Sermon on the Mount

Matthew chapter 5 verses 33 to 37. Again, you have heard that it is said to the people long ago. Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the lord the oaths you have made. But I tell you, do not swear on earth at all, either by heaven for it is God's throne or by the earth for it is his footstool. Or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king.

I do not swear by your head if you cannot make even 1 hair white or black. All you need to say is simply, yes, or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil 1. Tom? Thank you very much, Steve.

And good evening. Welcome. My name is Tom Sweetman. I'm 1 of the assistant pastors here. And welcome to those tuning in at home.

I don't know if you can see from home, but we have got a new layout here. We had a new layout this morning and this evening. And it's a great joy, isn't it, to have something that looks and feels a little bit more like church used to? And it struck me this morning as I was looking out that that even at Tiffin, we sort of sit like this anyway because we always like to leave distance between us and other people, don't we? Even if we're filing into the rows, most of us would feel uncomfortable about squeezing up to that next person.

So British people have got social distancing written into the DNA and into the blood, haven't we? So But it is wonderful, as the regulations relax to keep changing things to get more people in to listen to the word of god together, and so welcome to you. Let's pray and let's ask for the Lord's help. Father God, we do thank you for the lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that he committed no sin and that no deceit was ever found in his mouth.

We thank you that no lie ever passed through his lips, that he never played word games with the truth. That he never exaggerated to the point of deception, that he never led people astray, that he always always spoke the truth. We thank you that he is the way and the truth and the life that he doesn't just tell us the truth that he is truth. That as we look at the lord Jesus in the pages of scripture, we see truth with skin on. And we pray, Lord, that as we look at this subject tonight of how we use our words of the type of promises that we make of the oaths that we swear We pray that you would show us lord by your truthful spirit where we are either being careless in this area or perhaps willfully disobedient in this area that you would help us to see our sin, that we might repent of our sin more effectively, that we might turn to you Jesus the truth, and that we might find salvation in you again and that you would please transform us that we might live as children of the kingdom.

Who simply say yes, when we mean yes, and no when we mean no, that you would make us straightforward people and we ask it in Jesus' name. Oh, man. Oh, man. So if you're joining us for the first time this evening, you won't know perhaps that we are doing this series on the sermon on the Mount. And 1 of the key things to know about the sermon on the Mount is what Jesus taught in g in Matthew chapter 4 which was that the way that people come into the kingdom of God is through repentance of their sin and faith in God's king in Jesus Christ.

So as we look at the sermon on the mount, what we're dealing with here is not Jesus saying to us, look, you've already got an established moral code just swap it for the 1 I'm gonna give you, and then you can enter the kingdom of God. What Jesus is teaching here is that we need to be born again. We need a new birth, we need a new life, we need a new way of speaking, we need a new way of relating to the world, which flows not from ourselves, but from what Christ has done on our behalf. And today, in this part of the sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking to us about the truth. The key verse is in verse 37.

All you need to say is simply yes or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil 1. And as we've seen in the sermon on the Mount so far, the the applications of it are are very far reaching and profound, But in many ways, it is very straightforward, isn't it? What Jesus says. It's very straight down the line.

He says there are 2 sides There is the side of truth and the side of Christ and the side of the kingdom of God, and there is the side of lies and Satan and the kingdom of this world, and how we use and relate to the truth shows to which side we belong. And it really in many ways, it's a it's as straightforward as that. And yet, that wouldn't be much of a much of a sermon. And so there is a bit more to say tonight just as a way of unpacking that wonderful verse in verse 37. And so the key question that we're gonna work with tonight is how should followers of Jesus relate to the truth?

How should members of the kingdom of God treat truth? That's the big question that Jesus is dealing with here. And the first point, there are 3 headings. The first point this evening is this, that disciples should speak the truth with integrity. Decypers should speak the truth with integrity and that's in verse 33 to 35.

Look at verse 33 with me. Again, you have heard it was said to the people long ago, do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows that you have made. Now that isn't a quote from any 1 place in particular. It's more of a summary of Old Testament teaching, Old Testament teaching, which flowed from a concern to keep the third commandment. So if you know the 10 commandments, you might know that a third commandment was that the people of god should not misuse the name of the lord their god, for the lord would not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

And the word misuse simply means to treat lightly. So the Lord is saying to his people here, you shall not treat the name of Yahweh as a light and trivial thing. You shall not treat it as a light thing. And 1 of the ways that we can do that is to swear something in his name and then to not do it. If we swear something in his name, and then we don't fulfill it, we treat his name as a light thing.

