Transcript
Podcast Host (0:04)
Welcome to Gospel and Life. The Bible tells us there's a difference between outward self control and the deep lasting change only the Holy Spirit can bring. In Galatians, Chapter 5, Paul calls these inner transformations the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience and more. Join us today as Tim Keller explores one of the fruit of the Spirit.
Reader (0:33)
The reading for today is taken from the book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 14 and 15, 20, 25 and verse 29. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head that is Christ. You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him according with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitudes of your minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor. For we are all members of one body. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others upon according to their needs, that it may benefit those who will listen. This is the word of the Lord.
Tim Keller (2:04)
Galatians 5, 22:23 lists what's called the fruit of the Spirit. These are characteristics descriptors of a supernaturally changed heart, love, joy, peace, patience. And we're looking at one each week so that perhaps we can have more of the supernatural change in our own lives. And today we come to faithfulness. And the word faithfulness is honesty, integrity, truthfulness. And this is a great text that we're going to be looking at so we can take a deeper look at what that means. And there couldn't be a more relevant topic because of the economic crisis, the recession and the revelations that have come out since then. Our trust, Americans trust of their institutions, business, government, church is at an all time low. All the studies show that because there is a sense that there's been a failure of integrity in our society at all levels. And what does the Bible have to say about this? Therefore very relevant and all important sub this particular text is going to show us that there are two problems with regard to truth. There's a problem of practicing truthfulness. But then there's also a problem of abusing people with the truth. So there's a problem of practicing truth, and then there's a problem of abusing people with the truth. And then we're going to see what the solution is, how we solve both problems. Okay, first. First there's the problem of practicing truth. It's a very demanding thing according to the Bible. And what's great about this passage is there's three very important aspects to being truthful people that are all mentioned. What does it mean to be truthful? First, it means to refuse to deceive people, to not deceive people. Notice verse 14 and 15. Verse 15 says, instead, Speak the truth instead of what? And right. In verse 14, it says, cunning, craftiness, and deceit. Now, this is extremely important because if you and I, you and I tend to think of lying strictly as conveying inaccurate statements. But the bible long ago understood what today is called speech act theory. Do you know what speech act theory is? Speech act theory is the insight that every word is actually also a deed. We tend to say, you know, word, deed are two different things. But every word is really a deed. That is, every word is not only designed to convey information, it's also designed to get something done. It's got an intention, it's got a purpose. And in order to evaluate a word or a phrase, you need to not only evaluate whether it's conveying accurate information, but also evaluate what its purpose is. So, for example, there's been a theft at the office, your office. And you know Mr. A did it, but you want to protect and cover for Mr. A. So the investigators come, and you don't want to lie to them, see, and they say, who did it? What did you see? And you say, I saw Mr. B there that very night. Is that a lie? Technically, you're telling the. You're saying what actually happened. It's factually true. Mr. B was there that night. You did see Mr. B there that night. But what's the purpose of the statement? It's misdirection. It's to hide. It's to deceive. You're trying to get them to run down a. You know, you're throwing them a red herring. And therefore, what is, according to the Bible, an untruthful word. An untruthful word is any word that deliberately tries to hide reality from the listener. Every listener that asks you a question. If you lie to them, that means you are deliberately withholding reality as you know it to be from them. And therefore, if you're deceiving whether or not what you said is technically true or not, that's a lie and it's wrong. And as a result, by the way, what that does mean is once you realize what the Bible's saying here, it does expand your understanding, does it not, of untruthful speech. So somebody once made this little polite lies, euphemisms, exaggerations, word inflation and so called benevolent lies. But they're all lies. So here's a polite lie. I would love to go, but I'll be out of town. But you won't be out of town. Here's a euphemism. I think your writing is too sophisticated for our readers. When you mean it's too terrible for our readers, but you don't want to say it's terrible. You upset them. It's a euphemism, but it's a lie. See, exaggeration. This works inside marriage. You always, you never. Well now, of course that's not true because the person you are berating sometimes doesn't or sometimes does. But when you say you always, you never what you're actually with speech act theory here. You know, even if it's pretty much true, you're bludgeoning the person. Besides that, you're exaggerating. So the person's going to find the part of what you're saying that's wrong and it's just going to inflame things and you're