You shall not Blaspheme your Lord's Name

Well, good morning. My name is Eric Bierbauer. I'm the assistant pastor here at Clearnoat Church. And we have baptisms today that we're going to be doing at the end of the service. So it's a pleasure to see many family members here. Welcome. Welcome to all the visitors. It's good to have you all. I have been preaching through the Ten Commandments. And we are on the Third Commandment. We're going to continue with that. Our passage for today is in Exodus chapter 20. We're going to read verses 1 through 7 to help us see the context and how the commandments build on each other. But verse 7 will be our emphasis for today. So if you will, please stand for the reading of God's word. Then 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. You should not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You should not worship them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. In our text for today, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. As I said, this is the third commandment. The first four commandments, that is the first table of the law, have much to teach us about the worship of God. The first commandment tells us who we should worship.

He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. And so the first commandment is specifically focusing us on who we are to worship. The second commandment gets at how we are to worship. He says, you shall not make for yourself a graven image. And so this is to orient us. We have to have a proper orientation in worship, that we do it in the way that God has prescribed for us, not how we... may desire to worship God, but how he's told us to worship him. And then this third commandment, which we're covering today, is our attitude in worship and how we approach worship. That's the broad focus of the commandment. As we've talked about, each one of the commandments have the narrow meaning, which is the plain, just what it says, right? You shall know that God's before me.

But then all the commandments also have a broader meaning, ways that we can apply it. And the larger catechism, which we've been read through recently, and we read some today, it does a really good job of opening up each one of the greater meanings within the catechisms. And they have the scripture passages there for all of them. Now, what is in a name? Our passage says, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. How important are names? We live in a society that we don't really get this. You read history and you see duels fought often because someone insulted another person. And that insult to them was enough to fight to the death. Because they had an understanding of honor that is often just lacking in our society. And yet, names are really important.

It's something that we intuitively understand. How many of us have had big fights with our husband or our wife over the naming of our children, right? It's one of the most common disagreements is what do we name our kid? Why? Well, because we think names are important. As kids, we understand that, right? That's why you make fun of kids' names. Because you understand that their name is important to them. So you make jokes out of it and you mock them. That shows that they have an understanding that the name is important. Names are important because they identify us. A name places us as part of a family, right? If you meet a young man in a sky blue tie and you say, hi, what's your name? He says, I'm Timothy Beerbauer. It identified him as my brother, right, as part of my family. Names identify us. They place us as part of a community. You're an American.

Right? So names aren't just our personal names, but the country that you're part of, the family that you're part of, names tell us who we belong to. They're personal. And think about that, right? God gives us his name, and how amazing that is, the condescension on God's part to reveal his name to us. Names are more than simply just a name, right? They include reputation. You know, companies understand this. There's brand recognition. Right? And so when you hear the name of the company, it's not just the name, but you want to understand what their customer service is like, what the quality of their parts are like, right? And so certain brands have a reputation of being cheap, and other ones have a reputation of being of good quality. So we get the fact that names are important. We can see and we can understand, but this is even more true. This is even more true.

When we come to God. Now there are many passages that we could go to. All of scripture is a revelation of God to us. But I'm going to read a couple of them to us. A couple of verses that tell us about the name of God. In Exodus chapter 3 verses 14. God, Moses and God are talking. And God is preparing Moses and sending him to go back to Egypt. And then Moses asks a very logical question. Who should I tell the people sent me? And God's response is, I am who I am. He said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent you. Now, this is really an astounding name. The fact that God says I am is revealing of who he is. It means that God does not have a beginning. He has no ending.

He's not becoming, he's not dependent on anything outside of himself. His name is I Am. He's self-existent. And this is the name that's used throughout the Ten Commandments. Yahweh. That's what God calls himself throughout this chapter, and it's used over 5,700 times in the Old Testament. If we look in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7. The Lord passes in front of Moses because Moses says, Lord, I want to see you. So the Lord hides him in a cleft of the rock and reveals himself. But as part of that revelation, we get this passage. The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord, the God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands.

and who forgives iniquity and transgression and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on their children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. So do you hear how God describes himself in this passage? The Lord, compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness. He's the truth. He forgives iniquity and he rights wrongs. Now, this is an accurate description of God. And it's kind of a unique passage in scripture because in this passage, we have a lengthy description of God given by himself, highlighting who he is to Moses. And so this is teaching us the name of the Lord, who he is.