Number 30 verse 2, When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word. But must do everything he said. The law said, if you promise something, you've got to do it. If you promise it, you've got to do it, or the name of Yairway becomes a light trivial thing. And so that already is something of an opening challenge to us, isn't it?

When we say things like brother or sister, I'll pray for you. I'm gonna pray for you. What we're actually saying there is that I am going to talk to the living God about you. I'm gonna I'm gonna raise your concern and your life and your situation. With the 3 times holy God.

I'm gonna pray for you, will we do it? When we sing together, as we did all of 10 minutes ago, lover of my soul, I want to live for you. Who are we addressing? The lover of our soul, lover of my soul, I want to live for you. Do we mean it?

When those of us who are members of this church, said to the lord and to 1 another, I will devote myself to the apostles teaching and to prayer and to the fellowship, Did we take that promise that we made to the lord and to each other seriously? And of course, the teachers of the law would would agree with that interpretation. On 1 level, they were extremely careful about the truth. And on another level, they weren't very careful at all. Verse 34, we'll see what this means in just a moment, but Jesus says, but I tell you speaking to the disciples do not swear an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is God's throne, or by the earth, for it is his foot stall, or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king.

Now, I don't think what Jesus is saying here is that it is never ever acceptable to take anything like an oath. I don't think this is an absolute ban on all oaths. It's interesting when you read Paul's letters, he often used the language of oath to make his points. So this is just 1 example from 2 Corinthians 1 23. He says to the church, I call God as my witness.

And I stake my life on it that was in order to spare you that I did not return to corinth. Later on, in this gospel, in Matthew 26, Jesus himself, when he was on trial, went under oath when he was commanded to do so. He went under oath. And then practically, it might be the case that if we end up in court or we're asked to give evidence in a trial that we will be asked to take an oath Apparently, I was looking this up, they still require you either to swear on the holy book of your choice or if that won't mean anything to you, to at least vow to yourself or something, to promise, to swear by yourself that you are going to to tell the truth. So I don't think that an oath is essentially as in in its essence, an evil thing.

I don't think that's what Jesus is saying. What he's doing here as he does in so much of the sermon on the mount is to to attack a religious culture to attack a way of treating the truth that he had observed all around him. We saw it last week with divorce. Didn't we? Farisees had just got all these laws about divorce, and those little laws did 2 things for them.

Firstly, it enabled them to get out of a marriage for nothing for something like burnt soup. If your wife burnt your soup, you could divorce her. But secondly, it allowed them to get out of a marriage for nothing and to sound godly all at the same time. That was the advantage of the laws. You could largely do what you wanted and maintain the appearance of godliness because we know the law We know what Moses taught.

Moses is on our side. We sit in Moses's seat. We interpret Moses for you, and this is what he meant. Same thing when it came to oaths. The pharisees had this bizarre system of relating to oaths, which both helped them to sound concerned for the truth, but also allowed them to just ride over the truth with no concern for it at all.

Here's how Jesus takes it on in Matthew 23. And if as you read this, you think I don't really understand that. Exactly. Exactly. Matthew 23, woe to you blind guides.

You say, if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing. But anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath. You blind fools, which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred. You also say, if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing. But anyone who swears by the gift of the altar is bound by that oath.

You blind men. Which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred. Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it, and anyone who swears by the temple, swears by it and by the 1 who dwells in it, and anyone who swears by heaven, swears by God's throne and by the 1 who sits on it. Now, I always drink because it's quite a hard passage to read that. I was trying to think of a way to illustrate it for you.

And if you've ever been into Halford's and bought a bike lock, you might know that they have a system in order to tell you how secure their various locks are. So you might get just a 6 out of 10 lock, which will provide you with some protection, but they're not guaranteeing that it can't be broken. Okay? There's a there's a security of sorts to it, and then they've got ones that are 9 out of 10. And 9 out of 10 comes with its own alarm, anti pick, anti freeze, and what they're trying to say to you is that this is about as secure as our lock get?

I don't know if they have a 10, because a 10 would seem to guarantee that it could never be broken under any circumstances. But I think 9 is the highest that they go, and what they're trying to say is depending on the type, there are different levels of breakability, different levels of security in our locks, and the more money you pay, the greater you get. The pharisees seemed to treat oaths something like that. They had a system of oath where some of them were like a grade 10. If you were to swear directly on Yahweh's name, for instance, that would be a level 10 lock, there'd be an unbreakable promise.

