Sermon by Rev. Ray Silverman

Sermon: Murder, adultery and theft are fairly easy to identify – a person is shot, a married man has an affair, a youngster steals a car – but false witness, even on the external plane, is more subtle. A story is told, but an important detail is omitted. A testimony is given, but a change of one word colors the whole story. It is so easy to defend ourselves, to justify our actions, and to incriminate others through the power of the words that we choose. Over the years, innocent people have suffered cruel punishments and guilty people have gone free because this commandment has been broken. Therefore God in this commandment urges us to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” God wants us to be truthful, honest, people of personal integrity. He wants us to bear witness to the truth.

On the level of natural life and external occurrences we are to report events as accurately as possible, without distortion and without slanting things in our favor. We should be true witnesses. This does not mean that we must be brutally frank, or provide information that would be harmful to people. If an innocent person were being pursued by murderers, and the murderous pursuers came and asked you which way the innocent person had run, what would you say? If you chose to point in the wrong direction and say “They went thataway,” this would surely not be a sin against this commandment; from time to time, situations do come up where we need to use good judgment and discretion. But for the most part, our responsibility is to report events as honestly and accurately as possible. We are to be true witnesses.

In the Old Testament, Moses serves as the true witness to the children of Israel. As he led them forth out of Egypt toward the Promised Land, he continually witnessed to them about God’s leading and God’s power. He reminded them that the Lord had brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and he assured them that if they would hearken to the Lord’s voice, they would experience the joys of the Promised Land. At one point, as the children of Israel stood before the Red Sea with the Egyptians closing in on them, Moses gave a wonderful witness of the Lord’s saving power. He said to his people, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today, for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall see no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and you need only be still.” (Exodus 14:13, 14)

But the witness of Moses, taken by itself, was not the whole truth. For in the next verse God intervenes, saying, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. Lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea, and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.” (Exodus 14:15, 16) On the one hand, we are given the witness of Moses: “Stand still.” On the other hand, there are the words of the Lord: “Go forward.” To whom shall we listen? Who is the true witness? The answer, of course, is both to stand still, and to go forward. To stand still is to trust in the Lord; to go forward is to go forward in that trust. But between the quiet inner trust and the bold outward action there is an important step, not to be omitted. The Lord said to Moses, “Lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it.” (Exodus 14:16) This was the essential step between standing still and going forward.

In many ways, this is a divine picture of every human life. We stand still even though we are surrounded by spiritual enemies. We stand still, trusting in the Lord’s salvation. But we are also called to go forward, not blindly into a sea of troubles where we will drown, but to go forward wisely, armed with the rod of God. What is this rod which cleaves the sea in two? What does it represent in each of our lives?

The rod which Moses lifted up to part the sea represents the supreme and almighty power of Divine Truth. This rod stands for the power of sacred scripture working in our lives. This rod is the Word of God, testifying to God’s mercy and love, to His presence and power. This rod is the true witness. It gives testimony that God alone has the power to conquer hell. It gives testimony that He already has won the victory, and it gives testimony that man can come into this state of victorious Christian living by using the power of the Lord’s Word in his own life. Emanuel Swedenborg tells us that all spiritual struggles are combats between the evil with a man from hell and the good with him from the Lord. "This combat is carried on by means of truths from the Word. The man must fight against evil and falsity from these truths. If he fights from anything else, he does not conquer, because the Lord is not in anything else." (Arcana Coelestia 8962)

Just as Moses lifted up the rod to divide the sea, each of us is called to lift up the Word of God. We are not merely to stand still and await salvation, but we are to go forth into combat. We are called to fight against false witness by means of true witness from the Word of God. To stand still is to have faith in the Lord’s saving power, but man cannot partake of this power unless he opens himself to receive it. No one can be nourished by merely reading a menu. He must eat the meal. The truths of the Lord’s Word must be taken into the mind and become truths of faith. They must be drawn up and utilized in the refutation of false teachings, false witnesses, and false prophets.

