Transcript for Why Does Jesus Say Not to Swear Oaths?

Here's Tim. For Jesus, this is all located within the bigger story of God's purposes for Israel and the world that are told in the scriptures. He wants to form a renewal movement within Israel that fulfills what the giving of the Torah was all about in the first place.

Yep. For Jesus, this is all located within the bigger story of God's purposes for Israel and the world that are told in the Scriptures. He wants to form a renewal movement within Israel that fulfills what the giving of the Torah was all about in the first place. And so that's what he's offering in these six case studies.

That'll work. Yeah, I mean, what he says in the introductory paragraph is these are examples of the greater righteous.

But that word righteousness just doesn't mean it doesn't land. I like the phrase we've come to appreciate, which is doing right by people. How you do right by people?

Well, kind of. We're about, well, let's just see here. All of you read it Matthew chapter five, verse 33 to 37.

The ancients. The ancient ones.

So let's just first listen knowledge. We've gone from like really universal. Personal matters, sex, anger, conflict, relationships, and now both swearing. Yeah, it gets a little myopic. So it seems so. Yeah, totally. So he's addressing a pretty specific issue in their culture and there's nothing for it. We got to learn a little bit about Israelite, both swearing to make sense about Jesus and saying here. But this is a good example of wisdom literature, the issue underneath this actually is really powerful. But you just have to do the work to get there. So first thing, these words do not break your oath, fulfill to the Lord the vows you've made. This is the first time that Jesus doesn't quote from any single verse or sentence in the Torah. He is actually quoting from three passages of the Torah and creating a new sentence that summarizes all of them. So once in Leviticus 19, verse 12, where God says to the Israelites, do not swear and oath falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am Yahweh. There's passage in Numbers chapter 30 if someone makes a vow to Yahweh or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation. He can't or shouldn't violate his word. He should do everything he said he would do. And then there's another passage in Deuteronomy when you make a vow to Yahweh your God. Don't delay and fulfilling it. It would be a moral failure for you, a sin for you. And Yahweh will require it of you. However, if you don't make a vow, that's not a moral failure. Just be careful to do whatever came out of your mouth. So first of all, there's some vocabulary thing. So the vows in the Bible and ancient Israel. So these are when people make promises to God. A vow is about a promise to God, the Hebrew word, Nether. There's a story, for example, when Jacob steals from his old blind father and cheats his brother and all that. And he's on the run. He's exiled for 20 years. And so God appears to him in the famous Jacob's ladder that's not actually a ladder. Some kind of ramp connecting heaven and earth. And God says, Hey, I got your back. I'm with you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to bring you back here eventually. Just trust me. And so he makes a vow. He says to God, if it's a big, if then, if you bring me back to this land, if you keep me safe, then you will be my God. And I will offer sacrifice to you when I return to the land. So it's this kind of thing. It's, if God, if you do this for me, then here's what I'll do for you. So this is the neather in Hebrew with the vow. Okay.

Oh, sure. Okay. That's a little different. Yeah. So here's what's interesting. Usually vows are between people and God. Okay. And then usually between each other between humans, it's called an oath or in Hebrew, a shevel law, which can be a synonym for a covenant. Okay. But basically a promise in these oaths, oftentimes people will invoke the name of God. So they'll say, by the name of Yahweh, I will, you know, repay you five times what you paid me or this kind of thing. This is what in Leviticus 19 that I read, do not swear and oath falsely by my name. So if I say, hey, can I borrow your donkey? I'll borrow it for a week and I'll pay you, you know, the weeks, whatever. You think it's worth it. You know, plus and eight, all adenates. to it, you know, just for about it, you know, whatever. I promise I'll pay you back by the name of Yahweh, I promise I'll pay you back. And then what if I don't pay you back?

Yeah, so that's the kind of thing this law is getting out here. Okay. So don't bring Yahweh into it.

Yeah, that's right. So if I make an oath to you and bring Yahweh into it, I better do it. Yeah, you locked yourself in totally. And then also, if I make a vow to Yahweh, hey, Yahweh, if you bring me spring rains so that I get a bunch of harvest, I'll give a chance to you. You better do it. So just on the simple level, that's what these owes and vows are talking about. Got it. So we have to imagine a culture where people do this. They swear by the name of Yahweh. And that's a big deal. And it means something. It means something significant. It means something.

