[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Every single word that we say carries weight.
And every single word that we say either helps, protects, preserves life, our communities and our neighbors and the church.
But a hurtful word is a word that impacts in such a negative, deep way our community, our neighbors and the church.
And to me, that's the true heart of this ninth command to do not bear false witness against your neighbor.
It really hones in on the weight of every single word that we say.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I was a kid, anytime I went to, like, a youth group event and there was a speaker on the stage or maybe like in chapel, we would get this speaker that was trying to help us understand, even when we were little, like, the weight of the words that we choose to say.
And usually that speaker would use one or of two, like, physical illustrations. And one of those illustrations was this. He would pick some kid in the crowd and ask them to come up on stage. He would give them a tube and of toothpaste and a piece of like a card stock or like a plate or something and say, here's what I want you to do. I want you to squeeze out all that toothpaste and they would squeeze out all that toothpaste on top of that plate. And then he would say, now what I want you to do is I want you to put all that toothpaste back. And of course, you know, and you understand that that's impossible. While there's, to a certain degree, you can get a little bit back in there. But even when you try, what ends up happening is you make an even bigger mess. And it's hard to put everything back that was in that tube of toothpaste. And his whole point was that once you've said those words, you could have said, I didn't mean to. You could have even said, I'm sorry or I wish I wouldn't have said that.
And while we can be forgiven of those words, those words still have weight.
And you and I know this in our own lives because we would probably say that we have healed from broken bones quicker than we have broken reputations.
The other one that they would sometimes do, and if you're an elementary school teacher or a PE teacher, you probably remember this one, when it was, like, raining outside, they would play what was called the telephone game. And the telephone game was this. You would sit in this circle, and your teacher would whisper something to one student. And then it was trying to see, would the truth travel?
Would the truth make its way from this person all the way to the very end? And if you've ever done this before, you know how it works. The teacher will whisper something like, you know, all dogs go to heaven. And then it gets passed around. And by the very end, the kid shouts out, no one should own a cat. And, you know, and while there's some truth to it, you also understand that over time, what begins to happen is that while there was a little bit of truth to it, over time, what happened?
Well, the truth began to morph.
The truth did not travel.
I have loved this series for so many reasons, and one of the things I know Brandon and I have benefited so much from this study, is that a lot of these commands, if you kind of remember, are things like, I thought it meant that. And then you get into it, you're like, oh, it means that.
And today is one of those. And if you've been with us in this series, one of those examples would be this one. Do not take the Lord's name in vain. When I was a kid, always took that to mean, like, if I stubbed my toe, I do not need to say the Lord's name in that moment. And while it includes that, it's way more than that. The idea is, how do you take him? Like, when you walk into a situation that the odds are stacked against you, and it doesn't seem like there's maybe a way out that you couldn't help that situation or no one could bring you up, it's in that moment knowing God is powerful enough, he is strong enough. Do you take him to be all knowing? Do you take him to be powerful? Do you take him to be almighty? So when he says, don't take the Lord's name in vain, he's literally saying, how do you take him? Do you take him to be strong, mighty, and powerful?
Another example was when we talked about the command that we oftentimes label as do not murder. But the more we dug into that, we looked at what it really meant in the Hebrew was do not kill, which is all encompassing. What it was really highlighting is God values life.
And so we, especially as God's people, should seek to preserve life, protect life at every, in all stages.
And so just as those two commands were kind of seen in a different light than I always grew up seeing them, that's especially true with today's because when you get to the ninth command, if you remember back to your flannel board in Bible class or vbs, or even if you go online and Google images of ten commandments, most people have the ninth labeled like this.
Thou shalt not lie.
Now, lies are included. But if we just left it at that, we would actually miss the heart of the command and we would miss the heart of the Hebrew itself. And that's why this is the best to me and most accurate translation. But it still doesn't even tell the full story when it says this. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
And because there's two elements here, there's the bearing of false witness, which we're gonna get to, but also the heavy, important reminder that when we do this, it impacts others.
And so, like, from the very beginning, what I want us to think about is this, that every single word we say is either going to help people or it's going to hurt people.
There is no such thing as a neutral word. I want to say that again. Every single word we say is either going to help people or is going to hurt people. There is no such thing as neutrality. We when it comes to the words that we say.
And it is especially true as we dig into this command, because you'll notice, if you notice on the screen here that the word underlined to describe false witness is this Hebrew word that is pronounced Sheker.
And Sheker means this. Again, it's way more than just lying.
Sheker isn't just speaking what's false.
It's saying anything that causes somebody else to believe what's true or what isn't true.
