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You're listening to the teaching
ministry of Harvest Fellowship Church in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. You can find out more about us
on the web at www.harvestfellowshipchurch.org. We pray that through our teaching,
we may present everyone mature in Christ. Father in heaven,
we do pray Lord that as we even invoke your name tonight, that
a true apprehension of your glory will grip us every time we speak
your name. We pray, Lord, tonight, as we
look at the third word of this decalogue of the commandments
that you have written, even upon our hearts, Lord, that we might
grasp a greater sense of it tonight than we had even earlier today. And so we pray for your wisdom
to be upon us. And we pray this in the name
of Jesus. Amen. All right, I'm going to read
the law tonight. So let's read Deuteronomy chapter
5, verses 1 through 22. I think it'll be good on occasion
for us to hear the entire law just read together. And then
I'm going to come back with some questions for you. But first, Deuteronomy 5, hear
now the word of the Lord. And Moses summoned all Israel
and said to them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that
I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them, and
be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant
with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the
Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here
alive today. The Lord spoke with you face
to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while
I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare
to you the word of the Lord. For you were afraid because of
the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said,
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not make for yourself
a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth. You shall not bow down to them
or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am
a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children
to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing
steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my
commandments. 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. Observe the Sabbath day to keep
it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall
labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath
to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work,
you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your
female servant, or your ox, or your donkey, or any of your livestock,
or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant
and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember
that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your
God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded
you to keep the Sabbath day. Honor your father and your mother
as the Lord your God commanded you that your days may be long
and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord
your God is giving you. You shall not murder. And you
shall not commit adultery, and you shall not steal, and you
shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, and you
shall not covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire
your neighbor's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female
servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. These words, the Lord spoke to
all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire,
the cloud, and the thick darkness with a loud voice. And he added,
no more. And he wrote them on two tablets
of stone and gave them to me." And may the Lord write the truths
of his word, his holy, eternal word to our hearts this Wednesday
night. We're up to our 18th teaching
so far in Deuteronomy. But before we get into the text
tonight, I thought, this is one of the benefits sometimes of
having taught something else, that we go back to just briefly
chapter 19, paragraph 7 from the London Baptist Confession.
I'm not going to read to you the paragraph. I just wanted
to talk about the overall theme of it, which I had presented
on May 12, 2024. I'm sure you all remember that
vividly. But the topic that day or that morning was the agreement
between the law and the gospel. The idea was here we see this
great picture of the inscription of God's Law on stones to the
fuller picture later of the New Covenant where God writes, or
we could say inscribes His Law savingly upon the hearts of His
people. But I wanted to quiz you tonight
to see if you, I guess I don't have chalk so you're not going
to get anything written. I wanted to see if you remembered the
three uses of the Law. And if you can't remember them,
then it's a good thing that we're reviewing them, I can see. Maybe
you can describe one. And remember, Bob's not here
tonight, so I'm expecting full class participation here. Maybe
you can describe it, but maybe you don't know the word for it. Yes, so that'd be the first one,
to convince the sinner of their sinfulness and to lead them to
the gospel, or to point them to Christ. Anybody know what
the name for that is? No, thanks. Think of teacher or schoolmaster,
but there's another word. Yes, pedagogical. I'll write
this for you, just in the middle once. So pedagogical, it convinces
the law, God's law convinces the sinner of their sinfulness,
and it leads the sinner, or it's meant to lead the sinner, to
the gospel, to Jesus Christ. So that's the one of three primary
uses of the law. That's not all the law does.
Did I see your hand up, Luke? Restraint. OK. Restrain what? Sin. evil. Yeah, restrained sin or
evil. What would we call that? Civil. Good try. I'll put that
over here for you, Glenn. So the civil law, the laws that
we have in society are meant to restrain the evil of man.
Of course very early on we find in Genesis 9 after they get off
the ark what does God say? Whoever sheds man's blood by
man his blood should be shed. A retribution, a restraining
ideally of evil. And then the third one has to
do with believers. What's that? From a year and
a quarter ago. Pretty good. All right. Here's the value of a notebook.
You ready for those open book tests? So normative and the normative
use of the law, we could say, obliges believers to the law
of God as a rule of life and very importantly, not as a system
of salvation. obedience to the law is not the
means by which we are saved, it rather is our rule of life
and it comes about because we love God's law. And so, when
we talked about the agreement that morning between the Law
and the Gospel, I made this statement that the Law leads the sinner
indirectly to Christ. Remember the Law doesn't proclaim
the Gospel explicitly, it just says, don't do this, do this,
or die. But it leads the sinner indirectly
to Christ. The Gospel message, the actual
Good News of the Gospel is what conducts the sinner directly
to Christ. Paul when he talks about how
will they hear he doesn't say how will they hear unless the
law is proclaimed to them, he says how will they hear unless
the gospel is proclaimed. And so it's through the application
of the gospel by the Holy Spirit that the law is then savingly
inscribed on the hearts of believers. And what is the consequence,
or we could say the result of that inscription, we call it
gospel obedience. That's what keeping of the law
is, this normative keeping of the law is gospel obedience.