Yeah. I guess so. I don't know. I didn't grow up. And there aren't actually a ton of stories about people doing this in the Hebrew Bible. Okay. Usually it's a little formula in Hebrew where somebody says, May Yahweh do such and such to me and even more if I don't, you know, give you back your donkeys or whatever. So yeah, people do it, people did it. And it meant something apparently. But it gets more complicated. So by GS' day, Israel, like, culture is already over a thousand years old, right? And it's developed. So by GS' day, there's already a tradition that's a century or two old where people don't say the name of Yahweh anymore. People avoid pronouncing the divine name. So this whole practice was about using the name of God, but nobody says the name of God anymore. It creates this vacuum. Like, well, what do you swear by? So they're developed this practice of swearing by things that are really closely associated to y'all. They started putting in these other sacred things. But then, as human nature is, you know, you find ways to twist it to your own advantage. Jesus actually brings us up later in the Gospel of Matthew, prophetic, woe, oracles that he pronounces over the Pharisees. In Matthew 23, over 16, he says, woe, to you all, you blind gods, you say this. If somebody swears by the temple, it doesn't really mean anything. If anybody swears by the gold of the temple, well, then you're bound to fulfill your oath. You blind fools, which is greater the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You all say, if anyone swears by the altar, doesn't really mean it. But if anybody swears by the gift on the altar, well, then you're bound to fulfill your oath. You idiot! Sorry, that's my paraphrase. He calls them, you blind people. which is greater, the gift or the altar than Jesus concludes. Anybody who swears by the altar swears by anything on it. Anyone who swears by the temple swears by the one who dwells in it. Yahweh, anyone who swears by the skies, the heavens swears by God's throne and the one who sits on it.

I mean, the basic idea is like I imagine the scenario, it's Eliyahu, and he's talking to Yermiyahu. And he says, you know, I told you yesterday I actually swore to you yesterday on oath that I would help you move your wagon, but, you know, my aunt's sick, and I got to go help her. So sorry. And also, I didn't swear by the gold of the temple. It's a loophole. So it really wasn't a valid oath in the first place. Yeah. So Jesus, he's pretty irritated with something that's happening.

The final line that Jesus says here is in the King James, it's famous. Let your yes BS and your no be no. Literally in Greek it's let your word be yes yes no no. And so English translations are all over the map. Now they translate that dense little phrase of Jesus. And IV has all you need to say is simply yes or no. I guess the idea across. Right. Yeah. But new American standard is the closest in kind of normal English, but let your statement be yes, yes or no, no.

Yeah. Yeah, just say yes or just say no. Right. Yeah. Here's what's interesting. Let's go back to the sermon on the mount. Let's just I would just want to nail down one last thing about what Jesus is doing. So his point is humans inevitably develop these ways to manipulate and take advantage of each other. In his day, it was this practice of, you can swear by certain things that are close to God, but not totally, and so it's sort of like hedging your bets. Well, if I just swear by the skies, it's just the skies, you know, and it's okay. And so Jesus' point is anything that you would even try to swear by is God's creation. And you're implying God in any oath you take invoking anything at all. So don't swear by the sky or the land or Jerusalem or by your head. Well, it's my head. It doesn't have anything to do with God. And Jesus' point is, what? You don't even have control over your head. Where'd your head come from? Yeah. It comes from God.

You know that you can't escape God.

Yeah. Yeah. The point is that humans go to elaborate efforts to construct these schemes that help us avoid having to have a real vulnerable transparent moment with each other. And just saying, I know that you can't trust me because of the way I've treated you. And so instead of manipulating you, I'm just going to ask you to give me one more chance. And I will try and do what I said I was going to do. That's a very vulnerable thing to be that transparent with somebody.

You have totally. That's exactly right. Yeah. Dallas Willard, you wrote a book called The Divine Conspiracy in the early 2000s. I don't know man, it rocked my world. So he has a paragraph about this teaching of Jesus that continues to sit with me. It's kind of extended quote, but we'll just work through it because I think he gets to the heart of what this is about. He says the essence of swearing oaths that Jesus targets here is about invoking something or someone else, especially God, to make your words seem more significant and more weighty. The aim is to impress others with your seriousness or your piety so that you get what you want. It's a device of manipulation designed to override the judgment or input of others in order to possess them for our purposes. Such a good way putting that. It goes on. It's manipulation. Or as we say in our culture, spin. And Jesus says it's evil. Instead of loving and honoring others with truthfulness, the intent is to get one's way by verbal manipulation of the thoughts and choices of others. That's heavy, man. That's heavy. One way this applies and the way that this gets expressed in the practice Jesus targets is the way we borrow from the importance or honor of someone else to give your words more. Yeah, to like buster my lack of integrity. So that's one way. Sure. That's the specific thing. But again, if we're reading this as wisdom literature, We're also going to try and imagine what are other ways that we do that. That I use God to manipulate other people's perception of me to get them to do what I want. And somehow when Dallas will put it like that, all of a sudden I just started to think about all of these ways that in religious cultures people use language about God to cut off input from other people or to bulldoze over other people for their own purposes. So that's not exactly what Jesus is talking about, but it's another way that people use God to get what they want.

