Exodus 20, and the scripture reads, and God speak all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thyself have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work. Nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is. and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's. And thus far we read the word of the Lord. For the past number of Lord's Days we have been looking at the Law of Worship. And today we come to the Third Commandment under the heading The Trivialisation of God. The Third Commandment says, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. One of the most significant facts about contemporary Christianity is the trivialising of God. David Wells in one of his books wrote recently, it is one of the defining marks of our time that God is now weightless. He has become unimportant. Those who assure posters of their belief in God's existence nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, his truth less compelling than the advertiser's sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. You see, what has happened in contemporary Christianity is this, a reversal of positions. Once, man was in the dark, as it were, and God was the judge, and man was answerable to God. Now the situation has been reversed. God, as it were, is in the dark, man is on the bench, and God has been called to account by man. That's what has happened in our age. And we need to ask, what is the cause of this trivialization of God? Why has God become so unimportant? It is because of neglect of the third commandment. Neglect of the third commandment has led to the trivialization of God. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God and being. So I want you to notice three things. Firstly, the actions, words and manners that are forbidden in taking God's name in vain. Firstly, a proclamation of faith in God while neglecting to honour Him in our hearts. a proclamation of faith in God while neglecting to honour him in our hearts. If we turn to Isaiah 29 and in the verse 13 we see this very thing being said before us and God through Isaiah makes this accusation concerning these people. Wherefore the Lord said, forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth and with their lips to honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. What do we see here in this text? We see people who gather formally to worship God. That is good. That is the outward public stated intention to publicly worship God. And yet in their hearts they are not actually interested in the worshipping of God. They go through the motions, they use their lips at all the right time and place, but their heart's desire is not toward God. Their hearts are elsewhere in the worship of God. And what is the cause? Their fear toward me is taught by the priesthood of men. They have no experimental acquaintance with God. That is the problem. They have no experimental acquaintance with God. What they know of God is what others have said. Others know God and others are able to talk about God in that experimental way. But these people don't know God in that way. They only know Him from what they hear others say. It's a mere intellectual acquaintance with certain things about God. So here's a proclamation of faith in God while in their hearts they don't know Him. That is taking God's name in vain. Secondly, a profession of faith in God while murmuring against His providential arrangement of their affairs. a profession of faith in God, while murmuring against his providential arrangement of their affairs. So here are those, and they say, I believe in God. They worship God. They know Him, they say, in Christ. They trust Him, they say, for salvation. But when things happen in their lives, Instead of glorifying God for what has happened. Instead of trusting God in the midst of what has happened. They murmur. They complain. And they argue with God. So for example if we turn to Genesis 32. Here we have Jacob as an illustration of this. Genesis 32. And we'll read first of all verse 9 and 10. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and the God of my father Isaac, the Lord which said unto me. So here's a man who has an experimental acquaintance with God. He has faith in God. He acknowledges the continuation of God's covenant in his life. Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which I have shewed unto thy servant, for with my staff I am passed over this Jordan. And now I have become too bad. So he's acknowledging the promise of God. God has said, I will do well unto thee. I'll look after you. And he says, well, here is the thing that has happened. And sure enough, God has been kind and good to me. But when you turn to chapter 42, chapter 42, What a different story we have. Jacob, their father, said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, and Simon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away. All these things are against me. All these things are against me. Were not that be it he professed in those earlier years? What has happened? He is now murmuring against the providential arrangement of the affairs of his life. Everything, it seems, is being taken away from him. So when he was getting things, he blessed God. How wonderful it all was, how great you are. I'm not worthy of these things, he says, because he's on the receiving end. But now, things are being taken from him. What is he doing? He's murmuring, all these things are against me. Well of course, as you and I know from reading the rest of the narrative, they weren't against him at all. Providence was at work in his life and in the lives of all these people. But he didn't take any notice of that. He didn't consider what is God doing. God has looked after me in the past, well here is a difficult patch