"Truth Matters"

Dear Friends in Christ,  

On this Reformation Sunday I’d like to begin my sermon by inviting you to take a little journey with me back into time. The date is April 17, 1521. The place is a small town in Germany with a rather unusual name. It’s called Worms. And it is there that a very important meeting is being held with, again, a rather unusual name. It’s called a Diet, the Diet of Worms. That’s not a joke. That was the official title of this gathering. A diet back in those days was not something you did to lose weight, but rather it was an assembly. And this particular assembly was made up of representatives of the 2 most powerful men in the world at that time, namely, the Pope and the Roman emperor. The purpose of the diet was to deal with a headstrong and unruly monk from Wittenberg by the name of Martin Luther whose writings had called into question various long-standing teachings and traditions of the church which in turn had the empire in an uproar. For Luther was viewed by his enemies as a heretic but by his followers and friends as a hero.

So on this fateful day of history, April 17, 1521, Luther was brought before this rather august assembly of political and religious leaders who held his future, indeed, his very life in their hands. Spread out on a table in front of everyone were many of Luther’s questionable writings. Luther was asked if they were his. He indicated they were. He was then asked if he would recant or take back what he had said in them. Now at that point Luther could have crossed his fingers behind his back and lied. Out of fear for his own life, he could have very easily said he recanted when in fact he didn’t really mean it. But that’s not what he did. Instead he asked for more time to consider his response. He was given until the next day. After a very restless night, Luther appeared before the assembly one more time. Again the question was asked, “Do you recant of all your writings?” To which Luther replied: “Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason (for I believe neither in the Pope nor councils alone, since it has been established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures adduced by me, and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God, and I am neither able nor willing to recant, since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

By that powerful statement of conviction, Luther in essence signed his own death sentence. For just a few weeks later, Emperor Charles V issued the official ruling that came out of the Diet of Worms. It was called the Edict of Worms and it stated: "For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, whereupon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.” From that point on Luther was a marked man. He was considered fair game for anyone who might want to kill him or anyone who might want to capture him and turn him over to the authorities for a nice handsome reward. And yet amazingly God’s protective hand was over Luther and it spared him from any arrest, any punishment, any death and he lived out his remaining days proclaiming the precious Gospel truths that he had defended so staunchly before the Diet of Worms, dying of natural causes 25 years later.

But there is something else that Luther’s statement of conviction demonstrated and that is that truth matters. Like I said, Luther could have very easily lied to save his own neck, but he knew that more than being accountable to the religious and political authorities who were demanding that he recant, he was accountable to the supreme Emperor and Ruler of the universe, the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords.

So truth matters. That’s our theme for today as we continue our study of the 8^th Commandment which we began last Sunday. Remember, in this Commandment God instructs us: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” So this commandment is against the sin of lying. And last week we looked at a few of the reasons why we lie. For example, we said that sometimes we lie out of fear, fear of the consequences of what we’ve done wrong. Sometimes we lie when we’re hurt and we want to get even with the one who hurt us, and sometimes we do it to impress because we are insecure with who we are. Today I want to look at a few more reasons why we shade the truth or color the truth or distort the truth and then move on to some other issues pertaining to this commandment.

So another reason we lie is because of greed. We lie for selfish reasons. We talked about this a few weeks ago in one of my sermons on the 7^th Commandment when we were looking at the whole subject of deception. We tarnish the truth about a car we’re trying to sell and don’t disclose all the things that are wrong with it because we want more money out of it than what it’s worth. We lie on a resume in the hopes of getting that job or that promotion because it’s going to mean a higher paycheck. We gossip and tell nasty lies about one of our classmates for whom everything just always seems to go right and in the process we destroy their reputation while boosting our own. Greed can come in so many different forms and can lead us to tell many different kinds of lies.

Then we also lie out of laziness. Have you ever had someone call you up and ask for some help with a project they were working on, but you say, “Oh, I’d really love to do that, but I’m tied up this afternoon,” when in fact you’re planning on taking a nap? Or you kids here today, have you ever had your mom or dad ask if you had your homework done for the next day or your memory work done for Confirmation and you said you did when you had yet to crack a book? Sometimes it’s nothing but sheer laziness that leads us to distort the truth or withhold the truth in situations like that.

Then one more reason we lie is because of habit. Have you ever noticed that once you tell one lie, you often have to tell another to cover that one up and then another to cover that one up and so on down the line. And it’s a simple fact of life that the more you do it, the easier it becomes, the less it bothers you, and the more you even begin to believe your own lies.

