Let Your Yes Be Yes, and Your No Be No

Greetings in the Lord~
Today's first word is from Matthew 5:17-46.  In these verses, Jesus focuses on the Law and then begins to explain God's heart and original intention in the Law, but because what he says almost sounds like he is changing the Law, he begins by clearly saying, "I did not come to change the Law...but to fulfill its purpose."  So, we can know right away that their culture and understanding of the Law was different than what God had originally intended.  Well, that always seems to happen; we learn the rules then set about to get around them or use them to our advantage! 

In a nutshell, Jesus is saying that it is not enough just to obey the Law, but to also embrace God's heart and attitude for the Law as well, and they will lead to truth.  For example, the Law forbade adultery; yet Jesus explained that even having a heart full of lust for another was adultery.  Likewise regarding murder; if your heart was full of bitter anger towards someone it was the same as the sin of murder. Therefore, it is important to not legalistically follow God's rules like a checklist while giving free reign to bad motivations in your heart, because the truth is, we are then full of the capacity for committing those sins.  Therefore, we must know and understand and practice the true heart intention of God's Law, as it cultivates a life of godliness in us. 

Coincidentally, following the heart of the Law also positively impacts our environment.  For example, if we all let our "yes be yes and our no be no," then, we will be cultivating an environment of integrity and truth and will have no need to swear by or make a vow that our word is true.  I've lived in some places where a 'maybe' is a no, and a 'no' could be a yes, you just had to ask again and again; and a 'yes' was a maybe at best!  Needless to say, truth in these places was a rare commodity indeed, and often a person was called a "donkey" for telling the truth.  Yikes!

The second part of today's word comes from Luke 11:34-36:
"Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body.  When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light.  But when it is unhealthy, your body is filled with darkness.  Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness.  If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light."

We live in an unprecedented time in the United States where both truth and integrity are being called into question daily on a large scale, so at the end of the day many may ask, "What is truth, anyway?"  Well, in the first passage we see that quite often our cultural understanding of truth does not usually line up with or embrace God's heart and intention for truth and Law, which begins at our heart level.  So, what we get is a grey area something like this: I may not have told a lie on the witness stand, but my telling of the account will paint a biased/misleading/lying picture of the situation."  Therefore, we must know that truth begins with good heart motivations and godly intentions, without these, truth is not possible.

The second passage focuses on the "eyes" of a person, or how they perceive a situation.  "Unhealthy" eyes do not perceive things from a godly perspective, and as a result, that person's mind remains darkened or in the dark (not truth).  "Make sure the light you think you have is not actually darkness."  People with unhealthy eyes most often do not know that their eyes are unhealthy because they so firmly believe the lies that they have been taught over the years.  Some of these lies come from culture, others from family traditions or misguided religious understandings, but sometimes their eyes are unhealthy because of their own bad heart intentions, i.e. they believe they are entitled to or justified in their incorrect perceptions.  

At any rate, it is fair to say that a sizable percent of people have unhealthy eyes these days and cannot judge correctly because of it.  They may be very intelligent people, but conventional knowledge is not godly wisdom, and you can only have godly wisdom with reverence for the Lord.  Fear of the Lord is a prerequisite to receiving godly wisdom.  Therefore, it is safe to say that as our society has less and less reverence for the Lord, that truth will be harder and harder for them to know and discern, and God's Law will only seem like a set of rules for them.  So, today I pray that God would grant each person who really wants to know "What is truth?" the humility to seek Him in reverence and awe, so that God would begin to heal their eyes and they would begin to receive godly wisdom to know truth and the heart of God's Law.  Amen

~Be blessed and be a blessing.                  

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