The Third Commandment

well, good morning, good morning and Happy Mother’s Day to all of you. My name is dan, if I haven’t met you yet, I’m one of the elders here at sewer church and I was just trying to take in some of what mike was saying there. I mean that’s pretty awesome. All those class awards man. I, I don’t think I won that many class awards. I think I was more known for being kind of a troublemaker class clown. I mean the least likely guy to be preaching I think from my class, I think I did you know when best dress? I think that was it. That was it ironically because my brother is, is a better dresser than me and we were in the same class. He red shirted uh, kindergarten. So we went to school together even though he was a year older. Yeah, they give out red shirts for academic reasons these days. But no Happy Mother’s Day. It is, it is great. What an amazing day it is. I’m thankful for my mom. She taught me how to stand up for myself. Um she literally told me that if I got beat up, I had better not come home crying. And so I learned to fight. Um, But how’s this for a mother’s day message? The 3rd commandment don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. The third commandment, that’s our Mother’s Day message today, We are in week three of our coverage of the 10 commandments, right? And we’re gonna look at the third commandment today and I do think there is some relation to being a mom when you think about the application of this commandment, because moms especially moms of young Children can relate to how often your name is called throughout the day. For the silliest reasons. Mom Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom, look at this mom and that’s it. You know, just like okay kind of reminds me of the scene from nemo, you know the animated movie, the little orange fish. When the seagulls would yell out. Mind. Mind mind mind mind, right? That’s what little Children can be like. Sometimes mind, mind, mind mom Mom Mom mine mine mine they go back and forth. So I think mothers can relate to the third commandment which talks about taking the Lord’s name in vain. Now on that note, let’s let’s get a little more serious. Let’s look at look at the word of God. Turn with me in your bibles to exodus. Chapter 20 We’re gonna reverse seven. Uh This is the third commandment. And while you’re turning there, I do want to prepare you. I want to prep you for today’s message right first I want to remind you simply this that jesus our savior, right? He he took the penalty for the law on our behalf. And so if we are in christ if jesus is our Lord and Savior. The penalty for the law which is death is no longer ours. He took that upon himself on the cross, right? So when the scripture says that we’re no longer under law but under grace, it means we are no longer under the threat of the punishment and the severity of the law because jesus, he took that on our behalf on the cross. And so I think that’s important for us to remember as we unpack the 10 commandments. And the second thing we want to reiterate is that law and gospel or complementary, because the law points us to christ and the Gospel establishes the law as God’s just and righteous standard of which we weren’t able to meet, but christ met on our behalf. And so today, as we unpack this third commandment, you will feel bit of the weight of the holiness of God and weightiness of the law. I just want to remind you if you were in christ that your faith, your faith is not based on how you feel moment to moment. Your faith is based on the finished work of christ. And as you feel the weightiness of the law and the holiness of God, I want you to change the narrative in your own soul. And then you’re thinking in that moment and say God, let your glory be revealed. Your glory be revealed. May your glory feel the earth Amen. Amen. So, on that note, um I’m gonna pray for us and then read the passage Father in Heaven, Thank you for this time. Thank you for this day. Thank you for your word, Thank you for your people, your church. And you love whom you gave your only begotten son for Lord jesus, thank you for being our resurrected Lord and the head of your church. We gather today in your name. And it is about you, Not about me, not about us, it is about you. The will we prepare hearts God to receive what you have to say to us about your third commandment and the importance of it in our lives and God, as we feel the weightiness of your law and of your holiness. God, would you remind us that we were made to be with you and that you went to the cross so that we could be with you and that this whole earth is to be full of your glory. And God made this word edify and build us up to pursue those ends in jesus name. We pray amen Amen. So this is exodus 20 Again, Verse seven. This is the 3rd commandment. It says You shall not take the name of the Lord. Your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless. Who takes his name in vain. That is the 3rd command. The first commandment have no other gods before me. The second commandment do not make any idols And the third commandment shall not take the name of the Lord, Your God in vain. Where the world will not hold him guiltless. Who takes his name in vain. I have a homework assignment for all of you. You did not come to church today thinking on Mother’s Day that you will be given a homework assignment from the pastor. But it’s a small homework assignment and it’s very important. It’s relevant. It’ll make sense to you. The next time you watch a movie, the next time you watch a television series, Count how many times the Lord name is used in vain. Count how many times the Lord’s name is used in vain. Our family did a devotional while back on the 10 commandments. And as we were walking our Children through the commandments and in particular this third commandment. Some time had passed afterwards. But as we were watching a movie, one of the kids said, hey, they’re using the Lord’s name in vain. And I realized that in that moment I had become so desensitized, desensitized to the use or to the misuse of the Lord’s name culture and all around just gotten used to it, accustomed to okay with it. Until one of my kids pointed it out and I guarantee you that as