So there you have it, my friends, all kinds of reasons as to why we lie. But what I want to do now is shift gears a little bit and move on to the consequences of go along with lying and those consequences can be stated in 3 simple words: Lying damages relationships. It first of all damages our relationship with God. Whether you realize it or not, it erects a wall between you and God. Psalm 145:18 says: “The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” The implication of that passage is when you start tampering with the truth and trying to hide things from God or from others, that puts distance between yourself and God. And nobody understood that better than the man who wrote the words of that psalm, namely, King David. Remember that adulterous affair he had with Bathsheba and how he tried to cover up what he was doing with a multitude of lies? Do you think he felt close to God during that time? Not according to Ps. 32 where he says: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” But in Psalm 51 he writes a beautiful psalm of repentance in which he not only acknowledges his sins and comes clean with God, but he also expresses what God really wants from his people when he writes in v.6: “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.” So God wants truth from his people, plain and simple.

Or remember that story from the Gospel of John where Jesus had a one on one encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and they had a very lengthy discussion about the way the Jews worshiped and the way the Samaritans worshiped? Well, at one point Jesus told her: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” That’s just another way of saying you can’t have a relationship with God unless you’re honest. And really, when you think about it, what’s the point of even trying to hide the truth from God because he knows it all and sees it all anyway.

So lying damages your relationship with God. Then secondly, it also damages your relationship with yourself. It catches up with you sooner or later. Proverbs 10:9 says: “The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.” Isn’t that what happened to Bill Clinton when he was carrying on with Monica Lewinsky? Isn’t that what happened most recently to David Letterman who confessed on his show to having multiple affairs with females he’s worked with over the years? And isn’t that what happened to Ananias and Sapphira? You remember them, don’t you? They were part of the early Christian church who sold a piece of property and brought some of the proceeds to the apostles, which would have been great, except for one thing. They lied about it. They said they brought all the proceeds from the sale. And when God revealed to Peter that they were not telling the truth, he said to Ananias in private: "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?...You have not lied to men but to God.” With that, Ananias fell over dead and 3 hours later his wife, Sapphira, did the same when she tried to propagate the same lie.

So you damage your relationship with God when you lie. You bring harm to yourself. And then lastly, you damage your relationship with others. I’ve seen this so many times over the years when adultery has occurred in a marriage. Of course, in order to be unfaithful to your spouse, there has to be a lot of dishonesty going on, a lot of cover-ups, and a lot of lies told to account for the late nights and the absences from the dinner table and the extra purchases on the credit card. But once it all comes to light, even if there is genuine remorse and repentance on the part of the guilty spouse and a desire to keep the marriage afloat, the relationship has been damaged seriously, and in some cases beyond repair. Why? Because all those lies undermined and destroyed the foundation of trust that the marriage was originally built upon. I have found in situations like these that while the hurt for the injured party is almost unbearable in the beginning, over time it becomes manageable, but the trust factor is the hardest thing to rebuild. As one wife put it to me many years ago, “I have forgiven my husband, but I have to confess that not a day goes by that I don’t think about what he did.”

So what can we do to better avoid the pains and pitfalls that lying brings with it? Let me give you a few suggestions. First of all, consider the source of lies. In John 8:44 Jesus gives us the source of lies when he addresses the Pharisees and says: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” So remember that when you are tempted to lie. You are simply playing into the hand of Satan himself who is not only the father of lies but also the destroyer of relationships.

Then secondly, meditate on what it does to God. Sometimes I think we picture God as some impersonal force floating around out there somewhere in the universe who has no feelings. But he does have feelings. And he makes it very clear to us in his Word that he hates lying and that when we do it, we hurt him. We grieve him. So just like we would hopefully never intentionally do things that would hurt our spouse or grieve our kids, so also may we never intentionally do things that would bring sadness to the heart of God.

And yet the sad truth of the matter is that we do because at the very heart and core of our being we are sinful, selfish, self-centered, stubborn, rebellious human beings. And because of that, one more suggestion I have for you to help you become a truth-teller is that you become a truth-receiver. And without a doubt the greatest truth of all you can receive is the One who said of himself in John 14:6: "I am the way and the truth and the life.” And my friends, it only stands to reason that when you receive the living truth, Jesus Christ, by faith and he takes up permanent residence in your heart, then you are going to love what he loves more and more, and that would include the truth, and you are going to hate more and more the things that he hates, and that would include lying. Then when those temptations to lie come your way, you will be able to resist them and to say with Luther: “Here I stand (namely, upon the truth); I can do no other. God help me.”

            Amen.