Building Escape Clauses

You know, Americans have a very hard time with commitment. We fear missing out; we admit it, we call it FOMO. We don't buy, we subscribe. We don't marry, we live together. We don't join churches, we attend them. We don't break up, we ghost. We don't RSVP "yes," we click "maybe." We don't solidify our plans ever; we just wait and see. We say we are coming, but it's assumed you might come or not. We withhold the truth and call it a necessary lie or a white lie. We don't promise; we say, "We'll try." And then when someone asks this question, "How do I look?" you have to reason between the truth and personal survival.

We struggle—it's true. We struggle to make promises, and when we do, we often hedge our bets just in case something else comes up. When people talk to you, do they ever wonder if they have to read the fine print after hearing you speak? When's the last time you read the fine print? When you were at a bank? When you bought a house? You know, you can either read all this or it'll take 30 minutes—which one do you want? Parent permission forms—why don't we read them? Because they're 40 pages long. And what do they represent? They represent that something bad happened in the past, and so someone has to write down something so that bad thing doesn't happen again. We don't want to read the fine print, but it's not there by accident. Someone sat down and wrote it. Someone thought carefully about the moment when a deal might be inconvenient, and they built a door either to keep people in or let people escape.

The Power of Words

Now, hold on to that image because Jesus is going to speak about our promises. The Bible speaks a lot about how we use our words. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves; their religion is worthless. That's James 1:26. James has more to say about speech than any other topic. The tongue is full of deadly poison; it sets the world ablaze.

I know people who are in their 70s and 80s and can still remember things said to them in junior high—things that I'm sure those other junior high kids have no memory of saying; things that have so crushed their souls and become so entwined in their lives that they have shaped them for a lifetime. It crushes people. When we tend to think about words, we think of their impact on us; we don't think about the words coming out of our own mouths. But that's what Jesus is after today. The way we speak is not a minor matter.

As we work our way through the Sermon on the Mount, we've seen the pattern now, right? Six times Jesus says some version of, "You have heard it said," and then, "But I tell you." Every time, it's a teaching about a commandment everyone knows about, and then he gets underneath it. "You have heard it said, 'Don't murder,' but I say check your anger. You've heard it said, 'Don't commit adultery,' but I say check your eyes." Last week: divorce and remarriage. So anger, lust, adultery, divorce... are you surprised the next topic is integrity?

Again, Matthew 5—hear it again:

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.' But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

The Human Craft of Loopholes

Today is about integrity. It is about helping you walk securely in this world. "Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out"—that's Proverbs 10. It is about being complete and being whole. It is about not compromising who you are. It's about not compartmentalizing parts of your life. Jesus claims every square inch of your life, and this section is about those little crevices and corners of your life—about telling the truth. But it's not just that; it is about the elaborate ways in which we build escape clauses in order to convince ourselves we still have integrity.

So, three things in the text: the rule, what it's for and what we've done to it (why there's no safe place to swear anywhere), and then what Jesus asks of us.

First, here's the rule and the loophole that gets created. Verse 33: "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.'" You know what's interesting about that? That's not actually a direct Bible verse. Jesus is not quoting a single Old Testament verse; he is quoting a summary of several Old Testament laws about telling the truth and invoking God's name.

Until the printing press, very few people could read and write. So how do you sign a contract when people can't read and write? You just say it out loud. Your word is the contract. You may have heard one of the Ten Commandments: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." That's Exodus 20:7. Growing up, you may have had your parents quote that verse to you when you threw God's name around or responded in anger using God's name. Maybe you've heard people react if you use God's name as a comma in praying: "Dear Lord, thank you, Lord, for this day, Lord..." But it's more than that. The commandment in particular is about invoking his name to make promises.

Leviticus 19:12 says do not swear falsely by God's name and so profane it. Numbers 30:2 says when a man makes a vow to the Lord, he must not break his word. Deuteronomy 23:21 says if you make a vow, do not be slow to pay it. Nothing complicated—everyone knows what this means. If you invoke God's name to guarantee a promise, as in a contract, keep the promise.

Now, it's worth asking: what are oaths for? Why do they even exist? Maybe you've seen the greatest movie of all time, The Princess Bride—which is one of the greatest movies of all time, if not number one. The Man in Black is climbing the Cliffs of Insanity, and he's stuck. Inigo Montoya says, "I'll throw the rope down," and he says, "I'll pass. I don't trust you." And then Inigo Montoya says, "I swear on the soul of my father, Domingo Montoya, you will make it to the top alive... and then I will kill you." So what's the difference between "I will help you get up" and "I swear on the soul of my father"?

Or a more modern example: why does anyone put their hand on the Bible to make a promise? Behind that idea is that your word is not good enough—it's that you have a problem with commitment to the truth. And so you need to borrow power from something else you would be ashamed to desecrate. That's why the Bible ended up in American courtrooms and why politicians put their hands on a Bible. Every time a person swears by something, they are saying, "My ordinary word is not enough."

