To Tell the Truth

If you have your Bible, and I hope you do, we are continuing in the book of Ephesians. So turn to
Ephesians chapter four. Last week, there was a movie that came out in theaters that has been
getting a lot of buzz. You may have heard about it. It's a documentary about this woman. Her name
is Elizabeth Holmes. And when she was 19 years old, she dropped out of Stanford and founded a
company called Theranos. And within a couple of years, she was the youngest billionaire in the
world. She was on the cover of Forbes as one of the Forbes 400, kind of a female Steve Jobs.
And her company was building, pioneering a device that she said would revolutionize healthcare
around the world. Except they really weren't doing that. She was telling people about this
miraculous device that could... do amazing things and all of it simply wasn't true people were
investing millions of dollars in this company and it was all based on fraudulent claims it was
based on lies And back in 2023, she was sentenced to 11 years in a federal prison,
having been found guilty of four counts of defrauding investors. And right before she went to
prison, she invited, she and her romantic partner, Billy Evans, invited two documentary filmmakers
to come into her home and to film everything that they wanted to film.
Three weeks. No holds barred, free access. You can ask me anything. You can see how we live.
In fact, the name of the documentary is You Can See Everything. And about two months ago,
in anticipation of this movie being released in theaters, there was a clip from the movie that was
put online, and some of you have seen it. But I want you to watch this clip and watch the
interaction between the documentary filmmaker and Elizabeth Holmes.
See if we can play that here. I'm not that person. I can promise you that.
I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as
a human being.
Why would I deceive you?
There's no reason for me to do that.
Okay.
Alright.
Okay, good shot.
You're being real right now? I'm always being real. Oh,
that's the clip. And that... up what you see in the movie. Of course, the question people are
asking as they watch this movie and interact with her story is, after having been convicted of
fraud, after having raised millions of dollars for a device that doesn't work,
that as promised and never worked as promised, does she know she was lying then,
or is she somehow self-deceived? Did she tell the story so often that she just came to believe it
herself? I haven't seen the movie, so I won't weigh in. But here's what I can tell you. If we
assume for a minute that she is lying, she's just one in a long line of famous people who have been
caught in what were clear lies. I mean, we can go through a pretty long list. Two months ago,
there was a professor at Cambridge. who stepped down from his role after he was accused of
plagiarism in his PhD dissertation, which led to scrutiny of his life and his resume,
including claims. He said he had been completely nonverbal until he was 11 and illiterate until he
was 18, and now he was a PhD teaching at Cambridge. He also claimed that at one point he had run 30
marathons over a 35-day period and had raised money doing it.
Just one of many people in academia who had padded their resumes in order to get ahead.
They claimed they had degrees they didn't have. I mean, there's a long list of them. Of course,
politics. Think about politics. Politics is rife with people who lie to us. And we've come to a
point where we just kind of take that for granted.
Maybe you remember George Santos, who ran for Congress in New York back in 2000.
22. He claimed that he had worked for Goldman Sachs and for Citicorp and all of that was not true.
Claimed he was a multimillionaire and that he was Jewish and his ancestors had escaped the
Holocaust. Again, none of it was true.
And he got elected to Congress. We have a president whose relationship with the truth is curious,
right? We kind of expect it these days. And he's not the only one. Any of this sound familiar?
I will never pardon my son.
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Read my lips, no new taxes.
This is bipartisan. This is just the norm in politics.
You lie if it will serve your purposes. We could go on for a long time with lots of examples
about... lying in our day prominently, but I don't need to convince you that lying is an issue in
the world in which we live. We've got AI with deep fakes now that are online. You read stuff on
Facebook and go, is that true? Who posted that? But here's the more important question for all of
us this morning as we talk about all of the liars we're aware of. Are you someone who always tells
the truth?
Or do you sometimes, when it's expedient,
shade the truth, bend the truth, adjust it a little bit?
In other words, are you a liar?
We are in this extended study in the book of Ephesians, and this morning we are pausing to consider
an admonition found in chapter 4 that tells us that we are to put aside falsehood.
