Breaking Free


04/10/2011 - Leaving Falsehood for Truth



There's a story that's told about a young man who lived in a European town in the Middle Ages who was sent to monk. And when he stood in the monk's presence he had a confession to make. He said, "I've sinned by telling slanderous statements about someone that weren't true. What should I do?"

The monk was silent and thought about it for awhile and then said, "Go and put a feather on every doorstep in town." That's all he said.

And so the young man went out and did just what the monk told him to do. He put a feather on every door step in his village. And then a day or two later he came back to the monk wondering if there was anything else he should do.

And the monk said, "Yes, there is. Go back now and pick up all the feathers from those doorsteps."

The young man said, "That's impossible! By now the wind has blown them all over town. There's no way I can retrieve them!"

The monk replied, "So it is with your slanderous words. They've been blown all over town and are impossible to retrieve."

That's a simple story. I heard it years ago, but I never forgot it. Hopefully you won't either. It's a simple story, but it's a chilling one and a sober reminder of the power of words. And that's what I want to talk about today.

This morning we continue our series called Breaking Free: Leaving the Old Self for the New with a teaching I've called "Leaving Falsehood for Truth." This is a series that parallels the sacred season of Lent that we're in right now. Lent started on Ash Wednesday and lasts forty days right up until Easter Sunday.

It's a season for reflection and repentance and response to the death of our Savior Jesus Christ and his miraculous resurrection because as far as we can tell the tomb is empty. Jesus is alive and that makes all the difference!

But you can't have a resurrection unless you have a death. And so the question we've been asking ourselves during this season is what needs to die in us so that we can really live? What are the chains that enslave us and keep us from becoming people who reflect the image of God to the world?

The backdrop for the series has been the miraculous event of the Exodus where God rescues his people from bondage in Egypt and brings them to freedom in the Promised Land. It's the seminal story of redemption and deliverance in the Scriptures. And this Wednesday night we're going to meet here to observe a Passover meal together to remember that event the way God commanded his people to remember.

God redeemed and rescued the Israelites from Egypt because God wanted to show the world what he's like. The nation was to put flesh and blood on the Almighty. They were to give God a body. They were to be a kingdom of priests reflecting God's image to the rest of the world.

But shortly after they came out Egyptand passed through the Red Sea they started grumbling. They wanted to go back to the old life.

In Exodus 16:3 we read, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

"We were better off in our old life," they said. The story of the Exodus is a sad commentary on humanity. God is trying to shape a new kind of people in the world and yet they keep resisting him. They miss the point again and again and again.

But God hasn't given up on having a people is this world who represent him. Now through the power of Christ's resurrection God is trying to shape you and me so that we reflect his image to the world. He wants us to leave behind the old life and put on the new. Following Jesus is a lot more than just about what we believe it's also about how we behave.

The apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 4:22-24, 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; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

And his first application of that has to do with the words that come out of our mouth. Verse 25, Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

Truth tellers. That's what God wants us to be because that's who God is and we were created to be like God. Hebrews 6:18 says It is impossible for God to lie. It is IMPOSSIBLE for God to lie. Any questions? He just can't do it. That's why he's worthy of our trust. Jesus describes himself as the Truth in John 14:6 when he says,I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. God is all about truth and one way we reflect his image in this world is through truth telling.

A poll was taken awhile back asking churches what they most desired in a pastor. And more important than speaking ability or excellence in leadership or ministry skills or even personal example was honesty. People want a pastor they can trust. They want their leaders to be truth tellers, straight shooters, men and women of utmost integrity.

But unfortunately not all pastors are like that which is why in the 2010 Galluppoll on honesty and ethics clergy ranked 7th behind nurses, military officers, pharmacists, grade school teachers, medical doctors and police officers. We got to do better than that. At least we came in ahead of judges, and auto mechanics.