It's a cheerful obedience. It's not a forced obedience.
It's not like the forced labor of the Israelites in Egypt. It's
a cheerful obedience. It's that statement by David,
oh, how I love your law. It's a cheerful obedience to
the law as a rule of duty. Now, as we come to the third
word, or we'll call it the third commandment of the Ten Commandments
tonight, I want to ask you, have you typically heard about this
third commandment which 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? using the Lord's name profanely.
Okay. Yeah. And in fact, you know,
even going back to some of the videos we watched with Ray Comfort,
you know, that's typically, have you ever taken God's name in
vain? Um, and that's, and, and he's not wrong by the way in
saying that, but what we're going to see tonight is, is that's
just part of it. So we don't want to look at it
too narrowly and say, oh, well, I'm really careful with the way
I use my words. Therefore, I am completely vindicated
of this command. There's much more to it than
that. Anything else? You never gave it a thought? How about the phrase in vain? Matt V? Do you want to get up
here and expand on that for a few minutes? kidding. I'm just kidding. That's
a great thought though. That is a really great thought
to really get us thinking about how serious this covenantal commitment
that the believer has with God, with Yahweh. Alright, to get into this a little
bit, at the very beginning of what we saw here as we jumped
into Deuteronomy 5 where Moses is not giving a new law, he is
reiterating the law that has already been given. But we saw
that it is insisting, this Decalogue is insisting on something. God
is insisting on the exclusive right that He has to His people's
allegiance. And that is why this covenantal
aspect, we are just going to keep talking about it over, and
over, and over, that we are in covenant with God. And so, if
the Israelite people were going to enter into covenant agreement
with Him they had to understand from the start, of course as
we saw in the first word, is that there could be no other
gods whatsoever. And a follow-up, so word three
we could say probably ties a little bit more closely to word one
than word two, which we heard last week, is that committed
worshipers, covenant worshipers must reverence God's name. They must. And as you think of
God's name, just thinking of God's name, and of course, we
find a few different names that God describes himself by. The
one that we most typically refer to, especially in Old Testament
context, is Yahweh. But his name is often regarded
as an extension or a substitute of God himself. declaration,
His name is the declaration of His being and His character,
and that's why it's so closely tied here to the first command.
And I'll just give you an example of how His name is as if it's
interchangeable with Him, Himself. Deuteronomy 12, verse 5, Deuteronomy
is where you see this over, and over, and over. So, we'll see
it first in chapter 12 verse 5, but there it says, Notice that phrase there, to
put His name and make His habitation there, there you shall go. And
all you have to do then is go to verse 11 of chapter 12, 14,
23, 16.2, 16.6, 16.11, and 26.2. I know you wrote those all down. point wasn't to have you write
them down, just to see that you're going to keep seeing this show up, that there's
a strong connection between God Himself, His essence, and His
name. That's what makes this so important
here. His name highlights for us His character. We've been
talking about that, His attributes on the first Sunday of each month.
His name reveals His attributes. Exodus 34, think of this, and
sometimes we'll use direct language out of this as we're praying.
Sometimes you'll hear this in our congregational prayers, the
Lord passed before him, which is Moses, in Exodus 34, 6, and
proclaimed, the Lord, or Yahweh, the Lord, there twice, "'The
Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast
love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and
sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children
to the third and fourth generation.'" Which is some of the language
we heard week. But nevertheless you can see
in all of that it says, the Lord, the Lord, and everything that
comes after that is a description of who He is, His essence, His
character. And so we see this closeness
then that when we speak of God, when we invoke His name this
is who we're talking about. Think of Isaiah chapter 9, you
know that great prophecy, Wonderful Counselor, The Mighty God, and
all of those titles there too. What do they do? They describe
who God is. And of course, there specifically,
the God-man. So His name highlights His character,
but His name also signifies something and that is help to His people
and also the works that God does that manifest His glory. I'll give you a couple of Psalms
here, Psalm 44, 5, it says, through you, this is referring to Yahweh,
through you we push down our foes, there's the help, through
your name, notice that, through your name we tread down those
who rise up against us. through His name. So there's
the help to His people and then the works manifesting His glory.
