Please be seated. Good morning. We are in a series called Loving the Commandments. And as it's been brought up in our question and answer time, Loving God's commandments are really synonymous with loving God Himself. And we could have entitled it Loving God. And as we even said this morning Responsive reading, the greatest commandment is loving God, loving our neighbors. On these two commands hang all the law and the prophets. And so we see that those two commandments expand out to 10 commandments, which really go out to numerous other commandments. And it's all God's gracious instruction on how we are to love him and love each other. We are looking right now at the third commandment. It's found in Exodus chapter 20, verse 7, where we are going to have the second part. I talked about it last week. We're going to finish up this morning. Hear now the word of God. 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. Thus far the reading of God's word. Let us pray. Father, even as we come before you in prayer, invoking the name of Christ, praying in Jesus' name, gathering in your name, we fall very short from understanding what that even means, to gather in your name. We pray in the name of Christ. We gather in the name of Christ. We do pray that we would recognize that our very gathering would not be a pleasing aroma to you if it weren't for the work of Christ. Help us to understand how desperately we need what he has done and who he is for our very gathering, Father, to be pleasing to you. And we do pray as we look at your law and look at your wonderful instruction that we, as Jesus taught, with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength, seek to walk in your ways. to honor you and to love one another. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So we are in the process of seeking to understand what it means to love God and love others. This great commandment to love God and love others. The first four commandments expressing how we are to love God. The next six, how we are to love one another. I think it's important that we occasionally stop and look at that preamble to the Ten Commandments. That I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, recognizing that the Israelites were literally brought out of slavery and bondage. But that provides a picture for the rest of us to recognize that we were in bondage to sin. We were slaves to sin as the Apostle Paul teaches. And having been brought out of that slavery, how then do we live? It is not our ability to keep these commandments that frees us from the slavery of sin. It is Christ alone that frees us from the slavery of sin. But we are then to walk in a manner consistent with that freedom. And that is what we are looking at in these commandments. The first commandment, primarily, we see that we should have no other gods before This commandment is not somehow legitimizing false deities as if there really are other gods out there. But whatever you make as your primary seat of affection and allegiance and convictions, that's your God. And God is saying you should have no other gods before me. I am the true living God. Nobody is qualified for that office except for the triune God who lives, our Father who delivers us. Not an ideology, not a person, An ideology didn't deliver the Israelites from slavery. It was God, the person and work of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who delivered the Israelites. It is not an ideology that delivers us from the slavery of sin. It is the person and work of Christ, and we are to have no other God, and there is no other God who can deliver us other than that true living God. We see that in the first commandment. But in the second commandment, we came to realize that loving God means that we do not exchange the true God for some image or likeness, either physically or in our mind, where we exchange the true God. We carve Him into something we think we need, carve God into something we want. We are to worship the true God in truth in a manner that He is determined fit, and that is by His word, the scriptures. by the sacraments. God has determined how he is to be presented. He is not to be presented by man-made art and images that we somehow think are superior to the way that he presents himself. So now we're discussing the third commandment. Now assuming that we are seeking to worship the one true God in truth, and assuming we understand at least at some level that we shouldn't try to carve God into something other than who God actually is. How do we now handle this awesome, daunting, staggering responsibility of the name of God? We have to be clear on what that even means. What does it mean, the name of God? We talked about this a little bit last week. Charles Hodge gives us, I think, a very good definition where he says, frequently the name of God equivalent to God himself. To call in the name of the Lord and to call on God are synonymous forms of expression. So when we talk about the name of God we are talking about God himself. We did briefly talk last week about how this commandment does not forbid oaths or vows, it does forbid spurious, dubious oaths and vows. Our yes should be yes and our no should be no, but that doesn't mean that we should not vow, that we should not have oaths that we take in the name of God. We also talked last week about probably what is everybody's most common understanding