Speaking with Integrity
Matthew 5:33-37
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SERMON SUMMARY Why do people feel the need to say things like, "I swear to God" or "I swear on a stack of Bibles"? In this message we'll see how the prevenance of lies has corroded our language. Moreover, we'll learn that those in Jesus' kingdom must speak with integrity. |
Message begins at approx. the 39 min mark.
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About 20 years ago, before I went to seminary and got into pastoral ministry, I took a a job as a high school Bible teacher. I worked at a Christian high school in Illinois and taught courses on the Gospels and Epistles to sophomores and Juniors.
Before I took that job, I, of course, had had no teaching experience. I didn’t have any idea when it came to classroom management. I began to wonder about how to keep order in a room full or ornery teenagers. I asked an experienced friend of mine and he replied, “It’s all out psychological warfare.”
I soon came to realize that he wasn’t kidding. I recognized that, even though this was a Christian school, it still was full of sinners. One of the things that I always encountered with the young people I taught was that they said used two words almost ad nauseum. They were the words, “I swear!” They said it all the time. And sometimes they would have various versions they would repeat. Sometimes they’d say, “I swear to God.” Sometimes they’d say, “I swear on a stack of Bibles, Mr. Timmons.” Some would even invoke their grandmother’s grave.
And you know what I would do? I would always look at them and say, “Your word is sand.” That would get them even more fired up and they’d make their swearing all that much more emphatic.
But the truth was I just couldn’t trust them. They had a proclivity for manipulating their teachers and lying about what they were doing. School was one of the last places they wanted to be and they liked to get into mischief. So whenever they needed something or tried to tell me something, I couldn’t believe them. And so they had to ratchet up their promises, their “I swears,” and their scouts honors.
Unfortunately, that Christian high school is not the only place where we encounter that kind of thing. We can find it in churches and homes and all over the face of the planet. That’s because we live in a world where there is very little value placed on honest speech.
And certainly, in that respect, we have something in common with the people of Jesus’ day. In the passage before us today Jesus is addressing the confusion surrounding the third commandment and what constitutes Godly communication. He’s dealing with the issue of oaths and vows. And he wants us to understand that the people who belong to his kingdom need to have the highest level of integrity when it comes to their everyday conversation.
When it comes to our word, it must be worth its weight in gold. That’s what speaking with integrity really means.
In that regard, I want us to look at three points. If we are going to speak with integrity, we must understand that it is lawful to take oaths, it is sinful to be deceptive, and it is needful to be simple and straightforward
I. It is lawful to take oaths [33]
This might not be what you expect to hear. After all, the passage opens up by saying, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all...”
When Jesus says, “Do not take an oath at all” and “just let your yes be yes and your no be no,” you might get the idea that we should never take an oath or a vow of any kind.
And there have been some in the history of the church who have taken that view. For instance, those of the Friends Church (people who are more commonly known as “Quakers”) do not believe that it is ever right to take a formal oath where you call upon the name of God to be a witness in the matter of your truthfulness.
Also, I should point out that the Amish have traditionally not believed it is proper to make a solemn oath. Since we are surrounded by many Amish, it might be noteworthy to understand that many of them will not put their hand on a Bible in a court of law and make a vow in that way. Certainly, there may be some sects that will permit it, but historically they have not believed that kind of thing is a lawful practice.
But what I want you to understand here at the outset that there is no reason to think this way. I believe that this kind of thinking goes against the overall teaching of Scripture. As we will see in just a moment, this passage is forbidding a certain kind of swearing: a false swearing. And when we look at the whole of Scripture, we find that God’s Word is very much in favor of invoking God’s name in an oaths or using a solemn ceremony to formalize your vows.
Let me give you a couple Scriptures in this regard. First, the practice is set forth quite clearly in
Deuteronomy 6:13
It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.
Leviticus 19:12
You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
Numbers 30:2
If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
But of all the passages (and there are more that we could cite), one of the most interesting is Deut. 4:26. In this passage, God himself takes an oath. In speaking about how intent he is on punishing the disobedience of the Israelites God says,
Deuteronomy 4:26
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.
Now, it would be odd, to say the least, for Jesus to forbid something that God himself does.
