Sermon Cloud

September 20, 2009

Exodus 20:1-2, 7

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.7 “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.   There’s a way we should and way we should not even speak of God.  Really?  We’ve hit a fair amount in the past two weeks that we are pretty prone to define God on our own terms.  Not surprisingly, our definition of God tends to look a lot like ourselves.  He has the same values and goals as us!  He, too, is consumed with our emotional well being and is equally committed to our life being as successful and secure as it can be.  Don’t think you’ve got some ideas about God that conform to our values?  How about when we get angry at God when things don’t work out like we thought He was committed to do in us?   That’s’ been the point of these previous two weeks.  We have to know and worship the right God and other ones aren’t ok…and that includes ones that we’ve made up and that look a lot like us.

            So we feel a lot of liberty in defining a Jesus/God that suits us and, therefore, to believe that there are ways we shouldn’t even SPEAK of Him is shocking. We probably think this is one of these things that sums up what is so wrong with religion. But words are never just words.  Even if we say something just once in anger it came from somewhere.  Jesus confirms this in Matthew 12.  For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. We take the name of the Lord in vain when our heart thinks and feels that God is small.  And the trick is that we all tend to have misleading ideas about God and we all tend to minimize God. 

Ways We Take His Name in Vain

1. GD (misleading).  This is what most of us think this command means.  And let’s let it stand.  To combine God and damnation in a casual way is not the way to go.  Why?  As with all of God’s commands, they flow from God’s nature.  For example, the reason we should only value God in that ultimate place of God is because God values God and knows He is the only hope you’ve got.  The reason we shouldn’t lie is because God is truthful.  In this case, God isn’t casual and/or hateful about damnation.  He doesn’t damn someone because they cut you off on the road.  He doesn’t lash out in a harsh judgment off the cuff because he’s angry like you might when you spew those words.  To be sure, judgment will happen by God to all who desire to rule themselves and refuse to submit to His rule and reject His provision of His own Son Jesus who died on the cross.  But it won’t be rash or vindictive and our words make it seem like this is how God deals with people.

            In short, don’t speak of God in a way that misleads people (including you) about His nature.  This is way beyond cussing in that way.  It could be telling someone something that’s not true about God.  If you break the first commandment (have other gods), you are almost certain to break this one, too.  You’ll speak your viewpoints and they’ll be false.  Whether that’s bad theology, false prophecies, invoking His name in promises that you have no intention of fulfilling, scaring your kid into obedience, or saying GD, we mislead ourselves and others about God’s nature.  If knowing the true God is how people are redeemed and healed, then speaking wrongly of Him takes us down the wrong road and very few things are more serious than this.

2.  Light reference to God (minimizing).  Where religious people want to stop is to say that we just shouldn’t say GD.  OK, that’s true.  But if you consider what this is really getting at, the application extends, doesn’t it?  If this is really about not speaking about God in a way that is misleading or minimizing, then it goes beyond saying a couple of forbidden phrases.  In fact, this is going to push us more than we thought when we heard this read this morning.  Jews took this so serious that they wouldn’t even speak God’s name at all!  In fact, if you’ve ever had a Jewish friend, they will take out a letter (G-d) because they don’t want to take His name lightly.  Now, God never told them or us to not call Him by name.  In fact, He told them His name!  So that probably wasn’t where that needed to Go.  Again, that would be easy.  “Don’t say GD and don’t say the word “God” or spell it without leaving out a vowel.”  The religious would like to think so. 

            Another way we can render vain or lightly would be ‘empty.’  Ever speak of God in an empty way?  Oh you don’t mislead, you just speak of Him that makes Him seem very small or unable to do anything.   Minimizing God is as serious as misleading.  In fact, it’s just a form of misleading and maybe one of the most dangerous because we already have a minimizing tendency in all of us that likes to maximize self and minimize God’s authority and rule.  We can speak of God lightly or, more regularly, we just don’t speak of Him at all.  To be clear, we don’t want to mislead or minimize God because God is so great that He needs to be known and enjoyed as He is! 

Out of the Heart the Mouth Speaks

            Remember how we started?  Its not just words by themselves.  Words, even rash ones that we later regret, come from somewhere.  Our misleading or minimizing words about God come from somewhere: our hearts. 

            Let’s consider the opposite of speaking from our hearts through our mouths about the Lord in vain.  What would be the opposite?  How about this:  Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by your name.  Hallowed.  Honored.  Considered Holy.  Not just the words, but the God that the words represent!  He is so great and holy that we are compelled to live in a way that represents this.  He is so valuable that we want to speak of Him in a way that doesn’t mislead or minimize His excellence.  What would happen at Redeemer if there was gravity to our conversations about God?

            Let me point you to your deepest level of your heart to what you REALLY value and think about God.  I feel like we are just butterfly stitching wounds if we just talk about words this morning and don’t spend our focus here.  To hallow Him and not take Him in vain means we have to examine our thoughts and feelings about God.  I want to help us work through HOW we can fight our misleading and minimizing thoughts and words and then, positively, what this is supposed to look like.

1.  Fighting misleading thoughts and words:  Is your knowledge, even intellectually, of God deficient?  If so, you are likely to think, feel, speak, and live out misleading or minimizing things about God?  If you know this is you, what will you in response?  How will you make it your aim to learn more about Him with the aim of thinking and speaking rightly about Him?  Consistency in RG and worship services are great starts.  I put up an article about reflections on the air with some great books to read.  Read them.  Meet one on one with someone here that will help you grow.  That’s a great way to hallow Him.

2.  Fighting minimizing thoughts and words: Do you have a pretty solid knowledge of the right things, but your heart doesn’t feel the weight of Him and your mouth speaks this apathy towards Him?  It would be a great idea to spend a fair amount of time looking to the greatness of His nature.  You know it, but are you looking at Him in a way that would captivate you?  You know the right things, but you allow other rivals to enter His place of supremacy in your affections.  Could it be that you have assumed that right theology of God is the same as loving Him?  Could it be that you have done very little to cultivate your heart towards Him?  Remember what’s at stake.  If He’s functionally small to you (even if you would answer “God is big” on a multiple choice Bible test), your conversations will demonstrate that God is small.  You may not curse Him or say untrue things necessarily, but because He isn’t great to you, your conversations will be superficial and likely destructive at some point!  If I want to hallow God, I have to dethrone those rivals and the words will eventually reflect this reality.  Hallow Him by taking your saviors to task and not just treating symptoms!

3.  Positively, let me encourage you to speak true and real things about God to each other. This is one way we hallow Him.  Around Redeemer, we’ve adopted the phrase “gospeling one another.”  It is very possible for Jesus to be great to you as an individual, but to be in such disconnect with other believers that these words aren’t flowing.  So step one is to be with each other.  Step two is to encourage each other with the gospel.  You don’t have to sound like a 16^th century theologian either.  Speaking the gospel to one another and applying it is something we can do if we have been encouraged by Him.  We hallow Him when we do this.  By extension, let’s speak true and real things about God to non-believers.  We don’t need to be pushy or unkind, but we can gospel them just as surely as we gospel each other.  We can guide them through our own repentance on areas of brokenness.  In so doing, we hallow God.  Let’s follow Jesus and allow Him to change us and give us hearts that want to follow Him.  The words will follow.