We come this morning to the third commandment. And as we do, we encounter that commandment which among evangelicals is presumed to be understood, presuming ourselves not to break it. I was raised in an evangelical subculture that quite assumed that there was a list of words that must never be spoken. My mother was the keeper of this list. It was, as I discovered, an ever-expanding list: no bad language, no taking the Lord's name in vain. The Federal Communications Commission has a list of seven bad words that may not be spoken. My mother’s list was much larger than this. I was taught the little song, “Be careful little lips what you say. Be careful little lips what you say. For the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little lips what you say.” When little lips said the wrong words, retribution was swift. Punishment was sure!

It was, at the very least, an introduction to the power of words. How could one word—a hominological unit, an etymological construct, consonants and vowels put together in an orderly fashion—bring forth such a swift response? But words are just as powerful as they seem. As finite human creatures, words are among the most powerful of the potent tools at our finite disposal.

In Exodus 20, here in the first table of the law we encounter the third commandment: “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.” The horizon of our concern with this particular commandment is far too short. Our apprehension of this commandment is generally far too superficial. Our assumption—the assumption writ large across popular piety—is if we can just avoid a list we will do well. If like the Federal Communications Commission we can come up with our own list, if we can publish it and distribute it and remember it, all will be well. While out there among the fallen and the heathen, as they rage, words will be hurled with venom and with blasphemy and with very little concern for even the power of the word itself, we will be safe. And yet I would submit to you that this is perhaps the commandment most routinely broken by evangelicals—broken in our discourse amongst each other, broken in our piety and broken in our worship.

There is, of course, a covenantal context here, as Israel is the recipient of this treaty from the Lord that comes in the form of these two tables of the law. Israel is in a specific place as the covenant people, as the elect nation. And Israel is to stand out as this chosen, peculiar people from all the peoples of the world. And in one very specific dimension, among other very specific dimensions, Israel is to stand out from the other nations: one of the distinctives of Israel is to be its speech about God. After declaring that he will have no idols, God declares that his name must be spoken and heard with reverence. In the covenantal context here, this has to do with Israel coming to know the God who had brought Israel out of bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt. This was the God who to Moses had revealed himself, and as an act of his grace and mercy had disclosed himself, forfeiting his personal privacy in the theophany of the bush that burned but was not consumed, in order that Moses would be able to say to the people, “I have heard from the Lord and this is his name.”

This is not a generic deity of Middle Eastern piety and invention; this is the one true and living God. I Am that I Am—the Tetragrammaton. I Am who I Am. The revealed name. The name that makes a declaration of God's own infinite perfection, of his self-sufficiency and self-existence. The idols are created things. An idol is because we have decided that it should be. But I Am who I Am. 'I Am' implies sovereignty and self-existence and aseity and all that is involved in the infinity of God's own perfections. I Am who I Am. And yet this is a revealed name. Flesh and blood did not reveal this name unto us, but our Father who is in heaven.

It is a name about which God himself is jealous. He just told us that he was a jealous God, and that as a jealous God (let us look at his language just preceding): “For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

In your studies here you will understand the history of this name. We will come to understand how God continued to reveal himself through his names, as recorded in the Scripture—revealing himself as Provider and Healer and the Saviour of Israel. Revealing himself as Almighty. It is no small thing that we should know this name. It is simply by grace and by mercy that we would know this name. It is not a name that is a human invention; it is not a name of human discovery. It is a name of divine revelation! It is a name that is given to us. And in giving to us his name, the Father has given himself to us. He has allowed his name to be handled and spoken, and even manipulated and maligned, by sinful creatures. His name!

His name, even when it was heard, was soon violated. Even when it was prized, it was soon maligned. The Lord God is filled with zeal for his name, and he speaks of this over and over again. A zeal for his name; a jealousy for his name. Look at Ezekiel 36. As we are prepared for the promise of the new covenant, the Lord God makes his salvation of his people absolutely transparent as an act to vindicate his own name:

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.Ezekiel 36:22-23, ESV

Israel's serial disobedience is a sin against the holiness of God. Israel's weakness and the punishment that fell upon it is a blight upon the name of God. And God will not allow this to stand. It is not for Israel's sake that he will act, but for the sake of his own name. It is not because of Israel that God will bring salvation, it is not because of Israel that God will bring restoration, and it is not because of Israel that God will give the promise of a new covenant. But it is because of his name, his zeal for his own name. “I will do this because my reputation is at stake. You are my people, and thus I will vindicate myself through you.”

