introduction. We live in a society that incentivizes deceitfulness. Some time ago I read an editorial by a historian named Martin Jay, and in the editorial he argued that we ought to view deceitfulness in the context of politics as a virtue rather than a vice. His reasoning was practical and utilitarian. In other words, in order to achieve our political ends in a diverse society, lies may be necessary in order to unite an otherwise fragile coalition of competitors. So Jay reasoned that we should embrace deceitfulness in certain contexts because the ends justify the means, that there's something more important than truth And that namely is the security of our communities, the security of our political system. You see where that argument leads. When we consider the history of God's people in the Old Testament, however, we see a quite different picture of what a just and prosperous society might look like. When God entered into covenant with his people at Sinai, he commanded them to be truthful in all aspects of their lives. Therefore, in the ninth commandment of the Decalogue, we read these words in Exodus chapter 20, verse 16. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. We often gloss the statement, we say it, that the ninth commandment commands us saying, you shall not lie. And it's an appropriate gloss, for it recognizes the principle behind the commandment. In Proverbs 24, verse 28, we read, do not be a witness against your neighbor without cause, for would you deceive with your lips? You see, the reason why bearing false witness is wrong is because lying is wrong, because untruthfulness is inconsistent with the nature of God. And yet, it would be helpful for us to ask, why is the commandment so precise? Why doesn't the Ninth Commandment simply read, you shall not lie? Well, I think that we can begin by looking specifically at what it does say. You shall not bear false witness. That is, it prohibits perjury, in short. It prohibits saying something false about your neighbor in the context of a legal proceeding. And so it doesn't only point to the truthfulness of God, it also points to his love of justice. It points to the fact that he demands not only honesty of us, but also that we desire justice in our communities, in our world. That's certainly what he demanded of his people at Sinai. What's interesting is that their fate as a nation depended in large part upon their ability to maintain a just society, on their ability to remain trustworthy. So it's a very different picture than what we see in our own political context where people say that our continuance as a nation in some part depends on the willingness of our politicians to lie. Here, it depended on the commitment to trustworthiness in all aspects of life that God demanded of his people. Christopher Wright, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, proposes a helpful reason for this precision. He writes this, the commandment is not simply about telling the truth in general, but about telling the truth in the place where it counts most, because that is where lying can cost the most, the court of law. The protection of the process of justice was a major concern in Israel, and in the Decalogue, the full weight of the identity, character, and action of Yahweh is thrown behind it. Breaking the ninth commandment would frequently involve breaking the third, which increased its seriousness. A nation founded by an act of Yahweh's righteousness must guard the righteousness of its own legal system, and every citizen was accountable for that. See, Wright explains that the ninth commandment is about more than truth telling. It's about the justice of God and the justice that he demands from his people. Indeed, when we look throughout the law and throughout the Old Testament, we see that Israel's justice system depended upon the reliability of its witnesses. In Leviticus 5.1, we see that the Israelites were required to bear witness if they could when an accusation was made. Still, multiple witnesses were required to substantiate an allegation of criminal behavior, and judgment, execution for instance, could not be enacted unless you had two or three witnesses to a crime. In a society that values truth-telling, one can imagine a situation where an unworthy person, a worthless person, might bear false testimony. But in a society that values the truth, His testimony would be counteracted by all those other witnesses who are committed to telling the truth. Moreover, false testimony was discouraged by the law. So we read in Deuteronomy 19, a single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime, for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to this dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So, you shall purge the evil from your midst, and the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity, it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Deuteronomy 19, 15 to 21. So you see that Israel's preservation as a nation depended in large part on the preservation of justice in its society, which depended upon a commitment to truth-telling at an individual level. Moreover, when we look at the command of Exodus 20, we see that what's prohibited is not just false testimony, but false testimony against your neighbor. Dwayne Garrett, in his