Yeah, exactly. How else does it happen? And so this is really tricky. I have had moments before where someone's making a decision. And they're just telling me about a decision that they're making. And sometimes it'll be real general. It'll be like, you know, God gave me a real piece about this. Or even more so, God told me to do this. Yeah. I believe that like God tells people to do stuff. Yeah. The Bible's full of stories like that. And you know, I know people have had those kinds of experiences, but those are really precious experiences. And it makes it weighty.

Yeah, yeah. But again, the principle is I'm bringing God into bolster or validate something that I'm saying or doing.

But then it also raises a question of what if I didn't? What if I'm misunderstanding my experience? Honestly mistaken. Where worse, what if I've, you know, I've talked to myself in to believing that's true. And what my real motive is to just want to get this decision past so that the church can do this or that. And so, yeah, I really believe God told me. And if some elders disagree with me, well, you know, this stuff happens totally. And it's I guess to me it's just significant that Jesus wants his followers to be hyper vigilant and aware of how we bring God in to our desires to get things down in the world and how we relate to other people. And in the moment, really, like I said, the moment Dallas Willard helped me see that aspect of what Jesus is saying here, this one of all the six, this one just leaped in new ways for me. And I find myself thinking about all the time.

Because you don't want to have the pendulum swing and therefore never you never bring God into anything. Correct. Yeah, I don't think that's the right response, but it's that. It seems like Jesus wants us to cultivate a hyperself awareness that I'm not beyond manipulating other people by trying to use God's reputation. And it's just it's something I need to have on the radar. And this is true. I think for any follower of Jesus, I think it's especially true for religious leaders. Yeah. Whether it's in a local church setting or whatever, like people like you and me, yeah, who are like claiming to represent what the Bible is saying. And it's anyway. It's a terrifying thing, but it's a part of what Jesus is getting at.

I am really glad you're raising this. So let's paint a couple scenarios. Let's say someone has a deep conviction. They're reflecting on the scriptures. They feel like through events in their lives. Maybe even a powerful experience. I felt an impression or heard the Holy Spirit guide them in some specific way. And so they're going to make some decisions. And that decision will mean having to talk with other people because I'm not going to do that thing anymore. I'm going to do this thing. Yeah. So I think the question is, how do I handle that conversation. And how do I bring God into it? Because I think there are a couple ways to have a conversation like that. You could have a conversation where here's where I'm at. Here's why. Here's the reasons for my conviction. Here's an experience I had. Yeah. And that's just where I'm at. And you invite a conversation about it. And so someone can say, but I really disagree because what about this and that? Well, I respect that. And for these reasons, I'm not on board. It's having the conversation in the way that honors the dignity of both parties. Right. And I'm not going to try and manipulate you. I just want you to understand me. And I want to understand you. But there are often moments where there just is a difference of opinion, a different view. And you know, Paul and Barnabas, or Paul and Silas had these, you know, on the road about John Mark.

And they parted ways. And so I'm not saying that there's never differences opinions or conflict. What I'm saying is when those situations arise, I think Jesus wants us to cultivate a hyper vigilance that we don't use the God card to manipulate other people, but that we honor the relationships and do our best to communicate in an honest, transparent way. I think that's the heart. do I bring God into a conversation or a moment of difference or a moment where I'm trying to get something done or have desires, whatever. And I bring God in such a way that it keeps me from having to be vulnerable and honest with you. Or accountable. Or accountable. Oh, yes. Or accountable to you.

Yeah. Or I swear by the name of y'all way. I'm gonna do this thing when I know in my mind that I probably won't or I have some other agenda going on here. And it's just like don't bring God into it.

We are talking about the basic wisdom principle here. It's about open. Honest, vulnerable relationships, transparent honesty.

