Matthew 5:33

The Perverted Truth

Matthew 5:33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.

When an oath was made and it was broken, there was and elaborate system buy which the religious leaders would judge how close the oath came to God as to whether it was a valid oath that needed to be kept. There were whole sections of the Jewish teaching that dealt with which vows were valid and which ones were not.

Swearing by heaven or earth was not binding, nor was swearing by Jerusalem, BUT swearing TOWARD Jerusalem was! The idea behind this was that, if God’s name was used, God became a partner in the transaction, whereas if God’s name was not used, God had nothing to do with the transaction.

The traditional teaching that Jesus quotes here was a composite of ideas based on Leviticus 19:12, Numbers 30:2, and Deuteronomy 23:21.

Leviticus 19:12 ‘And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I [am] the LORD.

Numbers 30:2 “If a man makes a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.

Usually the purpose of the laws about oaths is to control the misuse of oaths, not to require their use.

Even Deuteronomy 6:13 and 10:20 should be construed not as commands that all Jews devote themselves to swearing, but rather as instructions that if a Jew does at some time make an oath, it should be limited by the law.

If the Old Testament permits swearing and recognizes that oaths will be uttered by men and if Jesus prohibited oaths, then either of two conclusions must be reached: either God permitted oaths because of human hard hearts in Old Testament times, even though such action was not His perfect plan (cf. Jesus’ comments in Matt 19:8 ), or processes in the Jewish practice of swearing in Jesus’ time had developed in a direction which demanded a stop.”

When someone would swear it was, in effect, to take an oath. The reason why you would take an oath is to verify that what you were saying was true.

Now we live in a country where oaths are taken every day. Everyday people go to a courtroom and take the witness stand and “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” That is an oath.

Now an oath does not keep you from perjury, but it makes you liable if you commit perjury. But that is not the type of oath that Jesus is dealing with here.

The Pharisees felt that an oath taken to God had to be kept. In other words, if you swore something was true by God Himself, then you had to be totally and completely honest. So if you gave a divine oath that you would do something, you had to do it.

If you gave a divine oath that something was true, then it must be true. But if it was not a divine oath then all bets were off. So, it wasn’t what you said that mattered, but how you said it that counted.

Well, Jesus points out a problem with that, and here it is: If a person has to swear to you that they are telling the truth, then it means that they normally lie, and that normally you can’t trust anything that they say. The Pharisees, and others like them, had forgotten the truth of Proverbs. 12:22, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truthfully are His delight.”

A clear description of an oath is given in the book of Hebrews: “For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute” (6:16). The name of something or someone greater than the person making the oath is invoked to give greater credibility to what is said.

Any oath calling on God invites Him to witness the truthfulness of what is said or to avenge if it is a lie. An oath was therefore generally taken to be the absolute truth, which made “an end of every dispute,” because it invited judgment on the one who violated his word. The Jews who returned from the Babylonian Exile to Israel took “on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God’s laws” (Neh. 10:29).

God provided for proper oath-giving in His name as an accommodation to sinful human nature, which is so prone to deceit and lying.

The command “You shall not swear falsely by My name” (Lev. 19:12) was conveniently interpreted to mean that swearing falsely by any other name was allowed.

The command “If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth” (Num. 30:2) was interpreted as permitting the reneging on oaths made to anyone but God.

So, through rabbinic tradition, God’s standard of absolute truthfulness was contradicted and lowered to a level that accommodated the sinful, selfish capacities and purposes of the people. They wanted to lie, and they did not want to be hampered by God’s absolute standard of truth. Instead of calling on the Lord to help them live up to the divine standard, they reduced that standard to suit their own carnal abilities and interests.

The common attitude toward oaths is also seen in Jesus’ great series of woes in Matthew 23 against the hypocritical Jewish leaders. “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.’ … And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering upon it, he is obligated’ ” (vv. 16, 18).

Jesus exposed the utter illogic of their practice. “You fools and blind men; which is more important, the gold, or the temple that sanctified the gold?

Among their many perversions of truth was the teaching that Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated. The very fact that they had developed such a double standard for swearing gives evidence that their concern was not for truth but for the evasion of it when it did not suit their selfish interests.

