Pentecost Week 17 - The Ninth Commandment

Sep 14

3 min read

Scripture Reading

*Explain the context: “This week, we will continue to read about God giving Israel his instructions at Mt. Sinai after God had freed them from Egypt.”

Exodus 20:16

Big Idea (For Parents)

To promote justice, the Ninth Commandment prohibits lying in court and, by extension, all destructive lying.

Family Reflection

(Read aloud or summarize)

The Ninth Commandment continues to teach us what “love” looks like as we seek to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The wording used for the prohibited speech in the Ninth Commandment specifically regards false legal testimony. Lying in court settings creates injustice which is unacceptable among God’s people. We also see the courtroom and justice focus of the Ninth Commandment in the “love of neighbor” section of the Ten Commandments in its correspondence to the Fourth Commandment in the “love of God” section. The Fourth Commandment focuses on the Sabbath which is when God gathers his people before his divine court for judgment. For those in Christ, he judges us as just/righteous and invites us to the blessing of table fellowship. Thus, our sincere witness to our sin and need for God’s grace at the outset of Sunday worship in our corporate confession of sin before God’s court corresponds to our need for sincere witness before all human courts as well. Courts are where the issue of justice (or injustice) is most visible in a society.

By extension, the Ninth Commandment prohibits all destructive lying regardless of the setting. It does not, however, prohibit very limited instances of deceptive speech which are necessary to protect life (sometimes during war) as exemplified in the stories of the Hebrew midwives’ lying to Pharaoh (Exodus 1:15-21), Rahab’s lying to the king of Jericho (Joshua 2:1-24; 6:25), and Jael’s lying to the Canaanite general Sisera (Judges 4:17-24; 5:24-27). In those instances, the deceptive serpent’s seed—murderous evildoers—are outsmarted by the righteous seed of the woman who, in very limited circumstances, use the serpent’s own craftiness against him (see Genesis 3:1, 13-15; Psalm 83:1-3, 9-10).

Thus, apart from very limited exceptions, our true speech promotes life and justice, while lies promote death and injustice. As the proverb says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue....” (Proverbs 18:21a). Though we are not required to say everything that may be true all the time, when we do speak, our default should be truth, even when that truth is very hard to hear. That, in the long run, produces life. That is how we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Discussion Questions

(Choose 1-2. Adjust for age.)

1- Sometimes we sin and then lie about it because we are afraid of the consequences if we truthfully confess. How does the good news of Jesus Christ impact this fear of the consequences of our sin if we simply confess it? How might things only get worse if we instead lie to try to hide sin?

2- Imagine a scenario in which it might be appropriate to do one of the following: (1) tell the truth to someone even though it is hard for the person to hear it; (2) not share information about someone else even though it is true; (3) tell the truth even though the hearer might not believe you; (4) tell a lie in order to save a life. If time is limited, only choose one scenario to imagine.

3- In our culture, many people think that someone telling the truth to another about a difficult subject is not loving. They think that loving someone means only telling people what they want to hear. How could this modern idea actually hurt people—both the one lying to try to help the other, and the one to whom he’s lying?

Practice—“Lying’s not Loving!”

As a family, have everybody repeat this phrase aloud three times, getting louder each time: “Lying’s not loving!” Charge the family to commit it to memory and quiz them on it throughout the week (e.g., mealtimes) by beginning the phrase and letting them (especially littles) complete it: “Lying’s not ____!”

To close the devotional time, pray as a family that whenever you are tempted with destructive lying this week, God will bring the phrase, “lying’s not loving,” to your mind and keep you from that sinful false speech.