going to be up very late tonight. Or word inflation. And here's something. Now think about this, everybody. This is something that Christians do particularly, but it can be done everywhere. Whenever public discourse in a church is, it's such a blessing. The Lord was there, it was just incredible. Now what happens is sometimes the Lord is there and sometimes it is a blessing, and sometimes it's incredible. When it's always a blessing, it's always incredible. You're just creating cynicism, especially amongst your kids, just creating cynicism. It's word inflation. And so what you're actually doing is. It's not, it's deceptive. It's just a way of always. It's hype. Hype is deceptive. Hype isn't reality. And then you've got a whole pile of little, what you call benevolent lies. There's, there's enabling lies, like when you continually lie for an incompetent friend when you actually ought to be confronting him or her about how they're living. Or then you have Watergate lies. You know what Watergate lies are. Watergate lies are. Well, the little people wouldn't understand. It's just too complicated for them. So this is what I'm going to say. This is all deception. To live a life of truthfulness means to refuse to deceive, number one. Number two, secondly, to live a life of truthfulness according to the Bible is to make and keep promises. That actually comes out, though you might not see it immediately. In verse 25 we should. If you're a Christian, you should tell the truth to everybody, of course. But in verse 25 it actually says speak truthfully to your neighbor. Now that might sound in that case like anybody, but then it says, for we are members of one body. And here he's talking about Christian to Christian and that members of one body is a covenant image. A covenant is an agreement. A covenant is a commitment. A covenant is a public commitment you enter into by signing a contract or making a promise. And here we're told that Christians are people who are not afraid of, they make and they keep promises. We live in a culture in which there is so much emphasis on personal freedom, personal freedom, keeping your options open, that people no longer make promises at places that they used to. And if they do make them, they feel very, very free to break them as soon as it means any, it entails any self denial at all. Let me just give you two examples and I'll immediately backpedal. Okay, two examples of places where people used to make promises but now they don't make promises. One is living together without being married, secondly, being very involved in the church without joining. In both cases you're not making the promise that you used to. Now right away somebody's going to say, are you equating those two things? I am not equating them. I'm not saying they're equally wrong or bad. What I'm saying is 40 years ago neither of them happened very much. And the reason they didn't happen very much was because the idea of making a promise and nailing it down and committing yourself, in a sense committing yourself and shutting down your options wasn't considered the horrible thing that it is today. But it is. And so it permeates us all. And one of the problems is that we actually think one of the reasons is we're so big on our freedom that we feel like if I make promises and I make commitments and I stick with them, that somehow I'll lose my freedom. And that is not true at all. Lewis Meads in his great book Mere Morality, which is an exposition of the Ten Commandments talks about this at one place. He's talking about making promises and keeping commitments and taking vows. And he's thinking. You can hear when he talks about it. He's thinking somewhat about the marriage vow, but he's actually. What he's. What he's saying in this quote is true of all promises and all commitments. He says this. When we make a promise, we take it on ourselves to create a future with someone else. No matter what fate or destiny may have in store. This is almost ultimate freedom. When I make a promise, I bear witness that my future with you is not determined by the hand I was dealt out of my family's genetic deck. When I make a promise, I testify that I was not routed along some unalterable itinerary by the psychic conditioning visited on me by my slightly wacky parents. I am not fated. I am not determined. I am not a lump of human dough whipped into shape by the contingent reinforcement and aversive conditioning of my past. Now, I know as well as the next person that much of what I am and what I do is a gift or a curse from my past. But when I make a promise to anyone, I rise above all the conditioning that limits me. No German shepherd ever promised to be there with me. No computer ever promised to be loyal for life. Only a person can make a promise. And when he does, he is most free. You see, when you say, but if I make that promise, if I make that commitment, if I promise to be there, then I won't have my freedom. And what he's saying is the opposite. Don't you realize that if you don't make a promise, then you are a slave to circumstances. You're a slave to feelings, slave to fears. You're a slave to impulses. Make a promise, and that's your way of saying, this is the way I'm going to be. And I don't care about whatever else happens. And that makes you more free. And to be people of integrity. We should be people who are not afraid of making promises and keeping promises. So refusing to deceive, making and keeping promises. And the third aspect of what it means to practice truth and be truthful is integrity of selves. Plural integrity of selves. Look at verse 25, where it says, therefore each of you must put off falsehood. But do you know what it says in the original Greek is you