Putting Away Lying

Putting Away Lying

By Pastor Matt Black

Bible Text: Ephesians 4:25

Preached on: Sunday, April 20, 2008, 11am

Tabernacle Baptist Church

7020 Barrington Road

Hanover Park, Illinois 60133

Website: www.GodCentered.info

Scripture and Theme: Please open your Bible to Ephesians 4:17-25.

Have you ever been lied to? As Psalm 116:11 says, “All men are liars.” Every person on earth is a liar. Lying is a way of life in this world. What we are going to find out today is that this way of life STOPS for the one who has become a Christian.

Yet lying continues on in various forms in the world. Have you ever looked at the pictures of the food at McDonald’s or another restaurant? It’s never the way it looks in the picture. The whole world is steeped in lies—presenting themselves falsely. Manipulation, shifting of the facts, cutting corners—all of this is deceit.

The one thing that convicted me to the core that Christianity is the exclusive way that the God of Heaven has revealed Himself and no other way is the radical truthfulness of it. Christianity teaches that God knows all things and God knows the heart. Over and over again, Paul is saying that God doesn’t lie, He cannot lie, and He searches the heart and desires truth in the inward parts. Our Lord is “the Truth” and His Word is truth (John 14:6; 17:17).

The Bible teaches that once a person becomes a Christian, they are marked by something that everyone can see. It is so obvious.

As we look at Ephesians 4:17-25 we are going to see that the very first evidence of the new life is that a person stops lying and starts telling the truth.

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, 18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: 19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 20 But ye have not so learned Christ; 21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. 25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.”

The first thing Paul says after telling us that we are brand new people, and that we are done with the old way of living is to “put off lying”. Why? Because “lying is the most prominent and common characteristic of the life of sin” (Lloyd-Jones). Call it what you will—you can call it a white lie just as much as you can call homicide a little murder.

Once we come to Christ, the thing that marks us is that we put off all play acting and hypocrisy. We become forthright, straightforward, and plain, and frank, and open, and real, and sincere, and accurate, and truthful, and honest.

This morning we are going to go around the baseball diamond. Four bases to cover today.

the History of lying in the human race
the Expectation for liars
the Transformation of the liar
Then there is the Necessity of getting rid of lies if you call yourself a Christian

I. As we look at lying, let me first give you the History of lying in the human race. What is the history of lying? Where did it come from? Turn over to Genesis 3:1-13. There was a time when man was innocent and holy. His heart was pure. But in Genesis 3 we read the sad story of how we all lost our holiness and our holy hearts were turned into lying hearts. Look at Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 6 ¶ And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. 8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 9 ¶ And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11 ¶ And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”

Where does lying come from? We have to go back the first woman to find out. The Apostle Paul comments on the event in 2 Corinthians 11:3, and says “the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty”. Eve believed the lie of Satan and became a liar with him. Satan promised she could be equal in power and understanding to God by eating the fruit. It was a boldfaced lie. She entrusted herself to that lie. She called into question the goodness of God. She was tempted. She began to think—Maybe God wasn’t giving her all that was good. And by trusting and following a liar instead of God, she became like her new companion the devil.

After she took what God had forbidden, her heart changed. What a radical change. She had been holy and innocent and good. But now her heart became deceiving and conniving. The first thing she did was to lie to her husband and bring him down with her. She gave some of the forbidden fruit to Adam, and Adam took it. Just as the devil had tempted her, so she tempted her husband. She presented the lie to her husband as she had been lied to. The corruption of lies spread from Eve to Adam. And Adam believed the lie and also became a liar with his wife and with Satan. Adam took it of his own will. He later tried to blame the woman, but he was fully responsible for what had happened. Satan became their new father. Their hearts were both changed and corrupted.

After Adam and Eve took the fruit their first inclination was to hide! Adam and Eve “heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). Adam wanted to shift the reality that he had just committed a rebellion against God. It was to live in a lying way—to pretend he wasn’t home, to manipulate the situation so that he wouldn’t have to face the truth with God. Immediately Adam’s heart changed into a lying heart.

Satan had said he would be like God, but instead Adam became like Satan who is the father of lies. Adam had sinned for the first time, and the thing that immediately marked him was the presentation of a lie. His innocent heart was replaced with a lying heart. The moment Adam sinned, his heart was corrupted and lies filled his heart. He became a liar. He lied because of fear. Fear filled his heart and he looked for a place to hide. He wanted to hide his sin and hide himself. He was now a sinner. We are all now liars like Adam, constantly trying to hide our sin through lies. Adam heard God’s voice, and Adam decided to lie to God by acting as if he were unavailable.

