I SWEAR…
Matthew 5:33-37

In the next great section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims the validity of telling the truth.  We live today in an age that has a great credibility gap.  We have been so exposed to half-truths, broken promises, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and betrayed confidences that we question most of what is related to us.  No arena in life has been kept from the shames of shady truth.  From government to business to education to family life, we search for truth.

Ted Koppel, the host of ABC television’s Night Line, stated in a speech given to the International Radio and Television Society, What is largely missing in American life today is a sense of context, of saying or doing anything that is intended or even expected to live beyond the moment.  There is no culture in the world that is so obsessed as ours with immediacy.  In our journalism, the trivial displaces the momentous because we tend to measure the importance of events by how recently they happened.  We have become so obsessed with facts that we have lost all touch with truth.  Friends, those are powerful words from a man whose career has centered upon the discerning of truth from those he has interviewed.

The Roman orator, Cicero, said that truth is the highest thing a man may experience.  Daniel Webster related that there is nothing as powerful as truth and often nothing as strange.  Even the Jews of Jesus’ day held truth in high esteem. 

So, why did Jesus feel the need to touch on truth in His sermon?  It was because the religious leaders of the day were misusing the emphasis on truth to accomplish their own purposes.

In the Old Testament, men were permitted to take an oath, even in God’s name.  Listen to these words from Deuteronomy 10:20, You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name.  Abraham, Jacob, and David are among the many Old Testament saints who are recorded as making an oath in the name of the Lord.

In the New Testament, Jesus Himself used oaths to affirm the truth.  At least 77 times, Jesus began a statement by saying, “Truly I say to you” and on 24 occasions he used the phrase, “Truly, truly, I say to you.”  We also find that the Apostle Paul used oaths, even invoking God as his witness in Romans 1:9, where he wrote:  For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you.

In our next study, we shall focus upon some biblical principles concerning oaths and how the Jews were misusing oaths to accomplish their selfish purposes.  Plan to join me for that important study.

Father, I praise You because You are truth.  You are absolute truth.  There is no variance with You.  You never change Your words.  You never lie.  You never mislead us with half-truths.  Father, as we have already discovered in our study of this Sermon, Your word never changes and it will not pass away, ever.  Thank You that we can depend upon You for truth.  We give You praise in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

 

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