People want their leaders to tell the truth. Employees want their employers to tell the truth. They want to work for an honest man or an honest woman, someone that will deal truthfully with them. Flip that equation over and ask employers what they want most in their employees and they'll tell you the same thing. They want to be able to trust their workers.

When I was growing up, my dad was in the food business and operated a number of supermarkets. He was a boss. And I can remember him coming home at night and grumbling around the kitchen table about how difficult it was to find good help. Honest men and women that he could trust to work the registers, to make the deposits, to unload the trucks, to stock the shelves without lifting merchandise from the back room. His biggest problem with theft didn't come from his customers, it came from his employees.

Ask single people what they're looking for in a spouse and at the top of the list is someone they can trust. Ask couples who have healthy, thriving marriages how they've been able to pull it off over all these years and they'll tell you it's because somewhere along the line they made a wall to wall commitment to be open and honest with each other, authentic and real, no secrets, no masks. The same can be said for best friends who've walked through life together.

People have had it with deceit. And I hope you have too. Have you ever been on the receiving end of a rumor or a story that wasn't true? Have you ever been betrayed, lied to or lied about? There aren't many things in life that are worse than that. It ties you up in knots, dominates your thinking and can take years off your life. You can't sleep at night until the truth is finally revealed.

The most difficult experiences I've ever had in over twenty five years of church ministry have happened when the truth wasn't being told and rumors were being circulated and I felt powerless to stop them. I can think of two distinct seasons of my life that almost did me in because of that. Abraham Lincoln once said, "A lie will get half way around the world, before the truth gets its boots on." That's so true.

The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about controlling our tongues. It mentions our words more than any other subject. Almost 150 times in 31 chapters, which averages to about five times each chapter, God says something about how we talk.

Proverbs 12:22 says, The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.

Proverbs 15:4 says, A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.

So we need to put off falsehood and speak truthfully to one another. Falsehood and deceit are part of the old life, truth telling is part of the new. But how do we do that? How do we become men and women of honesty and integrity? Well, let me give you four ways that I think can help up your batting average in this area of your life.

First, speak less. Cut down on your words. Proverbs 10:19 says,When words are many sin is not absent, but the prudent hold their tongues.

The more we open our mouth the more chance we have of getting ourselves into trouble by exaggerating, or making promises we can't keep, or saying things we don't mean, or things that we'll regret later, or spreading gossip, or violating confidentiality, on and on it goes. We can cut down on those things if we just talk less. And if we're going to be a healing community like we've talked about here at Valley View we need to do less talking and more listening to each other.

Proverbs 17:28 says,Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.

If you keep your mouth shut, even if you're a fool people will think you're wise. A fool in the Hebrew Scriptures is not someone with a low I.Q. or a poor SAT score. A fool is someone who doesn't understand how to live in relationship with God, someone who doesn't know how life works. But even fools are thought wise if they keep their mouths shut.

Ecclesiastes 10:12-13 says, Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious, but fools are consumed by their own lips. At the beginning their words are folly. At the end they are wicked madness and fools multiply words.

Do you know how many words you speak in a day? People who count things like that say that the average American speaks between 10,000 and 25,000 words a day. Now I know that's quite a range. And apparently it has something to do with gender, but I'm not going go there. I'd be a fool to do that! But whether it's 10,000 or 25,000, that's a lot of words in one day. There's plenty of room to cut back.

So put off falsehood and put on the truth by speaking less. And my next point should help with that.

Second, think before you speak. That little pause between what's in our mind and what comes out of our mouth is huge.

Jesus' brother James wrote in James 1:19,My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

Think before you speak. Sometimes I think we can convince ourselves that somehow our mouth works independently from our brain, that the two aren't really connected. But they are. We can control what we say.

I heard about a woman who had just received a new position as the assistant to the CEO of a large corporation. And early on he asked her to tell those who called that he wasn't in his office when he really was. That was routine for him, it was no big deal, but she wouldn't do it, she felt it was a lie. And when he found out that she wouldn't do it he was furious and called her into his office and said, "When I tell you to do something you do it. I could fire you for that." And in the heat of that moment she said very calmly, "Sir, I couldn't do that, because if I can lie for you, then I can also tell a lie to you. And you wouldn't want an assistant like that, would you?" Touché!

