in telling the truth, in gathering sinners. Tell the truth. It is the only hope that the church can offer to a soul that is perishing or facing perpetual suffering and judgment. Tell the truth. Then there's also the mission of the church in terms of telling the truth and sanctifying sinners. There is the gathering of sinners out of the world. There's also the sanctifying of sinners that are numbered among the saints already. And when the church speaks the truth in the church, it really deals with the same limitations that it does when it speaks the truth in the world. The church can't assume something for itself that it cannot deliver. The church doesn't have the power to revive a human heart that is uniquely God's work within a human being. And so the church cannot force results. The results are in God's hand and he distributes them according to his own eternal plan. But the church does minister to the sheep within the church in terms of telling the truth. Jesus himself says this in terms of the ministry of the church. In John 8, verse 32, he says, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. To be a disciple of Christ is to be set free by the truth, which is found in Christ and his word. The word of God spoken in truth, then, is the catalyst for the freedom of the Christian. So then the mission of the church to saints is also to tell the truth. The church is to declare the truth and that in turn sets the saints free. Now there are those within the church whose sense of freedom is something along the lines that they will just be left alone. that they will be left alone to enjoy their own preferences, to enjoy their own partially sanctified devices. But the church declares to the saints the truth of the duties that God requires of them. You see, the saints are not free to pursue the flesh. Any church that teaches its members that they are free to pursue the flesh is presenting a lie to its members. The church must declare the truth, including this call to mortify the flesh, to forsake it, and to follow after Christ. The church is to be a watering ground for the tender shoots that have been given life by the gospel. It is the one setting where the entirety of scripture should be examined and what is understood in a childlike way at redemption grows into full maturity and bears fruit 30, 60, and 100 fold. And however much the flesh of the Christian may prefer apathy, and however much the flesh of the Christian may prefer self-indulgence, the Bible urges the Christian to bear fruit, to run the race, to strain forward to what is ahead, to be holy even as God is holy. And so the task of the church is to proclaim this truth about God. to proclaim this truth about the duties of the church. The whole proclamation is the ministry of God by his word through his Holy Spirit. And it can be nothing less when it comes to the church as well. The mission is only to tell the truth about the Lord, to tell the truth about redemption, to tell the truth about our duties. Proclaiming the truth can never be replaced by any other human invention for a mission for the church. The mission of the church is simple. It's almost painfully simple, to tell the truth. The mission is so clear. Jesus, in John's gospel, describes himself as the one who speaks the truth. When the Jews come to argue with him, Jesus proclaims himself as the one who speaks the truth. In John 5, when the Pharisees come and criticize John the Baptist, he declares John the Baptist as the one who speaks the truth. When Paul, at the beginning of Romans 9, recounts his ministry, he identifies himself as one who speaks the truth. John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul, imitators of God who is truth in speaking the truth to the world and to the people of God. And so the Christian church must follow the example of Christ by speaking the truth. And yet, as church history will testify in many places, it is very easy for the church to lose its way. So we next want to consider, by way of warning, some of the failings of the church, some of the ways that the church fails to proclaim the truth as it should. So we've seen that the weapon that God gives his church to fulfill his mission is the truth. The truthful declaration of the things concerning the Lord is the weapon that God has given to his people. And now that is a relatively simple mission. The truth is written here. It is our task to declare that truth in word with the Holy Spirit's blessing to a world that doesn't know the truth. It is a relatively simple task even though, as we can see from history and from self-examination, It is relatively difficult for simple men to put this simple mission into practice. There are many ditches, there are many potholes that the church can fall into as it begins pursuing this mission of speaking the truth. It is in fact easy for the church to corrupt its mission by replacing the original orders that the king of the church has given with counterfeit ones derived from another commander. And the church can break this mission, break the ninth commandment in several ways, and I want to consider three of them together tonight. The first way, and perhaps the most common and most dangerous way that the church corrupts and breaks the ninth commandment is by softening God's word. The corruption of the proclamation of the truth of God's word is the primary way in which the church bears false witness against its neighbor. The truth of scripture is never to be changed, no matter how much we think this might help us in reaching out to the community that is around us. Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul as he writes to the Corinthians for the second time, chapter 4 and verse 2. He says, we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's Word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. What's Paul saying? Paul is saying we resist the temptation to make Scripture say what we want. and we simply declare the truth and apply it to the conscience of our listeners. Texts are not to be hijacked in pulpits. Meanings are not to be redefined in theology textbooks. God's Word is not to be a launching pad for some kind of social mission that may seem good on its face value. No, the Apostle Paul to Timothy this time reminds him of his work, reminds him of his mission as a preacher of the gospel. He simply charges him to preach the Word. Don't soften it. Don't make it easier to hear. Preach the Word. That is the mission of the church. And when we soften God's word, we corrupt that mission. The second way that the church can bear false witness against its neighbor is by imitating the world. When the church's message begins to sound like the noise of the world, you can be fairly sure that the church is bearing false witness against its neighbor. When the concerns of the world become the concerns of the church, something has gone dreadfully wrong. Listen to the words of Christ in John's Gospel, the 15th chapter, verses 18 and 19. Jesus says there, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you are of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, But I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. What's the Lord Jesus saying? He's saying friendship with the world is enmity with Christ. That's what it's saying. It's saying that if you are a friend of the world, you are a friend of the enemy of God. If you are saying the things of the world, you're saying the things that the enemy of God would say. And so we are not to imitate the world in our words. Anything that the world might suggest as true must first be refiltered through the lens of Scripture