Of course, there are many passages in the NT too. But there’s only one that really matters. It is Matthew 26:63, where Jesus takes an oath. Martyn Lloyd-Jones points out that when Jesus was on trial, he remained silent before the high priest. Then the high priest said, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.” It was only after that oath that he was put under that he spoke.
That is just a sample of the Scriptures. And I want you to understand that Scripture does recognize the need to take oaths and vows at times. There are circumstances which may be said to be extraordinary or have a special degree of gravity to them. You may be in a position where your promise or your truth telling is of particular importance. Those can be times for oaths.
For instance, I mentioned a court of law. When the stakes are high, as in cases of prosecution, your honesty is of the highest necessity. So it is only right that we put our hand on the Scriptures and promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.
We have times in our own church where we do this. When people become members of our church, we have them stand up front and we make a formal ceremony out of the membership vows. That’s because we believe entering into membership is a pretty serious thing. It requires good reflection and some recognition that your life and responsibility to this church body will be taken seriously.
And so, practices like this (or weddings or other such occasions where our honestly has rather grave repercussions) should be seen as lawful.
And we should not follow the Anabaptist tradition and swear off all swearing. And neither we should not be hesitant to give our pledge or promise in this way when asked to do so. Making an oath should be looked upon as a biblical thing (and a good thing).
What he does prohibit is a flippant or shoddy use of our language, especially when it comes to oaths and vows. And so, while it may be lawful to make an oath, we need to recognize that it is sinful to be deceptive.
II. It is sinful to be deceptive [34-36]
That’s what Jesus is getting at in verses 34-36. Look at verse 34 again. Notice that Jesus doesn’t just say, “Do not swear at all.” There’s more to it than that. He says, “Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great King.”
Jesus is speaking to a specific practice of his time. You see, people were making all kinds of oaths, but they were not really making oaths that they thought were binding. You might say that they were always giving themselves an out or making a loophole in their oath so they wouldn’t have to keep it.
So, someone might say, “I swore by the temple, but I didn’t swear by God.” And they thought that by doing this they were free from doing anything wrong. They didn’t invoke the name of God. And since they didn’t, they thought they weren’t obligated to fulfill that vow.
And what Jesus points out is that all creation is very much linked to God. If you swear by heaven, that’s God’s throne room. If you swear by earth, that is the same as swearing by God because it is his footstool.
Someone might say, “I swear by my great aunt Nellie,” or “I swear on my mother’s grave.” And you need to know that Aunt Nellie is one of God’s creations. She’s made in the image of God. Your mother is in her grave because God put her there. So you are making an oath that is just the same as if you invoked God’s name directly.
But you see the problem that Jesus is dealing with. It is this idea of deception. It’s language that is not altogether honest. It’s a deception to make a promise, but not have any real intention of keeping that promise. If what your mouth says does not line up with what your mind is thinking, there is something terribly wrong with that. It isn’t right to speak out of both sides of your mouth like that.
What you are doing is breaking down the lines of trust. You are attacking truth, and putting the ordinary functioning of society in jeopardy. Deceit destroys trust. And as a result it causes anarchy. Business are not able to function (or they are not able to function well) if promises are not kept. You put people’s livelihoods and reputations on the line when you don’t meet your deadlines or make your payments at the time you promised you would.
The same goes for households. Every home requires honest communication, or it will not function the way it should. If you don’t take your vows seriously and have no intention of living up to them, then you and your spouse are going to be pretty frustrated. And if you are not being honest with your parents or your kids, then there’s going to be a great deal of anarchy. Your home will not function the way it should if there is deception within it.
Now, this wasn’t just pertinent for Jesus’ day. This is a sound rebuke for our contemporary society. Finding the loophole and wiggling out of our word is something that is quite commonplace in our world today. As a matter of fact, we are so good at it that we pay professionals to find the loophole for us. Listen to these words from Pastor Scott Harris, who leads a church in NY:
“Modern lawyers understand this concept very well because they earn their living pouring over documents trying to either find a way out of keeping a contract or making the other party keep the contract. The intent of the parties making the contract to begin with is without much concern. Only the specific language of the fine print really matters in the final analysis. It is a system to manipulate things to your own advantage. You can say all sorts of things – but you do not have to do any of them because you have some sort of clause that makes your word non binding. Essentially it is legal lying. Long gone are the days when agreements where made between honest men with just a verbal agreement and a handshake.”
