First, let's start out with the Ten Commandments.
Okay, now you'll often hear people claim that one of the Ten Commandments is
thou shalt not lie. That's not one of the Ten Commandments.
It just isn't. You'll hear people all the time say, yeah,
Ten Commandments, thou shalt not lie. There is no
commandment in the Ten Commandments called thou shalt not lie. Now there's
plenty of scripture telling us not to lie.
There are all kinds of verses telling us that we need to tell the truth,
don't lie. I'm not saying the Bible doesn't say not to lie. I'm saying that
that's not one of the Ten Commandments. What the Ten Commandments actually say
is thou shalt not bear false witness against
thy neighbor. Now the Ten Commandments are an
abbreviated form of the old covenant or God's law
or, you know, the moral code of the Old Testament or what have you.
Really not even the moral code because it's really just the entire covenant
is summed up because the Bible calls it the tables of the covenant.
In First Corinthians chapter, no, no, no. Second Corinthians chapter three it talks
about the Ten Commandments as being sort of indicative of the
entire Old Testament law. So it's like a brief thing. It's not the
whole law. Obviously the Bible in the Old Testament has hundreds of
commandments, hundreds and hundreds of commandments.
The Ten Commandments aren't the only list,
but what are they? They're just a basic abbreviated list of the most important
basic requirements of God's covenant with Israel that he
made with them on Mount Sinai, and so it just has basic super important
teachings. No other gods before me, you know, don't
make a graven image. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
thy God in vain. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
Honor thy father and thy mother, and then we get into the second half of the
Ten Commandments. We get into the very famous thou shalt
not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbor, thou shalt not covet. Okay.
Why does this get its own commandment in the Ten Commandments? I mean stealing,
it's pretty obvious why thou shalt not steal is one of the Ten Commandments.
Why do you think that is? Out of hundreds of Old Testament
Commandments, why single that one out and put it in the Ten?
Because it's common. What about thou shalt not kill?
It's common. It's a big one. It's common. It's out there. It's happening every
single day. It's happening, you know, twice a day in
Chicago. It's happening at abortion clinics 3,000
times a day. So, you know, it's happening constantly.
It's very common. It's a basic thing. Thou shalt not
covet is happening every second of every day,
a million times all over the world. Coveting is when you,
you know, desire things that belong to other people.
Okay, you know, thou honor thy father and mother. I mean these are, these are like
really important basic things that are constantly
applicable in our lives in one way or another.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. Obviously committing adultery
is common, okay, unfortunately. But what does the Bible say? Thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
This is in there is, you know, couldn't God if he wanted to have just,
he could have saved a little room on the stone tablet
and just said thou shalt not lie. It wouldn't, you know what I mean? It would
have taken up less space on the tablet. Maybe, maybe Moses wouldn't have had to
carry such a heavy tablet because thou shalt not lie would have
been shorter and easier. But is that what God chose to put in
Ten Commandments? Thou shalt not lie? No. What he chose to put is thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
You know what that tells me is that bearing false witness against your
neighbor is probably something that comes up a lot.
It's probably common. It's probably important or else why would it be in
this abbreviated list, you know, just the cliff's notes of the
old covenant. Ten things and one of them is thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbor. And let me, let me point this out too.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
You know, I like the term bearing witness because to bear something means to carry
something. So even if you're not the origin of the
false witness, if you're repeating something
unsubstantiated, if you're repeating something without evidence,
you end up bearing false witness by repeating and redounding
lies told by others. You know, like what if somebody put out some
slanderous video and then yours, I'm just going to mirror this.
You have borne false witness. Your channel is bearing false witness
because you decided to mirror something that you know is slanderous that, you
know, well I'm just putting it out there people can decide.
You know, let me tell you something. False accusations can be damaging to people
even when they're found innocent, even when people go to court and all the
evidence shows that they're 100% innocent because it puts these seeds of doubt in
people's mind because most people don't know what I'm preaching this morning.
They don't follow the principles that I'm preaching this morning and look, I'm
getting up and preaching on principles of justice.
I guarantee you that there are a lot of people in this room who need to hear
this sermon this morning and I guarantee you that there are tons
of people in our church that have warped views on
justice even in our church. I mean, I haven't seen anything like that,
but just knowing human beings, knowing human nature, I'd be willing to bet just
conversations that I have with people that this kind of preaching needs to
happen because it's possible for us to be
influenced by the world or just not to think these things through.
And so, you know, this idea of well let's just put every accusation out there.
Let's just put every accusation out there and let people decide. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Because if it's not substantiated, don't receive it.
You know, that means don't receive means don't download
in order to upload because then you're bearing false witness now.
If you're going to download a false witness and then redound it on some
other channel, well guess what? You're bearing false
witness now. Bearing false witness is common. That's why there's so much
scripture on it. That's why it's in the 10 commandments
because people constantly lie and make false accusations against other people.
It happens all the time. Now you'd think we would have
all learned this in junior high and high school.
I mean, when we were in junior high and high school, let me ask you this, were
there false accusations made about people?
There were rumors because teenagers are infamous for gossiping.
And so when you're a junior high or high school student, there's all kinds of
rumors and gossip and wild-eyed stories going around that
turn out to be lies. So really, did you really become an
adult without figuring out that false witness is common?
Did you actually make it to adulthood without realizing
that people making false accusations or giving false testimony
or lying about what they saw or observed, you really haven't noticed that
and you're an adult? Because I remember seeing that my entire life
in school and beyond. So it's common.