Words

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. By the way, the Ten Commandments are probably the most influential set of moral standards ever written in the entire world. And yet, things like covening, people aren't quite sure what that means. In fact, you could ask people on the street to name the Ten Commandments. How many do you think they'd name? Three or four? Three or four, I think. That's about it. It's amazing how much we don't really know, or how we minimize what they actually say. And so today, the commandment, probably more than any other, we try to minimize what it means, is this one from Deuteronomy 5.20. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You've heard of bear false witness, right? And so we think it means what? What do you think it means? Don't lie, right? But that's not what he said. He doesn't say just don't lie, okay? He says bear false witness against your neighbor. So we're going to look at that truth and what it means to live into that truth as a community. In fact, I think it's foundational for any community to have a community of truth where you can trust what other people say and do, okay? So we're going to be looking today at three points about bearing false witness and how they impact what it means to be a community, and that is what your neighbor actually needs from you, why they need it so much, and how you can be a person of truth. So what your neighbor needs, and I think it does come down to that, it's what your neighbor needs, what you also need from your neighbors, and that is to have truthful speech acts. Now, I know that's kind of an odd way. You've probably never heard of the speech act kind of thing, but that's actually what they are. They're not just words. It's not just about information. It's fascinating, actually, the word here in Deuteronomy chapter 5, and why I chose Deuteronomy rather than Exodus, where the Ten Commandments are also read, is for this Hebrew word that's used here, just a little difference of a nuance of a Hebrew word than the one that's used in Exodus 5. And that word is shalweh. Now I could have said anything and you wouldn't have known, right? It's read from right to left, so that's a shin, a wow, and an aleph, shalweh, and it means actually a vain or worthless or empty word that includes false words, but other words as well. It's not so much just about the fact that don't lie. There's a movement, actually, that was introduced by Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin. He had a book called How to Do Things with Words, and in it he talks about what is called speech acts, that speech does something. It doesn't just give information. In the fact that statements are not about what they say, but about what you intend them to do, okay? It's called speech act theory. So for instance, you might say, wow, you really look good today, right? I could say that. Now the question is, what am I intending with those words? Am I trying to encourage someone that day, or am I trying to butter them up and to manipulate them by starting out with those words? Do you understand what I mean? The one would be absolutely true. It's true both ways. You look marvelous today, but the one is kind of a deceptive word, even though it's true. Do you get what's going on here with that? And oh my goodness, do you start seeing the implications of what it means to bear a false witness? Do you want, what do you want to do with your words? You can speak truth to mislead, yeah, by just sharing enough and letting people feel in the blanks their own way. We do that all the time, right? And that does go against this commandment as well. So it's really more about, this commandment is more about what you intend with your words and how they act rather than what they just say. So this means that when you indulge in political speech, when you advertise your market, when you report to your investors, when you give information to your customers, when you report to superiors or supervisors or to those who work under you, whatever you say, you not only must not lie about it, but you have to also not just share selective truths that misrepresent the whole picture. Oh my goodness. Now do you get it? Oh wow. This one's tough. You know, and it's not just that our culture is swimming in this kind of speech. We are drowning in it. It's everywhere. Social media is a cesspool of speech acts that are just false or misleading or intended to harm or to withhold or you name it. Isn't it amazing how we are just filled with it so much so you wonder who you can trust and what you can trust and how do you go about living? Now I think students, you know of a very good example of bearing false witness on our campus at FGCU. The campus preachers, or screamers as some of them have called them lately, they are speaking true words. They're speaking scripture. But what do they intend when they share those scriptura...