The Old Testament permitted oaths for this reason. An oath was meant to solemnize the truth and help someone who has a problem telling the truth to think twice. It was a protection mechanism for people who needed assurance. But as in previous weeks, people go searching for loopholes. Isn't that what a contract dispute is? "Show me where I have to do that!" The religious leadership had taken a good and simple command and built rule after rule around it. There's an entire section in the Mishnah—the collection of oral laws—devoted strictly to oaths: pages and pages of careful reasoning. One rabbi said if you swear by Jerusalem, you are not bound; if you swear toward Jerusalem, you are bound.

Jesus quotes them in Matthew 23: "Woe to you, blind guides! You say, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.'" And then he goes on about the altar: "Swear by the altar, it means nothing; but swear by the gift on the altar, now you're bound." So the gold outranks the temple, and the gift outranks the altar. The human rules had grown more sacred than the God whom the rule was originally about. What ends up happening when you make rule after rule about when it counts and when it doesn't? It promotes deceit.

If you're thinking, "Man, this sounds like Trivial Pursuit for Bible nerds," let's go back to your childhood playground. You're eight years old. You promise something to a friend, and later you don't do it. When they call you out, you produce the trump card of all trump cards: "I crossed my fingers!" They say, "You didn't cross your fingers!" You say, "I crossed them behind my back!" They say, "No, you didn't!" You say, "I crossed my legs!" And if they see through all that, you say, "It was my toes!" Who could argue with such logic? That's exactly what the Pharisees were good at: crossing fingers. It is a private mechanism that the recipient of your word does not see, which empties the promise of power while making you feel you still have integrity.

That heart grows up with all of us. Grown men and women may not cross their fingers, but they get more sophisticated. Remember Lance Armstrong, the cyclist? Multiple Tour de France wins. People would always ask him doping questions because every cyclist was doping. How would he respond? He would say he was the most tested athlete in the world and that he had never failed a test. We hear that as a denial. Did he lie? Technically, no: "I have never failed a test; I am the most tested athlete in the world." But he built a sentence with an escape door so that one day he could claim, "I wasn't lying."

We do smaller versions of this: "I never said that!" You've been in conversations where you technically didn't say those exact words, but the implied meaning was clear. "I didn't say those words; that's not what I meant"—when that's exactly what you intended. Or somebody tells a story that makes you sound amazing, way better than you are, and you don't correct it. You didn't say anything false—they did—and you get the credit. We're talking about deception that doesn't even require saying something false; it only requires leaving a door open on purpose so you can escape and still claim integrity. We are so good at turning a command into a loophole.

There Is No Safe Place to Swear

Second: there is no safe place to swear. "I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black."

Notice Jesus does not attack the rankings; he simply asks, "Whose is this?" Heaven is God's throne, earth is his footstool, Jerusalem is the city of the Great King, and you don't even own your own head. There is nothing in creation that doesn't already belong to God, which means every oath relates to God. God stands behind every word. There is no neutral ground in the words you speak. There is no room you can stand in where he is not listening to you.

An oath is supposed to be a gift of reassurance to someone else. Jesus' desire is that we be known as people of such deep integrity and commitment to the truth that all we have to say is, "I will do it," and everyone knows it's done. Now, some might look back nostalgically and say, "Back in my day, we just shook on it!" But Jesus would say to you that shaking hands is just like putting your hand on a Bible or swearing by the temple—you shouldn't have to shake on it to be believed.

Which raises the question: should Christians ever swear an oath? I've met people here in Bozeman who are very wary of signing any contract because of these verses. Godly people throughout history have read this as a strict prohibition against ever making an oath. The Anabaptists during the Reformation held this view. When they wrote their first statement of faith, the author was arrested within weeks, had his tongue cut out, and was executed. Both Protestants and Catholics persecuted the Anabaptists—in part over oaths. They refused to swear oaths to civil authorities. The U.S. Constitution actually includes the phrase "oath or affirmation" specifically as a carryover to accommodate groups like the Quakers and Anabaptists. That is a high cost to pay for a conviction, as people gave their lives believing they were obeying Jesus.

Yet the Old Testament permits taking oaths in God's name (Deuteronomy 6:13). In the New Testament, Paul calls on God as his witness nine times—which is an oath! For example, in Romans 1:9: "God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you." If Paul, who knew Jesus' teaching, made oaths in certain situations, notice he never reached for a sacred object. He didn't swear by the temple or Jerusalem; he simply recognized that God was his witness. Furthermore, God himself swears oaths—promising never to destroy the earth with a flood again, promising to send a Redeemer, and raising his Son from the dead. Hebrews 6 tells us God swore an oath not because his word is shaky, but because ours is.

Jesus is addressing a legalistic system built around dodging the truth. The point is this: if you only tell the truth in court because you swore an oath, you've missed the point. If you only tell the truth because your hand is on a Bible, you've missed the point. You don't need your hand on a Bible to make your words true. The oath doesn't change who you are; integrity does.