Psalm 81, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in
all the earth. You have set Your glory above
the heavens. His name is majestic and it's
above all the earth. And it doesn't take long as you
get into the Old Testament, but we see the prophets of God. What do the true prophets do?
The true prophets, the real prophets they carry God's authority as
if His voice is coming through their mouths. It's as if His
voice is coming through their mouths. And that's what makes
Deuteronomy 18.20 such a weighty concern for all of us where God
says the prophet who presumes to speak a word, how? In my name. Notice all these
expressions that have to do with the name of God. In my name.
The one who presumes to do that. That I have not commanded him
to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods that same
prophet shall die. Die. to presume to speak a word
in God's name. And you know, that carries a
lot of weight. And so for those who especially would lead worship,
and there's various aspects to our worship, but the one that
I was thinking about earlier today is when we take the Lord's
Supper. And we say things like, on the
authority of Scripture, which really is on the authority of
God's name, that if you are in Christ, Scripture declares that
you are pardoned of your sins, that you have forgiveness with
God. That's not a light thing to say. That's not a flippant
thing to say. But consider that example that
we think is good and right, even though it's weighty, and think
of the things that we see in the Roman Catholic Church. some
sort of pronouncement of absolution, I absolve you of your sins, or
whatever types of statements are made that we might say are
presuming to speak a word in God's name that they have not
received express permission from God to state. So that type of
pronouncement of pardon in God's name, it can be done in a proper
manner or in a blasphemous manner. That's a really weighty thing
to think about. God's covenant people care about
the glory and reverence of God's name. What happens after the
great victory that the Israelites had at Jericho? What's the very next narrative? Yes. don't know immediately why
they lost to AI. In fact, Joshua himself isn't
sure. And after they lose, and it was
so stunning because they had this great, amazing victory,
and the smaller town of AI beats them back. And Joshua cries out
to God in Joshua 7.9, he says, for the Canaanites and all the
inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and will surround
us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you
do when for your great name." Now of course God had to go on
to reprove and to rebuke Joshua and say, the reason is because
there is sin in the camp. And of course then it's the whole
saga of Achan. But what was Joshua's primary
concern there? The name of God. What will you
do for your great name? Moses had that same concern when
God said He was going to strike down all the Israelites, and
He was going to start over with Moses. And Moses says, You promised. You have to consider your name
God. And so this is how God's covenant
people care about. They care about the reverence
and glory of God's name. But those who spurn God's love,
so those who think little of God's love, they have no qualms
then about invoking his name falsely. There is a word that
we probably will see show up a bit with this idea of using
God's name falsely. Jeremiah 5 says, who does justice and seeks truth,
that I may pardon her, though they say as the Lord lives."
So, there they are invoking God's name. He says, even though they
say as the Lord lives, yet they swear falsely. Again, that word
falsely. If you go on to read Jeremiah
5 then Jeremiah says, well maybe this is just the poor people.
Surely the rich people don't act this way. And he goes and
he finds that they are just as evil. God's name, or invoking
His name just as falsely as the poor people. And the point of
it was that Israel as a whole was massively corrupt, apostate. So we come back then again to
verse 11, which I just want to read it again. So the opposite
of taking God's name in vain would be to honor His name. Or
we could say simply to make God look good to everyone who's around
us. And of course, we see that in
the Lord. How does the Lord's Prayer begin? Yeah, so it speaks, it invokes
his name, and then it says, hallowed be your name, revered be your
name, may your name be held up, made to look good. So there's a sense here in this
command that we are never to make use of God's name, of the
Lord's name, of any type of description of, we could say, of the divine
being in a light way, we could say in a trifling way, in any
way that fails to show reverence for him and affection to him. should always be done with an
awe of the greatness of God's majesty upon our mind. To take the name of the Lord
our God in vain is then, therefore, not to make him look good, but
to give God a bad name in front of other people. This is exactly,
in a sense, what James has been getting at, even though he hasn't
used these exact words. But when he talks about people
who are two-faced, when he talks about people who are double-minded,
people who are straddling the world and God, this worldly behavior,
they are making God to have a bad name among the area, the people
that they live among. Jeremiah 7, so you go two chapters
after the one I read in verses 8 through 11, this continues
on. Behold, you trust in deceptive
words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit
adultery, swear falsely? Make offerings to Baal and go
after other gods you have not known. And then, so you do all
those things, and then come and stand before me in this house,
which is called by my name, and say, we are delivered, only to
go on doing all these abominations. Has this house, which is called
by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself
have seen it, declares the Lord. sense of riotous living, and
then professing the name of God in gathered worship. John Calvin described this verse
in this way. He said, it becomes us, this
is how we should be, to regulate our minds and our tongues so
as never to think or speak of God and his mysteries without
reverence and great soberness, and never in estimating his works
or just looking at what God has done to have any feelings towards
him but one of deep veneration, deep veneration. So there's a lot of things that,
and Calvin goes on to further balance that out, but I want
to go on to this phrase here, you shall not take, you shall
not take. Now this word take, we could
also instead supplement the word bear or lift or raise. So think of that as almost in
a sense of raising God's name as like the shield or the banner.
