Word of Salvation – Vol.23 No.46 – August 1977

 

The Ninth Commandment (Mat.26:59-75)

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on Lord’s Day 43

Scripture Readings: James 3:1-12 (Law), Acts 4:32 –  5:11

Psalter Hymnal: 30 (1,3,4); 79; 250; 404 (1,2,3,4); 404 (5) after benediction

 

Once upon a time there was a man who wanted to make a trip overseas.  But the factory where he worked would not guarantee him his job back after he returned from such a trip UNLESS the trip was made because of sickness.  And so our friend went to his boss.  “Could you give me leave, sir?  My mother is very ill and I have to go overseas to see her.”  But the mother was not ill at all.  “Oh”, says the boss, “how do you know?”  “Well, I got a letter!”  “O.K.”, says the boss, “I will give you your leave if you show me that letter!”  Well, what must our brother do?

Well, what do you think he did?

He went to a sister in the church and asked her to write to him as if it were a letter from his mother.  With that letter he went to the boss… and got his leave all right!  And the sad part: this was a member of the church!

* * * * *

Did he know what he was doing?

IN FACT he was saying:
IF I DO NOT ORGANIZE IT SO THAT I HAVE WORK WHEN I COME BACK NOBODY WILL HELP ME.
GOD WON’T EITHER!

It’s almost like saying: “There is no God, I must fight all alone for myself!”

Is it any wonder, that this sin kills one’s faith and one’s joy in God?

The story I told you is a modernization, really, of a story you have in your Old Testament.  The story of a man who thinks:
“If I do not wrangle a blessing out of my Dad by parading as if I am my brother… then I won’t get a blessing!”

What do you say?  Promise of God?

Ah well, but we have to look after ourselves!

No wonder that this man, Jacob, felt all alone and utterly miserable when he had to flee home after this deceit, and lay down with his head upon a stone.  He had severely damaged his faith by his lying.  Because whoever is lying is thereby saying:

“THERE IS NO GOD!”

He is not really there….. or He is not really GOD!
I can say what I like
I can do what I like!
Who shall know?
And then: I must care and look after myself!  Who else will?

Do you see brothers and sisters, what this kind of sin does to your faith?  How can you gladly sing of your redeemer if you make it a habit to lie, as if He were not real?

Our Catechism has good reasons to call deceit and lying the VERY WORKS OF THE DEVIL.

Behind every lie – even every white lie – there is a denial of God!  In every lie there is an element of what Peter did who, scared for his life, scared of “the others”, said – and said again: JESUS?  Man I don’t know him….!  I don’t know what you’re talking about!

* * * * *

Lies…. lies…. lies!

Our world is suffocating in lies.  Communism feeds its children on it.  Just as National Socialism did whose propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said: “Tell a lie often enough and brashly enough, and the people will end up believing it.”

Lies…. lies….. lies!

Advertisements bandy them about
and we have learned not to believe them anymore.
Newspapers report, but we have already learned to wonder: is it all true?
Lies tell the story that a world does not believe that there is a God.
There is the climate of lies in which people want to get richer.
So they say, ‘Let’s lie on the tax form.’
Or they want to save face, so they lie the social white lie.
Or they want to destroy someone else, so they lie by telling his BAD things but NOT telling his good things…!

The world is full of lies…..because the world does not believe there is a God…!

But how about us, now?
How about church people?
WE have in our Bible the majestic words of Psalm 139:
“Lord, YOU examine me and know me!
YOU know if I am standing or sitting,
YOU read my thoughts from far away,
Whether I walk or lie down, YOU are watching,
you know every detail of my conduct.
The word is not even on my tongue,
LORD, before YOU know all of it;
close behind and close in front
You fence me around,
shielding me with Your hand!

Where could I go to escape Your spirit?
Where could I flee from Your presence?
If I climb the heavens, You are there!
there, too, if I lie among the dead!
If I flew to the point of Sunrise,
or westward across the sea,
Your hand would still be guiding me,
Your right hand holding me….

If I asked darkness to cover me,
and light to become night around me,
that darkness would not be dark to you!
night would be as light as day!”

Well, is that what YOU say to YOUR GOD?
But then why also in church…
and why among Reformed Church people,
that sneaky lie, that white fib, that playing around with truth?

We all know it…. and we all do it, at times,
right from the little boy who says, “No I didn’t!”
when Dad asks him: “Have YOU used my saw?”
But the saw tells the story and the boy was lying.
Apparently he was a good deal more scared of his Dad than of his God.

We all know it, and we all do it at times, right from that little boy to the grey-haired pew-dweller who thinks up silly excuses for not being at certain meetings instead of openly saying: “I just felt like staying home”.

