Chilly, Chile or Chili?

How do you spell...?

So many of you were concerned for the well being of our marriage after my sermon yesterday. Several kindhearted friends offered their couch or spare room if I needed a place to crash for the night after my comments about Anna and her spelling. One person threatened me with bodily harm if I didn't lighten up on her! Whoa!

Just to clarify and put everyone's heart and mind at ease, Anna and I are fine. She wasn't offended and didn't make me sleep on the couch.

If the above comments completely confused you, check out the audio from my sermon yesterday entitled, "Patience in the Face of Suffering" from James 5:7-11. http://www.firstprotestant.com/fileadmin/Sermon_Recordings/Sermons/5-04-2008%20cont%20PB.wma

Also, if you're interested, the audio of the Confirmation Celebration from yesterday at 3:00pm is also available and you can get it here: http://www.firstprotestant.com/fileadmin/Sermon_Recordings/Sermons/5-4-2008%20confirmation%20service/

Now - as I promised yesterday, I have a few thoughts to share about James 5:12. There's enough here to warrant another whole sermon, but in the interests of time (and so that we can complete our study of James this century) I'm going to post the info here instead of preaching it in person. Here goes:

James 5:12 - Above all, my brothers, do not swear - not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.

This is the first of a series of commands that James issues to close out his letter to the scattered Jewish-Christian church he's been preaching to over the past 5 chapters.

As I have repeatedly mentioned, James' pattern throughout this letter is to present believers with a series of what I've referred to as "Tests of Living Faith." And the words that come out of our mouth has consistently found its way onto this list of tests. Our speech is mentioned in every chapter as an indicator of the health of our faith and relationship with Christ (1:26, 2:12, 3:2-11, 4:11, 5:12)

Apparently, to James, the way we talk is the most revealing test of our true spiritual state. He agrees with his brother, Jesus, who had this to say about the words we choose:

Luke 6:43-45 - No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

So clearly, our words are important. James uses the term "above all" - in other words, "this is the clearest test - everything else we've talked about is an indicator, but nothing says more about your faith and relationship with Jesus than your words. Wow.

He goes on to say, "do not swear." This doesn't mean "don't use foul language and four-letter words," but let me address that quickly. I've been bothered recently by how acceptable it's become inside and outside the church to be what my mother would refer to as a "potty-mouth." For real, dude! Why do we find it so necessary to pepper our conversation with these words? I have always found that I lose respect for people when they can't express themselves effectively without using profanity every other word.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to be a prude, here, and imply that every sentence we utter has to have a reference to Jesus and end with "Praise the Lord." I realize that they're just words, and if at some point "pickle" had been used in a profane way, and looked upon differently, we may view it as a curse word, but, really, can't we find a more appropriate and meaningful way to express strong emotions than relying on profanity?

I think we can. And I think when we do, people will notice. Those words are so prominent, it's an easy way to let our light shine to just avoid using them.

OK - I'm off the soap box. Back to the text.

Here's what James is really getting at. The Jews of his day had developed the practice of swearing false, evasive, deceptive oaths by everything other than the name of the Lord (which was the only thing that was considered to be a binding oath).

So - if I wanted to lie to you about something, I could swear by heaven, Jerusalem, the temple, the veil or my mother's eyes to add emphasis to what I was telling you. Then I could break that vow, because I never said "on the name of the Lord."

A contemporary example of this same technique is "I had my fingers crossed." I know I promised you that I would do..., but I only swore by my step-father's goatee, so that didn't really count!

They were going out of their way to hide their lying hearts and intentions and covering it up with these complex, wordy approaches to answering a direct question. Does this sound familiar? I seem to remember somebody saying something like, "It depends on what the definition of is is."

What!? Come on. James is saying, if you're taking the name of Jesus - you should have integrity enough that people trust that your "Yes" means yes, and they don't need you to swear by anything. We should have the belt of truth (see Ephesians 6) wrapped so tightly around our lives, that people believe us because we have credibility, not because we found a creative way to trick them by swearing what seems to be a promise.

When people are trying to convince me of something and they say, "I swear!," I usually say, "You don't have to swear - if you tell me the truth, I'll believe you." Shouldn't that be the way people see us? We should have so much integrity that our words have power.

When we say, "YES!," people ought to know that we mean it and that we can be trusted.
When we say, "NO!," others should know from our previous encounters that they can believe us.

When a person is constantly adding unnecessary oaths and I-swears to their words, it doesn't build their credibility, it weakens it.

Here's the best way to make sure that people will believe what you tell them: make a habit of telling the truth. Sounds simple, right? It's just that easy.

One last thing before I go. Some of you may ask, what about weddings and courtrooms? Don't we regularly make oaths in those situations (and even place our hand on the Bible)? Is this verse suggesting that I should I not do that?

I don't think that's what is being addressed here. There are times that oaths can be useful (and required by law). Taking oaths is wrong when they are misused with the intent to deceive or when taken rashly or flippantly. The bottom line is this: people of integrity do not need to swear elaborate oaths on everything short of God's name to convince others that they're telling the truth.

I pray that we can be (or become) that kind of follower of Jesus.

Until next time - RevPhil