of the violation of this commandment, and that is associating the name of God with profanity, which is so common, obviously, today. but not just profanity, associating the name of God with interjections, with exclamations. This whole idea that we're bringing the name of God into the mundane. It's almost like the plan of the enemy is to take away the august nature of the name of God, where we should bow. Instead, we just throw it around. We talked last week about vain janglings and this idea that we just kind of talk about God as if he were some other person sitting in the room. I've often said one of the problems I have I'm not as a full indictment, don't get me wrong, with this idea that you see today in churches, the traditional and the contemporary worship. Not to get into all of that, but one of the problems I have observed, even as I have participated in it myself, is that in the contemporary worship, we tend to approach God as if he's a contemporary, so casually. And so we have this very casual attitude before God, which is part of that violation of this commandment. Now I mentioned last week how I was going to be vulnerable today and share with you what I believe to be my biggest violation of this commandment. But I've decided not to do that. No, just kidding. And because this is a weakness and a failure that I've experienced many times and still wrestle with, I have sought not only to be aware of it in myself, but also to aid those who are similar to myself in this category. Let me put it this way. As we grow in our faith, as we study, and as we mature in our understanding of the Word of God, it seems to become easier to spot error when we see it. Let's just put it that way. And let's just assume for the sake of this discussion. that it actually is error. Let's just assume, and now we have to be willing to acknowledge that maybe we're the ones in error, maybe I have the error, but just for the sake of the discussion, grant me this for now, that we understand or I understand that what has been said or what is being promoted in terms of the Christian faith is an error. The way that error is approached is its own, if you could put it this way, art form. I can't tell you how many conversations I want back, that I want another shot at, that I wish I could rewind and undo. Now, it's not as if I entered into these conversations about God and the things of God with the intention of using God's name in vain. It wasn't as if I thought, okay, today I'm gonna use God's name in vain. I got up and said, today I'm going to hammer away at somebody who's making a mistake about God. It wasn't that intention. I didn't get up going, OK, I'm going to be the biggest jerk in the Bible study tonight. But conversations take funny turns. So you're talking about God. You're talking about the things of God. And then all of a sudden, you feel attacked. You're saying something, and then you feel attacked. or you're wounded, or you feel insecure. You've said this, they've said that, now you start looking bad in the conversation, or you get a little frustrated, or you begin to vent. You're growing impatient because the person you're talking to just refuses to see the clarity of your position. Or maybe they see it and they just don't want to accept it. Suddenly, we find ourselves wanting to avoid Humiliation. We want a safe face. We just don't want to look bad in this conversation we're having about God. So we attack back. And all of a sudden, it's like kind of this war that we're in, this battle of pride, this battle of egos that we allow to take control of the conversation. We become like that reporter, you know, who's looking for that gotcha moment. And if you get him, like you've got that zinger, right? And now you've won, and you're like, walk away going, boy, I showed him, I showed her, I was so right in the things of God. Breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. Or, we vent. It's way easier to do this on social media. We're so brave behind our keyboard. Friends, there is a selfish, unhealthy catharsis that our flesh enjoys when we become infuriated and lash out. But if there is error, I'm not suggesting for a moment that it's not engaged. I mean, we have a responsibility, right, to engage error. But the Apostle Paul counsels us on how that's supposed to happen. And Paul was a human being just like the rest of us. I have no doubt that there were times when his flesh kind of got the better of him, as he records in Romans chapter seven. But in Galatians chapter six, he says it this way, that we are to restore, and I'm gonna argue that whether it's moral or theological, whether it's life or practice, that we are to seek to restore others in a spirit of gentleness. keeping watch on yourself, lest you be tempted. I mean, the basic feel of this exhortation carries the idea that it may very well next time be you who needs to be confronted. Matter of fact, what I have felt in times is while I'm in that conversation, I'm thinking to myself, I probably need to be confronted right now by the way I'm talking to whoever I'm talking to. And how would I want to be confronted? Because the feel of that exhortation is you want to talk to other people in terms of correcting their error the way you want to be spoken to when your error needs to be corrected, right? It's kind of the golden rule. It should happen. Now, there may be a