Sunday we talked about being a soldier, a good soldier of
Christ that we serve under his banner. So you shall not bear
or lift up God's name, claiming God as your own, as representative
of him in vain. We're going to be on this phrase
here in vain for a bit here. In vain. Or we could say in empty
expression, or for a worthless purpose, or without reason. This phrase here in vain has
to do with the idea of waste and disorder. So anything that
is empty, vain, or we could say of no value, or of no importance,
and therefore there is no occasion for that. There is no occasion
to ever use God's name in any of these scenarios. So let's talk then about the
scope of that. So the scope is not just blasphemy,
although it's included, but how about the idea of using God's
name in some way in magic, incantations, or curses? those types of things. When you do those things it's
a form of idolatry. To use God's name in that way
is a form of idolatry. To use God's name as if it was
a talisman of sorts can serve idolatrous purposes in our minds. And we should kind of keep in
mind here even the context of Israel here. The vast majority
of Israelites here had a tremendous reverence for God. You remember
how terrified they were at the mountain. So they would have
been even reluctant to mention God's name at all, let alone
blaspheme His name. But as they're going into Canaan,
headed into a territory now that is filled with all the things
that God is going to warn them about later. Spiritism, occultism,
all types of witchcraft. And of course He tells them over
and over again, you cannot permit these things to be in your midst. These people that you are going
to be around they are obsessed with these things. These are
the ways of the world, the ways of Satan. And you may not use
my name, but by using it in a spell or any form of magical ceremony. This is not for the children
of God to engage in any types of corrupt, abominable, forbidden
practices. We'll see those covered in Deuteronomy
18. But they're going to encounter,
and they probably already had encountered at this point, this
belief that the name of a person, or especially the name of a god,
was considered to have power within it. And this is why Balak,
do you remember Balak, the king of Moab? Who does he go out to
hire? Balaam. And what does he want
Balaam to do? He wants them to curse them.
And I think there's the sense in that passage which you'll
find in Numbers 22 that He wants them to do that in the name of
their God, that He has no familiarity with. But there's a sense of
that this magic incantation or this curse can be placed upon
them because the fear of the Moabites was, we've seen their
power, they will destroy us. We're going to have to do something
else. And so there was that attempt at a curse, and of course that
failed miserably. Can you think of any other curses
that we find in the Bible? Yes? Yes. I'm going to cover that
under blasphemy, though. But there is some overlap in
these types of categories here. The one that I was thinking about
was a foolish curse, and it comes in 1 Samuel 14. If you remember
that the Israelites are fighting against the Philistines, and
God gives them great victory, and Saul says, this is going
so well that I curse anybody who stops to eat food. I don't even know why he says
that. But I'm sure there's some really good theological thoughts
around all that. But nevertheless, it's a foolish
curse. And of course, Jonathan doesn't hear it. Jonathan goes
and eats some honey. He's revived. And then Saul says,
well, it's time to kill Jonathan. But the people prevented that.
But there's an example of a foolish curse. And the text does not
explicitly invoke God's name there. But I think there's a
sense of that anything that the king would say, who is God's
representative, is done under the authority of his name. So
it was a very foolish thing for Saul to do. And of course, that
was already leading to his demise already there. So, magic, incantations,
or curses. How about something that might
be a little bit more practical in the world that we live in?
How about somebody who tries to push ideas or projects as
if they are God's will? You know, I had this dream last
night that God wants us to double the size of the sanctuary, and
that's what God wants us to do. You know, that type of idea,
and have you seen that before in churches? Have you seen that
around people who claim to be men of God, that God revealed
this to them, or I just know this is what God wants us to
do? And to claim that you just know that this is God's will
is a very precarious place to be. So to push human ideas or
even projects as God's will could be to invoke God's name in vain. How about the swearing of oaths? Now, I decided not to cover oaths
in great depth, even though we could, because I know many of
you have come to Sunday school and we've covered oaths and vows
really well, really comprehensively. But a basic definition for an
oath is simply to call God to witness that what we are saying
is true. And of course, probably one of
the most common ones is when you You hold up your hand in
court, so help me God. I swear to tell the whole truth,
nothing but the truth, so help me God. Everything that I'm saying
by God's name is true. But how often can oaths be taken
to not tell the truth? How many people perjure themselves
intentionally with no fear of God? They have a fear of man.