Let me give you the context for what we're going to look at this morning. The Apostle Paul has
written this letter to this church made up mostly of Gentiles, new Christians living in Ephesus,
and he spent the first half of his letter explaining to them, reminding them, telling them of the
great things God has done for us who are in Christ. If you are in Christ, you've been blessed with
every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. You were dead. You've been brought alive. We've
rehearsed over and over again all that God has done for us in Christ. We get to chapter four and he
says, therefore, because of this, in response to what God has done,
walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. In other words, act like who
you are. That's what he's saying. If tomorrow you were named the ambassador to England,
people would expect you to act like an ambassador. You have a new assignment,
a new title, a new position. You should act like an ambassador. You should dress like an
ambassador. You should do what's appropriate for someone who is in that. role. You've been given a
new assignment. Now act like it. That's what Paul is saying in Ephesians chapter four. You have
become an ambassador for Christ. Now act like it. Walk in a manner worthy of that calling.
And then in verse 17, he said, that's going to mean you don't act like the Gentiles.
Don't walk the way they walk. Their hearts are hard toward God. They believe in false gods.
And they live according to their sensual appetites and desires and passions. And he says,
we saw last week, he said, you need to be putting off your old way of living. You need to renew
your mind according to God's word and put on a new way of living, put on Christ and live in a way
that now aligns with who you are. And he defines that as walking in righteousness,
true righteousness and holiness. And the rest of the letter, once he makes that statement,
the rest of the letter is him talking about what that's going to mean practically, specifically.
Getting into our business to talk about this, and the first thing he talks about is putting away
falsehood. Don't lie to one another. If you are putting off the old behavior, if you're not going
to walk like the Gentiles, put away falsehood and do not lie. If you are anything other than
truthful with someone else, even with yourself, you're not walking in a manner worthy of your
calling. And that's the clear point that Paul is making in this passage.
To be a Christian means to be honest, to be truthful, to let your yes be yes,
as Jesus said.
So I want to read the passage. We're actually going to start at verse 17, go all the way through
the end of the chapter so we've got the full context. But we're only going to be looking this
morning at one verse, and that's verse 25, which is this verse, this admonition, not to lie to one
another, to put away falsehood. So let me pray for our time in God's Word, and then we will read
this passage. Father, we need your Spirit now to come and to do your work in us,
through us. We pray that our hearts would be softened, that our ears would be opened,
that we would be ready and eager to hear what you have for us this morning.
And help us not just to be hearers of your word, but to be doers. Lord, convict us where we need
conviction. Strengthen us where we need strength. Encourage us as we spend time in your word.
I pray it in your name. Amen. Stand with me, if you would, as we read God's word.
This is the word of God for the people of God. Ephesians 4, starting in verse 17. The Apostle Paul
writes, Now this I say, and testify in the Lord. that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in
the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of
God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. They have become
callous. They've given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
But that is not the way you learn Christ. assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in
him as the truth is in Jesus. To put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life
and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put
on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, Having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor,
for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no
longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have
something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,
but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who
hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you,
along with all malice. Be kind to one another. tenderhearted,
forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Amen.
May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our God
will stand forever. You can be seated.
As I said, our focus this morning is going to be on verse 25. In the weeks ahead, we are going to
tackle the different subjects that are addressed in the last part of chapter four.
taking a single Sunday to address each issue. So next week we're going to look at verses 26 and 27
about anger, along with verse 31. The week after that, we'll look at what verse 28 says about
stealing. Verse 29, the week after that, about speaking to one another,
how we speak to one another. And then verses 30 and 32 about being kind to one another and not
grieving the Holy Spirit. But this morning, verse 25, which begins with the word therefore which as
you know means because of what i've just said in light of this new identity don't walk as the
gentiles put off the old way of living put on christ therefore because you have a new identity for
that reason put away putting away falsehood having put away falsehood actually puts it the past
tense it's interesting that he says this is something you've already done and he's telling them to
continue in what they've already done. He states the negative first, put off the old,
put away falsehood. He assumes that the readers recognize that falsehood is not compatible with
being a follower of Jesus. They've already taken steps to put off that behavior.
Then he says let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor. This is the positive. Put off
falsehood but be proactive in speaking the truth with your neighbor. He's already talked about
speaking the truth in love. So that qualification is there. He's reinforcing that in our
relationship with others, especially with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to be people
who speak truth to one another. And I say especially with our brothers and sisters in Christ
because he says we are members of one another. This is reinforcing what he said back earlier in
chapter 4 where he talked about God uniting us. We are eager to maintain that unity.
We are members of one another. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. And it would be crazy for
members of the same body not to be honest with one another.
