Christians and Truth, Part 2

Guest (Female): You’re listening to Telling the Truth, the ministry of Stuart and Jill Briscoe. Today on Telling the Truth, guest speaker Charles Price wraps up his message on an issue that may seem straightforward, but it’s so essential to your life as a Christian. It’s all about letting your yes be yes, and your no be no. He’ll get started in just a moment.
Guest (Male): Your generous support helps keep broadcasts like this one going out around the world, so you and others can experience life through the biblical teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. As thanks for your gift today, we’ll send you Triumph Over Temptation, an encouraging four-message series created by Stuart and Jill Briscoe to help you stand strong against temptation and grow in your faith in the process. Call today to request yours at 1-800-889-5388. That’s 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here’s today’s teaching from Charles Price.
Charles Price: Look at the times the devil speaks in the Bible, which aren’t many. He actually never tells an outright lie. Lying is his mother tongue, but he is very subtle in the way he lies. What he normally does is ask questions designed to lead you into deception. For instance, in Genesis chapter 3 in the Garden of Eden, he came to Eve and he said to the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” Now, he’s not affirming anything. He’s just asking a question. “Did God say you should not eat of any tree in the garden? Is God being unreasonable?” Of course, God had said no such thing. God actually said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you will surely die.” But his innocent-sounding question was packed with innuendo and suggestions designed to deceive. It’s a clever way to lie, but it’s lying. By the way, when you find yourself reasoning that God is unreasonable in looking in these ethical issues that Jesus raised in the Sermon on the Mount, if you sat here maybe some of these Sundays saying, “This is unreasonable. I don’t like this,” I’ll tell you whose voice you’re listening to. It’s the voice of Satan. He makes God unreasonable. He asks questions. “This is unnecessary.” When Satan appears in the book of Job and talks to God about Job, God said of Job, “He is a blameless man. He is upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” That’s a wonderful description to make of anybody. And Satan comes back and says, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” He doesn’t tell any lie there. He just throws in the question. “Do you not think Job has a hidden agenda behind all that? You think Job fears God and is blameless because he actually cares about you, God? Or has he got his own agenda here?” It was a question designed to cast doubt. And a lot of gossip is like that. A lot of gossip isn’t saying, “Hey, did you know so and so?” It’s asking a question designed to provoke the thinking that maybe so and so is so and so after all. When Satan appeared in the wilderness and spoke to Jesus and tempted Jesus three times, each of his temptations began with this word: “If you are the Son of God.” He didn’t say he wasn’t the Son of God, but he’s throwing a doubt, or trying to. It’s a clever way to lie, but lying is his nature—to ask questions that carry implications that blacken somebody’s character. By the way, lies are usually a cover-up for corruption. That’s why I called this point “truth as character.” There are quite a lot of liars in the Bible, but they all lie to cover up something else. Cain was the first to lie. Having killed his brother Abel, he was asked, “Where is your brother?” He said, “I don’t know where he is. Am I my brother’s keeper?” He had just actually buried him, but he lies to cover up the fact that he’s just killed him. Abraham lied to Pharaoh about his wife. He went into Egypt against the will of God, and his wife was very beautiful. Pharaoh thought, “I like her,” and Abraham realized what was going on and said, “She’s not my wife. She’s my sister. You can have her. She’s my sister.” He lied to cover up his own being in the wrong place. Jacob disguised himself and lied to his father. He pretended to be Esau to get the blessing that belonged to the firstborn. He was a cheat and a liar. David lied after his adultery with Bathsheba. And Ananias and Sapphira, husband and wife, agreed together to lie to the church in Jerusalem that the money they were giving was the money they got for some land that they sold. But it was not the money they got for the land. It was a part of it. They didn’t have to give any of it, but they gave the impression, “We’re more generous than we are.” And Peter said to Ananias and Sapphira, “You’ve not lied to men, but to God.” Lying is the native language of a corrupt heart. Therefore, lying is a symptom usually of something much deeper. No wonder it tells in the book of Proverbs that God hates lying. It says there are seven things God hates, and two of them have to do with lying. One of the things God hates is a lying tongue. A second thing is a false witness who pours out lies. Proverbs 12:22 says the Lord detests lying lips, but then in contrast, he delights in men who are truthful. He detests lies. He delights in truth. Proverbs 26:28 says a lying tongue hates those it hurts, and that is always the case—usually the intention—to hurt. Which is why we lie. At the end of the book of Revelation, there’s a list of those who will face the fiery lake of burning sulfur. Revelation 21 lists some of those people: the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars. Their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur because these vices, including lying, are symptoms of a corrupt heart. Therefore, in verse 37, back in Matthew 5, Jesus says, “Simply let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ and your ‘no,’ ‘no’ for this reason. Anything else comes from the evil one.” Because when you lie, you’re actually speaking the native language of hell. Now, if Satan is the father of lies and lying is his native language, in contrast, God’s native language is truth. Isaiah 65 and verse 16 twice in that verse speaks of God as the God of truth. In Revelation chapter 15 and verse 3, the angels sing around the throne of God, and they sing, “Just and true are your ways.” In John 1:17, John describes Jesus when he was incarnate and became a man. He described him as full of grace and truth. And Jesus himself said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the truth.” This is more than God simply being true. This is God being truth. It is his nature, and truth is his native language. Therefore, as we are brought into relationship with God and his purpose in our lives is by his indwelling Spirit to make us like himself, then one of the evidences and one of the outworkings of that is going to be in the fact that we are true. Psalm 51, verse 6 says, “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” Truth in the inner parts is in the heart. Not just truth on the surface, making sure you talk the truth, but actually, the truth on the surface derives from the truth in the inner heart, the inner part of a person’s life. Psalm 15 and verse 1 asks the question, “Who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” And then verse 2 answers the question: “He whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, and who speaks truth from his heart.” He speaks truth from his heart, not because it serves his interests, but because it is true, and truth has become his native language. It comes out of his heart. And the person who speaks that which is true does so because he himself is true.