And how we need to hear that as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ! It is not because of who we are that the Church will endure. It is not because of who we are that the gospel will go forth. It is not because of who we are that God's promises are secure. It is not because of who we are that the Church will endure. It is because of who he is, and the fact that he will not allow his name to be blasphemed among the nations without vindication.

God's zeal for his own name explains the righteousness of his actions and the absolute consistency of what he does for the glory of his own name. What if the third commandment isn't as simple as we thought it was? Maybe there is hidden danger here—a hidden danger that would endanger our very souls and endanger the very reputation of God, a reputation which he will vindicate. What if the third commandment extends to the totality of our understanding? What if it extends to all that we would seek to do or to say or to think or to sing and worship? What if it extends to the far reaches of our discipleship?

I want to suggest to you several ways in which we break and violate the third commandment. I want to suggest several ways in which in the contemporary Church we see God's name taken in vain. 

Reductionistic Theology⤒🔗

The first is reductionistic theology. To understand the name of God is to understand the power of the name. The name implies an entire theology. The name implies a self-revelation. The name implies the very being of the One who has here revealed himself. God says, “I Am that I Am,” and that is the specific reference of this commandment, “'Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD in vain.” The Tetragrammaton, the revealed name, Yahweh, Jehovah. You shall not take it in vain!

And yet God's name is taken in vain among the theologians routinely. As a matter of fact, there are entire libraries of vanity. Of God's name taken in vain. The revelation of the name of God is a revelation of his character, it is a revelation of his perfections, it is a revelation of his sovereignty, it is a revelation of his power, it is a revelation of his holiness, it is a revelation of his love—and all of these things are maligned and distorted and often denied in the reductionistic theologies that are rampant in our day! God's name—his own self-revealed name—points to his infinity, his sovereignty, his holiness, his justice, his love, his mercy, and all that is implied in his name. God has the sole right to define and to name himself! It is an act of creaturely arrogance and defiance to seek to name him. To deny any component of his name which he has revealed or to seek to redefine it in a way that would make his name, his character or his being more palatable for a post-modern age.

In the context of the giving of the law, the logic operates something like this: Following fast upon the second commandment (“No idols; no other gods; my worship is to be regulated by my word, and you may not invent or bring in an idol”) is this command that “You may not take my name in vain.” “There are plenty of idols out there; you may have nothing to do with them. But by the same token and following from the same imperative, you must not take my name in vain. If you do so, you treat me like an idol, an idol of your own invention! By corrupting my name and maligning my name and redefining my name and taking my name in vain,” the Lord God said, “You are redefining me. You are making me an idol. No image. No name in vain. At least be honest in your idolatry! At least go out whoring after another god, whoring after an idol. Do not seek to do that by subverting my name!”

That is an indictment of where we are in this age of all of these reductionistic theologies that would claim, nonetheless, this name. They are disguised forms of idolatry that rob God of his glory and malign his name. As Augustine properly reminds us, again, there are only two loves. And thus idolatry is a form of disguised narcissism; idolatry is a love of self, disguised as a love of an idol. There are only two loves—love of God and love of self—and everything tends towards one of these poles of love and affection. And thus idolatry is a disguised form of love of self. And so are these reductionistic theologies. They are disguised forms of human self-love. We will make God accountable to us and to our worldviews and our ideologies.

In some sense it was a lot easier to deal with the paganisms of old. They were more honest forms of idolatry. We face here the persistent temptation to redefine God in our image and to make of God an idol by the corruption of his name. We bring in wrong ideas about God, wrong teachings about his character, wrong arguments about his power, and we create an ideological idol in our own midst. These reductionistic theologies have been perennial in the church, but most especially I speak of those which have arisen in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, when human wisdom and human rationality and human reason were placed at the very center of the universe and all things were brought under the reach and the accountability of that reason.