I mean, imagine your hand lying to your foot.
It doesn't make any sense. The hand and the foot work in concert and they work together with the
truth under the head. So we are to be truthful with one another because we have an assignment from
God. We are under the headship of God. we are members of one another. By the way as an aside when
we welcome a new member like we just did with Hannah we make it clear we try to make it clear that
you're not joining a club or an organization you're joining a body. We are not members of the
church as much as we are members of one another. The church is just the umbrella over this family
relationship that we have. So those of us who are members of this church, we are really members of
one another. That's what we're called to do and to be. You are joining a family,
not an institution, when you join a local church. So with that overview of verse 25 in mind,
here's the outline I want us to look at as we consider what it means to put off falsehood and to
speak the truth to one another. First of all, I want us to see what exactly is a lie.
Let's define truth and let's define lying. Because I think we have a truncated,
shallow view of what it means to lie. Secondly, I want us to see what this verse and the rest of
the Bible is telling us about lying. Third, I want us to look at why we are tempted to lie.
And then we'll wrap it up by asking this question. Is there such a thing as a God-glorifying lie?
Or, to say it another way, is there... there some circumstances where the thing you can do that
honors the Lord greatest is to tell a lie?
Okay, so that's where we're going. Let's start by defining terms. Most of us, I said, I think we
have a thin understanding of what a lie is. I did at one point. I thought a lie was when you tell
someone something that is not true and you know it's not true. But I learned years ago after a trip
to the grocery store that there's more to lying than simply not telling the truth.
In fact, you think about this for a moment. When somebody goes into a courtroom and they put their
hand on the Bible and the person swearing them in says, do you swear to tell the truth?
And then what's next? The whole truth. And nothing but the truth.
Why don't they just say the truth? Why do they have to say the whole truth? because they're trying
to make it clear that you can tell the truth, but not the whole truth, and that's not the truth.
And this is what I, here's how I learned that. And apologies to those of you who went through the
Love Like You Mean It marriage study this summer with Carlos, because you heard this story,
and some of you have heard it, but I'm going to tell it to you again. So there was a Saturday, this
was many years ago, when Mary Ann, she was busy, but she had a shopping list,
and she needed, I volunteered to go to the and to get groceries for us, get her what she needed on
the shopping list because she was busy with other things. And I went over the list with her ahead
of time. This is a smart thing to do. Pro tip, if your wife has cream cheese on the shopping list,
you need to know, does that mean Philadelphia brand cream cheese or is the Kroger brand cheese? Do
you need the eight ounce or do you need the 16 ounce? You get these details down because if you
come home with the wrong... My default, I'm looking and go, well, Kroger's cheaper than
Philadelphia, but if I come home with Kroger, I'm going to be in trouble, okay? So I went over all
of that eggs. Eggs are important. Is it okay? Pasture raised, free range.
I don't know what any of this means, but I need to know exactly what are the right eggs to get.
Okay. So I was ready, headed to the store, walk in, first place produce section, starting to get
the things that are on the list. And I saw some grapes. Grapes were not on our list, but at our
house at that time, grapes were everywhere. I mean, kids ate grapes all the time. So I saw,
and they were on sale. I thought, I'm going to get a bunch of grapes, even though they're not on
the list. This is a dangerous move to make, to get something that's not on the list is dangerous,
but I went ahead and got it, bought a bunch of grapes. Everything was going just fine here until I
turned down the chip aisle, the snack aisle.
There was nothing on the list. I didn't even need to go down this aisle, but I wanted to see what
was on the aisle. I got halfway down the aisle, and this is what was staring at me.
This bag of Cheetos right here, the party-sized bag of Cheetos. And it was calling to me.
It was saying, take me home. I want to go home with you. And I looked at those Cheetos and I just
thought, I want those Cheetos. But those Cheetos were not on the list. And I was having this inner
debate. On one hand, I knew that if I brought home the Cheetos, Marianne would not be pleased.
She would say, we don't need Cheetos. Bob, you don't need Cheetos. The kids don't need Cheetos. And
all of that was true, but on the other hand, I wanted the Cheetos, right? And I'm thinking,
I earn the money in this family. If I want to buy a bag of Cheetos for myself,
I can buy a bag of Cheetos. She's not my mom. I can get Cheetos if I want to,
and it's none of her business if I'm buying Cheetos. So I put the Cheetos in the cart,
and I moved on proudly. And then as I drove home, I started to get afraid,
okay?