There's also Isaiah 57, 15. For thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy. I dwell on high in a holy place and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Holy is maybe the most common description that we have of God. Holy, holy, holy is what the angels cry. So all of these verses teach us names of God. They teach us God's reputation. They tell us who God is and what God is about. Now, we're warned in the third commandment that we should not take his name in vain. So we've looked briefly at some verses that teach us God's names and attributes. But what does it mean then to take them in vain? What does it mean that we're not to blaspheme the name of the Lord our God? Well, vain is something that's empty.

That's without substance and without result. Blaspheme means to speak irreverently against God or something sacred. And I think that when we think about the third commandment, the first thing that we think about is words. How do we use God's name? We think that the violations of the third commandment are verbal. And they are. But it's not merely that. I think sometimes we think, like, if I could have just... put a slide up here with all the words that we shouldn't use in connection with God, then that would be sort of happy for us, right? It's like, okay, excise these words out of my vocabulary, and now we can check that commandment off, say it's good. The Jews tried to do this, right? They would not say the name of the Lord, the name Yahweh. In fact, they never put...

the vowels into it, so we don't even actually know how to pronounce Yahweh. Because they wanted to keep his name so holy, they wouldn't actually use that. But there is a propriety to being careful with how we use the name of the Lord. That's not a fully wrong conclusion. But what I want to show to us is that blasphemy is much broader than that. The Hebrew word that is here, is not the common word for speaking or talking. It actually means to lift, to carry, to bear, or to take. So blasphemy is not just saying God's name in an unholy way, but it also means that if you bear God's name, if you carry it, your actions will reflect on God. So if your actions dishonor God, you have blasphemed the name of the Lord.

And we understand this connection with our kids, with companies, with countries. We understand the connection. Think about it. One of the qualifications for elders is what? He must be able to manage his household. Because if you go out there in the sanctuary and you see a kid running wild, it tells you something about the person who calls them their son or daughter. You make this connection every time you go onto Google and you look at reviews of the company. You don't just say, here's a name. You look at the reviews because you say, what actions follow? Because how they treat their customers reflects on the culture of that company and whether you want to support that company. We understand it with politics. We understand it with ambassadors. The ambassador's actions.

reflect on the country that they're in representing. So as a Christian, what you do reflects on God. You're called a Christian. You're the Christ in Christian. As a Christian, you bear Christ's name. People will judge God by the actions of Christians. They don't know God, so they will assume that those who associate themselves with God are a representative of God and what he is like. And you can't blame people for judging Christ by what they see in you. You bear his name. Now, this is true of all people, by the way. We were created in God's image, which means all of us are to reflect him. So if you here are sitting here today listening, but you do not acknowledge Christ as Lord, you're a blasphemer. And God will not let that slide. You are guilty before him because you're an image bearer of his.

And so you owe him duty, honor, allegiance, obedience as someone who is made in the image of God. So there are two ways that we violate the third commandment. One is in trashing something that's holy and sullying a holy thing, which is God's name. The second way is by bringing guilt by association. That as you're a Christian, what you do, will reflect on God. So I want to think about how do we then violate this? We can violate, we can blaspheme God in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds. So let's go through these three things. Thoughts and words are very similar in a lot of ways. There's overlap between these categories because words are an expression of what we think.

How you view and think about God is either honoring to God or dishonoring to him. So, you know, the Bible says to pray without ceasing. I used to, I still do lose my car keys, but there was a point in time where I lost my car keys. And so I pray, Lord, help me find my car keys. And something you should know about Beer Bowers is my dad likes words. So we sort of grew up liking words. And we would joke around. And you had to be very literal sometimes in how you said things. Because we would find flaws in what you said. And we'd tease you about what you said versus what we knew you meant. I did that with God at one point. Where it's like, Lord, help me find my keys. Like now. Not like in a week from now. Because if I didn't specify the time, you know.

