Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Let Your Yes Be Yes

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

As we look at the hard sayings of Jesus, we see in this passage that Jesus gives us a radical principle of truthfulness.  The whole Bible is built on covenants, public promises, observed words. So what does Jesus mean when he says to let your “yes” be “yes”? He can’t mean you can’t take oaths. What he does mean is actually something almost the opposite, that if you think you can separate and create levels of truthfulness, you’re wrong. Everything is observed. Every yes and every no is an oath.  Jesus is teaching us 1) the importance of truthfulness, 2) the nature of truthfulness, and 3) how you become a person of integrity. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 14, 1993. Series: Hard Sayings of Jesus (1993). Scripture: Matthew 5:33-37. Today's podcast episode is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. This may sound strange at first, but in many ways Jesus is an upside down Savior. He came not in strength, but in weakness. He came not to gain power, but to give away power. As a teacher, then, he spoke in a way that turned people's expectations on their heads, calling people to lose their lives to gain them, to die to themselves so they can truly live. Some of his teachings can be difficult to understand

or accept. Today Tim Keller is teaching through one of the hard sayings of Jesus, showing us that while Christ's teachings aren't always easy, they provide the answers to having a meaningful life and a relationship with him. After you listen, please take a few seconds to rate and review our podcast. Your review can help others to discover our podcast and experience the hope of the gospel.

Now, here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. We're still looking at Jesus' teachings, especially the hard sayings, the difficult statements that Jesus makes in his teaching. I'm going to read in chapter 5 verses 33 to 37. Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not break your oath. But keep the oaths 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 the earth for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king,

and do not swear by your head for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your yes be yes, you know be no anything beyond this comes from the evil one. This is God's Word. Now you know Jesus thought it was important to talk about promises, about truthfulness in general and promise keeping in particular. There a week of January, one man's promise meant we had a big party, big festival inauguration is called. And ever since then everybody's been talking about promises, have the promises been kept. Jesus also agreed that promises were extremely important. He talks in this passage about swearing, about oaths, which are really just promises.

Now today we live in a written culture, not an oral culture, and as a result most of the way in which we make oaths is through signing documents because in our particular legal system we find that when you sign a contract and that contract is witnessed then that is more binding than a public oral promise. And of course in Jesus' time, in an oral culture, public oral promises were more prevalent, but the principle is the same. A contract of an oath is an observed word, observed, lots of people observe it, other people observe it, and as a result, you are held accountable, you must be consistent with that word, you must be true to your word.

Now, Jesus says in this passage, you've heard it said, keep the vows you make to the Lord, but I say unto you, swear not at all. Don't swear by heaven because it's God's throne. Don't swear by the earth. It's his footstool. Don't swear by Jerusalem. Don't swear by your head. But like your yes be yes and your no be no. And Jesus is giving us a radical principle of truthfulness. If you want to understand it, first you have to understand a couple of interpretive keys. First of all, Jesus is not quitting the Old Testament when He says, you have heard it said, do not break your oath

and keep the oaths you have made to the Lord. You're not gonna find that anywhere in the Old Testament. You know why? It's not there. Because Jesus is not trying to correct or change the Old Testament, the law. When he talks about the law, he always uses the description, it is written. He doesn't say that here.

He says, you have heard it said, which means he is critiquing the prevalent interpretation of the law, what they're teaching, what the religious teachers are saying. And what they are saying is, you have to keep your oath to the Lord, but we know that in that day, they said, if you swear by something else,

you don't have to be bound to keep your word. If you swear by heaven, by the earth, by Jerusalem, by your head, by your father, by your family name, and you decide to break that later on, that's okay. But if you swear by God's name, you have to keep those oaths. When Jesus says, I say unto you, swear not at all. At first, and some Christians have felt this over the centuries, it looks like he's saying don't make public promises. Now, the reason we know that's not true is that he did it himself.