Guest (Male): Charles Price on Telling the Truth today. We’ll return to him in a moment, but first, we want you to hear these words from Paul, who listens online in the UK. He says, “We so appreciate your authentic and God-centered teaching. You are a real blessing to many people. May this magnificent ministry of Telling the Truth continue for years to come.” Thank you, Paul. That’s the kind of encouragement your support today will bring to more people around the world as you help share the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth so others can experience life in Christ. We’d like to encourage you with a powerful resource to equip you to not only resist temptation but conquer it and grow in your faith as you do. It’s called Triumph Over Temptation, a four-message series created by Stuart and Jill Briscoe to empower you with biblical truth to help you stand firm in the face of daily temptations. Filled with the Briscoes' trademark wisdom and understanding of scripture, this series will help you remember that every temptation to do wrong is also a chance to do what’s right. We’ll send you the Triumph Over Temptation series as our thanks for your gift of support today to help continue the Briscoes' legacy through the teaching resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you call 1-800-889-5388. That’s 1-800-889-5388, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let’s return to today’s message from our guest speaker, Charles Price.
Charles Price: Of course, you can speak what is true when it’s convenient and it’s beneficial and your heart be corrupt. But the scripture goes back behind all of that, that the inmost place, the heart of a person, is true. A friend of mine tells how that when he left school and went to work in a bank, but a few weeks into his work, his boss said to him one day, “So and so may call today, and when they do, tell them I am not in.” He said, “I can’t do that.” He said, “Not only can you do it, I’m telling you to do it.” He said, “No, I can’t do it because it’s not true. Give me something else to say, but I cannot tell a lie.” And his boss was angry with him. Later he went into his boss’s office that afternoon, and he said, “I want you to know that if I won’t tell a lie for you, you can be sure I’ll never tell a lie to you.” The next morning when he got to work, his boss called him into his office and he thought, “Uh oh, what’s going to happen now?” And his boss looked him in the eye and said, “I’m going to make it my business to make sure you rise to the very top of this bank.” Because his boss recognizes not just that this guy tells the truth; this guy is true. Probably many of us here face that kind of dilemma in our workplace. And you have a choice. Are you going to be true and let that truth permeate what you do in every respect? Because if you allow yourself to not be true, you are allowing the poison of the native language of Satan to influence and make you. You can be sure that as the fruit connects to the root, if the root is good, the fruit is good. If the root is true, the fruit is true. But if you start to put some poison of lies into the fruit, it will work back to the root and you’ll corrupt the root. It works both ways. The theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that what goes on outwardly is merely a symptom of what is going on inwardly. That’s why Jesus says murder is a symptom of anger, adultery is a symptom of lust, divorce is a symptom of disloyalty, and taking oaths—he’s saying here—in order to be believed is a symptom of dishonesty. That’s why you have to take the oaths. Eliminate that need by being true through and through, right from the innermost part, your inner being. It’s about character. You don’t put on character; you are your character. You put on behavior sometimes, but character is what we are. And it’s truth in the innermost being. But the third thing we’ll talk about just for a couple of minutes is truth as a commitment. Truth in communication, truth as character, but we’ve got to commit ourselves to this. Our commitment to God involves a commitment to truth and to be true. Now let me talk about this practically. It doesn’t mean we have to be completely transparent all the time because sometimes it’s not appropriate to be transparent. In fact, Jesus in Matthew chapter 6, still in the Sermon on the Mount, tells them not to be transparent in some things. Because he says there, “When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting.” In other words, he says, disguise it. The rest of us neither need to know that you’re fasting, nor do we actually want to know that you’re fasting. But in contrast to displaying what you’re doing to be seen by men, he says this is private. You don’t have to be transparent about that. Of course, it’s still all about integrity before God. It’s being honest before God. It’s interesting in Luke 24 when Jesus met those men on the road to Emmaus, it says, “As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going further.” But they said to him, “Stay with us.” And so he went in to stay with them. The way Luke writes that, he probably would have welcomed an invite, but he acted as though he were going further. And when they said, “Would you stay with us?” He went in. Sometimes it is appropriate not to let everything hang out. Let’s also be very realistic. Not every promise that you and I make can be kept. We make our promises sometimes with proper intentions, but we make unrealistic promises. We need to be very careful we don’t do that very often, but sometimes that happens. There are elements of pretense that we all have that are hard to eradicate. Some of us like to keep up appearances and it’s very difficult to be honest. Some of us don’t actually know who the real me is. That’s a problem in itself, but it’s not an easy problem to resolve because there are so many layers sometimes we build around. But the point is when we are allowing truth in the inmost being to be true and God who is truth to work, it’ll begin to break through some of those. But if you’re driving in here on a Sunday morning and you’re having a squabble with your wife in the car, get over it before you walk in here. We don’t actually want to know. We don’t need to see it written all over you. Just sort it out on the way home if you didn’t sort it out before you got here. There’s discretion, of course, in where are we honest in that sense.