And so a way to explain this is like maybe you get a message from somebody, you copy and paste it except for one sentence, or you add a sentence or you pass on based on what your experience has been, a little bit of the truth because of your own desires. What you see is that that checker is so much more than not just telling a lie.
It's how we pass on information.
And from a Hebrew perspective, the way people understood this was Sheker was oftentimes used to describe a masquerade. And you know what a masquerade is where people wear masks oftentimes in theater, and they act like a certain way, but in reality there's something else going on. It was oftentimes used in that way. Like, we present one thing, but in reality it's another thing.
But one of the things that I found the most interesting about this word, and it really backs up what the Ninth Commandment says when it says against your neighbor.
That 114 times in the Hebrew Bible is the word sheker used. And most of them are used in correlation with communal and society settings.
Because, you know, like today, say, two people are at odds with each other and they start saying words about each other.
And what then happens? Like today, you can bring that to a court and the jury will decide, well, they didn't really have that. What they had then is that people would meet outside of the city gates. And I would, in a way, kind of love for this to happen today. They would actually have to face the people that are in that community, face the people about what was said. This is why Jesus kind of talks about this in Matthew, right? About you go to your brother, right? You go to your sister. They would meet in those settings. And what would happen is the community, the judges and the leaders would decide what is true or not. And so what would happen is if there was just the tiniest amount of falsehood, just the tiniest amount of something that wasn't right, it impacted the whole community in a very negative way. See, every single word that we say carries weight.
And every single word we say either impacts our community, our church, our neighbors, in a positive way or negative way.
In fact, scripture speaks a lot about why this is such a big deal. It says, sheker is an abomination to the Lord and it will not go unpunished. And we're going to read a text later that says, those that do it cannot be in my house.
And I think about this before we get into our main narrative. You think about numbers 13.
This shows the big deal that a bad report gives. So if you remember numbers 13, the setting is this. God's people are trying to get ready to go into the promised land. There's like, one final thing that's standing before them, and that's Canaan. So they're trying to go into that land. And so what they do is they send several spies, 12 of them.
And if you remember, when they send those 12 spies into that land, how many come back with a good or accurate Report. Do you remember two?
But if you read the text, it says this. But the men who had gone with them said, we can't attack those, that they are stronger than we. And they spread. How many?
10. 10 spread A bad report.
Now, for me, I used to kind of understand this to mean that they were just saying, like, it's going to be difficult. No, 10 were actually giving a bad report. It wasn't just they were saying, this is going to be difficult. They were giving a bad report of actually what they saw and notice what happened.
That bad report spread. And to me, there's deep significance in the fact that 2 gave a good report and 10 gave a bad one.
Because doesn't it kind of show us that it's easier at times to join the bad report?
It's easier at times to join the half truth. It's easier at times to join those 10.
But here's what you notice happened as a result of that bad report. Number one, that fear, just as it always does, it spreads fast.
That fear starts making its way and then this person's fearful, and this person, persons feel fearful. This group of people at one time that were so confident that were walking by faith, all of a sudden are fearful. Why?
Because of a bad report.
And then on top of that, what happens is, yes, there was a problem. Was there giants in the land? Absolutely. But what happened was the people saw giants. And when they only saw the giants, when only the giants were talked about, guess who they forgot to talk about?
God.
Giants were still there, but so was God.
And the other part of this that is so sad is the next generation, because of this bad report, didn't even get to go into the land.
You don't think a bad report, half truth doesn't carry weight.
And then the thing that's also sad is these are the same people that witnessed the 10 plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, they forgot all the things God had done before.
So as we dig into this narrative, what I want us to see, the Hebrew word sheker is way more broad than just lying.
This word includes gossip, it includes slander, half truths, exaggeration, selective reporting, deceptive silence.
And so there's a lot of different narratives that we could use to kind of illustrate this. But we're going to focus on the one that I looked at today, and that is, and you heard in the scripture reading, and that is Naboth and his vineyard. And as we approach this text, what I want us to keep in mind is kind of like the big idea for this morning. Is every time we speak, since our words do carry weight, we're either reflecting truth or, or we're reshaping it. But I wanted to add something to it and I wish I could have gone back and I would add to this that with our words, we're either gonna preserve life and protect it, or we're gonna hurt it.
And so let's go to 1 Kings 21. And as you're turning there, I wanna give you a little bit of context. So the context is this. There's a guy named King Ahab. And Ahab was the king of Israel for like around eight years.
And well, excuse me, he was the eighth king of Israel, but he had been reigning for about 22 years. And one of the things that happened in his 22 year reign that ended up hurting him and I think caused this whole awful sad. And even as you heard the scripture reading this morning, you're like, whoa, that's quite a way to start today. When you read something like that, like, how did that happen? Here's where it happened.