For example, in Matthew 26, during his trial, the high priest says, I charge you under oath, he said to Jesus, by the living God, are you the Christ? And Jesus says, he's been totally silent up to this moment. Jesus says, yes, it is as you say. Jesus was not willing to say anything until he was sworn under oath and then he speaks. You'll see in Galatians 1, in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul takes oath. He says, by the living God, I tell you this. If you go back to Genesis 15, you see God Himself making an oath,

and an oath or a promise is an observed word. He passes between the pieces. Remember, God passes between the pieces of the animals, and He swears an oath to Abraham. And He says, I hope myself accountable to you, that I will keep this promise. So the whole Bible is built on covenants, public promises, observed words, accountability.

So what does Jesus mean? He can't mean, you can't take oaths. What he does mean is actually something almost the opposite. He is saying, if you think that you can separate and that you can create levels of truthfulness, you're wrong. If you think I have to be truthful when I'm using this particular description, but not when I'm using this particular description, friends, he says, don't you realize, if you

think I only have to be truthful if I use the name of God, when you use the heaven, that's God's throne. When you use the earth, that's God's footstool. Don't you realize that God is everywhere? He's everywhere. He owns everything. And therefore, what God is saying, what Jesus is saying is, every yes and every no must be as truthful as if you just swore on a stack of vibals on network television. He says, every word is observed. Let me put it this way to you.

If I told you that tomorrow a camera was going to follow you everywhere and was going to observe, it was going to record every word you say, every tone of voice, every denotation and connotation, everything you said, and then on Tuesday night, it was gonna be played over the networks, 20 million people watching. I wanna know, would it be a different Monday than any other Monday, I mean, I mean, would it make a difference in how you spoke

if you knew you were observed completely observed? And if you say yes, you've got something to think about in this statement. What Jesus is saying is that your condition is actually far more serious than that. As fanciful as the preacher has been, says Jesus, in that interesting illustration, I want This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important.

This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. This is the reason why this is so important. It's everywhere. You're before the face of God and His appraisal of you, and His values, and His opinion, and His sight of you is the only one that matters.

Matters far more than 20 million people on network television. Every yes, and every no is an oath. Oh, of course, my friends, Jesus is not saying No, is an oath. Oh, of course, my friends, Jesus is not saying that there aren't degrees of commitment. If on the way out the door, I say to you, I will call you this week.

And I don't do it. And we got to preach your sin, as you know. Preachers tend to be oldest children. They want to please people. They promise more than they can. According to Jesus, that's a serious thing. Every yes and every no is observed. But on the other hand, I mean, if I don't call you,

it's probably not the end of the world. On the other hand, if I say to my wife on wedding day, I will be faithful to you, I will not go with other women and I break that vow. That's a higher commitment, obviously. I mean, we're not saying that there aren't degrees of commitment. We're saying, is there can't be degrees of truthfulness in what you say? Everything is observed.

And therefore, Jesus is really laying something onto us that is really takes our breath away. Now, as we look at this, I just want you, as we try to pull out some principles here, I want you to know how worried I am that we're not going to do this right. Because Jesus, whenever he gives you a truth, he is the great physician. And great physicians, what they first do is they come in and they cut you open. So there's blood and gore and it's terrible. You hurt like crazy and you feel worse than before. He touched you.

That's how the great physician is. Like other physicians actually. You feel worse. On the other hand, then the great physician also, the great physician is really good. Takes the tumor out, stitches you up, and you're better. And one of the problems with looking at any of Christ's texts, any of his teachings, these are scalples.