you set your sights to pay attention to that you’re gonna be shocked and how often you hear the Lord’s name used in vain. And so we have to ask the question, how did we get here? How do we get to this place where our culture is emboldened to profane the holy name of God? What has happened in our churches, What has happened in our christian fellowships where the culture feels like it’s okay as an expression of mere art to take the name of the ward. I have to think that somehow we as a people of God, but we’ve kind of paved a way for this. Pro feigning of the name of the Lord by turning our worship services into entertainment centers or social clubs. We lightly esteem the word of God. We lightly esteem are holy gone creator and savior. And so the culture is just downstream from the church. So they go even further. How did we get here? Well, as we cover the 10 commandments, we as the people of God. We we want to return back to the Lord. We want holiness to mark our lives and our church and our marriages and our families and the way in which we live our lives. We want the holiness of God the character of God to be on display as the power of God is applying the truth of God to our lives and everything that we do amen. So, let’s look at this commandment. Again, we should not take the name of the Lord. Your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless. Who takes his name in vain. This is a negative commandment Eight of the 10 commandments are negative in the sense that they place restrictions or limits on very specific behavior and a very basic level. This commandment is governing the speech of the people of God about God, but it may surprise you that the third commandment extends even further beyond just our speech Again, speech is the most obvious area of application, but there are other areas of life where we must be careful not to take or to use the Lord’s name in vain. One theologian summed it up in this way, says the third commandment ought to be understood as a warning not to misuse, not to misuse power of Attorney privileges. Every time the name of the Lord is used, we are in effect saying that the character, nature and authority of God fully endorses our words and actions. For this reason. The third commandment comes with a strong warning that God will judge all offenders and vindicate his name. Power of Attorney privileges given to the people of God based upon the name of God, fully endorsing our words and our actions. So from this perspective, we know that the third commandment extends even beyond our speech. But it begins with our speech. We see that there’s a threefold application to this third commandment. It governs our speech, our worship, and all of our commitments in life. All of our speech, all of our worship and all of our commitments. Let’s take a look at the third commandment and speech. We got to first begin by looking at how God reveals himself right? God reveals himself to his people and he uses terminology that we can understand. But there comes a point to where our own language, our own terminology is limited in trying to define an infinite God. One such occasion is in exodus three, when moses encounters God in the burning bush. And he says, what is your name? And God says I am who I am. In other words, if I try to give you a name to define me, those words would limit me. It placed a restraint on the the Infinite Almighty un created self sustaining God. And so He gives moses the four letters or the Tetra Graviton, what we call, and we translate literate that to me. Yeah, well, so the jews after receiving this revelation of God, the Great I am They became so concerned based on the third commandment of transgressing the commandment, misusing the name of God, that they prefer to use the title Lord or or Adonai. And addressing God simply just didn’t want to misuse the name of God. Now, I think that’s going a little too far. I think God reveals names to us about his. His names reflect his character, his attributes, what he’s like. And I think it’s okay, provided that we use those names in the right context and in the right way. I think they went a little too far with that. But you can sense. But there is a a reverence of God and that’s all been lost in our day And right after the giving of the third commandment, we have a very sad and unfortunate story that happens in the Bible in Leviticus 24, it says now an Israelite woman’s son whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the people of Israel and the Israelite woman’s son and a man of Israel fought in the camp and the Israel White woman’s son blasphemed the name and cursed and read further on in the story, this young man was stoned to death because he blasphemed his God. He blasphemed the name of God, he cursed the name of God. And when we read passages like this, it makes us uncomfortable. It makes us a little uncomfortable. A little uneasy. But what has happened in this situation, and we’re trying to reconcile some things in our hearts and in our minds on the one hand, the holiness of God, but on the other hand, does it really need to be put to death? For this is where again, when we read a passage like this, we need to ask ourselves, what does God want us to see here? And what does he want us to do about? I think it’s quite clear from this passage, God indeed wants us to see that he is holy, he is holy and not only is he holy, but he’s deeply personal. And when we call upon him, we should call upon him with the expectation that he is holy and personal, that he will draw near The third commandment is yet another reminder that God sees that he is closer to you than you even realize right now, that he draws near. But then we should also look at this passage and then look again at the cross. See right there, jesus christ he suffered, he took the penalty are disobeying of the law. He died for us for our sins never sin deserves death penalty of the law. So rather than read a passage like this as a christian and be ashamed of it, we ought to ask ourselves, what does God want us to see from and what should we do about it? I think God wants us to see that he is holy, That he draws near to his people, that he is closer to you than the skin on your bones and that his name