The Lord warned us to beware of false prophets who come to us in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. These are the false witnesses of the unseen spiritual world who come to us, disguised as truths that justify hidden evil. For example, they tell us to go ahead and hate someone who has hurt us. They say, “It’s healthy. Don’t stop your feelings. You have to pay them back. It will teach them a lesson. The Bible says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They tell us to go ahead and have an affair. They don’t call it adultery. They say it is a tender, sweet thing. They say that it is merely love between two human beings, and the Bible says we should love one another. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They say, “This is a really big store, and losing one little item doesn’t matter at all. It’s not like stealing from a little store.” They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The commandment against false witness is given to protect us against wolves in sheep’s clothing, against evil spirits who justify and legitimize their existence in us through twisting truths to serve their own ends. Whether it is the way we justify a sweet dessert, even when we are on a strict diet, or the way we rationalize our decision to cheat on income taxes, or the way we defend ourselves after speaking cruel words to a loved one, this commandment urges us to beware of false prophets, to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, to beware of false witnesses. We are to take a look at our unseen inner world, to listen carefully to the thoughts that flow in and to send them back to hell with the words, “You shall not bear false witness.”

At this level there is an amazing shift in our understanding of this commandment. There is no longer a divine finger of blame pointing at us, accompanied by a thunderous voice saying, “You should not.” Instead, we find that the Lord, in His mercy, is putting into our mouths words that will protect us from the onslaughts of hell, words of power that will cleave the sea in two, words of truth to refute all manner of false witness – words of spirit and life.

The simple command, “You shall not bear false witness,” is given to each of us as something we can say when falsity begins to flow in. In the third Psalm, David describes himself as being surrounded by the forces of despair and discouragement. He writes, “Lord, how they have increased to trouble me. Many are they who say of me, there is no help for him in God.” (Psalms 3:1, 2) Similarly, there are times in each of our lives when we feel desperate, helpless, and want to give up. It is at times like this that the false witness, who has already filled us with those desperate, hopeless feelings, now approaches with the death blow. It is just a whisper, but a false whisper, that, if believed, can do fatal damage. It’s the false witness to reality, claiming that there is no help for us in God.

At the deepest level, all of hell conspires to attack our faith in God and replace it with faith in self. Every evil spirit enjoys the most profound delight in dragging us into its own despair and desperation, and in destroying our trust in God. It is for this reason that the Lord puts into our mouth the words to refute them: “Begone, you devils. You shall not bear false witness. Begone, you pack of liars. You shall not bear false witness to the truth.” Like Moses lifting his rod before the Red Sea, like the shepherd who lifts his rod before the wolves, we are to continually lift up the Divine Truth against all that is false. Though the demonic crew surrounded David with the false witness about God, David was able to refute their falsehoods. In the very next verse David says, “But you, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.” (Psalms 3:3) And later in the twenty-third Psalm he writes, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.” (Psalms 23:4)

In this commandment we are given the power to refute the false witness of hell. This power comes to us through the Word of God. When a false witness rises up to say there is no help for us in God, we can refute him with the Lord’s own promise: “I will not leave you comfortless. I will give you a helper, even the spirit of truth.” (John 14:18; 15:26) When the false witness rises up to say, “When the going gets tough, it's time to give up,” we can refute him with the deeper truth, “When the going gets tough, I will call upon the Lord, and He will say, ‘Go forward in the power of My Word.’” When the false witness rises up to justify feelings of anger in us, we can refute him with the words of our Lord: “You shall not murder. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.” When the false witness rises up to justify adulterous lusts in us, we can refute him with the words, “You shall not commit adultery,” and “We are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” When the false witness rises up to justify feelings of merit and to tell us how good we are and how much we deserve, we can refute him with the truth that, “You shall not steal,” and “There is only one who is good, and He is God.”

The commandment against false witness gives us the power to refute the falsehoods that flow in from hell. It urges us to arm ourselves with the power of Divine Truth, to listen to the words of our Lord, and use them in our lives. In doing this, we walk with Moses and the children of Israel on dry ground through the Red Sea, and later, as we cross over Jordan with the Ten Commandments leading the way, we shall know for sure that the power of the Lord’s Word is our true witness, and it shall prevail. As Jesus said, “For this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.” (John 18:37)