And it's very easy for me as I teach you, and for you, as you listen to take it wrong, and just to let it mutilate you and not do anything else. So let's see if we can do this right. Because on the one hand, there's a there's a lot of bad news here. It's going to make, it's going to press you. It's going to make you feel my word. But on the other hand, there's lots of good news and it's going to say, look what I can

do for you. This teaching will cleanse you and search you and scan you and regenerate you if you let it. Look, first, the first thing Jesus is teaching us is he's teaching us the importance of truthfulness, the importance of it. Be just because of the fact that he shows that every yes and every no are gonna be measured as if they're oaths,

they're all observed, I want everything you say to be true, why would he do that? And I'll tell you why I think. You have to realize where it comes in the sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been talking about murder and he's been talking about violence and about power and about sex and about money. And frankly, we're all much more sensitive to that than we are about lies. And one of the reasons is because a lack of untruthfulness is something that just goes down easier. It's something that we tend, we learn to live with, violence and impurity and robbery, and these things are more startling to us, especially in a place like New York, we have

a tendency to live in environments. Some of you live in work environments in which misrepresentations and half-truths and out-and-out lies, you just breathe them. You swim in them. They're just there all the time. And you become, we become the proverbial frog in the kettle. Which means that degree by degree by degree, the frog in the kettle Oblivious sort of happy, not realizing what's happening because it's happening so gradually, as the temperature comes up, the frog and the kettle gets cooked without knowing it. A minister friend of mine was telling me, not, by the way, I'm not recommending this bedside manner for some of you who like to talk to people on airplanes.

He was in an airplane and he was talking to a very rude, very skeptical businessman who was also a salesman. And this businessman was very, very nasty about Christianity and about religion. And the man was trying to be polite. And finally, he says, I don't believe in sin. I don't believe people are sinners. So my minister, friend Louis, cool little bit. And he said, well, let me ask you a question.

Your salesman, have you ever exaggerated a claim or falsified a claim in order to get a sale? And the man looked and he says, well, in the industry, things like this are sort of taken into account. Well, let me ask you another question. Have you ever, on your business expense account, made a claim that really wasn't a business expense. The man looked and says, well now, you know,

anybody who, and finally the minister says, let me ask you one more question. On all this traveling, have you always been absolutely faithful to your wife? The man just stared. Suddenly the man realized, he was a cheat, he was a liar, he was a two-timer, he just admitted it to himself. Now, was this a terrible man?

He's just like anybody else, he's a typical person, he's a frog in a kettle bit by bit by bit by bit. You know, M. Scott Peck wrote, the people of the lie. He says that children lie naturally. He says people are constantly asking, why is there so much evil in the world? He says that's a ridiculous question. Physicists know that in the physical world, things tend to go to more and more random disorder.

The second law of thermodynamics, things break down. He says the same thing is true in the moral world. He actually goes so far as to say, he says the tendency to lie is absolutely natural in a child. if not checked, it leads you into deeper and deeper evil. Let me go to your quote, that children lie, steal, cheat, and want to make reality what they want it to be is routinely observable. The fact that some people grow into honest adults is absolutely remarkable. That's the reason why Jesus says, don't you have to understand, the battle for truthfulness is fought in every little yes and no.

It's not like adultery, really, which is fought in these big crises of temptation. It's not really like robbery or things like that. It's not really like violence. It's really, this is something that can so easily go down. The reason that truthfulness is so important, and I'll give you two reasons why Jesus would bring it up here. Think about this for a moment. This is the hard part.

First of all, truthfulness, he's talking about truthfulness in general and promise keeping in particular, or your true to your word, you live consistently with what you said. That's, first of all, truthfulness is what you need in order to be human. It's the fragile tissue that keeps your humanity together. Lewis Meeds some years ago wrote a great essay on promising and he put it this way.

He says, just as forgiveness is the one way for you to be free from your painful past. So promising, promise keeping, commitment and honesty is the only way to be free from your unpredictable future. Let me look at that with you for a second. First of all, he says, the only way to be human and free in terms of your past is to forgive. Why? If you don't forgive, you're controlled by your past, you're programmed by past, and you're not a human, you're an animal or a machine. Animals are completely controlled by their instincts. Visara. Computers are completely controlled by their programming.

