All right, we are going to continue our Heidelberg Catechism study today. And so if you need a book, Quentin is ready and waiting to give you one. Just keep your hands up until he gets it to you. And just remember to bring those back up to the front row when you're finished. But we are continuing in our study of the Ten Commandments in the Heidelberg Catechism. Which of the three sections of the Heidelberg Catechism are we in right now? The service section, right? Or the gratitude section. We've covered our sin and our guilt, we've covered salvation and grace, and now we're in service or gratitude. Which is important as we get into some of these nitty-gritty details of the law, that we remember that this comes after God saying, I am the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the God who's already saved you. And it's out of gratitude that we want to serve him well. with these things. So we're on Lord's Day 36, and we're actually going to do both 36 and 37 today. That starts on page 98, I think. But these go well together, and G.I. Williamson and his commentary on it lumps them together in one chapter, so I'll fall back on his expertise on covering two Lord's Days this week. So, Lord's Days 36 and 37, and this is on the Third Commandment. So, kids, what is the Third Commandment? There are fewer of you today, so you're kind of on the spot. Quentin. You shall not take the Lord's name in vain. Right? What does that mean? You're okay? You don't say God's name when? unless you're really talking about God, right? That's one part of it, yep. So you don't just talk, you use the word God or the name Jesus unless you're really talking about God. That's part of it. And that's really, that's what we often think of, right, is the, just sort of using Jesus' name casually or as a curse word or just without really meaning it when we say the word Jesus or the word God. And we're, We're so used to it, we're so used to people just casually taking the Lord's name in vain that we don't necessarily even hear it anymore. It maybe doesn't bother us as much as it should. Certainly, in entertainment and stuff, you hear it so much that it maybe doesn't affect us as much as we should. But there's also an aspect, as we look at this command here, there's an aspect of this that I hadn't thought much about before and that has been very convicting to me. And that is that the third commandment also has to do with hypocritical worship, of calling on the name of the Lord when you're not really calling on the name of the Lord. And that's something that I hadn't thought about before as much, and I hope you'll see as we go through here, it's not just using the name of Jesus as a curse word, it's If we are calling on the name of the Lord, we don't mean it in our hearts that we're breaking the third commandment. So hopefully you can see both of those things. It is true that we shouldn't just use God's name casually, but also it has to do with hypocritical worship today. So let's look at question 99. It says, what is required in the third commandment? Answer, that we must not, by cursing or by false swearing, nor yet by unnecessary oaths, profane or abuse the name of God. nor even by our silence and connivance be partakers of these horrible sins in others. And in summary, that we use the holy name of God in no other way than with fear and reverence so that he may be rightly confessed and worshiped by us and be glorified in all our words and works. So there's a lot packed into that answer. It starts by talking about cursing. And the one definition of this that I saw is to wish ill to oneself or to others by the use of the name of God or of his creatures. I think particularly it's talking about by the name of God. And so that's to curse someone, to say, when you damn someone or when you say you will call on God to damn someone, you are cursing them in the name of God. It's something that we're not called to do. It's taking the Lord's name in vain. It also talks about false swearing. What do you think false swearing means? Robert? Lying under oath. Yes, that is pretty much exactly right. To swear is to swear an oath, right? To say what you are saying is true. And so we take an oath, right? If you go into court and you have to testify, you swear, right? You have to put your hand on the Bible and raise your hand and you're calling God as witness. that you are what you're saying is true. We make a similar, the high school kids heard about this this morning and we just happened to be doing lawful oaths and vows in the confession this morning. But an oath is, we also take them occasionally, sometimes with an oath of office or in our Covenant of Communicant Membership, there's an oath at the end where we say, do you make this testimony in the presence of God? You're calling God as witness to what you're doing. Often wedding vows will have some kind of an oath aspect to it where you say, in the presence of God and these witnesses. And you're calling God as witness to what you're doing and saying, saying, I will do this or what I'm saying is true. So false swearing is what Robert said, right? It's saying that and then breaking your word or speaking lies when you have sworn that you were telling the truth. And so that would be taking the Lord's name in vain because you've called God as witness and then you don't follow through. And then it says we should not take unnecessary oaths. And this is sort of talking about frivolous oaths or just using oaths all the time in conversation. You're just sort of always swearing that it's true, always swearing by something that it's true. When I was growing up in Boston, one of the, it's just sort of a colloquialism that you hear constantly that people are saying is, and you hear it other places, but especially in Boston, is you say, you know, I swear to God, blah, blah, blah. And I want to be careful not to break the third commandment myself as I'm talking about these things, but I'm trying to communicate that this is something that you just hear people say that constantly. Or we talked