The congregation of Jesus, I have been asked by your consistory to preach on God's word in connection with Lord's Day 43, which concerns itself with the ninth commandment. And as you know, the ninth commandment is, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. I would like for you to turn to page 55 in the back of your Psalter hymnals to Lord's day 43, so that we can confess the answer to question 112 together. What does God teach us in his word concerning this ninth commandment? And we want to do that understanding that the catechism, of course, expands on this commandment and shows us the application of it. Listen to the question, and then if you would all respond to the answer with me. What is God's will for us in the ninth commandment? God's will is that I never give false testimony against anyone, twist no one's words, not gossip or slander, nor join in condemning anyone without a hearing or without a just cause. Rather, in court and everywhere else, I should avoid lying and deceit of every kind. These are devices the devil himself uses, and they would call down on me God's intense anger. I should love the truth, speak it candidly, and openly acknowledge it, and I should do what I can to guard and advance my neighbor's good name. Well, let us turn to the word of God upon which such truths are based that we have just confessed, and we want to turn together tonight to Ephesians chapter 4. Turn in our Bibles to Ephesians 4, beginning to read at verse 17 and through the end of the chapter. Please keep your Bibles open before you because I will be referring to this passage from time to time directly and having you look at some verses with me. Reading then from God's word, Ephesians 4 beginning at 17. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk, as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. It's verse 25 in its context that I would like to call your attention to, especially this evening. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Maybe you heard about him, as I did too on the news, was a man by the name of Brian Banks. Brian spent six long years in prison. This young man had a very promising future. He was a man who was about to finish high school, to go off to college, and he was going to be playing football. In the meantime, some woman accused him of rape, so he went off to prison. He sat in prison for six years, and then after a while, just recently, a woman came forward and said, I have lied. There was no such crime actually committed. She lied, and as a consequence, this young man spent six years of his life in prison. You see, people of God, words are powerful. Our mouths are powerful. That's why tonight when we come to this ninth commandment, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor, God focuses our attention on our tongues. That little instrument that James 3 calls a small part of the body, which makes great boasts, a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body, a restless evil, full of deadly poison. The ninth commandment obliges us to use our tongues for blessing rather than lying. In the ninth commandment, God tells us, not only in our words, but in all of our dealings with the Lord and with men that we are to tell the truth. We are to deal with the truth, but the accent falls squarely upon our words. God is not pleased with lying lips. God is not pleased with slandering words. Rather, in the words of our text, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Tonight, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we come up against a double challenge. As believers, we are to put off the practices of the old man, which operate in the sphere of lying, and we are to put on the new man that operates in the realm of the truth, truth spoken in love. It's this double challenge, it's this double calling that I would like to draw your attention to tonight as we look at this passage under the title, Integrity of Speech. Noticing falsehood removed in the first place, in the second place, truth promoted, and then in the third place, a fundamental reason. When you look at the scriptures, the Bible tells us on a number of occasions about people who have lied, people who have in their actions or in their words have engaged in what is falsehood. Think for a moment about Judas who betrayed Christ. Think of his coming to the garden. One of Jesus' disciples and he betrays Jesus with a kiss in the garden of Gethsemane. What mockery. Or we think of the trial of our Lord Jesus Christ. And once again, what a perversion of justice. You think of the Lord Jesus Christ trial and you think about those people who came forward to testify against him. They couldn't even find a couple of people who would say the same thing. Finally, they found two false witnesses that brought charges against the Lord Jesus Christ. But that whole trial was a mockery, wasn't it? It was a lie. Or I think of the scribes and Pharisees of the Lord Jesus' day. These hypocrites, who as one man accurately put it, whose lives were living lies. Do you remember what the scribes and Pharisees did? They stood on the street corners praying, looking pious. calling attention to their holiness, so to speak. But they were walking liars. It was all a sham. The Bible tells us the words of the Lord Jesus, that they had washed the dish on the outside, but on the inside they left it all filthy. They were walking liars. Maybe you as boys and girls remember two people called Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira were a couple in the early New Testament church who sold a piece of property. Other Christians were doing the same thing in those early days in the church. And they sold this piece of property, but agreed to tell a lie about that property. More particularly, they agreed to tell a lie about the price of that property. You see, boys and girls, they didn't have to take any money from that sale of their property to give it to the congregation. They could have taken a part of the money from that sale and given it to the congregation. God would have been pleased about all of that, but they chose to lie about it. Satan, the father of lies, filled their hearts to say that in fact they had given it all to the church, when as a matter of fact they didn't, they plainly lied. And Peter said to Ananias, you have not lied to men but to God. You have not lied just to me, but you have lied to the Holy Spirit. And when Ananias heard those words, the book of Acts tells us that he fell down dead at Peter's feet. You don't get away with lying, you see. The sun will shine upon you and expose your sin. That sin will find you out. His wife, Sapphira, came after three hours to Peter and told the same lie. And the same men that carried out the dead body of her husband, carried her out to bury her as well. They plainly lied, and God does not tolerate falsehood. Each of you must put off falsehood. The Catechism makes this very down-to-earth, doesn't it? It says God's