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    Sep 11, 2022

    Friends Don’t Lie

    Friends Don’t Lie

    Passage: Deuteronomy 5:20

    Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

    Series: Life in Ten Words

    Misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information: these words are now all too familiar, but they’ve been present in human experience far longer than our last two years of upheaval. Whether from the real disappointments of our shared institutions (including the church), or from bad actors out to sow chaos, suspicion pervades. We wonder if we’re really hearing the truth. But the problem “out there” is something each of us has to contend with within. The ninth commandment speaks to the context of the law court, trying to uphold the dignity of each person and ensure just ends in every dispute. But its principle has every domain of human experience in view. Why do we lie? What will make us speaking and living in the truth more desirable?

    *09.18.2022 Update: Due to issues with our AV Equipment, the recording of this week's sermon is not available. We apologize for the inconvenience.

    Readings & Scripture

    PREPARATION: Psalm 15: 1-3, 5
    LEADER: O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent?
    Who shall dwell on your holy hill?

    PEOPLE: He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
    and speaks truth in his heart;

    LEADER: who does not slander with his tongue
    and does no evil to his neighbor,
    nor takes up a reproach against his friend;

    AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) John 8:34-44 or WLC

    LEADER: John 8:34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

    LEADER: What are the duties required in the ninth commandment? WLC 144

    ALL: The duties required in the ninth commandment are, the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man, and the good name of our neighbor, as well as our own; appearing and standing for the truth; and from the heart, sincerely, freely, clearly, and fully, speaking the truth, and only the truth, in matters of judgment and justice, and in all other things: Whatsoever; a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for, and covering of their infirmities; freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency; a ready receiving of a good report, and unwillingness to admit of an evil report, concerning them; discouraging talebearers, flatterers, and slanderers; love and care of our own good name, and defending it when need requires; keeping of lawful promises; studying and practicing of: Whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely, and of good report.

    ALL: He who does these things shall never be moved.
    ALL: Thanks be to God.

    CENTRAL TEXT: Deuteronomy 5:20, Ephesians 4:17-25
    Deut. 5:20 “ ‘And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

    Eph. 4:17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

    Eph. 4:25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

    BENEDICTION: 2 John 3
    LEADER: Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son,
    ALL: in truth and love. Amen!

    RELATED SCRIPTURES:

    • Psalm 15
    • Psalm 16:5-6

    DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

    1. Name a time you were lied to. How did you discover the deception? How did you feel and respond?
    2. Now, ever been caught in something less than the truth–perhaps when you were younger (because adults never deceive, right?) On reflection, why did deception seem a preferable choice to full transparency? Broaden the question now: Why do we lie? Name all the reasons.
    3. Now list all the dangers of deceit–whether mentioned or omitted in the sermon.
    4. Now wrestle: how shall we think of those clear biblical examples of people not telling the whole truth (for example, the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1or Rahab in Joshua 2)? How might you respond to someone who takes the ninth commandment to the degree that truth is even of greater value than one’s own or others’s lives?
    5. Why does insisting on pairing truth and love revolutionize the act of speaking the truth? What happens when those are separated? And when they remain paired? Can you give examples?
    6. From the sermon, what true witness/testimony did Jesus bear against us? What true witness did he bear for us? (For both questions think about how the cross is more than an tool of execution but a testimony about the truth.) How does that serve to help us see the value of truth-telling?

    QUOTES: 

    • In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
    • It seems to me that the intellectualization. . .of principles and values in this country is one of the things that’s gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me, like ‘It’s really important not to lie.’ OK, check, got it. I nod at that but I really don’t feel it. Until I get to be about thirty and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can’t trust you. I feel that I’m in pain, I’m nervous, I’m lonely, and I can’t figure out why. Then I realize, ‘Oh, perhaps the way to deal with this is really not to lie. . . .’  That seems to me like something our generation needs to feel. David Foster Wallace
    • The moment we consider our dishonesty from the perspective of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed….  Sam Harris, Lying
    • Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that “Truth is mighty and will prevail” — the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal. There in Boston is a monument to the man who discovered anesthesia; many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didn’t discover it at all, but stole the discovery from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will it prevail? Ah, no, my hearers, the monument is made of hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years — except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then, of course, but that is no merit of yours.  Mark Twain (HT: Alan Jacobs)
    • Telling the truth, therefore, is not solely a matter of moral character. It is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
    • There are no facts, only interpretations. Nietzsche

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