Because the first two commands were broken.
Because if you remember, what happened is King Ahab wanted to make a trade alliance, so he married a woman named Jezebel. Now, just as it is wrong to get married because somebody has money, it's especially wrong to marry somebody just because you can make a trade alliance. Well, so what happened was, is they got married. And would you know it, the lady who worships idols, guess what she brings into the land?
Idols. And so what happens is he slowly starts to get introduced to the idols impact by the idols. And idols that begin in the heart end up showing up in real life.
And so he starts to idolize everything that's around him. And the reason why I want to stop and point this out is when we look at the heart of half truths, when we look at the heart of gossip, it oftentimes begins with an idol that's in the heart, something we desire.
And so that's what happened to him.
And so what happened to this guy is that he saw that there was this guy right beside him that had a field that he desired.
And so the first thing we're going to look at today as we read this text together is that false witness begins when truth becomes less important than desire. So let's get into the text this morning. 1 Kings 21, beginning in verse 1, it says, Naboth, he had this vineyard in Jezreel right beside the palace of Ahab. And after this, Ahab said to Naboth, hey, can you Please give me your vineyard. And I want to have a vegetable garden there because it's right next to my house. I'm going to give you a better vineyard, and if it seems good to you, I will give you its value and money. But this is what Naboth said back to him.
The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers. What he's actually doing is what is scriptural. Because during that day, if you had family land, it wasn't just you to give, to give up. Like, that was something that was in the family for years. He's like, no, I can't do this. Number one, I don't want to. Number two, it would be wrong of me to do this.
So Ahab in that moment could have said, you know what? That's fine. Sounds good, buddy.
And it made me think about, I have some family that lives in central Florida, and the house that my mom grew up in is right near this place called the Villages. Have you ever seen heard of that place? It's a huge community. I think it's one of the biggest communities in the United States as a retirement community.
And they were buying up land, and they kept buying closer and closer and closer to the house that my mom grew up in. And so they were wanting to buy the house, and they were wanted that house. And they offered something. And my aunt was like, no, thank you. They offered some more. She's like, no, thanks. They offered some more. She was like, no, thanks. And I'm kind of like, okay, one of these. We might want to, you know, jump on. But she kept saying, no, thanks. So here's what happens. The villages, they have a choice.
They have a choice to say, well, that's good, that's fine, or they go and kill my grandmother and aunt. Well, that's not what happened, but that is what happened here in this text. Because I'm trying to help us understand how bizarre and crazy this is, that how in the world do we get to that point?
How do we get to something like that Is a desire, an idol in the heart leads to what's next. And so if you keep reading, you'll see what happens. It says this in verse five. But Jezebel, his wife came to him and said to him, why is your spirit so vexed? You haven't even eaten any food. And he said to her, well, because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, give me your vineyard for money or else, if it pleases you, I will give you another vineyard.
And he answered, I will not give you my vineyard. And Jezebel, his wife said to him, don't you govern Israel? He's basically, she's saying, hey, aren't you in a leadership position? Can't you leverage your leadership to get what you want?
And so notice what she does next, because one of the challenges is when you have a half truth. Sometimes when you're gossiping, it's easy to hide it behind a respectable appearance.
And I want you to notice here, she actually does some spiritual things.
She goes through spiritual motions is maybe the better way to put it. And so what it says here, she says, well, why don't we proclaim a fast? So this is all sounding good. And set Naboth at the head of the table, which is where he would sit and set two worthless men opposite of him. Isn't it kind of interesting that of all the people they pick, they're labeled as worthless people? Our text this morning, I think that was read basically said, scoundrels. He's trying to make the point. It takes a scoundrel to do something like that and let him bring a charge against him.
And they said this, that you said, you have cursed God and the king. Take him out and stone him to death.
So when truth becomes way more important than desire, what starts to happen is the truth, little by little, becomes expendable.
And then as it does, what happens is it then takes people to join.
And I know this is an extensive list and I might put on our family page so we can go through it later, but here's some ways I think this shows up. Number one is by selective editing of conversations, leaving out certain details or adding to certain details.
The second one is this spreading rumors as prayer requests.
And I think John Crist has a video about this, you know, praying for people under the guise of, you know, rumors, gossip.
How about this one?
Social media accusations.
That one's a big one.
Because I think today what happens is you all have people, y', all, they are so bold and they are so strong behind a Dell 15 and a half inch laptop screen.