commentary on Exodus, notes that the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, required fidelity to Yahweh. It also required moral integrity. But something that we tend to neglect very frequently is the responsibility that it required to the covenant community. We see that particularly in the Ninth Commandment, where we're told we're not to bear false witness against our neighbor. See, a neighbor could have, the word could have the breadth of meaning as the word fellow in our own language. It can be someone very close to you, but it could be someone not so close to you. The point is that we have a certain responsibility to those within our community to be honest with them, to be forthright, to tell the truth. It's what was required of Israel, and it's something that we often neglect when we consider the law. We consider what we're to do before God. We consider our own moral integrity, as Garrett pointed out, but we tend to neglect our responsibility to one another. So in summary, one reason for the precision of the ninth commandment is found in the emphasis it places on the importance of both truth and justice. God is a God of truth. He never lies, as Paul writes in Titus 1-2. Indeed, it is impossible for him to lie, we read in Hebrews 6-18. All his ways are justice. The law tells us again and again. Therefore, he commanded Israel to imitate him with honesty and a commitment to justice. Their success depended upon it, for he said, justice and only justice shall you follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God has given you. Deuteronomy 16 verse 20. And yet, as we consider the history of Israel, We consider that they failed again and again to follow God's law. As Christopher Wright again points out, they gave into the various temptations that God warned them about. Temptations that would have led them into deceitful practices. Greed, hatred, peer pressure, favoritism, family loyalties. All of these pressures are things that we face in our own day. So he writes, along with religious idolatry and socioeconomic oppression, the perversion of justice was one of the primary targets of prophetic anger. Indeed, all three were linked. And so, by the time the Babylonians rose to power, God raised them up, brought them against his people and judgment, the nation was ended. The people were sent into exile. because among other things, their failure to be trustworthy with one another, and trustworthy before their God. Well, after God reestablished the people in the land, we see that they put a more intense focus on keeping the law, and yet they didn't really improve the situation. Because what we see in the Gospels is that they focused on minutia of the law, but they had nuanced ways to set aside the actual requirements of it. That is, what we see the Pharisees and other people in Israel doing is narrowing the scope of the commandment so that when we look at something like, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, we ask, well, what kind of deceitfulness is actually allowable? What can I get away with? Rather than, how can I honor God by being truthful in my life? Jesus confronted that very idea in Matthew chapter five, in his Sermon on the Mount, verse 33 through 37, when he spoke about oath taking and taught his disciples not to take oaths. It's not because an oath can never, in any situation, be appropriate. Members here who serve in the military have to take oaths. In Scripture, we see people taking oaths, and yet the whole reason why an oath is necessary is because of our propensity to deceitfulness. You see that in our political context, when someone, some politician, perhaps a prominent one, is going to be asked to testify on a certain scandal. It's a question we ask, will he be under oath? Well, no, he won't be under oath, and the assumption is, well, then he'll just lie, because he's not obligated to tell the truth. Why wouldn't he be obligated to tell the truth? So you see, what Jesus was talking about, what he was confronting is the fact that we tend to look at something like an oath and use it as an escape, a loophole, for opportunities to be deceitful. And that's exactly what the Pharisees did. As D.A. Carson explains in his commentary on Matthew, that the Pharisees had fine distinctions where they would say, if you swear by Jerusalem, well, that's not binding. You don't have to keep that oath. But if you swear to Jerusalem, there, that's a binding oath. That makes no sense. And so he writes, if oaths designed to encourage truthfulness become occasions for clever lies and casuistical deceit, Jesus will abolish oaths, for the direction in which the Old Testament points is the fundamental importance of thorough and consistent truthfulness. were not to take commandments like this and use them to narrow the scope of what God requires. What Jesus did is he expanded it. That is, he looked at what it pointed to, the nature of God as truthful, as just. That's the way that we ought to live. But the Pharisees in Jesus' day and the people of Israel in Jesus' day were looking for opportunities to twist God's words, to set it aside through their own traditions. for all their legalism, they cast aside the law of God with their fine distinctions. We see another example of ways in which they narrowed the scope