He presented a falsehood to God because he was quite available. And remember the question God asked Adam? “Where art thou?” God didn’t ask the question to find out information. There is absolutely nothing God doesn’t already know. He asked the question so Adam would know where he had fallen to. Adam had entered the kingdom of darkness. He had become a traitor to God and put on the uniform of the enemy. He became like the enemy and started acting like him.

Application: And here is how this applies to us. People hide and lie in various ways. You may clam up in a conversation and refuse to be up front because you are angry. A husband asks his wife, “is everything ok?” She irritatedly responds, “Everything is just fine!” What she really means is—everything is not ok!! Everything couldn’t be worse!

We need to stop hiding and be upfront and honest and tell the truth.

Rocks and trees could not hide Adam’s lies. God knows everything at all times. And nothing can hide your lies and my lies. “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3).

We’ve seen the history of lying. We’ve found out where it came from.

II. Now let us look at the Expectation for liars. We are all liars. In Genesis 2:17 God clearly said there was a definite expectation for them if they disobeyed Him. He said, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” And because Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lies and became liars themselves, they could expect to die. Now they didn’t die immediately, but they started slowly toward death. We call that old age.

Adam had never been winded or tired before. He was now. He had never been thirsty or felt hunger pains. He never felt pain before. He did now. He was on his way to death.

They were ashamed at what they had done. They had disbelieved the most gracious and good Person in the universe. They had turned their backs on the God who is Love. And so they tried to hide.

Remember Adam and Eve had sewed fig leaves together to hide their nakedness. When they were innocent they were “naked and unashamed”. Their minds were pure. They were clothed in holiness and innocence. Then sin corrupted their hearts, and they lost their covering of holiness. Shame and guilt filled the hearts of Adam and Eve. They were now clothed with shame and guilt! So they tried to cover their guilt with fig leaves. After they sinned we read in Genesis 3:7, “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons”. The next verse says the moment they heard God’s voice, they hid themselves.

A. But God was going to give Adam and Eve a picture of hope. Notice God sought them out. They didn’t go after God, but God pursued them. They heard His voice! He called after them. And unless the Lord pursues after you, you will never come to him. You will remain in hiding. You will remain self deceived believing a lie. Jesus said in John 6:44, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him”. God has to call you out like He called Adam out. He speaks to your heart of hearts. God sought out Adam and Eve, and He did something for them. Look at Genesis 3:21, “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”

Here we have God requiring the skins of animals—death has now for the first time entered the world. God has required that if Adam and Eve are to live and continue a relationship with God, they must live at the expense of another. Now this is a picture and a beautiful type of Christ. It is an illustration of the hope that would come into the world.

Now I do not know what kind of animal God had slain to give Adam and Eve coats. I think God could have clothed them in coats of lamb. The lambs would have been totally innocent.

And that is the only way that we can have a relationship with God. Someone else must take our punishment. It cannot be another sinner like us—it has to be someone innocent. Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

God is holy and good. Sin cannot go unpunished. It has to be dealt with. God requires that sins require an eternal penalty. We read in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

God had to slay those animals for coats of skin to cover Adam and Eve, but one day God’s Son would come into the world and also be slain—not for His own sins because He had none. Jesus came into this world to be the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

B. Let me say that without Christ, the Precious Lamb, there is no hope for liars. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Jesus is the only way to the new life. He is the Truth.

You must understand what God thinks about lying. Outside of Jesus Christ there is no hope for those who lie (which is every one of us). The most appauling statement about lying in all the Bible is found in Revelation 21:7-8, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Something must happen. God must do something. He must change us. So we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

Christ takes our sin and washes it away in His own blood. And in place of our sin, He gives us a new nature. We are “made the righteousness of God in him.” God creates a new and holy heart in us! We are born again!

Turn back to Ephesians 4:24.

C. I want you to see that a person who has come to Christ has had a change in their Nature. The one thing that characterizes the new birth is that we are no longer hiding like Adam was in the Garden. We have “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (verse 24). Last week we said that the new man is this new union that we have with Christ. Our souls are united to Jesus Christ. Many people say they are Christians, but only those who have the evidence of a change in their nature are truly Christians.

We are to be “putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another” (verse 25). Let everyone who names the name of Christ put away all falsehood, speaking truth to our neighbor, for we are members one of another. This is our new nature, the creation of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Application: Let me stop here and ask you if your heart has been changed. You are not a Christian simply because you say you are one. There must be an inward change from excusing lying of any and every kind and telling the truth.