time, don't get me wrong, for a more forceful conversation, a stronger confrontation. There may be a time for that. I just was dialoguing this week with somebody on the internet about a theological issue, and boy, they just right away, I have to say, got mean right away. And my response was, if you're going to be insulting, I guess we're just not going to talk. I really wanted the person, and I thought it was really interesting argument because I like, I think Irenic, which just means peaceful, I think Irenic dialogue is more profitable. And the argument was sometimes you have to be inimical before you can get to Irenic. And inimical means like angry. It means like insulting. And I'm like, I'm not sure if that's the way to approach it. I think it should be the other way. I think we should start with an Irenic approach. And then, if need be, then you become forceful if the situation demands it. We see that in the Bible. We see Jesus doing that. We see Paul doing that. We see John the Baptist doing that. Not everybody we disagree with is a Pharisee, my friends. We want to immediately call them a brood of vipers. My Baptist friends, though they err in the sacraments, are not a brood of vipers. We ought to understand how to do that. How do we talk to people? The Apostle Paul also addresses this idea of confrontation. In Colossians 4.6, he writes this, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. That's a very interesting verse. It tells me that this is a lifelong skill. It tells me that not every person is necessarily answered the same way. Some people respond well to a confrontation. Some people don't mind you getting right up in their grill, if you know what I mean by that. Other people, if you do that, you've lost them. It is a lifelong skill, understanding how to interact with people. And going back to my own personal testimony, I've had hard lessons and sleepless nights because of my failure to do this. My willingness to just get out there and just blurt things out without taking into consideration for a second what that person might be feeling like while I'm talking to them. So the point I'd like to make is that to use one's faith To use one's knowledge of God, to use one's knowledge of the scriptures to somehow lord it over other people is a violation of the third commandment. It is a common temptation to use your knowledge of the scriptures to win an argument rather than to bless. I made a commitment. I'm not saying I've kept it, you know. But I made a commitment a long time ago to be careful to see when this conversation is degenerating and realize when this conversation is no longer a blessing. These are good things to learn in life in general. I mean, hopefully, if you're married, you're learning when that happens in your marriage. When you're really about to say something, because you just feel like it needs to be said, but you've grown mature enough to recognize that this is going to take this conversation in a direction that it really doesn't need to go, but I need to say it. Well, maybe you might want to rethink either what you're saying or how you're saying it. You know, the word that we see in the scriptures a lot to refer to God, to refer to the power of God, is the word dunamis, right? And you know what word we get from that, right? Yeah, the word dynamite. Sometimes I feel like God has given me, you know, whatever knowledge I have, I feel like he's given me a stick of dynamite. And I'm like a four-year-old playing with a stick of dynamite when it comes to the word of God. And I think we need to begin to respect that word more than that immature disposition. Moving on, using the name of God this is a separate category, for the purpose of manipulation or making others feel guilty is a violation of this commandment. Now there are times when we should feel guilty, but I'm talking about using the Word of God, your knowledge of God, to manipulate other people into doing what you want them to do. You're not trying to bless them, you're not trying to bring them into conformity to the love Expressed in the commandments. You're just you just want them to do what you want them to do to guilt somebody into doing your desire and using the Scriptures as your personal instrument to accomplish this my friends is a sin Now it might be a husband or a father misusing his authority it might be a wife disrespecting her husband because of a quote call she has from God or some such thing where you're just going I don't want to do what you want me to do and I'm going to say I have a call from God because I just kind of feel like maybe I do and so you're out or the husband kind of going well look hey I'm in charge here so give me the clicker and get me a can of beer and just you know this whole idea of just misusing this this what God has established for his own glory for your own benefit. I knew a young woman years ago she went to a church It was a charismatic church and you know in charismatic churches they believe in the continued unmediated revelation from God. So there's a distinction there between those of us who believe that the Bible is the sole infallible word from God. But she went to this church and she was trying to convince me that there were prophets in her church and she showed me this 10 page letter that one of the prophets had given her. and asked me to read it, and I read it, and it was all very biblical. As