I'm going through. Has God abandoned me? Not at all. He's murmuring. So a profession of faith in God while murmuring against this providential arrangement of their affairs. We're guilty of that, aren't we? We are sometimes guilty of complaining to God and complaining about God. It is lawful to complain to him, but it is not lawful to complain about him. And how often we complain about him. And we argue with what he's doing. And we're opposed to his providential arrangement. You see, we have this selfish view of life, that when things are going well, God is blessed. How great is our God, and we're so full of excitement and so full of praise. But then God does the opposite, he takes things from us and we no longer praise him. We may come to the worship of God and we may go through all the motions but in our hearts we are crossed, in our hearts we are disappointed, in our hearts we are complaining that God has somehow turned, his whole nature has changed and he's not the same anymore. We can even begin to think atheistically. how bad things can be. Thirdly, a presentation of adoration to God while acting irreverently in his performance. A presentation of adoration to God while acting irreverently in his performance. What do we mean by this? Well, we come to present our praise to God And yet, amazingly, we can do it all so irrevocably. It can be done with carelessness and indifference, so casually. This is the modern fad for worship. Everything is done so indifferently, so casually. I've been to meetings and I've heard people shouting, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. But the place is in chaos and an uproar and all kinds of silly things are happening. It's unbelievable. It can all be done so irreparably. Well let's look at an example of this Malachi 1. Malachi 1 verses 6 to 13. A son honours his father and the servant his master. So he says in a normal arrangement of life, you see certain decorum, you see a certain approach to things. A son honours his father, at least that's the norm. But look what happens, he says, when you come to worship me. If then I be a father, where is mine honour? And if I be a master, where is my fear? Said the Lord of hosts unto you, O priest that despise my name. And ye say, wherein are we despise thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar, and ye say, wherein are we polluted it? In that ye say, the table of the Lord is contemptible. And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor. Will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy persons? said the Lord of Hosts. And now I pray you, beseech God, that he will be gracious unto us, this has been by your means. Will he regard your persons? said the Lord of Hosts. Who is there among you that would shut the doors for naught, neither do ye kindle fire in mine altar for naught? I have no pleasure in you, said the Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand. For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the sea, in my name shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering For my name shall be great among the heathen, said the Lord of Hosts. But he hath profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the Lord is polluted, and the fruit thereof, even his meat is contemptible. Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! And ye have snapped at it, said the Lord of Hosts. And ye brought that which was torn, and the lamb and the stick, thus ye brought an offering. Should I accept this of your hand, said the Lord? You see what's going on here. These people knew we have to worship God. That's our duty. But they said, you know, it's a chore. It just takes so much time. It takes so much effort. You know, I have to get out of my bed. I have to get all these animals. I have to hop them down to the temple. And it's all such a bother in my life. You know, I want to do something else. I want to be elsewhere. But I have all this to do. Now, God says, you cheated all with contempt. They say, with contempt? When did we ever say it with contempt? He says, look at your attitude, look at what you're doing, look at your whole approach. When you're bringing these flocks to me, you're supposed to bring that which is pure and all the rest of it and God had set out rules for all of this. No, they said, well there's one, there's an ugly looking animal there, let's haul that one down. I don't like it, don't want it, it's lame and all the rest of it. Haul it down there and off with that and that'll do. We'll go through all the motions. God says you are treating it all with a sense of irrelevance. You are supposed to be making this presentation of adoration to God and to worship God. But look at how you're going about it. Look at what you're doing. You're doing it with indifference. You're casual about it. You're careless about it. You don't care about how the thing is done or what exactly is done. The attitude is let's do it and be done with it and get on with our lives. They had so little regard for the worship of God that they did the least they could possibly do, whatever had the least cost to themselves. It was a careless and flippant attitude to the worship of God. As Matthew Henry puts it, they had become so atheistical in their approach to God that they took a pride in bantering a serious and just reproof. Wherein have we ever said it was contemptuous? Here was a serious reproof, but they turned it all round and used it as a sense of banter. When did we ever do that? Oh, don't be so silly. Don't be so dull. Aren't we here? Aren't we doing it? Is that not enough? The whole performance had become discredited. So there's the first thing, the actions, words and manners that are forbidden in taking God's name. Secondly, the causes and circumstances