before it can be in any way useful within the church. And so we are not, as Christians, as the church, to imitate the world. To imitate the world, as part of our presentation of the truth, is to bear false witness against our neighbor. And the third way that the church can bear false witness is by excusing sin. The truth of God's word states that love for God is shown in obedience to Him. Breaking the law, breaking the commandments of God is sin defined, and sin then is the opposite of loving God. Sin, in fact, is an expression of hatred towards God, and hatred of God does not bring Him glory, so sin cannot be tolerated in the place where He is to be glorified. To excuse sin within the church is to aim a cannon at the very foundation of the Christian life. It is to be self-defeating. It is to implode Christianity onto itself. And that's why the Apostle Paul, when dealing with evil in the Corinthian church, 1 Corinthians 5.13 says, purge the evil person from among you. Now the church excuses sin at times. It happens when drunkenness is left unaddressed because the man who is engaged in drunkenness happens to be a friend. Or it takes place when sinful labels are used by pastors and simply accepted in the church as if these are normal. That is the controversy within our own denomination. You understand that. whether ordained men can be named by their sinful desires. Is there such a thing as a gay Christian, as a gay Christian pastor? It's controversial in some circles, whether or not that's possible. Why is that? It's only controversial because they're trying to excuse sin. It's only controversial because they're not telling the truth about what God says about these sins in His Word. It's the opposite of telling the truth. It is bearing false witness against your neighbor. When a church excuses sin, it gives the impression that sin is of no consequence to God. To not deal with sin within the church is unkind. Some people would say to deal with sin is unkind. It's ungracious. Why don't you just let it go? But dealing with sin protects the truth, protects God's honor. To give an unrepentant man or woman the impression that his or her sin is of no consequence is not honest. When the church's actions prove that the glory of God is unimportant to them, they are bearing false witness against their neighbor. The church's task is to faithfully proclaim the significance of sin, the danger that sin awakens or the danger that sin sets up in the heart of the believer even, and it fails to point the sinner to Christ for forgiveness. And so when the church stops telling the truth and incorporates that untruthfulness into her mission, what the church does is introduce lies. And it corrupts the very task that God has set them on the earth to accomplish. In these cases, the church is essentially saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. They're failing to address the danger. They're failing to address the cure. They're failing to address the truth as God has recorded it in his word. To present false peace by denying God or denying the significance of sin or by proclaiming a gospel that depends on man's work is to direct the soul of those who listen into the very heart of hell. That's what we're doing when we fail to present the truth. When people fail to present the truth, It's dealt with very harshly in scripture. Jesus, meek and mild, we like him. We forget about how directly he dealt with sin, how truthfully he spoke about the effects of sin. Listen to his words to the Pharisees in Matthew 23 in verse 15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, he says, hypocrites. For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. He said that to the Pharisees in their hearing. He didn't whisper it in a corner when they weren't there. He spoke it to them when they were right in front of him. Think that was a popular message? You think they said, well, thank you for sharing that. That was really, I feel edified now. Jesus spoke the truth. He didn't say, peace, peace, when there was no peace. The Pharisees' gospel was a lie. It added to salvation by faith in Christ, the aspect of man's participation. God's mercy plus man's working, that was the message of the Pharisees. In Galatians 1 and verse 8, the Apostle Paul addresses those who would distort the gospel that he preached to the Galatians. And he begins his letter very abruptly because the Galatian church was tempted to follow after the lie and not be faithful to the truth. And the Apostle Paul says that anybody who preaches a gospel other than the one that he preached, let him be anathema, let him be accursed. Let him be thrown into the heart of hell with no hope for rescue. That's what that means. Let him be accursed. Paul declared that truth to those who would lead the church of Christ astray. The truth is essential for lost man. God's salvation is only known when the truth is declared, and it is the responsibility of the church, of this church, to declare that truth. In Romans 10 and verse 14, the apostle Paul marvels at the wonders of the ministry of the church in declaring the truth. He says, how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? The mission of the church, the glorious mission of the church, is in declaring the truth, gathering sinners, and in sanctifying sinners, that they would know Christ, Him crucified, and the fruits that the Spirit bears in them through faith. A false gospel condemns those who follow it to eternal condemnation, and so the pure and unadulterated truth must go forth. I wonder, will the church have blood on its hands? Will this congregation have blood on its hands? When it comes to declaring the truth, when it comes to the Christian gospel, It's not a matter of being persuasive. It's not a matter of being able to win the argument, to have the most people agree with our side. That's not the mission and purpose of the church. In the Greek world, there was a philosophy, sophistry. Maybe you've heard about it. But this was a school that taught its students not to proclaim the truth, but to convince as many people as possible that what they were saying was true. It didn't matter if it was true or not, just so long as they could convince enough people that in fact it was the truth. They were trained in eloquent speech. They were trained in convincing argumentation to accomplish that goal. And the goal in the debate was actually much more so learning to tell a convincing lie than it was telling the truth plainly to the listener. The Soffits were really just training people to be convincing breakers of the Ninth Commandment. But when it comes to the Ninth Commandment, the church is not engaged in a game. The church is not engaged in some kind of a neat debate contest where you could win or you could lose. It is a declaration of the only truth that can save a human soul from eternal condemnation. That is the ministry of the church. And we can never turn aside from that ministry to the left or to the right. when the church is charged not to bear false witness against its neighbor, it has a responsibility when it calls the unbeliever to repentance, and when it exhorts the believer in his walk with the Lord. At no point can that responsibility be adapted to anything other than a declaration of the whole truth of the gospel. It can only be the application, the true application of God's word in the process of sanctification. And that can only happen by God working through the declaration of the truth. The truth must be spoken, the truth must be heard, because only in those words, the words of truth, are found the words of life. Let's pray together.