They have a fear of being convicted. No fear of God. And so they'll
hold up their hand. In some cases they might even
put their hand on a Bible and they will lie. They will be deceitful. They will be dishonest. They
will tell falseness. Leviticus 19.12, you shall not
swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. when we take an oath, and of
course we talked before about there are legitimate times to
swear an oath. What are we doing? We are acknowledging
in that oath under God's name that God is eternal, that God
is unchangeable, that He is truth. And when we call upon Him we
are saying that He is a fit witness to the truth, and He's able to
bring things to light that nobody else can see because He is a
discerner of the heart. Isaiah 48, 1. People were not doing this there
in the days of Isaiah. Hear this, O house of Jacob,
who are called by the name of Israel and who came from the
waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess
the God of Israel, but not in truth or right. So there's a
falseness in what they swore. And we see in the prophets this
theme over and over that we find people living, or we could say,
swearing or claiming the name of Yahweh. Oh, I'm a follower. Or maybe put it into our modern
day's language. I am a follower of Christ, but
then living as if they belonged to Baal, or living as if they
were a child of Satan. In 2 Samuel 15. This is close
to the end of the really sad saga after Absalom kills his
brother and after he's banished. And then it says there, remember
how he came around and he started telling people, like, you know,
if I was king. Things would go a lot better
around here. And it says, so Absalom stole the hearts of the
men of Israel with his smooth talk. But then at the end of
four years, he says to the king, please let me go and pay my vow,
or this sense of a swearing before God, which I have vowed to the
Lord in Hebron. And what did he do after that? So he did something really evil.
But he did it under this pretense. And in a sense, what he says,
I have vowed to the Lord. So there's the invocation of
Yahweh's name there and something that he is purposing intentional
evil against his own father, against his own country, against
his own God. So the swearing of oaths. How
about unnecessary swearing? How often do we hear people,
to be a little bit more emphatic or to prove their point, say
things like, I swear to God. If you remember way back to Matthew
5, remember Jesus talks about how we should be able to be such
people of integrity, such people of God's truth, that we never
need to add on to what we're saying. And we're going to see
that in James 5 as well. Let your yes be yes, and let
your no be no. We don't need to say, I swear
by heaven, or I swear on my mother's grave, or anything, and certainly
not by the name of God in any type of way. Rash or unlawful vows to the
Lord. Who probably made the most rash
vow in the whole Bible, Grace? Jephthah. And if Jephthah actually
follows through on his vow, which we don't know if he really did
or not, but if he did, he is going on to break commandments
here from the Ten Commandments. It was a rash vow. He just comes to him and he gives
this rash vow, and of course you go on to read, and it was
a terrible thing. What about the breaking of vows
before God? What about if you vowed to do
something that was really good, and then you don't follow through
on it? And you vowed this in the name of the Lord. The most
prominent example for this in Scripture is probably what happened
at Horeb. From the Exodus version in Exodus
24, 3 it says, Not yet. answered with one voice." This
means they rehearsed it together. All right, let's all practice
what we're going to say. It says, they all answered with
one voice. It just means that there was unanimous consent. Everybody
was agreed, this is what we're going to do. And they said, all
the words that the Lord has spoken we will do. That was their vow. And as you said, Susan, it wasn't
too long before they broke it, which led to Moses breaking the
tablets. What I thought as well, you know, how about divorce? How often are those vows so lightly
cast to the ground before God as if his name had never been
invoked? So the breaking of good vows
before God. How about murmuring against God's
providences? And by providences that doesn't
mean just the things that we perceive to be good, everything
that God is doing is providential. Numbers 14, the Lord spoke to
Moses and Aaron saying, how long shall this wicked congregation
grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of
the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. And then
after that he goes on to say, and that's why they're going
to die in the wilderness. They're murmuring against me. And what's
going on when somebody murmurs? They're questioning the character
of God. I don't know if God's really good. I don't know if
God's doing what's best. And you can fill in any other
idea there, but that's what murmuring is. It's placing yourself above
God. I think I know better. Or I don't
understand what he's doing as if he is going to reveal all
that he's doing to you. Instead, our disposition should
be like Abraham's. Remember when Abraham interacts
with God before Sodom is destroyed? And he says, shall not the judge
of all the earth do what is just? That's what he believed. He believed
it. And he didn't know how many righteous
people. He didn't know it was one. He didn't know it was just
Lot. But he believed that whatever God did would be just and would
be right. And so he does not use God's
name there incorrectly. All right. How about blasphemy? Blasphemy is when anything is
done or spoken whereby the majesty of God is diminished or offended
or when his truth is denied or his name is profaned. I have
several examples here but I want to see what you can come up with
some examples that you can think of in scripture of blasphemy. And I mean legitimate blasphemy
so not the blasphemy that Jesus was accused of. Yes. So I do view Goliath's cursing
of the armies of the living God in 1 Samuel 17 as a form of blasphemy. I think that's why David is so
outraged. He's outraged because he's one
of those people that I mentioned at the beginning are people who
care about the glory and reverence of God's name. David wasn't doing
it just for being pro-Jewish, he was doing it because of Yahweh's
name, the same God who had helped him kill those bears and lions. So Goliath's blasphemy against
the living God, against Israel. What else? I'd have to go back and read
the text. I mean, you have to remember, I mean, I'm not going
to say you're wrong, but remember that's the one book that we don't
find God's name in it at all. So he definitely hated the representatives
of God. So perhaps, okay. So he's not technically invoking
God's name, but he's setting himself above God. Look at all
that I have made. And instantly he became a wild
beast. How about Pharaoh? Moses comes
and he says, Yahweh is here for his people. And he says, who
is the Lord? Who is Yahweh? That I should
obey his voice and let Israel go. as you read through Leviticus,
which is you know it can be a tough book to read through at times.