ought to be revered and then it ought to remind us the grace of the cross. You know, Henry van til said culture is religion externalized in other words, culture reflects faith and value and we live in a culture that believes taking the Lord’s name in vain is a matter of art form. But the same culture will censor any kind of speech it deems hateful based on sexual preference and the same culture will metaphorically stone anyone who threatens this sexual ideology without forgiveness. This culture will not forgive you when you cross the line. Our culture says, our speech should be regulated by all the things we hold sacred and dear. That’s what it says. That’s what our culture says. And in contrast, when we read something like this in the bible, how could we be ashamed? How could we not think about the holiness of God? Think about what our God has done for us, response to our falling short and the forgiveness that is offered to us in christ quite different from the culture we live in. You cross the line in this culture, you will not be forgiven, not by the culture, but our God is gracious, he forgets. There are two more examples of how our speech violates the third commandment. And this has to do with false prophets and false teaching. Most profits fall teaching would be similar in scripture, But it also has to do with the twisting of scripture, the adding or subtracting from scripture, Deuteronomy 18 and Ezekiel 13, you can write down those references, they warn the false prophets and teachers that they are taking always in vain. And in Revelation 22, 18 and 19, there’s a warning about adding and subtracting from the word of God. Because when you do that, you are saying that God fully endorses that that his name, his character and his attributes are behind it. We can’t do that. So the third commandment not taking the Lord’s name in vain. It regulates our speech. It governs our speech. It also governs our worship. So moving on ahead, as we as we’ve talked about false teaching and false um prophecy. It’s important for us to understand that false teaching creates false worship, false teaching produces false worship and false teaching and false worship has at its foundation, doing whatever we want or doing whatever we think is right or doing whatever we feel like. In fact the word heresy is borrowed from a greek term that literally means choosing for oneself and if we choose for ourselves, how we want to worship God and put God’s name on it and we’re probably going to worship him. And then high likelihood. In fact this was ancient, Israel’s biggest problem mixing idolatry. Pastor mike talked about idols and not creating idols last week. Great sermon. You need to go back and listen to it. But this is what Israel would do. They would make these idols and they would bring these idols with them and they would say see this is Adonai, this is yeah, this is the Yahweh that brought us out of Egypt. God says no, not who I am. Have you ever been puzzled by what happened to Israel right after they were taken out of Egypt across the Red sea moses goes up onto the mountain the first time to get the 10 commandments and Aaron and the people are back there and they make this golden calf. Have you ever been puzzled by that? That’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re saying this is the yeah way that delivered us out of Egypt and I love what, what the question that moses asked Aaron, his brother is like what have you done? He says, you know, I threw it in the fire and this is what came out like it was like it was magic or something like don’t blame me, this is what the people wanted, right? No God God must be honored in our worship and the way we honor him is by doing what he commands or by what we can by what he allows through good and necessary influence what I mean by good and necessary. At the time of the writing of scripture there was no such thing as power point. Is it a sin to use power point in your sermon? It just helps us to communicate the message with good and necessary. There are some other examples of people not honoring God in their worship. Leviticus Chin tells the story of the sons of Aaron Nadav and a B who how they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord or strange fire or profane fire and how fire came out from the Lord and consume them. You need to know that every time there’s a mention of a sacrifice or something done in the temple that’s related to worship. Temple was a, it was a small replica of God’s throne room in heaven, I have to do worship. So everything that’s happening there, the sacrifices, all those things that have to do worship. And then revelation picks up on this and talks about the lamb that was slain. That has done away with all of the other human need for you know atoning sacrifices right with animals and stuff. All it has to do with worship. You gotta be able to draw near to this holy God and there’s a need for the atonement for sin to be able to approach God in his holiness to the lamb that was slain, his blood covers grable and now enter in boldly before the throne of grace and worship it. But we we don’t get creative and start doing our own thing on the way there. Right? Oh there’s some reverence that we need as we do it. Matthew 15 jesus says you hypocrites well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said this, People honors me with their lips but their heart as far from me in vain do they worship me? Listen to what he says, teaching as doctrines. The commandments of men, not what God has commanded, but there are traditions, not what the scripture said, but what they feel, what has been voted on by popular opinion, the census of the day. The zeitgeist, the zeitgeist of the day teaching that is the as doctrine Jesus says that’s vain worship. So the third commandment governs our speech and governs our worship and the third commandment governs our commitments. The way we represent or witness of God as can be seen in our commitments in life. What do I mean by commitments? Well, first, I mean our commitment to God being his word, right? What his word has said, what his word is revealed to us. Secondly, in our commitment to marriage and family, two really important covenant relationships