Ten(der) Command #3 - Be Sure to Take God Very Seriously

Well, good morning.

Today is Sunday, the twenty third of August, two thousand and fifteen, and God is still on the throne.

He was all week long.

He will be in the week to come, and he is today.

Unlike us, God is in control.

Unlike us, he does precisely as he pleases.

Unlike us, what he pleases is always and only good.

And we can trust him.

We are in the middle of a series of messages on the tender commandments.

Our able God knows what we need in order to make life work.

We don't know that.

We don't know that by ourselves.

We have been looking at the Ten Commandments, and some of us have been memorizing them.

I carry around little pieces of pieces of paper, three by five cards.

By the way, I doubt anybody under 20 knows what a three by five card is anymore.

I have a little sticket note on my phone, actually.

I do have that as well.

The tender commandments.

I'd like to ask you to turn to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

And I would like to read those at least through verse 7, which is the tender commandments that we are going to be looking at today.

So follow along as I read.

And God spoke all these words, saying, 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.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at that and we saw that that has to do with the priority that God must be in our lives.

God must have the first place in our lives, and everything else must find some other place.

We go on and reread the second.

You shall not make for yourselves a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or is on the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them and serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers and the sons to the third and fourth generation, but showing steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

And as we looked at that, we saw that that has to do with how we worship, who we worship.

We are not to worship a God of our own making.

We are not to worship God as we want him to be, but as he is.

And when we do that, it goes well with us.

These tender commandments were given that it might go well with us.

And then we come today to verse 7, the third of the tender 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.

This verse, I believe, says a whole lot more to us than don't curse, than profanity.

It says that, but it says a whole lot more to us.

And what I hope you will take away from the thoughts that I want to share as I've been studying this passage and thinking through what God would have me share, I hope you will grab a hold of the basic idea that we need to make sure that God really makes a difference in our lives.

If we took out all of the God talk and all of the God activities, would our lives be any different from those around us?

Does God really make a difference in our lives?

The tender commandment.

This is how God, how life works.

God who made us tells us how to live, says, go this way, don't go that way.

This is the way of life, that's the way of death.

And the way of life is to be sure that who I am, says God, all encapsulated in my name, that who I am really makes a practical difference in our lives.

So that's what we're going to be, I'm going to be trying to communicate to you this morning.

I have three simple things I want to say.

First of all, I want to ask a question: what's in a name?

What's in a name?

A rose by any other name would swell as a smell as sweet.

What's in a name?

What's the big deal about the name of God?

What is in vain?

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

What is in vain?

And then thirdly, I want to explore and suggest to you how we might think about, could we, could I, could you be taking the name of the Lord our God in vain, even if it has nothing to do with saying, O God or O Christ?

Is it me, Lord?

Is it me that you're talking to in this verse?

Alright, so that's what I would like to do.

I already made a reference to Romeo and Juliet.

I believe that's uh Act 2, scene two.

I was supposed to read it one time in high school, and I ducked out.

I ducked out of a whole bunch of other things in high school too.

And to this day, actually, I've never read the Shakespeare play, one of the most famous, uh, Romeo and Juliet.

After thinking about this pack uh passage, uh, I've got it on my wish list on uh on Amazon.

Um a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and this is part of the famous balcony scene where Juliet is on the balcony and she's reflecting about her love, Romeo, and he's there, but she doesn't know it yet.

He's down below.

And so she reflects, Romeo, Romeo.

If your name was Harvey Schwartz, you would be as sweet to me.

If your name was Randy Dingwell, I had a I had a friend in college whose name was Randy Dingwell.

Can you imagine what it would be like to go through life and be Mr.

Dingwell?

Or how would you like to be be Mrs.

Dingwell?

Anybody gonna sign up for that?

Do names not really matter?

Well, apparently, many people think that names really do matter.

If you're having your first child or your eleventh child, it doesn't really matter which, um, you think seriously about what you're going to uh to name the child.

Uh we instinctively realize that names, some names are names we would want, and some names are names that we wouldn't want.