that produce a neglect of the third command. What has led to this neglect of the third command? What has caused and brought about this whole attitude? where God is no longer treated with the honour that he should be treated with. What has caused it? Well, here are some reasons. First thing, a loss of the uniqueness of God. A loss of the uniqueness of God. If we turn to Hebrews 12, Hebrews 12 and the verse 28. Just reading the last part of verse 28 and the first part of verse 29 will help us. It says whereby we may serve God acceptably with the reverence and godly fear for Our God is a consuming fire. Serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire. One writer puts it this way, the consuming fire has been domesticated into a candle flame adding a bit of religious atmosphere. In other words God has been domesticated and personalised to the extent that he has been reshaped into the image that we prefer. He has become a manageable deity. Instead of thinking that God is unique, We want to domesticate and bring him down to our level so that we can manipulate him and manage him in ways that we want. Now we may point the finger at Liberation Theology and say, look what they have done with God. We may point the finger at Feminist Theology and say, see how they have reconceived God. And yet the same has happened in Evangelical circles. So we have the God of the individual. God has revealed himself as the only true God, the God who made this world, the one who is transcendent, the one who is sovereign, who decrees all things, who directs and disposes all creatures, actions and things according to the good pleasure of his own will. But there are many who don't like that, don't want this view of God. just cannot accept this teaching from Scripture. No, they want a God personalized to suit themselves. So what they dislike, they discard. What they want, they exaggerate. So they discard what God has said about Himself. But they then exaggerate the love of God, discarding His justice, holiness and righteousness and so on. So they exaggerate certain attributes of God and they discard everything else. The God of the individual. We have the God of experience. Here, subjective experience of God is all that matters. what we or others have experienced of God. That's the only truth. That's the only thing that's important. And everything is filtered through subjective experience. They remake God so that in their form of worship or in their praying or whatever spiritual exercise they're doing or how they think of God, it is all directly related and shaped according to their subjective experience of God. So when you talk to them about the God of Scripture, they say, that's not how I experience God. That's not how I think of God. That's not how I know God. And you may say, well, I'm not really interested in your experience of God. Your experience of God may in fact be wrong, it may be unbiblical. At that point they explode. How dare you question my experiences of God? Whether those experiences are biblical and lawful is irrelevant but their experience of God determines their view of God and how they think God should be understood. We have the God of psychology that tries to meet everyone's felt needs. has led to a reshaping of God and how God is to be viewed and understood. Robert Whitlow said this at one time. Theologians argued that the chief purpose of man was to glorify God. Now it would seem the logic has been reversed. The chief purpose of God is to glorify man. Spirituality no longer is true or good because it meets absolute standards of truth or goodness. but because it helps me get along. So God then is the great therapist who helps us get along, who meets my needs. The God of psychology. So there is a loss of the uniqueness of God. He has been reshaped into the various images that people have of God. Secondly, the loss of the hiddenness of God. It may seem a strange thing to say. The loss of the hiddenness of God. What do I mean by this? Well, without revelation, we would never know God. Unless God reveals himself, no one would ever know God. And God has revealed himself in scripture. All that we need to know of God, all that we can know of God, we learn from Scripture. We can only go through the revealed mediator, Jesus Christ, but we can only know God and Christ through Scripture. But how often we hear modern Christians say, but that is to limit God. God cannot be limited. So there has taken root in the minds of some that there are other paths to go. So instead of knowing God as He is revealed in Scripture, We have, for example, the charismatic who tells us that we can have these mystical experiences of God. I think of one man who says that he had this experience that heaven was open just above him and the door was open and all he had to do was step in. So he's calling on the congregation, get out of your seat and step through the door and God, you will know God in a unique way. And he says if you step back out of that hotspot that he called it, then suddenly you no longer experience God and the spirit of God in your life. This is absolutely horrendous. It's the mystical path to knowing God. That's what is being presented. This is what Catholicism teaches. a mystical path to knowing God. What is it that people want? They want a God they can manage for themselves and not this God who is revealed in scripture. If we turn to Deuteronomy 4 verse 12 God here set down for his people the standard Here is the unchanging rule for God's unique people. Deuteronomy 4, verse 12. The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude, only ye heard a voice. What is the significance of this? Well, as Moses goes on to explain, The Canaanites thought that they could know God through wizards and