this morning some with the high schoolers about, you know, I swear on my mother's grave, or I swear whatever it is, you know, I cross my heart and hope to die, that you're swearing to something frivolously, just constantly in your life about things that don't really need to be sworn. So we'll talk a little bit about proper oaths here in a little bit, but we need to not just be swearing constantly in the sense of taking an oath. And then it also talks about not profaning or abusing the name of God. And so, it's talking here about using the name of God frivolously, or not frivolously, flippantly, or just talking about God in a disrespectful way, or a way that's, where you're not even really talking about Him. And not really speaking fearfully and and carefully about our God. And one of the commentaries I was looking at, it was talking about using God in jokes or in jest. And you see so often in our entertainment these days when Jesus is turned into a joke or God himself, God the Father is turned into a joke. So all of these things are part of breaking the third commandment. And you could spend a long time just talking through exactly how we see that going on around us all the time. But it does give us the opposite then. Well, it tells us that we need to be, we are not to be by our silence and connivance partakers of these horrible sins and others. That we should be holding other people accountable not to be using the name of the Lord in vain. And again, I'll mention some more about that in a little bit. But on the flip side then, it says we're supposed to use the name of God with fear and reverence. That we should rightly confess and worship Him. And so this is where you get into what I was talking about earlier where it's not just about flippantly using the name of God, it's that hypocritical worship is a breaking of the third commandment. That if you sing about God, and this has been on my mind all day today as we sing, if you sing about God and you don't mean it, and you're just saying the name of God and you're busy thinking about lunch or what you're going to do later this afternoon or whatever else is on your mind. If you're not really speaking the name of God with your heart, then you're breaking the third commandment. You're not really honoring and respecting the name of God. And that's been very convicting to me. The same is true in prayer. If you're ever If you're ever just praying to be heard by others, praying because someone else expects you to do it, praying because you think you should, but you're not really talking to God or referring to Him actually in your heart and mind, then you're not rightly worshiping or confessing Him and worshiping Him. And so the third commandment is one of those commandments that's, if you take it at face value, It's one of those ones you could say, well, I don't break the Third Commandment because I don't use the name of Jesus as a curse word. But we're all guilty of this in various ways of not really meaning it when we talk about God. And so one other risk of the Heidelberg Catechism points out here is that It says that we want him to be glorified in all our words and works. And I wanted to look at the references it mentions for that one. In Romans 2, verse 24, on the opposite page, on page 99, Paul says, For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, as it is written. And then a similar thought in 1 Timothy 6, verse 1. Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and his doctrine may not be blasphemed. So that's adding on another reason not to be hypocritical is that if we are acting in such a way that brings dishonor to the name of God, we're causing others to break the third commandment. That if somebody sees what we're doing and says, that's what a Christian's like, and they're blaspheming God because they don't like what they see in us, because what we're doing is wrong, then we're bringing dishonor. to our God. It's a breaking of the third commandment. So these are weighty things to think about. It's not a commandment we can say we keep perfectly by a long shot. Then question 100 goes on to say, is the profaning of God's name by swearing and cursing so grievous a sin that his wrath is kindled against those also who do not help as much as they can to hinder and forbid it? Answer, yes, truly. For no sin is greater and more provoking to God than the profaning of his name, wherefore he even commanded it to be punished with death. When you think of the list of the worst sins, or if you look at Dante's Inferno, if you've read Dante's Inferno and he has the levels of hell, and you have the very worst of the worst are the, who's at the very bottom? Does anybody know? In Dante's hell? And I don't know, one of the popes might have been down there, I'm not sure. He picked on them, but he didn't like corruption in the church. Does anybody know what's at the very, very bottom? It's those who have betrayed someone. It's betrayal. You have Judas and I think Brutus and there's like three of them who are the worst of the worst in Dante's view. So betrayal in his mind is the worst sin. But maybe, I mean, in our minds we all have different ideas of what we think is the worst sin, right? And you think of culturally you'd say, you know, mass murderer, somebody like Hitler, somebody like Stalin, sort of the worst of the worst, or a rapist. There are all these things that we think of as the worst of the worst. But the catechism here says that no sin is greater and more provoking to God than the profaning of His name. And it's certainly taken very seriously in the Old Testament law. Leviticus 24 verse 16 talks about that penalty, I guess it's there in your books, the death penalty for blasphemy or for taking the name of the Lord in vain. And we see that actually acted out. There's a story in the I don't have the reference in front of me, but there's a story of someone in Israel when they were in the wilderness who blasphemed and they tried him and they stoned him for blaspheming the name of God, for cursing someone in the name of