And as long as you refuse to forgive, your past continues to have you by the throat. If you don't forgive, like the Bible says, and like Christ gives you the power to, you are not so much a human, you're not so much free, you're more of an animal on a machine. And then he turns around and says, in the same way, making promises and keeping them, making commitments, being true to people, being true and reliable and dependable, and following through, is the only way you can have freedom in the face of an unpredictable future.

Lewis Meads goes on and says, put it this way, when you make a promise, GK Chesterton actually says a promise is an appointment you make with yourself. If you make a promise, you know what you're going to be doing a week from now, two weeks from now, a year from now, two years from now, ten years from now, you're going to be in a place. That's why, because you promised. You're going to be for this person. You're going to be true to this commitment.

And Lewis Meade says, when you make a promise, you call the world to witness that you are not an animal, pushed about by your feelings, by your moods, by your glands. The fact is you make a promise now, and you say, not my body chemistry, not my conditioning, you say, I'm not an animal, pushed about by heredity, I'm not a computer, pushed about by environment, I'm a free person, I'm a human being, I make a commitment, I stick with it. And he says, what you actually do is you, when you make those promises and you stay true

to those promises and true to those commitments, you become a human being. That's not the way the modern world puts it. The modern world says, oh, if you're really going to be true, if you're really going to be happy in a human person, you've got to be free from obligations. A conversation I hear all the time goes like this. You said you would help me and be part of this firm. Where are you going so soon? You said when you got married to me that you'd stick with me, where are you going so soon?

You said that you would be my friend and here I'm telling you what my problem is, where are you going so soon? And the answer, and this is a very typical modern answer, it goes like this, hey, you got one life to live. I've got to be happy. The most important thing is to find what makes you happy and do that. And what you've got to do the same thing,

I'm sorry that I'm hurting you, but you've got to find out what makes you happy too. If you really want to be human and free, stay away from commitments., promises are a suckers game. So don't make marriage promises live together. So don't join church, it's just come. So don't make commitments, just be friends so you can always keep your options open.

That's the modern idea of what it means to be human. And haven't you seen what Lewis Mead says in that great essay, you're not a human being. You're an animal or you're a computer. You're pushed around. Or I'll put it another way. When I was in the 1960s, when I was in college, all the radicals, and of course they were all my professors. So I had to read it anyway.

Made us read a woman named Hana Arant, who wrote on revolution. But in one book, she's not talking about revolution. She's talking about commitment. And she says a lot of people try to get their identity from their feelings. They say, I have to break my promises. I have to break this in that, because I have to find myself. She says, you'll never find yourself

by looking at your feelings, because 10 years from now, your feelings will be different. Or maybe she says, people try to find themselves through their aspirations. They say, I am what I aspire to be. She says, people try to find themselves through their aspirations. They say, I am what I aspire to be. She says, that's not true. Your aspirations will show you what you want to be, not what you are. The only way to have an identity is to put your faith in something, is to make a promise

to something, is to make a commitment and follow through with it and keep to it regardless of how you feel. In one of her books, Honore and put to this way, she says, without promises, we would never be able to keep our identities. We would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each person's lonely heart,

caught in all its contradictions and equivocations. Lewis made says, since we got married, my wife has lived with five men and they were all me. And he says the only reason that we have had a common identity through all those years is our promise to each other to stick together. She says, if I let go of that promise, he says, I would have no idea who I am. I want to know was I the person I wasn't in my 40s, the person I was in my 30s, the person I was in my 50s, or the person I was in my 60s. And how do I know who I am? I've made commitment.

And my baptism, I made a commitment. At my marriage, I made a commitment. He was a minister. At my ordination, I made a commitment. When I get up on Sunday and I say the apostles create, it's a commitment. Sometimes I don't believe it. Sometimes I don't want to do it.

Sometimes I don't want to follow through. Who am I if I don't stick with my promises? Nobody. I'd never know who I am. Don't you see, put it this way. The world says, and Christians say, two different things. You can either say, South fulfillment comes before truth. Or you can say, truth comes before a South fulfillment.