But in chapter 24 you see a vivid example, this is probably one
of the clearest examples of there was a mixed marriage, there was
an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man, and it says that her son,
the Israelite woman's son, it says, blasphemed the name, a
name there is capitalized, and cursed. We'll come back to that
in a little bit. But he blasphemed the name of
God in the camp. Numbers 21, is that what you
just read today Madeline? Numbers 21, what did you read? Well, yeah it's close. You'll
get there in a week. But in Numbers 21 it says, the
people spoke against God and against Moses. It's a form of
blasphemy. How about when Hezekiah is holed
up in Jerusalem and along comes Sennacherib, remember that? And
he says, do you really think this Yahweh is going to save
you? There was no other gods that have been preserved from
the other people we've attacked. But he mocks Yahweh, blaspheming
him before Hezekiah and all the people of Israel in 2 Kings 18. How about Matthew 12 when the
Pharisees say that Jesus' work of casting out demons they say
it is only by Beelzebub, Beelzebul, the Prince of Demons that this
man casts out demons. And of course we call that the
blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 3, Peter talks about, he
says, "...scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing,
following their own sinful desires. They will say, where is the promise
of His coming? Mocking God. God said He was
coming back. Ha-ha, it's never happened. Blaspheming
His name." And the final one here to think about which is
not a biblical example as much as it is an application for us
and something that we should consider. Because again, you
can get into that, I'm not doing that, therefore I'm okay. But
what about our silence when we hear God's name blasphemed right
in front of us? Do we care more about the reprisal
of men or do we care about, like Joshua did, the name of God? So we take this phrase here together,
take the name of the Lord your God in vain, means to lift up
the name of Yahweh to emptiness, to use the name in a manner that's
not befitting God's holiness. And I want you to think about
that just for a moment here now more poignantly about what we
do. So from the context of what do we do on Sundays? We enter
into gathered worship. And yes, we can draw near with
our mouths, we can honor God with our lips, but can we not,
as Isaiah says in 29.13, can we not do that while our hearts
are far from Him? Without a true fear of God? That
is very possible. And I've quoted this verse recently
in James, but from Psalm 24, who shall ascend the hill of
the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a
pure heart. He who does not lift up his soul
to what is false. That's what this is, to use God's
name irreverently. means that you've lifted up your
soul to what is false or that you've sworn deceitfully. So
to take the name of the Lord your God in vain could be an
attempt to manipulate God for personal ends. It could be to invoke God's name
in support of a statement or a deed that does not really have
God's authority behind it because you want to do something for
deceptive purposes. A lot of charlatans going around
to churches raise a lot of money And they do that through the
implication that God is standing behind what I am affirming or
what I'm doing. Do we see this a lot in those
who preach a prosperity gospel? God told me. How many times have
you heard these so-called preachers say, God told me? Or I was having
a conversation with God. Or what about these so-called
faith healers? Same type of vain use of God's name over and over
and over. 1 Kings 22, I think I had mentioned
this perhaps last time I taught. I wasn't focused on this text.