I started to imagine the disapproval that would await me, and so I started mapping out a plan.
I could think of a place in the garage where I could hide these Cheetos. and she would never have
to know that I got them. I could go out and have a Cheeto snack when I wanted to and in privacy,
and it could just be my own thing, and nobody needed to know that I'd gotten Cheetos. So as soon as
I pull into the garage, I go hide the Cheetos in my hiding spot in the garage. Then I take all of
the groceries and walk to the back door and walk in. And so here's what you need to know.
Now, bringing in the groceries in the olden days, grocery stores,
when they printed out your receipt, it looked like this. So all it was,
I don't know if you can see that, but this just says grocery, grocery, grocery, produce,
dairy. That's all it says on it with the price there. It doesn't say what you bought.
It just says grocery produce. I was still thinking we were living in these days, but...
had moved to this kind of a receipt, which is the one you're familiar with, where they itemize
what's on there. I hadn't calculated that into my equation with this.
So I bring in the groceries, I set them down, Marianne's there. First question, did they have
everything on the list at the grocery store? And I said, no, they didn't. There were a couple of
things you'd put on here that I could not find at the store. Second question, did you get anything
else that wasn't on the list? I said, yes, I got grapes.
I told the truth, but not the whole truth. And so we're unpacking and everything,
and then the receipt falls out. And Marianne gets the receipt, and she goes, what about the
Cheetos?
And there I was. I was busted. I was guilty.
I had told my wife the truth, but I had not told her the whole truth. And in the process, here's
what you need to know. I had unwittingly sowed seeds. of distrust in our relationship.
You may think, now Cheetos, it's not that big a deal. You hid the Cheetos, right? But my wife is
thinking, what else are you hiding?
What else are you not telling me? What else don't I know about? I mean,
it might seem trivial, but it erodes trust in a relationship when you're not honest with one
another. A lie is more than just saying something that is untrue. Anytime your intention is to
deceive another person, you're guilty of falsehood. You are bearing false witness.
You are not being honest with another person.
Now, does your definition of truth need to be adjusted, expanded?
Do you do like I used to do and satisfy your conscience by thinking I didn't lie when you leave
something out or when you say something that you're shading or clouding?
We need to make sure when we're interacting with one another that we're being as honest as we can
be about the things we're saying. And let me show you why we need to be honest with one another by
exploring God's perspective on truth. I'm going to give you a little theology of truth,
if you will. And I want you to see four things in this theology of truth. The first thing that I
want you to see is that everything is messed up because of a lie.
The whole world is messed up because of a lie. You know what happened in Genesis 3.
God created Adam and Eve, put them in the garden, said, it's all yours except this one tree.
Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Satan shows up in Genesis 3,
and the first thing he does is he questions whether God can be trusted, whether he's honest,
whether he's true. Did God really say that? Are you sure you heard that right?
And then when Eve says, this is what God said, Satan says,
you will not surely die.
He lies to him. And he goes on from that lie.
to tell them, God's just trying to keep you from being like him.
You eat from that tree, you'll have the knowledge of good and evil. You'll be like God. You can be
your own God. You won't have to listen to him anymore. And that was tempting.
And that's ultimately what Adam and Eve bought. They were tempted by a lie,
and it led to the world being destroyed.
Here's what we need to keep in mind. Truth and trust are foundational to any relationship. And the
relationship that men have with God was based on truth and trust. And Satan comes along and he sows
seeds of distrust, which brings us to the second point here in understanding truth. Lying is
demonic.
Think about that. Lying is demonic and evil. In John 8,
Jesus is interacting with the Jewish leaders. and he's saying that God is his father.
And they say, we have Abraham as our father, and we've always had Abraham. They're rejecting his
claim to be the Messiah. And Jesus says to them, you are of your father,
not Abraham, the devil. Your will is to do your father's desires.
He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in
him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character,
for he is a liar and the father of lies. The devil does not stand in the truth.
It's an interesting phrase. It describes what should be true about each one of us. We should be
anchored in, standing in, standing firm in the truth of God's word. We anchor ourselves in that and
do not move. What Paul is talking about back in verse 14 of chapter 4 in Ephesians,
when he talked about people being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and human cunning in
deceitful schemes, he's saying lies will knock you around. Anchor yourself in Jesus and reject the
lies. Satan is the father of lies. Every lie you tell,
everything you do that is less than truthful,
has a satanic origin. Satan's the father of that. Every lie comes from this.