What Jesus is saying here is, if you put truth before fulfillment, you'll have both. And if you put fulfillment before truth, you'll end up having neither. See the importance of truth? But do you see therefore how the battle is at every yes and every no? Do you realize what happens when we lose truth? Truth is not only necessary to make me a human being, it's necessary for us to treat each other as humans. Imagine, for a moment, a society in which every political leader was expected by the people to lie.

A society in which every business leader was expected by people to not honor contracts unless there was enough money in it. A society in which every academic was actually a fraud and in which every preacher was a hypocrite. You couldn't have a society. There could be no commerce. There could be no family. There could be no academic life. There could be nothing.

Well, you don't have to imagine a society like that. We've had them. Eastern Europe and the communist countries recently collapsed, and all of the indications are they clashed on the inside because the internal rottenness of the fact that nobody trusted anybody. You couldn't believe your political leaders, you couldn't believe the journalists,

you couldn't believe the scholars, you couldn't go to a psychiatrist, a psychiatrist was there to get rid of political activists. The journalist was there to spout the party line. The scholar couldn't really do scholarship, it had to fit in with the party line. Nobody trusted anybody, and former's were everywhere.

And because nobody told the truth anywhere, you couldn't have a civilization. Life was brutalized. Instead of a community, you have a wolf pack. You have gangs. Now listen, all scientific surveys and all experience tells us that in this country we're lying more than we ever have before.

The scientific surveys show that we lie more to employers, we lie to the government more than we ever have. We lie to each other more than we ever have. There's the HUD scandal, there's the SNL crisis. There's the litigation problem that's destroying the ability to do healthcare. We do not trust each other. Our sins will find us out. And when you pad your expense account, you're a frog in a kettle.

Our sins will find us out. God is not mocked what we reap we will sow. Jesus says, every little yes and every little no. Is your yes really yes? every little no, is your yes, really yes, is your no, really no? And one lie, one little polite lie, one little benevolent lie, doesn't ever really add up to that much, but altogether we're getting ourselves cooked. We will get ourselves cooked.

When you decide that this person can't handle the truth, and you say, I can't tell her really how I feel, when you lie, oh, benevolently, because you're just trying to help an incompetent colleague from losing your job. When you lie politely, because you just, you don't think this person could really hear, you know what you've done at that point? You've destroyed community.

You've isolated yourself from him or her. You're treating that person as a child. She or he is not free. You're cutting them off from reality. How paternalistic. Don't you see a typical little polite lie and a typical little benevolent lie doesn't usually add up to much. Jesus is saying lies and truth are fought out in the little things that we say right after the service. an Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn's Evelyn way, another grain of sand on the beach. It's another pebble on the mountain, but eventually

you've got a mountain. God is not mocked. What we reap we will sow. Truth is absolutely critical to our humanity. And every little yes and every little no is a battleground at which that's fought, which way are you going to go? Jesus also tells us when he gives us this yes and no, he also is telling us really the nature of truthfulness and integrity. We can put it this way. The word integrity means, comes from the word integer, which means to be whole, as opposed to fragmented.

And it means simplicity. Now, it doesn't mean simple mindedness, oh no. A person of integrity, which Jesus is meaning when he says, let your yes actually be yes and you know really be no, he means, that the real, the essence of integrity is not even telling a truth but a deception. The essence of truthfulness is sincerity and the essence of falsehood is not simply telling a falsehood as much as it is deception. You know, you can lie just as well by not saying anything at the

right time. You can lie sometimes by telling the truth in a way that will not be believed. But the point that Jesus is making is, a person of integrity is a simple person. You're what you say, what you do, what you think, and where you are is always the same. Let's put it a several ways. A person of integrity is someone who doesn't say one thing and do another.