That’s the state of our world today. We are not that much different from the day of Jesus. We are mounting up words and adding all kinds of extra language to put more backing to our word. We are trying to make our relationships that much more airtight. But what we are really doing is putting more and more distance between each other and wreaking havoc on our society. We have all kinds of fine print because of our lies, but then we turn around and use the fine print to validate our lack of integrity.
The Lord wants us to know that that isn’t right. We need to recognize that it is sinful to be deceptive like that. It goes against everything that the Lord loves.
Which brings us to our last point. If we are going to have speech that has integrity, it is needful to be simple and straightforward.
III. It is needful to be simple and straightforward [37]
In verse 37 Jesus says, “let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more is from the evil one.”
That strikes you as much more simple, doesn’t it? There’s no trumped up language. It’s not all that flamboyant. It’s just a yes and a no.
You’ve heard people say, “Just say what you mean and mean what you say.” That’s basically what Jesus is saying here.
In other words, we should understand the value of our words. We should not let words be emptied of their power and their meaning. When we commit to doing something, we should not have to make an oath or throw in a lot of extra lingo in to help fortify the truthfulness of what we say. We should just be able to be plain spoken, straightforward people.
All in all, from what I’ve said here, we should recognize that anyone who has to put more backing on their words is probably not someone you can trust.
Think about it. Why is it that someone will say, “I swear!” or “I swear to God!” It’s likely because they can’t be trusted in the first place. They have to make themselves sound more honest by making an oath.
But really, the swearing and oath taking is only to be something that we do in the most serious and solemn circumstances. Oaths and vows are not supposed to be used in ordinary, everyday conversation. It is a downgrade of the oath taking process to have to do something like that. But we feel the need to do it because we feel our word won’t be believed.
The real mark of Christian vocabulary though, is it’s simplicity.
How do we get to this point? How can we make this a trait that characterizes our speech?
Well, the the first thing we must do is be honest with ourselves and with God. By that I mean we need to admit that our speech is demonic. We add bloat to our promises and are deceptive because we are evil.
That’s what Jesus tells us in verse 37. Anything more than yes or no comes from evil. Why is it that we lie and fail to keep our commitments? It’s because we are sinful. It is because we have been living under the power of the Devil and following he who is the Father of Lies.
We will only begin to speak aright when we honestly admit that our speech patterns are more in line with sin and Satan than they are with God and his Kingdom.
Think about it. Mom asks, “Will you clean up the kitchen by the time I get back.” And the child, who tends to be lazy and not get the job done, will say, “I’ll do it, I promise.” Mom looks at him a little funny and he says, “I swear! I swear to God I’ll have it done.” Mom says, “You’re sure?” Knowing full well that there’s a slim chance that little johnny will make good on his promise. So Johnny pulls out the mother of all oaths, “Cross my heart and hope to die; stick a needle in my eye.”
Why is it that Johnny has to pledge malediction to his cornea? It’s because there’s a lack of integrity; there’s a lack of righteousness. At that point it is about his laziness. His heart is evil and he doesn’t want to be diligent as God calls him to.
And it is only when you come to be honest about your track record and your habitual failure that you’ll begin to speak with more simplicity. A yes and no will mean more when you come to sense how your yes and no haven’t meant much of anything up to this point.
But the second thing you need to do is remember that Christ has been a simple and plain spoken fellow. As we’ve seen throughout the last few messages here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been pointing out that your righteousness has to exceed the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And as he has done that, we’ve seen that only His righteousness can do that.
And this is good news to you. For Jesus does fulfill his oaths and vows. What has he promised? He’s promised to deliver us from our sins. He’s made an oath to be our God and to have us as his people. And he has not failed in those things. He’s been faithful and true. We hear him cry out on the cross “It is finished.” That’s the declaration of the completion of his promise. He died and brought about salvation. The penalty of sin is paid; redemption has been procured and the promise of Christ is fulfilled.
And it is because he has been faithful in keeping his word (and because he continues to be faithful to that word) that we can find ourselves renewed after his image. By God’s power we can find that our speech can come to have more weight, despite there being fewer words. He will save us from foolish oath taking and deception and make us more truthful.
And as we remember that and put our faith in him and trust him for his saving grace that we will be delivered.