Integrity is about being whole—being the same person all the way through. The problem for most of us is not usually a direct lie; it's compartmentalization. A man is one person at work, another with his family, and another at church. A woman is one person leading a small group and another on a neighborhood group chat. A student is one person in the dorms, another in class, and another at church. None of that is hidden from God. Incognito mode on your phone won't hide you. There is no private word; there is always a screenshot. Speak as if God is in the room—because he is.

Let Your "Yes" Be "Yes"

"All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

Jesus' half-brother James must have remembered this sermon. The letter of James is in many ways an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount. In James 5:12, he writes: "Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple 'Yes' or 'No,' otherwise you will be condemned."

Notice three things there. First, "above all." James covers prayer, suffering, wealth, favoritism, and patience, yet he caps it off by saying above all, do not swear by anything—just let your yes be yes and your no be no. That is a striking priority. Second, he expands Jesus' list to include "anything else" to shut down every possible loophole. Third, he reminds us of what is needed: a simple yes or no. That should be a relief! You are freed from the exhausting work of tracking which promises count and which ones don't.

Why do extra words come from the evil one? Extra words are built for loopholes. We pile on assurances—"I promise," "On my life," "Cross my heart and hope to die"—or we pile on excuses so we can slip away. Both come from a divided heart. A person of integrity has no use for extra words. You don't have to say, "I swear"; all you need to say is, "I will do it," or "I will not do it."

Notice Jesus says your "no" must also be "no." We have invented an entire vocabulary of non-commitments: "I'll try," "We'll see," "Let me pray about it," "We should get together sometime," "I'll be there if I can." Every single one of those sentences is engineered so that if it doesn't happen, you can claim you didn't lie. Think of how we decline things. Ever ghosted anyone? Instead of saying no, you disappear and let silence do the work because you're unwilling to own a boundary. Ghosting is just a "no" that refuses to take responsibility. Or you say yes to helping someone move, and on Friday night you text, "Sorry, something came up!" Nothing came up—you just didn't mean your "yes." We even have a word for non-committal romantic relationships: a "situationship"—two people building an arrangement around never having to say yes or no.

That is why Jesus says it comes from the evil one. Extra words and missing words always serve self-protection. A commitment is not just a feeling; feelings change. You need promises to bind you to your identity regardless of how you feel. We build escape clauses thinking they make us free, but they actually harm us. You are not a whole person of integrity until your promises bind you to keep them.

Now, a biblical qualification: does this mean you can never change your mind? No. The Apostle Paul was accused of this in 2 Corinthians 1. Paul had told the church he was coming, but his plans changed and he didn't come. They accused him of saying "yes" and "no" in the same breath, quoting Jesus' words against him. Paul defended himself, calling God as his witness that he changed his plans out of love to spare them from a painful confrontation. Changing his plans cost him personally.

Here is the test for changing a commitment: 1. Is it the more loving thing to do? 2. Does it cost you rather than them?

Escape clauses are designed to transfer pain to the other person so you can get out easy. Integrity takes the cost on oneself.

Swearing to Your Own Hurt: The Gospel Hope

Psalm 15:4 describes the righteous person as one "who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind"—or in older translations, "who swears to his own hurt and changes not." Picture this person: they made a promise, time passed, and they discovered that keeping it would cost far more than expected. A way out is available, but they don't take it. They absorb the loss because of their integrity.

Think of standard marriage vows: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part." What do the bride and groom have to go on? Only the words of the other person. There is no fine print on page 31 detailing what happens when it gets hard. In a wedding, a man and a woman swear to their own hurt before they even know what that hurt will be. The vow names the coming pain of an uncertain future and says yes to it anyway.

There's a famous sports example from 1925. Bobby Jones was playing in the U.S. Open. In the deep grass on the 11th hole, he grounded his club and the ball moved slightly. No one saw it. He called over the official and reported the infraction on himself. They tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted on adding a penalty stroke. He ended up tied, went to a playoff, and lost the tournament. Afterward, people praised his heroism, but he rejected the praise, saying, "You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank." He didn't need an award for basic integrity. That is what Jesus is after: a person who doesn't build escape doors because they are committed to the truth.

So what now? Most of us can think of countless times we've failed at this. Psalm 15 asks, "Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?" If you read that psalm as a checklist, none of us qualify. But there is One who did. There is One who swore to his own hurt and did not change his mind.

Jesus walked into Gethsemane having made a promise before the creation of the world. On his knees, sweating blood, he experienced the full weight of that cost and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." He kept his word—no escape clauses, no hidden motives, no crossed fingers. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:20, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ."

You can afford to have your word tested because you rest on the One whose word can never fail. God doesn't just hand you a standard to climb; he gives you a Savior who climbed it for you. You can keep your promises because you are secure in the One who kept his promise to you. You don't need escape doors or image management. Let your yes be yes. God's promises to you have no fine print—may your promises reflect his.

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