And thus, the very unreasonableness of Jehovah, according to contemporary standards of rationality, is simply not to be permitted—those standards of rationality having nothing to do with the operation of reason but everything to do with what we consider to be reasonable. It is not reasonable to speak of God and all of his perfections. It is not reasonable to understand the necessary limitation upon our own will by speaking of his absolute sovereignty. It is not reasonable, following the logic of the intellectual bent of our age, to speak of God's omniscience as meaning that he actually knows all things.

The reductionistic theologies have everything to do with Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity, and everything to do with theology proper and the doctrine of God, and everything that has to do with cutting God down to size in order that we may handle him intellectually in the culture of modernity, and among the postmodern ideologies as well. We face a desiccated and dehydrated and demythologized deity in much of contemporary theology—a God who bears no resemblance at all to Jehovah. A God who does not intervene in the natural sphere, because that simply is not done.

These reductionistic theologies suggest that we must surrender the ‘omni’s (the omnipresence, the omnipotence and the omniscience of God), for instance, as impositions of an alien worldview. As Adolf von Harnack argued, as the “acute Hellenization of Christianity.” So we will deny the ‘omni’s and cut God down to size, because if we deny the ‘omni’, then God is something less than ‘omni’.

And Harnack would find his logic very much among us with those who would press such ideas as limited theism, disguised as open theism. Let us suggest that God knows everything that can be known, suggesting that what can be known are the things which are rather than the things which might be or the things that will be in the future. Let us suggest that if God's omniscience is redefined that way, then it allows us to have total libertarian human freedom, which absolutely, unconditionally we must have. These reductionistic theologies simply say: the God who reveals himself in Scripture is going to be accountable to our modern worldviews in such a way that we will make ourselves comfortable with him. And it is discomforting for modern and postmodern persons to know that their very thoughts are known before they think them. That their decisions are known before they make them. And yet, that is the God of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

These various reductionisms are new and old, ranging from process theology to the play with language of our contemporary day. You see it in its radicalized form in the scandal of someone like of John Shelby Spong, who is running out of material because there are no doctrines left to deny! But it is seen far more insidiously among those who consider themselves to be the faithful, who nonetheless hold to understandings of God that are also dehydrated and desiccated and demythologized, but more tamely so. You know, in one sense we have to give the old heretics their due. Think of someone like Nietzsche, who said this:

The Christian concept of a god the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god type.The Antichrist, 1895

At least Nietzsche knew what he was rejecting. There once was a day when it took some testosterone to deny God. There once was a day when it took some courage to deny God. But this dehydrated deity of popular piety requires no courage to deny. We have fallen from Nietzsche to Shirley MacLaine, and it is to our shame.

Triumphalistic Piety←⤒🔗

Secondly, we take the Lord's name in vain by triumphalistic piety. If we could only hear ourselves talk. The chattering of religious nonsense. This too, of course, is a theological sin, but in some sense I am almost afraid to call it that because there is so little theology in this theological sin. Listen to our talk about God; or for that matter, substitute the talk for the bumper stickers. God is our copilot, our dream weaver, our life artist, our friend, our coach, our therapist. Not Jehovah! He renders no therapy; he offers no coaching; he weaves no dreams. He reveals himself and saves his people from their sin. The triviality and the triteness of our triumphalistic piety, the backslapping easy familiarity with the things of God (not to mention his own name) is a scandal among us. We who would think ourselves safe because we can avoid a canon of forbidden words take the Lord's name in vain by the sheer triteness and cheapness of so much of how we speak.

That is why I cringe when an athlete is interviewed after a game. I want to make a deal with athletes all over the world: I will stay off your football field if you will stay out of theology. It is an easy, easy pledge to make on my part! “God wanted us to win.” “God evidently wanted them to lose.” “God told me! God showed me! God led me!” God does show; God does tell; God does lead…by his Word! His revealed Word. But forms of disguised idolatry have commenced amongst us when without any Word—any revealed word, any canonical word, any Scriptural word—we speak as if God has spoken to us and this is our new canon.