God might be like, oh, yes, you'll find your keys, but it will be in a week. You asked if I would help you find them, and you will, but just so I'd have to specify, right? Well, then I was convicted because my view of God was as if he was like this cosmic trickster. What blasphemy to have such shallow and unfaithful thoughts of God that he would just play jokes on his people like we would. Stupid thoughts you have about God that are transgressive. Oh, brothers and sisters, that's blasphemy. God is holy. We come to words, and with words, there's the obvious thing, right? The irreverent speaking of God's name. Using God's name as a curse word or a four-letter word. Saying OMG, saying Jesus without love and respect. That's like the most...

That's elementary. Christians don't do that. It goes beyond that, though. We should be careful because there are things called minstolds. We say Jesus, or we say geez, right? Which, that's Jesus just lopping off a syllable. Or gosh. Right? So, like, we can get very legalistic about what we can say. And we don't want to turn into the Jews who said, We won't even say the name Yahweh. God revealed his name to them as a personal God. It's a great condescension of God to give us his name. And yet, when he says, I will not hold those guiltless who take my name in vain, it ought to engender in us fear for how we refer to God in the words that we use. So I'm not going to give you a list of don't say this and do say this. What is the heart behind what you're saying? Never use the Lord's name.

as a curse word. And this would also extend to God's attributes, wouldn't it? See, if you look up in the dictionary and you say, what is good? Do you know who defines goodness? God. God is absolute. He's the I am. So every attribute of God, God is to the full extent. He defines it. You don't, right? So when we refer to generic goodness, there is no generic goodness. God is good. There isn't a generic holy cow or whatever, right? God is holy. And so when we talk about these things and we talk about, oh, my goodness, and we throw out these phrases, we have to realize that in some ways the way we use our language, we're atheistic. And we don't realize.

the goodness of God that we're actually referring to, or else we're referring to what? If there's just a generic goodness out there, that's atheism, right? And so we have to be careful about how we use the words that we use. False prophecy, saying God told me so. If you say God told me so and it doesn't come to pass, you have blasphemed the name of the Lord your God because he doesn't lie. That's why prophecy, false prophets, were stoned. Because to say, well, my God teaches X, Y, or Z, and God doesn't teach that, you have now impugned the holy name of the Lord. We must be careful. Oaths, whenever you swear, God is your witness, whether you say the name of the Lord or not.

The Lord can't swear by anything higher, so he swears by himself. So I'm not saying that we can't take an oath, but you do need to know that whether you swear, so help me God or not, you have taken an oath before the Lord who is everywhere. And by taking an oath, you're saying that there should be consequences for not following through. And I tell you, the Lord is witness against you if you do not follow through with what you say. To vow and not follow through shows you have no fear of the Lord. This also does have to do with worship, right? So we have to think about our singing. When you sing songs, does your mind sort of glaze over because you sung the song so many times? Brothers and sisters, don't do that. We're worshiping God.

We're singing promises often, promises of God. Do you believe that promise? You know, thinking about the atheistic side of our language, when you complain about the weather, who gave you the weather? Who chose for the weather to be like that? See, if we actually think God's sovereign, we got to be very careful because our attitudes proclaim either a disrespect and dishonor for God or atheism. both of which blaspheme the name of the Lord our God. So thoughts, words, deeds, actions. Hypocrisy is blasphemy. Hypocrisy is blasphemy. When you claim the name of the Lord your God and then go and act contrary to his word, you have blasphemed his holy name. Think about the verses that we read. Exodus 34, 6. The Lord's compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth.

He keeps his loving kindness to thousands and forgives iniquity. Is this the picture that people would get of God when they examine your life? We're going to have baptisms today, right? In baptism, we're taking the name of God upon ourselves. We are claiming that we or our children are part of his kingdom. This is a serious business. If we... are baptized, and then we reject God. We have blasphemed the name of God. So as we see the baptisms, we must recollect our own baptisms and think, have we, as the catechism says, have you improved your baptism? Or have you been living in shame and rejection of your baptism? The same thing is true of the Lord's Supper.

