Matthew 5 - Let your Yes be Yes and Your No be No

33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ 34 But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. - Matthew 5:31-37

Heaven is God's throne and the Earth His footstool, Jesus reiterated this as it was written in Isaiah 66:1. Can we truly understand the magnitude of that concept? Can we even imagine what that means. If we can, the mere thought of swearing by heaven or earth wouldn't even
cross our minds.

Out of ignorance sometimes we do things we don't understand the implications of but once we know what we are doing is wrong we would stop. Have you ever been convicted by your own actions or realized the condemnation an action you did effortlessly had and quickly repented? 

For us to swear by heaven or earth is outright disrespect to God. We do not want to be swearing by His throne nor His footstool. When you know who The Almighty God is, you fear God, you respect God, you are left in awe by the thought of Who He Is, The Alpha and Omega, The First and The Last, The Beginning and The End, apart from Him there is No God! (Revelation 22:13, Isaiah 44:6). Who do you know can contend with that? Or who has the power that our Sovereign God has?

Therefore, we should not even swear by our head because we don't even have the power to turn a strand of hair white or black. We do not possess that power. The only person who has that kind of power is our Almighty Father.

We now know the implications of swearing, therefore we should not do it. Simply if you say yes, follow through with what you said and do what you said yes to, the same for saying no. Honestly it is that simple. If we are conscious of what we do and say, if we truly know and understand ourselves, many promises we make, we wouldn't make them. Furthermore, when we feel tempted to swear about some things, it's only because the other person may not believe your promise or we feel compelled to prove a point. 

Brothers and sisters, let's get in touch with the truth that lies in our hearts and when we do that, we can truly stick to what we say. 

Jesus goes on to say that anything else beside letting your yes be yes and no be no is from the evil one. I believe that one of the reasons it is from the evil one is because it makes you a double-minded person who is unstable (James 1:8). Someone who is unsure of anything is a great candidate for the evil one to toy with. A double minded person will say yes and then say no and then say yes again and maybe change it to no a little later. With God we cannot be so, we have to stand by what we choose, stick by our decisions and even when it gets hard, do not waver, we are in it for the long haul!

We cannot serve God and the evil one. We have to choose one, either one or the other. It's the same with our word, either yes or no. Let us continue to make the right decisions and let our word be our bond.

Que Dios te bendiga. -God bless you.