a matter of fact, it looked almost like he had copied and cut and pasted a bunch of Psalms together. And I was supposed to be convinced that here you have it. You know, Paul, can you see anything wrong with these words? These words are beautiful, they're wonderful, they're biblical. And then I got a call from her afterward, and she told me that that same gentleman had heard from God that she was to go with him to Hawaii. That's using the name of God in a vain, empty, manipulative way. Now that might be the extreme, but you understand the point when we use God's name for our own personal gain rather than to enrich one another and to honor who he is. Now perhaps the most popular and egregious violation of this commandment in modern Western evangelicalism is to be found with televangelism. Robert Tilton, Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth Copeland, Jesse Duplantis, Benny Hinn, and you know that I'm not generally quick to name names, but I'm telling you, these are names of people who have abused the name of God for personal profit and have become multi-millionaires. I just was re-listening to a conversation between Jesse Duplantis and Kenneth Copeland on why they needed private jets because in a regular commercial jet there are too many sinners and the sinners interfere in their communion with God. And not only that, one of them said, and now since we've become famous, people are just inconveniencing us because they want us to pray for them. And we just can't really do that. And I'm looking at this. And it's an indictment against the church in America that these people would be able to do that. And it's an indictment against them. Many of you know that for 25 years, I worked at this retirement home. women, mostly widows, and they would come and they'd go, Pastor Paul, what do you think about this? And they would get mailers from these godless organizations asking them for money from their fixed incomes and promising them blessings as a result of the money they would send, and they would feel guilt-ridden. They'd feel like, am I gonna miss out on the blessing of God if I don't send Kenneth Copeland or Kenneth Hagin the money he's saying I need to receive the hundredfold blessing? Let me tell you, I don't want to sound mean about this, but the hottest places in hell are reserved for those people. And it's not just me that's saying that. The apostle Peter in 2 Peter was addressing, this isn't anything new. This is something that's gone on in the church during the apostolic era, through the Holy Roman Empire, all the way through up until the Reformation, and it still exists. Peter wrote this in 2 Peter 2, 13-17. He's not talking about people outside the church. He's talking about people within. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deception while they feast with you. See, they're eating with you. They're at the potluck. They're at the Lord's table, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. There's a lot on the market. There's big inventory in America when it comes to unstable souls to be enticed. They have a heart trained in covetous practices and are accursed children. We can talk about that in more detail. What does it mean? If you're a child of God, are you accursed? They are part of the covenant, but they would be here. They'd be a member in good standing. but they'd be cursed. They have forsaken the right way and have gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. But he was rebuked for his iniquity, a dumb donkey, speaking with a man's voice, restrained the madness of the prophet. These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, and here's the strong indictment at the very end, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. You know, when Jesus was asked how we should pray, his opening comment included that the name of God be hallowed. Pray this way, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed. That word hallowed means holy, sacred, set apart. We must take great care with the name of God As we grow, as we mature in Christ, that name should become more and more precious to us, more and more holy to us. He is God, and there is no other, and his name is to occupy a hallowed place in our hearts and on our lips. Now, maybe up till now, you've been thinking, yeah, the world needs to get together. or maybe even thinking, hey, Western evangelicalism needs to get it together. But let me see if I can put my finger on our own spiritual nerve, lest we think somehow we're immune to this. And I want to address it in terms of the primary institution that God has ordained to reveal His name, and that is the church. I have to believe that one of the violations of this commandment occurs within the hearts of God's own people. as we come to church, as we sit where we sit. And I think that problem stems from another issue that I can't get into in great detail, and that is a misunderstanding of what church actually is. I feel like we've lost that, or maybe never had it in terms of what's going on in Western evangelicalism. We have this holy congregation, we've gathered with as the church militant, we've gathered with the church victorious. We are worshiping with those who've gone to be with Christ. There's this gathering here, and the spirit of Christ walks among us. It's something very unique. It's not just the omnipresence of Christ. You might say, well, Jesus