When you say, I'll call you this week, you do it. When you say, I will be faithful to you, you are faithful. Also, a person of integrity doesn't say one thing and think another. I love to come, but I'll be out of town that day when you wouldn't love to come. I don't think your writing is quite right for our readers. I think it's too sophisticated. When it's trash, saying one thing and thinking another, saying one thing and doing another,

a lack of simplicity, a duplicity, you're in pieces. You're not of a piece. You're convoluted. You're complex. You're complex. A person of integrity is someone who's simple or put it another way. A person of integrity doesn't just say one thing and do another thing, doesn't say one thing and mean another thing and think another thing. Also, a person of integrity doesn't say one thing here and another thing there. People in business look at, you know,

you ahead of a business? Do you say to your customers, we're for quality, but then you put unreasonable deadlines and demands on your workers? They see the duplicity and your sins will find you out. Do you say, you tell everybody to put a lot of orders in just before the end of the quarter, even though, you know, most of them are going to be canceled, but it's going to look really good on the books. Do you say everything's fine on the outside when the people inside the business know nothing is right. Everything is wrong. Do you say one thing, one place and be another thing, another place?

There's got to be a simplicity. It's supposed to be all of the piece, what you say and what you do and what you are when people are looking and what you are when no one is looking must be the same. And that's the whole point behind what Jesus is saying. Every yes, every no is observed, which means you shouldn't be one way when people are looking and another way when people are not looking. And that's how you know you're an honest person. For many in our culture today, biblical Christianity is a dangerous idea, challenging some of their deepest beliefs. In her book Confronting Christianity, 12 hard questions for the world's largest religion. Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin explores the hard questions that keep many people from considering faith in Christ. Tackling issues, including gender and sexuality, science and faith, and the problem of suffering,

McLoxon shows that what seems like roadblocks to faith in Jesus can become signposts to a relationship with Him. Confronting Christianity is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give.

Tom Watson, the golfer, in his very first state tournament, walked up to the putting green at one point, put his putter behind the ball and the ball moved. He looked everywhere and he realized no one had seen it. He walked over to the judge and he said, my ball moved, you're going to have to, you're going to have to, it'll cost me a stroke, it cost me a stroke, it cost me a whole. Is that ridiculous? Is that a necessity? When no one is looking, what are you?

Are you different than when everybody is looking? What Jesus is saying is, every yes and every no is observed. You must not act ever unobserved. Do you understand that? Are you a man? Are you a woman of integrity? If not, you're dehumanizing yourself and you're dehumanizing the people around you. Okay, lastly, now for the tender part. Look, first of all, are we saying a couple of footnotes before we come to our last we saying a couple of footnotes before we come to our last point, a couple of footnotes. Number one, are we saying here that

there is no way that you must ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, no matter how stupid the vow and no matter how abusive the other person is, ever get out of a vow. The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible is giving you a rule. The Bible has lots of, the Bible is very, very, very nuanced and very sophisticated. For example, Jesus prescribes divorce in some cases. We have a great example of a rash vow where Herod says to Salome, I will give you anything you want up to half my kingdom. And Salome says, I want the head of John the Baptist, and Herod said, whoops.

And you see, there are such things as promises that are so sinful and so stupid that it's a more of a sin to keep than to break. Now, does that mean that I'm unraveling everything I've said, even though the Bible makes statements like that? Of course not. You see, promises like Herod's, though you do have to come out even though the Bible makes statements like that? Of course not. You see, promises like herds,

though you do have to come out repenting, though he didn't, he should have, instead of following through in the macho way that he did. That doesn't prove that we're not supposed to keep our promises. That just proves how incredibly important promises are and how incredibly important they are and how valuable they are and how they do humanize and how powerful they are and therefore only how we've got to use them carefully. Nuclear power alcohol can be twisted and used and they can kill people or they can be used

in wonderful ways. And the same thing is true with promises. Here's one more thing. Another footnote, another qualification. There are people who say, I'm committed to the truth, I'm very committed to the truth. I believe in telling the truth. I'm a straight shooter.