all kinds of strange means. But the unique thing about God's people was that they would not need to resort to any of these things. They would have the Word of God. That's what would make them different. They must always come to the Word of God. For God is hidden. He cannot be seen. He is a Spirit. He is invisible to the eye. But God has spoken. You saw no similitude. He did not come in a form to you. He brought His Word to you. And Israel always had a problem over this. God told them you were to drive out the Canaanites so that all these ways of knowing God would be dismissed and no longer known. You were to inquire as to how they would try to make, how they would come to know all these false gods. You were to drag them out. But Israel always hankered for something tangible. And so the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 40 Isaiah chapter 14 and verse 9. O Zion that bringeth good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain. O Jerusalem that bringeth good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. Lift it up, be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God. Behold, the Lord will come with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his work before him. And then he goes on to explain what God has done. Verse 12. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, meted out heaven with the span, comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being as counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel over and over? He says, who can you compare with God? Who will be like unto this God? Verse 18, to whom then will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare unto him? Then comes the crucial difference. The workman melted the graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. He that is so impoverished that he hath no ablation, chooseth a tree that will not rot. He seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image that shall not be moved. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth that it is He that is sitting upon the circle of the earth and so on? Here is this foolish person. They want a God that they can handle and touch and see. And so they make themselves a God. A God that they can carry with them from place to place. A God that they can set up in their living room and then they can take it from the room and put it in a car, take it with them and put it up in another place. A God that they can touch. A God that they can make. A God that they can jack with gold and silver. The prophet Isaiah in chapter 44. And verse 9 says the same, they that make a graven image are all of them vanity. These silly people who make these gods. You know all they're doing is making a god like themselves. Their delectable things shall not profit. And they are their own witnesses, these tea not nor know that they may be ashamed. How silly, how blind are these people. They make a God, they carve eyes into his head. And yet it bears witness, you have made a God that cannot see. You are worshipping a God that is dead and deaf and dumb and blind. Why are you doing this? Because you want a God that you can handle. Prophet Jeremiah chapter 10 in these important verses, verses 1 to 5 But just to quote verse 5, they are upright as a palm tree, but speak not. So the mirror of God that is standing tall and straight. And yet that's all it does. It just stands there. They see it, they can look at it, they can carry it about. They must needs be born because they cannot go. How foolish. What is wrong with these people? The hiddenness of God they don't want. They don't want to have to rely on a God who reveals himself. A God whom they cannot know outside of his own self-revelation. What is it as Christians we are most jealous and jealous for? Scripture. You can only know God through the Bible, this book and none other. You cannot know Him in any other religion. We are not pluralists. We cannot be. It is to deny the very hiddenness of God. But there's a third reason or cause for all of this. A loss of the sovereignty of God. The modern professing Christians want a God who does what they want. That's why we have charismatic movement. They want a God who does what they tell them to do. That's why we have this word faith movement, the Rima movement. We have commanded it, God will do it. A manageable deity. Yet God has declared he not only governs this world and all its parts and every element every speck of dust but he does what he does because it pleases him and he commands us to please him and he punishes us because we do not please him. Yet what many people want is a designer kind of religion. A designer religion in which there is no judgement. In which the God that they have does not call them to account because in this consumerist age there is no right, there is no wrong. Everything is right, nothing is wrong. And there is no judgemental attitude. Of course when things go wrong as they are going wrong then the consumerist ideology will suddenly turn and it will start to complain. But we have a designer religion, a consumerist form of religion where people pick and choose and it's all so warm and so nice and so cuddly and so uplifting and so exciting. But it will all come to an end. Before 1914 we had the social gospel, it was all onward and upward, how uplifting, exciting it all was, only to crash with the First World War. Since the 1990s we have the consumerist gospel, it's all onward and upward, exciting, uplifting, how wonderful it all is and we all pick and mix into it. Everybody has their own kind of Christianity, their own kind of religion. And it will all come to an end, a disastrous end. What is wrong? What is wrong is a loss of God's sovereignty. Turn to Romans 1 verse 1. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle. Note the phrase, separated onto the gospel of God. Everything else that he says from this point onward is but an explanation of what he means by the gospel of God. Verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation. Verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. Chapter 2 verse 3, And thinkest thou this, O man, that judges them which do the same things and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? So in verse after verse he keeps piling up all the evidence about the gospel of God, about the sovereignty of God, the authority and power and greatness and majesty of God. What is wrong with contemporary Christianity? We have a law. and we have a loss of the sovereignty of God. That brings me to the third and final point. The means by which we can remove the shallowness of the heart toward God. How can we reverse the trend? How can you, as you go out and talk to other Christians, seek to reverse this shallow trend that is upon us? We must have the following. Firstly, to be gripped afresh with the glory of God. Gripped afresh with the glory of God. Let's turn to Exodus 34 and verse... Exodus 34 Or rather, chapter 33, Exodus 33, verse 18, and he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to him I will be gracious, and will show mercy on him I will show mercy. And he said, thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand, while I pass by. And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen. Gripped afresh with the glory of God. Here's Moses, I want to see God's glory. And God says, well, I will show you some of my glory. I'll show you the bad parts of my glory. What are the bad parts of God's glory? The sovereignty of God's goodness. The sovereignty of His grace. The sovereignty of His mercy. And he's gripped afresh with the glory of God in this way. That's how to remove shallowness. to be humbled afresh, to be gripped afresh, to be thrilled afresh at this uniqueness of God's sovereignty, that God is sovereign in goodness, that God is sovereign in grace, that God is sovereign in mercy. To be thrilled at the fresh realization Why am I a Christian? Because God was sovereign. God was pleased to save me. That's why I'm a Christian. Second, to be humbled at the holiness of God. We turn to Nehemiah 9. We'll just stick with Nehemiah 9 for this point in the next one. Humbled at the holiness of God, Nehemiah and I, now in the twenty and fourth day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting and with sackcloth and earth upon them. And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquity of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read in the book of the law of the Lord their God. One fourth part of the day and another fourth part they confessed and worshipped the Lord their God. They set aside a day of prayer and repentance. And they divide the day into parts. The first part, the first fourth of the day they read the law of God. And then in the next part of the day they confessed their sins in light of what God had said about himself. Their sins and their iniquities, their transgressions. That they deserve the punishment and the wrath of God. They were humbled before the holiness of God. Why were they sinners? Because they had broken God's law. God is a holy God who gave them his law. When they read the law and they examined themselves in light of that law, they acknowledged their sins and their iniquities, humbled with the holiness of God. Then thirdly, to be students of the attributes of God. Look at the rest of chapter 9. I'll give you a very quick outline. Students of the attributes of God. From verse 5 to 6, the greatness of God. Verses 7 to 30, the goodness of God. Verses 31 to 37, the grace of God. So you have these three things about God in Nehemiah 9. Verse 5 and 6 is greatness. Verses 7 to 30 is goodness. Verses 31 to 7 the grace of God. To be students of the attributes of God. There is a woeful and deplorable ignorance about God. What a tragedy. In this land where we have so many churches So much religion, so much Christianity, yet there is a woeful ignorance of the attributes of God. Ask the average Christian. Those of you who have learned the Catechism will know the answer. What is God? You will immediately say, God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. And then you will start with the proof text, God is a Spirit, John 4 and so on, right down the line. studying the attributes of God. But for the average Christian, what is God? Well, he's being domesticated and personalized. The God of the individual, the God of personal experience, the God of psychology. Where is the grandeur, the glory, the majesty, the greatness of God? And fourthly, to be refreshed at the providence of God. If we turn to the psalmist, Psalm 139, the whole psalm is a psalm of God's providence. O Lord, thou hast searched me and hast known. Thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine up-rising. Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path in my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain onto it. And so on. The providence of God. It's on to talk about the providence of God in his birth. The providence of God in his whole make-up. His whole physical shape. Everything about him. Every aspect of his entire existence. The providence of God. To be refreshed with the providence of God. my time of God. I'll just finish with application of one text. It's found in the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes chapter 5 verse 1 and 2. Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth Let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in heaven, and thy upon earth. Therefore let thy words be few." Let us not be guilty of trivializing God. Amen.