But then they had others which seemed to be more like an 8. So the temple, for instance, You shouldn't you shouldn't really lie if you're gonna swear on the temple, but if you need to. If you need to, then that lock would be breakable. And then presumably, it went down from there to something like a 5, which might be Jerusalem, which wouldn't be a d lock at all. It would probably be a wire lock, I would think.

So those are provide some security but can be much more easily broken and a more and a more flexible. It's something like that, the system that from what I can work out. And it's a little bit like a religious version of those old games we used to play in the playground. You might remember if somebody was very serious about something in the playground that they would swear on their lives that it was true. You might be in the lunch queue, for instance, and somebody told you that the mass lesson had been canceled that afternoon.

And you would say, are you sure. It doesn't sound like they would cancel the matter. I swear on my life they're canceling the Mathperson. But then if you wanted to prove that you were even more serious, You could invoke the name of your mother into a swear, and you could do something like swear on your mother's life. And that would be that would be like a grade 9, wouldn't it?

You know, it wasn't unbreakable, but, you know, that would require a lot more seriousness about the oath that you were swearing. I swear on my mother's life. And then there's ones that I was looking at which are more modern, and I don't understand like swearing down. I swear down. I don't actually know what that means, but it doesn't sound as serious as your mother's life, whatever it means.

As I say, just a couple of illustrations. The pharisees had a system like that where loyalty to your words depended on what exactly you were swearing on, and what words you used. A system where loyalty to your word depended on what exactly you were swearing on, and what words you used. So again, as I say, there's a there's a there's a concern for the truth on 1 level. Look at all these words we've got Look at all these formulations about promises.

See how seriously we take this. But at the same time, they're just playing games. Finding ways to be deceitful whilst sounding godly, all at the same time. And you see how Jesus very simply just blows the whole thing apart. First 34, but I tell you do not swear an oath at all either by heaven for it's God's throne.

You swear by heaven? You're gonna swear by heaven? God lives there. That's God's throne. Or by the earth for it is his footstool.

You're gonna swear by the earth, God's there, too. God's there, or by Jerusalem for it city of the great king. You gonna swear by Jerusalem? That's God's city. God's king, God's holy king, the Christ is from there.

This is doctrine of God lesson 1, isn't it? God is everywhere. He knows everything and he cares about truth all the time in every place. At the most generous we could be, Their system was confusing. But at worst, it's there just to justify their own sin It is blasphemy and it is satanic.

It is a satanic way of relating to the truth. And Jesus says, to members of his kingdom, anything like that has got to go. Anything like that has got to go. A disciples word should be capable of being trusted without these word games. We should live as if we were always under oath because God is everywhere and truth always matters.

So whether we happen to be in the pulpit or at home or in the office, or in the car or at the school gate, we should live as if truth always mattered, and God was always there and we were always under oath, we should be straightforward people. A simple yes, or a simple no, because very often anything more than that has more to do with satan than it does with Jesus. Members of the kingdom should relate to the truth with integrity. Secondly, disciples should speak the truth with humility. They should speak it with integrity and they should speak it with humility.

And that's in verse 36. And do not swear by your head for you cannot make even 1 hair white or black. Now just to return to those promises that we would make in the playground. I I don't I really don't want to attach too much weight to playground silliness. But it is interesting, isn't it?

That promise? I swear on my mother's life. Because there are multiple things wrong with that promise, aren't there? Firstly, it's a fairly trivial way to treat your mother's life, isn't it? That you would actually be willing to put it on the line for the sake of a playground discussion.

It seems like a fairly frivolous way to to treat a life. Secondly, it's messing around with the truth, isn't it? It's just implying that you've got multiple tiers in your language. There's the sort of normal you where you may tell the truth or you may lie, but then there's the time you're swearing on your mom's life, and then you'll never or at least very rarely. So it's a 2 tier approach to the truth, which is just messing around with it.

Just say yes if you mean yes and no if you mean no. But thirdly, and for the purposes of this point, it's claiming a power that just doesn't belong to you. When you swear on your mother's life, it assumes that you actually have power over your mother's life, that the world or God or whoever's listening to you is going to submit all of a sudden to your oath, and that you actually have the power in that moment to put your mother's life on the line. And that she will die if you break it because so so sovereign is your promise. Ridiculous.

It's ridiculous, isn't it? And that is what Jesus is saying to them. Look, not only are you delusional about the truth, you're delusional about power. You're delusional about your place in the world. Do not swear by your head, you cannot make even 1 hair white or black.

