Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,
a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.
It's our hope that these sermons will draw you
more into the life of following God, Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. Please consider coming and
joining with us each Sunday morning at 10am in
the heart of Midtown Harrisburg. You can find
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sermon. God Bless. Oh Lord God, we thank you
for you are good. Your mercy is over all that
you have made. Here we are on this beautiful
morning as spring is getting into gear and yet
many of us feel a weight of sin in our hearts.
Please meet with us here today. Please enliven
our hearts and our spirits. Be with us in Word
and in Sacrament. Please change us to be people
who desire your glory above all things. We pray,
O Lord, that you would open our hearts, even
now. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well,
hello. It's good to be with you this morning
up here. I'm Jed Stalker. I am a pastoral intern
here at Second City. So... If you've just been
attending this church for a couple of weeks and
you are expecting Peter, you are allowed to be
disappointed at this time. If you are a regular
attender here, you'll know that I've preached
here half a dozen or so times over the past year
and I wanted to reveal a part of my process for
writing sermons to you all. So the first thing
that I do before I even study the text intently
is I ask my children who range in age from two
to 11, what I should preach about. And sometimes
they even have good things to say. But more than
anything else, my daughters have consistently
suggested that I preach from Harry Potter. And
there are many good reasons for me to ignore
them in this matter. So I will not be preaching
from children's fantasy literature this morning,
but... For my girls, I do want to begin our discussion
of the third commandment Thou shalt not take
the name of the Lord thy God in vain as it says
in the King James by thinking about a profound
quote from the headmaster of Hogwarts Albus Dumbledore
One of the things that he says to Harry in the
first book of the series is this he says fear
of a name increases fear of the thing itself
fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself.
This is surprisingly profound, right? So in the
context of the book, the character Dumbledore
is talking about the character Voldemort, who's,
you know, the devil. And one of the plot points
in this whole series is that the majority of
the people in this world, they won't even mention
the guy's name. They're too afraid of him. So
they'll refer to him as he who must not be named
or even You know who. So what Dumbledore is saying
is, yeah, he's a bad guy, but you can say his
name. You don't need to venerate him. So get
your fears out in the open, call them by their
name, and then they'll be less scary. And I think
this is good advice for most things that we should
not be afraid of, right? But then the question
is, what about for those things that we should?
be afraid of. Those things that in a good and
godly way we should tremble before. So remember
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
right? So in that case, well the advice should
be opposite. So if we want to train ourselves
to fear, something, Dumbledore's logic would
say, one way to do that would be to train ourselves
in the fear of the thing, sorry, the name, the
fear of the name, right? That will increase our
fear of the thing itself. So, I feel like that's
sort of a practical, psychological introduction
to the theory of the Third Commandment. Joy Davidman,
who is the woman who married C .S. Lewis late
in his life, there's a movie about it, it's pretty
good. Lewis is played by Anthony Hopkins She
says quote the third commandment is not just
a nice Nellie ish warning against profanity It's
much more like the sort of warning you see around
power plants danger high voltage The implied
moral seems to be be careful how you touch God.
He is dangerous So the point of the third commandment
I think one of the points, perhaps, is that God
is utterly different than us. He is the Creator.
We are the creatures. He is infinite. We are
limited. He is holy. We are sinners. He is other
than us. He's good, but He is very much other
in a separate realm than ourselves, and we need
to be trained in that truth even to the extent
of our language, even to the extent of the things
that we say about Him. Let's think about what
the commandment says. It doesn't say, don't talk
about God at all. No, we should be talking about
God. A bunch of the Psalms, for instance, say
that we're supposed to extol His name, we're
supposed to shout His name, we're supposed to
sing His name. But what the commandment says
is don't take His name in vain. Don't misuse
it. So the question then is, how do you misuse
the name of God? In the small group that meets
at my house, we started looking at Ecclesiastes
recently and many of you know that Ecclesiastes
begins with the line, vanity of vanities. All
is vanity. It repeats this many times. One interesting
thing is that the word for vanity in Ecclesiastes
is a different word from the word vain that we
see in Exodus. The Ecclesiastes vanity is a Hebrew
word that means vanishing, vapor, smoke, something
that is here and then it goes away and there's
no trace of it. The message of Ecclesiastes is
that everything can feel meaningless because
it passes. It goes away from us, right? But the
name of the Lord surely does not pass. This is
a different word that's used in Exodus. The word
that's used in Exodus is a word that means worthless.