right there, God in Christ that commitment, number one and number two, marriage and family, right? Our commitment there is important to God. How we love our spouses, How we love our families, How we instruct our family’s so important to God, right? God, 1st, family. two thirdly, our commitment to our contracts and agreements between neighbors. You can’t be calling yourself a christian and then you know, agree to to do something or commit yourself to doing something and and then you’re known, you’re notorious for bailing on your commitment, It’s not keeping your commitments. Remember after I became a christian in college, I was 19 years old when I began to follow jesus and some of the best advice someone gave me, an older man gave me, he realized I was an athlete. He said do not allow your Christianity to become a crutch for you or an excuse for every time you decide you’re not going to show up or do things. I took him seriously. I remember there was a young man who younger guy that joined the team. He was a christian good kids, but his Christianity was a crutch. I pulled him aside and I had the same conversation with him, but this older gentleman had with me, this is going to impact your witness if you’re the first guy to quit when times are hard, if you’re the guy complaining because you don’t like what coach is saying, what we’ve been asked to do, you’re the first guy to lay down and bail, then you want to talk to people about jesus. Where is the power of that cross? Certainly aren’t witnessing to it. Look, I know what it’s like. I mean we’re not saying that you need to pretend to be superman or wonder woman. We’re not saying that we’re saying that when you commit bend, That’s what Psalm 15 1 says zero Lord who shall sojourn in your tent, dwell on your holy hill whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord who swears to his own hurt does not change. We sing a lot about God being faithful christian man christian woman. We want to grow in faithfulness like our God. We want to be faithful like our God. The 3rd commandment in addressing commitments also forbids hypocrisy romans too. 22 paul talking about the jews and how they were living as hypocrites said this, you who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who will bore idols do you rob temples, you who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law for as it is written, the name of God, the name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you because of your hypocrisy. You know, be a christian living and fornicating and committing adultery, stealing. Again reflect back to my younger years, one of the reasons why um as an athlete, whenever we were training and we were doing raps in the weight room, guys didn’t like to partner with me because there were no cutting reps. I don’t care how much it hurt. Coach said we need to do this amount of reps, we’ve got to do this amount of reps and then coach asked me have you done your reps? I’m not gonna lie. And so it’s tough love but they knew I loved him and I would encourage them and I would stand with them and I would help them as much as I can and I will let them know man, I’m hurting too. This is hard, but we can do this, we honor our commitments, Jesus Matthew five said this again. You have heard that it was said to those of old. You shall not swear falsely but shall perform to the Lord What you have sworn. But I say to you. Do not take an oath at all. Either by heaven for it is the throne of God or by the earth for it is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king and do not take an oath by your head for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. Jesus is saying here avoid boasting, be humble and through godly character demonstrate you’re a man that can be trusted. You are a woman who can be trusted that you are faithful. That your example of faithfulness is enough. You don’t need to try to manipulate people with words. Oh man, I swear on this or I swear on this right here. You can trust me. No, let the reputation of your character stand the witness. Hey, that’s a christian man. That’s a christian woman, they always keep their word and when they fall short man they tell you they they’re up front, they’re honest. Would that be your reputation? That’s what Jesus is saying. So in conclusion, the third commandment is a warning not to misuse power of attorney privileges. Every time the name of the Lord is used, we are in fact saying that the character, nature and authority of our God fully endorses our words and our actions For this reason. The 3rd commandment comes with a strong warning and it says that God will judge all offenders and vindicate his name. You know in the US when public officials are sworn into office, they’ve taken the oath and many officials will take this oath while placing one hand on the bible. I would submit to you christians Based on an understanding of this 3rd commandment christ has given us something even more significant, even more powerful, even more honorable than that Matthew 28 19 Jesus says go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit christian at your baptism. That was for you, the public swearing in service to king jesus. That was for you being baptized into his name, declaring that you are in union with him that you are one in christ. That was the commissioning of you to be able to pray in his name. That was for you being commanded, being commissioned, being given the grace to live a life worthy of his colleague. That’s not vain living or vain worship or vain commitment. But this is a glorious calling. This is a christ honoring calling, this is kingdom living and this is why we must not take the Lord’s name in vain. You are an ambassador of the kingdom. You’ve been baptized into it. You’ve been justified by his righteousness and you’ve been made a son and a daughter every part of your life. Your speech, your worship and your commitments are valuable amen. Hey man, let us pray father in heaven. Thank you for the grace and the honor to be called sons God because of the work of jesus christ on the cross or may we take it to heart to honor your name and to give you glory and praise and all that? We do speech worship and commitment. We ask this in jesus.