will is that I never give false testimony against anyone. We ought surely to give testimony, particularly when we are called upon to do that in the court of law. But we are to give truthful testimony in the court of law and everywhere else. But we must never give false testimony against our neighbors. I think of another example. I think of Ahab the king and Naboth, who had a very wonderful vineyard right under Ahab's window, but Naboth refused to sell it. So what does Ahab do? He gets together these false witnesses, and they come and they lie, and therefore Naboth lost his life. Ahab the king suffered the curse of God as a result. But you can see from all of this that the Bible gives us many examples of not only lying, but the consequences of lying. The lie has been around for a long, long time. As a matter of fact, way back there in the Garden of Eden, Satan came to Eve in the Garden with a lie. He said to her, is God really giving you that command not to eat of the tree? The father of lies was operating way back there and that lie was designed to take Eve from the love of the truth. God is the God of truth, so that when Eve left the truth, she fell into Satan's lie and broke her relationship with God. As a consequence of the fall of Adam, we all now live the lie before God and before other people. By nature, we're liars. By nature we not only have as a heart a little idol making factory, but by nature we're liars. That's what's in our heart. We lie against God, we lie against our neighbors, we take this beautiful tool of the tongue, this very beautiful gift to mankind, and we turn our speech into a tool that operates against God. We lie with our tongues. But there's much more to this commandment than simply outward lying. We can say something that is actually in content truthful. But at the same time, we say it with hatred, or we say it with arrogance, we say it with pride for the purpose of hurting other people. Catechism says that we are not to twist anyone's words so that we make them out to be something different than they are meant. Catechism says we're not to gossip or to slander, nor join in condemning anyone without a hearing or without just cause. Do you remember Romans 1? Romans 1 is a chapter that records the deeds of those who do not know God. They know that he exists, but they don't know him. They don't have a living relationship with him. And the Apostle Paul says they live in their depraved minds, in the lie. Paul says of the reprobate mind they are gossips. They are slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. Listen to this. According to 1 Timothy 3, verse 11, wives of deacons must be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers, but temperate and trustworthy in everything. You see, our speech is so very important as Christian people. Our speech is not to be abusive or vindictive, it's not to be bitter, it's not to be spiteful or unforgiving, it's not to be seeking revenge, we must put off falsehood. But God's command does not stop there. What we see here in this passage is that our speech must be full of integrity, Our speech must be patterned after the Lord Jesus Christ. We will speak the truth in love because Christ Jesus is the truth. The context here is so very important, my friends of the Lord Jesus. Our passage begins, verse 25 begins, therefore. And you know the old rule. Whenever you see therefore, you ask the question, why is it therefore? Well, it's there for a particular reason. The context speaks to us about the new life that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, the apostle, is speaking to the Ephesians. And he is talking about the fact that we have been redeemed. The fellow believers in Ephesus were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. He talks about no longer walking as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. That's not the way it is with you, he says, who have learned Christ. You are to put off your old self that belongs to the former man of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. But you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds to put on the new self created after the likeness of God into righteousness and holiness. If that is the case, therefore, therefore, having put away falsehood, here comes the positive part now, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. We are called to integrity of speech. And speech is a reflection, it is a response, it is a consequence of the work of Jesus Christ in us. making us new people, so that rather than following that old way of life that had to do with the sphere of the devil, of falsehood, we are called as new creatures to walk in truth and in honesty before the face of God. What a difference that would make in a world so filled with falsehood. Think about it for a moment. If people spoke the truth, reporters would not warp the news to make it even more sensational for people. They would report accurately, wouldn't they? You go to buy something from the store and dealers would not use their high-pressure tactics to wrangle out of you purchasing a product that you don't really want to buy at all. If people spoke the truth and students would not string a lie on a test because they hadn't studied the night before, they would speak the truth. Young people would not pawn off sly lies about where they had been the night before when parents asked where they had been. They would tell the truth. Neighbors would not exchange some juicy morsels of gossip about that neighbor down the street who doesn't happen to keep his front yard in particularly good order. They would tell the truth. Politicians, think about it. They wouldn't deceive the people in making promises that they know they can't keep anyway. Ministers of the gospel would not mislead their congregations with a gospel that is not a gospel at all. We would tell the truth and we would speak the truth in love. Listen to the catechism once again. In court and everywhere else, I should avoid lying in deceit of every kind. These are the devices of the devil himself that he uses, and they would call down on me God's intense anger. I should love the truth, speak it candidly and openly acknowledge it, and I should do what I can to guard and advance my neighbor's good name. Now, as we look at this commandment, we must understand that we are not forced by way of this commandment to say to everyone everything that we know. We must understand as well that God never forces us to lie. God insists that we tell the truth, but he does not insist that we tell everything to everybody. There is a place for certain truths to be placed. You see, there are private matters. There are things that belong to me, but they're not the business of anybody else. There are things that are private. There are matters that are left, best left, unrepeated. There are matters of sensitivity that people shouldn't hear. So this commandment, of course, does not make us to tell everything to