of the law in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10. Recall that that parable was precipitated because a lawyer asked Jesus, who is my neighbor? You see, there was a confrontation, and the lawyer correctly stated that the law is summarized in the two commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. But Luke tells us that seeking to justify himself, he said, who is my neighbor? Many commentators point out that he likely had the sense that those within Israel could be classified as his neighbor, but he didn't have the same obligation to those outside his own community. And again, Jesus responds not by accepting his narrower scope of the commandment, but by expanding it. What does the parable say? The man who is beaten, he's anonymous. He's just a certain man, no identity, And the man who helps him is not even an Israelite, a Samaritan. And the question Jesus asks is not who saw the beaten man as his neighbor, but who was a neighbor to him. You see that what the commandment requires of us, or what it gives us, is an opportunity to be honest with everyone, with all people. Not a loophole, not an opportunity to escape the requirements of truthfulness in our lives. That is the way in which Israel failed when they were reestablished in the land. And yet, we can note two observations from this brief survey of Israel's history, both before the exile and after the exile. First, they were utterly incapable of maintaining a just society because they could not maintain a commitment to telling the truth in all facets of their life. And second, they demonstrated this disturbing tendency to narrow the scope of God's law. When Christ came, he confronted these tendencies and pointed the people toward the aim of the law. It was not an aim that was less than the commandments. Rather, it was a perfect righteousness that was intended. When we consider that, though, sadly, we must recognize that we demonstrate many of the same sinful tendencies that we saw in our survey of Israel's history. We give in to the pressures of our own world to live deceitfully in this world, in our lives. The same pressures, greed, favoritism, peer pressure, and so on. We embrace something less than complete truthfulness in our lives. Consider, you're seeking a new job and you have to prepare your resume. Isn't it a little bit tempting to embellish your credentials? When I was leaving active duty for the first time from the Navy, everyone said to me, don't say you were a division officer. They won't understand that. Say you were a project manager. I could spin it to say I was anything I wanted to get the job that I desired. And they said, well, this is what everybody does. This is what you have to do to be competitive in the workplace. This is thoroughly and consistently honest? Is it trustworthy? And what then I'm doing, if I follow along, is I'm putting myself above someone else who may have actually been, name the position, a project manager, a supervisor of production. It doesn't really matter. The point is that our culture tells us that we have to engage in deceitful practices to be competitive, to get ahead. Or, suppose you were to, you had ambition to run for political office, or you were supporting some person running for political office. What do they say about underhanded tactics, about slandering your opponent? I'm not saying legitimate criticism, I'm saying slandering them, even if it's just a suggestion of scandal in their life. Well, it works. Shouldn't we embrace it? We tend to tolerate it if it's on our own side. What if we were to run ourselves? Would we engage in the same practices through the pressure of those who support us saying, this is what you must do to win the election. It's what you must do. What about in our families? Do we hide our struggles from one another? Do we hide our challenges? What about in our church? Do we present a veneer of self-righteousness? that closes us off from each other, when other people are there to help us, and when they may need help from us, and yet all they see is someone who's got it all together. We are prone to deceit, and our world tells us that's what we must do to get ahead, to be competitive, to avoid the challenges that come to those who are honest in their lives. At this moment, we can engage in a simple act of truth telling to ourselves and admit our own failure to measure up to the complete and thorough trustworthiness that our Lord demands of us. As the Apostle John wrote in his first epistle, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. No, we do not measure up to the standard of trustworthiness that God demands of his people. And the scripture uses a particular word to describe this trait, transgression. Some translations, trespass. Sometimes it's rendered as rebellion. And it comprehends more than deceitfulness, but not less. We see an example of this in Genesis chapter 50. When Joseph's brothers entreat him to forgive them, twice they say, forgive us our trespass, remembering how they should have been trustworthy because they were his brothers. And yet they sold him into slavery and they lied to their father about it. It was, what transgression represents is someone who should be trustworthy, someone who's in a relationship with another, who we should be able to trust, who we should find faithful, and yet violates that relationship. And what's the solution to this that Scripture presents? It's not in ourselves, but it's in Christ. So if you have your finger in Isaiah 53, please turn with me there. In verse five we read this. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many. And he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors." What we see in this passage, though we don't have the time tonight to unpack everything in it, what I want you to see is how the trustworthy servant stood in the place of those who were untrustworthy, of the transgressors. Four times we're told that he was numbered with the transgressors, he was pierced for them, he was stricken for them, he intercedes for them. Four times Isaiah mentions transgression or transgressors, and it was Christ who bore their punishment, bore our punishment. Why? So that we could be accounted righteous. So not only do we see one who's trustworthy, who has no deceit in his mouth, who bears the just punishment that we deserve, but we're made righteous through that work so that God demonstrates his justice in the injustice of man. And so, what do we do in light of our failure? The hymn written by Joseph Swain captures it well. Come ye souls by sin afflicted, bowed with fruitless sorrow down, by the broken law convicted, through the cross behold the crown. Look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus. Mercy flows through him alone. We look to Christ, we trust in him, For though we're untrustworthy, he is trustworthy. And having looked to him, then we trust like him. The apostle Peter applies Isaiah 53 in his first epistle. In chapter two, beginning in verse 21, he writes this. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example. so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. See, what Peter does is he looks to Isaiah 53 and weaves it in this passage, is he shows us that the solution to living in a deceitful world in a trustworthy way is to imitate Christ. Not only to trust in him, but to trust like him. You see, one of the greatest challenges I think that we can face when it comes to living a trustworthy life is the fact that it will very likely lead to oppression. It will very likely lead to suffering at the hands of those who are untrustworthy. We see that in Acts chapter six, for example, at Stephen's martyrdom. They array false witnesses against him. They stir up and induce people to accuse him. Commenting on this passage, I, Howard Marshall, notes that the Old Testament condemns. It condemns false witness, but it also recognizes that the godly fall victim to it. And yet when we look to Christ, we see one who was the victim of unjust suffering, much of it the result of deceit. He was betrayed by Judas. He was denied by his disciples. He was brought before the Sanhedrin, who arrayed false witnesses against him to accuse him of crimes he did not commit. They blasphemed him, they slandered him, and they crucified him. And yet he didn't open his mouth. He didn't commit sin as he was reviled. He didn't revile in return. He didn't threaten in return. He didn't go at them tit for tat and say, they did it to me, I'll do it to them. Just as the sage tells us in Proverbs, when he says in Proverbs 24 verse 28, warning us against bearing false witness, he goes on to say that We ought not to engage with people in that kind of tit for tat, back and forth, because he did it to me. That's the wisdom that Christ exemplified. How did he do it? When we think about the law and what it requires of us, we also need to think about the how. How do we obey? How do we follow Christ's example? And it's right here in the passage. He continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Did you see it in the scope of Isaiah 53? How because of all his suffering, it concludes with therefore. And God allots him a portion. God raises him up, that God exalts him. And so, indeed, Christ was raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of the Father. And throughout his life, he endured all the suffering, all the deceit, all the wickedness, because he trusted that God, who judges justly, would do all that he promised. And so we can follow his example of living trustworthy lives by trusting that God will do likewise. The world tells us that it is sometimes necessary to live deceitfully, but Christ shows us a better way, the way of trust. Therefore, let us trust in Christ and let us trust like him. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are true in all you say. You are trustworthy, the faithful God who shows steadfast love to your people forever. We thank you for Christ Jesus, your son, who you sent to die for us, so that through the injustices against him, you might accomplish justice and make many to be accounted righteous. through his atoning sacrifice for us. We have no other hope than this. Lord, help us to trust in him, never to trust in our own righteousness, but only the righteousness that you impart to us through him. We pray that you'd enable us to live lives that are honest, that are trustworthy, that you would help us to put aside deceitful practices, that you would help us to be trustworthy with one another, Encouraging one another, honoring you in all things. Pray all these things in Jesus' name.