Well, in the classic historical epic, Monty Python in the Holy Grail, there is a scene where a bunch of villagers bring a woman in front of one of the King Arthur's knights. And they say, we've got a witch. And the knight says, how do you know she's a witch? She looks like a witch. The woman says, I'm not a witch. They dress me like this. And this isn't my nose. They gave me a fake nose. Well, well, we did give her the nose and the hat. But she's a witch. Burn her. Did you dress her like that? No, no. Yes, a bit. A bit. But she has got a wart. Now, what makes you think she's a witch? She turned me into a newt. Yeah, better though. Yeah, burn her. Quiet, the knight says. And then he goes off on, how do you know someone is a witch? Well, if they're made of wood, they'll burn. Or if they can float. And if they, you know, if they can float, if they weigh the same as a duck, so they get some scales and they weigh her against a duck. And she weighs the same as a duck, burn her.
Good thing mobs are just a thing of the distant past, right? Or are they? Are they? In the summer of 2020, a manual cavity, a Mexican-American worker for a San Diego power company, was on his way home from work after a long shift. And he pulled up to a red light and a car pulled up next to him. And after making a scene gesture, then the driver then gave him that okay hand signal. And then when the light turned green, he drove on, and Cafferty didn't know what was going on, drove the next light. And there it was the car again. This time he rolled down the window and said, do it, do it! Cafferty didn't know what was going on, but he made the okay hand signal. And the driver took a picture and sped off. Two hours later, Cafferty got a call from a supervisor, saying that he was being fired because his picture was on Twitter, making a white supremacist hand signal. People, several people had called his company demanding he'd be fired. And he was. With no interview, no due process, no chance to respond. Now there's a serious problem in today's society. And it goes beyond even more basic than the problem of a Twitter mob. And that is the problem of jumping to conclusions about people. And not giving others the benefit of a doubt that you would hope that they would give to you. And you'll probably not be surprised to learn that the book of Proverbs has a number of things to say about this. So if you're able, please stand. We're going to read a couple of verses in chapters 18 and 14. Here's the word of God. From Proverbs 18, the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. And Proverbs 14, whoever is slow to anger has great understanding. But he who has a hasty temper, results folly. This is God's word for God's people and for the good of the world, please be seated. Now the book of Proverbs is pretty clear that when we allow our emotions, to rule us, that we often go the way of folly. And when it comes to hearing things about other people, a wise person first vets the information before they start to vent. They first research it, first look into it to see if it is true before they disseminate it. Whereas my friend Mike Philover says in his excellent new book Beyond Outrage, he says, authenticate before you propagate. Now the reason why we need to vet before we vent is because innocent until proven guilty is God's idea. Now Proverbs 18, 17, is actually the third warning in this chapter, in chapter 18, against forming a hasty opinion. The first warning is in verse 2, which says, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. How many times have you read the comment section of an article or blog post and thought, did these people even read the article? Or did they just read the headline and assume they knew what it said and just jump into the comments and start throwing haymakers? Verse 13 then says, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. Fools speak before they listen, they use their mouths before they use their ears and their brains. And then it is hard not to read verse 18, that the one who states his case first seems right until another comes and examines him without thinking about a good courtroom drama. A good TV show or movie, you've seen it right where one lawyer presents his to her case very compellingly or examines a witness and you think you have all the facts and you know what's true. And then until the other lawyer comes and either cross examines or presents a whole different set of facts, then you think, well, I thought I knew what was right, now I'm not so sure. And listen, I think lawyers get a bad route. There are way too many bad lawyer jokes. But most of the lawyers I know are actually really pretty good people and are not in it just for dishonest game. There are bad unscrupulous lawyers as there are bad preachers and teachers and business people, but lawyers can often serve a very important role in the cause of justice. And that is to vet the first story that is told in a case. Now the laws that God gives in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, they are all predicated on the ideas of fairness and justice. One commentator on Old Testament law rights, God established rules of justice to prevent unfair, arbitrary, erroneous, or dishonest treatment of an individual. Israelites who broke the law committing evil in the eyes of the Lord were subject to harsh penalties but not without careful investigation by leaders of the community. A person had to be proven guilty of a crime through examination and due process before a penalty could be served. Now our modern court system is based in large part on Old Testament law and that idea of due process. And I know that we can sometimes be frustrated by how slowly our criminal justice system tends to work but that can often be a very good thing to give time to investigate what really happened. And Moses in Deuteronomy 19 says that corroborating testimony is important. He says this, he says, you must not convict anyone of a crime in the testimony of only one witness. The facts of the case must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. The new testament continues that theme, says 1 Timothy 5, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. The big picture idea here is don't assume that you know just because you've heard one side that you know the bigger picture, take time to get all the facts of a case. The author Jonathan Swift once wrote, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. And we've seen that. We've seen that over in 2019. A person on the internet accused the singer songwriter Mitsky of not only abusing her from the age of 11 but also claimed that Mitsky was running a trafficking ring with her family. Now the story was eventually proven false but it could have destroyed her music career, could have many ways destroyed her life. Now there is an unfortunate side effect that can happen when we hold strongly this to this idea of innocent until proven guilty. And that is that sometimes victims can feel like they are not being believed. And this can actually re- victimize people who are trying to bring their accuser to justice. It's not uncommon for a rape victim to be questioned about what she was wearing, why she was out after dark, making it seem like it was her fault for the assault. And that is wrong. I think the answer here though is that we have to hold two things at the same time. We have to hold that number one, we take the posture of believing victims until we have reason not to while also holding the posture, taking the posture of assuming that someone is innocent of charges until we have reason not to believe that. Is that hard to do? Absolutely. Especially if we know one of the parties, they were friends with them. Or if the accused is part of some group that we are, we don't like or we are against and would benefit us if they were guilty. It's hard but God demands that we try to use all the objectivity that we can when we come to allegations. So innocent until proven guilty is God's idea, but do not bear false witness is also God's idea. Everyone knows that lying is a sin, but the knife can man actually says, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, which is interesting because it puts it in a relational context. And reminds us that even small lies that we tell can often have very big consequences for other people. And of course Jesus tells us that everyone is our neighbor. And so the commandment tells us that we should never speak something about our neighbor that we don't know to be true. And not even that includes gossip. Oh, did you hear that the Tom and Jane are having marital problems? I bet they are going to get divorced. Now, A, their marriage is probably not something you should be talking about with other people. But B, do you really know what's going on in their marriage unless you are a therapist or you have their house bug? And see, talking about the future of their marriage in such a doom way is wicked. Well, the Westminster confession, the larger catechism goes on, goes even further and says that the knife commandment really is about this that we should from the heart sincerely, freely, clearly and fully speak the truth. And only the truth in matters of judgment and justice and in all other things whatsoever. What does that sound like? That sounds like the oath that witness is taking court. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The confession is saying that that's actually how Christians should live all the time. All the time, we should seek to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not just in a court case, but in everyday life. I know that there's a tendency when it comes to politics or cultural war to think, well, the other side's not playing fair. Why do I have to play fair? I mean, why can't I just forward this email? It's probably true. And it'll certainly prove my side, right? Well, three reasons, at least three reasons why we'd be careful about that. Now, you should vent, why you should not vent before you vet. Number one, you have to play fair because you serve a just God. And the ends do not justify the means for God's people. We, God cares about everything we do, and He wants us to act with integrity and justice because He acts with integrity and justice. But number two, giving in to the temptation of play dirty is a fundamental mistrust in the sovereignty of God. If you know and truly believe that God is working all things for good, together for good, for those who love Him, then you won't have to stoop to sinful, underhanded tactics to try to bring about that good. You could trust that God is bringing about good. And He wants you to do good work. The third reason not to vent before you vet is that using half truths or unsubstantiated rumors, may give you a short-term game, but in the long term, the long run can often result in losing credibility. It runs very big thing that happens when we as Christians spread false reports, is that it becomes natural for an unbeliever to wonder if the gospel that we preach is also a false report. This is one of the things I admired about Tim Keller so much that not only did he refuse to speak about people poorly, even his biggest critics, but he also took great pains when he was interacting with somebody else's beliefs that were different from his or a debate opponent. He took great pains to understand their beliefs and to represent them fairly. To such a degree that his opponent would have to say, yeah, that's what I believe. You've actually spoken very well. He refused to build strong man arguments to falsely represent someone. He's a good example. First Corinthians 10-31 says, whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Does it glorify God when we forward that incendiary email that may or may not be true? Does it glorify God when we skip the process of fact-finding and letting someone explain themselves in just to clear them guilty in our eyes? Book of Proverbs would say, no, it does not. The reason, I think, that we often make these snap judgments and pass on un-stantiated rumors is often because we are angry. We are angry, and our anger can lead us to very rash decisions. But Proverbs 14 reminds us, whoever slowed anger has great understanding. But he who has a hasty temper, exalts folly, Christian, don't let your temper make you act like a fool.