That's why I tell people, people don't like it. Now, if people don't like it, now look. On the one hand, I must say, people of integrity can be pretty frightening. In casualties of war, that movie, the whole movie is about the fact that one man, private Ericsson, sees a war at a time atrocity, and he tells the truth about it, even though it puts his life and his career in total jeopardy. And Vincent Canby, when he was reviewing this in the New York Times, was very honest about it.

He says, you know, the problem with people who are absolutely honest like that, who will jeopardize their life and career just to tell the truth, can be says, we may admire such selfless moral courage, but that kind of purity of spirit is frightening to us. We don't like it. And I'm not saying that if you become a person of integrity, people are going to have trouble with you.

On the one hand, they'll want you on their side, they'll know who you are, that you're approachable, they'll know what they're getting with you, they'll know you're giving a fair shake, and they'll like you. On the other hand, they'll be kind of scared of you too. Because you see telling fibs and misrepresentations is so much a part of the way in which we do things in the world. That if you're a person of integrity, I'm not saying that you won't be unpopular. What I am trying to say is this, a lot of people, when they say, I'm for the truth, you're

really just irritable. It says in Ephesians 4, 16, speak the truth in love. Paul is not saying that love conditions you're telling the truth. What Paul is saying is, if you don't speak the truth in love, you're not really honoring the truth. If you tell the truth anywhere anytime, you don't care about the fact that you're saying it in the wrong tone, you're saying it at the wrong time, in the wrong setting, that you're not, or maybe that you're not supposed to be the person to say it.

Other at shows that you don't care about whether the truth gets through. If you don't speak the truth in love, and just speak the truth, you just blur it out at the worst possible times, and in the most hurtful possible ways, that doesn't show that you want or the truth. Truth without love isn't honoring the truth. You don't really want the truth to get through. You're just an irritable person. So don't think that when we talk about truthfulness and commitment and keeping your promises, that that means that you do this in a way it's not loving. Truth without love really isn't truth. Love without truth really isn't

love. They have to be together. Okay, last. How do you become a person of integrity? And in a way, we've got it right here. They're all here. First of all, you become a person of integrity with a hard truth and a tender truth and a humble truth. The hard truth is this. He says, let your yes be yes, you know, be no because you can't even change the hair on your head from black to white. Now look, they had hair die back then too. But what Jesus is trying to say is you didn't create your head, you didn't create the city.

You are a creature. And if you don't tell the truth, you inevitably come up against the fact that you are a creature and therefore there are laws of design. Why is it wrong to commit adultery? Why is it wrong to tell lie and why is it wrong to breathe underwater? They try to breathe underwater. Why? All for the same reason. The reason it's wrong to breathe underwater is because it doesn't work.

And the reason it doesn't work is because there's a law of design. You're a law of design. You're a law of built for it. And they'll destroy you if you break that law. And the same reason that you're supposed to not commit adultery and not tell a lie is the same reason that you're not supposed to be breathing underwater. What is it?

You were designed for the truth. And maybe the destruction will not be as quick as if you try to breathe underwater, but it'll actually be worse. You can't escape. That's the reason why Jesus says, the reason you must tell the truth is because everything is his, everything is his, the heavens are his, the earth is his, the city is his, your head is his.

You must tell the truth because you've got to honor your creator and you cannot escape it. Secondly, the other reason, of course, the Christians know that we're His, is not just because He created us, but because He redeemed us. You know, where Paul says, you're not Your own, you're bought with a price. If you want to really understand integrity,

and if you want to have your heart motivated to integrity, watch how Jesus acted when no one was looking. Look at the Garden of Gisemini. Everybody was asleep, nobody was around, and nobody even knew yet what he promised. You know, he tried to tell his disciples that he was going to die for this arsons. They never got it. And so at the point where Jesus was sweating blood, where he was being crushed, where he suddenly finally sensed what it was going to be to take the punishment for the sins of the world.

