King of Hearts | Week 5

SERIES:  King of Hearts
MESSAGE: Oaths
DATE: May 9, 2021

“Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors,You must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord.  Matthew 5:33

But I tell you, don’t take an oath at all: either by heaven, because it is God’s throne; or by the earth, because it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black.    Matthew 5:34-36

But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one.   Matthew 5:33-37

Say what you mean; and mean what you say. 

 “Whenever I utter the formula ‘I swear by God,’ I am really saying, ‘Now I’m going to mark off an area of absolute truth and put walls around it to cut it off from the muddy floods of untruthfulness and irresponsibility that ordinarily overruns my speech.’ In fact, I am saying even more than this. I am saying that people are expecting me to lie from the start. And just because they are counting on my lying I have to bring up these big guns of oaths and words of honor.”   (Dr. Helmut Thielicke, “Life Can Begin Again”)