Uh this is clearly true, sorry about that.

Uh, this is clearly true when it comes to celebrities and famous people and screen and uh music fame.

Um there was a guy by the name of Charlie Buchensky.

He was uh an actor.

He uh he starred in a couple of movies as Charlie Buczynski.

And then he changed his name because there was just something about Charlie Buchinski that just didn't quite fit.

And so he changed his name to Charles Bronson.

Charlie Buczynski, good old Charlie Buchensky.

Um Whoopi Goldberg changed her name from Karen Johnson.

Now, in this case, I think she got it all wrong.

Whoopi Goldberg?

I think Karen Johnson would have been uh actually much uh, you know, maybe it's my generation, I don't know.

Uh John Denver.

John Denver's real name is Henry Deutschendorf.

Uh Cary Grant was originally called, and he was named, that is his legal name, Archibald Leach.

Can't you just imagine a whole generation of young women who were swooning for Archibald Leach?

Names do seem to matter to us.

Uh I uh Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga, just saying that to me, much less seeing her, but saying that.

Anna Mae Bullock.

Anna Mae, I think you should have stayed with Anna May.

So we get a sense that names do matter to us.

Uh in the Bible, we find that names really do matter oftentimes, and oftentimes the meanings of the name are made evident to us.

And certainly when we think of the names of God, we realize those are more than just labels.

You see, what uh what Juliet was actually saying is, Romeo, that's just a label.

That's that's just an alphanumeric, that's just a label.

It doesn't really say anything about him.

But we find that in the Bible, names really do say something oftentimes about the person.

They're not just labels.

In our day, we tend to choose names because uh they sound good.

I haven't noticed any Ichabods or Gomers uh in this congregation.

To our ears, uh those don't sound particularly attractive.

You may have noticed as you're reading in your Bible, you'll come across a footnote.

And I'm not talking about the commentary that you might have in your Bible, which as far as I'm concerned, you would do well to stay somewhat far removed from, because if we're not careful, even a wonderful uh study Bible with this much of notes on the page, if we're not careful, we're looking at those notes instead of looking at God's word.

There's a place for it.

But oftentimes there's actually notations of the translators of what a name meant.

Because a lot of the names were in Hebrew or Greek, obviously, and we don't have much knowledge of Hebrew and Greek.

But for example, Moses, uh, you'll probably find a footnote from the translators in your Bible that Moses comes from the Hebrew word meaning to draw out of something.

And it's a picture of Moses being drawn out of the river as he was uh taken out of the bulrushes.

Uh at the time of Samuel in the Old Testament, one of the grandsons of Eli, his name was Ichabod.

And that means the glory of the Lord has departed.

And if you understand that in the context, you will find that that's very true.

Sometimes the name was a wish on the part of the parent, often the mother, uh, wishing or expressing a hope or a longing.

Uh Joseph, the patriarch Joseph, his name basically means, may the Lord give me another son.

My mother did not name me Moses, or uh uh uh Joseph.

May the Lord give me another son.

Or how about Reuben?

May my husband love me now.

These main names had significance.

Oftentimes God changed a name, and that change of name had to do with a destiny or something that would come.

Abram became Abraham, the father of multitudes.

Uh Jacob is the usurper, um, and he became Israel, the prince.

Saul, the persecutor of the church, became Paul.

Uh Peter is the rock, Barnabas is the son of encouragement, and Jesus is the Savior.

Names in the Bible mean something most of the time.

God's names reveal something about his character.

God's names are not just labels that you can change as you will, but they are pointers to something within the being and the character and the nature of God.

Sometime it would be well worth us having a study of some of the different names of God.

In this passage, we've already come across two of the main names of God.

One is just what's translated God, but that's actually a name, it's Elohim, and it points to the power and the mighty and the glory of the God of God who created, spoke, and all things came into being.

It's a reminder of the majesty and the sovereignty and the goodness of God.

Elohim.

We also come across in the Ten Commandments another name of God, Lord, and in many translations or editions of the Bible, that's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D.

