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Campion Seventh Day Adventist Church

Micheal Goetz

Tale of Two Lies

In Cumbria, England, there is an annual competition.

Some of us might be good competitors for this.

It is the world's biggest liar competition.

Every year, liars from around the world gather to see who can, you have 5 minutes.

5 minutes, you've got to give the most convincing lie you can.

The competition rules also prohibit lawyers and politicians from entering the competition.

That's nothing personal if that's your field of interest, but they say they're just too skilled at telling the porkies.

But they have this competition, 5 minutes.

Every year somebody wins from around the world.

And some of the lies are just outrageous, but if you can sound convincing, and so these guys practice it, gals as well, practice it until they can sound like they absolutely know what they're talking about.

About a dozen years ago or so, 1 gentleman right there from, it was his home turf, he got up and didn't use up, he used closer to 5 words than 5 minutes.

But deception is such a gut punch, to be deceived, to be lied to, it's so debilitating.

I, for a decade, held in my possession a pair of sunglasses, cheap sunglasses that a college student, when I was in college, a colleague of mine, a fellow student of mine, came into my room 1 day and said, Michael, I need to borrow 20 bucks.

We're all poor around here, we're in college.

He said, come on, borrow, give me, just let me borrow 20 bucks.

He said, I'll give you my very expensive sunglasses as kind of a surety.

Well, I never saw him or my 20 bucks again, but I had his very expensive, bought right out of a little vending machine pair of sunglasses.

Just to remind myself, it stinks to be deceived.

Well, that's why we celebrate the legend of our first president, George Washington, who looked into his dad's eyes, of course, according to legend, looked into his father's eyes and said, I cannot tell a lie.

And his father said, well, truth is worth a thousand cherry trees.

And apparently little Georgie didn't get disciplined.

But lies have played a significant role and continue to play a significant role in our universe.

And that's what brings us to our conversation today.

Very early on, come on, you can't help but say, alright, let's read a little script.

Whatever your perspective of the Bible is, let's read a little bit of what it says about it.

Because the Bible picks up and says, yep, in fact, lies were very early on part of this world.

It's in your study guide, I'll put it on the screen for you.

In the beginning, 1 deity gave his very best.

And then a rival crazed with selfishness gave his worst.

Each of the 2 pointing their fingers at the other going, nope, he's a liar, nope, he's a liar.

The great conflict, that's what we're gonna call it, the great conflict between these 2 gods, as it were, little G, has been all we have ever known.

However, fortunately, it is not all that we will ever know.

I wanna take you back to that line that we've all learned and used, fish out of water, right, from the Canterbury Tales, made famous by Chaucer, the author, used that expression first, and it's caught on, like a fish out of water, I mean, out of your ordinary environment.

The water we have ever known, the only water we have ever known has been this water of deceit and lies.

We have never known a world without lies.

But apparently it was made to be, the world was made to be absolutely in truth, without a single lie.

We can't imagine what it's like to have a world where there's never a lie spoken, never an exaggeration, deception practiced.

The ancient Greek, the ancient Greek poet, He's considered 1 of the forefathers of Greek mythology.

Hesiod wrote the work Theogony, and he said, man, you look at Greek mythology and the ancient wars of the gods, they fought, they bickered, they accused each other of lying all the time.

It was acceptable practice for them to attack each other and to accuse each other, to war against each other.

The gods are always fighting against each other.

He says the brutality of the gods, which is most glaring in his work, the rebellion and war run riot and the rise and fall of the gods.

It's this God against that God and these gods.

Cronus and the Titans challenge their parents and then Zeus and the Olympians challenge and overthrow the Titans and It's this against the other, even to despicable acts like rape.

Hesiod wrote, and I'll put his words on the screen, it's in your study guide, a terrible din arose from there, there being the gods, dreadful wrath, and the work of power was revealed.

This is the context in which a great deal of the world became to understand what deity and what gods were about.

And that has trickled down, but they didn't come up with it themselves.

There's a lot that's trickled down from Greek mythology, and we're going to study that all week.

What is it that we have taken from Greek mythology that we may not have even known we are believing?

But Greek mythology did not start this idea that the gods war against each other.

It's actually even older than the Greeks.

It goes back to the very beginning, as the Bible calls it, creation, where 1 deity gave, the creator gave his best, and then a rival crazed, began the accusations.

Let's take a look at what the what the bible says in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis chapter 1 and 2 recount the story of creation.

Genesis chapter 3 picks up and now says, now the serpent.

Well, that's a key operative word right there.

The fact that there's a serpent involved would grab every historian's attention.

If Homer and Hesiod were sitting here, the fathers of Greek mythology, that would grab their attention right away.

Because there's always a serpent sneaking around or involved in these gods.

Greek mythology didn't make up everything.

More cunning, some Bibles will write, or more crafty.

It's not that he's deceptive He's just very street smart very very wise This this serpent he knows how to get what he wants and and and maneuver Kind of be convincing act like he knows what he's talking about.

He said to the woman, the biblical character of Eve, he said to the woman, didn't God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?

He's not questioning whether God said that in a literal sense, because everyone knew that God had said that.

It wasn't whether the words had come out of God's mouth, it was whether he really was truthful in what he said.

Come on, did really, the woman said to the serpent, yes, we may eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden, but God did say, verse 3, that we must not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden and we can't even touch it or we will die.

And that's exactly where the serpent wanted her to go.

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Tale of Two Lies

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