Remember when they have to go get the one true prophet of the
Lord, Micaiah, out of prison? But before that had happened,
it says, the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah,
were sitting on their thrones. This is when they're planning
to go into battle together. At the threshing floor, at the
entrance of the Gate of Samaria, all the prophets were prophesying
before them. What were they saying? Zedekiah,
the son of Canaanah, made for himself horns of iron and said,
Thus says the Lord, as if God had told this to him, with these
you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed. And all the
prophets prophesied so and said, go up to Ramoth Gilead and triumph. The Lord will give it into the
hand of the king. And they all lied for whatever
they hoped to gain from that. And when Maikiah comes out, he
has a word specifically for the Zedekiah guy, which I think left
him a little speechless. But they were using the name
of the Lord for personal gain, for their own prosperity. So
it might be a little bit easier to look at something like that
and say, well, I would never do that, but what about to come
back to who we're called to be. And how often could we hear expressions
slip out of people's mouths like, oh God, oh my God, good God,
or even something like good heavens, which really the heavens are
the Lord's. They point toward the Lord. All
types of expressions like that are a breach of this law. A transgression of this law,
and the one older commentator, so to show you that's not just
unique in our time period, the guy was reading, I think it was
like 1600s, 1700s, he said, how many who pass for Christians
are highly criminal here with speaking that way? Instead, we ought to do as the
psalmist says in Psalm 99.3, let them praise your great and
awesome name. Holy is he. Going back to our thoughts of
worship, how often do we use Jesus's name in word? How often do we pray in the name
of Christ? How often do we sing about Jesus? What does it mean if you stand
there and you sing but your heart's not in it or you're just mumbling
the words or mouthing the word but you're mouthing the words
of God? What does that mean in terms of this commandment when
you're doing that? Or you pray and you just say
at the very end, in Jesus' name, amen. And that's become so cliche
for you as saying, God bless you if someone sneezes. It's
a trite, trivial use of the most holy name of God. Psalm 29.2,
ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord
in the splendor of holiness. Psalm 103.1, bless the Lord,
O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. So how many violations of the
third word are taking place when we are entering into haphazard
worship? Unprepared worship? Just quick
run to our seats and be like, all right, we're ready, God.
Here we go. Insincere worship? Irreverent worship? And by irreverent,
I don't mean I don't mean that we're openly mocking God, but
just not having a lack of awe that we should have of God. Unauthorized
worship, as we'll see with Aaron's sons, and just overall unholy
worship, all of those violate this third word. Another thing
that I wanted to bring out, and I don't have anybody in mind,
so don't feel attacked here, But in prayer, when we begin
to use God's name as a crutch word, instead of saying, um,
I'll just say, Lord. And so, Lord, you know, Lord,
I was thinking today, Lord, that if you would hear my prayer,
Lord, that type of, there's no way that that is reverential.
That is just using it unthinkingly. And it's a very easy thing to
fall into. But if you really think about
it, you never talk to anybody else like that. You don't use
my name four times in one sentence when you're talking to me. So
it's something to think about. The way that we pray and the
way that we invoke God's name in everything matters. But I
don't want us to feel futile about this, because when we worship
God with sincere and earnest hearts, it says in Proverbs 15.8
that the prayer of the upright is acceptable to Him. Praise
God. The final phrase though here
is something to take very seriously, that the Lord will not hold him
guiltless who takes his name in vain. He will not be cleared,
this person will not be pure, they will not be free or innocent,
they will not be exempt from punishment. God is going to punish
those who use his name vainly. So the millions upon billions
of unholy use of his name that takes place all around the world,
it will be punished. And we have to remember that
if not in this world, then in the world to come. And sometimes
God does it right away. So that blasphemer that I mentioned
in Leviticus 24, what happens to him? He's executed. They take
him outside the camp and they stone him to death. Or in a sense, do you remember
from Acts 5, how God strikes down Ananias and Sapphira? I
think they're guilty of this. He said, you have lied to the
Holy Spirit. In a sense, they're saying, in
the name of the Lord, we present this money in good faith as if
this was the full proceeds of the sale of our house. Ezekiel 36, God talks about how
he's going to vindicate the holiness of his great name. And he will
be vindicated. He says, it has been profaned
among the nations. He says, the nations will know
that I am the Lord. Thomas Watson says this, and
he starts out with the word, me thinks. And I thought, well
we have to listen to it if he says, me thinks. And he says,
"...methinks these words, the Lord will not hold him guiltless,
should put a lock upon our lips, and make us afraid of speaking
anything that may bring dishonor upon God, or may be taking his
name in vain." Hebrews 10.31 says, "...it is a fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God." But consider also
what Peter says, He says, if you are insulted in 1 Peter 4,
if you are insulted for the name of Christ. So, I think that's
kind of Matt, like your tie in there. The name of Christ is
what we identify, we have taken His name upon us. If you are
insulted for that name you are blessed. Because the spirit of
glory and of God rests upon you, but let none of you suffer as
a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone
suffers as a Christian under the name of Christ, let him not
be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. How great of importance is this
command, I mean for everybody in the world, but especially
for those who are bound to God in covenant. Those who know His
name in the relationship of gracious, divine love. And so, right before
we leave here I just want to give you a few things. How should
this third word then be positively construed? That's how we should
look at all these commands. It's not just don't do, but what's
the positive element to it? So if we are going to fully obey
this law in a loving, cheerful way, here's some things. To speak of God and to want to
hear others speak of God with all humility, reverence of heart,
and manifestation of respect. That's how we should speak about
God. We should not use his name the same way that we tell stories
about our friends and all sorts of things that are happening.