Just remember this: All the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Jesus Christ. See how simple that is? See how straightforward? And the beautiful thing is that it is a simple yes; it doesn’t even include the no--It is only yes.
Thanks be to God that this simple affirmation is ours in Christ. May it be the pattern for our speech too.
Before I took that job, I, of course, had had no teaching experience. I didn’t have any idea when it came to classroom management. I began to wonder about how to keep order in a room full or ornery teenagers. I asked an experienced friend of mine and he replied, “It’s all out psychological warfare.”
I soon came to realize that he wasn’t kidding. I recognized that, even though this was a Christian school, it still was full of sinners. One of the things that I always encountered with the young people I taught was that they said used two words almost ad nauseum. They were the words, “I swear!” They said it all the time. And sometimes they would have various versions they would repeat. Sometimes they’d say, “I swear to God.” Sometimes they’d say, “I swear on a stack of Bibles, Mr. Timmons.” Some would even invoke their grandmother’s grave.
And you know what I would do? I would always look at them and say, “Your word is sand.” That would get them even more fired up and they’d make their swearing all that much more emphatic.
But the truth was I just couldn’t trust them. They had a proclivity for manipulating their teachers and lying about what they were doing. School was one of the last places they wanted to be and they liked to get into mischief. So whenever they needed something or tried to tell me something, I couldn’t believe them. And so they had to ratchet up their promises, their “I swears,” and their scouts honors.
Unfortunately, that Christian high school is not the only place where we encounter that kind of thing. We can find it in churches and homes and all over the face of the planet. That’s because we live in a world where there is very little value placed on honest speech.
And certainly, in that respect, we have something in common with the people of Jesus’ day. In the passage before us today Jesus is addressing the confusion surrounding the third commandment and what constitutes Godly communication. He’s dealing with the issue of oaths and vows. And he wants us to understand that the people who belong to his kingdom need to have the highest level of integrity when it comes to their everyday conversation.
When it comes to our word, it must be worth its weight in gold. That’s what speaking with integrity really means.
In that regard, I want us to look at three points. If we are going to speak with integrity, we must understand that it is lawful to take oaths, it is sinful to be deceptive, and it is needful to be simple and straightforward
I. It is lawful to take oaths [33]
This might not be what you expect to hear. After all, the passage opens up by saying, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all...”
When Jesus says, “Do not take an oath at all” and “just let your yes be yes and your no be no,” you might get the idea that we should never take an oath or a vow of any kind.
And there have been some in the history of the church who have taken that view. For instance, those of the Friends Church (people who are more commonly known as “Quakers”) do not believe that it is ever right to take a formal oath where you call upon the name of God to be a witness in the matter of your truthfulness.
Also, I should point out that the Amish have traditionally not believed it is proper to make a solemn oath. Since we are surrounded by many Amish, it might be noteworthy to understand that many of them will not put their hand on a Bible in a court of law and make a vow in that way. Certainly, there may be some sects that will permit it, but historically they have not believed that kind of thing is a lawful practice.
But what I want you to understand here at the outset that there is no reason to think this way. I believe that this kind of thinking goes against the overall teaching of Scripture. As we will see in just a moment, this passage is forbidding a certain kind of swearing: a false swearing. And when we look at the whole of Scripture, we find that God’s Word is very much in favor of invoking God’s name in an oaths or using a solemn ceremony to formalize your vows.
Let me give you a couple Scriptures in this regard. First, the practice is set forth quite clearly in
Deuteronomy 6:13
It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.
Leviticus 19:12
You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
Numbers 30:2
If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
But of all the passages (and there are more that we could cite), one of the most interesting is Deut. 4:26. In this passage, God himself takes an oath. In speaking about how intent he is on punishing the disobedience of the Israelites God says,
Deuteronomy 4:26
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.
Now, it would be odd, to say the least, for Jesus to forbid something that God himself does.
Of course, there are many passages in the NT too. But there’s only one that really matters. It is Matthew 26:63, where Jesus takes an oath. Martyn Lloyd-Jones points out that when Jesus was on trial, he remained silent before the high priest. Then the high priest said, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.” It was only after that oath that he was put under that he spoke.