He looked at his father when no one was looking and he said, I don't want to do this. I'm scared, but I'll do it, not my will, but thine be done. If you look at Jesus dying in the dark for you, when no one's looking, you'll be able to live in the dark for him when no one's looking. When you think about what he did, when you think about the integrity of what he did, you'll look at yourself, are you doing things in the dark where no one's looking that you're being untrue to people, you're being untrue to God, you're being untrue

to your own standards? What are you like when no one's looking? Look at Jesus. You see, you need both tough and tender truths to make you a person of honesty. On the one hand, he's your creator, and you're never gonna get away with it. On the other hand, he's your creator, and you're never going to get away with it. On the other hand, he's your redeemer,

and look what he did for you, and you need both kinds of truths to really turn you into a person of honesty. It's not enough just to feel guilty about lying. You've got to say, look at what he's done for me. Look at his integrity. Look at how he was when no one was looking. Because he knew actually, there's always somebody looking

that everything's observed. Lastly, if there's anybody here who says, boy, if this is what Christianity is, count me out, I could never be that honest. You have missed the point of the gospel. You know what the gospel is? It goes like this. Jesus told a story to the Pharisees.

They were legalistic types. They didn't understand that you're saved by grace. They didn't understand that you're saved because Jesus died for you. They thought that what it meant to be religious was really just to be a good person, moral and honest. Jesus told them a parable. He said, a man talked to two young men and said,

please go out into the field and work for me. And the first man said, I will, and he never went. And the second man said, I won't, but later on repented and went. Now which one was obedient to his father? And the Pharisees said the second one. And Jesus said, right, and that's why the prostitutes and the pimps go into the kingdom of heaven before you. What was he saying? He was saying, it's not your record, but your willingness to repent. In other words, the only honesty that I really need to save you is your willingness to be honest about your dishonesty.

The only honesty that you've really got to have for me to save you is to be honest that you are dishonest. And the only dishonesty that'll damn you is your unwillingness to be honest that you're dishonest. What you really need today in order for him to come into your life and make you into a person of integrity, a person of purity, a spirit that might be frightening, but also everybody wants, is for you to say, I am dishonest. You know where dishonest you started?

It started in Genesis 3, the minute that Adam and Eve decided that they would be their own masters. They had to get dishonest. They started to hide. You know why? If there's anybody in this room that believes that you can live your life without complete submission to Jesus Christ, you're out of touch with reality. That's why you're so defensive about criticism.

That's the reason why you don't like it when people don't treat you with somebody. You desperately need to feel like somebody, you know why? You're running from the truth. You're dishonest about your dependence. And because you're dishonest about your dependence, you can't be honest about anything else. So honesty starts right here, please. Admit that you're a dishonest person.

Admit that you don't like the truth. Admit that you run from reality. Admit that you lie. And that's the one place where you're honest. That's the one honesty that you have to give to Jesus. So if you think, oh, there'd be a Christian means I've got to be, have a perfectly great moral record. I've got to be totally honest, I can never keep it up.

You've missed the point. You're actually halfway there. You're more than halfway there. You're willing to admit that you can't do this. You're willing to admit you haven't done this. Then come to him and say, Lord, be my savior. Make me a person of integrity. So that my yes will really be yes.

And my no will really be no. Let's pray. Father as we take the next couple of minutes to think about how we have been dishonest, help us to be honest with our spouses, help us to be honest with our employers, help us to be honest with ourselves, help us to be honest with you, and show us that the door to honesty is repentance, a recognition of what Jesus did for us there in the dark. Willingness to acknowledge the fact that we are creatures and we are dependent on you and we can't avoid the reality that you are the measure of.

We ask that all these things would sink in our hearts, how we would love to be a community in which, in a place where people more and more are falling away from the truth, we are characterized by integrity, uprightness, dependability of Father, give us this, give us this, or we lose everything. Help us to begin to fight the battle with your help. In every yes and no, the minute we get up from here

and begin to speak to each other, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. podcast, please rate and review it so more people can discover the hope of the gospel and thanks again for listening. This month's sermons were recorded in 1993 and 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the gospel and life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. in church.