They can post whatever, they can say whatever, but don't make them talk to that person, right? But then here's what's made it worse. Some of y' all are part of neighborhood groups like I am, where you can have that neighborhood. You know who they are, and they are that person that will post something and you don't know who it was.
Like, you have no name attached. And so they can say whatever they want. Still does not take away from the fact that it's attached to you.
The other one is this misleading headlines. How many of y' all have been like me? You've clicked on an article because the headline, and they got you. You start reading, you're like, well, that's not what happened, right?
Or what about manipulating statistics or just telling half the story again? It's easy at times to make it look respectable. And so then once that happens, we now have willing people that start to participate. And so it begins to grow. And look what happens in verse 11. And we're going to read through verse 14. It says, and the men of the city, the elders, the leaders who lived in his city, did as Jezebel had sent word to them. So more people joined.
It says they proclaimed a fast, and they set Naboth at the head of the people. And the two worthless men came in and sat opposite. And the worthless men brought a charge against Naboth in the presence of the people, saying, naboth cursed God and the king. So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death with stones.
Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, naboth has been stoned and he is dead.
This was an innocent man.
But you know what's really interesting is Naboth was not the only innocent person killed because of a lie.
If you keep reading in your Bible, you'll notice in Second Kings that King Ahab, the one that allowed the false witness to keep growing, guess what happened to his own children?
They died.
Isn't that sad to see the innocent lives that were hurt by some false witnesses?
I told you there's several texts this morning that are very heavy. To me. This is one of those.
And I was thinking, all right, why is this in the ten words God gives? Why is this the ninth command?
Because every single word we say carries weight. And every single word we say either impacts our community in a positive or a negative way because it says this. No one who practices deceit will live in my house.
You know, one of the things I was thinking about this morning is we have a spiritual enemy, Satan, who absolutely hates every single one of us.
And one of the things that I know he hates, number one, is that we're in here together.
And he hates that our eyes are all fixed on God.
And I know that spiritual enemy because it says he only has one job, and that is to steal, to kill, and to destroy. Think about that for a second. He steals from you, he kills you, and when you're already dead, destroys you. And so his method of attack since he's roaring around is if he can create deceit, dysfunction within the body, it can hurt other people and so many people, innocent people.
And the reason why I want to mention him is I think the sooner we understand what is of the enemy and what is of God, we'll better know how to handle every moment.
And the other thing is this. There's a quote that I heard a while back that I really love and it's this, that truth may seem slow, but it eventually arrives.
And so as we think about these things, well, how can we be guilty of this today? Well, number one, through gossip.
Passing on information that has not been verified. And notice it begins with a whisper.
Look what it says here. A dishonest man spreads strife and a whisperer separates close friends.
So maybe we take it like this. If you, if you weren't there, don't speak as if you were. I want to say that again. If you weren't there, don't speak as if you were.
Here's the next one through a half truth, tell just enough truth to mislead.
Or what about this through social media.
Sometimes sharing stuff before we fully verified it, we share something. And it was turns out some guy made the video in his basement. You know, whatever it is like we share, before we verify another one, we assume motives.
There's somebody in my life that I really appreciate that they will say, well, we don't really know if that's. I'm like, I need more of that, right? Like sometimes we claim to know why somebody did something.
Another one is through slander, like trying to damage somebody else's reputation through exaggeration, making people maybe look worse than they really are.
Or how about this one we use God Sometimes we'll say, well, God wanted me to do this. I feel like God wants me to do that. Or God led me to this. Well, God's not going to lead you to something that contradicts his word.
But also God is love.
So it's pretty easy to rule out a lot of stuff when you first focus on the fact that he is love.
So here's maybe a diagnostic tool that we can use.
It's not perfect, but it kind of covers most of the things. Number one, we need to ask ourselves, is this even true?
Verify it before you repeat it. But now hold on. Before we end, don't end there, because that could be dangerous too.
And if you don't hear anything else today, I hope you hear this. Everything we say must be true, but not all true things should be said. I wanna Say that again. Everything we say must be true, but not all true things should be said. And so that gets us to this next one. Is this really necessary? Right. Is this even for you to repeat?
In fact, I'll tell you, at times, my true is sometimes not timely. I want you to think about for you. Would you say your true is timely? I've had this happen in marriage a lot. Some of y' all might be like me.
Whenever we're trying to go out the door and the house is cray cray. I mean, it's loud. People are forgetting shoes. Some people don't even have shoes. You know, we're trying to get out the door. And I feel like this is now the best time for me to ask Lori and something. Hey, did we do this? She's like, really, like, right now, like, we're trying to go out the door, Right. Was it true? Yes. Was it needing to be said at that moment? Absolutely not. Right.
And so thinking about that, is this really necessary right now?