Guest (Male): We’ll get right back for the conclusion of today’s message from Charles Price. A reminder: when you give a gift today to support the teaching ministry of Telling the Truth, we’ll say thanks with an empowering resource created by Stuart and Jill Briscoe called Triumph Over Temptation. We all face temptation every day, sometimes every moment of every day. While you may struggle with sinful desires and selfish motives, you must remember that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right. You are not powerless to resist wrong. You have God’s power within you to bring you through even the toughest challenges. In their four-message series Triumph Over Temptation, Stuart and Jill Briscoe equip you with powerful biblical truth to help you triumph over temptation and grow your faith in the process. Triumph Over Temptation is our thanks for your generous gift today to help more people experience abundant life in Christ through the unchanging truth of God’s Word. Simply request your copy when you call today and give a gift to help keep Telling the Truth going around the world. Call 1-800-889-5388. That’s 1-800-889-5388, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let’s return to Charles to wrap things up.
Charles Price: But when it comes to our speaking, when it comes to what we are deliberately conveying, then we need to be characterized by truth. If I can just share something personal with you in our own family as parents. We have placed the highest value on telling the truth in our children’s upbringing. The most severe discipline was reserved for lying because when you’re dealing with truth or lies, you’re dealing with character. When you deal with character, you’re dealing with all behavior. Consequently, they didn’t lie very often. Just a couple of times was enough to get the message. I’ll tell you, they are better people because of it. They will one day be better wives and a better husband because of it. They’ll be better parents because of it. They’ll be better citizens because of it. When you deal with that truth issue in a child’s life, you’re dealing as a knock-on effect with a million other issues which the rest of their lives people will be grateful for. And if the one who indwells us is the truth, then that truth of who Christ is who lives within the Christian will be expressed in our personal lives, in our family lives, in our family dynamics and family relationships, in our business life, in our work life. It won’t simply be an ethic in our work life; it’ll be the criteria from which all our other ethics derive. So here is the issue which, although we wouldn’t put it up in the headlines as being the exciting, dramatic issue of telling the truth—we see things like lusting and adultery, those kind of get our interest much more quickly. But this is the steel pillar of your life—that we are men and women who are true. Your yes must be yes, your no must be no, says Jesus, because anything beyond this comes from the evil one. That is, you give him a foothold in your life. I ask you as I close, what actually is your native language? What is the default position? Is it deception? You say, “Well, I wouldn’t be here if it was.” Hey, we’re not that naive. It might well be here that it is so. That there’s deception in your marriage, deception in your work, deception in your relationships, deception with your parents, deception with your children. You’re allowing the poison to trickle back to the heart and root of your character and who you are. Anything that is not yes means yes and no means no comes from the evil one, said Jesus. And we need to come in repentance and say, “Lord Jesus, please forgive me, cleanse me. Go and put it right. Go and tell people the truth that you’ve been deceiving.” And allow the Spirit of God who lives in you and who is the God of truth, who is the truth, to express his character of truthfulness. It’s probably the most important thing about you.
Guest (Male): Thank you so much, Charles. We hope today’s message has encouraged you. Before we go, remember that when you give today to help keep Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one going out around the world, we’ll send you a copy of Triumph Over Temptation, a four-message series from Stuart and Jill Briscoe that’s sure to help you stand up to daily temptations and grow stronger in your faith as you do. So call now to give and remember to request Triumph Over Temptation with our thanks. 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being with us today. Come back tomorrow for a powerful message from guest speaker Charles Price about justice and love. That’s here on Telling the Truth.