It is to our shame that the cover story in Time Magazine this week is on prosperity theology. “Name it and claim it, because God wants us rich.” Well, God does want us rich in the only things that matter, such as the knowledge of his name and the experience of his pleasure. This Word-Faith theology did not emerge out of a vacuum. It could not have emerged and taken hold in the precincts where it is now found if there had been a Scriptural check upon the language that was spoken, the claims that were made, the discourse of conversation. All this is to our shame. The overfamiliarity! And prosperity theology is just one pornographic example of what it looks like.

But even where that is not found in its most blatant forms, where we would never have the audacity to suggest that God wants us rich, we are nonetheless assured that God wants us happy and fertile and well. Overcoming our co-dependencies. Authenticity. “God wants that for us. God wants us happy and well. God wants us well-educated and safe. God wants us full and satisfied.” And that triumphalistic piety comes as judgment upon us, because we are taking the name of the Lord in vain! Maybe the Lord wants us satisfied in him and dissatisfied in everything else. Maybe God wants us to hunger and thirst for the glory of his name and thus to be hungry to be reminded of that hunger. Maybe he would have us to thirst for righteousness when we do not thirst at all. 

Superficial Worship←⤒🔗

We take the Lord's name in vain, thirdly, by superficial worship. And here again we face a parade of horribles. God takes worship seriously for the sake of his name. Just ask Nadab and Abihu who brought strange fire to the altar and were consumed by fire for the glory of God's own name. In John 4 the Lord spoke to the woman at the well of the fact that the Father seeks those who will worship him in Spirit and in truth—never the one without the other, the one [is] impossible without the other. This is the truth that is found in Word-centered worship, in biblically regulated worship, in Scripturally established worship, in Christ-focused worship, in Trinitarian worship. And yet among evangelicals worship has been turned into a laboratory of frivolities and a circus of creativities!

A.W. Tozer, a half-century ago, spoke of worship as the missing jewel among evangelicals. And he spoke of those he described as the “joy-bell boys” who pop out on the stage to be seen (and now on television as well). The joy-bell boys are among us. “Worship must be happy! Worship must be fun! Worship is creative.” And all idolatrous worship is fun and creative! Not necessarily fun in terms of frivolity (just ask the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18), but nonetheless narcissistic and self-focused. The horizon of our worship is, of course, simply too low. We welcome God to our services as if he is a guest.

We take the Lord's name in vain in our superficial worship because our worship betrays us. Our worship demonstrates what we genuinely believe. Time and time again we are reminded of this fact that when we worship we are declaring what we genuinely believe. Our prayers, our sermons, our songs reveal what we genuinely believe. I am not here to offer a broadside against contemporary music. Frankly, much of it is better than the stuff it replaced. Some of it is worse. I am generationally chastised and warned against making broadside attacks. I think John Piper is right when he says that a generation raised on “Do Lord, oh do Lord, oh do remember me” is not well-placed to criticize the young. However, I do have a contest for the worst of the new music. You know the definition of a praise chorus: One word; two notes; three hours.

I was in a church just a couple weeks ago where I have found a new low. It was not difficult to memorize this atrocity. The words are few. My family and I were standing as this song, in a church we were visiting, was being sung. And the only pleasure I had in it was seeing my teenage children look at me with the recognition of how awful it was. Here is the song (I had to look it up on the internet to believe that it actually existed): “I'll do my best, I'll do my best, I'll do my best Jesus. I'll do my best for you. I'll do my best, I'll do my best, I'll do my best for you Jesus. I'll, I'll, I'll do my best for you.” Capped off by the worship leader at the end saying, “That is just the way it is, ain't it? God just wants us to do our best.”

Our superficial worship betrays us in the worst ways. God takes his name seriously. We do not if we think this is merely a matter of style. There is no revealed musical taste, but there is a revealed name. And what is revealed about that name is the necessary reverence that is attached to that name and the dignity that is attached to that name, and let us speak honestly, the danger that is attached to that name.

Before we leave this worship, we must be reminded that this is in other precincts a danger that is represented in the attempt to change the language of worship about God—feminist God-language and inclusive language and all the rest. That is an effort to redefine God by redefining his name and names, and thus another idol is placed in our midst.