In the Lord's Supper, we are once again saying that we are part of God's family. We're identifying ourselves with the family of God. It's a table of unity. Why do you think we emphasize self-examination as being so important? Why does Paul command that you self-examine? Because you should not blaspheme the name of the Lord your God. by partaking of the Lord's Supper unworthily. Because in doing so, you put yourself in danger of death or great sickness. Because it's the name of the Lord your God. It's his table. And when you're living at disunity with your brothers and sisters in Christ, that is blasphemy to then go and partake of the table that proclaims the unity of Christ. And so the scriptures say, If, when you're going to the temple to present your offering, and on the way there, you remember that you have issue with your brother, go and make it right. And then come back and offer the offering. And so when it comes to the Lord's table, which we're going to take next week, the Lord's Supper, there is this duty upon us that we examine ourselves and repent of any sin that we're cherishing.

or that we're refusing to repent of. Because if we don't, all those who see us go up, we're blaspheming the name of the Lord. And even if no one else knows but you, you've blasphemed God's name by not acting in accord with his commands, and by violating this. So why is this so hard for us? Why is it so hard for us to keep the name of the Lord holy? I think it's because we don't actually think God's holy. Because we're so... And we don't really see. We're just somewhat comfortable in our sin. And we can be easily overwhelmed by the amount of sin in our lives. And we can't deal with all the sin. We think maybe God can just give us a pass. And we don't understand the terrifying holiness of the Lord. But you have to remember, these commandments were given on a mountain that was shaking.

and filled with thunder and lightning and the booming, terrifying voice. So much so that the people of Israel said, we don't want to deal with God directly. Moses, we need you to intercede. And the Lord says, that's a good thing. Because if I came in the midst of you, I would strike you all dead. And so they had Moses as their intercessor. And if we don't understand that kind of holiness, then we'll continually blaspheme the name of the Lord our God because we don't have fear. But that's a problem because the Lord says he will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. And this is no idle threat. If you read through the Old Testament, God strikes dead Nadab and Abihu and Uzziah, all for blaspheming God. There's also a story of an Israelite whose father was an Egyptian.

who in the heat of a moment, how many times using the Lord's name in vain happens because, oh, you hit your thumb with a hammer? Well, guess what? This Egyptian was fighting with a man. It wasn't a friendly fight. And in the midst of that, in the midst of the passion of this fight, he blasphemes the name, and he's put to death. Being in an intense situation does not give us a pass for blaspheming the name of the Lord. I've said this before. But look at God's response to his sin, and then look at your response. That's how you can tell if your normal meter's broken. If God says, I will not hold you blameless, I will hold you guilty for taking my name in vain, then it ought to be a really serious deal for us because it's a really serious deal for God. And so that's one of the easiest ways for us to check and see with our own hearts.

How does God respond to this sin? That should inform us how we should respond to that sin. And this is serious. So, do you honor God with your mouth? Not using God's name as a four-letter word, that's like the basics. That's like, treat your mom with respect. Don't use her name, filthy, right? But it goes far beyond that. What is your talk like at school? and at work? Is your mouth producing clean water and salt water? Are you swearing and making crude jokes with others one minute and then trying to speak of the things of God the next? Or are you too ashamed to speak of the things of God because of the way your mouth runs the rest of the week? And so you refuse to bear witness to Christ because your own mind convicts you of the blasphemy that it would be to name yourself as a Christian because of the life that you've lived in front of your coworkers.

or your classmates or your siblings? Do your actions draw people to Christ or push them away? How does your life reflect God? We are in a holiday season. We're going to be with family. Many of us have family with us today. We have disagreements with them. Some of them are believers. Some of them are not. It's easy to go along to get along in these situations. But be careful. Brothers and sisters, be careful that you do not go along to get along, and in doing so, blaspheme God's name by saying it's okay to sins that God says it's not okay. Let's pray.