And that is from Jehovah, or more accurately, Yahweh.

Yahweh.

A name which was so sacred it wasn't even allowed to be pronounced, or at least the Jews didn't allow themselves to pronounce it.

Yahweh.

And that points to the covenant-keeping God, the God who in all of his majesty and glory allows us to enter into relationship with him.

It's a word of grace, it's a word of belonging that Jesus, in as the fulfillment of that, came to earth, became one of us, and is with us.

God with us.

And all of that in seed form is tied to Yahweh.

So Juliet was wrong.

The way we relate to God and the way we use his name expresses our understanding of who God is, or at least it's supposed to.

His essence, his qualities, his attributes, his divine nature.

When we misuse his name, we're not just misusing a label, we are misusing God.

When we use his name in inappropriate ways and places, we are treating God inappropriately.

When we empty his name of meaning, it's because we're emptying God of meaning in our lives.

We're emptying our lives of the meaning of who God is.

If we abuse his name, we are abusing God.

If we use his name frivolously, then we are treating him frivolously.

Try to say that four times standing in front of people frivolously, frivolously.

But how we use God's name reflects something about who he is.

And that's at the very heart of this.

Juliet was wrong.

As it relates to God, it reveals his character.

And when we make light of God or little of God's name, when we make light or little of God's name, we are making light or little of God.

Now God says, I want it to go well with you.

And when you do these things out of a heart that desires, desires this, then it begins to go well with you.

And it does not go well with us when we empty God's name, when we empty the value of God, and when our own lives don't reflect who God is.

So God tenderly says, don't go there, come here.

There really is something in a name.

Well, let's ask the question then, what is in vain?

Many translations actually use it the way the ESV does.

Some use the word misuse.

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.

And that works, but it doesn't work as well as the original word.

The reason that has been used is we've lost oftentimes in our culture and in the use of language an understanding of what vain really means.

So acquiescing to the illiteracy of our own language on the part of many people, that's often misused.

But I want to help you understand what in vain means.

Now, when we think of the word in vain, or think of the word vain, we usually think of someone who is proud, someone who is arrogant, someone who is puffed up with themselves, someone who likes to see themselves, and someone who likes to have other people see them.

That's vanity.

I was down at uh Choice Fitness and uh noticed that uh, especially in the free weights, you've got all of these mirrors here.

And I know in terms of weightlifting, there's a reason to be able to see yourself, but I have to wonder whether those guys are really.

I was in another gym one time and a guy walked in.

This was a big hunkin' fella.

He he probably couldn't get his arms down any closer to this, you know.

And he walks into the men's or to the locker room and he says, Hey guys, look at this.

It's not only women who are vain, so filled with themselves that they want other people to see them.

The real meaning of vain is empty or having no real value, frivolous or insincere.

Vain promises are promises that are meaningless.

Uh the book of Ecclesiastes, so you may remember, begins chapter 1, verse 2.

Vanity of vanities, everything is but a vanity.

And it's emptiness, meaninglessness, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

And that whole book shows a picture of life without God.

And without God, it is meaningless.

Vanity of vanities.

Vanity fair.

Uh that was taken from Ecclesiastes as well.

Um frivolous, useless, meaningless, furious activities that we get all wrapped up in.

So to do something in vain is to come up empty.

Like, oh, where did I put my glasses?

Um, Jane, where did you put your glasses?

Uh we have about six sets of glasses around the house.

And where I'm I'm trying to find them.

Where are my glasses?

Where are my glasses?

I'm searching all over, or I should actually confess my sins, not hers.

Uh, where is the mustard in the refrigerator?

Where is the mustard?

I've looked all over.

I've looked in vain.

And Jane says, How about the second shelf in the back?

Did you look there?

But my search for it was in vain.

Um, to do something in vain means to come up empty.

Uh no tangible results.

To take something in vain means to empty something of its content, to make it, in fact, irrelevant, trivial, without meaning or value.

Um, the third commandment is saying that we must never use the name of the Lord our God in vain.

We should never treat it as something that is just just just talk, just an empty, an empty thing.

