Word of Salvation – Vol. 54 No.8 – January 2009

 

Minding Your Language?

 

A Sermon by Rev Sjirk Bajema

on Heidelberg Catechism, LD 43

 Scripture Reading: Mark 14:53-65

 

Congregation…

For a commandment that says simply, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour,” Answer 112 sure seems to have a lot of dos and don’ts. But then this Lord’s Day isn’t really for you, is it? These sins of the tongue couldn’t possibly be yours, could they?

I mean, who among us would ever “give false testimony against anyone”? None of us would ever “twist anyone’s words”, would we? And who in this church would ever “gossip or slander” and “join in condemning anyone without a hearing or without a just cause”? The language here is simply too strong. None of us would say things that bad.

Mind you, sometimes we get things a bit mixed up, though. Didn’t Pontius Pilate show this two thousand years ago. That tired old politician asked of Jesus in John 18:38, “What is truth?” And doesn’t the news media do this all the time? You can’t believe everything you see or read there. So who can blame us for the odd bit of misinformation we might be involved in? Who can be 100% accurate all the time anyway? “You know Pontius, you said it well!”

But Pontius knew the truth. And so do you! You see, for Pontius the truth was there vividly before him! Christ Jesus was truth personified. And for you, while the Living Word may not be physically present, yet His Word still holds forth His eternal presence! God’s will is absolutely clear. It’s black and white.

That reminds me of an ongoing debate an elder had with his minister. That elder would often refer to disputable matters as being part of the grey area. So he would say, “We can’t be too black and white about it!” Some time later, after finding that it often didn’t add up, the minister replied in this way: “It may seem grey to us but it’s all black and white to the Lord. If we could only see it more from His perspective it would be less grey for us, too! Yes – God’s will is very clear! But not ours, is it?

For a first point to this sermon we ask the question…

WHAT WAS I SAYING?

And secondly, seeing how we have been saved and are thankful and as we follow God’s will, we ask… DO YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Firstly… WHAT WAS I SAYING?

This is a key question because we have to understand that God has always been true, despite our lie . Romans 1:25 says of what we were, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator.” We human beings were openly violating exactly who God is. Pontius Pilate, for all his hand-wringing and comments about the innocence of our Lord, ignored who God was – right before him!

Congregation, the witness of our Lord was clear enough. We read it in Mark 14:55-56, “The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any . Many testified against him, but their statements did not agree .”

Do you condemn a man for his silence? Doesn’t the evidence have to be true? Oh, they clutched at straws alright! And when all else fails, then just shout out loud enough and you can drown out any appeal for justice. “Crucify him!” they cried out. “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”

The LORD God stood there before Pilate. The One whose statements were all perfect and true. There’s no hint here of even the slightest shadow of doubt about the genuineness, sincerity, and trustworthiness of who He is! Jesus Christ – the same yesterday, today and forever!

But have you always been utterly true to God? Even today was your mouth clear of any exaggeration, excuses, flattery, pretended politeness, half-truths, and those white-lies said for a supposedly good cause? Could you still be living like the unsaved live? Friend, it easily slips back in. It’s like one school boy wrote down what he thought was a biblical quotation on lying, “A lie is an abomination to the LORD, and a very present help in trouble.” What we say can preach one gospel, and what we actually do may present a completely different picture to who Jesus really is!

The phone rings, and quickly you say to the person going to pick it up, “If it’s old so-and-so, tell them I’m not home.” A small thing? A joke? It’s just the thing to help the devil make his inroads on the way making our whole lives a tissue of lies. At first it may even appear as something helpful. For the sake of love we feel we have to cover something up. We can do that as a church, too.

Charles Spurgeon told a story about a Unitarian minister who preached the doctrine of universal salvation. So he said in his sermons that it didn’t matter what you did because everyone was going to heaven anyway. This man once met an old-fashioned Reformed preacher. The Calvinist was not an educated man and yet he had a crowded congregation, while the Unitarian man only had a dozen or two to hear his eloquent discourse.

The Unitarian said, “I can’t make out how it is that there is such a difference in our congregations. You get so many to hear you, and I so few. I preach a very pleasing doctrine. I tell the people that all will be right with them at last. I don’t worry them with any doctrines of repentance and faith and atonement, and yet they won’t come to hear me. You preach a very dreary doctrine, and you tell the people that unless they repent they shall perish and be cast into hell. And yet they crowd the place to hear you. Why is it like that?” “Well,” said the old man, “I think it’s because they have a shrewd suspicion that what I say is true, and that what you say isn’t true.” He hit the nail right on the head! It is so. But congregation, think also of the damage that Unitarian “minister” has done to his own flock!

There’s a Unitarian Church in Auckland. That’s a church of that same denomination – though now because of their liberal teaching they are very small in number. The Auckland congregation has been vacant for quite a while. So it was interesting to read their job description for their new minister. He has to be well-qualified person theologically but believe in nothing personally!