It's a word that means nothingness. It means
actually, in context, to take something that's
full of meaning and to empty it. meaning, to
make it worthless. That's the sense of the Exodus
word. So, how do we empty the name of God of
its significance so that we know not to do it?
Well, it seems to me to empty God's name of significance,
you act as though He's not alive and interested
and capable of intervening in the world. Right?
You talk as though God, who is wholly other and
wholly powerful, was just some other thing in
the world. So this commandment, I think, is saying,
don't think you can be casual about God, the
God of heaven, right? Like he was just another
guy that you happen to know. Don't think you
can be casual about God like a politician who
can vote out in four years if you don't like
what he's doing. This is God. He created heaven
and earth. He dwells in unapproachable light.
So the Ten Commandments are given in Exodus 20.
In Exodus 19, right before the commandments are
given, when Moses is going to go up onto Mount
Sinai to receive the Lord's words, God, this
is a quote, says, God tells Moses to quote, set
limits for the people all around saying, take
care not to go up into the mountain or touch
the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain
shall be put to death. That's verse 12 of Exodus
19. The whole mountain became holy. The whole
mountain became dangerous to get near because
God, the living presence of God was there on
the mountain and that's what this prohibition
about using His name casually is there for. That's
the kind of reverence that we're supposed to
give to the name of God. So if you're A lot of
people think about, why do we need to fear God?
Well, if you're a parent, right, you're well
aware that you need to teach your children to
have a healthy fear of many dangerous things.
Fire going in the road, animals that growl at
them, right? We need to be taught to have a healthy
respect, not just for the name of God, but for
God Himself. He's not an idea. He's not a theory.
He's not just a mysterious energy. He's a living
person who is so holy that to see him would kill
you. Philip Riken says this. He says, God's name
quote, is much more than a name. It is God's
identity. For us, a name is a label. It's something
we have, not something we are. But when we use
the name of God, we're referring to the essence
of His divine being. So the name of God is a
big deal precisely because God is a big deal
and we need to be trained in that. Anyway, with
all that said, I want to talk about this third
commandment that we read this morning. I don't
exactly have three points today. I sort of have
three lenses through which we can view it. So
I want to talk about it in terms of law, the
implications of the law, and then gospel. So
first off Law we're not supposed to take the
name of the Lord in vain John Calvin puts it
really simply when he says this quote in some
we must not profane God's name by using it irreverently
or contemptuously so if we use the name of God
in any other way than as referring to God and
In fact doing so in a manner befitting creatures
talking about their creator. We're breaking the
commandment That's the sort of bare minimum,
right, of the third commandment. So here's the
takeaway from that first point. Don't do it.
It's actually pretty simple. And I think for
most of us in here, this is actually somewhat
easy for us, right? We need to remember the holiness
of God and the respect and reverence that He's
due, right? If you're here this morning at the
gathered worship service of Second City Church,
of the Presbyterian Church in America, you're
probably one who does not routinely use the name
of God as a curse word. Probably you do not say,
I swear to God, unless you're making a very,
very serious vow, and you mean it, right? You
are probably not an intentional blasphemer, right?
And this is good. We should keep the commandment
at this lowest level. However, if you are here
this morning, You probably also know that our
surrounding culture is remarkably bad at keeping
this commandment. People curse using God's name
all the time. People who don't believe in God
swear to God without thinking much about it,
right? There for a while, the kids in school
were all saying, by God, all the time, just in
order to prove that they felt strongly about
anything. I want to tell you a brief story. about
how little some people in our culture think about
reverence to God and His name. It's just an anecdote.
So I worked at a library for a few years and
there was one young guy who came in. He was very
angry because the library had fined him because
he had lost several of their DVDs. So we had
a lengthy conversation about this. And in the
course of this conversation, he called me G.
a few times, listen G, yo G, this is a white
guy, and I calmed this guy down and he started
feeling nicer to me eventually and he said this,
you know, some people find G offensive as a term,
but really it's not meant to be offensive. If
you look into it, you'll see that G means God.