Use it.

We must pay very careful attention how we use the name.

Now, let me give you a picture to maybe help picture this, how something in our lives can be in vain.

Uh, I used to travel a lot, I would go back and forth to Europe.

We were living in Europe, I was serving in Europe at the time.

So a lot of long-distance transatlantic flights, which are incredibly boring, and the movies that are shown are incredibly yawn-inducing as far as I'm concerned.

And so normally I had a book or something significant.

Actually, I was a captive in that little square space, kind of like this, for seven hours.

And if I used it well, I could actually get something done.

But there was one time I remember where I just needed to veg out.

So I looked through the movies that were being offered, and I saw one.

I recognized uh the lead character.

I liked some of the things that he had done before, and so I decided let me just watch this movie.

And I watched it.

It was a great movie, great character development.

It was about a man's an older man's influence on a younger man, how he his life influenced this person and brought about change.

It was a powerful and great movie.

I was so glad I had watched it.

So a month or two later, when we were at home, my two boys, our two boys were still with us at the time, and we needed some time together.

We just needed to do something.

So I got a hold of that movie.

It was actually in VHS form, for those of you who remember what in the world that was.

It was before streaming and it was before DVDs.

All right.

So I took this VHS tape, this movie, and put it in the uh the player, and Peter and Jeff and I were gonna have a good time for the evening, and the movie got started, the same movie I had watched on the airlines.

And it was very strange.

There were things I saw in that movie that I had not seen the first time.

In fact, there were whole scenes in that movie.

And these scenes were sexually explicit, they were lewd, the language was coarse, it was outright obnoxious.

And I got thinking, how I saw that movie.

How did they add all of this other stuff to it?

And I got so uncomfortable with it, watching that with our sons, that we pulled it out and did something else for the evening.

And what I discovered is what I had seen in the airplane was a cleaned up version, a excise.

They had taken all of the ludity, all of the sex, a lot of language out.

And you know what?

When they took that out, it didn't, it didn't make a difference.

All of that stuff that had been added could be removed, and still the movie was a great movie.

In fact, for me, the movie was better without all of that stuff because all of that junk was in there in vain.

And I got so frustrated about it.

Um I have rarely encouraged people to watch certain movies just because I enjoyed them, uh, because I realized I have no idea which version they're going to get.

But stop and think about what's going on.

None of what was in that movie that had taken out had any value whatsoever.

It was gratuitous, it was unnecessary, it was frivolous, it was without meaning and value.

It was being used to manipulate me.

And it had nothing to do with the real story.

Now, here's the point of the illustration.

Are there things like that in our lives that if they were taken out, there would be no difference whatsoever?

The reality of our lives would be the same, that we just miss certain scenes.

The point that I want to make is if there were, what difference would it make if our God talk and our religious activities were somehow or another excise, stripped out of our lives?

Let's say that God puts in a heavenly streaming video or whatever it will be in those days, and the story of my life is brought before Him, the real story of my life would have all kinds of religious activities.

I go to church, I pray, I do my devotions, I say God bless you, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If all of the blah blah blah blah in our lives were removed, would it make any difference whatsoever?

Would it make any difference whatsoever?

If you didn't come here this morning but were out doing something else, anything else, would your life be fundamentally different?

Would it be any different from your neighbors?

If you didn't pray, if you didn't uh try to understand the reality of God's grace, if there were all kinds of things in our lives that we didn't do, that we think are Christian, ostensibly Christian, if they were all taken out in a way, would we look any different from anybody else?

When we use God in vain, there are God things and God talk and God activities which are meaningless, they are not contributing to our lives.

And I wonder, are there things in our lives which, if they were removed, uh Christian things, Christian activities, being here every time the doors open or whatever, good things in and of themselves.

But do they really, really make a difference in your life or in mine?

Or could we just excise all of that from the tape of our lives, and it really wouldn't make any difference?

There are many, many things that we do, and we do it ostensibly for good reasons, and they're often good things.

The third commandment is saying to us, what difference do those things make in our lives?