What a lie! It’s dishonest to convince people that no heart-searching, repentance or healing is necessary! It’s a deception that rips apart the Body of Christ – the Church which He’s bought with His own blood! But that’s what we so easily do. In a single generation a faithful Bible-believing denomination can become a false church. And each of us can suddenly say and show the same. The devil so craftily comes into and distorts and destroys what should be a clean and open relationship with God.

The Catechism cannot be stronger in warning about this. As it says, “In court and everywhere else , I should avoid lying and deceit of every kind; these are devices the devil himself uses, and they would call down on me God’s intense anger.” Sin spoils our communion with the Lord, and in the same way it spoils so terribly our relationships with each other.

If you have experienced this separation between a husband and wife, or between a parent and child, what’s the first thing that disappears? Why, isn’t it openness? And, as well, genuineness. Communication we had before was free and deep; now it becomes cold and shallow! Somewhere something has distorted the truth somehow.

It’s never so hard to find out what happened. But, dear believer, the tragedy is that it did happen! We didn’t avoid lying and deceit. We actually thought that God couldn’t help! Yes, you heard it right! Because I know that the more open and genuine I am, the far better I live with you and with my Lord.

To be “genuine” means to come from the right source. There’s the right heart in that. As James says in his letter Chapter 3:17, “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

DO YOU HEAR ME NOW? Our second point.

Let’s consider a believer who lives simply by grace alone.

Are you thankful for the richness of where you stand eternally in the Lord Jesus Christ? Not muttering on and on about what you don’t have, or what others aren’t giving to you, or how everyone else has got it in for you, but really appreciative of the tremendous wealth you do have! To not be thankful is to live a terrible lie!

To come to church without joy and thankfulness is hypocrisy. To go on and on, even if it’s in your own mind, about how things should be so much better and different in the church and in what happens in the church, and so on, is to call Christ a liar. It’s His Church! Has He pulled the wool over your eyes? Did God fail to give you what you need? Has He let you down somewhere? This is sheer folly. For then I would “call down on me God’s intense anger!” I asked for it! I used words for a different purpose than for which they were made. And as with the abuse of anything the Lord has made, only sadness and separation result. The building site becomes a demolition zone.

Don’t we see that with the more than 50% of Christians in this country who keep floating from church to church? You can be sure very few of them left their last church because of its biblical unfaithfulness! They didn’t go for the sake of the truth! But it doesn’t have to be like that. We don’t have to give false testimony against our neighbours or our Lord. Our lives can be free from falling into those holes we’ve dug with our own mouths.

DO YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Is it different to what I was saying? In fact, do people hear you now say it God’s way? In the words of the Catechism, can you say, “I love the truth, I speak it candidly, I openly acknowledge it”?

Imagine friend, if it was a little lie that got this whole world in the mess it’s in now, how much more wouldn’t a little truth change things the other way round? That would be something different! Think of the massive effect Jesus had, and the difference Jesus made when He spoke the truth in all its straightness.

That’s the story we find right throughout Scripture and church history, when believers weren’t backwards in being forward. Then those around them knew where they stood! The apostle Paul tells about this in 1 Corinthians 13:6. There he tells about the victory we have, for “love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.”

Congregation, the closer we draw to the Lord in our language, the less confused we’ll be about the truth as well. In the words of Proverbs 10:11, “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.” That’s why a Christian teacher has to come down most severely against the lying child. Because that’s not the truth. And the rest of that child’s life might become a terrible lie if it’s not punished strongly.

Brother, sister, young person, are you on speaking terms with the Lord? Is there that open and warm conversation each day in prayer, and with listening to Him in His Word? Does your prayer and Scripture reading go together? Because I can’t really talk with you unless I’m listening first of all – true?

Dear believer, you live with Him, and He will be with you! The relationship can be even more than the closest human friendships you can have. Actually, the connection can be so close that you can be His voice to others! In the words of Ephesians 4:25, “each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbour, for we are all members of one body.”

Though this exposition of the 9 ^th Commandment seems to be a whole lot of dos and don’ts, yet it speaks very positively of where we’re going with the Lord. Jesus does the same in the very chapter where He condemns the devil as the father of lies. There He also holds out the most wonderful promise. For he says in John 8:31-32, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Ah, to be free from fear – to be rid of that incessant worry about how our words will bounce back on us! And to know security – real peace within. To have that assurance which confirms our faith.

But also, congregation, to speak that word. To decisively cut through the layers upon layers of sinful language which our world is covered in!! That’s giving the true testimony to our neighbour! That’s preaching the gospel!

Amen.

 

PRAYER:

Let’s pray…

Dear Lord, we desperately need to follow your example with the words we speak. Help us to be slow to speak but quick to listen to your truth. We know that lying has only caused hassles. It was a lie that led to the first sin, and how much haven’t we been covering up since then? This is exactly the place the devil delights in!

So Lord, make us confess our lies. Stir us by your Spirit of truth to live the Greatest Truth which you are to us.

In your precious Name we pray.

Amen.