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. For a friend or a family member who you share the same religious convictions. Sometimes those religious beliefs can form a bond and create a safety between you to share things that are really powerful and vulnerable. But at the same time, in other relationships, it can become a tool to manipulate each other. And again, I think that's the thing Jesus is targeting here. royal images of God who are called the represent God to the world. They don't need to do that with each other. They can be honest with each other and learn God's wisdom to figure out their differences and treat each other with integrity. And yeah, this is powerful. So here's how I think where Jesus is going in this triad, the second triad here. Okay. This is how he starts it. The second two are going to be about non-retalliation, non-violent retaliation, and loving your enemies. So what all three of these have in common is about coercion, responding to people, and how I relate to people when our wills are at cross purposes, or we have different visions of reality in some way. How do we cooperate? Yeah, so the first three had to do with this value, treating each other with value and dignity. And now this is also that's underneath this two, but this is the next step of like What happens when we're conflict? Yeah. How am I going to treat you? Yeah. Second is you've hurt me. How am I going to treat you? The third is you and I hate each other. How am I going to treat you?

Yeah. Yeah.

That's it. That's the second try. That's good John Well, yes, yes, and you know be no

Yeah, so what is so interesting is that Jesus is drawing upon here in a very subtle way, but it's become more clear to me as the years come by upon an important narrative motif throughout the Hebrew Bible that begins life with the snake, the snake in the Garden of Eden, in the Garden of Eden. And it's a motif that continues right on. It's about people who take the words of God and use them to manipulate other people or deceive them to get them to do what they want.

Yes, we're talking about just three. Yep, we're in Genesis 3. The snake comes up to the woman. And first, re-quotes the command of God to Adam and Eve from chapter 2. But changes just a couple words. Twist said. Yeah, did God really say you cannot eat from all the trees of the garden? Mm-hmm. That's not what you say. No. And there's one word different. It's the word not. Because God said, you, yeah, each of all the trees. Yeah. But what introducing that one word not makes the woman focus then on the one tree that God did say not to eat from. Yeah. So he's sewing the seeds of kind of distrust there. Then the woman says, well, no, God said, you'll die. you know, when you eat of it and then you just straight up, inverts God to where it's no, you will not die. So he's using God's words, but just tweaking twisting in order to lead this person into a trap. So that's the motif. So what is the evil one? That's the evil. It's the voice of the evil one. And Jesus is alluding to that. Okay. How the words of God can be twisted and abused in order to create traps and to manipulate people. Okay. But how does this relate to oaths? Okay. Yes. So it can't make the stuff out, man. The way that design patterns work in the Hebrew Bible is that the Garden of Eden's story becomes like a template. And each generation of characters that goes on will always be replaying through usually subtle vocabulary hyperlinks in some way, the previous stories. And so when you get to like a story with Abraham, he goes into the land and then the moment there's a famine he leaves the land he goes down to Egypt with his wife and then he lies about her saying she's my sister and then all of the language there of the men of Egypt will see you that you are beautiful of seeing they will take you and all of a sudden Sarah is being described in the language of the true identical of the tree in Genesis 2 in 3 Pharaoh and his courtiers see and take her, so they become like Adam and Eve. Okay. And then Abram is the one lying to the king, and it's his deception that gets, right? The Egyptians to take her. So Abram is depicted in the slot of the snake. So this happens all the time. What's super interesting, there's many narratives in the Hebrew Bible where people trick each other. Taking the role of the snake. Yep, where someone in the story is depicted in language similar to the snake. And then what they do is use a vow or an oath as the way to deceive somebody. It's so fascinating. There's many examples I could show. Here's just a couple because it's cool. But all this is to say, this is a core motif using what sounds true in order to deceive and that forces somebody to have to discern whether you represent the truth or not. This is a key idea throughout the Hebrew Bible, and Jesus is pulling on it right here in the sermon. He's going to pull on it again at the end when he says, watch out for false prophets. Okay. There's just like sheep, but they're really their wolves. He's drawing on that idea again. So here, so here's an example. This is in Joshua chapter nine. So in Joshua 1 through 8, his relates of Cross the Jordan River. So Joshua's leadership going into the Promised Land. All these Canaanite groups attack them. and they just get destroyed. And sometimes, it's the Israelites actually having a battle with them. Other times, God will send a storm of hailstones on them or something. But the point is, by Joshua 9, they've won a number of battles.