And is this even for me to repeat, to be involved in?
But here's the third part, because this gets to the core of who God is. God is love.
And so it's not just, hey, I don't wanna lie, because God said, don't do that. It's, I love my neighbor so much that I wanna do whatever it takes to guard him or her and their reputation. So I wanna ask a question this morning.
It might seem like an odd question.
Do you think maybe in your life there have been times where what you've passed on, what you've shared, might possibly just only. Only only have two degrees of truth or, like, two degrees of falsehood?
And at that time, it might be easy. It's just 2 degrees. Like, that's not much.
Most of what I've said is true. Well, imagine you drop a compass. You break it, and the compass is broken and it's off by 2 degrees.
When you first start walking, you pretty close to the truth.
You're pretty close to where you need to be. But what happens over time with that 2 degrees?
The further it travels, guess what begins to happen?
The truth doesn't travel.
But I also want you to think it not just on that end, but maybe there have been two degrees of untruth spoken about you.
And I know people that have heard something when they were in, like, third grade, and those words traveled their whole life.
And I love what Seth mentioned this morning. It was so awesome about what lie has Satan got you to believe?
That's not true.
So have we said, maybe two degrees of something that's off, but also, are we believing something that's 2 degrees off?
Here's the other illustration that I was trying to pick one, but I just went with the both is so Hebrew children in school, they have like a. Basically, like a character class that they go through. And in those character classes, one of the things that they do is the rabbi would get in front of them and tell them stories.
And one of the most common popular stories is this one. There was this girl that started spreading gossip. She started sharing some things. Some were true, some were not. And she was passing things along. And so he was trying to help her understand that her words carried weight. So what they asked this little girl to do, they said, all right, here's what I want you to do. We're going to go to this field. And when he got to this field, he cut open this pillow and had all these feathers in it. Told her to shake the pillow, and then the feathers went flying, if you know the story. One of the things he then tells her to do, he said, now what I want you to do is I want you to get all of those feathers and I want you to put them back in the pillow. She's like, well, I can't do that. And he said, yes, that's my point.
The hurtful things that you've said, you might have said, I'm sorry, but they still happened.
You might have said, I didn't mean to, but it still happened.
Truth in both ways, it travels. Hurtful words travel.
So again, the core of this commandment is to understand that the words we say are never neutral. We're either going to protect life and preserve it, or we're going to hurt it.
We're either helpful or hurtful. There's no middle ground.
And so I want us to all think about, would we say by the words that we've said that we're reflecting reality or we're reshaping it.
You know, I hope this is encouraging to you because maybe you're here today and you've been believing lies.
Maybe it's because of what you've done in your past. One of the things I know that Satan loves to do, he loves to capitalize on what you've done.
And the world really loves to focus on the what question. Yet you go through scripture. Do you know what scripture likes to focus on?
The who question.
Who you are, whose you are, who is God.
And so maybe you've bought into what Seth talked about. You've bought into a lie.
Maybe for some of you, you've said some things that you shouldn't have. You've shared some half truths, you've gossiped about something.
And maybe what you need to do is to confess that sin. Because you see it's hurting innocent people down the road, you see, and you haven't seen the good news. You get to Isaiah 53, and of course Isaiah is prophesying about Jesus and this is so powerful. If you look in verse seven. Excuse me, let me get there, I was there and then I am not. Alright, verse seven, this is what it says about Jesus.
And I want you to notice the one that could have said we would think justifiably anything.
Look what he did.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.
He was like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And like a sheep before the shearers is silent. Notice what it says.
So he opened not his mouth.
Skipping down to verse nine. And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death and all that he had done, there was no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
It's pretty amazing that the one who was put on the cross and condemned by lies is now the savior of all of us who have lied in. You know, I was thinking about Acts 2 this morning and you might remember where there's a group of people that yelled out with their voices, we want Barabbas.
They accused an innocent man, put him on the cross.
And Peter has the opportunity to preach to that group of people that said what God doesn't rank, hurtful words.
But some might say a word that hurt real deep.
And that is, we want Barabbas. And to that crowd, Peter gets in front of them and he doesn't say, you know, you scoundrels, what in the world you know, too bad, so sad. He gets in front of this group of people that use their words to hurt people and he says, repent and be baptized, every single one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
While maybe what you've said, you can't take back.
God can still redeem sin, and that's the good news.
And sin can be something that you can learn from. And so maybe today you've let words that have been said about you stay on the hard drive of your heart and mind and you want help.
We would love to pray about that. Maybe you've just let words fly and it's hurt innocent people. Whatever it is that you have a need of Please come while we stand and we sing this song.