And I thought, what? And I said to him, Were
you do you mean that you were intending to call
me God when we were speaking just a little bit
ago? Why? Were you doing that? And he looked
confused about this as confused I think as I
felt and Then he just asked if he could borrow
some more DVDs. So I don't know. I mean, I enjoyed
that interaction more in retrospect than in the
moment, but So even though that was kind of funny,
this issue is not exactly low stakes. If you
think about the rest of the Bible, so in Leviticus,
in one of the few narrative sections of that
book, there's a story in chapter 24 of a man
who quote, blasphemed the name and Moses goes
to the Lord to ask for instructions about what
to do with this guy. And the answer is the people
of God are supposed to stone him. No mercy. Quote,
whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall
surely be put to death. This is something the
Lord feels strongly about and yet we're in a
society in which reverence as such is at a remarkably
low level and verbal reverence for God is at
a remarkably even lower level than sort of the
normal and I think that this is offensive to
God. However, I also think that a lot of the
people who do routinely take the Lord's name
in vain are totally unthinking about it. In a
very real sense, they know not what they do,
as Jesus says on the cross. So I think we should
feel pity and pray for people's forgiveness.
We should not fall into the trap of feeling better
than other people because of our verbal... habits
or theirs, right? Because if we do that, if we
start feeling holier than others, we might be
guilty of taking the Lord's name in vain in a
different way. So this is one of my points, I
suppose. My first mini point was don't take the
Lord's name in vain in a simple sense. My second
point related to it is you probably do take the
Lord's name in vain all the time in a deeper
sense. Look out. We'll come back to this. One
more little mini point again while we're still
in this law section and that's a New Testament
consideration of this third testament. So the
Apostle Luke says that Jesus is suffering before
he was crucified. So the men who came and arrested
him, they were holding him in custody and quote,
it said, they said many things against him blaspheming.
Him. They said things, and this was blasphemy.
This means that Jesus is capable of being verbally
blasphemed, right? And that, according to the
logic of the Bible, means that He has a name
which is equal to that of God the Father. Therefore,
I think for us practically, in this law section
of things to think about, the name of Jesus needs
to be handled with the same respect and reverence
with which we handle the name God for obvious
theological orthodox reasons, right? Okay, so
let's move on to our next lens. That was the
law, flat. That's the prohibition. Don't do it.
And again, we should just agree, right? Don't
do it. It's like Nike, but in reverse. But as
Calvin, John Calvin is good to point out, the
negatives of the law actually mean a good deal
more than just don't. We need to think about
the negatives of the law as a bare minimum, but
we are expected to go above and beyond those
negatives. So Calvin says this, quote, the prohibition
of the third commandment implies a corresponding
precept, which is that it be our study and our
care to treat his name with religious veneration.
End quote. That is to say we're supposed to worship
God whenever we talk about him, in Jesus's terms,
we're supposed to hallow the name of God our
Father who art in heaven, right? So that's my
second lens. This is the implication of the law.
I want to give you a hypothetical scenario to
illustrate kind of what I'm talking about here,
right? So picture this setting. It's lunch break.
At work, a bunch of people have gone out to get
a sandwich. They're walking back to the job.
It's been a hard day already. Consider two theoretical
people and their speaking roles in the same situation,
okay? Here's person A. He's an atheist. He's
speaking to his work buddies. And first, he speaks
the holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he
is not praying. He is not making a theological
observation. He's using it as a curse word. And
then he says, The boss is such an idiot. This
is a believable scenario, is it not? Right? Maybe
you could put in a couple of sprinkling of adjectives
to make it more believable to you, but these
conversations are real. But now, picture a hypothetical
different person, a churchgoer, in exactly that
same situation. So now person B, he says this.