Those who are true Christians have a changed heart that hates lies. I have often been asked the question, “How do you know you are a Christian?” Well, once Christ comes to indwell your soul as Lord and Master, you will have an inward desire to tell the truth and to avoid lying. A person who is truly saved has come to the end of themselves, and they put away lying because they have put off self-awareness and self importance. A humble person doesn’t need to lie because they never have to deceive others into thinking they are more important or better than they are.

III. Finally, I want to give you the Transformation of the liar. How can we change?

A. If we are to change we need to identify what a lie is. What is our starting point?

According to the dictionary, a lie is “something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression” (Free Dictionary). It is not simply something that we do with words. You can lie sometimes by not speaking. You can lie with a look. You can lie by allowing something to be said that you know is wrong and not correcting it. You can speak something that is true with your mouth, but roll your eyes are give a certain tone of voice that will make it false.

We’ve lost our innocence. We are liars. We no longer trust others. We no longer trust ourselves. We need to be changed! The condition is much worse than you might think. A person who tells lies, not only tells lies with his mouth, but he is a liar through and through. I want to show you how when we come to Christ, all that changes. Truth penetrates every part of our being.

B. So let’s look at the anatomy of a liar which is what we all are born as. It is so pervasive that the Bible actually says in Psalm 58:3, “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.”

I want you to see how accustomed we are to lying and how lying affects every part of our being, and how the Christian who has put on the new man at conversion begins a pathway to “righteousness and true holiness” that is characterized by the Truthful One that indwells him!

1. The heart as the control center of our intellect and emotions, is an organ of deceit. Jeremiah 17:9 says it clearly: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

All human beings are born in Adam with this nature. Satan is the “father of lies”. John 8:44, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”

It can be said that all people without God’s call in their heart are of their “father the devil”.

The person without the indwelling presence of God in their heart is unaware of the majority of deceit in his heart or in the world. Their heart is blind and they are unaware of the blindness. The world doesn’t seem as bad. “Not every one can possibly be a liar” is the primary objection. Just as a garbage man gets used to the smell of garbage, so every human being gets used to the use of lies.

So what is the solution? We need a new heart! God promises us a new heart in Ezekiel 36:26, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

David said to God in Psalm 51:6, “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts”. God is concerned with us having a changed and renewed heart!

a. What does this new heart look like? It is not “deceitful and desperately wicked” like the heart that we are born with. It is the exact opposite. It is “created in righteousness and true holiness”.

Turn over to Psalm 15. David describes what a changed regenerated heart actually looks like.

David in Psalm 15 asks the question: “LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?” In other words, Lord, who is going to have a relationship with you? Who is going to actually know you? Look at verse 2, “He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. 3 He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. 4 In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the LORD. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.”

David is describing a person with a regenerated heart. Of course the heart is the control center of the being, so when the heart is changed everything changes. A true believer is puts away lying and tells the truth (Ephesians 4:25). With the presence of Christ now dwelling in you, you are a new person. And you are aware of lying to a much higher degree. You now put off lying, and in the circumstances where you lied before, you now automatically, unconsciously, skillfully and comfortably tell the truth.

2. Our mouth is the orator of deceit. Romans 3:13, “Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips”.

We read in Proverbs 12:22, “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord.” To lie is to speak that which one knows to be an untruth. There is nothing more contrary to God than a lie. The Holy Ghost is called the “Spirit of Truth” (1 John 4:6). So we come to the verse in Ephesians 4:25 and Paul says we need to “put away lying and speak … truth with your neighbor”. Now that you are in Christ you need to stop lying! Lying or falsehood is the main characteristic of the old man—who you were before you came to know Christ!

What this tells us is that we ought to weigh our words. We don’t always have to be about talking. Words are important. Jesus said that “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). Idle and silly words are deceitful. Proverbs 15:2 tells us that “The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.” Much speaking and careless words destroys your credibility and weakens the value of what is spoken. Do you understand that we are given mouths to speak forth the riches of Christ? If you speak with silliness and carelessness, when you speak on other matters, you may not be taken seriously.

Quiet contemplation ought to be a mark of all believers. In 1 Thessalonians 4:11, we are told to that we are to “study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you”.

It’s just as Proverbs 10:19 says, “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise.”

We should try to avoid conversations that have no real point of edification—words are to be used for the building up of our brothers and sisters’ faith. Even as Paul says in Ephesians 4:29, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”

3. Our ears before salvation are deceitful and deficient.

We may think we know God because of our much hearing of the Word of God. You may know much truth but not love the truth.

