This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day three of week five of our look through the book of
Matthew. We're going to look at Matthew chapter five, verses 33 to 37 today.
This is Jesus' sermon on the Mount, His life management seminar, and as we're
walking through this week, it's pretty obvious that Jesus does not shrink away
from going straight to the heart of our problems.

Some of us, that makes us uncomfortable. We'd rather have sermons that just talk
about all the nice things, but Jesus talks about the real things. He does it
with compassion.

He does it with love. He shows us the way out. And so I hope you hear in what He
has to say to you today, a way out, a way different to live like He wants you to
live.

The first couple of days of this week, we've seen how He tells us to deal with
anger by making our relationships a priority, how to deal with lust by taking
our heart seriously and acting radically. Today He tells us how to deal with the
lies that can make their way into our relationships. In verse 33 down to verse
37, Jesus taught, "Again, you've heard that it was said to the people long ago,
'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths that you have made to the Lord.

' But I tell you, do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is God's throne,
or by earth, for it's His footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it's the city of the
great King. And don't swear by your head, for you can't make even one hair white
or black. Simply let your yes be yes, and your no, no.

Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. " Jesus here talks about lies. He
talks about the deceit that can make its way into our relationships.

And He talks about the struggle that they had with calling something that was a
lie not really a lie. The Jews in that day had two classes of oaths. They had
binding and nonbinding.

And really it depended on how close you got to the use of something holy, of
God's name. They took great pains to develop this system of trust in what
somebody was saying. You couldn't vow upon God's name.

That would be a sin. But the closer you got to God's name, the more that you
could trust what the other person would say. So I swear by Jerusalem.

When He says, "Don't swear at all," He's not saying, "Don't use swear words
here," although other places in the Bible it says not to do that. He's saying
here, "Don't make a promise based on heaven or by earth or by Jerusalem or by
the throne of David in the city of Jerusalem. " It's almost humorous in some
ways because we see that we do the same things today.

It's this, "I swear it's true," or, "I swear on my mother's grave," or, "You can
trust me this time," or even honest. And it goes all the way back to His
children as saying, "I cross my heart and hope to die. " Makes you smile inside
because you realize all through our lives we struggle with this need to be
honest, but we also try to find ways to not quite be honest.

They had built this elaborate system that made a lie okay if it was told in the
right way. And we do the same thing. We do the same thing in our minds.

We run it over and over again in our minds, and then the lie becomes okay. But
the truth is lies build mistrust into a relationship. And you cannot build a
relationship on mistrust.

So Jesus has an answer. He has a very simple answer to deceit, to the lies that
come into our lives. He says, "Let your yes be yes and your no, no.

" In fact, after that, He says, "Anything more is of the evil one. " What He's
saying here is when you build in ways that the yes really means a no or maybe,
that's the trick of the evil one. Now, the truth that's behind this when you
think about lies and communication and relationships, the truth is the
foundation of communication is trust.

If I can't trust what you're saying, it doesn't really matter what you're
saying. When you think about how your relationships work, you talk about this
system that they had, the personal question that's behind this for me and for
you is what do you have to say to get people to believe you? Are you able to
just let your yes be yes?

Or have you covered things over with so many lies and so many mistruths that you
really have to work to get people to believe you? It's almost a sign. Could you
give me a signed affidavit on that this time?

And could you get it notarized because of what's happened? Do you speak with
integrity in the closest relationships of your life? Or do you erode trust?

There are four major ways that you can erode trust in a relationship when it
comes to communication. Through failing to communicate, you think they know what
you're thinking, but they don't know what you're thinking unless you say what
you're thinking. Through lies, which we're talking about right now, mistruths,
through flattery, which is a positive lie, always saying the nice thing, never
saying the difficult thing, and through broken promises, especially with family.

The truth of the matter is you cannot have high quality relationships without
high level trust. Now, let's just think about this together for a moment. The
truth of the matter is all of us struggle with our words.

James taught us if anyone was perfect with their words, they would be entirely
perfect. So if you struggle with this one, join the human race. The question
isn't, do you struggle?

We all struggle. The question is, am I going to learn from Jesus how to do it
better? Am I going to learn from Jesus how to have stronger relationships?

And Jesus says, here's how to do it better. Just be simple and clear. Let your
yes be yes and your no, no.

Be a person of your word. That simple step will bring a new sense of joy and
freedom to your relationships. I'll never forget reading somewhere about a
businessman who was asked what the biggest change that had happened in his life
since he came to Christ.

And he said, it's the way I answer the telephone. And they said, well, what does
that mean? He said, well, I used to, when I answered the phone, I'd look at the
person's name and I'd have to remember all the lies that I told them.

Because if I didn't remember all the lies, I might not say the right thing in
this sense. But now that I'm telling the truth more and more, I don't have to
remember the lies. It's a lot less work.

It's a lot more joy. Now in the reality of relationships and family, we've
talked about broken promises. There are times when you make a promise.

You say to your child, we're going to go to the park after school today. But
something happens and you can't do that. Is there a way to deal with that?

Of course there is by telling the truth. Tell them the truth. Tell them that
something happened at work and you weren't able to go.

Don't make up something that makes you continue to look good. It's amazing how
even with a six-year-old, sometimes we find ourselves lying because we want to
look good to ourselves and to them. Just tell the truth in that moment.

Tell the truth in the reality of life. Satan is the father of lies. That's what
the scripture tells us.

And you can see it from the very beginning. The lie that he told to Adam and Eve
in the garden. The lie that if you eat this, you'll become like God.

That lie was a sort of a half-truth. They did get some of the knowledge of good
and evil that God has, but he didn't tell them that they would lose their
relationship with God, that they would lose their eternity with God. Satan is
still working today.

He's still telling lies today and he's still using lies for the same purpose. He
wanted to divide Adam and Eve from God and their relationship with God and he
wanted to divide Adam and Eve from each other, their relationship to each other.
And so he tells lies and he wants us to tell lies.

Because lies divide, but truth brings us together. Truth brings trust. So as we
take a few minutes today to pray together, in prayer, I'd just like to join you
in praying, "God, help me to be better at telling the truth.

Help me to be a person who builds trust in my relationships. If something
difficult needs to be said, help me to say it, but with gentleness and with
love. If I have to be honest about something in myself, help me to say it with
humility, with humility.

And Lord, the fear that I have, that I won't be understood, the fear that I
have, that I will be rejected, I know where that's coming from. That's coming
from Satan. He's the father of lies and that's one of his tricks.

So Lord, I pray that in my heart you would set aside that fear and in place of
it put a trust, a trust where I can be honest with you. God, yes, here's where I
struggle, yes, and where I can be honest with the people I love. Let my yes be
yes and my no, no.

I want to be a man of my word. I want to be a woman of my word, say to the Lord.
That's who I want to be.

In Jesus' name, I make this commitment to you. Amen. Tomorrow we're going to
look together at Jesus' answer to our feelings of revenge.