The underlying purpose behind the first part of the standard was to provide sanctimonious justification for lying A person could lie all he wanted, provided he swore by the temple and not by the gold of the temple. Since no society can survive without some provision for verifying and guaranteeing such things as promises and contracts, the second part of the standard was developed as a necessary expediency.

If a person wanted to make absolutely certain that someone was telling the truth or would live up to an agreement, he would make him swear by the gold of the temple, which supposedly made his word binding. A person who broke his word after taking such an oath was subject to penalties under Jewish law.

The use of oaths had become so perverse in Israel that they were used even to renege on promises made to God.

The great offense of Ananias and Sapphira was not in giving less to the Lord’s work than they were able to give but in lying about it.

What perverted logic had it been to determine that making a vow on something lesser was more binding than one made on something greater? The only reason the gold could be thought of as sacred, and thereby make the vow supposedly more obligatory, was the temple that sanctified the gold.

Truth is so scarce that nearly everyone is suspect.

Business people, advertisers, commentators, clerks, salesmen, lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, teachers, writers, politicians, and even many, if not most, preachers are suspect. Our whole society is largely built on a network of fabrication, of manufactured “truth.” We shade the truth, we cheat, we exaggerate, we misrepresent income tax deductions, we make promises we have no intention of keeping, we make up excuses, and betray confidences-all as a matter of normal, everyday living.

Yet even the most corrupt and deceptive societies have always realized that, in certain areas at least, the “real truth” is necessary. Individually men are inclined to the truth only when it benefits them, yet collectively they have always known something of its importance and rightfulhess-even outside courts of law.

The great Roman orator Cicero said, “Truth is the highest thing a man may experience.” Sadly, with most people it is an infrequent experience. Daniel Webster wrote, “There is nothing as powerful as truth and often nothing as strange.”

That is one reason they go to such lengths to make what they say appear to be truthful. Our problem is in being truthful.

The Jews of Jesus’ day revered the idea of truth in principle, but in practice it was buried under their system of tradition, which over the centuries had continually cut God’s law down to fit their own sinful perspectives and purposes.

We just do not expect people to keep their word anymore. Politics has gotten to the point where we EXPECT our leaders to have a lack of integrity.

Additionally, in the early days of the church, even the apostle Paul gave a type of oath in saying to the Romans, “I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 9:1). He called on Christ and the Holy Spirit as witnesses with his own conscience to the truthfulness of what he was about to say. That is swearing by God.

THE PROPER TRUTH

Matthew5;37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

JUST TELL THE simple truth, you don’t need a oath,,

Truth has no degrees or shades. A half truth is a whole lie, and a white lie is really black. God has never had any standard lower than absolute truthfulness.

Of every person He desires “truth in the innermost being” (Ps. 51:6). Among the things He especially hates is “a lying tongue” (Prov. 6:16–17), Every normal word in the course of daily speech should be a truthful word, unadorned and unqualified in regard to its truthfulness.

We should take very great care to either speak the truth or not speak at all. But I don’t want to be misunderstood about this matter of honesty. You should always be totally honest in what you say, but you don’t always have to say what is totally honest. In other words, you don’t always have to express your honesty. You know there are some people who pride themselves on being “brutally honest.” Many times I have found that people are more brutal than they are honest, and there are times when making no comment is better than making an honest comment.

Every time you either stretch the truth or you speak an untruth, you stretch your conscience. The Apostle Paul said in Phil. 1:10 that we should be “sincere and without offense till the day of Christ.” The word sincere is actually a Latin word that means “without wax.” The Greek term means “sun-tested.” The ancients had a very fine porcelain which was greatly valued and therefore very expensive. But often when it was fired in the furnace tiny cracks would appear.

Dishonest merchants would smear pearly-white wax over these cracks which would pass for true porcelain until it was held up to the light of the sun. Honest dealers marked their flawless porcelain this way-Sine Cera-“without wax.” When your words are held up to the light of the holiness of God, be sincere. Without wax let your yes be yes, and your no be no.