Deuteronomy 29:4, “Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.”

John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”.

4. The eyes are organs of deceit. Our eyes deceive us because they cannot look into the heart, and they always offer us more than what is there.

1 John 2:16 says “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

We read in verse 22, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts”. Our eyes are constantly informing us wrongly and lying to us. They are organs of deceit. They do not see things as they are!

Application: They inform us that a new car will look good in our driveway. Advertisers are masters at playing to our deceitful eyes. Most Marketing on TV is designed to make their product appear greater than it is or to give the impression that their product can do something that it is not able to do.

Have you ever seen a 50 pound child pile the equivalent of his body weight in food upon his plate? The lust of the eyes deceives people into thinking that things or food or other people can satisfy their desires.

The deceit of the eyes is the cause of the majority of credit card debt. People are deceived into needing to have NOW things they could easily do without.

The deceit of the eyes has ended marriages of 25 years. A floozy cannot deliver what you want. Marriage is God’s perfect way to satisfy those desires. He said the marriage bed is undefiled.

Illustration: The godly man Job in the Old Testament knew about the deceitfulness of the eyes, and so he said in Job 31:1, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” Job was a happily married man. He knew his eyes were organs of deceit. So if he was tempted to look with lust upon another lady, he would quickly look at his sandals! And that is what every godly man should do!

The eyes are organs of deceit.

a. Of course the solution is that their needs to be a change in us—and when our heart is changed, our eyes are changed too! We need to be given spiritual eyes! Spiritual eyes see everything from a heavenly radically God-saturated perspective.

Jesus made the clearest statement in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” If Jesus IS the truth, then the direct result of Him entering in to you would be a putting away of lying. To be pure in heart is to be free from lies. It is to be innocent and completely without guile or deceit.

If you come to know Christ, truth becomes a way of life. You long for the truth. You are pure in heart and you see God more and more in everything!

Is their guile in you? Is there an innocence in you? Must you always shift the facts? The first thing that happens to a person whose heart is newly created is that the person becomes innocent and without guile. We transfer our goat heart for a sheep heart. Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” We become harmless or innocent. It doesn’t mean that we are stupid. We are “wise as serpents” but we are without guile. Jesus was as harmless as a dove, yet he was the incarnation of wisdom. He was truly innocent. We read in John 2:24-25 that “Jesus did not commit himself unto them [THE PEOPLE], because he knew all men, 25 And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” What was in man? Guile. Deceit. Manipulation. Shading of reality. Only the new birth can take this out of you.

I am urging you today as a Christian to come to a place of innocency and guilelessness.

IV. Finally, there is the Necessity of getting rid of lies if you call yourself a Christian.

First, the Bible says if you are a true Christian you will be known by your fruit. The moment your heart is changed you are a new creation and the first sign is that you put of lying and you start telling the truth.

A. So the first necessity has to do with your Testimony. Do you testimony that you are a Christian and your heart and life match? Does your heart or your mouth lie? Are you putting something on that isn’t true? Jesus is the Truth. Put Jesus on if you are a Christian.

B. Secondly you need to get rid of lies because of your Ties to your brothers and sisters in Christ. You are “members one of another” (verse 25 of Ephesians 4). Lying is what will destroy any body you are a part of. It will destroy a church. It will destroy your home. It will destroy your life.

Illustration: Without honesty everything goes haywire. Imagine if your body functioned this way. People with MS or Parkinson’s Disease or ALS understand this. Your body is not communicating properly, and so there is a breakdown.

Conclusion: Lying is part of the corrupt old nature. Let every trace of the deceitful old nature be put away! In the church, let's not have any lying to each other, or hypocrisy, or duplicity, or deception, or twisting of the truth, or evasiveness, or equivocation. Let's not be like that at Tabernacle!

Is there any guile in you? Are you two faced? Are you double tongued? Do you gossip about people? Do you puff your self up? Are you something more at church than you are at home or in the supermarket?

Is there anything like that in your life? Put it off! How do you do that? Ephesians 5:25, “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.” Speak every man truth with his neighbor. If you have lied to another member of this church, or to your boss at work, or to a family member, you need to immediately confess that lie to them. Ask for God to forgive you and for that person to forgive you.

Let’s be candid with each other, and straightforward, and plain, and frank, and open, and real, and sincere, and accurate, and truthful, and honest. Let's walk in the light as Jesus Christ is in the light. In every conversation we have, let's be open and above-board and up front in our dealings. By God’s grace lets “put away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.”