That is just a sample of the Scriptures. And I want you to understand that Scripture does recognize the need to take oaths and vows at times. There are circumstances which may be said to be extraordinary or have a special degree of gravity to them. You may be in a position where your promise or your truth telling is of particular importance. Those can be times for oaths.
For instance, I mentioned a court of law. When the stakes are high, as in cases of prosecution, your honesty is of the highest necessity. So it is only right that we put our hand on the Scriptures and promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.
We have times in our own church where we do this. When people become members of our church, we have them stand up front and we make a formal ceremony out of the membership vows. That’s because we believe entering into membership is a pretty serious thing. It requires good reflection and some recognition that your life and responsibility to this church body will be taken seriously.
And so, practices like this (or weddings or other such occasions where our honestly has rather grave repercussions) should be seen as lawful.
And we should not follow the Anabaptist tradition and swear off all swearing. And neither we should not be hesitant to give our pledge or promise in this way when asked to do so. Making an oath should be looked upon as a biblical thing (and a good thing).
What he does prohibit is a flippant or shoddy use of our language, especially when it comes to oaths and vows. And so, while it may be lawful to make an oath, we need to recognize that it is sinful to be deceptive.
II. It is sinful to be deceptive [34-36]
That’s what Jesus is getting at in verses 34-36. Look at verse 34 again. Notice that Jesus doesn’t just say, “Do not swear at all.” There’s more to it than that. He says, “Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great King.”
Jesus is speaking to a specific practice of his time. You see, people were making all kinds of oaths, but they were not really making oaths that they thought were binding. You might say that they were always giving themselves an out or making a loophole in their oath so they wouldn’t have to keep it.
So, someone might say, “I swore by the temple, but I didn’t swear by God.” And they thought that by doing this they were free from doing anything wrong. They didn’t invoke the name of God. And since they didn’t, they thought they weren’t obligated to fulfill that vow.
And what Jesus points out is that all creation is very much linked to God. If you swear by heaven, that’s God’s throne room. If you swear by earth, that is the same as swearing by God because it is his footstool.
Someone might say, “I swear by my great aunt Nellie,” or “I swear on my mother’s grave.” And you need to know that Aunt Nellie is one of God’s creations. She’s made in the image of God. Your mother is in her grave because God put her there. So you are making an oath that is just the same as if you invoked God’s name directly.
But you see the problem that Jesus is dealing with. It is this idea of deception. It’s language that is not altogether honest. It’s a deception to make a promise, but not have any real intention of keeping that promise. If what your mouth says does not line up with what your mind is thinking, there is something terribly wrong with that. It isn’t right to speak out of both sides of your mouth like that.
What you are doing is breaking down the lines of trust. You are attacking truth, and putting the ordinary functioning of society in jeopardy. Deceit destroys trust. And as a result it causes anarchy. Business are not able to function (or they are not able to function well) if promises are not kept. You put people’s livelihoods and reputations on the line when you don’t meet your deadlines or make your payments at the time you promised you would.
The same goes for households. Every home requires honest communication, or it will not function the way it should. If you don’t take your vows seriously and have no intention of living up to them, then you and your spouse are going to be pretty frustrated. And if you are not being honest with your parents or your kids, then there’s going to be a great deal of anarchy. Your home will not function the way it should if there is deception within it.
Now, this wasn’t just pertinent for Jesus’ day. This is a sound rebuke for our contemporary society. Finding the loophole and wiggling out of our word is something that is quite commonplace in our world today. As a matter of fact, we are so good at it that we pay professionals to find the loophole for us. Listen to these words from Pastor Scott Harris, who leads a church in NY:
“Modern lawyers understand this concept very well because they earn their living pouring over documents trying to either find a way out of keeping a contract or making the other party keep the contract. The intent of the parties making the contract to begin with is without much concern. Only the specific language of the fine print really matters in the final analysis. It is a system to manipulate things to your own advantage. You can say all sorts of things – but you do not have to do any of them because you have some sort of clause that makes your word non binding. Essentially it is legal lying. Long gone are the days when agreements where made between honest men with just a verbal agreement and a handshake.”
That’s the state of our world today. We are not that much different from the day of Jesus. We are mounting up words and adding all kinds of extra language to put more backing to our word. We are trying to make our relationships that much more airtight. But what we are really doing is putting more and more distance between each other and wreaking havoc on our society. We have all kinds of fine print because of our lies, but then we turn around and use the fine print to validate our lack of integrity.