I don't know what sort of primitive hair dye they may have had at this time, but even using that, All you can do is cover up. You can't change the root. Jesus is attacking this culture again. You make these promises as if you're god, but you're not. You're not.

And so for disciples, that's got to go as well. I think what he's saying here is that we should be slow to promise things that we have no control over. We should be slow to promise things that we have no control over. In James's letter, which picks up on so much of the sermon on the mount, he says he says this. In chapter 4.

Now listen, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go to this or that city, spend a year there carrying on business and make money, Why? You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Now look, I know that sometimes, with all the right intentions in the world, we might say things like, I I promise I'll be there tomorrow.

Alright. I'm gonna be there tomorrow, and we just can't make it. It becomes impossible. Something happens, our car breaks down, whatever it is, and we can't do it. And I don't think James here is warning us against making plans.

You know, your life is a mist, never plans to go on holiday. Again, ever. Don't make a plan because your life is a mist and you'll never be able to go, which in this year of COVID is probably a foolish promised to make anyway, but that's society, isn't it? He's not warning us against plans. And so we're not being silly with this, but verse 35 is a caution to be slow to promise things that we don't have control over.

I was thinking about this in in my own life, and if Caleb, my son becomes becomes grumpy, which is a reasonably regular occurrence at the moment, over silly things, like, because he can't have ice cream for breakfast, for instance. 1 of the things that we might do to cheer him up and to pacify him is to say, look, if you just eat your porridge this morning, a promise will have ice cream on Saturday. Just eat your porridge now. Nobody nobody has ice cream for breakfast. Very rare, strange, very rarely, unless you're a student or a toddler.

Those people might have ice cream for breakfast, but very rarely does that just eat your porridge, and we'll have ice cream on Saturday, but then something maybe comes up. And I make plans, and then we don't have ice cream on Saturday. Happens, isn't it? Easily easily happens. Now at this age, he'll forget But yeah.

Willie. Yeah. You know him a little bit, maybe what but look, too much of that. Too much of that, and it'll begin to erode his confidence in me. It'll begin to eat away at my character And even though he wouldn't say it like this, he might start to just pick up.

Dad promises things in the future, but they don't happen. He forgets. He makes other plans. We do something else. He doesn't have the power over the future, which his word implies.

That is something of what it means to relate to the truth with humility. We are not sovereign. We cannot say, yes, yes, or no, no, about things we either don't control or don't know about. Jesus says do not swear by your head. For you cannot make even 1 hair white or black.

Disciples should speak the truth with integrity, with humility, and lastly, with simplicity. It's the key verse in verse 37. All you need to say is simply yes or no, Anything beyond this comes from the evil 1. James in his letter puts it even more strongly. James 5 verse 12 above all my brothers and sisters do not swear not by heaven or by earth or by anything else.

All you need to say is a simple yes or no. Otherwise, you will be condemned. I don't know if you've been following 1 of the recent sagas in number 10 in Downing Street about Boris's refurbishments. Been in the news recently. I don't really have much desire to say a whole lot about that.

But when you look when you look at scandals in general, these kinds of scandals. 1 of the things that always seems to be the case with them is that they they sound very complicated, don't they? You know, who who paid for this and who sent that message and who leaked that document. It's incredibly it's incredible comp it's complex, isn't it? So many things that were said behind closed doors and secret accounts and private lobbying and mates' rates.

It's all complex complicated, isn't it? And that is because deception and complexity are often very good friends. Deception and simplicity don't go together very well, but deception and complexity go together very well. Scammers work like this, don't they? Scammers.

When they ring you up or they email you and they're trying to scam you, 1 of the things that they like to do is to convince you that something is too complicated for you to understand, and therefore you need to trust them, is too complex It's too hard for your little mind to get. Let me just bury you with words, and terms, and knowledge that you don't know about, to make you think that you've gotta trust me. Many words, but in the complexity evil is often hiding. And look, we can be the same with this 1 as well, can't we? Late for a meeting, How easy is it to just bury the conversation in words and detail and complexity?

Oh, well, kids were playing up this morning. Traffic was bad. Other drivers cut me up. Weather's terrible. Public transport is unreliable.

I thought it was another day. I thought it was this day. So many work so it's so complicated isn't it? So many words, I must have sort of convinced you that my life is so complicated, and that's why that couldn't make it. When what I really mean is that my time is more precious than your time, and I couldn't be bothered to leave on time.

Proverbs 10 verse 19. In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking. But he who restrains his lips, is wise. In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking. But he who restrains his lips is wise.