God. Maybe we need to readjust our thinking a little bit about the seriousness of this sin. It is taken very seriously in the Word of God. Think about the fact that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin. We don't have time today to go into the details of what that means exactly, but our testimony calls it the final rejection of the Spirit's testimony concerning Jesus Christ, willful and persistent rejection of the only hope of forgiveness through the Savior. And another definition I saw said it's the persistent knowing verbal attribution of the work of God to Satan. It's calling something that is Satan's work God's work and blaspheming his name in that way. And so you see the blasphemy or speaking against God, speaking against his name is taken incredibly seriously. in the Word of God. And you see that in the commandments themselves, right? What's the last part of the third 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. And that's the only commandment that has that, right? So I don't have a lot to contribute there to tell you exactly why or where else you see that in scripture, but I just encourage you to think about that. Why is it so serious? Why does it get its own extra special warning? the Ten Commandments. But blasphemy laws have been fairly common throughout history since the time of Christ. I mean, all the way into the Old Testament, obviously. But blasphemy laws have often been very serious. And that's just so, in our free speech society, that's so foreign to us that we don't maybe see the seriousness of it. But we have a responsibility, as it says here, to restrain the misuse of God's name. And that goes especially for those of you who are in positions of authority over other people. So as a parent, as maybe a manager in a workplace, or if you have a classroom, or if you have people that are under your authority, You have the right to regulate the speech in the sense of what goes on, what kinds of things are said. And when you have some of that authority, it's important for us to use that. Sometimes you can do this in overt, direct ways. Other times you can do it subtly. I was hearing a story about a guy who would just, you know, if somebody starts using the name of Jesus or something like that, will just turn and walk away, all right? And just not be involved in that, not be part of that joke, not be part of what's going on there. And there are ways, even if you're not in a position of authority, to do it subtly or even just to bring it up with someone. You might be surprised. If you say, that's the name of my savior, that's really important to me. If you could not do that in front of me, that's something that you have the opportunity in your relationships with other people to maybe influence them that way. So to think about it, one of the ways I thought about this is that if If someone was mocking one of your loved ones, one of your close, if your spouse or your child or your mom or your dad, in a really crass way, you wouldn't just stand by and let it happen. And the same is true when your God's name is blasphemed. So easier said than done, to have the guts to stand up to somebody and say that that's a serious, serious thing. So then the question is, if we're not supposed to misuse the name of God, Can we swear oaths at all? Should we swear oaths at all? And that's where we go next with question 101. It says, but may we swear reverently by the name of God? Answer, yes, when the magistrate requires it or when it may be needful otherwise to maintain and promote fidelity and truth to the glory of God and our neighbor's good. For such an oath is grounded in God's word and therefore was rightly used by the saints in the Old and New Testaments. And so, it's not that we may never swear an oath, but to complicate things, does anyone know what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount about oaths? Robert? Right. Yes. Some parents can pull that out of context really nicely. They say, don't swear at all. That's what Jesus said. He's talking about profanities, right? He says, don't swear by heaven or by the temple. And he says, let your yes be yes and your no be no. That's Jesus' teaching. That's in Matthew 5, 34 to 37. There's a whole paragraph there in the Sermon on the Mount. So Jesus says, don't swear at all. But then, look at the verses that you're given there in the book. Deuteronomy 10, verse 20. You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him, and to him you shall hold fast and take oaths in his name. Hebrews 6, verse 13. I don't think this is in your, this is not in your book. But in Hebrews 6, verse 13, God himself swears an oath. God swears an oath by himself. And then in Romans 1 verse 9, and that's in your book, Paul says, And that kind of, an oath is calling God as witness. So Paul is making an oath there, he's saying, God is my witness. So how do we connect these, how do we put these things together? You've got Jesus saying, don't take an oath at all, and then you've got the Old Testament commanding it, and you've got examples of it in the New Testament, and God himself taking an oath. But I think our testimony is, there's a good section in the RP Constitution, in the Confession and Testimony, that if you're curious later, go look it up, the chapter on lawful oaths and vows. And it talks about how Jesus is trying to prohibit us from using oaths casually or profanely or deceptively in the way that it was often being used at their time. Jesus was dealing with an issue at their time where people were just swearing all the time. You know, I swear by the temple, I swear by the gold of the temple, I swear, you know, I swear by heaven. And Jesus was, people were swearing that way all the time and he was saying, that shouldn't be necessary in your daily lives. What you should be able to do is just say yes, and people will believe you, and your yes means yes, and your no means no. And that in your personal daily life, it should be that you shouldn't need oaths to confirm what you're saying or to get people to believe you. So it