Are we really, really, does our life really make a difference that we're we call ourselves Christians and we do Christian things?

If we are very similar to the world around us, then perhaps all of that religious activity is in vain, even though they may be good things.

What practical difference does Christ, the scriptures, the church, your spiritual life, what difference does it really make in your lives?

And I want to, just with the time that we have, I want to pursue a question, a question that was posed by the disciples, or by uh raised by the disciples, when in the upper room, Jesus made it very clear that one of them would betray him.

And they started talking to one another, and one by one, according to Matthew 26, they came to Jesus and said, Could it be me?

One of you, one of you are a betrayer.

One of you, it's not real.

And the the question is, how do you know whether it makes any difference whatsoever, really, or have we just been socialized by growing up in the church?

Uh, social pressure to act and talk certain ways, but our hearts, our hearts could be resistant and cold.

So what I want to, I've I've tried to think through, tried to think through, um, we show that God doesn't make much difference in our lives when.

Fill in the blank.

We show that God doesn't really make much difference in our lives.

When?

Well, when we empty God's name and value through profanity, that's the way we normally think of it.

And it's absolutely true.

Some of us grew up with habits of speech where it was, oh Christ this and oh God that.

And there's a fair amount of that that still lives among us, like, oh God.

I just thought of something, oh God.

Or we come up with uh polite ways of saying, uh, Jiminy Christmas, which is just a polite form.

If you look, check it out historically, of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, I can't believe that.

Um, all kinds of things we can do that.

Some people are oh Christing this and oh goddamn that all the time.

And some of us have learned to clean it up a little bit.

I grew up with a toilet mouth.

I came to Christ in college, and it wasn't automatic that my language changed, and it didn't change just because I hung around with the Campus Crusade crew.

It began to change because I changed.

There was a deep change within, and what was within found its expression in my lips.

And what I had been found an expression in my lips.

The way we speak is important.

The words, where do the words come from?

According to the Jesus Himself, um, that which is on the inside from our heart that expresses itself in various ways.

Matthew chapter 12, 33, and following.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and the fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.

In other words, the nature of what's inside becomes visible on what's on the outside.

For you brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil?

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Now, this passage talking about our heart means a whole variety of things.

But certainly the way we talk, the way we talk is an expression of what's within.

The good person, out of his good thoughts, brings forth good, the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

Matthew 15, 18 to 20.

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.

For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, and murder and adultery and sexual immorality and theft and false witness and slander.

These are what defile a person.

It's from the heart that these things come.

And if we find that we are consistently taking God's name in vain in this or other ways, then I think we need to ask ourselves, do we have a heart issue?

Because out of the heart our mouth speaks.

Out of the heart, our actions ultimately come.

So the issues of the heart are incredibly important.

A bad mouth reveals a heart problem.

It's just that simple.

Not that we never hit our thumb with a hammer and something comes out of our mouth that we wish didn't, because a lot of that junk is in there.

But if there's a consistent pattern of, oh God this and Jesus that and goddam that, then there's a heart problem, folks.

And you can go to church all you want, and unless somehow or another you're changing from the inside and the way you speak and the way you act, it's all in vain.

You shall not take God in vain.

I will not hold guiltless he who takes me in vain, says God.

Well, that's uh actually a pretty simple one.

Um another one which is uh unfortunately extremely common in our Christian culture.

We show that God doesn't make much difference in our lives when we make God into someone who exists to meet our needs, to make us happy, to make us feel good, to answer our prayers, to get us out of trouble.

Now, God graciously does much of that often.

But that's not what God is for.

God is not here to serve you, so you leave, you lose your contact lens.

Oh God, help me find my contact lens.

You're you're running late, you come into the parking lot.

God, help me find a parking space.

Does God really care about your parking space?

I'm not convinced he does.

Is that some grand celestial issue?

Does God exist to see that you get there on time, that you find your contact lens, or whatever it happens to be?

Now, we're to pray for all things, I understand that, out of dependency, but we're not telling God what to do.

When we're telling God what to do, it's an expression of we think that he exists to serve us.