Yeah, so that's how Josh would nine begins, kind of all the kings beyond the Jordan gathered together to fight with Joshua in Israel. The inhabitants of Gibbon, which was a city there in the hills, they heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and I, they acted craftily. Hmm, that's the word. It's the exact word, Arum. Let's see, used of the snake in Genesis 3. And so they set out on voice and they took worn out food sex on their donkeys. They took worn out wine skins that were torn and then like sewn back together. They took worn out and patched sandals on their feet and worn out clothes. And all the bread of their provisions that they took was dry and like crumbled in pieces. Okay. They put on a performance here. They put on a disguise. Yep. and they take food and they take food. That's gonna become an object of deception. So they take this disguise and food and they go and they say, hey, Israelites, man, you guys are really powerful. This is my paraphrase. You're really powerful. Your God is with you. We've heard that any kings who stand up against you, you're able to defeat. So we heard of this. We live in a far away land. We've come from far and we've come from far away and we want to make peace with you. We are your servants. And Joshua and the elders are like sweet cool band. This is great. Check out sandals are worn. Yeah, look at your clothing. They look it says they look at the clothes and so on. And so what they do is they make a covenant with them. and these tricksters get the Israelites, Joshua 9 vs 15, to swear an oath, by Yahweh that we won't ever do anything to harm you or hurt you or whatever. So there's an example where people who are acting like snakes, tricksters, using an oath. And they use an oath. Yeah.

No, they're getting somebody else to make. Promise in the name of Yahweh. But it's still manipulation. But they're manipulating Yahweh. Yeah, that's right. So there are lots of stories like this. There's stories of people making rash oaths like Jephta, who's a judge. And he makes a really stupid oath to Yahweh that helps sacrifice whatever walks out of his house. If God will help him win a battle, and then who walks out of his house is his daughter. That's definitely from the evil one, and so he ends up sacrificing her. Saul, the first king of Israel, swears in oath that none of his soldiers can eat any food. And if they do, they'll be put to death. And then his son, Jonathan, didn't hear the oath. And so he finds some honey in the forest. And he eats of the honey. And then when Saul hears about it, he's going to kill his own son. So, in other words, oh, this becomes instruments that bring death instead of life. Whereas the whole purpose of them originally is that they bolster truth. And in both those stories about Jeff that and was saw, there's all these hyperlinks in them like this one in Joshua 9 that link these characters to the snake. Here's my point. When Jesus says anything beyond this comes from the evil one. He's sharing a little window into how he reads and understands his scriptures. And he sees in them a motif that when people use the truth, especially divine truth, like, oh, it's something that got to words. And then use them as instruments to deceive or use them to set in motion something that will lead to death or to ruin. He sees the voice of the evil one at work there. Humans can become instruments of the evil one. we can become snakes to each other. Yes, yeah. When we use something that's meant to reinforce truth and we actually use it to manipulate or to deceive.

You're playing the snake, yeah. And so it's interesting. There are times when we may intentionally do that to each other. Yeah. I think there's other times when it's maybe subconscious and we don't fully know that that's what we're doing, but we are because we're motivated by some desire. You know, we're honest, probably most of us can think of an experience where we have misrepresented the truth just a little bit in order to persuade people to think a certain thing.

And we're sneaking ourselves as well as others. Yeah, so in Jesus' day, swearing oaths was a really common practice where you're bringing the name or the reputation of God of Israel into our interactions with each other. I swear to God that I'll pay you back. Listen, you can trust me. I will do that thing I said. Remember, I swore a nose by the temple that I would do it. You know, and then the next day you're kind of like, oh, man, I really can't, you know, do that thing that I said it was gonna do. Well, I only swore about the temple. So, at least I didn't swear I got it. That's the kind of mental games Jesus is talking about.

But Jesus is naming there is something diabolical underneath of it. underneath it, but maybe we don't even fully understand that we're participating in, right? And maybe this also goes to that theme of character shaping that's a work in the sermon. Maybe think back to the case study about lust, right? Jesus saying, even for a man to look at a woman with lustful intent to play out a little fantasy. And some people might say, well, at least if that man's keeping it in his mind and it never goes outside his mind, what's the harm? But I think Jesus has a view of human character that habit formation, while it may be really personal and internal, it rarely stays private. Like it eventually goes public in some way, because your character is shaped by your habits. And then eventually, even internal habits have an external set of consequences. And so I wonder if this, too, might seem an innocent little exaggeration, the little white lie, but over a thousand repetitions, All of a sudden it becomes a lot easier to maybe tell a bigger lie and bring God into the deception and to use someone else's belief in God as a way to manipulate them. Right, yeah. That's the way of the snake.

It's called an English-the-law retaliation. It's preventing blood fumes between clans and towns and cities from spiraling out of control. And so the law of retaliation is actually trying to put a limit on human violence in savagery.