He does not say the name Jesus Christ, instead
he says, golly. Gee whiz. And then what he says
is, the boss is such an idiot. And what I want
to ask you is this, is person B doing better
in this scenario morally than person A? This
is a real question, right? Let's do ethics. Here's
my answer. You can tell me if you think I'm wrong
later. I think person B, the guy who says, golly.
is, strictly speaking, doing better morally than
the other guy. He has not broken the letter of
the law in terms of the third commandment. However,
it's a very shallow victory, isn't it? While
he has not profaned the name of the Lord by using
it irreverently or contemptuously, he's certainly
not bringing honor to God because the rest of
his speech is entirely like this other guy. He
speaks like an atheist except for not honoring
the bear, excuse me, not breaking the bear commandment
itself, right? The rest of his speech does not
hollow the name, grumbling about people, insulting
them behind their back. This is not Christ -like
behavior. Yes? Calvin says, quote, we must not
detract from or throw insult upon God's works.
as miserable men often insultingly do, but we
must laud, praise every action which we attribute
to him as wise, just, and good. This is to sanctify
the name of the Lord. And do you know what's
included in the scope of God's works? It's literally
everything, right? So if we are praising God
for literally everything, we're doing well. according
to the implication of the third commandment.
Do you praise God for literally everything? I'm
not saying that we can't be sad or angry about
unjust things or even that we can't complain
sometimes in a way that acknowledges our own
faults and maintains God's sovereignty, but if
we usually or even often take the position of
judging and grumbling, we're insulting the providence
of God, and that is taking His name lightly.
And friend, if you are like me, I'm a person
who feels things very strongly. I feel like I
should just probably be in charge of the world.
If everybody would listen to me, we would do
better, right? This implication should make you
pause, right? Are your Habitual words are your
habitual thoughts, giving glory to God's name?
What about when you're driving? What about when
you're watching sports? What about when you're
scrolling through your news feed, right? If your
words are not giving positive glory to God, you're
not making it to this implication of the law,
right? quote, whatever our mind conceives of
him, whatever our tongue utters, must bespeak
his excellence and correspond to the greatness
of his sacred name. Do you live up to that standard?
I do not. So, friend, here's the thing. I think
that even if we're really good at keeping the
third commandment in its prohibition, we don't
actively misuse God name, I think we probably
fail. much of the time at keeping the implications
of the same law, honoring God's name and all
that we think as well as we say. I'm guessing
we keep the letter, but break the spirit of the
law. Well, what should we do with this? I don't
think we should just stop trying, right? It's
better to be a flailing sinner who's trying to
get things right than a Pharisee. So that's what
I meant earlier when I said that we better not
be judgmental when we hear others, especially
in ignorance, misuse God's name. Because if we
do that, if we put ourselves in the seat of judgment
against them, we are judging them on part of
the law while we ourselves are breaking other
parts of the law. And you remember what Paul
says about that? Romans 2, he says, Do you hear?
If we don't live up to what God's holiness deserves,
we're causing the third commandment to be broken.
So if we think in these terms, I think we will
say, like Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address,
we cannot consecrate. We cannot hallow. We are
not good enough to bring glory to God's name
like we should. It's beyond our power. We cannot
keep the positive implications of the law. This
is bad news. But there is good news. So the law
is, as Paul says, a schoolmaster to bring us
to Christ. So let's move to my third lens here
today. What does the gospel have to say about
the third commandment? Here it is, I think. God
will do the work that we can't. You remember
the gospel reading this morning from John 12?
Jesus prays, Father, glorify your name, and God
the Father answers audibly from heaven as he
did at Sinai, and he says, I have glorified it,
and I will glorify it again. So, bad news, we
can't glorify God's name the way that he deserves.
Good news, he will do it himself. Praise God,
God's name will be honored because God will honor
it. And that's kind of the picture of Scripture,
the pattern, isn't it? We are lawbreakers, but
God in Christ keeps the law on our behalf and
we get the benefit of His obedience. This is
gospel. The John 12 reading, you remember, is
in the context of Jesus talking about the crucifixion.
The way that God makes sure His name will be
glorified is by the willing sacrifice of the
innocent Jesus who's the only person who perfectly
kept the third commandment. the law and it's
the implications of the law, right? This is the
logic of the cross. So, I gave us a lot of mini
takeaways earlier, right? Don't use God's name
as profanity, don't swear by God unless you really
mean it, right? Don't look down your nose about
people who get this stuff wrong too easily, right?