We can control the words that come out of our mouths. Before you speak think, "Is what I'm saying true?" But more than just being true, think, "Is what I'm saying necessary?" And that leads to my next point.

Third, speak the truth in love. Truth telling doesn't mean that we tell the whole truth all the time and go around blowing people away with our honest observations and our unsolicited criticisms no matter how true they might be.

Our truth telling must be tempered with love. Ephesians 4:15 says, Speak the truth in love. Later on in that same chapter Paul says in verse 29,say only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

I thank God for the people in my life who over the years have encouraged me with their kind words. And there have been many. We all so desperately need to be built up with encouragement. But I also thank God for the people who have had the courage to say hard things to me when I've needed to hear them. That includes my wife, my kids, a few good friends, and those I've served with in ministry. I haven't always liked what they've had to say. But all of them at one time or another have taken risks to speak the truth in love.

Proverbs 27:6 says,Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. Do you have any truth tellers in your life? People who love you enough to shoot straight with you? We all need them.

But sometimes the best thing we can do with the truth is to bury it. We need to speak truth. But we don't need to speak all the truth all the time. Love covers a multitude of sins.

Proverbs 17:9 says,Whoever covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. We need God's wisdom to know what to share and when and how to share it. We need to know how to keep things confidential if we're going to be safe people and have a healing community.

So we can put off falsehood and put on truthby speaking less, thinking before we speak, speaking the truth in love, and finally by speaking the truth about ourselves.

In our last series calledThe Healing Power of Love we talked about the importance of having an accurate view of ourselves because if we don't we can cave into all sorts of lies like I'm nothing, I'm a mess, I'm a failure, nobody loves me, nobody cares, I don't belong, I don't have a future, I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not fast enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not thin enough and on and on it goes. That internal dialogue can kill us. It's full of lies.

The truth is that we are loved and we do belong and we do count and we can change. That's the truth about you. But we're not perfect and so sometimes we need to own up to the things we do and say that hurt people.

In our pre-marital counseling sessions we tell every couple that the goal of marriage is oneness. God created the two to become one. I believe marriage is the most intimate form of community that we can experience on this earth.

But community is not something we achieve on our wedding day or on our honeymoon and then just sit back and relax and enjoy it. No. All our married life we move in and out of community with our spouse.

There are times we feel so close to our spouse that we think we're connected at the hip or better yet ... at the heart. And those are the times we want to last forever. But then life hits. And we go through times where we feel like total strangers sleeping in the same bed ... 6 inches apart, but 6,000 miles away from each other.

Oneness flows in and out of a relationship and when we're out of it, we need the courage and the humility to get back into it. Conflict destroys community, but confession restores community with twelve little words, "I am sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me. I love you." Those twelve words spoken from the heart have the power to keep marriages growing in oneness for a lifetime and all our relationships healthy. Because the truth is there are times when we do mess up and we need to confess our sin one to another in order to be healed. That's telling the truth about ourselves.

So during Lenten season let's leave behind the old life with its falsehood and let's put on the truth by speaking less, thinking before we speak, speaking the truth in love, and telling the truth about ourselves.


Questions of the Week

  • After leaving Egypt, the people of Israel seemed to have a problem with remembering the truth of their old life. Why do you think that was? What are some reasons that we sometimes have difficulty telling the truth to ourselves? What problems does this create for us in breaking free?
  • What does trust mean to you? What is the most important thing to you in giving and keeping trust?
  • Have you ever thought about speaking less as a way of truth telling? Why do you think this might be a good practice? How is it challenging?
  • Speaking the truth in love can be a difficult discipline to practice. Have you experienced a time when this was done well? What were the results? What are some ways that we can learn to speak the truth in love?