Matthew 5:33-37

(Text Only)

Title: Swearing Oaths

I remember during my elementary school years driving down with my parents every Christmas from Cleveland to Nashville, TN to see my family.  The car ride was long, usually about 10 hours, but as a 10 year old that felt like 40 hours.  I would do anything I could to pass the time.

One of the games I’d play is to look far down the freeway to an overpass in the distance a mile or two and I’d say, “Jesus, I promise to hold my breath until we get to that overpass”  The reason for pledging to Jesus instead of just seeing if I could do it was that I thought I’d try harder if I’d made a promise to God.

Now sometimes I’d make it.  My parents would get down the road, under the overpass and they’d hear from the back seat, “Ahhhhhhhhhh” as I took a huge breath of relief and they’d wonder what the heck I was doing.  But most times, I didn’t make it.  I had misjudged how long it was going to take to get to that bridge, and therefore, I’d made a pledge, directly to God, and I failed.

This is what we are talking about today with Jesus’ instructions on taking and making oaths, and as we venture into this text, the question that I want to give you now, and then re-visit at the message’s conclusion is this:  What kind of man or woman are you?  What is your word worth?

(read/pray)

  1. What is the origin?

What teaching, exactly, from the Mosaic Law is Jesus offering a commentary on?  Deuteronomy 23:23 states, “That which has gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth.”

(Sounds a lot like what I did as a kid by holding my breath until the overpass…)

The key here is that the vow was given voluntarily, it wasn’t forced, and it was vowed to the Lord.  Therefore, the person making the vow was now under the Law to keep the vow.

Now, at first glance I don’t have a problem at all with the teaching from Deuteronomy.  To be honest, it seems fair.  It seems reasonable.  If a person makes a public vow to God, and does so voluntarily, it seems right that they should have to keep that vow.  So I’m naturally very curious as to how Jesus will amplify and clarify this teaching, for it seems pretty straight-forward.  

So what does Jesus say?

Do not swear at all.

This seems peculiar to me.  Why would Jesus suggest that the answer is not to keep our vows, but rather to not make them in the first place?  Is he eliminating vows all together?

If we read this in a basic sense, the answer would be yes.  But if we do a little more research, we see there is more to the answer than that.  

  1. Is this Universal?

So are all vows always wrong?  

Let’s look at three verses for a moment:  (Assign each of the following)

  1. Matthew 26:63   (Jesus takes an oath)
  2.   Romans 1:9  (Paul invokes God as his witness)
  3.   Hebrews 6:17  (God himself swears an oath)

So, obviously, Jesus is not forbidding oaths altogether.  So what problem what misunderstanding is Jesus trying to address?

Your thoughts?

Jesus is addressing a narrow and misleading legalism (amongst the Jews) that required a specific oath to make spoken words binding.  The implication of such an approach to honesty is that we do not need to be truthful, except when under and oath.  Jesus commands integrity of speech as though everything were under and oath.

-J.I. Packer

So we see what the real issue is.  When we have to qualify what we say as honest by an oath, the assumption is that whatever we say or do outside of an oath, doesn’t have to be honest.  And this practice and mindset falls woefully short of the character of men and women that God calls to be ambassadors for his kingdom.

  1. Four reasons not to swear

As if Christ’s reasoning were not compelling enough, he goes on to give us four reasons why we are not to swear these oaths:

  1. Not by Heaven because it is God’s throne (Don’t pledge someone else’s glory for your promise)
  1.   Not by earth for it is His footstool  (Don’t pledge on the name of something less than God, like one of his creations.  Pledging on “your mother’s eyes” is insulting to God.
  1.   Not by Jerusalem because it is the city of the great King (Don’t pledge on something that isn’t yours to barter with)
  1.   By your own head because you cannot make one hair white or black (Don’t pledge on yourself because you don’t have power over yourself, you are a slave to God’s will and righteousness, bought at a price, for the purpose of His glory)
  1. The Conclusion

(read v. 37)

So what then is our conclusion?

  1. We should act and speak in this way:  We are always under the ultimate oath:  The oath of representing our King as ambassadors for the Kingdom of Christ.
  1. Your reputation should distinguish itself in such a way that an oath is totally unnecessary, because your word is enough.

3.  A subtle, but powerful tool of the enemy is to get your swearing oaths, but this suggests that the “norm” of your speech is less than an oath.