What about the white lies we feed through the telephone when we want to get out of something?  Sniffles that aren’t bad at all, and headaches that barely exist?

Apparently we are more scared of the man we apologize to than of Almighty God.  We are more afraid of losing face than of losing our faith.
Losing faith….?
Yes because when we treat God as if He does not REALLY exist (Almighty and reading my thoughts) then before long it begins to FEEL as if He doesn’t exist, and another of these dry periods begins in which the devil seems to have all the say.

Oh the slavery of it!  The misery of it!
Little men and little women,
ministers and elders among them,
feeding each other sneaky little white lies
and feeble untruthful excuses as if there were no God in their lives
– sneaky little cheating frauds over a few dollars,
a few lousy dollars that give neither joy nor life!

But in such a world and into such a climate…
a climate of CHURCH PEOPLE
(the Jewish leaders were church leaders!!)
we see Jesus, in the words of our text.

All around Him it is… lying,
just as in a tropical cyclone we can say “It’s raining”.
All around Him it’s lying!
False witnesses contradict each other, and finally settle on a crazy half-truth,
“He’s going to break the temple down…..!”

Out in the courtyard Peter boasts:
“I don’t know Him”…… it’s lying……… lying,
and Jesus SAYS NOTHING!
He is silent, for these priests KNOW that they lie.
Jesus does not have to argue.

But then the moment comes that the high priest rises up:
“I put you under oath now,
to tell us if you are the Christ the Son of the Living God?”

THEN Jesus speaks.
He could have evaded the issue – as we do when faced with such an emergency.
He could have answered with a question:

“MAN!  I… THE SON OF GOD…?
Don’t you remember Me calling Myself The Son of Man?”
…or something like that; a half-truth,
something that isn’t quite untrue, a way out..!

Remember, Jesus was on trial and they had found nothing.
On the words he shall now speak depends his freedom….. or death.
And He knows it.

Will He be diplomatic……?  No He won’t.
Openly He states the truth as fearlessly He says:
“I am!  And you will see Me too,
coming down from heaven… at the Father’s right Hand!”

That truth cost Him His life and brings us a Saviour.
That truth brings Him to the cross
where He was to pay for our miserable lies,
our sneaky, fearful denials.
He paid there for Peter, He paid there for us.

He can wash the foulest clean!  And boy, do you and I need some cleaning!
But, then He Who IS the truth gives His Church the SPIRIT of truth, and calls you and me to regard all lies as our deadly enemies.  We are to see them as the very works of Satan, and to seek the truth no matter what the cost.  We are to DO the truth and speak it, even though speaking in LOVE as the apostle Paul says.  Then He calls His Church to be different from the world…. and to be a patch of sunshine of bright, crisp truth in a world where it’s lying all the time.  That He wants that, and insists on that is clear from the early Church story of Ananias and Sapphira, the two people who thought they could fool the church and fool their God.

Brothers and sisters, your God calls us to show our love for Jesus in a love for the truth.  We have a lot of housecleaning to do, all of us!

But in a world where people must get to know Christ, we are called to be children of light, and that also means to declare war on the white lie.  There must be other ways to show love and concern.  The truth can be said in sympathy, but Jesus leaves us in no doubt: Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ ‘no’.

God’s children don’t have to show off better than they are (that’s a lie).

Neither do they have to show off ROUGHER than they are (THAT can be a lie, too).

God calls you to live before each other’s face as you live before His!
You cannot fool Him!  Why try to fool one another!
We cannot keep breathing in a climate of lies.
Only the truth is like oxygen: crisp and good,
only it will keep us going
even though at times it will be painful to ourselves
or perhaps cost us a few cents.

The final upshot of the matter is the same AS WITH THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT,

How we deal with money and property is in the last analysis a matter of whether we trust GOD to look after us or whether we sneakily think that if we don’t look after ourselves, nobody will care.

Jesus asks: But I, then?  Have you forgotten Me?  And so this ninth commandment is also a matter of TAKING SERIOUSLY IF GOD IS REALLY THERE.  And we may as well train ourselves in doing that, for when one day we shall stand before His judgement seat, we shall be VERY MUCH AWARE of the fact that He IS THERE after all!

Oh let us now live and speak and think CORAM DEO AS ‘BEFORE HIS FACE’!

Oh let us show our love to Jesus by having that HOUSECLEANING and sweeping away those white and black lies!

Jacob was miserable until he found out that God was everywhere, even where he lay asleep on his flight from home!  Why shall you be miserable?  Asks your God!

Whoever loves the truth will hear His voice.

And that voice says:
“I am with you, WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED?
I am with you, all the days, even to the end of the world!”

Amen.