So get this, when you are not being truthful, when you practice deceit,
when you do not put away falsehood, you're not telling the whole truth, you're deceiving someone,
you're not functioning as a child of God, you're functioning as if Satan is your father.
You're on team Satan when you lie.
Now, I'm not saying you're not a child of God in that moment when you tell a lie. I'm saying you're
not living like a child of God in that moment. You're living as if Satan is your authority.
You're following his ways and his example.
If Satan is the father of lies, it means that God is the father of the truth. All truth comes from
him. And that's the next thing I want us to see. God cannot lie. It's impossible for God to lie.
The Bible tells us that. Numbers 23, God is not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he
should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not fulfill
it? The writer here is saying God's incapable of lying.
You can count on everything he says as being truthful and trustworthy. What a great blessing that
is. that everything God says we can take to the bank, we can hold on to,
we can trust in. Paul, in writing to Titus, Titus chapter 1,
his introduction to the letter, he talks about our hope of eternal life, which comes from God,
who never lies, he says. Hebrews 6, the writer of Hebrews says,
it's impossible for God to lie.
God is truth. He's the author of truth. He's the foundation of truth.
Everything about him is true and honest. Psalm 31 calls him the God of all truth.
So if God is conforming us more and more into his image, if we are putting off our old ways and
putting on our new ways, shouldn't our lives be characterized by the truth that is found in God?
We should be men and women who, like God, do not lie.
And the last thing I want us to see is we should recognize that Jesus is truth. That's what he says
about himself. John 1, 14, we beheld his glory. Glory is of the only begotten Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth. He's full of truth.
There's no deception in him. There's no lie in him. There's no double-mindedness in him.
And in John 14, 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth.
and the life.
And let me make this clear to you as well. We've all heard this quoted, and I think we
misunderstood it when we've heard it quoted. In John 8, Jesus says, you shall know the truth,
and what? Truth will set you free. People in our day quote that as if to say,
when you finally understand the truth, that's when you'll find freedom. When you get the right
information, the right facts, you'll have enlightenment and liberation. But Jesus is not saying
that when you have some information that that's what will bring liberation.
He's saying you shall know the truth. And then what's he say? I am the truth.
So when he says, you shall know the truth, he's saying, you shall know me and I'll set you free.
It's a person who sets you free, not a theological statement, not your affirming a certain set of
facts. Now we need to be able to affirm truth, but that's not what sets you free.
It's Jesus who sets you free. You don't just bear witness to a doctrinal statement or a set of
theological presuppositions and think, okay, now I have liberation. No. Jesus is bearing witness to
God by his life. God is the truth. He's the visible image of the invisible God. In fact, when
Pilate was questioning him, you remember Pilate saying, what is truth? He said it because Jesus had
said to him, everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.
Christians are people who are of the truth.
It's an interesting phrase. Are you of the truth? Listen, I want to make sure everybody understands
this. It's not a knowledge about God that brings spiritual liberation. It's knowing God.
You understand the difference? There's a difference between a knowledge about God and knowing God.
It's having a relationship with him. It's walking with him. It's why Paul in Ephesians uses the
phrase over and over again, in him, in Christ.
It's not just knowing about him or affirming that he is who he claims to be. It's being in him.
It's being united with him. It's being related to him. That's what sets you free.
When you come to recognize what Jesus has done for us, Through his death,
we owed a debt we could not pay for our sin. Jesus paid it all. And then Jesus went to the grave
and then he rose again and comes and offers new life, victory over sin and death and hell that he
gives to us. Knowing the truth means that you believe that those things are true for you and you
respond to them. You surrender and you walk with Jesus. You submit your life to him. Have you done
that? Are you in Christ?
You can be.
Today, you can cry out to him and say, God, I need you. I need to build my life on what's true.
I need you to be the anchor for my soul. I admit that I'm a sinner. I believe you died for my sins
and rose again. I surrender my life to you.
You can do that if you've never done that. You need to be in him.
Now, I want to talk to you for just a minute about why we're often tempted to be less than
truthful.