We exist to serve him.

I don't care if he doesn't give me what I want.

Well, I do care.

I want what I want, but I care about something far, far more, and I care that his will and his purposes get manifest in my life.

And when I begin to think that my relationship with God is to make me healthy, wealthy, and wise, I have bought into the message of our Christian age, there is an awful lot of that out there, where God exists to serve me.

And if to the extent that that is present in our lives, uh we are taking God in vain.

Um a third one, when there's little discernible difference between our lives and that of non-believers, when there's very little discernible difference between our lives and that of non-believers, and understand, I'm I'm saying forget for a moment the hours you spend at church, and forget for a moment uh your language.

Not that those are unimportant, but other than that, other than the religious things and activities and words in our life, if our lives are not not different from those around us, we are living a Christian life, as it were, in vain.

And there's all kinds of ways this expresses itself.

Let me just very briefly touch on two.

How about how we use our money?

Now, I know preachers always finally get around to your wallet.

How you use your money has, or money itself is not the problem.

God and God doesn't need your money, by the way.

God does not need your money.

I hope you don't put money in the offering plate or write a check as though God needs your money.

God doesn't need your money.

He is rich enough.

We need to learn to give.

We need to learn to be generous.

We need to learn to pay off the credit card at the end of the month, every month if we possibly can.

We need to learn to be good stewards of our lives.

And if the way we use our money is not fundamentally different from those around us, then our faith is in vain.

It's just that simple.

I wish I had a couple hours to go into that.

We'll do that another time.

I won't tell you ahead of time because you'll never show up on that Sunday.

Another thermometer that shows whether our lives really make any difference.

What happens?

What happens when you come under stress?

You see, who you are under stress is who you really are.

How you respond when you go to the doctor, and the doctor gives the report that you never want to hear.

How do you deal with that?

That's where the reality of God in our lives is really manifest.

What happens with that dreaded phone call?

You hear your kids on the other end of the line, and your world is about to shatter.

That's when the reality of Christ in our life becomes particularly precious and real.

A whole lot of things that I could say about that.

One final one.

We show that God doesn't make much difference in our lives when we claim to know Him but do not.

When we name the name of Christ but don't possess the reality of it.

That is the ultimate, the ultimate profanity.

That we walk around calling ourselves believers when at our core we're really not.

Now, I'm not trying to get everybody here to question their salvation.

That's not the point whatsoever.

What I'm saying is that faith must work.

Faith works.

That's the book of James.

That's probably where I'll be going when we finish with the Ten Commandments.

Titus speaks of those who profess to know God but deny him by their works.

Jesus, Matthew 7, pointedly and directedly said, There are those who say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name?

Lord, Lord, did we not do miracles in your name?

And he said, Depart from me, I never knew you.

It's possible to be religious and all the religious activities and appearances, and still our hearts be fundamentally unchanged.

That is the ultimate profanity.

That we name the name, but we don't live the reality.

This commandment is very clear that God will not hold those guiltless who take him in vain.

The solution to that is Christ.

We all take God in vain in deep and fundamental ways, and for that we should be punished.

And all of that punishment was placed on Christ.

All of our guilt, all of our sin, all that we deserve for being who we are was placed on Christ and covers our sin.

We are new, we are free, we can be reborn.

And the way to that is the cross.

The way to that is to repent, to change our mind and change our hearts, and it's a work that God does in our hearts.

The only solution for the breaking of the third commandment is the Savior.

I have to ask the question Is your life in vain?

In the sense that we're talking about here.

And I have to offer the solution, and that is Jesus.

Jesus who transforms us from within, forgives our sins, and truly gives a paddy-mouthed guy words of grace.

That's amazing.

That's because God changes us.

If the Holy Spirit is saying to you, Lord, to say, Lord, could it be me?

And I pray, Father, that we would turn to you, we would repent, we would come empty and broken, and that you would give us life, that you would renew us from within.

Father, we so desperately need you that we shall not take your name in vain, but by your grace and through the work of Christ, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.