is appropriate, as this answer says, when the magistrate requires it, what does that mean? What does magistrate mean? Kids, anybody know what a magistrate means? You don't have to be a kid. Does anybody know what magistrate means? the civil government. So if the civil government requires it, or when it may be needful otherwise, to maintain and promote fidelity and truth to the glory of God and our neighbor's good. So we've already talked about an oath. We've talked about a few examples already. Marriage vows, you should take an oath of a kind. A covenant of communicate membership, it's in there. An oath of office, an oath when you're going to be testifying in court. And those are sufficiently weighty matters, that it's helpful and needful for us to swear, that the government holds people to a higher standard. If you say something under oath, you're held to a higher standard of whether that's true or not. And it creates, it gives us that sense of seriousness. And so, I don't think that I've ever sworn an oath just voluntarily of my own, with it being my own idea. I can't think of an occasion when I've just called God as witness to something that I was saying in my daily life. I've only ever done these kinds of official, required oaths. But it has made me wonder, because you have Paul making an oath there in Romans chapter 1. And certainly it does, you see it occur a few other times. Abraham talks about how he tells the king of Sodom he's raised his hand to the Lord in an oath. There's an angel in Revelation who's pictured raising his hand to heaven and making an oath. And it does make me wonder if, it certainly, I don't know if it's a part of your daily lives, it's not a part of my daily life, and I think there are cautions in Scripture that we shouldn't just use it all the time. But there are appropriate times to call God as witness and say, call God as witness to what I'm about to say when it's weighty enough. But in general, Jesus' teaching is let your yes be yes and your no be no. You shouldn't be constantly swearing by things. I told the kids this morning, if you know someone who's constantly swearing about things and saying, no, I swear, really, it's true, or I swear by my mother's grave, often it's someone who who knows they're not very trustworthy, or someone who knows that people don't trust what they say. And they have to constantly swear by something to say, no, actually, this time I mean it. And so Jesus is saying we shouldn't need to do that. We should just let our yes be yes and our no be no. So then question 102 says, may we swear by the saints or by any other creatures? Answer, no, for a lawful oath is a calling upon God that he, as the only searcher of hearts, may bear witness to the truth and punish me if I swear falsely. Which honor is due to no creature? So one of the problems they were dealing with at this time when the catechism was written is that people would swear by the saints, as it says here, or swear by something other than God. Why do you think somebody would swear by one of the saints instead of swearing by God? Right, it's not quite as binding, right? And maybe they know how unreliable they are and they say, well, I don't really wanna bring God's judgment on me, so I'm going to swear, but I'm going to swear by something a little bit less. I'm going to swear by one of the saints. I'm going to swear by something else. So why are you swearing by something lesser if you're swearing at all, is one of the questions here. Because this answer here gets at the fact that when you take an oath, you are calling God as witness and judge. Is there anything else or anyone else that is a perfect witness who will also be your judge other than God? All right, there's no, none of the saints are all-knowing. I mean, even if, you know, none of the, in the true sense of the word saints, none of the saints are all-knowing. And none of them will be our ultimate judge on that day. And so we, We should be careful that as scripture teaches us to only swear when we have to, to swear by the name of God and God himself and not to create the secondary category of oaths. So kids, I would encourage you to listen to what your friends say, and see if you hear them say, I swear this, or I crossed my heart and hoped to die, or any other ways where they try to make it more serious, or swear that this is really true, and think about whether is that something we really should be doing. And if we do, we should only ever do it when it's really necessary and in the name of God. We shouldn't be swearing by anything other than God himself. So the name of God should be a serious matter to us. It should be something we think about, something we notice. I hope this week we'll all be more sort of in tune with hearing it when we hear his name dishonored. And so we should be careful in our own speech. We should point it out to others when we can and not participate in what they're saying. But again, I think the more convicting part of this for me this week has been this idea of hypocritical worship. Are we really calling on the name of the Lord when we call on the name of the Lord? When we get up and we sing these psalms, how often do I get a verse or two into a psalm and realize I don't remember any of the words that I just sang? Am I really worshiping God when I'm here? When I'm praying, am I doing it just while I'm thinking about something else, or do I really mean what I'm saying? Because the name of Jesus, it's at the name of Jesus that every knee will bow. And so that's a reminder that He is our King, He is our God, but He's also our Savior. And we look forward to that day when every knee will bow to the name of Jesus. So He's forgiven us for the times we've already dishonored His name. And now out of gratitude, we want to honor that name. We want others to honor that name. And we should be looking forward to that day when we won't. We won't be tempted to dishonor His name anymore, and no one in the new heavens and the new earth will dishonor Him. And that is a wonderful day to look forward to.