For me with the Cheetos, I was tempted to be less than truthful because I didn't want to face what
I knew would be my wife's disapproval. And that's one reason why we are sometimes less than
truthful. We want the approval or the esteem of others, so we hide what's true about us in order to
appear better than we are. Let me give you a list of these things, okay? Reasons why we lie.
We want to avoid... disapproval, or we might lie to avoid consequences.
We did that when we were kids, right? When your parents came in and said, have you been playing
with stuff you shouldn't be playing with? Did you get in the refrigerator? Did you eat a snack when
I told you no? How many of you, when you were kids, just lied to your parents while you had snack
stuff on your face? You said, no, I didn't have a snack, right? You just told a bold-faced lie.
Why? Because you were trying to avoid consequences.
We might still do it today, by the way. We at work don't want to face consequences,
or we're in a relationship where we don't want to face consequences, or we're seeking to escape
punishment or criticism or embarrassment or accountability.
Sometimes we hide the truth because it will enhance our image to do so. This is presumably what
Ananias and Sapphira were doing in Acts chapter 5. When they brought the offering and they made
this big thing, we're giving everything, except they weren't. They were holding some stuff back.
They were telling a lie. They wanted to appear more generous than they were, so they were lying to
try to boost their image. Sometimes we hide the truth so we can fit in and get the approval of the
crowd. We don't say anything that we ought to say, or we...
say something that we nod our heads and go along with what the crowd's saying because we care more
about their approval than we do about telling the truth. This, by the way, may have been what Peter
was doing when he was in Galatia. And the Judaizers were saying, well, don't you think people
should keep some of the law? And Peter goes weak on the gospel and he says, well, yeah, probably.
He wants the approval, wants to fit in. And Paul has to come and rebuke him.
Sometimes we lie to gain advantage over others because lying will get you more money or more power,
more prestige than you really deserve. In fact, there's another movie that's out in theaters right
now. You've heard of the Kendrick Brothers who did the movies Courageous and War Room, and they've
done other movies with biblical themes, Fireproof. Well, the first movie they ever did was a movie
called Flywheel about a used car salesman. cheap movie. They did it for $20,000.
They've just redone it, shot it in Rio de Janeiro in Portuguese. It's now dubbed into English and
out in theaters, but it's the story of this car dealer who professes to be a Christian,
but in his dealings with folks, he is less than honest and truthful about the cars he's selling
them. And he becomes convicted and realized, I can't profess Christ and function this way in my
business. He's recognizing he's trying to use a lie to get an advantage over others.
I just mentioned that because we can fall into that as well.
It can be easy in our work. We have to recognize that our workplace environment doesn't change how
we should be functioning. We've got to be honest with people we interact with, with customers, with
suppliers, with folks we're dealing with. You can't say I'm a Christian on Sunday and then go out
and not function honestly with people in your business. Sometimes we lie to avoid hurting
somebody's feelings. We can use kindness as an excuse for dishonesty and it shouldn't be.
We're called to speak the truth in love. The Bible says faithful are the wounds of a friend.
The kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
Finally, we will sometimes tell lies because we want to manipulate somebody or get them to do what
we want them to do. And really what we want there is control over them or over the situation.
We're lying to try to maintain control. This is why Satan was lying in the garden.
He wanted control over Adam and Eve. And he told them a lie that he knew would get it.
He manipulated them. Now look at that whole list.
Are you tempted to lie, to conceal, deceive for any of these reasons?
What would God have you do today to take steps to correct that?
What would he want you to put off? Where is it that you would say,
When I go to work, I got to change the way I'm doing my business practices, or in my relationships,
I need to be more honest, or where do you fall into that?
Now, all of that leads into the last question I said I wanted to look at. We'll do this briefly. Is
there such a thing as a God-glorifying lie? Classic question. You're living in Poland in 1940,
and you're protecting Jews from the Nazis. They're living in your home.
You're hiding them. And the Nazis knock on the door with their machine guns and they come in and
they say, are you hiding any Jews here in your home?
Is it okay to lie and say, no, we're not?
Two views on this among Christians. There is what is called the strict truthfulness view.
Strict truthfulness says lying is always sinful, even when motivated by a desire to protect
someone. One should protect others through truthful answers, silence, or a refusal to cooperate
with evil, but you don't tell a lie.
That's the strict truthfulness view. Then there's the qualified truthfulness view. It says
deception is ordinarily wrong, but there are some exceptional circumstances,
like protecting innocent life from murderous wrongdoing, that may justify misleading an evil doer.