everybody. We need to guard and advance our neighbor's good name. At the same time, there are some very difficult situations that arise even in the life of a Christian. Does God ever force us to lie? No. Weren't people forced to lie under such circumstances such as World War II and the Nazis coming to your door and asking you, are you hiding Jews? Were you forced to lie? These were very difficult circumstances, weren't they? Were you forced to lie? Does God ever put you in a position where you have to lie? Is lying always wrong? Yes. You don't have to lie. If the Nazis came to your door and said, Are you hiding Jews? If you said yes, they would search your house. If they said no, they would search your house. Very likely. But those were difficult circumstances. Those were difficult decisions that people made in those years. But God never forces us to disobey his commandments under such circumstances. There are times when we can simply not say anything at all. Now, finally, in this text, the Lord gives to us a reason why we are to put off falsehood, why we are to speak the truth. He gives to us a fundamental reason why we are to obey this commandment. The apostle says, for we are all members of one another. That's the reason. Having put off falsehood, we are to speak the truth because we are members of one another. As we look at this text, we probably would have supposed that Paul would have said, you are to obey this commandment because if you don't, God's going to punish you. Or maybe we would have expected God to say, if you disobey this commandment, you will never get away with it. Those are good reasons to obey this commandment as well. But the Apostle Paul, you see, gives to us another very important reason. We are to obey this commandment because we are members one of another. He is speaking to us, you see, in the context about the unity of the body of Christ. In Christ we constitute a body, one body. Because of Christ Jesus, he has given to us various gifts to use for his service. And one of those gifts that he gives to us is the usage of our tongue. The usage of our mouths to build each other up, to bless each other, to encourage one another. But not to tear apart the body of Christ. Our tongues are to express that glorious unity that we have in Jesus Christ. Our unity is founded upon the truth of God's word. That's why the context is so very important here. The context tells us that we're no longer to be infants tossed back and forth by every word, every wind of false teaching, but we're to be children of the truth. And when we live in the truth, then we grow up in Jesus Christ. We become mature in him when we live in the truth. We are children of the light, but we do not follow the life of ignorance and sin. I want for you to look at this passage from this perspective that the Apostle Paul puts together this matter of the unity of the body and the usage of our mouths together. Look at our text, first of all, in verse 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of another. Or verse 29. Let no corrupt talk, corrupting talk, come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. You see, this matter of the benefit of the body and the usage of our mouths is put together. Look at verses 31 and verse 32. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Our tongues are to be used for blessing to the body that's been forgiven by Christ. Or go into chapter 5, look at verse 4 with me. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. Look at verses 6 and 7. Let no one deceive you with empty words, For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become partners with them. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. O congregation of the Lord Jesus, God wants us to use our tongues in the truth for the upbuilding, for the benefit, for the edification of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is sometimes the case that for the sake of Christ, we simply take that evil word spoken against us with bowed head, but with a thankful heart that we can suffer for Jesus Christ. Paul himself spoke of his experiences in 1 Corinthians 4, He says, we work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure it. When we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment, we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world. Why did Paul respond that way? Why ought we, on occasion, respond that way? Because we're children of Christ. Because a disciple is not above his master. 1 Peter 2 verse 23 says of Christ, When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. You see, people of God, there is the key. It's Jesus Christ. Our Lord perfectly obeyed this commandment. Along with all of the other commandments. And therefore, when we break this ninth commandment, when we sin against God and others, with that tongue, that powerful instrument, then we must find in Christ alone our forgiveness. We must continue to trust the truth embodied Jesus Christ. We must continue to trust in him to give us his perfect righteousness. As a result of being right with God, he calls us to use our tongues to bless his name, to promote his kingdom, to advance my neighbor's good name. Because of Christ, therefore, each of you must put off falsehood. Speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are members one of another. That's a large challenge. It's not easy. But you and I must apply this word of God to our lives from day to day. May the Lord give us that grace. May the Lord give to us that openness and truth before the Lord God that we say to Him, Lord, I have broken Your commandments. I have broken this commandment. But I have found in Christ Jesus my entire forgiveness. And He has given me His Spirit to walk in truth. Let us pray. Lord God in heaven, we thank you for Christ Jesus, who is the truth. We thank you, Heavenly Father, for helping us to understand this evening the importance of this command and helping us to understand in some ways how to apply this command to daily life. It is not always easy for us, Lord. Give us wisdom to know how to do that. We know, Father, that you do not force us to lie. But when we apply this commandment, Father, we realize that there are life circumstances that are very difficult. We pray that you will help us in all of life to live the truth, to live in the power of Christ. Help us, Lord, to be filled with integrity of speech. Help us to love the truth, to advance our neighbor's good, to advance your truth in the world. Because, oh Lord, the greatest truth of all is the gospel of the Lord Jesus, that in the face of our hearts filled with lies, we have been forgiven in Jesus. You have washed our sins all away. You have given us the righteousness of Christ so that we might shine. with that truth, to all our neighbors who walk in darkness. Lord, help us then to truly promote the truth in whatever way we can, that your name may be honored and glorified. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.