must put off the pseudo. That's the Greek word, the pseudo. And this is what he is talking about. Think of the word integrity in English. It's the same as the word integer. What is an integer? It's a whole number, not a fraction, something that can't be divided. It's a whole number. What is integrity? A person of integrity has the same self in every place. You don't have a pseudo self and a real self. So, for example, a person who lacks integrity is one way in private and another way in public. This is the reason why politicians should be really careful about those live microphones. You're one way in private, another way in public, without integrity. You are one way with this group and a total another way with this group. You talk a completely different line than this. What you say, what you say, you believe. It's totally different. Okay? A person of integrity, however, is the same in private as in public. The same with this group, as with that group, the same in what you think, with what you say, and the same with what you say, with what you do. You don't have multiple selves, a real self and a bunch of pseudo selves. You got one self, one real self, and boy, is this lacking. If I had time, I would talk about all the cultural reasons why we're actually encouraged by the culture to create totally different cells. What do you think? What do you think all those Internet names are? You create totally different cells. We're encouraged by it. But let me just give you one example of how devastating it is in just one area, which I mentioned at the top, which is business. A man who was some years ago just writing a book on how to have integrity as a business leader just wrote these things down. I just pulled them off because they're routine, but they also are very revealing. He says, don't say publicly we're for quality, but privately you have unreasonable deadlines and all your employees know it. Don't take friends to company box seats when everybody knows you should only be bringing clients there. Don't say publicly everything is fine when all your employees know everything is not fine. Don't give huge perks to management and not to others. Don't put in a big number of orders right before the end of the quarter, because even though you know they will all be canceled, it will look so good in the figures for the quarter. When you hear that kind of thing, you suddenly realize, oh, my word, we just swim in that. I'm back to my. The illustration. Don't ask a fish to tell you about water, because then the fish will say, well, what's water? Because the fish is so in the water, the fish doesn't even see there was water and Maybe we're getting to the place where we can't even say to people in business, in government, in the church, in real life, just life, be people of integrity, because they don't even know what that is because they are so used to the kind of behavior that this man said, don't do, don't do. But we just swim in it. It's just everywhere. All through this passage. The reason why we should be truthful comes back to God, does it not? We should be righteous and truthful and holy because God is truthful and righteous and holy. And the implication of that, if you're a Christian believer, there's a place in the Sermon on the Mount. When you're reading through the Sermon on the Mount, a lot of this stuff makes sense. When you get to this place, it doesn't seem to make sense. It's about oaths. And there's a place where Jesus says, don't swear by the city of Jerusalem and don't swear by your head, but let your yes be yes and let your no be no. And you say, what? And here's what he meant by that. In those days, it was understood or believed that if you swore by God, the name of God, then you couldn't ever break your oath. That probably goes to their understanding of the Ten Commandments. It says, you must not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Which means you must never take the name of God on and then not follow through. If you invoke God's name, then you better follow through. But they said if you. If you. If you swear on something else, if you swear on your father's grave, or if you swear on the city of Jerusalem, or if you swear on your own head, that's different. If you make a promise like that, it's not so bad if you break it. And you know what Jesus is saying? Don't you dare believe that. He says, don't you understand? Jerusalem is God's city. Your head is God's. God made your head. Your father's grave is God's. He says, don't you realize that every yes and every no, everything you say, every day, every idle word is under oath, as much under oath as if you were because you are standing before the throne of the great king. Absolutely. There's no levels of truthfulness. Absolutely everything you say is actually under oath. If I told you that tomorrow somebody's going to follow you around and is going to video every single thing you do and every single thing you say, would you speak with more integrity? Would you be more careful how you spoke to your spouse or to your friends or to the person that you're pitching a deal to, you know, prospective client? Would you be at all more careful if you knew it was being, it was being recorded and then tomorrow it was going to be put up on the Internet? Would you be more careful? I would. And you would. And if we're Christians, we're fools because it's true that we would be more careful. And yet Jesus Christ says, don't you realize you're under way more scrutiny than that? Every single one of your words is being held to far greater accountability than a few thousand people watching it on the Internet. God, the God of truth, the God of righteousness, the God of holiness, you're standing right before Him.