Manipulative God Talk←⤒🔗

Fourth, we break this command and take God's name in vain by our manipulative God-talk. Stephen Carter at Yale University, a well-known law professor, has said this:

In truth, there is probably no country in the Western world where people use God's name quite as much, or quite as publicly, or for quite as many purposes, as we Americans do—the Third Commandment notwithstanding. Few candidates for office are able to end their speeches without asking God to bless their audience, or the nation, or the great work we are undertaking, but everybody is sure that the other side is insincere…Athletes thank God, often on television, after scoring the winning touchdown, because, like politicians, they like to think God is on their side.

Everybody who wants to change America, and everybody who wants not to, understand the nation's love affair with God's name, which is why everybody invokes it.God’s Name in Vain, 2000

God is co-opted into the political context, the athletic context, the economic context, the personal context, the relational context and the ecclesial context. It is deeply theological.

We have no right to speak where God has not spoken. You see, it is not just the misuse of God's name by a politician. I am far more concerned, frankly, with the misuse of God's name by Christians—pastors, public figures, church members—where we would dare to speak where God has not spoken. We would dare to speak as if we were speaking in his name and speaking in his stead. The Lord's name is taken in vain when we say, “We know why God did that. I can tell you why you have cancer. I can explain to the nation why Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.” God's name is taken in vain. Turn on the television and you will find many, including Eliphaz the Temanite. Eliphaz the Temanite shows up over and over again there, among the other of Job's friends. Showing up on television to explain why God did this, or God did that, or what God is saying to us in this or that where God has not told us what he is saying. And God has not given us license to explain his ways where he has not declared his way! As Paul writes at the end of Romans 11, his ways are past finding out. “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his advisor?”

Hallow God’s Name←⤒🔗

There is a very clear threat in this commandment. And the threat is that “the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” Not guiltless. So there is guilt among us and there is guilt around us. The Lord takes his name with such seriousness that he will vindicate his name. Not only will he vindicate his name among the nations; he will vindicate his name among the name-breakers—those who vainly treat his name.

Does this have to do with Christians and oaths? Of course it does. Does this have to do with profanity? Yes, of course that is included in this, lest we take the Lord's name in vain, not to mention the other biblical commandments concerning the importance of speech and the danger of the tongue. Does this warn us against the misuse of the divine name? Yes. Is there a list of forbidden words? Yes there is, and you do not have to have a degree in linguistics and semiotics to understand why. The tongue betrays and reveals the heart.

But there is so much more here as we understand the third commandment. It has everything to do with our worship, everything to do with the disposition of our heart, everything to do with our knowledge or lack of knowledge with the one true and living God, everything to do with our obedience to his command not to take his name in vain. It reaches to the depths of our discipleship. It extends to everything we touch and everything we think that is even remotely theological or spiritual. It extends to our worship. It extends to our personal discourse. It extends to our marriages. It extends to our parenting. It extends to the totality of our lives. Because God makes total claim upon us by his name.

Calvin, in preaching on this very commandment, gets it exactly right:

The purpose of this commandment is: God wills that we hallow the majesty of his name. Therefore, it means in brief that we are not to profane his name by treating it contemptuously and irreverently. To this prohibition duly corresponds the commandment that we should be zealous and careful to honour his name with godly reverence. Therefore we ought to be so disposed in mind and speech that we neither think nor say anything concerning God and his mysteries without reverence and with much soberness; that in estimating his works we conceive nothing but what is honorable to him.The Institutes, 1559

And of course, as we look to the new covenant in Christ, we recognize that not only is this command fulfilled in Christ but eschatologically it will be universally and consciously fulfilled. That is why we go from Exodus 20 to Philippians 2 and we understand that there will come that day when “every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” And when that name is understood, all will be well and all will be answered and all will be right. The eschatological fulfillment of that promise is what brings us to true Christian worship as we invoke the name of God with reverence and with awe and with fear, and as we look to that day when God will vindicate his name among the nations. And he will do so in that name which he has given, that name which he has revealed, that name of his Son, even Jesus Christ our Lord. The name of Jesus will vindicate the name of the Father as the Father vindicates the name of the Son.

So how shall we live in light of this commandment? “Be careful little lips what you say. Be careful little lips what you say. For the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful lips what you say.”