The Lord wants us to know that that isn’t right. We need to recognize that it is sinful to be deceptive like that. It goes against everything that the Lord loves.
Which brings us to our last point. If we are going to have speech that has integrity, it is needful to be simple and straightforward.
III. It is needful to be simple and straightforward [37]
In verse 37 Jesus says, “let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more is from the evil one.”
That strikes you as much more simple, doesn’t it? There’s no trumped up language. It’s not all that flamboyant. It’s just a yes and a no.
You’ve heard people say, “Just say what you mean and mean what you say.” That’s basically what Jesus is saying here.
In other words, we should understand the value of our words. We should not let words be emptied of their power and their meaning. When we commit to doing something, we should not have to make an oath or throw in a lot of extra lingo in to help fortify the truthfulness of what we say. We should just be able to be plain spoken, straightforward people.
All in all, from what I’ve said here, we should recognize that anyone who has to put more backing on their words is probably not someone you can trust.
Think about it. Why is it that someone will say, “I swear!” or “I swear to God!” It’s likely because they can’t be trusted in the first place. They have to make themselves sound more honest by making an oath.
But really, the swearing and oath taking is only to be something that we do in the most serious and solemn circumstances. Oaths and vows are not supposed to be used in ordinary, everyday conversation. It is a downgrade of the oath taking process to have to do something like that. But we feel the need to do it because we feel our word won’t be believed.
The real mark of Christian vocabulary though, is it’s simplicity.
How do we get to this point? How can we make this a trait that characterizes our speech?
Well, the the first thing we must do is be honest with ourselves and with God. By that I mean we need to admit that our speech is demonic. We add bloat to our promises and are deceptive because we are evil.
That’s what Jesus tells us in verse 37. Anything more than yes or no comes from evil. Why is it that we lie and fail to keep our commitments? It’s because we are sinful. It is because we have been living under the power of the Devil and following he who is the Father of Lies.
We will only begin to speak aright when we honestly admit that our speech patterns are more in line with sin and Satan than they are with God and his Kingdom.
Think about it. Mom asks, “Will you clean up the kitchen by the time I get back.” And the child, who tends to be lazy and not get the job done, will say, “I’ll do it, I promise.” Mom looks at him a little funny and he says, “I swear! I swear to God I’ll have it done.” Mom says, “You’re sure?” Knowing full well that there’s a slim chance that little johnny will make good on his promise. So Johnny pulls out the mother of all oaths, “Cross my heart and hope to die; stick a needle in my eye.”
Why is it that Johnny has to pledge malediction to his cornea? It’s because there’s a lack of integrity; there’s a lack of righteousness. At that point it is about his laziness. His heart is evil and he doesn’t want to be diligent as God calls him to.
And it is only when you come to be honest about your track record and your habitual failure that you’ll begin to speak with more simplicity. A yes and no will mean more when you come to sense how your yes and no haven’t meant much of anything up to this point.
But the second thing you need to do is remember that Christ has been a simple and plain spoken fellow. As we’ve seen throughout the last few messages here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been pointing out that your righteousness has to exceed the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And as he has done that, we’ve seen that only His righteousness can do that.
And this is good news to you. For Jesus does fulfill his oaths and vows. What has he promised? He’s promised to deliver us from our sins. He’s made an oath to be our God and to have us as his people. And he has not failed in those things. He’s been faithful and true. We hear him cry out on the cross “It is finished.” That’s the declaration of the completion of his promise. He died and brought about salvation. The penalty of sin is paid; redemption has been procured and the promise of Christ is fulfilled.
And it is because he has been faithful in keeping his word (and because he continues to be faithful to that word) that we can find ourselves renewed after his image. By God’s power we can find that our speech can come to have more weight, despite there being fewer words. He will save us from foolish oath taking and deception and make us more truthful.
And as we remember that and put our faith in him and trust him for his saving grace that we will be delivered.
Just remember this: All the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Jesus Christ. See how simple that is? See how straightforward? And the beautiful thing is that it is a simple yes; it doesn’t even include the no--It is only yes.
Thanks be to God that this simple affirmation is ours in Christ. May it be the pattern for our speech too.