is everywhere. No, when he said, when two or three are gathered in my name, and he's really kind of talking about the church and disciplinary issues there, there I am in their midst. There's this special, sacred presence of Christ when his people gather together to hear the word, to administer the sacraments. We walk in, though, and I wrote this without realizing it was daylight savings, but we so comfortably walk in tardy. We allow ourselves to be distracted by what happened this morning. We allow ourselves to be distracted by what we're gonna do later. We wonder if things will run smoothly in church. Will the songs that are sung be good? Will they be performed well? Will they be the good songs, the songs I like? Will the pastor be entertaining? Will I be enriched by the whole event? Is this going to enrich me? I'm coming here to be enriched. Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying. At a certain level, there may be some legitimacy to all these expectations. I do it myself. I sit here and I listen to the elders who are up here. I listen to the deacons. I watch the worship leaders. And as an elder, I think to myself, can this be done better? Can things be more efficient, more smooth, more tight? All things that happen, let me just say, and this is kind of an aside, but everything that we do here should be done with a certain level of excellence. We read in Psalm 33, three, sing to him a new song, play, how? Skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. David was said to be prudent in speech and a man of good presence and the Lord was with him. So you've got this presentation, this way that he appeared that was least worthy to be mentioned. Paul viewed himself in a ministerial sense as a skilled master builder. He says, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. So you see the word skill and you see you need to take care on what you say and what you do and how the ministry is to be pursued. We read about Apollos In Acts 18, 24, and 25, he was said to be an eloquent, that word means learned, cultured, skilled in knowledge. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures, being fervent in spirit. He spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus. And to be sure, the apostle taught that the church, during the worship service, All things should be done decently and in order. Don't get me wrong when I talk about how we all will fail at this commandment when we gather here together. There should be an effort on my part and on everybody's part who's leading worship to be as excellent as they could possibly be. Those who lead should be prayerful, thoughtful, deliberate, seeking to excel to the best of our God-given spirit-gifted abilities. We should know who we are serving and our preparation and desire for a skillful presentation should govern our hearts. But, having said that, this desire to know the august nature of the one who's called us to himself and the gathering of his people, friends, is not restricted to those who lead. It's not restricted to me, or the worship leaders, or the other elders, or the deacons. You see, in a sense, we're all cast members. And God is the singular audience. Now, if we are willing to critique those who lead in singing, how well will you do when your singing is critiqued? What if the whole room went dark while we're critiquing the worship leaders, and one spotlight went on you, and we all watched you sing. How well would you do? Would you pass your own critique? If we're all willing to critique the prayers, if we're all willing to critique the sermon, how well would we all do if we were critiqued in the way we pray along with the one praying? Would we have that focus? Would God, as He's searching our hearts, is He looking at you going, you are fully focused on this prayer? Or are you an active listener to the sermon? Are you listening? I learned from Tommy Chaffin, who's a member of our church, who's probably the best high school volleyball coach in America, because now I'm coaching 12 and under kids, and I learned from him something that I've imposed upon my little guy, and that is the ABCs of listening. First of all, if you get a D or an F, you're not even on the team. So it's A, B, or C. C, you get a C if we make eye contact. You get a B if you give me the impression that you're paying attention. And then you get an A if you actually do what I say. How well are we doing all of that as we critique the sermon? Are we active listeners? Are we taking it to heart? Are we evaluating? Are we applying it to our own hearts? Will we be cut to the heart as we read with Peter's sermon? What then shall we do? We have that disposition or is it a critique of somebody up front? And whether they're good or not good. And we shouldn't think of God as the singular audience in terms of some fickle despot or some tyrant or some rich critic who's rented out a theater and said entertain me everybody. Let's not think of it that way, because we might be tempted now to think of going, okay, we've got one person who's the audience, and we're all the entertainers. I wonder how our hearts would be affected if we were invited to the upper room, if we were in that event. I mean, I hesitate to say what it would be like if we were to enter into the holy place. You know, you got the Holy of Holies, and we read about it in the Old Testament, right? And you had to dress