So which of those is right?
You want to know what I think? Here's my answer. I think the Bible teaches a strict truthfulness
view, but I think there are times when I will lack the faith to act on what I believe the Bible
teaches.
Here, I have these concerns with the qualified truthfulness view, two concerns. First of all, I
don't think you can find scriptural support for qualified truthfulness. I don't think you can find
a verse that says it's okay in these circumstances. I haven't mentioned it yet this morning,
but This idea of being truthful is one of the Ten Commandments. Do not bear false witness.
It's up there with adultery and murder. It's not a small thing.
And as we've seen, it is not the nature or character of God to tell a lie. There's no situation in
which God would lie to protect someone. And if we are being conformed to his image,
I don't think we ought to lie either. And by the way, I think the Bible speaks to this directly in
Romans chapter three, where Paul says, if through my lie, God's truth abounds to his glory,
why am I still being condemned as a sinner? In other words, isn't it okay for me to lie if God gets
glory somehow through my lie? I won't be accountable to that. And why not do evil that good may
come? As some people slanderously charge us with saying, and their condemnation is just. He's
saying, we don't have situation ethics where we say lying is wrong, except in these circumstances.
You can dig into that passage in Romans on your own. But here's the other reason I think that the
qualified truthfulness view is problematic. It leads to finding new reasons where we can justify
deception. It's a slippery slope. You say, well, you can do it with the Nazis in Germany and
Poland. And then what's the next thing where you go, well, I think I can do it here. I think I can
do it here. And all of a sudden, you're down the slope. But as I said, if I was in Poland in 1940
and the Nazis knocked on my door and said, do you have any Jews here? I'm not sure that I would
hold to the strict truthfulness view. I don't know that I have the faith to do that.
I think I should, but I don't know if I would.
And I'll just say, thank God that he's a God of grace.
Let me point out the qualified truthfulness folks will point to Rahab and say,
well, what about Rahab? She lied. Or what about the Hebrew midwives? They lied about Moses to
protect him, and God got glory in both of those situations. Yes, God can get glory even when we
sin, look at the crucifixion of Jesus, and see that as the prime example.
And God can sovereignly accomplish what he will, and he's a God of grace, as I said.
I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking, well, what about if I'm the general of an army? Can I use
misdirection with the enemy in order to gain an advantage? I'm lying. I'm misleading the enemy.
Is that okay? What if I'm a basketball player and I do a pump fake?
Am I lying? I can't do it. So a lot to think about. But the bottom line for me is I think we all
need to lean in the direction of truthfulness, honesty. Our goal should be to put away falsehood.
Listen, lying can easily become habitual. We can get really comfortable with it.
So we need to wrap up here. We've seen this morning that we live in a world where lying is common.
It's always been that way. It was in Paul's day. That's why he has to tell these Ephesians to put
away falsehood. Lying in the first century in Greece and Rome was a way of life like it is today.
That's how most people in our world think about truthfulness, but we're called by God not to walk
as the Gentiles walk, instead to walk in a manner worthy of our calling and to reflect the image of
God.
I want to read to you, I got an email from one of you just yesterday, and it was a good reminder to
me, and I thought it fits what we've got going on here. This person wrote and said,
in both my study and my practice, I have learned, and I'm continuing to learn, how vital it is to
put off sin and put on the new man, which is my union with Jesus in both his death and
resurrection. That's what you're putting on. You're uniting yourself with Jesus in his death and
resurrection. This person went on and said the vital word, vital is the necessary word here because
it's the death of Christ that took the power of sin away for me.
In his death, sin's power was broken. And the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now at
work in me, which enables me to put off the flesh and put on the new man and to walk in newness of
life.
That's what it all comes down to. When we talk about being honest with one another, we're talking
about putting on Christ, putting on the new man, walking as he would walk,
embodying his way of being. And we do that because we have the power of the Spirit alive in us that
makes all of that possible. Well, let's pray together. Father,
these are challenging things for us to think about, and yet we want to be people who are known for
truth and by truth. We want to be people who represent you rightly and well.
So Lord, I pray that you would help each of us put off falsehood and speak the truth to one
another. that we would be able to speak the truth in love, we would be able to hear the truth and
respond well to the truth,
that we would be people who, like you,
do not tell lies but can be trusted, and that we would honor you by how we live.
We ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.