But the real takeaway here, as always, is this.
Cling to the cross of Christ. Don't trust in
your own righteousness, even in the smallest
and apparently easiest things. Think about this.
Just do a mental check. The third command is
probably the easiest of all of the Ten Commandments,
isn't it? Don't lie? Well, that's difficult.
Don't covet? Oh boy. Don't lust? Okay. Don't
have any other gods before God? That's really
difficult when we consider the large scope. The
third commandment is the easiest of them all,
I think, and you can't do it. So don't trust
in your ability, trust in Christ. I think the
real heart of this message is that we need to
have a renewed sense of our own insufficiency
to keep even the smallest parts of the law and
a heightened desire to go to Christ for forgiveness
and grace and justification before God. And then,
having done that, right? We will want to praise
His name. We will want our conversation to bring
Him great glory. There'll be no temptation to
misuse His name because we will desire to praise
Him, right? That's what this sermon series is
called, you know, the resurrection life. Here
we are in the season of Easter, right? Being
new, being newborn in Christ is to want to praise
His name always. So that's the good news. God
keeps His name holy. It's not up to you. But
wait, there's more. There always is. What's the
greater good news with the third commandment?
What's the great gospel truth? Here it is. Think
about the Great Commission. What does Jesus say
when he's risen from the dead and all authority
in heaven and earth has been given unto him?
He says his disciples are supposed to go therefore
into all the world making disciples and baptizing
them in the name the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost. Friend, think about it. If
you are a baptized Christian, if you are a believer
in the Lord Jesus and a member of His Church,
you were baptized in the name of the Trinity,
right? the name that God was so concerned in
the third commandment that didn't get misused
and didn't get taken in vain, didn't get dirty.
He lets you and me and every forgiven sinner
into that name. He puts that name upon us. In
Leviticus 24, we have that story of the person
who misused the name of the Lord in anger and
he got stoned for it. He got rocks thrown at
him until he died. is how serious, how intense
the Lord feels about the misuse of His name and
how apparently intense we should feel about the
name of the Lord. And then in the New Testament,
God says that you and me and our children and
all who are far off can be baptized into that
name because of the mediatorial work of Jesus.
This is very nearly unbelievable. God goes to
great lengths all throughout the Bible to show
how drastically holy how other he is, how you
can't approach him without the proper ceremony
or you will get zapped. And then Jesus comes
among us and dies on our behalf. And then what
happens to the holiness of the name? It doesn't
lessen. It does not become less holy. But God
sloshes that holiness out in full measure upon
all his baptized people. In Exodus 19, that same
chapter where God is roping off the bottom of
Mount Sinai to make sure nobody stumbles up into
His holiness and dies, this is what God tells
Moses, to tell the people. He says, you shall
be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
That is, every one of God's people will be like
Moses. They will all be holy. They'll all be
able to stand in His presence. And that's what
happens to us because of the blood of Christ
shed on our behalf. We're not holy in our own
right. We don't earn our position, but instead
we bear His very name. It's part of our new identity.
We become other than what we were. That's what
it means to be a Christian. Right? It means that
you're called by the name of Christ, the holy
name. Think about Ephesians that we read this
morning. The whole family in heaven and earth
is named. Revelation says that believers will
have the Holy Name written upon them. Chapter
22. To be a saved person means that the Holy
Name is attached to you. It's more important
to your true identity than your personal name
is. So, all of this to say, we vain people are
welcomed into the very name we're told not to
take in vain. by the holiness, by the plan of
God. Okay, so fear of a name increases fear of
the thing itself. We should fear God. We should
reverence His name. And Christian, we should
know that we are marked body and soul by that
very name that we are told to reverence to the
glory of God in Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray.
Oh Lord God, we pray now In the name of Jesus,
as you have made available for us in this great
economy of salvation, we pray that your name
would be holy. We pray that you would glorify
that name, and we pray that you would glorify
even in us. Help us to live holy lives, to do
those things that please you. Help us to desire
what is right above all things, above our own
glory. Lord God, we pray these things in Jesus'
name, amen.