Now, one of the defining questions in our culture over the last decade or so has been, how do I know what the truth is? What media outlets do I trust? What authorities are worth listening to, and listen, that is a good question. And it's only going to become an even more important question in the future. Where technology and AI will get better and better and lead to more and more deep fakes in pictures and internet posts. Some experts predict that we are heading towards a zero-trust society where no one trusts anyone. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we have to put our trust in something. You have to put your faith in something to live. You can't live with zero trust, or you wouldn't even be able to eat anything, because who knows what somebody put in my food? We have to trust something, and we need to know the standard of truth. And the standard of truth is God Himself. We read a couple weeks ago in Proverbs 2, the Lord gives wisdom from His mouth, come knowledge, and understanding. In the John 14, Jesus says, I am the way the truth and the life. God is the source of truth, the giver of knowledge, the one who gives us understanding. And if you know God, you can know truth. Talked about this the first sermon in this series. Through His Word to the work of the Spirit, He is working to guide you in the truth, to be able to understand it better, to walk in it. And the better you know God, the better you know and trust His Word, the more you will be able to tell the difference between lies and truth in our culture. Now, knowing God makes you able to discern a real picture from a photoshopped fake, well, not necessarily. But knowing God should keep us from being part of efforts to mislead and represent people. Knowing God gives us the wisdom to know what to do when we find out someone has tried to mislead us or spread a false report even about us. And ultimately knowing God gives us a different playing field. It reminds us that it is not necessarily who wins in this life, but that big part of our life is storing up treasure in heaven for the next life. And knowing that even if you are the victim of baseless gossip or slander, but even if you don't get justice in this life, that God will give you justice in the next. There's a TV show that recently aired and it was called Silo. And it's about a whole society of people who are living underground and they've been living their whole lives and so it's really all they know. And they've just been told that the outside world is too dangerous to go out into and so they need to stay in this silo. But some people begin to suspect that they're being lied to and that there might be more out there, but they find that it's very difficult to find evidence and who to trust and what information to trust. And they really find that ultimately what they need is someone to come from the outside to tell them what life is like there. Well the Bible tells us that we have that someone that Jesus Christ came from heaven. He came from the kingdom of God to earth to tell us that there is a place where there will not be any line, where there will be no false reports, where there will only be truth and justice and goodness. And Jesus gives us that kingdom and calls us to be a part of bringing in that kingdom as we trust in Him. I was talking this week with some guys about the concept of prudence and how it's used in Proverbs. Proverbs says that wisdom dwells with prudence and we're talking about how that idea prudence has become a bit of an insult in our culture. Now it's an old fashioned idea. It's even a name that some women used to have and nobody names their daughter prudence anymore. It's a bit of an insult. It's like people associated with people who are afraid to express themselves artistically or sexually prude. But the Oxford dictionary defines prudence as this, a sensible and careful attitude when you make judgments and decisions. In that sense we should all want to be prudent because the opposite of that is making hasty and rash decisions and being hasty rash usually does not accomplish the things of God. Again, my friend Mike Phillip who is a pastoral call in the city wrote the book Beyond Outright. He tells a story in the book about receiving an email from someone in his congregation and he first time he read it he felt like it was just a big veiled criticism of him. And so he immediately started typing a response email defending himself and in his anger. But before he pressed send he decided to go back and read the email again and when he reread it he realized that it was really a cry for help. I mean not really intended to be a criticism at all. Haste makes waste is a common saying for a reason. Christian lets value prudence over hasty judgments. Let's commit to not spreading false reports to spend the often five minutes it takes to verify something before we start venting about it. But even more than that let's commit to loving our neighbors so much that we will not want to spread false reports about them that put them in a bad light. Let's love them so much that we desire the best for them because that's how much Jesus loves them. Let's pray. Father Pontius Pilate wants to ask what is truth and that is a big question that is being asked in our culture. What is truth? Who is the power to determine truth? The Father we can only say either we are the arbiters of truth or ultimately you are. And so we look to you to tell us Father indeed what is truth and what we can know for sure. But we pray Holy Spirit that you would guide us in truth that you would be our counselors, that you would be our comforter and that you would show us the way we should walk. That you would help us as we exercise control over our minds and our lips and the things that we say that our words might not do great damage and show us to be foolish. But that we might speak wisely and that when sinners do need to be brought to justice Father if we are the agents of justice would we have the courage to do that. But if we are not Father would we as much as it depends on us lit a peace with all people that you might be honored in our lives and our words the name of Jesus we pray.