Many words are often a cover for a lie, aren't they? Many words better to restrain our lips and be straightforward. All you need to say is simply yes, or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil 1. And look again, I know.

That there are many there are many issues which are complicated. And we live in a world of polarized opinions and we have to remember that with many issues, they just cannot be answered in a hundred and 40 characters or with simple sound bites. That that is that is true. But when it comes to the truth, we we should basically be straightforward, shouldn't we? Yes, I will.

No, I won't. Yes, I can. No, I can't. Yes, I'll be there. No, I won't.

I don't know the answer to that question, but I'll find out for you. I don't know what to do at the moment, can you give me some time to find out? It's just a simple attitude to the truth, isn't it? Most of the time, That is genuinely all that is needed, isn't it? Simple yes, simple no.

And you notice that no is actually an okay option. You know, some of us are so so keen to be liked We feel that we have to say yes to everything, even if we can't do it or frankly, don't want to do it. We can say we can say with kindness, of course, Not, you know, not rudely. You know, we always speak the truth in love, but yes or no. But what is not okay is a yes, which means a no.

Or a no which means a yes or some sort of story to hide what we really mean. Most of the time, yes or no, is genuinely all that is needed, anything more, and we can be off into Satan's world. How much truth and heartbreak would be prevented if just yes meant yes, and no meant no. So when you boil it all down, to conclude, Jesus is saying here, members of the kingdom, decide my loved children, my disciples, be the sort of people who have enough weight in your character that you don't need all these extras. You don't need to muddy the water or move the blame, yes is yes, and no is no.

I told you it was a pretty straightforward message. And yet as with this whole sermon on the mount, the more you think about it, and I've certainly felt this in preparation. The more you think about it, the more it opens us up. The more it opens us And if if you do feel anything like that, it is a good place to be. Because you remember that in the sermon on the mount, It's not those who've got their lives together who are blessed.

It's those who mourn over their sin and look to Jesus. They are the ones who find hope. It's those who recognize that they haven't spoken the truth with humility with integrity and with simplicity, and they need a righteousness outside of themselves. They need Jesus the truth to stand in for them and to change their hearts. And wonderfully, that's exactly what he does.

Here's God swearing on oath to us. When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no 1 greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself. Saying I will surely bless you and give you many descendants. And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised, People swear by someone greater themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument, because god wanted to make the unchanging nature of his perp very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that by 2 unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we, who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us, may be greatly encouraged.

The God of the Bible wants us to be absolutely sure that by faith in Christ, we can become part of Abraham's family we can become part of the family of God. And since there was no 1 greater to swear by, since there was no name higher or more holy than his, He swore by himself. He swore by his own name and his own glory and his own truthfulness that all who run to Christ will be saved of their sin, that we may fly to the cross and be greatly encouraged as we see 1 who died for people like me, people who've been double minded when they should have been real. People who've been proud with the truth when they should have been humble, people who've used many words to deceive when they should have been straightforward. That's who Jesus died for.

And by the power of his gracious love, Not only does he save us, but he transforms us, transforms us, that we might have a new relationship with the truth, 1 of integrity, 1 of humility and 1 of simplicity. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, again, we thank you that no deceit was ever found in your mouth and that no lie ever passed through your lips. That you were true in all that you said and did. And lord Jesus, we thank you for showing us what we really like.

And we are sorry. We're sorry for when we have not related to the truth in this way. For when we have not spoken the truth with integrity but have been double minded and hypocritical. For when we have not spoken the truth with humility, but we have sworn and promised things that we do not have the power to fulfill. Forgive us for when we haven't spoken the truth with simplicity when instead of saying yes or no, or clearly owning up to our faults, we have tried to bury the truth with excuses and exaggerations and misleading details in order either to get ourselves off the hook or worse to put somebody else in the spotlight.

Forgive us for these things, we pray for the power of your spirit to change us that we might be honest, straightforward, simple people who reflect Jesus in the way that we use speech. We thank you lord Jesus that you knew every deceitful word that we would ever speak and you loved us enough to die for each 1. We thank you that every lie and every deception, every false promise, you bore in your body on the tree that we might be forgiven of everyone. We thank you that all of our lives have been wrapped up and thrown into the bottom of the ocean, never to be drawn up and used against us again. We thank you that even the untruths we will speak in the future, have been fully paid for by the blood of Jesus.

When he said it is finished, he knew what he was finishing. He knew the price that he was paying. And we thank you that when you rose, you gave hope and life to all of us. And we just ask, Lord, that you would help us to be people who love and speak truth, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Ahmed.

Amen.