the right way, and you had to think the right thoughts, and you had to go through all these rituals, because you don't enter into that Holy of Holies the wrong way, lest you die. But of course, when Jesus died, the veil was ripped. How? From top to bottom. So we now walk in with our lattes. Well, hey, it's casual now. The Holy of Holies, we just walk right in, no big deal. We have that casual disposition. How would we do if we were invited to the upper room? Would we not make it? Would we be like, you know what, I'm busy today, I'm gonna, I got other things to do. Or would we make it if we were called by Christ to that gathering? What would be going on in our minds and our hearts when we heard Jesus for the first time institute the Lord's Supper as he held it? Would we be distracted? Would we be thinking about other things? Would we be thinking about what he was wearing and what, you know, other people and what am I going to do? What happened this morning? What's going to happen later today? As the Lord, in anticipation of his own crucifixion, institutes the Lord's Supper, what would be going on in our minds? At what point, you know, and they sang a hymn in that. Would we sing in that hymn? Would we be evaluating whether or not Thomas has a good voice? Now, don't get me wrong. Remember I said, Thomas, if he's going to lead worship, should have a good voice. That's his skill. That's his gift. But is that where our thinking would be? At what point would we begin to weep? At what point would we begin to fear? At what point would we recognize, as he handed that cup to us in our trembling hands, at what point would we recognize how unworthy we were to hold that cup, and yet how much we desperately need it. And does that govern our thinking as we gather as God's people on a Sunday morning? At what point would we begin to realize that no matter how hard we try, we simply can't dispense with our own selfishness? I mean, it's just the way, that's the plague. Now, I'm not sinking to point my fingers any further than my own heart. You understand? This is a universal problem. When I consider that I have made an effort, when I consider that I, you know, I'm talking about me personally, I've made my best effort, whatever that is, at appreciating this holy event, how far I fall short of recognizing what God is actually doing here. I just, my mind doesn't go there. I don't get it. I can come to no other conclusion than the reality that I'm a lawbreaker. We are a room full of lawbreakers. We are a room full, as Jesus said it, I did not come for the righteous, I came for the unrighteous. And that's you and that's me and that's us right this minute as we sit here. That is why we open the worship service with God's Word, our confession of sin, and His pardon. Because we can't gather in His name without being pardoned first. Then we take a deep breath, and then we can rejoice. You know, sometimes they say things, I never write things in my sermon that I think will be funny. But sometimes I say things, and they just come out funny, and everybody laughs, and thank you for that. And some people are like, oh no, the event should be way more sober, you shouldn't laugh in service. They allow, you know, it's funny, when you read it, they'll allow every other emotion. They'll allow grief, and righteous indignation, and sorrow, but not laughter. But I'm saying, you know what? When I hear that my sins have been pardoned, it makes me wanna laugh. It makes me want to be happy. It's almost like God is saying, leave all that, leave it at the door, because when you gather, I only see, as I'm looking at you, the righteousness of Christ, because you are gathering in his name. And when I think of my own deplorable disposition, even during worship, it should bring my mind, it should bring my heart to recognize how desperately I need the person and work of Christ in order for this gathering to be a gathering of grace and love and mercy and joy and happiness. It's like the happiest time of the week when it becomes more clear than it ever is that He has taken our filthy rags off of us and He has clothed us with His own righteousness. Friends, we violate this commandment all day long, but we believe in a Savior who never violated it ever. Jesus never had a stray thought about the name of God. He never had a sinful word in reference to the name of God. He kept it, and he kept it perfectly. And when we call upon his name, his righteousness is given to us. That's why the Lord's Supper is followed by a hymn of praise. Let's pray. Father God in heaven, we do thank you that Though we are unworthy to gather in your holy name, that we have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. So I do pray, Father, for our church. I pray for churches throughout the world that the central focus of the worship service would be that wonderful recognition that we are sinners in need of a Savior whom you have graciously provided in your Son, Jesus. And may our thoughts and our words and our prayers and our songs, even our listening, Father, reflect that you are at work within our hearts to help us understand that all the more. And that when we leave this place, we would ever reflect upon the cross of Christ and our desperate need for it, and how sufficient it is to present us holy and blameless before you in all righteousness, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.