There should be a far greater reverence in our hearts anytime
we invoke his name. To confess the Lord. We mentioned
that in one of the verses, those who confess my name. We confess
the Lord's name every Lord's Day together. We confess him,
but to confess it in a holy way and also in an unashamed way. Unashamed loyalty, honor, and
fear. Are you a Christian? Yes, I am.
That type of unashamed loyalty. I am named by Christ. I bear
his name upon me as one of his covenant children. As Paul says, to glorify God
in all that we say or do. We probably don't think about
the third commandment too often when we think about that, but
we should think about, am I glorifying God when I say His name? Every time that I say His name.
to be zealous for God's name and His cause. And I already
gave you the example of Moses. We gave the example of David.
And of course, Elijah is another great example. But on the flip
side of that, as Paul says in Romans 2.24, giving no occasion
through our lifestyle for others to blaspheme God's name. So if
we live in such a way that we provoke other people to blaspheme
his name through our evil behavior as we proclaim ourselves to be
Christians then we are the ones who are also violating this law. To call upon the name of the
Lord which I wrote down Psalm 99 6 I didn't put that in here
so I don't I'll read it to you in a second. This is referring to, it says,
Moses and Aaron were among God's priests. Samuel also was among
those who called upon his name. They called to the Lord, and
he answered them. Do we call upon the name of the
Lord in this same way? And finally, to swear by God's
name holy manner. And we see that in Scripture.
2 Corinthians 1.23, Paul makes statements sometimes and he's
essentially saying, as God is my witness I'm not lying to you,
or whatever he says. So, we see there is precedent
for it. And so, if we are going to use God's name then we better
one be telling the truth, and we better be doing it in a holy,
reverential way. Jeremiah 42.5 is another example. And the other thing that I would
refer you to is also if you've looked at the bulletins I've
been putting in a catechism question each week from the Hercule Collins
Baptist Catechism. If you go to questions 111 through
114 you'll see pointed questions about this Third Commandment.
What does it prohibit? What does it call for? What are
we supposed to do? How can we properly observe command. It's a pretty short verse. There's
a lot there, and there was a lot that I even cut out of the notes,
but I hope that in some ways just thinking about it a little
bit more comprehensively with all these different categories
fuels each one of us to think a little bit more deeply. That
was my prayer this morning, that we will all think a little bit
more deeply about about this every single time that we use
God's name, when we sing His name, when we pray His name,
when we use it in our conversations with each other. Even as we quote
scripture, we are quoting from Psalm 33 on Sundays, we are saying
the Lord, are we just saying that like it is just any other
word in the verse, or does it mean something to our hearts? This is the God who has saved
us from destruction. And He is worthy of every ounce
of reverence that we can summon every time we use it. Let's pray,
and then if you have any questions, come on up. But thank you for
your attention. Father in heaven, we do desire, even in our sinful
flesh, Lord, we desire that your name will be reverenced here
on earth. And I pray, Lord, that every
time that we hear your name blasphemed and mocked, and curse, that that
will be like a knife to our own heart because we are so united
to you. We pray, Lord, that you will
give us courage to speak out against those who use your name
so flippantly. We pray, Lord, that as we worship
weakly, that this will really be upon our hearts, that we will
remember that we have been called into the presence of the King
with not the fear that Esther had that she might be killed
for entering But we can enter into your presence because of
the shed blood of Jesus Christ, because that dividing partition
has been torn asunder. But nevertheless, we are coming
into the presence of the King of Kings. Give us holy tongues,
Lord. Give us pure hearts. Give us
a true desire to honor you, even as we seek to obey this command
cheerfully. And we pray this now in the name
of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.
Deuteronomy 5:11
Series Deuteronomy
Teaching on Deuteronomy 5:11
| Sermon ID | 91825054113118 |
| Duration | 1:02:55 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Deuteronomy 5:11 |
| Language | English |
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